North Dallas Forty

Football at all levels, everything from the NFL to NCAA to high school and Pop Warner, is at an all-time high in terms of popularity. Over the last few years, football has been in the news for an ever-increasing amount of negative news, much of it related to the dangers of the sport. This isn't anything new, but the purely impressive numbers are mounting at dangerous levels. Years ahead of its time and based on a bestselling novel, here's 1979's North Dallas Forty.

A wide receiver for the North Dallas Bulls, Phil Elliott (Nick Nolte) is past but his prime but still a very reliable player who the team counts on in go-to situations seemingly week in and week out. He's coming off an especially strong performance, hauling in the game-winning catch, but football is a week to week sport. With his friend and the team's quarterback, Seth Maxwell (Mac Davis), Phil has come to rely on painkillers to survive from game to game, not to mention the recreational drugs, increasing drinking and meaningless sexual encounters. It's becoming a lot to handle for Elliott, the receiver questioning his career choice, the business behind it, and the possibility of that career coming to an end quicker than he would have liked. The next game is fast approaching, and the Bulls need a win more than ever. Can Phil pull it together again?

Yowza, what a good movie, a sports movie that isn't often mentioned as one of the genre's best. It certainly deserves to be mentioned in the conversation. Based off the bestselling novel from Peter Gent (a former wide receiver), 'North' is a not-so thinly veiled dig at the Dallas Cowboys of the late 1960s when Gent was with the team. It is a hell of a story, a damning, indicting look at something fans take for granted at times. What goes on in this 1979 could be shocking for audiences currently, much less 30-plus years ago. This is honest, uncomfortable, funny, depressing and one of those brutally underrated movies -- kudos director Ted Kotcheff -- that has an air of authenticity that could only come from someone who's been in the locker rooms, the practice fields, the training room and the postgame parties. You feel like you're getting a window into something dark and disturbing. It's not just something we watch as fans on the weekend, but a cutthroat business with money as the bottom line.

With Nolte leading a strong ensemble cast, 'North' offers more than a few memorable moments. The opener sets the tone immediately, Nolte's Elliott waking up and going through his morning routine. He can barely make it to the tub to soak in the water. Yeah, the game-winning catch is glamorous, but at what cost? I loved the excesses of the postgame party, the Bulls celebrating with a raucous, out of control blowout. As big and crazy as the party is, the pregame moments in the locker room are just as effective. We run the gamut of preparations, some quietly readying themselves, others psyching themselves up for the game. None of these moments feel overdone or forced, and it would have been easy for the story to take that extra step forward to over-the-top. In ways that just watching the games never do, you get a sense as a viewer what it means to survive as a professional football player through the ups and the downs.

Who better to play the gravely-voiced veteran wide receiver who's hanging on to what he loves -- playing football -- better than Nick Nolte? I submit that no one is better. Nolte delivers a great performance as Phil Elliott, a skilled receiver who doesn't have the most ability but works at it religiously, relying on some of the best hands in football. It's great seeing his development (the story takes place over a little week) as he weighs the pros and cons of what he does for a living. His friendship and working relationship with Davis' Seth provides some great human moments as well as some that just make you cringe. We see the difference too between the star quarterback (Davis, a singer, holding his own as a character if not a football player) who the team so desperately depends on, and the far-more replaceable wide receiver. This is a business, a lesson we learn all too harshly.

Who else to look for? A very strong ensemble as we see the players, coaching staff of the Bulls, the owner and management, anyone and everyone. Playing a variation on legendary Cowboys coach Tom Landry, G.D. Spradlin plays Bulls head coach B.A. Strothers, an authoritarian leader, with Charles Durning as his rah-rah, get in your face coordinator. Steve Forrest is slimy and smooth as Conrad Hunter, the Bulls' owner who wants a championship for Dallas, Dabney Coleman as his brother and general manager. Dayle Haddon plays Charlotte, a woman removed from the sport Phil falls for while Savannah Smith Boucher is a far-more casual sexual acquaintance. Bo Svenson and John Matuszak are terrifying as two of the Bulls offensive linemen, embodying the concept of football players as modern-day gladiators.

As the movie develops though, it's the business of the sport and football that takes the spotlight. We see snippets of a game, just a few plays on one drive in a key game between Dallas and Chicago, the plays shot almost in complete darkness so we can't see the stands (and fans, probably cheaper this way). It's quick and effective without overstaying its welcome. I was genuinely surprised by where the story went in the final 15 minutes, an appropriately dark finale that works on basically all levels to show how ridiculous the sport and the business can be. A classic sports movie that deserves far more of a reputation. Now if Nolte's Phil would just stop wearing that stupid cap....

