50 Days 50 films - #30 "The Running Man" (Paul Michael Glaser)

As a boy child of the 80s, I just knew there was going to have to be at least one Arnold Schwarzenegger movie on this list. So I was all set to write about Paul Verhoeven's 1990 classic "Total Recall" until literally 30 seconds ago when I realized that I was kidding myself. "Total Recall" is probably the better film, but the Schwarzenegger movie I love — and I mean LOVE — is "The Running Man." 

It's the one that I watched over and over and over and OVER again. Hell, I kind of just want to go home and watch it right now.

"The Running Man" is Verhoeven-lite in many ways. It's got all those elements so readily identifiable with his late 80s/mid 90s films — hot chicks, badass action, and a healthy dose of social satire. Some might see this as a negative, might claim that this movie is really nothing but a derivative retread. But for me "The Running Man" took all those crazy Verhoeven elements, chopped them up, threw them into a blender, and made something even more crazy and way more fun.

Let's just list some of the positives here: It's based (very loosely) on a Stephen King novel, which helps. It features the second best line of dialogue in movie history (the best, interestingly, comes from another Schwarzenegger film). It has this scene. It has dance numbers (I couldn't find any video clips, but trust me, they're amazing). It's even got Jesse "The Body" Ventura.

And, come on, any movie that teams up Dweezil Zappa with Mick Fleetwood playing a future cyberpunk version of Mick Fleetwood has just got to be awesome.

The film's absolute stroke of genius was in casting the late Richard Dawson as The Big Bad. To put this in context for all you Millenials out there, Dawson was the host of "The Family Feud." Literally every grandmother in America was in love with that guy. 

In "The Running Man," Dawson chews the scenery like it's made of candy and has a ton of fun sending up his family-friendly image and twisting it into something a little dark and kind of vicious. It's a truly memorable performance that actually manages to elevate this movie at least a little bit beyond the slice of 80s American cheese that it is.

It's too easy to use the word "prescient" when it comes to a film like this. That's one of those buzzwords critics like to use to elevate their guilty pleasures in order to justify being a fan. You hear this a lot about Verhoeven's "RoboCop," as well — and I'm not saying that it's not true on some level. I mean, sure, "The Running Man" did seem to predict the moral dip in our post Cold-War culture that lead to shows like "Survivor" and "Fear Factor," and I'm sure there's an argument to be made paralleling this film's depiction of a fascistic consumerist nightmare to Bush-era America in the years following 9/11.

But I think it's more useful to look at both this film and "RoboCop" as reflections of their own time. Both films were birthed in the wake of cyberpunk, which was an absolute reaction to the Reagan era. Rather than predict the future, what both these films did (and, I would argue, that "The Running Man" did a little bit better) was fashion their bombastic action extravaganzas around a truly Swiftian satire. They took certain disturbing elements of their time in history and pushed them to a level of such extreme absurdity that they became impossible to ignore. 

But whatever. End of the day, this movie is just a ton of fun. It may be the most absolutely batshit Schwarzenegger movie of that or any time. It's compulsively quotable in the way the all best Ah-nuld movies are. People tend to look at it as a minor film in the Austrian giant's...er...ouvre, but I'd say it's definitely worth a reappraisal.

And how can you not love a movie with a scene like this?

50 Days 50 Films - #31 "Duel" (Steven Spielberg)

I can feel you all rolling your eyes right now.

And trust me, I get it. Out of all the Spielberg movies to chose from — "E.T.," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Jaws," "Jurassic Park," "Schindler's List" — I go with a TV movie from 1971. Yes, this is my hipster pick. I might as well be wearing skinny jeans and an Iggy Pop t-shirt, sneering about how I "only like the early, raw stuff."

So let me stipulate: I love Spielberg movies. He was absolutely every bit as much a part of my childhood as anyone else. He's a master. Just check this out if you don't believe me.

