Ohio State Football All-1960's Squad

Ohio State football in the 1960’s was marked by two episodes which make the decade stand out from the rest. Both figure prominently in Buckeye lore, one for the worse and the other, which served as a sort of corrective to the first, for the better. The former episode was the vote by the university to prevent the football team from playing in the Rose Bowl. Undefeated with one tie, the 1961 Buckeyes, featuring what was possibly the greatest backfield in Ohio State history, were ranked at #1 and #2 in the two polls and, with a Rose Bowl win over UCLA – something that Minnesota, the replacement team, easily accomplished – would likely have claimed a share of the national title. Instead they finished second in both polls. This blow reverberated for years to come and cost Ohio State in its recruiting battles, the consequences of which were felt by the dearth of Big Ten titles for the next six seasons.

Having arrived as head coach in 1951, Woody Hayes soon established a pattern of excellence, winning a national title every three or four years, and each title team was coupled with another only slightly less powerful team either the preceding or following year. In his fourth season, in 1954, Hayes’ Buckeyes went 10-0 through a brutal schedule and followed it with a very solid 1955 campaign which also brought home a Big Ten title. The 1957 team posted a 9-1 record, won the national title and was followed by a 6-1-2 team the following year. The 1961 team, which should have played for yet another national title, was preceded by a 7-2 squad that shut out three of nine opponents and held three others to a single touchdown.

But after the denial of the Rose Bowl, the Buckeye fortunes soured. The next assembly of talent to make a run for a championship were the 1964 and 1965 squads. This time, however, after posting records of 7-2, neither one was able to win the national title nor even a Big Ten title. There certainly was talent there – the 1964 Buckeyes had three All-Americans and two others who would be so named in the coming years – but it fell shy of the champions of previous years. The 1964 team, the better of the two, started 6-0 and in mid-season spent two weeks ranked #1. But a lackluster sixth win followed by an inexplicable 27-0 home loss to a Penn State team that would finish 5-4 dashed their title hopes. When Michigan shut them out two weeks later, they lost the Rose Bowl as well. The companion team of 1965, though posting the same record, struggled mightily to eek out desperate wins that better Hayes-coached teams would have rolled through. The years ’66-’67 were, by Buckeye standards, truly terrible. The former lost more than it won, and the latter, one of the weakest three-loss teams in Buckeye history, started 2-3 before putting together some victories over middling competition.

With his career on the line, Wayne Woodrow Hayes went on to engineer the second episode, the resurgence. He put together a class of talent that would come to be known as the Super Sophomores, four of whom would be first round draft picks, eight of whom would make at least one All-America list. A Lombardi and Outland award winner played on the defensive line and the nation’s defensive MVP in 1970, a converted fullback, played in the backfield. The Buckeyes would win the national championship in 1968 and in the following years put some of the greatest football teams ever assembled onto the gridiron. In the decade when football modernized, Ohio State’s fortunes swung like a pendulum, but by the end of the decade Hayes had secured his place in history. Never again, not even during down periods, would Buckeye football be seriously questioned.

The common memory of the 1960’s, as established through Buckeye lore, is the modestly accurate but nevertheless slightly distorted view one gets from looking through the rosy haze of fond memories, and a few things could bear some clearing up. The 1968 team, for instance, is commonly held to be the greatest Buckeye team in history. ‘Tis no such matter. The 1968 team was very young, with sophomores, then the youngest eligible players, starting up and down the unit, including at quarterback. They posted an impressive shutout win over #1 Purdue early on, but through the middle of the season they struggled. Inconsistency plagued them, as it will young teams, and they recorded three one-score victories over unimpressive competition, including a 31-24 win over an Illinois team that would finish 1-8. It was not until the end of the season that they turned into the great team that their talent promised. In defeating #4 Michigan 50-14 and then rolling over #2 USC 27-16 in a game that was not as close as the final score would seem to indicate, the Buckeyes gave us a glimpse of what they would become the following season. They finished very strong indeed, but taken as a whole the 1968 team was not as powerful as a score of other Buckeye teams who, had they met on the field with all differences in size and era accounted for, would probably have beaten or even thumped the Super Sophomores in that first year. Even if one uses a different yardstick, giving more weight to the final record rather than the impressiveness of the performance, the 1954 team, with the same 10-0 record, was surely stronger if the entire season is considered.