North Dallas Forty (1979): ***/****

Apocalypse Now

As a fan of movies, there are just certain films you have to see. When you haven't seen those movies, you typically get a reaction something like 'HOW HAVE YOU NOT SEEN THAT? IT'S A CLASSIC!' The reaction can be angrier or happier depending on the individual. I've gotten that reaction concerning 1979's Apocalypse Now. Well, check that one off the list.

Having already served at least one tour in Vietnam, special forces Capt. Willard (Martin Sheen) is wasting away in Saigon as he battles through some personal demons. He waits and waits for a mission, and finally gets one, but it's nothing like he expected. Across the Cambodian border, an American officer and Special Forces vet, Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), has gone rogue, and Intelligence things he's gone insane with his adoring command still intact. Willard's mission sounds simple but is anything but. Boarding a small patrol boat with its close-knit crew, Willard travels all the way up a river into Cambodia with one objective; terminate Kurtz with extreme discretion.

While director Francis Ford Coppola's highly controversial and much debated movie is typically grouped as a war movie, it is really anything but. It is based off Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, albeit based in a Vietnam setting. Not to sound pretentious -- the movie does enough of that -- but this movie isn't about war. It's more about the affects of war, how it hits people, how it impacts them. I watched Apocalypse Now Redux, the longer version Coppola released in 2001, and I feel safe saying it is unlike any movie I've ever seen before. Emotional, moving, existential, other-worldly, upsetting. It defies descriptions in so many ways.

The best I can do though is surreal. The Vietnam setting is a jumping off point for the weirdness. At 202 minutes (the Redux), it is a leisurely, slow moving story. It is one of the most incredibly visual movies I've ever seen, haunting in its beauty at times and upsetting at others. Working with his father, a composer himself, Coppola creates a musical score that is both classical and innovative. It uses an electronic synthesizer and lots of percussion, setting an eerie, unsettling mood to this trippy, even psychedelic trip up the river to Kurtz's compound. The feeling and aura of the movie is unreal and hard to put into words. Coppola creates a vision of a war -- Vietnam -- that I can only imagine was more terrifying than the actual war itself.

This is a movie about a journey though, both physically moving up the river and in one's mind, specifically Sheen's Capt. Willard. In a movie that runs three-plus hours, we get to see a lot of these bizarre, surreal moments in the journey. It starts with an opening set to The Doors' The End, and then we're off to the Intelligence community where the mission is explained, and then Willard is to to the Air Cav, a helicopter unit commanded by Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall), more interested in surf conditions than objectives. That's just the start though. We see a disintegrating force of soldiers the further north the boat travels, officers in "command" long since gone. The patrol boat also runs into a USO show with Playboy playmates, the crew later running into them at an isolated Medevac station, and is also captured of sorts by French plantation owners (including Christian Marquand) still in Vietnam from the French occupation years before. The longer the journey, the stranger things get.

Through the good and the bad -- and there's a fair share of both -- are some moments of perfection. Kilgore's Air Cav command assaulting a Viet Cong coastline post is a brilliant sequence, one of the most realistic, intense, adrenaline-pumping action scenes ever. It's set to Wagner's Flight of the Valkyries, the music the attacking helicopters listen to as they fly into battle. Has to be seen to be believed and appreciated. Watch part of it HERE. Another highpoint is the patrol boat reaching the last American post on the river, a bridge under constant construction and under constant attack. Arriving in the dead of night during an attack with lights strung across the river, Willard and the crew find the semblance of what used to be a command in a dream-like, eerily beautiful sequence.

Onto the cast, and there's plenty to talk about there. Sheen nails his part as the tortured Capt. Willard. His narration fills in much of the movie's quieter gaps, treading the line between obnoxious and pretentious with genuinely heartfelt messages. His own descent into madness, his obsession to finish the mission is startling in its own right. Brando doesn't even appear until 150 minutes in, and his performance is almost a caricature of himself. It's all right, but a little much (more on that later). Duvall very much earns his Best Supporting Nod (but didn't win) as Col. Kilgore, infamously stating "I love the smell of napalm in the morning. The patrol boat's crew include Chief (Albert Hall), the no-nonsense commander, Clean (very young Laurence Fishburne), Chef (Frederic Forrest) and zen-like surfer Lance (Sam Bottoms). G.D. Spradlin and Harrison Ford have small parts as Intelligence officers giving Willard his mission. 

