Dances with Wolves** (1990)

Filled with lush settings, costumes and cinematography, Kevin Costner’s directorial debut is an absolute eye-pleaser. Turning Western film conventions on their heads, Dances with Wolves’ subtleties and melancholy tones won over audiences and Oscar voters alike, making it one of the best and most successful anti-Westerns of all time.

I use the term anti-Western because the film defies most of the generalizations and stereotypes that had become the norm in “cowboy and Indian” flicks. Gone is the notion that the white man is good and virtuous in his move westward. Likewise, the archetypal angry Indian savage has been thrown out the window. This is not to say that the roles have been reversed, because they haven’t. Instead, Costner aims to depict both parties objectively, as genuine human beings with parallel virtues and flaws.

The South Dakota setting is the first step in the right direction. Instead of filming in the barren desolation of Monument Valley, Dances with Wolves tells its tale on the rugged prairies of the Great Plains. While you wouldn’t think that hill after hill would be much to look at, the vastness is quite gripping. For parts of the film, Costner’s only screen partners are the hills and the sky that eventually bends down to meet them. It is the essence of both wonder and vulnerability.

Costner plays Lt. John Dunbar, a man whose suicidal antics on the Civil War battlefield gets him labeled a hero and earns him a ticket to whatever outpost he likes. He chooses one of the most remote outposts on the western frontier. He finds it abandoned and in disarray. As the only tenant, he does his best to get the fort up to snuff. As he waits for the reinforcements that may never come, Dunbar has frequent visits by a curious wolf and tense encounters with the native Sioux Indian tribe.

Dunbar ultimately finds ways to ease the tension between himself and the Sioux and they form a mutual respect for each other. As his relationship with the Sioux builds, Dunbar finds himself more and more disenfranchised with the ways of the supposedly civilized white man and finds himself sympathetic to the Sioux cause. He finds friendship, dignity, love and inner peace with the natives and is forced to choose sides when US troops finally make their way to his fort, delivering harsh doses of Westward Expansion to anyone standing in their way.

The concept of “going native” was not new with this film but the process is head and shoulders above the rest because Costner allows plenty of time for Dunbar’s transformation to take place. At three hours long, Dances with Wolves is a sprawling tale. Without that kind of length, the story would have been shortchanged and Dunbar’s shift in allegiances would have seemed rushed.

While a three hour run time may have been necessary for the story to seem plausible, the film is not without its share of dull moments. The voice-overs and cinematography really help capture Dunbar’s isolation but there are times in the film when I felt more desperate for something to happen than Dunbar. It is very difficult for one person to be the focus of a film for a great length of time. Costner’s dry, matter-of-fact tone in the voice-overs doesn’t help much when you begin to feel less engaged by the film’s central character. A few years ago, Costner released a director’s cut version of the film that added an additional hour to the film’s run time. While the film is a real treat and a triumph at three hours, I fear that four hours would begin to try my patience.

This film makes sense as an Oscar winner for Best Picture. While many movie fans like to scoff and say that Goodfellas was more deserving, you have to understand how the Academy works. Dances with Wolves is sympathetic and empathetic with a downtrodden people. It helps to right some of the wrongs done to Native Americans over the years in cinema and television and challenges our notions of what is right, both historically and sociologically. Costner has crafted a thinking man’s Western that strives to be anything but a Western. That in and of itself makes Dances with Wolves a fantastic film to watch.

RATING: 3.75 out of 5

Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

All too often, a successful film makes enough money and generates enough buzz that Hollywood can’t help but create a sequel. Not all sequels are bad but most are inevitably inferior to the original for one reason or another. The chief reason that Poltergeist II: The Other Side fails to find success is the original Poltergeist itself.

The original film was a breath of fresh air from the rising trend in splatter films and graphic horror. It used common yet creative scenarios to make the hairs on the back of our necks stand up. It was the fear of the seemingly normal that fueled the first film. Most importantly, the original was such a tight and complete film that it left no room for a sequel. The Freelings saved their daughter, found out why their house was haunted and got the heck out of Dodge.

This film does what should have been unthinkable- it undoes all the closure of the original and supplants it with reasoning that’s far harder to swallow (a tactic know as retroactive continuity or rectconning). The filmmakers are basically saying, “Remember that nice, neat ending in the original? Well there’s more!” Unfortunately, less is almost always more.

Before, the reason for the haunting had been because the Freeling homestead was built over a cemetery where only the headstones had been moved. Now the story is that a religious cult committed mass suicide in a cave under the house and their souls are still trying to cross over. The youngest Freeling, Carol Anne, is special and those lost souls need her to be led to the other side. The spirit of the cult leader, Kane, will stop at nothing to have her.

Retconning always cheapens a story because it takes what you thought you knew to be true and throws it out the window. Philosophers might not mind it but it’s quite irksome to moviegoers. It doesn’t take away the power and impact of the original Poltergeist but it certainly makes the sequel harder to accept and get into.

