LFM in the News – Page 9 – LFM: Libertas Film Magazine

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo at The Huffington Post and AOL-Moviefone: Battleship, Memorial Day & The Top 10 Naval Warfare Movies of All Time

BatteshipTop — Taylor Kitsch and Liam Neeson in "Battleship."

[Editor’s note: the post below appears today on the front page of The Huffington Post and AOL-Moviefone.]

By Jason Apuzzo. Memorial Day weekend is approaching, a time when Americans traditionally focus their attention on corn dogs, guacamole burgers and LeBron’s fading playoff hopes – but it’s also a time when we remember the men and women who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice for their country and for freedom.

And although Universal’s new film Battleship just capsized at the box office, unable to compete with the entertaining spectacle of The Avengers or Facebook’s Hindenburg-style IPO, it’s still a perfect excuse to take a look at The Top 10 Naval Warfare Movies of All Time.

Movies about America’s naval heroes – and there have been some great ones – teach us about courage under fire, about the importance of strategy, and recall a more romantic era when tactical masterminds made split-second decisions that changed the course of world history.

Old-school naval warfare in "Battleship."

Granted, America’s enemies these days don’t seem to like the water very much. Long gone are the days of legendary naval adversaries like Japan’s Isoroku Yamamoto (the Harvard-trained mastermind behind the Pearl Harbor attack), Germany’s Alfred von Tirpitz (whose submarines raised havoc during World War I), or even Britain’s Lord Sandwich – who somehow took time out from battling America’s Continental Navy to invent the sandwich.

Even the Russians don’t seem eager to confront the U.S. out in the open ocean, anymore – possibly due to the traditional Russian difficulty of keeping nuclear-powered ships afloat.

All of this is why Hasbro and director Peter Berg resurrected the cinema’s most reliable enemy, space aliens, to serve as the foe in Battleship.

And even though Battleship doesn’t make the Top 10 list below, as Memorial Day approaches the film may nonetheless put you in the mood to watch one of these classics of the World War II era and beyond, from the days when America proved her might – and sailors proved their mettle – by battling for supremacy on the high seas:

1. The Enemy Below (1957)

The Enemy Below pits laconic World War II destroyer captain Robert Mitchum against a craggy, war-weary German U-boat skipper played by Curt Jürgens. Mitchum and Jürgens play cat-and-mouse with each other across the south Atlantic, putting their tactical skill and nerves to the maximum test. And as their duel grows more intense, so too does their respect for one another. With a great musical score by Leigh Harline and directed by actor Dick Powell, The Enemy Below set the standard for realism in its day – although it’s Mitchum’s rivalry with Jürgens that puts the film over the top.

Best line: “I don’t want to know the man I’m trying to destroy.”

2. Destination Tokyo (1944)

Destination Tokyo stars Cary Grant as a conscientious sub captain who leads his crew on a daring mission from the Aleutian Islands to Tokyo Bay. Co-starring John Garfield as a skirt-chasing sailor named ‘Wolf’, and featuring colorful performances from Alan Hale and Dane Clark, Destination Tokyo brings the action like few other war films of its day. Grant’s sub torpedoes destroyers and aircraft carriers, and conducts bold night missions along the Japanese coast – all while dodging minefields, depth charges, bombs, even an appendicitis attack among its crew. Destination Tokyo was so good, it inspired a young Tony Curtis to join the Navy – years before he would appear on-screen with Grant in Operation Petticoat.

Best line: “Congratulations, Wolf … It’s been an hour since anything reminded you of a dame.”

3. Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

A mega-production that tells the story of the Pearl Harbor attack from both the American and Japanese perspectives, Tora! Tora! Tora! was so big that it needed three directors to make – one of whom initially was Akira Kurosawa. Tora! Tora! Tora! takes its history seriously, exploring the political and military context behind the infamous December 7th, 1941 raid. An epic film in every sense, including in its methodical pacing, Tora! Tora! Tora! shows what a complex, risky gamble the attack was for the Imperial Japanese – along with the many tactical failures on the American side that made it possible. In the pre-digital era, few war pictures seem bigger than Tora! Tora! Tora!, and the final attack sequence still looks incredible today – because so many of the pyrotechnics are real.

Best line: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

4. The Hunt for Red October (1990)

A signature film of the Cold War era and based on the famous Tom Clancy novel, The Hunt for Red October stars Sean Connery as Soviet sub captain Marko Ramius, who decides to defect to the U.S. and hand over his undetectable sub, the Red October, before the Russians can use it to launch World War III. Connery is perfect as the wily Ramius, and a young Alec Baldwin does a nice turn playing Jack Ryan before Harrison Ford took over the role in later films. A great musical score by Basil Poledouris – along with sharp performances by James Earl Jones, Sam Neill, Fred Thompson and Scott Glenn – rounds out this must-see classic.