I found "Duel" relatively late, when I was fifteen or sixteen. The reason I'm picking it is because, as raw as it is, it perfectly combines everything I love about the Spielberg-to-be with another great obsession of mine — "The Twilight Zone."

We all know "The Twilight Zone" — the intro, the classic theme song. For me, it was a watershed. Aside from Stephen King, "The Twilight Zone" might be the single most influential thing I encountered as a developing writer. It's what helped shape my voice more than anything else.

A great many episodes were either penned by or based on stories by some of my favorite pulp horror and sci-fi authors of the 30s-50s. The later 1980s revival (which, if I'm to be honest, is the first "Twilight Zone" I ever loved) pulled from the works of some of my more contemporary heroes. Robert Bloch, Charles Beaumont, Ray Bradbury, George R.R. Martin, Harlan Ellison — they all did time in the "Twilight Zone" trenches at one point or another.

Towering above them all was Richard Matheson. Known mostly for his novel "I Am Legend" (which we can indirectly thank for the current zombie boom), Matheson also wrote "Born of Man and Woman," which I believe is probably the most perfect horror short story ever written.

He's also famous for being the mind behind some of the most celebrated episodes of "The Twilight Zone," including the classic "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet."

"Duel" was also based on a Matheson short story (of the same name). The concept is deceptively simple — a guy (Dennis Weaver) is driving up a lonely California highway when he encounters a psychotic truck driver, who proceeds to spend the next 80 minutes or so trying to drive him off the road. There's not a whole lot of character development here. The film doesn't need it. We understand everything we need to know about Weaver's character and his dilemna. He's a regular guy just trying to get to a business meeting when he suddenly finds himself trying to escape the fabled Uncanny Valley.

That right there is the power of this story (as was the case with "The Twilight Zone" and most pulp horror from that era). The world is recognizably our own. But then... something happens. And suddenly everything's just a little bit off. And that subtle difference leads to a complete upending of our entire understanding of reality.

The best horror isn't about gore, or even scares as we tend to understand them. It's about encountering the inexplicable.

"Duel" works on a total reptile brain level. We may be dealing with a semi truck here, but really Spielberg and Matheson are tapping into some very basic fears here, stuff that goes back to our caveman days. This is about being alone and stalked by a hungry beast. A beast with no mercy and no remorse.

Like "Jaws" after it, "Duel" is structured like a classic monster movie (in many ways, we can see "Duel" as a trial run for Spielberg's first blockbuster, which would come just a few years later). We never see the driver, so the truck itself — with its rust-caked hide, its snarling teeth-like grill, its black windshield glaring like the cold eyes of an animal — becomes the thing we fear. When it (spoiler alert) "dies" at the end, the sound of crunching metal becomes the scream of a dinosaur.

This is not Spielberg's best film. Not by a long shot. But it's the one that speaks to me on the most fundamental level.

50 Days 50 Films - #32 "Reservoir Dogs" (Quentin Tarantino)

I'm not someone who loves Quentin Tarantino.

Don't get me wrong. I did. "Pulp Fiction" came out when I was 17, and it felt like everything I ever wanted movies to be for the rest of forever. Jules' Ezekial speech, the thing about the watch, Marvin getting shot in the face — the movie just felt both perfect and perfectly awful in a way that nothing else really had before.

I, of course, was pretty young and didn't realize exactly how much Tarantino was appropriating from previous films, authors, etc. Learning that lessened the impact a bit over subsequent viewings. I don't blame him for that — Tarantino was maybe the first major filmmaker to come out of our meta, hip-hop, sample-based culture, and his true genius lies in the way he can mash up everything that's in his head, toss it into a blender, and come out with something that, at its best, tastes startlingly fresh.

I still like Tarantino quite a bit (most of the time), and I would never presume to say that he's not a genius. But he's a flawed genius, for sure, and as I get older the flaws become more pronounced.