As good as parts of the movie can be, it also struggles to hold its momentum until the end. The story drifts along far too much, and by the time Brando's Kurtz actually reveals himself it's almost a disappointment. There is little energy in the build-up to the finale, an incredible ending that has stirred up controversy over the years in all its different variations. Dennis Hopper as a stoned-out photojournalist (Scott Glenn has a small part here as one of Willard's predecessors) and Brando spout off with lots of philosophical musings that mean nothing but sound good. Kurtz delivers one moving monologue about the horrors of war, but it's lost in a sea of drifting, pointless "messages." That's the problem with much of the movie. It wants to say something about war and man, but what exactly? 

Through everything though, this is an incredible movie. Even if you hate it, Apocalypse Now will almost certainly make an impact on you either negative or positive. I watched it two days ago and am still wrapping my head around it. It is unlike any other movie I can think of, and truly needs to be experienced.

Apocalypse Now <---trailer (1979): ***/****

The Formula

Following the conclusion of World War II, American movies had an easy enemy and opponent for the next 40-plus years.  Through the length of the Cold War, the Russians/Soviets/Reds were the perfect bad guy, a shadowy, dark, sinister and even evil villain to do battle with.  But let's not forget about that other villain to come out of the late 40s...the escaped Nazis in movies like The Boys from Brazil and Marathon Man, and to an extent 1980's The Formula.

From director John G. Avildsen comes a story that you think will go one way and instead goes down another path. It does involved Nazis -- including a very cool opening sequence -- but ends up being more about big business and billions of dollars on the line from international corporations that end up all but ruling the world.  Think Syriana meets Who Killed the Electric Car?, and you've got this movie.  I don't know what to think of it, liking it at times and groaning as the "twists" are revealed. Like any movie I guess, take the good and the bad.

A former government agent turned Los Angeles police officer, Lt. Barney Caine (George C. Scott) is called in to lead a murder investigation. Caine is startled to find it is the murder of an old friend and a fellow police officer. But as he examines the evidence at the scene, something doesn't add up. Something seems forced, but he follows what is presented to him and ends up traveling to Germany as the clues and evidence present themselves. His friend was apparently involved in some high-end things -- drugs, big business (including oil chairman Marlon Brando) and billions of dollars -- that few were aware of. Was Caine's friend involved in something bigger than all of that though? Something worth killing more people over? As the bodies start to pile up, Caine wonders what exactly is going on, and if he could be next.

Complicated, twisting storylines typically go two ways. One, it is a well-written, well thought out complicated plot that works if you pay attention and keep up with it. Two, it is complicated for the sake of being hard to follow. That's The Formula. I resent when reviewers say a viewer who doesn't "get it" wasn't paying attention. Here, I paid attention, but the twists are too ridiculous, too convenient to even come close to making sense.  It isn't so much a Nazi splinter group of survivors pulling the strings as big business with monetary concerns doing the work. Just too many things happen that are explained in one quick conversation. If it is going to work, some sort of clue has to be given. If not, that isn't a twist. It's just lazy on the part of the script.

In its twists and turns, 'Formula' probably tries to do to much. It was billed as the movie that "the oil companies don't want you to see." The subject matter is probably dead-on accurate as to how the oil companies actually work, but it is handled in such a heavy-handed fashion that the message gets murky and even darkly comical and over the top. The formula is a German solution and equation to create a synthetic fuel that will replace the world's need for oil. Naturally the oil companies want to cover up its existence and are willing to do just about everything possible to keep it under wraps.  The story does keep you guessing as to everyone's motives, and it ends on a pessimistic note, but the story is so far all over the place that it never gels as a finished product.

On to the positives, few that they are.  In well-written movies or schlock like this, George C. Scott is almost always a watchable movie star.  He is intense, believable, and feels like he's never acting (to me at least). His Barney Caine character keeps the movie grounded in its police procedural roots -- albeit one that has him globe-trotting and involved in multi-billion dollar deals.  He's more than a little fed up with the system, the higher-ups, and the limitations placed on him. Caine is an old school cop/investigator who is just going to get the job done, and Scott is a bright spot among the bigger mess. Another positive, the opening in spring 1945 as German stares the end of the war dead in the face. The closing days of WWII (really, any war) are Dramatic Situations 101, and the tension and mood are great in this quick but effective opener.