It was the 1969 team that proved itself the most formidable force of the decade. Now experienced veterans, the Super Sophomores, well supplemented by talent from the other two classes, steamrolled their competition and soon established themselves as the most powerful team at that point in Buckeye history. But maybe the wins came too easy, and when Bo Schembechler, Woody’s protégé, led a Michigan team that finally stood up to Ohio State and punched them right in the mouth, the Buckeyes, hampered by an injured quarterback who, in light of the talent on the bench behind him, never should have started, fell to the Wolverines in what is probably the bitterest defeat Buckeye fans have ever tasted. As if the decade had not provided entertainment enough, it also saw the beginning of the Ten Year War between Woody and Bo.

The 1961 group is often called The Forgotten Buckeyes, but it must be admitted that, when every Buckeye fan with a modicum of knowledge of Ohio State history knows them as such and can tell you why they are so called, they have ceased to be forgotten. The Cheated Buckeyes, The Might-Have-Beens-Through-No-Fault-Of-Their-Own Buckeyes, but surely not The Forgotten Buckeyes. The true forgotten team of the 1960’s was the 1964 squad. They raced to #1 behind a line that must rank as one of Woody’s greatest and two future pro running backs. Two All-Americans anchored the defense along side three others who would claim All Big Ten honors before their careers were finished. Powerful teams fell before them, including #2 Illinois, which failed to score. Just when they seemed perched to claim Woody’s third or fourth national title, depending on how one is keeping score, they stumbled and fell in the most spectacular and mystifying fashion. Over the last thirteen quarters of their season they scored only one touchdown, and twice in their last two games they lost and failed to score, both times at home. They are not celebrated; they are not talked about; they are not even agonized over anymore. If ever there was a forgotten team, but not forgotten because it was mediocre, it was they.

Such was the 1960’s for Buckeye football, a drama with all the fascinating facets of a fine story: abysmal lows, sudden heartbreaks, backstabbing and controversy, and shining triumphs. With its fine start derailed by treachery, its sojourn through the wilderness and ultimate victory, the good reader could be forgiven for mistaking it for an epic concocted by ancient Greeks, of confusing Woody with Odysseus. And of all the fine warriors that the hero commanded, which were the greatest? There are many to choose from and good arguments for multiple candidates. Alas, only twenty two positions do we have to fill, and these are the humble blogger’s choices:


BACKFIELD

QB Tom Matte – A controversial choice, Matte, a Vince Young prototype, completed a very high percentage of his passes at a time when most passes fell incomplete. He would go on to play many years in the pros… as a running back. Started in 1959 and 1960, we’ll put him in the 1960’s list as the 1959 team was forgettable.

FB Bob Ferguson – As good as Jim Otis was, Woody was quite clear on who was his best fullback. Mr. Ferguson labored for the 1961 group.

TB Thomas Barrington – There were no iconic tailbacks/halfbacks from the 1960’s but there were several good ones. We prefer the one with the best kick return stats in Buckeye history. From the 1964 team.


RECEIVERS

WR Paul Warfield – More of a halfback/wingback and underutilized, he still was twice named All Big Ten. His pro career, as a true wide receiver, is legend. Along with Matt Snell and Bob Ferguson, formed what was probably the best backfield in Buckeye history.

SE/TE Bruce Jankowski – Call him a fast tight end or a strong receiver, Jankowski was a frequent target of Mr. Rex Kern in the late sixties.

TE Jan White – An All-American as a senior, along with Jankowski one of the Super Sophs.


OFFENSIVE LINE

OL Jim Davidson – Possibly Woody’s greatest lineman from this decade, a first round draft pick and All-American who cleared the way for Barrington.

OL Doug Van Horn – All-American guard who played with Davidson, his pro career was long and successful.

OL Ray Pryor – All-American center from the mid-sixties.

OL Dave Foley – All-American tackle was a senior on the ’68 champions, a first round draft pick and All-Pro.

OL Bob Vogel – Hard to argue against a first round draft pick and six-time All-Pro.


DEFENSIVE LINE

DT Jim Stillwagon – Indisputable, possibly the greatest DT in Buckeye history. All-American, Lombardi and Outland award winner and one of the most super of the Super Sophs.

DT Dick Himes – OT his senior year, two time All Big Ten honoree whose career left him between the 1964 and 1968 teams. A true forgotten Buckeye

DE Matt Snell – Better known as a running back, Mr. Snell spent his junior year of 1962 on the defensive line and went on to a stellar pro career.

DE Mark Debevc – Lesser known Super Soph was twice named All Big Ten.

LINEBACKERS

LB Dwight Kelley – Two-time All-American, anchored a stingy 1964 defense.

LB Tom Bugel – All Big Ten selection, played alongside Kelley.