My problem with him is that, once you get past the sheer manic energy of his films there's just not a lot of there there. I don't get a lot of heart. There's so much amazing stuff happening, but it rarely transcends the level of schoolboy fantasy. He feels like the world's most talented 13-year-old boy. "Fiction" felt so fresh and alive to me at the time, but the power has waned over the years. Most of his work after that has been tug-of-war between the overwhelming genius of his use of language, the audacity of his vision... and the snarky little kid who just can't help himself.

Both "Inglourious Basterds" and "Django Unchained" felt like they were so close to reaching cinematic divinity (the opening scene from "Basterds" and the "white cake" scene from "Django" are two of the best things ever committed to film) and fell short because, in the end, his more juvenile instincts took over.

But in his first film, "Reservoir Dogs," this push-pull dynamic feels less like a war. All the recognizable Tarantino-isms are present and accounted for, but the balance is better. It's simple, streamlined, with not a second wasted. Even more than two decades later, it still feels like his most emotionally sophisticated film (I recently reappraised "Jackie Brown" and would call it a close second, but I think a lot of the credit for that one has to go to Elmore Leonard).

The difference here is in the characters — specifically Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) and Mr. Orange (Tim Roth). All of Tarantino's films take place in a show-offy, hyper-real MOVIE world, and "Dogs" is no different. But these two guys manage to provide a sturdy tent stake that keeps the whole thing attached firmly to the ground. Everything that's happening around them is heightened and over-the-top, but Keitel and Roth play it absolutely straight. There's a reality at the core their relationship — a brotherly bond, genuine affection, absolute betrayal — that is exhilarating to watch and heartbreaking all at once.

That last shot of Mr. White's face when he finally realizes... well, shit. It can still bring a tear to my eye.

There's a genuine, beating heart to this film. And that makes all the difference.

I saw "Dogs" shortly after seeing "Pulp Fiction" in the theaters, and at the time it felt like the smaller film to me. But, as the years have gone on and "Pulp" has diminished in my mind, "Dogs" just looms larger and larger.

This was the game changer.

50 Days 50 Films - #33 "Grizzly Man" (Werner Herzog)

Werner Herzog is THE weirdo genius of the film world, as fascinating for his bizarre off-screen behavior as for his films. Whether it's pulling a gun on Klaus Kinski, eating his shoe, saving Joaquin Phoenix from a fiery car crash, shrugging off a sniper attack ("It's not a significant bullet" is the most badass thing anyone has ever said), or literally dragging a boat over a mountain, Herzog continues to prove that nobody quite knows how to live like he does.

As far as the movies go, I tend to prefer the docs (with the exception of "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans," which is so batshit nuts I find it epically rewatchable). The features can be incredibly ponderous, and tend to bury Herzog's insanity under about a million layers of self importance. The docs, on the other hand, are alternately lyrical, grandiose, intimate, energetic, and absolutely cracked in some fundamental way.

The subject of "Grizzly Man" — the tragic story of a conservationist/legit crazy person named Timothy Treadwell who went to go live with the grizzlies until one decided to up and eat him and his girlfriend — is already fascinating before Herzog gets his mitts on it. Herzog pieces together hours and hours of Treadwell's own footage to assemble a chilling portrait of a guy at the end of his rope.

But Herzog's not done there. He uses the occasion as a vehicle to explore his own notions of madness, obsession, naivete, and the cruelty of the natural world. He narrates the film himself, and there's something about the German accented Slytherin-hiss of his voice that burrows into you like the buzz of an insect laying eggs in your ear canal.

He also knows how to build a scene, finding drama in simple interactions with those who knew Treadwill. He doesn't cut when you expect him to, often lingering just a beat too long on an interview subject's face. The effect is uncanny: we see the masks teeter a bit, the eyes get a little scared and rabbity, and somehow we get a sense of lurking insanity within all of us. I don't even quite know how he does it.

Herzog's cynicism might be a bit hard for some people to swallow, but it's hard to argue that it's not justified when we learn the full details of Treadwell's fate. It's truly unsettling in the way no fiction film can quite be.

