Forgotten Film Gems: The Villain

Posted on February 24, 2015 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

Remember that time when director Hal Needham got really drunk and decided to cast Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cowboy in a western comedy? Yes, that really happened. Maybe not the drunk part, but I assume he had to be out of his mind when he cast a giant Austrian in a western. That’d make about as much sense as having John Wayne play Genghis Khan. Oh, wait. Anyway, the end result of Needham’s insane bit of casting is an anomaly of a film called The Villain.

In 1979, Needham had already directed two wildly successful films (Smokey and the Bandit and Hooper), and he switched gears and made the most unique western I’ve ever seen. This was after Stay Hungry but before Conan the Barbarian, so Schwarzenegger was still relatively unknown at this point in his career.

Let’s see how the West was fun as we explore why The Villain is a forgotten film gem. Continue reading →

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Bill and Ted vs. Wayne and Garth

Posted on February 17, 2015 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

I recently re-watched Wayne’s World and it brought back a lot of fun memories. It got me thinking about another cinematic pair of rockers: Bill and Ted.

I was tempted to compare the two duos. After all, Bill and Ted and Wayne and Garth have a lot in common:

  • They are would-be rockers who film themselves in their parents’ garage/basement.
  • One has black hair and the other has blond hair.
  • They share a similar vernacular, including such phrases as, “Party on,” “Excellent,” No way,” and “Bogus.”
  • They date girls who are way out of their league (and/or century).
  • They each had two movies that end in chase scenes and some type of performance at the end.
  • In both duos, one actor went on to have a successful acting career (Keanu Reeves/Mike Myers) while the other fell into relative obscurity (Alex Winters/Dana Carvey).

But there is something about the very nature of these films that clearly differentiates them: the Bill and Ted movies are satires while Wayne’s World and its sequel are parodies.

Some might think that because of the shallow and stupid nature of the main characters, these films are completely silly and not worthy of any type of critical analysis. I beg to differ. I’ve already shown how Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is an example of cinematic chiasmus. That, by itself, shows that there is at least something going on in this film just below surface.

Let’s dig deeper and see what we find about these films. Continue reading →

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Patriot Games Just Got a Whole New Layer of Complexity

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

While most people were watching the Patriots defeat the Seahawks at the Super Bowl last Sunday, I was watching Patriot Games and discovering something profound about it. What I learned is far more intriguing to me than any football game.

Patriot Games follows an ancient symmetrical form of storytelling known as chiasmus. Its first half mirrors its second half so that it begins and ends the same way and every other point along the way to the middle of the film matches up perfectly.

This is going to be easier to digest than my analysis of the Dark Knight Trilogy or some of my other longer examples of cinematic chiasmus.

Sit back and learn a whole new way to appreciate Patriot Games. Continue reading →

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10 Clever Uses of Old Pop Songs in Modern Movies

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

I love good music. And while I appreciate how some films (for example, Star Wars) manage to create a completely original orchestral accompaniment that complements the action, sometimes I like to relax in familiar territory with some good old pop songs on the movie soundtrack.

Here are 10 movies that perfectly use classic rock n’ roll or other types of pop songs in extremely clever ways. Continue reading →

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What an Aborted Cinematic Chiasmus Looks Like

Posted on January 27, 2015 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

After doing my massive Dark Knight Trilogy cinematic chiasmus, I took a step back and considered how incredible it was that those three films managed to be perfectly ordered to create something beautiful. And then I realized that after doing nine of these film analyses, I must be starting to strain credibility.

I mean, could I be looking for patterns where none exist? Or am I trying to force films to fit a mold that they really don’t fit? I don’t think so. Symmetrical films are quite rare. Even when a film seems to be symmetrical, just a couple of things can keep it from being perfect.

Spider-Man comes close to being a symmetrical film.Take the original Spider-Man film. I’ve noted that this film isn’t as well-structured as its superior sequel, but I tried looking at it with my Cinematic Chiasmus lens, and it came so close to making the cut. Here’s the chiasmus, so you can see for yourself. Continue reading →

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10 Directors Who Seamlessly Transitioned to Sci-Fi on Their First Try

Posted on January 20, 2015 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

Great directors are ones who thrive even when making films in genres they’re not particularly familiar with. Science fiction is a great one to test a director’s mettle because films in this genre could so easily be dismissed as mindless spectacle that they have to bring something special to the table to convince people otherwise.

Here are 10 directors who knocked it out of the park with their first sci-fi film. They may not have been able to sustain that success in follow-up sci-fi entries, but that just makes their first attempt shine even brighter. Continue reading →

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Pleasant Surprises: Scream 4

Posted on January 13, 2015 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

Why would I talk about a horror film like Scream 4 in January? Isn’t that more of an October thing? Well, it’s a new year with new rules.

I’m not a huge fan of the horror genre. I enjoy Alien, Halloween (1978), Psycho, and a few other horror films, but they are generally not my favorite kind of thing to watch. But I love the Scream films. The fact that they are brimming with intelligence and well-crafted suspense puts them in a different category from the usual “blood and guts” affairs.

I enjoyed the first two Scream films, but the third one let me down. That’s true of a lot of film series: Superman III, X-Men: The Last Stand, Spider-Man 3, etc. Anyway, Kevin Williamson, the writer of the first two Scream films, didn’t write Scream 3, which is definitely why it suffered from so many problems that the first two managed to avoid. Williamson returned to pen the fourth film in 2011, long after I had stopped thinking about the series. I finally gave Scream 4 a shot a few weeks ago, and I was shocked by how much I liked it. Continue reading →

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The Subtle Symmetry of the Entire Dark Knight Trilogy

Posted on January 8, 2015 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

My readers deserve a better class of article. And I’m gonna give it to ‘em.

You will never look at Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy the same. This one is a real doozy. Remember my Cinematic Chiasmus on the entire Back to the Future Trilogy? This makes that one look like child’s play.

I am going to show how meticulously crafted Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises are that they perfectly mirror each other from beginning to end. I’ll discuss all of the points at which they intersect and then explain the significance of this chiasmus at the end. Continue reading →

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Cinematic Chiasmus: The Dark Knight Trilogy

Posted on January 7, 2015 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

This is not a typical Cinematic Chiasmus. I have written an ambitious article detailing how Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises mirror each other quite breathtakingly. The only problem is that the article is so huge that I have had to delay publishing it for a couple of days instead on my usual Tuesday.

So to whet your appetite and let you know that I am not just slacking off but hard at work on this latest article, I present to you this chiasmus. I couldn’t include this in the main article because it would make it so huge as to be unwieldy. I will publish the main article tomorrow when my amazing wife and I finish putting together all of the images to go with it. This is going to be epic.

Continue reading →

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10 Great Westerns That Aren’t Set in the Old West

Posted on December 30, 2014 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

A movie doesn’t have to star John Wayne or take place in the Old West for it to be a western. There are plenty of movies that fall into the western category that are set in modern times or the future or even on different continents, but they still most definitely fit the pattern of classic western stories.

Let’s take a look at 10 amazing westerns that aren’t actually set in the Old West. Continue reading →

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