LB Mike Ingram – One of the best defenders on a 1961 defense without many big names. All Big Ten selection.


DEFENSIVE BACKS

DB Jack Tatum – Indisputable, perhaps the greatest player in Ohio State history. Two-time All-American, 1970 defensive MVP, first round draft pick, Super Sophomore… called The Assassin for his debilitating hits.

DB Mike Sensibaugh – Free safety still holds the all time Buckeye interception record. Another Super Soph.

DB Tim Anderson – All American cornerback. First round draft pick. Super Soph.

DB Arnold Chonko – All-American on the 1964 team, played what would today be called free safety.

Movie Review: Vantage Point

Perhaps more so than other hobbyists and enthusiasts, the cinephile must brace himself for disillusionment, which comes to him more frequently than parallel disappointments do to fans and dabblers in other fields. It is not that a football fan does not frequently suffer, but he does not see his expectations so recurrently shattered. A football fan, or fan of any sport, if he is moderately knowledgeable, does not often see his predictions proved grossly inaccurate. If he believes his team a championship contender, and they instead finish 10-2, he has suffered only two true disappointments in twelve games, a pace which any lover of movies envies, for the lover of movies is plagued by the preview.

Even an experienced and circumspect moviegoer cannot completely inoculate himself from heartbreak and letdown, for the artful editor, in selecting certain shots and moments that run no more than a couple minutes out of a movie that may last hours, has fashioned a deceptive trailer. In all but the most lopsided of football games, a losing team is yet able to cobble together intermittent moments of competence and even artistry. The losing team nearly always scores, and only rarely does the winning team never punt the ball, or at least fumble or suffer a sack. The difference is that the football fan of the losing team has not been shown these bright moments beforehand to the exclusion of everything else, whereas the wretched cinephile, no matter his cynicism, must yield at least a little to the enticements of a trailer. These repeated disappointments are exacerbated by the fact that when a movie disappoints, the entire theater suffers, whereas when a football team underachieves the other contingent of fans is happy. There is a guarantee of balance in football, but in cinema, when a movie is a disaster, only the director’s ex-wife rejoices.

Which brings us to Vantage Point. Advertisements for this particular flick have been around for a very long time by the standards of the industry. We have seen a solid cast assembled and the premise is alluring. The shots we have glimpsed were competently taken. No big name director was at the helm but the project, having passed through the filter of a trailer, had come out looking as if it had originated from a good movie. It is your humble blogger’s duty, as critic, to slice away the mendacity of advertising and expose what could not pass through the filter.

Set in the current political climate but linked to no specific year or administration, the story takes place in Salamanca, Spain, on the occasion of a visit by the president of the United States. As Secret Servicemen take the scene and news crews record it, the president arrives at the Plaza Mayor to give a speech, but an assassination attempt followed by bomb explosions derail the proceedings. From the vantage point of several different characters, we view and review the event nearly to the limits of human endurance.

If a single flaw in the movie were to be cited which no amount of excellence in other aspects of filmmaking could overcome, it would be the very structure of the story. No fewer than seven times that I can recall, a storyline progressed to the threshold of the climax only to freeze, rewind, and finally start again at the beginning from a different vantage point. This very soon grows tedious and quickly passes from tediousness to a point where the viewer simply stares in tumescent disbelief that the filmmakers are going to make us sit through the same scene yet again.

Sadly, the structure of the film is not its only impediment to pleasure. It suffers from such an earnest proclivity for the dramatic that it sweeps aside realism in its pursuit, crossing characters with improbable coincidence, or giving them absurd behavior in order to place them in more precarious circumstances. Sometimes realism is eschewed for no better excuse than what I take to be rank laziness, and sometimes for no discernible reason at all. The procedures and protocols of the Secret Service, for instance, do not strike one as thoroughly fleshed out and genuine. In the Line of Fire, whether or not it was well researched, at least convinced one ignorant of such matters that it had been. Vantage Point does no such convincing. The crowd in the Plaza Mayor is full of faces that seem suspiciously New World, lacking the classic Castilian features, and the bits of Spanish that are tossed about often have a decidedly Latin American accent, excepting, of course, actor Eduardo Noriega. One character is magically teleported to a distant part of the city so that a scene of poignant reuniting may take place. The worst of it is to be witnessed in the president’s hotel suite, where the commander in chief and his advisers carry on in such a juvenile manner that one marvels at the puerility of the mind that conceived it.