Best line: “We will pass through the American patrols, past their sonar nets, and lay off their largest city, and listen to their rock-and-roll … while we conduct missile drills.”

5. Sink the Bismarck! (1960)

This neglected classic recounts the harrowing story of how Germany’s massive Bismarck battleship, the naval Death Star of its day, threatened to obliterate Britain’s Royal Navy – and actually did obliterate the HMS Hood, Britain’s most powerful battlecruiser. Sink the Bismarck! also dramatizes how blind luck often factors in to history’s most decisive battles. Strong performances by Kenneth More and Dana Wynter, as well as a colorful turn by Karel Štěpánek as Germany’s Admiral Lütjens, make Sink the Bismarck! key viewing for naval warfare buffs.

Best line: “We are unsinkable … and we are German!”

6. They Were Expendable (1945)

Director John Ford’s They Were Expendable brings an element of poetry and heightened realism to the genre in telling the story of how America’s PT boats fought the war against the Imperial Japanese in the Philippines. They Were Expendable stars John Wayne and Robert Montgomery – who actually commanded a PT boat during the war, and who took over directing the film when Ford (who shot footage of the Battle of Midway and also of D-Day for the Navy Department) fell ill. A sobering, moody look at the sacrifices made during wartime, and also at military innovation in the face of numerically superior forces, They Were Expendable was Ford’s last wartime film – and a memorable one.

Best line: “I used to skipper a cake of soap in the bathtub, too.”

7. Midway (1976)

With a boffo cast featuring Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Glenn Ford and Toshiro Mifune, and with music by John Williams, Midway recounts the decisive Battle of Midway on an epic scale. Although the film sometimes feels cobbled together with too much stock footage, Midway takes combat strategy more seriously than most war films – painstakingly setting up the options facing both the American and Imperial Japanese fleets in this crucial naval conflict that turned the tide in the Pacific. And even with Mifune playing Admiral Yamamoto, and Fonda as Admiral Nimitz, it’s Heston who steals the show as hard-ass Navy captain Matt Garth.

Best line: “‘Wait and see.’ We waited. December 7th, we saw. The ‘Wait and see’-ers will bust your ass every time.”

8. The Caine Mutiny (1954)

This exceptional adaptation of Herman Wouk’s novel is probably the finest film ever on the psychological strain of command. Humphrey Bogart (himself a former Navy man) was nominated for Best Actor for his iconic performance as Captain Queeg, who loses his composure – and possibly his sanity – during a dangerous typhoon, prompting his minesweeper crew to relieve him of duty. Scintillating performances by Fred MacMurray and José Ferrer, and vivid Technicolor cinematography by Franz Planer, round out this dramatic and provocative look at stress under fire. Plus, you’ll never look at a bowl of strawberries the same way.

Best line: “The first thing you’ve got to learn about this ship is that she was designed by geniuses to be run by idiots.”

9. Pearl Harbor (2001)

Michael Bay’s epic telling of the Pearl Harbor attack brought a new level of realism and detail to the depiction of combat – with ILM’s visual effects team re-creating not only the Japanese attack, but also the Doolittle raid and the Battle of Britain. Although the film’s romantic subplot never totally clicks, Pearl Harbor still packs an emotional punch once the Japanese raid kicks in – and the film’s old-fashioned, patriotic sensibility fits the subject matter perfectly. Bay’s team actually re-created a large-scale section of the doomed battleship USS Oklahoma and capsized it for the film. Don’t try that at home.

Best line: “I’ve got some genuine French champagne. From France.”

10. Action in the North Atlantic (1943)

Another classic from Humphrey Bogart, this wartime Warner Brothers gem was Bogie’s first film after Casablanca made him a superstar. Action dramatizes the vital role of the Merchant Marine in transporting armaments during World War II, as Bogie and Raymond Massey guide a Liberty ship on a harrowing mission to Murmansk – battling U-boats and the Luftwaffe along the way. Action is well-named, with more combat scenes than any World War II film outside of Destination Tokyo. And although the film was shot exclusively on the back lot, Bogie and Massey still made real-life dives off one of the film’s burning ships … after a few drinks.

Best line: “The trouble with you, Pulaski, is you think America is just a place to eat and sleep. You don’t know what side your future’s buttered on.”