Okay, now back to the negatives!  Yeah, more fun!  Brando got a paycheck for this one, and I think that's all he was worried about. His extended cameo as the chairman of an oil corporation as the actor -- maybe Hollywood's all-time best actor -- hamming it up in such an over the top fashion that it is either unintentionally bad or a brilliant choice by a brilliant actor.  I lean toward unintentionally bad, but who knows? The rest of the cast is okay, including Marthe Keller as Lisa, a source for Caine in Germany, John Gielgud as a German scientist who escaped from the Russians, G.D. Spradlin as Clements, a higher-up official with his hand in everything, and a long cast listing following them, none really making much of an impression positive or negative. It was cool to see WWII movie vet Wolfgang Preiss in a small part if nothing else.

Needlessly confusing at times, boring at others, and even a memorable lead performance from George C. Scott can't save this one.

The Formula <---TCM clip (1980): **/****   

Hell's Angels '69

By the late 1960s, movie studios seemed to start catching on that the same-old movies weren't appealing to audiences so there were releases like Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Easy Rider, among many more.  They reflected the changing times that were seeing a hippie/drug culture grow bigger and bigger, basically groups that were fed up with the status-quo and society's "norms."  Easy Rider specifically opened up a whole new genre of movies that had only been touched upon in the previous decade or so.

I don't know if it has an official name, but let's call it the biker genre where motorcycle gangs roamed the country causing havoc wherever they went.  I've only seen a couple, but from what I've read they were typically low-budget, drive-in type movies that cost as much to make as people spent to get into the drive-in or theater.  But I'll say it again, low budget doesn't mean bad.  It can be appealing in a lot of ways.  Last week's TCM Underground movie was called Hell's Angels '69, released in 1969 at the height of these biker movies.  Even though the IMDB rating is pretty low at 5.0/10 -- give or take a few decimal points -- the movie is pretty good, probably due to the talent involved.

Heading west on their motorcylces, brothers Chuck (Tom Stern) and Wes (Jeremy Slate) meet a gang of Hell's Angels and do their best to start off on good terms with these tough, very anti-social bikers.  The Angel's are a little skeptical of them but allow the brothers to ride along with them a little while as they all continue west.  Chuck and Wes though have a plan that unbeknownst to the Angel's involves them.  The brothers plan to break off from the group and head into Las Vegas where they'll be staying at Caesar's Palace.  Years of preparation has gone into putting this plan into action...they're going to knock off the casino for all the money they can carry using the Hell's Angels as a diversion.

Think of this as the original Ocean's 11 except instead of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack we get a gang of dirty, long-haired bikers.  It's one of the more unlikely heist movies I've come across, but at the same time, it's one of the better ones because of the story's simplicity.  The robbery itself is so simple -- even with the diversion -- that it surprised me that it didn't have a twist.  The last 30 minutes are the aftermath of the casino robbery as a Las Vegas detective (G.D. Spradlin, Senator Geary from Godfather II) tries to piece everything together while the brothers put their escape plan into effect.  Don't be disappointed though, the bikers figure out they've been duped and head out on the vengeance trail.  The movie is named after them so it's not like they'd disappear at the best part.

With B-movies, you have to expect a certain amount of cheese from the proceedings, but for the most part, 'Angel's' is free of it.  Sure, there is a lot of footage of the gang riding around, doing tricks, riding through Vegas, that does nothing to advance the story at all, but that's to be expected to a certain point.  It looks like Stern and Slate did a fair share of their own riding so that's always a positive too.  With one exception of an actor I recognized from another movie, the Angel's are played by actual members of the gang out of Oakland.  I won't post links because for most this was their only role, but it adds a sense of reality and for lack of a better word, coolness, that these bikers are authentic.

As the brothers leading the charge, Stern and Slate do double duty here, writing the script together while Stern also produced and put up a lot of his own money to get the movie made.  They had worked together the year before in The Devil's Brigade so I'd assume they met there and formed a fast friendship.  Because they both had something invested in the movie, it comes across better.  Stern was only in a handful of movies, and Slate was typically a supporting player so it's definitely cool to see them step into starring roles.  For one, they look alike, and they have a definite chemistry together so the brothers come across as very believable.  There are two twists -- one more important than the other -- in the last half hour that involve their backgrounds and their motivation for the robbery.

The story never really lags, but two key scenes stand out to me as out of the ordinary for a drive-in B-movie.  The build-up to the heist, the robbery and the aftermath are handled nicely in an exciting way that keeps you guessing as to what's going to happen.  Then, in the finale, there's a tension-filled chase on dirtbikes (SPOILERS watch it HERE) as the brothers run from the Hell's Angels.  The ending is a bit of a shocker, but it also leaves it open for your own interpretation as to their situation.  Surprisingly good low budget movie, and certainly a strong introduction to the all-powerful biker genre of the late 1960s.

Hell's Angel's '69 <----trailer (1969): ***/****