When the seemingly interminable rewinds and replays are finally finished, ninety percent of the climactic scene is taken up by a car chase. It is the same car chase that the good reader saw last week, which was the same car chase he saw the week before and the week before that. But for the quicker cuts and more mobile camera it was the same car chase he saw in 1985. I have reached a point where, no matter its incongruity with the established character of the villain, rather than lead the hero on another dull, high velocity/multiple impact car chase, if no fresh and interesting perspective on vehicular pursuit can be found, I would prefer that he simply hand over the keys, turn himself in and end the movie a few minutes sooner. If the hero is the one being pursued, then he should allow himself to be shot and his offspring can catch the villain in the sequel.

One last flaw I will expound and then leave off, with the understanding that the enumeration of certain defects in the movie shall not be construed as denying or disparaging other defects contained in it. This last shortcoming is the entire terrorist enterprise, which is so grand in scale, so intricate in execution and so dependent upon a variety of players from a myriad of backgrounds that a credible explanation for how such an endeavor could be undertaken is quite simply an obligation on the part of the storytellers. There is nothing wrong with a fantastic conspiracy, even if it breaks through the bounds of what could reasonably occur in real life, so long as the filmmakers demonstrate how it might plausibly be put together. Such a demonstration would not only alleviate incredulity but could prove quite interesting in and of itself. Failing that, leave it in mystery. Don’t show us who carried it out, or at least not all of them. Don’t fill in all the details; leave the audience with the chill of unfulfilled suspicion. Make the investigation only a partial victory or, better yet, no victory at all. I merely offer some suggestions for when the movie is remade in 2032.

Final Grade: D+

Ohio State Football All-1950's Squad

With all apologies to Kansanians, some of whom have some rudimentary knowledge of reading and might stumble across this page, it must be acknowledged that the game of football has evolved, much like a language or a species. If you go back far enough, you could find young men playing an almost unrecognizable sport that would eventually become football, soccer and rugby. Any interested Kansanian could go follow the progress of the sport through time and notice the accumulation of small changes that turned it into the sport we recognize today. Notice, if you take the journey, that the leather wearing brutes of 1918 did not suddenly show up to a game one day in 1919 wearing face masks, modern helmets and pads, playing a nickle defense on third and long and sending the wingback in motion to put him in a better position to block the outside linebacker, which seems to be your understanding of how the evolution of species works.

At any rate, because of the gradual nature of the evolution, it is difficult to locate a single moment in time when football became the modern sport played today and left behind its roots. My opinion is that the 1950's represent this bridge between modern football and its paleo predecessor. If the good reader were to watch a football game from the 1960's, he would see a very recognizable sport whose differences from the game played today are principally stylistic and hardly worth mentioning. On the other hand, the 1940's seem very different indeed.

The 1950's had a fairly well developed specialization at each position. It is true that players generally played on offense and defense, but each particular position, regardless of who played it, had well defined duties and required skills. Tailbacks no longer led their teams in passing, for instance, and a definite difference in the body types and skill sets of halfbacks and fullbacks had arisen. Passing was coming into greater popularity, partly because the shape of the ball had finally been settled on and was more aerodynamic. Also, facemasks came to be used sometime around 1955, if photographs are to be believed. This is an important development because it affects how a defender is willing to defend, what he is willing to do to his body and therefore what an attacker must endure. If the good reader does not believe us, we invite him to view rugby, which does not give its players much in the way of armor, and contrast it with a good football game today.

If the 1950's was the beginning of modern football, or at least on the threshold of it, and if Ohio State is the greatest program in football history - a proposition against which no serious argument can be raised - then it is worth asking what greatness looked like when the modern game was just developing. What, it may well be asked, is the best of the best of the decade? In considering all Ohio State teams, which players would form the All-1950's squad?

The humble blogger must confess to having only a little experience in watching the players of this era. If there were a remedy for this he would certainly avail himself of it, but alas he must make do with reputation and contemporary reports. Also, a decision must be made as to whether a given player should be on the offensive or defensive side of the ball. For better or worse, this is his vote for best of the best of the 1950's:

Backfield



QB John Borton - Probably Woody's most prolific passer, he set a record that would not be broken at Ohio State for a quarter century.

HB Hopalong Cassady - Heisman Trophy winning HB was Woody's best until a certain number 45 came around. Led Ohio State to the 1954 national championship.

HB Don Clark - Forgotten two-time All Big Ten Halfback, a mainstay on the other national championship squad of 1957.

FB Bob White - A bruising fullback (aren't all fullbacks so described?) and All-American who teamed up with Clark in the Buckeye backfield.