I think the biggest problem is that the film tries to force a potentially interesting plot onto the same family. There was such a sense of relief and triumph for the Freelings at the end of the first film that everything happening now just seems excessive and unfair. How much paranormal abuse does one family have to be subjected to? The events that unfold could have easily occurred to a new family and it could have been so much more than it turned out to be.

Other problems that plague the film are either omissions or forced inclusions. Dana Freeling, the eldest child, is absent without any explanation (though the actress who played her died shortly after the release of the first film). Carol Anne’s grandmother is introduced to reveal the young girl’s specialness and act as a sort of catalyst for things to come. There is also an awkward Native American element to the film that is never fully explained. Taylor, a shaman, has some kind of connection to Kane and can help open a portal into the first part of the other side, where Kane and his followers are stuck. Neither of these things get explained at all. Finally, when the Freelings travel into the other side to save Carol Anne the effects are anything but special, even for 1986.

Put simply, Poltergeist II: The Other Side strikes me as an interesting idea with plenty of potential. Had the story not been forced to fit around the Freeling family, that potential may have been realized. Poltergeist did not need a direct sequel and Poltergeist II did not need to be a direct sequel.

RATING: 1.5 out of 5

Across the Universe (2007)

Released amidst the recent onslaught of contemporary movie musicals, Across the Universe tells a tale of love, political unrest and war during the 1960s set to the music of The Beatles. As The Beatles’ popularity is still strong as ever and considering the success of movies such as Moulin Rouge!, that use a menagerie of contemporary tunes to fuel its story, Across the Universe undoubtedly seemed to be not only a safe bet but a good idea as well. Unfortunately, the film never manages to escape the realm of just a “good idea.”

If any group deserves to have their songs used in the form of a musical production, it’s The Beatles. Their career and discography are expansive to say the least. With all their sounds and styles, you could use their music in several different genres of musicals. It’s all a matter of how it’s executed. Writer-director Julie Taymor came up with a good idea but failed in the execution.

Song and dance numbers in musicals are meant to be fun and entertaining, which is mostly true for Across the Universe, but they are also supposed to help move the story along. That’s not the case here. Instead, the use of The Beatles’ songs is the main selling point, leaving the actual story and plot as an aside, calling upon it momentarily to help move us into the next rendition of a Beatles classic.

The plot itself is quite generic- a young man from England moves to America in the 1960s in the hopes of making something of himself. He falls in love with a girl and they get caught up in the turmoil of the times, encountering a variety of colorful characters along the way. Some call it a tried-and-true formula but it feels more tiredly formulaic than anything else. Case in point- the use of the Vietnam War as an antagonistic backdrop. Vietnam has been used so many times in so many films that it has almost lost its value as an antagonist. And the use of it as a shallow allusion to modern military struggles has only become tacky for me.

The characters are another of the film’s problems. All of them are flat, filling out one kind of gross generalization or archetype or another. Other characters are stand-ins for cultural icons like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Very few, if any, characters have any depth, which makes them hard to appreciate or get behind. The actors all do a very good job of singing The Beatles’ tunes but that only gets you so far.

While I appreciate the use of several songs that are not among the most oft-heard Beatles tunes on the radio, I feel slightly robbed at the same time. Tunes like “Oh! Darling,” “Blue Jay Way,” and “I’ve Just Seen a Face” are inspired choices and help satisfy people like me, who enjoy The Beatles’ entire catalogue, but with the songs being the main focus of the film, why not go for broke and include all the classics? Where’s “Love Me Do,” “Help!” and “A Hard Day’s Night”? I’m sure they could have been slipped in there somewhere.

Perhaps to make up for some of the songs left out of the production, or perhaps just to be extra cheeky, many of the characters are named after people in Beatles songs. You’ve got Sadie, Jude, Lucy, JoJo, Maxwell, Desmond, Molly, Dr. Robert, Mr. Kite and even Prudence! But nowhere to be found is Eleanor Rigby, Father McKenzie, or Sgt. Pepper. At first it’s somewhat amusing but then the references just keep coming and it gets tired in a hurry.

The other issue I had with the film was with some of the ways the song lyrics were re-interpreted to fit the story. I didn’t have a problem with a teenage lesbian singing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” while watching the head cheerleader do her thing but when Uncle Sam starts singing “I Want You” in the draft office and soldiers carrying the Statue of Liberty through Vietnamese rice patties crying out “She’s so heavy!,” I can’t help but roll my eyes. The few times Taymor tries to use the songs to help the story we get groan-worthy literal segments like this.

All in all, Across the Universe is a good idea. It really is. But to make it work, you would need to relegate the Beatles songs to the role of a supporting player, something Taymor seems unwilling to do. Instead of crafting a love story and capturing the romance and drama of the 60s, all Across the Universe manages to be is a Beatles sing-a-long that doubles as an anti-war film.

RATING: 1.75 out of 5