Honorable Mentions: Crash Dive (1943), Operation Pacific (1951), In Harm’s Way (1965).

Posted on May 22nd, 2012 at 5:26pm.

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo & Govindini Murty at The Atlantic: “At the Summer Box Office, a Battle Between Two Ways of Filming”

FilmDigital — "The Avengers" was photographed digitally, whereas "The Dark Knight Rises" was shot on film.

[Editor’s Note: the piece below was featured today on the front page of The Atlantic.]

Digital moviemaking is on the rise, but some high-profile directors still shoot popcorn flicks the old way.

By Jason Apuzzo & Govindini Murty. This summer, Hollywood’s blockbusters are engaging in a high-stakes format war between cutting-edge digital technology and old-fashioned, photochemical film. Digitally photographed thrillers like The Avengers, Prometheus, and The Amazing Spider-Man will be battling it out with equally epic movies shot on film such as The Dark Knight Rises, Men in Black 3, and Battleship. Indeed, no summer in recent memory boasts so much variety in terms of how films are photographed and exhibited.

Yet with studios looking to trim costs on increasingly expensive “tentpole” movies, traditional celluloid film—easily the more expensive of the two formats—may be on its way out as the cinema’s medium of choice. Still, advocates of film continue to make compelling arguments about why theirs is the more enduring medium, even as both sides pull out their biggest guns this summer in an effort to prove definitively the commercial value of their respective formats.

Right now, advocates of film have numbers on their side. Of this summer’s major blockbusters, more were shot on film than digitally. Aside from The Dark Knight Rises, Men in Black 3, and Battleship, other summer tentpole movies filmed photochemically include Snow White and the Huntsman, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, and The Bourne Legacy.

But digital technology has the momentum and the prestigious advocates who will likely help it win out eventually.

For the rest of the article please visit The Atlantic.

Posted on May 14th, 2012 at 1:32pm.

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo at The Huffington Post and AOL-Moviefone: “Step Up to the Loudmouth!” Morton Downey, Jr. & The 10 Ways to Improve Today’s Political Talk Shows

[Editor’s Note: the post below appears today at The Huffington Post and at AOL-Moviefone.]

By Jason Apuzzo. Recently, while attending New York’s Tribeca Film Festival, I indulged in a guilty pleasure.

Wearing dark shades, and clutching my plastic media badge and a $7 bag of greasy popcorn, I stealthily ducked into a Chelsea multiplex to watch some of my youth flicker by across the big screen.

When I say ‘my’ youth, I’m also talking about the youth of millions of other guys who were teenagers during the late 1980s and tuned into politics. If you were around at that time, there’s probably one name you’ve never forgotten – no matter how hard you’ve tried: Morton Downey, Jr.

The movie I was watching was the probing and hilarious new documentary, Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie. If you never had the chance to experience Downey in his prime, you really missed something. Downey was easily the most popular and controversial TV talk show host of his day – although that’s sort of like saying Genghis Khan was the most popular and controversial equestrian of his day. It doesn’t really capture the scale or the savagery of the phenomenon.

Downey was the id of the 1980s – a real-life Howard Beale, if you remember Paddy Chayefsky’s Network. Like some wild, genetic fusion of Howard Stern, Michael Savage and Howard Cosell, Downey invented the modern political talk show almost overnight during his colorful, meteoric career in the late 1980s – while becoming a tongue-in-cheek folk hero for political junkies like myself, especially (but not exclusively) for those of the teenage male persuasion.

Part rock star (he was a former singer, like his famous father), part populist firebrand, part stand-up comedian, Downey transformed political debate on TV from the staid, genteel disquisitions of David Brinkley’s “This Week” program into something closer to a Vegas floor show – or a night with the Rat Pack. Dangling his trademark cigarette, and wielding a cutting wit, Downey turned the political talk show into the kind of uninhibited, boozy, late-night pleasure it had never been before – and has never really been since.

Watching Downey do his routine all over again in Évocateur (more on the film below), several ideas came to mind about how to liven-up today’s creaky political talk shows:

1. Encourage In-Studio Fistfights.

Let’s face it: most guests on today’s talk shows look like they’re just going through the motions – like they’re only concerned with their hair, and with being invited back. When was the last time someone upended a table, or stormed off a cable news show? It never happens anymore. Before Downey’s show, no one had ever seen political activists throw chairs at each other on national television, or watched ACLU lawyers battle screaming teenagers with mohawks, or watched Hollywood directors get dragged off stage – their legs flailing helplessly, as Downey’s working-class crowd hooted with joy. Downey’s guests were passionate, and always willing to put their bodies on the line when it counted (watch the legendary Al Sharpton-Roy Innis throwdown). There should be more fistfights, and table- and chair-throwing on political talk shows today – then maybe we’ll believe more of the nonsense these shows are spouting.