Offensive Line/Ends


OL Jim Parker - The greatest offensive lineman in history. Eight time All-Pro and college All-American, Mr. Parker opened up large holes for Hop Cassady.

OL Aurealius Thomas - Cassady had his Parker, and Clark had his Thomas. An All-American.

OL Ernie Wright - After laboring in undeserved obscurity at Ohio State, he anchored NFL lines for many years. Also on the 1957 team.

OL Dick Schafrath - Yet another standout from the 1957 team. Longtime NFL lineman and the first man to canoo across Lake Erie. At least, the first with white skin...

OL Jim Tyrer - Played two years in the 1950's, one year in the 1960's and then fourteen in the NFL. First round draft pick.

TE Dick Brubaker - Ohio State's main receiver on the 1954 squad.

TE Leo Brown - The main receiver for the 1957 squad and two-time All Big Ten.

Defensive Line



DE Jim Houston - Two-time All-American and mainstay for the Browns in the 1960's. Led the Buckeye defense on the 1957 title team.

DE Dean Dugger - All-American, the Houston of the 1954 squad.

DT Jim Marshall - A second All-American DL for the 1957 team, he played in the NFL for about 67 years.

DT Francis Machinsky - All Big Ten DL/OL from the 1954 squad.


Linebackers
LB Jerry Reichenbach - All-American Guard/LB from the 1954 squad.

LB Bill Jobko - After helping OSU to the 1957 title, he had a good career in the pros.

LB Hubert Bobo - LB/FB from the 1954 team.



Defensive Backs

DB Vic Janowicz - Won the Heisman as a HB, but may have been even better on Defense.

DB Fred Bruney - Went on to multiple All-Pro seasons in the NFL.

DB Dick LeBeau - Another underappreciated 1957-man who went on to multiple All-Pro seasons in the NFL.

DB Don Sutherin - Several qualified candidates for this fourth spot, we'll go with yet another 1957 man with a short NFL career.

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

Uwe Boll makes movies. This is beyond dispute as ample evidence for it has been offered up on several occasions. What is lacking is a sufficient explanation as to why he makes movies, or rather, why other men not involuntarily committed to an asylum read his scripts, put the necessary capital at his disposal to film them, distribute the results and then, contrary to all sense and decency, repeat all three steps of the process when experience should have made them wiser. I suppose that Uwe can no more be blamed for seizing the opportunity to make movies than Lyle Lovett can be blamed for seizing Julia Roberts in a lustful embrace of connubial bliss. But what does the other party get out of the arrangement?

I have heard that loopholes in German tax laws make it easy for someone so inclined to raise money for a movie. This may be true, but it still does not elucidate the conundrum. There are eighty million German citizens, give or take, the loopholes in the laws presumably apply equally to them all and yet the money finds its way specifically to Uwe’s projects and does so with regularity. A brief touch of the hand to a hot stove will so impress the careless cook that such an event becomes unlikely to repeat itself. Why, then, does viewing an Uwe Boll movie not provide the same sort of corrective to producers?

Dr. Boll, for so he demands to be addressed, has recently labored to produce In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. It does not differ from his other movies by so much that my critique of it, if we expunge the specific details, could not serve as a perfectly accurate appraisal of everything he has ever done. Every film from him is the same bewildering waste of time, as entertaining as a hippopotamus trying to dance ballet and for the same reasons. It is true that he does have some sense of story structure, but this is no more significant than remarking that the burger-flipper at the local fast food restaurant has some sense of the structure of the human body. Ask him to draw it and you will probably get a good representation of Uwe’s storytelling skills translated to visual art. He also manages to take some shots that one might see in a greater work, just as a foreign student, after his first English class, might grab a dictionary and scribble onto paper the words that he sees there. Missing is any indication that the soul and significance of the words are felt and understood, as well as any coherence between them. It is not that Uwe Boll is a bad director; the plain fact is that Uwe Boll is not a director at all. Yes, he directs movies, but this no more makes him a director than chewing on grass and wearing a bell would make me a cow.

Shall I summarize the plot? As best as I care to remember it was this: Evil orcs (called Krugs in the movie), attack a town, led by a traitor from within the walls of the king’s castle. Farmer, played by Jason Statham, loses his family either to death or enslavement and vows revenge while the king searches for warriors to swell the ranks of his army so that he may fight the Krugs. Hilarity ensues.