50 Days 50 Films - #34 "Dazed and Confused" (Richard Linklater)

"That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, and they stay the same age."

I grew up in Los Alamos, NM in the 80s and 90s, not Austin in the 70s. And yet, this movie spoke to me when I was 15. It was both reminiscent of my high school experience and what I wished high school had been.

Like "Clerks," Linklater's "Slacker" and "Dazed and Confused" typified the lighter side of the 90s indie boom. But where "Clerks" is compact, lewd and grimy, "Dazed" is sort of loose and breezy. There's very little story here, but somehow it all adds up to something, and it's just a world you want to live in for awhile.

The 90s were all about darkness for some reason. We were living in the most peaceful and prosperous time we'd had as a nation for several generations, but we were still experiencing one big collective 80s hangover. We OD'd on all the blatant consumerism and nationalism of the Reagan era, and tossed aside its more obnoxious trappings — Hollywood blockbusters, hair metal, etc. — for Seriousness with a capital "S." The grunge guys were all about glowering and Having Something To Say. Nine Inch Nails inspired reams of terrible high-school poetry. And indie movies rose to real prominence and — like their 70s godfathers — went about trying to outdo each other in edge and ick-factor.

To be honest, I ate all that stuff up. But even then, I recognized that we needed Linklater and Smith. They managed to eschew the gloomy trappings of their contemporaries while still maintaining that rowdy indie spirit. They made it okay to have fun. They've both had their hits and misses since, but I'll always respect them for that. That era is largely gone now, but we still have a few great films to hang on to.

I loved this movie. I lived the soundtrack. It was like home to me. And every few years I like to go back and visit.

50 Days 50 Films - #35 "Double Indemnity" (Billy Wilder)

This is one of those weird Sophie's Choice situtations here: I knew I just had to pick a Billy Wilder film for this list, but how do you choose between this one, "Sunset Boulevard," " The Apartment," and "Stalag 17"?

Here's how:

Phyllis: Mr. Neff, why don't you drop by tomorrow evening about eight-thirty? He'll be in then.
Neff: Who?
Phyllis: My husband. You were anxious to talk to him, weren't you?
Neff: Yeah, I was. But I'm sort of getting over the idea, if you know what I mean.
Phyllis: There's a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.
Neff: How fast was I going, officer?
Phyllis: I'd say around ninety.
Neff: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket.
Phyllis: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time.
Neff: Suppose it doesn't take.
Phyllis: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles.
 Neff: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder.
Phyllis: Suppose you try putting it on my husband's shoulder.
Walter Neff: That tears it.

Classic film noir isn't known for inserting screwball comedy repartee into the middle of a scene. But that's because most film noir wasn't written and directed by Wilder. The above exchange is classic Wilder — funny, tight, rhythmic and tense all at once. Not one word is wasted. Objectively speaking, I'd have to say "Sunset Boulevard" is probably the superior film, but the dialogue in "Double Indemnity" is just so delicious throughout, like light cheese with a slightly pungent aftertaste. There's something deeply acidic lurking beneath the film's airy wit.

Try this one:

Barton Keyes: You know, you, oughta take a look at the statistics on suicide some time. You might learn a little something about the insurance business.
Edward S. Norton: Mister Keyes, I was raised in the insurance business.
Barton Keyes: Yeah, in the front office. Come now, you've never read an actuarial table in your life, have you? Why they've got ten volumes on suicide alone. Suicide by race, by color, by occupation, by sex, by seasons of the year, by time of day. Suicide, how committed: by poison, by firearms, by drowning, by leaps. Suicide by poison, subdivided by types of poison, such as corrosive, irritant, systemic, gaseous, narcotic, alkaloid, protein, and so forth; suicide by leaps, subdivided by leaps from high places, under the wheels of trains, under the wheels of trucks, under the feet of horses, from steamboats. But, Mr. Norton, of all the cases on record, there's not one single case of suicide by leap from the rear end of a moving train. And you know how fast that train was going at the point where the body was found? Fifteen miles an hour. Now how can anybody jump off a slow-moving train like that with any kind of expectation that he would kill himself? No. No soap, Mr. Norton. We're sunk, and we'll have to pay through the nose, and you know it. 