2. Bring Back Live Studio Audiences!

Why are today’s political talk show hosts so afraid of live studio audiences? Downey began his shows by high-fiving his crowd, even kissing the women in his studio audience. Downey’s hyped-up, seemingly inebriated audience (they often dressed in Halloween costumes) was encouraged to talk back to the show’s guests from a lectern known as ‘The Loudmouth.’ It was at ‘The Loudmouth’ that the audience lived out the primal fantasy of speaking truth to power – as teenagers, truck drivers, dental assistants and other regular folk got their chance to berate corrupt officials, phony celebrities, radical professors or gasbag political activists. It was this cathartic opportunity to abuse and humiliate the powerful that gave Downey’s show its special electricity. (“Step up to the Loudmouth” even became a catchphrase of the day.)

3. Invite Actual Human Beings on as Guests.

This is an important point: consultants, political strategists and journalists should be replaced by actual human beings on political talk shows. Although media figures of today like Al Sharpton, Gloria Allred and Alan Dershowitz got their first big breaks on Downey’s show (alongside even wilder guests like Joey Ramone of The Ramones, or Ace Frehley of Kiss), Downey rarely played it easy by inviting on the usual pundits – or even people conversant in the English language – to talk about issues. He instead found people who were colorful, off-beat, or in some way good foils for him and his hyper-charged studio audience. As a result, a lot of all-too-real people made their way onto his show: street hustlers, pro wrestlers, strippers, UFO conspiracy theorists, communists, small-time evangelists. Not even Fox News covers as much ground in this respect as Downey once did.

4. Boot Bad Guests Off the Show – Frequently.

This is the flipside of #3. Downey took great relish in booting dull or belligerent guests off his show – and this is really something today’s political shows should consider doing. Although Downey invited the most radical, combative and often freakish public figures of his day onto his show, sometimes their schtick didn’t work and the guest had to be cut loose – quickly. As an example from today, Fox News keeps bringing on some guy who’s listed as a ‘conservative comedian’ – but the guy’s never made me laugh once. He should be barked-at and ridiculed by Bill O’Reilly, then hauled off by security guards while a live studio audience throws wads of Kleenex at him. Then he might be fun to have around.

5. Get Up Off Your Behind!

Downey was rarely seated on his show; he prowled around the set for the full hour, gesticulating with a cigarette, pointing at the camera, hovering over his guests and bantering with the studio audience. It brought pizzazz and theatricality to the show. Plus, Downey understood that he was the real star of his show, which he why his guests as a rule stayed firmly planted in their seats – under threat of getting booted. Today’s hosts should get off their asses, get out from behind their desks, and start moving around more.

6. Drop the Dress Code.

Part of why people are so inhibited on today’s shows is that everybody dresses like they’re at a GE stock holders meeting. It’s boring. Downey frequently came onto his show in jeans, sans coat or tie. He also dressed up as Dracula once, and even wore war paint and army fatigues. Plus, his audience members sometimes dressed as gorillas, carnival clowns, or Cuban revolutionaries. It set the tone, and people loosened up.

7. Learn to Ignore the News Cycle.

This is a big one with me. The term ‘news cycle’ is really just another way to say: ‘whatever somebody else is talking about.’ It’s tedious to turn on the big cable news networks and see them covering identical subjects, day in and day out. Branch out! Be creative, the way Downey was (he once did a show on “Strippers for God”). Find news stories nobody else is covering, like: “Oil Drillers Who Dig with Their Teeth,” or “Green Technology You Can’t Afford.” It would liven things up.

8. When You Say Something Stupid, Apologize.

It’s inevitable that a host will say something stupid or otherwise regrettable over the course of doing a daily political TV show. Downey certainly did, and apologized when necessary. What’s annoying is when today’s hosts, in an effort to save their careers, double-down on stupid comments later – pretending that their inane remark (“Senator Smith’s wife has skin like a Maine lobster”) was actually a carefully considered policy statement (“Actually, my critics aren’t aware that before I was a TV talk show host, I worked at The American Crustacean Society. So I know what I’m talking about!”). It’s embarrassing. When you say something inappropriate, fess up, apologize and move on – in other words, be a human being.

Downey with rockers Honey One Percenter and Ace Frehley.