I found it amusing to reflect on some of the potentially controversial revisionist history implied by the movie. Of course it was an accident of incompetence much like the likeness of Abraham Lincoln is an accident of the wind pushing at the cumulus clouds, but for the imaginative mind it is there all the same. For instance, medieval farmers’ parents had homes in the suburbs on real estate overlooking the sea. Their wives properly moisturized their skin and conditioned their hair. Africans served as soldiers in medieval, European style armies – officers so as not to offend modern politically correct sensibilities but nothing too central to the story so as not to be intrusive. And of course, a theme whose like is repeated in most bad action movies: medieval farmers, with no other training than that they get from the time they spend with hoes and ploughs, are warriors of the most fearsome sort.

Apart from a good belly laugh, there is but one modestly valuable result of watching such a flick: filled as it is with actors of some name, the movie gives us a good chance to gauge the real ability of these actors based on how much of their dignity they lose by participating in this project. In other words, how many of them are simply extroverts with a little screen presence who have been getting by through the simple artifice of portraying themselves on screen, and how many are truly actors and to what degree? By this metric, we can say that John Rhys-Davies is an actor of no small ability. Burt Reynolds gets his hair mussed a touch but otherwise comes out alright. Jason Statham makes out OK, but his character is lifted from all the other movies he has done, the laconic and surly warrior which makes only small demands on the thespian. Kristanna Loken has a similarly undemanding role, escapes similarly unscathed but for the same reasons fails to impress. Ron Perlman could have done much worse; Matthew Lillard does. One feels a sympathetic embarrassment for Leelee Sobieskie and Claire Forlani.

But the most outstanding actor of them all, outstanding in the sense that he stands out, like a gigantic white-headed zit on the tip of a nose, is Ray Liotta. Ray Liotta is a great buffoon on stilts on roller blades. The effect of his acting is much the same as that of a bullfrog singing first tenor. I’m rather inclined to recommend it, actually, but only on those nights when the humdrum day has left one with an appetite for the other extreme, for something so absurd that the sheer weight of its ridiculousness balances the scales. In this respect, Ray Liotta is a tiny representation of the entire movie; the Boll actor par excellence.

However, it must be mentioned that In the Name of the King has perhaps the best closing credits in cinema history. This is not attributable to the relief that the end of the movie brings, nor to any inherent cleverness in the credits themselves, but rather to the three songs played during it. As a fan of European Heavy Metal, I was rather pleased to hear Blind Guardian and Hammerfall playing as the names of those who forgot to tell the editor they did not want credit for the movie passed by. Uwe Boll, in a feat as improbable as his fundraising, managed to keep me in the seat to the very end of the credits, much as if I had just finished my first viewing of Schindler’s List but, again like the fundraising, for entirely different reasons than one would normally expect.

Final Grade: D-

Cloverfield

Cloverfield has many times been described as Godzilla meets The Blair Witch. Having seen the movie, I can attest that the description is spot on and, with few words, does a great job of conveying what it is like to watch it. Indeed, I have the feeling that a hundred independent viewers with no foreknowledge of the project would have each come up with the same phrase to describe it. The question remains, however, whether Cloverfield is a cheesy flop of a monster picture or if, more like The Blair Witch, it is a somewhat shallow but intense and thrilling ride for that demographic which appreciates this sort of thing.

The plot is simple and the story is short. A party is thrown for a young professional, Rob Hawkins played by Michael Stahl-David, about to move to Japan. He is falling in love with a girl, Beth McIntyre played by Odette Yustman, but has withdrawn of late because of the anticipated move. When she comes to the party with another man they have an argument and she leaves. Then the behemoth creature arrives and Rob, getting a voice mail from Beth in great distress, decides to cross town on foot, with the monster rampaging around, to try and save her. The entire story is told from the point of view of the same in situ camera.

I thought the movie a definite success, an intense roller coaster that leaves one exhilarated, dizzy and a touch nauseous. Like The Blair Witch, the camera is jumpy and, on the big screen, merciless. As much as the intent is to overwhelm the viewer, I think it might actually be more enjoyable on DVD, where the family room TV is less apt to provoke such queasiness. But when one can summon the will to look at the screen, the movie captivates.

The nighttime shots and the city sets make for a great atmosphere. There are no memorable characters, but the director and writer take enough time and care in introducing them, and evoke a pleasant mood with the party, so that we are well disposed towards them when they find themselves in peril. The situation becomes more engrossing in proportion as the bits of news filter down to the stunned people of Manhattan. Half the attraction of the film is the contrast of the mammoth proportions of the crisis and all its attendant effects recklessly spinning and interweaving about the island, most of them only implied, imagined or at most briefly glimpsed, with the smaller but omnipresent perspective of the main characters.

