——The Killing——

(A)

I was a little surprised to see that I liked this film as much as I did. Why? Well for starters this film is just like just about every other heist movie and film noir you’ve ever seen. There is nothing really in the story that will seem all that new to you. So why did I like it so much then? Because it’s not the story that matters, but how you tell the story. Kubrick pretty much pioneered the non-linear story in commercial American cinema with this movie (you can see its impact all the way up to Tarantino in Reservoir Dogs) and it works brilliantly. By starting at the moment of the heist, and then flashing back to the beginning only to work your way back up to the heist and then watch each man play out his part in flashback before actually getting to see if the heist is a success is brilliant. Elements are repeated and the story builds up remarkable tension as Kubrick keeps pulling you away from what you really want to see and only showing that at the very last minute. In our minds we think we have a good idea of what the other characters are doing, but instead of jumping straight from one story to the next we have to watch each one overlap to see how each piece of the puzzle fits together. Information is only given when it is necessary, which makes it a lot easier to build the suspense of wondering who is going to get out alive when, say, the one man’s wife (a perfect femme fatale) finds out about the money and has her boyfriend ambush the other men for the money. On top of that the ending is quite excellent. The main character’s final words left me quite surprised and yet satisfied.

Kubrick’s cinematography isn’t quite up to the levels of brilliance that we will see in Dr. Strangelove (I enjoyed the fact that the main character of this was the general afraid of the communists contaminating his fluids in Strangelove), and yet it is still miles above most other directors. The tracking shots through rooms were quite good and there was one scene in particular that really impressed me. We see the main character open a door, walk down a hallway, and then the camera pulls back to show us that we were actually looking in a mirror as he walks out the opposite side of the screen that we expected. The shot then continues down the length of the room, allowing Kubrick to film the entire movement without cutting once. Nice.

——Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)——

(B+)

This movie wasn’t quite as good as I had hoped (it had been compared to The Thing as an all time great remake) but it was still pretty darn entertaining. Just the idea of everyone around you being replaced and becoming someone different that you don’t know scares me. What if you woke up one day and everyone was a Republican, for instance? (Which is an actual extremely subtle joke at the beginning of the movie, by the way.) Anyway, the idea of the film is far scarier than the actual pods, which look like giant sea cucumbers with big plastic flowers sticking out of one end. The replicate bodies are pretty creepy though (at least the ones that don’t look like infant adults). Donald Sutherland (in all his porn mustache glory) plays the lead very effectively, playing doubtful to the crazy woman’s claims that her husband is different at first, but then quickly becoming a believer when the weird things start piling up. I’m not really sure why Jeff Goldblum is in the movie, but Leonard Nemoy (looking totally like a pimp with his huge sideburns) is great as the psychologist who is trying to convince everyone that they are just having a nervous breakdown. The ending is quite a shocker (lame at first but then as you think about it, it gets quite cool). The film deals with paranoia real well. It is not the greatest film in the world, and yet it is still creepy enough to get my recommendation.