9. Feature Live Music.

A former singer himself, Downey occasionally brought live bands – mostly hard rock acts – onto his show to great effect. It gave the show a late-night, uninhibited vibe that today’s political shows desperately need. (Side note: in the absence of music, such primitive group behavior as chanting or catcalls should be encouraged from the studio audience.) Downey understood that the enemy of political talk shows is stuffiness – and nobody ever called his show stuffy.

10. Bring Cigarettes & Liquor Back to Late Night.

OK, admittedly this one is never going to happen – but it should.

Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie

The suggestions above are just a few examples of what Morton Downey, Jr. would likely do to liven up political talk shows, were he around today. And who knows? Maybe somebody will actually take some of this advice and turn today’s dull, grimly earnest shows into the glorious, Rabelaisian carnivals of human excess that they could be.

In the meantime, thanks to Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie, we can look back at how cathartic and liberating it once was to “step up to the Loudmouth.”

In Évocateur, filmmakers Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller, and Jeremy Newberger dig into Downey’s personal story, beginning with his privileged youth as the son of popular singer Morton Downey and actress Barbara Bennett (the sister of actresses Constance and Joan Bennett). We learn, in an incredible irony, that Downey was actually raised next door to the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port – and was a lifelong friend of Ted Kennedy, with whom he clearly shared the same salty sense of humor.

Downey rambled through a series of careers as a singer and radio announcer until he finally hit his stride as a New Jersey TV host in the late ’80s, channeling mostly working class resentments against liberal cultural elites. (Sound familiar?) The moment his opera buffa-style talk show went national in 1988 it became an overnight hit – although it would last less than two years. After jumping the shark a few too many times – at one point even staging a fake assault on himself by neo-Nazis in an airport bathroom stall – his show petered out, his audience moving on to more sedate fare.

Évocateur does a fabulous job of bringing Downey’s cracked brilliance back to life with a slew of archival clips from his show, and interviews with former guests and co-workers. It’s clear that even liberals loved the guy – Gloria Allred and Alan Dershowitz have especially warm words for him, in particular.

After the Tribeca screening I asked Jeremy Newberger, one of the film’s directors, what made Downey different from today’s talk show hosts of either the conservative or liberal variety. “The [hosts] today … there’s more machinery in place to protect them,” Newberger said. “They have more infrastructure … a lot of these guys are in a vacuum, where no one gets to come across and have a different opinion without being edited out.”

“This guy [Downey] was tough, he was willing to speak his mind, and he had an interactive show – and he was pretty brave to do what he did.”

Newberger is right – Downey was brave. His show was a far cry from the stale, corporate programs of today that seem intent on insulating their high-priced hosts from criticism, awkward questions or interaction with regular citizens. Downey didn’t avoid such public exposure – he thrived on it.

Downey’s raucous show may not have been particularly noble or elevating – no doubt he turned political debate into something more vulgar and carnivalesque than it had ever been. But he also made political TV more earthy, entertaining and human – and nobody’s equaled him in that way since.

Posted on May 11th, 2012 at 2:09pm.

San Francisco International Film Festival 2012: LFM Reviews Policeman

By Joe Bendel. As if Palestinian terrorism were not enough to worry about, Israel also must contend with old fashioned violent leftist extremism. Fortunately, the anti-terror cops are confident they can handle any threat in Nadav Lapid’s anti-procedural Policeman (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival.

Yaron is your basic red-blooded Israeli man with a very pregnant wife. He is the leader of his squad not necessarily by rank, but by force of personality. Regrettably, a rather messy mission has created lingering legal problems for his unit. However, Yaron should be able to fix it, if he can convince a colleague with a convenient but all too real brain tumor to take the heat for them.

About halfway through the film, Lapid switches gears, introducing viewers to the next crisis the SWAT cops will face. The charismatic Shira and the manipulative Natanel lead an extreme left wing terror cell planning to crash a billionaire’s wedding. Their manifesto states: “it is time for the poor to get rich and the rich to start dying,” which ultimately would not leave anyone left alive. At least total equality would be achieved. The jig is nearly up when the father of Shira’s newest dupe discovers their plan. Yet, rather than save his son by informing, the old school radical invites himself along to serve as his protector. Before long, Yaron and his comrades reappear with an obvious job to do.

Policeman is an unusually detached film, highly charged politically, yet scrupulously avoiding the central issue of Israeli life. In fact, Natanel vetoes every reference to the so-called “Palestinian” issue in Shira’s proclamation, lest it muddy the waters. What emerges is a portrait of extremes. On one hand, we see the hyper-masculinity of Yaron and his colleagues. Lapid repeatedly shows viewers the back-slapping and chest-bumping rituals they go through every time they greet each other. On the flip side, Shira and her co-conspirators are an emotionless lot, who are all more than willing to kill and die as part of the violence—all except Natanel that is. He seems to prefer that someone else stand in the line of fire.