Wilder was one of the first screenwriters, I believe, who really mastered the brute poetry of dialogue. There's an edge, a hipness to his best work that almost recalls the jazz-based inflections of beat poetry. The film came out in 1944, and too much of what was happening in cinema at the time was either still entrenched in the silent era or was pulling too deeply from stage melodrama. Orson Welles and Herman Mankiewicz got it right in "Citizen Kane," but even the great "Casablanca" gets mired at times in an overall lugubrious lushness that is dated and, to me at least, slightly alienating.

Wilder's dialogue has the staccato pop and crackle we associate with much more contemporary writers, like David Mamet and the Coens (you can hear Wilder's influence all over "Barton Fink" and Miller's Crossing," and Mamet should have practically been paying Wilder royalties for this scene in "Glengarry Glen Ross"). It's both of its time and completely current. He's one of the only classic Hollywood screenwriters I can say that about (Budd Schulberg is another).

"Double Indemnity" really created the template for so much noir that followed, but it set the bar so high that very few films could come even close to reaching it. It's just one of those movies where everything works.

Wilder had a great run — he was also the man behind "Some Like It Hot," "The Seven Year Itch," "Ace In The Hole," and "The Lost Weekend." They're all must-see films, but if you're not familiar with his work, "Double Indemnity" is a great place to start.

50 Days 50 Films - #36 "Frankenstein" (James Whale)

Frankenstein's Monster is the first movie character I ever really loved. In fact, I loved him long before I saw the actual movie.

I have distinct memories of being in pre-school and chasing my friends around the playground pretending to be Boris Karloff. I must have been three or four, maybe. I had no idea what this Frankenstein dude was, but I knew I wanted to be him.

My infatuation with monsters started basically at birth, but really solidified as a toddler with "Frankenstein" and "King Kong." The imagery — completely divorced from any sort of narrative context — grabbed hold of me somehow and wouldn't let go. I drew pictures of Frankenstein's Monster everywhere, and I had a King Kong lunchbox (from the terrible 70s Jeff Bridges remake, unfortunately).

It wasn't until I was around the third or fourth grade that I actually saw either movie and even then I was struck by the notion that, in a fundamental way, they were pretty much exactly the same film: big awkward outsider with a sensitive side is misunderstood, smashes things, gets killed by assholes.

As a big lumbering dork who was painfully shy and got punched in the face by bullies sometimes for no reason, I related.

"King Kong" doesn't hold up for me in quite the same way, but Karloff's monster still has his grip on me. And, while I can psychoanalyze that until the sun goes down, the fact is that this fascination of mine is elemental in some primal way. It's reptile brain stuff. Vampires, werewolves, the boogeyman, etc... I don't remember there ever being a point in my life where I wasn't completely enraptured by the very idea of MONSTERS. That's how it always was to me -- in all caps and bolded. I obsessively read and reread the Crestwood House "Monsters" series of books. I loved Dracula, the Wolfman, Godzilla, all the rest... but Frankenstein's Monster was the king. I used to lay in bed at night fantasizing about Frankenstein fighting Godzilla (someone really should make that movie). Even now, as a 36-year-old man, looking at that picture at the top of this page sends a thrill up my spine.

The movie itself is pretty great. I know the general consensus is that "Bride of Frankenstein" is the superior film, but for me Whale tips a little too much into camp with that one. There's something so simple, so dark, so primal about the original, and there are images from this film — the initial reveal, the girl at the lake, Fritz (Dwight Frye) with his whip, the villagers with their torches, the final showdown at the windmill — that continue to haunt me.

As a side note, if you haven't seen Bill Condon's 1998 film "Gods and Monsters," you really should give it a look. It missed this list by a hair.