The movie is too short for a great number of adventures, but the few they experience along the way are gripping and increasingly extraordinary. Despite how fantastic the adventures become, they are at all times well founded in realism. The behavior of the characters is generally believable – no one, for instance, suddenly reveals unlikely prowess in battle – and the laws of physics are either obeyed or at least not broken to the extent that a moderately skeptical layman must become incredulous. This authenticity, in my opinion, gives the movie a certain integrity that many lack, and makes the adventures more compelling.

The movie does have its little faults, to be sure. Given the situation, Hud, the doofus who spends most of the time holding the camera, makes too many humorous remarks, remarks whose humor escapes his character but not the audience. There are times, after all, when even a doofus must sober up. The other actors, capable enough of portraying young urban professionals at a party, are at times taxed beyond their abilities by the more emotional sequences, but they miss convincing us by only a small amount. The decision of one of the military men ,in light of what occurred in New Orleans, is not authentic. But my complaints are small in number and light in impact.

One scene taken with another, it is a very good way to start 2008. I hope it’s not the best that cinema will offer us this year, but if once per month something of equal value comes to the silver screen I shall consider it a good year.

Final Grade: B+

El Orfanato (The Orphanage)

The Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, in keeping with his penchant for Spanish stories with Spanish actors, has assumed the role of producer for The Orphanage (El Orfanato). A horrific tale of ghosts in a spooky house, it is just the sort of movie you would expect to interest Sr. del Toro. Though lacking the touches of color and imagination that are characteristic of his own works, the movie’s direction feels less awkward and the resulting average makes for a similar grade.

Set in Spain, the movie is about a couple and their adopted son who move back to the orphanage where the heroine spent much of her youth. Laura (Belén Rueda) and her spouse Carlos (Fernando Cayo) have plans to take in a few orphans at some point in the future, but a horror movie’s plot will not permit such idyllic dreams without protest. First, Laura’s son begins talking to invisible friends and insists they are real. Next, like clockwork, strange occurrences beset the family, occurrences which become increasingly harder to explain through rational means. The heroine eventually, of course, becomes convinced that there is a supernatural explanation and her spouse, of course, stubbornly refuses to countenance such nonsense. She throws herself into an investigation and he begins to withdraw from the affair.

There is never any question in the moviegoer’s mind that supernatural events are indeed transpiring. This does not give anything away that is not felt almost immediately and confirmed soon thereafter. Rare is the ghost story which wraps up with a perfectly natural explanation, or at least leaves us with an ambiguous ending, but it seems to me that The Orphanage could have left us with a bit of doubt through Act I at least. Instead, there are obvious clues which leave no room for a natural cause. Perhaps I have simply seen too many of this sort of movie, but the moments that are supposed to give us goose bumps feel expected and habitual. Naturally she will see footprints where none should be found; of course objects will be moved when none but one of the invisible friends could have done it. I haven’t read the manual of horror writing, but I have seen enough of its products to be able to turn out a close approximation.

Though The Orphanage does not revolutionize the genre, it does manage to achieve some authentic thrills. There is a séance – there must be a séance! – but at least the ceremony is reasonably unique and the filmmakers are judicious in what they show us and what they leave to our imagination. And the moment when the heroine makes contact with some of the spirits through a children’s game is effective enough to chill even when we know exactly what is going to happen.

The actors perform well as forgettable characters in undistinguished roles. But for a bit of back story, the heroine is interchangeable with characters from the majority of other horror movies (truly exceptional roles have always been less abundant than actors capable of filling them). The other characters are flat and cliché: for instance the man who introduces the heroine to the medium Balaban (Edgar Vivar) and the medium herself speak with foreign accents. Apparently, in Spain, like America, arcane knowledge of another world must come from another country. With what accent do vampires speak in Romania?

The movie is too formulaic to be truly great, but it is competently filmed and well acted. Even some of the scares you see coming from a mile off manage to have an effect. It doesn’t make you love the characters or grab you and hold you in its world, but it is modestly entertaining. If you like the genre I would recommend it as worth seeing.

Final Grade: B-

Movie Review: I Am Legend

We revisit the genre of the last man on earth with Will Smith’s latest, I Am Legend (Francis Lawrence directing). It’s a genre that holds so much promise, and yet very rarely does it bear fruit. The latest attempt falls in line with the majority: entertaining premise, mundane execution.

A new virus is genetically engineered to cure cancer and meets with initial success. But the virus gets loose and wreaks havoc on the human race, turning the vast majority into mindless vampire-like creatures with no tolerance for sunlight. Will Smith, playing Colonel Robert Neville, is, as far as he knows, the last human being on the planet. A scientist as well as colonel, he spends his days maintaining his solitary existence and searching for a cure. His nights he spends bunkered down in his home with his faithful canine companion, praying the physically enhanced vampires do not discover where he lives.

