Auteur archieven: Jeppe Kleijngeld

Dungeon Classics #32: Starship Troopers

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

FilmDungeon’s Chief Editor JK sorts through the Dungeon’s DVD-collection to look for old cult favorites….

Starship Troopers (1997, USA)

Director: Paul Verhoeven
Cast: Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Dina Meyer, Jake Busey
Running Time: 129 mins.

In the late eighties till the late nineties, Paul Verhoeven – the pride of the Netherlands – had the decade of his career in which he made three science fiction classics that are both masterful and unique: RoboCop, Total Recall and Starship Troopers. All three deliver on stunning design, ultra-violence and social commentary. Starship Troopers revolves around a future human, militaristic society which is at war with an alien bug species. The film follows several recruits who join different parts of the military organization, and go on outer space missions to defeat the bugs. The social commentary against extreme policies was apparently too well hidden, so that critics and viewers missed it completely at the time and considered Starship Troopers just as a typical Hollywood action movie. Understandable, because Verhoeven’s direction is basically flawless and as a piece of suburb popcorn entertainment, the movie works extremely well. However, it works just as well as a propaganda piece for a future, fascist government, who want to dominate the galaxy through violence and oppression. The good looking cast members (check out main actor Casper Van Dien’s perfect jawline) thereby function as ultimate poster girls and boys for citizenship, a status that is reached through military service. The fact that Verhoeven took 100 million dollars from a major Hollywood studio to make this, is fantastic. Don’t expect it to happen anytime soon again. Luckily, Starship Troopers is still just as effective and enjoyable as it was back in 1997.

Fans of American Popular Culture Really Can’t Refuse This Show

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

How did I almost miss this show? It is fantastic. The Offer is about the making of The Godfather, which is still considered to be one of the greatest movies ever made. I had some knowledge about its troubled production history, but the movie still offers new insights. Especially about the involvement of the real Mafia in the production.

The limited series is based on the experiences of Albert S. Ruddy, the producer of the film. Ruddy (Miles Teller from Top Gun: Maverick) started his career as a television writer-producer and he wanted to make the transition to the more alluring (especially in those days!) big screen. He pleads for a job with Bob Evans, the brilliant head of Paramount Studios, who sees something in the passionate young man and decides to give him his shot at the title.

The mini-series then follows the typical film’s development process, which starts with the hiring of a screenplay writer (Ruddy hires the author of the book Mario Puzo and immediately breaks a golden rule in Hollywood) and a director (Coppola, who was supposed to be able to bring in the film low budget). At the same time, he gets Joe Colombo to deal with. Apart from being the boss of one of the five New York mob families, Colombo was leader of the Italian-American Civil Rights League and he thought The Godfather was a complete insult.

Then starts the casting process which is even more troubling. Coppola is in love with Al Pacino (“the shortest unknown actor in the world”), whom Bob Evens absolutely hates. And both Ruddy, Coppola and Puzo are dead set on Marlon Brando for the role of the Don, but he is known to be a major troublemaker by the studio’s.

Another storyline of The Offer revolves around Evans’ marriage with actress Ali McGraw. Due to the pressures of his work, he can’t go with her to Texas where she is to shoot The Getaway with womanizer Steve McQueen. When he loses her, the studio boss cannot bring himself to return to work, but The Godfather cannot succeed without him, as number cruncher Barry Lapidus (Colin Hanks) threatens to destroy all creativity in his absence.

It is a lot of fun watching Ruddy & Co deal with all these insurmountable challenges, and seeing the masterpiece that is to be The Godfather slowly emerging. The main cast members are all great. What was always gonna be impossible is to find suitable actors to play The Godfather’s cast members: Brando, Pacino, Caan, Duvall… Talking about insurmountable challenges, but they managed to at least not screw it up.

The Offer can best be compared with Mad Men: another show about the creative process mixed with business. But since this is the story about a fantastic period in American cinema, it is even more enjoyable for movie lovers such as myself. Also, seeing the dozen ways The Godfather could have gone off the rails, will make you appreciate this movie even more as the miracle that it is.

A Scanner Darkly

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Director: Richard Linklater
Written by: Philip K. Dick (novel), Richard Linklater (screenplay)
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson

Year / Country: 2006, USA
Running Time: 100 mins.

A Scanner Darkly, Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s semi-autobiographical novel about a futuristic undercover agent who gets addicted to the drug ‘Substance D’ during a drug epidemic in Orange County in 1994, opens with Rory Cockrane’s junkie character being tormented by bugs that keep respawning on his body and face. It sets the tone of the film right away. This movie, set in a near-future dystopia and police state, seems to be mostly about the frightening downsides of a drug habit.

Typical for Dick, it is also about losing one’s identity as heavy users of Substance D, like main character Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves), typically develop a serious brain impairment. The movie was shot digitally and then animated using rotoscoping technique. This visual style, also used in Linklater’s Waking Life, fits this movie perfectly. Apart from the police characters’ use of ‘scramble suits’, which are suits that change their appearance and voice every microsecond to hide their identity, this is not really a science fiction film. The story – of which there is not much really – is kind of hard to follow, but thanks to the terrific visuals and strong performances by the main cast it is still captivating. Robert Downey Jr. is especially on a roll here.

After The Matrix, Keanu Reeves is on another mind trip here (he literally takes a red pill at one point), but while The Matrix delivers a crystal clear concept, what A Scanner Darkly tries to do, plotwise or thematically, remains pretty much… well… in the dark. What the movie does very well though is portray the depressing hopelessness of being stuck in a community of junkies, with all the panic, pain, fear and paranoia that comes with it. It is admirable that Linklater stayed faithful to Dick’s source material, and did not try to turn it into a Hollywood movie. But maybe this is the one book of the famous sci-fi author that could have used some clarification. Now it remains quite a confusing affair, albeit a mesmerizing one.

Rating:

Biography: Richard Linklater (1960, Houston) is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. He was among the first and most successful talents to emerge during the American independent film renaissance of the 1990s. Suburban culture and the passage of time are big themes in many of his movies, some of which are set during one 24-hours period, including his successful ‘Before’-trilogy with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. He is married to Christina Harrison and they have three children, including Lorelei who played a large part in Linklater’s much praised movie Boyhood.

Filmography (a selection): It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (1988, short), Slacker (1990), Dazed and Confused (1993), Before Sunrise (1995), The Newton Boys (1998), Waking Life (2001), Tape (2001), School of Rock (2003), Before Sunset (2004), Fast Food Nation (2006), A Scanner Darkly (2006), Me and Orson Welles (2008), Before Midnight (2013), Boyhood (2014), Everybody Wants Some (2016), Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood (2022)