Lapid’s clinical tone is not that far removed from Olivier Assayas’s Carlos, but it is even less judgmental. Whereas many people will be horrified by the actions of Shira and company during the final act, it is quite possible some immature viewers might be stirred up by it all. Granted, that ambiguity is largely the point, but it leaves the film in a precariously half-pregnant state.

Whether it was her intention or not, Yaara Pelzig’s performance as Shira is absolutely terrifying. Like a cobra, she expresses the hypnotic power extremists hold over their followers. Frankly, the lack of a correspondingly compelling character among the police, good or bad, somewhat unbalances the film.

Lapid’s distinctly bifurcated narrative structure leads to a conspicuous stop-and-start-over effect that is arguably not in the film’s best interests. Still, it quickly builds up more steam in the second part than first segment ever had. Indeed, Policeman lays claim to one of the more intense and disturbing hostage stand-offs dramatized on film in recent years. Wildly uneven but powerful down the stretch, Policeman should intrigue and scare viewers. It screens tomorrow (5/2) and Thursday (5/3) as part of the 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on May 1st, 2012 at 7:45pm.

LFM’s Joe Bendel on Tribeca 2012 @ Indiewire

LFM wants to thank Indiewire for featuring Joe Bendel’s Tribeca coverage in Indiewire’s Criticwire ranking of the best films from the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival. Indiewire is a great resource for the independent film community, and we’re very proud of Joe’s coverage of Tribeca and other festivals.

Posted on April 28th, 2012 at 9:47pm.

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo at The Huffington Post and AOL-Moviefone: Hail Caesar! What’s Good & Bad about The New Sword & Sandal Movies

JohnCarter12 — Lynn Collins and Taylor Kitsch in "John Carter."

[Editor’s Note: the post below appears today on the front page of The Huffington Post and AOL-Moviefone.]

By Jason Apuzzo. I come to praise Sword & Sandal movies – not to bury them.

But with Wrath of the Titans and the Sword & Sandal/sci-fi mash-up John Carter not exactly setting the world on fire – along with recent disappointments like Immortals and Conan – it’s getting more difficult by the day to believe that the Sword & Sandal movie can survive the recent fumbling of this otherwise great genre.

And that’s a shame, because the Sword & Sandal movie – known for its gladiatorial games, pagan orgies, depraved emperors, and the occasional snarling cyclops – may represent the most colorful and enduring movie genre of all time.

So for the uninitiated, what exactly is a Sword & Sandal movie?

Like its cousin the Biblical epic, a Sword & Sandal movie – or ‘peplum,’ named after a type of ancient Greek garment – is typically set in the ancient Mediterranean world, and dramatizes the fight for freedom. Think of Kirk Douglas fighting to free slaves in Spartacus.

Sam Worthington as Perseus in "Wrath of the Titans."

The hero of a Sword & Sandal movie is usually muscle-bound (think Steve Reeves) and able to deliver passionate speeches about freedom (think Charlton Heston). The villain is normally a wicked tyrant, preferably played by a silky British actor (think Christopher Plummer) – and the hero typically has a few slave girls, wicked queens or curvy sorceresses thrown his way before he settles down with his true love, often played by an Italian brunette (think Sophia Loren).

From as far back as 1914’s Italian epic Cabiria – the first movie ever screened at the White House – Sword & Sandal movies have been delivering huge entertainment value with their muscle men, exploding volcanoes, sacrifices to Moloch and marching Roman armies.

Cecil B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith took the genre to its early heights from the 1910s-1930s, with spectacular films like Intolerance (1916) and Cleopatra (1934). In the years before the Production Code, these films often pushed the boundaries of sex and carnivalesque violence. In DeMille’s infamous The Sign of the Cross (1932), for example, Claudette Colbert takes a sexy milk bath (see below), and the film wraps with a lurid finale featuring Amazon women fighting pygmies, and nubile Christian martyrs (including one played by burlesque queen Sally Rand) served up to gorillas and crocodiles.

Hail Caesar!

Claudette Colbert in "The Sign of the Cross."

The genre’s heyday, however, was in the 1950s and early ’60s – the era of ‘Hollywood on the Tiber,’ when the studios decamped to Rome to recreate the ancient world. This period was dominated by American-made Biblical epics and Italian-made serials about Hercules or other burly, mythical heroes like Maciste. Lavish spectacles like Ben-Hur, The Robe and Quo Vadis saved Hollywood from the economic encroachments of television, and minted a new generation of masculine stars like Charlton Heston, Kirk Douglas and Richard Burton. And the movies themselves got bigger, with new formats like CinemaScope and VistaVision filling movie houses with sumptuous panoramas of ancient lands.

