Today at the movies — Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges go joyriding across Montana, William Shatner goes looking for God, a safecracker goes for the diamonds, hundreds die in an accidental release of biological weapons, hundreds of thousands trip out and dance to high-quality rock'n'roll, millions are killed in a worldwide pandemic, and Bruce Lee's legacy gets an incoherent high-kick in the face.

• Contagion (2011)

• The Crazies (1973)

• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

• Superdragon vs Supermen (1975)

• Thief (1981)

• Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)

• Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (1970)

Best of the week and superb on every account: Woodstock.

Pretty damned good: Contagion, Thief, and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.

Pretty damned good, for a bargain-basement budget: The Crazies.

Pretty damned bad: Star Trek V, and Superdragon vs Supermen.

♦ ♦ ♦

Contagion (2011)

Having (so far) lived through the (so far) biggest pandemic of my lifetime, I was curious to see how a worldwide pandemic was portrayed back when the idea was science fiction instead of fact.

In the hands of moviemaker Steven Soderbergh, it's a rather conventional disaster movie, but certainly compelling to watch.

You'll be fooled into thinking Gweneth Paltrow stars, but she's only in the movie long enough to die and become Patient Zero. Her widowed husband (Matt Damon) and their daughter are the central points in a sprawling ensemble cast of ordinary people and medical professionals, going about their lives until the disease strikes, and then going about their deaths.

So — did Soderbergh get it right? Overall, in addition to making a pretty good movie, yeah, his prophesy is way better than anything by that Nostradamus dude.

As she travels the world telling people of the dangers of the virus, Doctor Kate Winslet doesn't wear a mask. The movie shows no panicked run for toilet paper, but instead mentions a run on the bank, which didn't happen, in my 2020 hindsight.

But here's Jude Law as a delightfully slimy blogger who pushes forsythia as the cure — that's a shrub, and the next best nonsense to hydroxychloroquine. And the movie uses the term "social distancing," which I don't recall ever hearing as medical advice before COVID-19.

When a vaccine is developed and rush-approved, the movie shows hooded burglars storming any facility that might have some, which didn't happen. But the irresponsible blogger brags that he could tell his millions of followers not to get the jab and they wouldn't, which definitely did.

Damon's daughter complains of losing spring and summer, which rings authentic, only we lost years. People who know insiders have a better chance to survive, which was certainly true in real life, though rarely mentioned in the media. There's a lottery of birthdates, to determine who gets the injection first, but nah, that's stupid; and the way the CDC did it was smarter — rationing the vaccine by giving it to old people first.

There are no particular insights here for the next crisis, but it's a fun Hollywood popcorn-muncher that starts with a single cough, and ends with the audience perhaps a little more eager to wash their hands.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Crazies (1973)

The US military has developed a new biological weapon, which is accidentally released in an air crash, contaminating a small Pennsylvania town.

When you're infected, you lose all mental control and start acting crazy, and then you die, so people who have the bug are called 'The Crazies'. It's contagious, and of course, there's no known cure.

I happened to see this the day after watching Contagion (above), and the comparisons couldn't be more stark. Of course, Contagion is a many-million-dollar Hollywood blockbuster, and The Crazies is an indy cheapo that probably played mostly in drive-in theaters. The philosophical differences are more to the point.

In Contagion, scientists and authorities work together to understand and counteract the epidemic. In The Crazies, the response is completely chaotic, with authority figures often making stupid decisions, arguing amongst themselves, and using the military to quarantine the town but never telling the locals what's going on.

The out-of-control feeling of The Crazies is so complete that often, watching the movie, I had no idea what was happening. The constant screaming and bedlam certainly isn't as much fun as the rational progress of science in Contagion.

Writer-director George Romero's message is that our leaders created this crisis, and then all through the film their mistakes and squabbling and stubbornness, and specifically their insistence on following the rules, makes the situation worse instead of better.

The Crazies is an antidote to Contagion.

In keeping with both the movie's point and its budget, the storytelling is frantic, poorly articulated, and if you miss a moment of explanatory dialogue you'll never get a second chance to understand what the heck's going on. This isn't Romero's most polished piece, and it's certainly no Night of the Living Dead. It's messy and loud, and there's so much yelling!, but it's definitely watch-worthy.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

This is the franchise's dumbest moment, the first Trek movie that's simply bad, and doesn't work on any level. If it wasn't Star Trek, you'd think it's Roger Corman.

There's a very cheesy opening, with Kirk climbing Yosemite without adequate gear, Spock stupidly distracting him so he loses his footing, and then Spock rocketing through the air to catch Kirk at the last moment. It's like an episode of Johnny Quest.

Then Kirk and Spock and McCoy make painful small talk and sing "Row Row Row Your Boat" around the campfire. Seriously.

All through the movie there's painfully bad writing like that, and many of the many lame lines are delivered awkwardly, because a realistic delivery would be impossible. Everything on-screen feels simply wrong.

We're half an hour into this before there's anything but small talk and bad jokes. When a plot finally reveals itself, it's about a religious zealot who wants to feel your pain like a Scientology quiz, heal your mind, and lead you toward God or heaven or some such.