There is nothing really wrong with I Am Legend, but there are so many minor flaws, missed opportunities and poor decisions that the premise, no matter how much one likes this sort of thing, has little hope of saving the enterprise.

Once again we are treated to, or rather made to endure, more CGI creatures. I find myself repeating the same thing over and over on the topic: CGI has its place, but a director has to know where that place is and must guard against overusing the technology. In a movie like I Am Legend, a serious endeavor with creatures that are meant to scare us, CGI is a poor choice to represent the monsters. A CGI vampire is not scary for the same reason the Smurfs aren’t scary: IT’S A FREAKING CARTOON! It might have been difficult, perhaps impossible, to get a human to move with the force and speed that the vampires in the movie have, but that would have been a small sacrifice in exchange for the gripping presence of a real looking vampire. Makeup and costumes still trump computer graphics, and it’s not even close. If you don’t believe me, watch portions of Alien 3, then go back and watch Alien.

Another poor choice is the lead character. Will Smith, reprising the same role he has played in every movie I’ve ever seen him in, plays a brilliant scientist, a dashing hunk, and a super athlete all at once (Yes, the specifics change, but the persona is the same). It might have been interesting to see, say, Paul Giamatti playing the role of intellectual scientist in search of a cure, a scientist with all the quirks and idiosyncrasies that great minds often have who must use his brain to compensate for his average or even frail physique, something that hampers him in his struggle against the vampires. Or, staying with Will Smith, it could have been just as interesting to watch an athletic man with an average mind using his brawn to survive, but always treading water, getting by until the sun rises again, lacking the cerebral capacity to grasp the bigger picture and discover a solution.

It would have been even more interesting to see these characters meet halfway through. But instead what we get is a character from an Ayn Rand novel: flawless both physically and mentally. It’s a perfection which snuffs out any sympathy we might have felt for the man as his sad back-story is revealed to us. I have a difficult time accepting movies where the female characters, no matter who they are supposed to be, look better suited for lovemaking than whatever it is they are doing. It is equally hard to accept Will Smith.

Implausibility is another affliction that curses this film. Sometimes the implausible thing is only a minor irritant, such as when the sets show New York City streets, only three years removed from the outbreak of the virus, already choked with weeds pushing through the cracks but the posters for the Broadway musicals are not even peeling at the corners. Other times, the implausibility is more damaging to the project’s integrity. Examples of this include the fact that Will Smith is still eating food from a jar that – unless he has found the time and know-how to master all the different jobs spread throughout the division of labor and therefore grow, harvest, process and jar his own food – must be at least three years old. Will Smith’s home has running water, water which he apparently believes to be pure enough to drink. It also has electricity. Either show us exactly how he is able to maintain this living standard – and still find time to hit golf balls off the wing of a fighter jet when he isn’t searching for a cure – or show us how life would really be without extensively divided labor like we now have.

Show him boiling his water after collecting it from buckets on his roof. Show him tending his garden, using his own feces to fertilize his crops. Show him mending his own clothes. Show him in agony as he must cut out his own decaying tooth. The movie does show him hunting – albeit in a sleek looking car as, incredibly, he cruises New York City looking for deer – but it doesn’t give us a reason for him to be hunting. Rather than all the jarred and canned food he has, show us a bare pantry, or a half-eaten cured leg of some beast hanging from a hook in the ceiling. And if you must show him driving cars, at least show him coping with gasoline which has degraded for the last three years. Does gas last that long? How well does it work after thirty-six months? It would have been interesting to find out.

There is a hint of something more interesting in the movie which is introduced but left undeveloped. The colonel hunts the vampires during the daytime to use as guinea pigs in his search for a cure. As he makes notes of his observations, he remarks that the social humanity of the vampires is almost entirely gone. However, it soon becomes apparent that he is wrong, and the vampires may even be hunting him. But instead of pursuing this potentially interesting cat and mouse game, the movie breaks down into fighting and screaming and explosions wherein even greater implausibilities await.

I will give the movie credit for taking its time. Despite the CGI and dubious actions of the lead character, and despite everything else that was missing, the movie does at least concern itself with setting things up. It certainly doesn't push headlong into something, anything, to get some action started. But when all is said and done it is still a tantalizing but ultimately unfulfilling trip down an avenue of unrealized possibilities and disappointing decisions.

Final Grade: C