Capping off the era was Elizabeth Taylor’s magnificently grandiose Cleopatra (1963), a movie so big that today it would’ve cost over $330 million to produce – possibly because the film’s dubious Italian accountants claimed Liz Taylor ate twelve chickens and forty pounds of bacon each day for breakfast.

Nothing about peplum movies – not even their catering – is small.

After a long drought, broken by only a handful of films like Ray Harryhausen’s magical Clash of the Titans (1981) – and Conan the Barbarian (1982), featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the bone-crushing Cimmerian warlord – the Sword & Sandal genre was revived splendidly in 2000 by Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe in Gladiator. Gladiator took advantage of new digital technology to convincingly recreate the ancient world in telling a blood-soaked tale of Rome’s slide into imperial tyranny. Frank Miller’s 300 then ‘modernized’ the genre in 2006 – recreating the Battle of Thermopylae with video game-style action, post-9/11-style speeches about the value of freedom, and Gerard Butler providing the most impressive display of abs since Franco Columbu was Mr. Olympia.

Fortunately, although recent projects like Wrath of the Titans and John Carter are doing little to build off the momentum of those films, Hollywood still seems to have confidence in peplum movies. Brett Ratner and The Rock are plunging ahead with their adaptation of Hercules: The Thracian Wars, and Russell Crowe recently signed to star in Darren Aronofsky’s Sword & Sandal-esque movie about Noah. The 300 prequel Battle of Artemisia still moves forward, and Wrath of the Titans director Jonathan Liebesman wants to direct movies about Julius Caesar and Odysseus. Plus Mel Gibson’s Maccabee movie is still in development (a bit awkward, that one), Ridley Scott and Paul W.S. Anderson are both doing Pompeii projects, Angelina Jolie is still circling around an expensive Cleopatra film – and Steven Spielberg is even considering directing Gods and Kings, an epic telling of the life of Moses.

While it’s heartening that these projects are still going forward, no one wants them to suffer the same fate as John Carter or other recent, lackluster efforts. Audiences probably deserve better than what they’ve been getting, so with that in mind it’s time to take an unflinching look at what’s working – and not working – about this latest crop of Sword & Sandal movies.

Kronos gets fired-up in "Wrath of the Titans."

WHAT’S WORKING ABOUT THE NEW SWORD & SANDAL MOVIES:

1) Boffo Digital Creatures

Movie creatures haven’t been quite the same since Ray Harryhausen retired, but his legacy is still alive and kicking (and growling) into the digital age. Recent creatures like Wrath of the Titans‘ Kronos or the club-wielding cyclops, or the White Apes in John Carter, are awesome beasts to behold – especially in IMAX 3D and 7.1 channel sound. And whereas back in the 1950s and ’60s only Harryhausen’s movies had credible creatures (even the wonderful Italian peplum movies so often got dragged down by paper mache dragons and rubber lizards), nowadays most Sword & Sandal flicks can be expected to feature a decent mythical beast or two.

2) Great Use of Weaponry

Today’s Sword & Sandal stars like Conan‘s/Game of Thrones‘ Jason Momoa or Immortals‘ Henry Cavill (who’s also the next Superman) really look like they can fight, or at least like they’re trained and know their way around weaponry. And while that isn’t a prerequisite for peplum heroics – Tony Curtis never needed it – the ability to use a sword, spear or hammer axe convincingly is one of the key selling points of any Sword & Sandal hero.

Wild costume and production design in "Immortals."

3) Bold Costumes & Production Design

Tarsem’s Immortals featured some wildly imaginative costume and production design, blending North African, Indian, Persian and Greek influences that enlivened the look of Sword & Sandal cinema for the first time in years. Plus, Disney’s John Carter managed some fabulous retro/19th century sci-fi designs, for the few people in the audience still awake after the first hour.

4) British Accents

Let’s face it: the Brits, along with the Aussies and the Irish, just sound better doing this stuff right now than their American counterparts, and are saving a lot of otherwise sub-par films. In Wrath of the Titans, for example, stodgy dialogue is routinely rescued by the redoubtable Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes – both of whom could probably make an ad for shaving cream seem portentous.