As a concept, that gets a maybe, but the execution is like the other kind of execution — a guillotine or hangman's noose.

The most obvious mistake is that William Shatner directs the movie. He was the star of the show, but I doubt he ever really understood what made Star Trek tick — it sure wasn't him.

Directing is a little bit like coaching in sports, I think. A star athlete rarely becomes a great coach. The game's come too easy for him, and for his whole career, it's always been about him. Sparky Anderson, Dusty Baker, and Tony LaRusa weren't big stars on the playing field; a reliable veteran or second-stringer is much more likely to be a good coach, because he's seen the game from more of a 'team' perspective.

Shatner the star is a lousy director, but his interstellar sidekick Leonard Nimoy directed the third and fourth Star Trek movies, quite well.

So Star Trek V sucks, but in addition to blaming the director, blame the script, too — based on a story by William Shatner.

Dude, you're not even a very good actor; what the hell makes you think you can write and direct?

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

Superdragon vs Supermen (1975)

a/k/a Bruce Lee against Supermen

a/k/a Call Me Dragon

After martial arts and movie star Bruce Lee's death, a series of 'Brucesploitation' flicks cashed in on his name, and if this wasn't the worst it'll do until something even awfuller comes along. The dialogue is badly dubbed into English, and if there was ever a story (doubtful) it's lost in translation.

Someone going by the name Bruce Li stars, wearing a knock-off of Bruce Lee's Kato outfit from The Green Hornet. The fights are poorly staged, and look like guys goofing around at the dojo, with plenty of backflips added for no reason. Every fight has added sound effects, loud and silly even for a chop socky flick. In one scene, the good guy accidentally drops someone to their death, and watches him fall but shows no regret.

All the music is swiped from wherever they could find it — there's some "Autobahn" in there, a few other pop tunes of the '70s, and the opening theme is a slightly jazzed-up version of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," without the lyrics, of course. Martin Luther, founder of the Lutheran Church, wrote that hymn, but neither he nor Kraftwerk are credited.

Verdict: BIG NO. It's not even the kind of bad movie that's funny.

♦ ♦ ♦

Thief (1981)

Is it me, or is that a dreadful poster for this movie? It's James Caan wearing shades, but with the photographic tricks he looks like a space alien.

The movie, though, is lots better than the poster.

Caan stars as a professional thief who prefers to work independently from the mafia, choosing and planning his own burglaries and keeping the spoils. Mob-man Robert Prosky wants Caan on his team, and offers him everything he asks, including an illegally-adopted son for Caan and his wife, Tuesday Weld. Prosky sends Caan to steal a few million dollars worth of diamonds, and the tension triples.

Written and directed by Michael Mann, this is a very good heist film. You'll forget it's a movie, and be fully engrossed into the story.

The burglaries are marvelous, the drama is palpable, and Caan's character gets a brief backstory that makes him sympathetic despite his criminal shenanigans.

The movie's little moments are excellent, too, like a perfectly scripted and performed courtroom scene, showing the legal and illegal wrangling necessary to get Caan's mentor and friend, Willie Nelson, released from prison.

Like most of the Mann movies I've seen (Manhunter, Heat, Collateral), all the details and characteristics of crime and criminals seem authentic, all the pieces fit together, and everything moves at a quick pace and holds your attention. It's so dang good, I'll make a special exception and forgive the presence of Jim Belushi, who's at least not trying to be funny.

Music by Tangerine Dream.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)

Notice who's missing from the poster for this one? Jeff Bridges. It's a buddy picture, but he wasn't yet a big enough star to merit being included.

Clint Eastwood plays a conman — he's a preacher in the first scene, which is hilarious and really gets things going. George Kennedy, an old friend who's now an enemy, shows up to shoot at him 27 times by my count, and misses every time. I didn't know any manufacturer made 27-shooter pistols, but I ain't complaining. This is a terrific action-adventure heist and buried treasure flick.

Car thief Jeff Bridges (Lightfoot) accidentally comes to Eastwood's rescue, but they don't become buddies instantly; it takes about a third of the movie, and I like that. Nobody becomes best pals instantly, like you see so often in lesser flicks.

Eventually Lightfoot calls Eastwood "Thunderbolt," though I don't remember why, and there's your catchy title.

Eastwood is Eastwood, all sneers and glares, and even when he smiles he looks mean. It's the same enjoyable character he played for decades. Bridges is young and full of sass and sassafras, more energetic than you're accustomed to seeing from him. Kennedy is a son of a bitch with a mean squint and low IQ.

Michael Cimino wrote and directs, and there are lots of other things here that you don't often see, including bad guys working an ice cream truck, Jeff Bridges in drag, and an ingeniously planned getaway through a drive-in theater.

Geoffrey Lewis, Catherine Bach, Gary Busey, Dub Taylor, and especially Burton Gilliam add little bits of brilliance. The film is stuffed full of them, and it was filmed on location in Montana, so Bridges isn't the only pretty thing to see here.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (1970)

Once upon a time in the '60s, music promoter Michael Lang and a few co-sponsors rented some farmland in upstate New York, about 40 miles south of Woodstock. That's about fifty miles from Poughkeepsie.

What they'd planned was an enormous 3-day festival of music and art, with up to 50,000 people in attendance. The actual turnout, though, approached half a million. The crowd trampled the fences, and tickets couldn't possibly be collected, making Woodstock a free concert. And food and medical care for what was suddenly the third-largest city in New York became an emergency.

The highways were jammed for miles, the Army sent medics via helicopter, locals and officials did all they could do to get food to the people, and filmmaker Michael Wadleigh was there.

Over the course of the long weekend, Wadleigh and his crew (including then-unknowns Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker) used 16 cameras to shoot 120 miles of film, which was eventually edited into this Oscar-winning documentary.

It opens on an empty green field, surrounded by other empty fields. Then comes the construction of a temporary bandstand, and several tall towers for loudspeakers. And then come the people, and more and more people, and the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was underway.

It was a rock'n'roll concert, of course, so it's no surprise that the music is terrific. Most of the era's greats were there — Joan Baez, Country Joe and the Fish, Crosby Stills & Nash (their second performance together anywhere, says Stephen Stills), Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Carlos Sanata, John Sebastian, Sly & the Family Stone, Ten Years After, and The Who were on the bill, and maybe one or two more performers that I've forgotten.

The Grateful Dead was there, but for reasons unknown to me, didn't make it into the movie. Almost perversely, Sha-Na-Na did. I didn't even know Sha-Na-Na was a real band — I thought they were invented for TV.

The music is amazing — yes, even Sha-Na-Na — and not simply because it's so many of my favorite performers playing a lot of my favorite songs. It's amazing because the sound is as clear as a brand-new LP on your hi-fi stereo.

It's always bothered me, not slightly but a lot, to hear a song that was recorded live, and also hear some fuckin' bozo in the audience finger-whistle louder than a siren, and other people screaming, shouting in the background. When you're at a concert, you can tune out all the ruckus of the crowd and only hear the music, but the microphone can't.

And yet, the sound here is flawless. It's only the musicians making music. Either the film's sound technicians put in enormous hours removing all the ordinary crowd sounds, or Woodstock somehow had stage microphones far superior to those that have been used in recording live performances ever since.

The movie is certainly not all music, though. What happened at Woodstock was hella bigger than music, and so's the movie.

There are lots of (brief) interviews with locals, who mostly seem bemused, and with young adults who explain why they felt compelled to cross the country to be there.

We see a guy cleaning the few portable toilets, and Wavy Gravy saying, "Folks, we're planning breakfast in bed for 400,000 people," and of course the famous public-address warnings about the quality of the acid going around.

We see storm clouds approaching, then soaking everyone, and the music is stopped for safety concerns, what with all the power-amps and electronics on stage. When the rains stop, we see the mud, the mess, and hear the music start again.

At one point, a camera crew finds Lang, the concert's bedraggled promoter, and asks him, "You're in the red?"

"Financially?" he answers. "It's hard to think in those terms when you're talking about something like this, but financially, this is a disaster."

"But you look so happy," the unseen cameraman says.

"I'm very happy. It has nothing to do with money, nothing to do with tangible things…"

They don't make concerts like Woodstock any more, and I don't think they make promoters like Lang, either. He looks like a man who, for a moment, cares nothing about making a profit. If that's the Woodstock Effect, it's a beautiful thing.

Hendrix famously insisted on performing last, not wanting to be anybody's warm-up gig, so after three days of build-up he finally takes the stage as Woodstock's climactic act. And he's great, of course, but there'd been numerous weather delays, and most of the crowd had already packed up and gone, so Hendrix plays to several thousand people and a lot of dirt and mud.

And while we're talking about scheduling, nobody should ever want to follow Crosby Stills & Nash. They're sheer perfection.

Over the event's three days, there were two deaths at Woodstock, but quickly Googling around for stats, a city of that size should expect about a dozen deaths daily.

Of course, there weren't many senior citizens in the crowd, which perhaps skews the comparison, but with all those people taking all those drugs, there was only one fatal overdose. The other death was someone who took shelter and fell asleep under a tractor, and got rudely awakened and killed when the farmer didn't notice him and drove off to the fields.

There are several different cuts of this film, but longer is better. The version I watched was three hours and 44 minutes, and ends with a moment's memorial to those who've passed, including most of the Woodstock Generation.

Seeing the movie feels like you're part of it, only you get the luxury of flush toilets.

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Coming attractions:
• Colossus: The Forbin Project (1969)
• Dead Again (1991)
• Face/Off (1997)
• Flash Gordon (1980)
• Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1982)
• The Naked Prey (1965)
• Pi (1998)
1/3/2023

There are so many good movies out there — old movies, odd or artsy, foreign or forgotten movies, or do-it-yourself movies made just for the joy of making them — that if you only watch whatever's on Netflix or playing at the twentyplex, you're missing out.

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Top illustration by Jeff Meyer. No talking once the lights dim. Real butter, not that fake crap, on the popcorn. I try to make these reviews spoiler-free, but sometimes screw up, sorry. Piracy is not a victimless crime. Click any image to enlarge. [Comments & conversations invited.](mailto:[email protected]?subject=Comments for Mostly Words)