5) 3D & IMAX

When it comes to Sword & Sandal movies, size really does matter. And while today’s 3D/IMAX-sized movies can’t compare in scale to films like Howard Hawks’ 1955 CinemaScope epic Land of the Pharaohs (one scene in that film featured over 9,000 extras), new films like the IMAX 3D version of John Carter still offer a reasonable facsimile of what those widescreen spectacles of old were like.

WHAT’S NOT WORKING ABOUT THE NEW SWORD & SANDAL MOVIES:

Sophia Loren in "The Fall of the Roman Empire."

1) Where did all the Love Goddesses go?

Easily the biggest problem with today’s Sword & Sandals movies – although this is less of a problem on cable TV shows like Spartacus or Game of Thrones – is the lack of good female characters. The wicked queens, love goddesses and slave girls that once made peplum movies so famous (and scandalous) are almost completely gone – leaving little for the men in these films to do other than chop each other to pieces. No more dancing girls, pagan orgies, or virgin sacrifices – what fun is that? In the ’50s and ’60s, tantalizing (and usually Italian) women like Sophia Loren, Rossana Podesta, Gina Lollobrigida and Sylva Koscina appeared routinely in Sword & Sandal epics and made life exciting for the gods and mortal men who coveted them – or feared them. They should be welcomed back.

2) Spoiled Heroes with Super-powers and Abs

The big new trend nowadays – from peplum films to comic book movies – is to have annoying, demigod heroes with abs who fret over their supernatural powers. Petulant guys like John Carter or Perseus in Wrath or Theseus in Immortals who can’t decide whether the world is cool enough for them to save. It’s tiresome. Kirk Douglas didn’t fret over his ‘powers’ or his abs in Spartacus, Ulysses or The Vikings, probably because he didn’t have any – he just had courage (also the cinema’s best chin). Today’s peplum heroes should have fewer powers and flabbier abs (like Victor Mature), and more backbone. They should be more stoic, and stand for something beyond their own narcissism – like freedom.

Another fake digital army in "Immortals."

3) Fake Digital Armies

You know the kind I’m talking about, because they’re in every new Sword & Sandal film: the fake digital armies, with endless rows of digital soldiers wearing digital armor – marching and grunting into battle as one. They always appear in a scene that’s supposed to be ‘awe-inspiring,’ but that instead comes across as software-driven and phony. Memo to Hollywood: spend the money and hire some real extras.

4) Characters Who’ve Never Taken a Bath

In an effort to create ‘edgier,’ more ‘realistic’ Sword & Sandal movies, some filmmakers have come up with the idea of populating the ancient world with guys who’ve never bathed, shaved, or washed their clothes. Wrath has one such guy, an unshaven dude with matted hair named Agenor, who looks like he spent the last six months occupying Zuccotti Park. He actually gets more on-screen time than actress Rosamund Pike (seemingly the only female cast member), who plays the film’s pretty blonde heroine. A related idea in today’s peplum cinema is to have everything – buildings, armor, vegetable stands – sprayed with mud and dirt for that ‘authentic,’ antediluvian feel. It may come as a shock to some filmmakers to learn that people in the ancient world actually had access to water, and were able to wash themselves.

5) Movies That Skimp on the Big Themes: Freedom, Romance, Religious Faith

Here’s the key to a good Sword & Sandal movie: it wears its heart on its sleeve. Classics like Robert Wise’s Helen of Troy, Kirk Douglas’ Ulysses or Anthony Mann’s The Fall of the Roman Empire not only had more intelligent, literate scripts; not only were they better researched, and more faithful to the spirit of their original stories. There was also an element of sincerity and passion to them in how they depicted the big Sword & Sandal themes of freedom, romance and religious faith. In more recent years, for example, a film like 300 took the theme of freedom seriously, and cleaned-up at the box office. By contrast, I read recently that in Disney’s early meetings on John Carter, the first things executives discussed about the film were … the merchandizing and the sequels. It showed.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

While today’s 3D/IMAX-sized Sword and Sandal movies have modern technology and other advances going for them, they don’t always understand the human element that made classics like Ben-Hur or Spartacus work. Of course, assuming Hollywood doesn’t want more $200 million write-downs on its books, perhaps that will start to change.

The good news is that when Sword & Sandal movies are done right, people still love them. Movies about the ancient world stir our imaginations, and give us a sense of continuity with the past. They also speak to our most cherished values of liberty and faith – often while providing scandalous fun. Hollywood is right to believe in these projects – Cecil B. DeMille did, and made a career out of them for 40 years – so let’s hope filmmakers can up their game over the next few years, and make the ancient world as exciting as it used to be.

Posted on April 4th, 2012 at 8:04am.