One!

Capricorn One comes from a time when we got our conspiracy theories from the likes of the Weekly World News and not the Oval Office. One of the most prevalent conspiracy theories I've run across is the crusty notion that the United States did not put men onto the surface of the Moon, and that the whole shebang was just a product of the "Industrial Military Complex" and it's need to keep a tight tether on the fickle public. Sometimes aliens get mixed into this rhubarb, but the essential element is that government of the people and for the people spends most of its time lying to the people. Now I'm not going to say that governments don't lie, they do with regularity, but the dopey and preposterous notion that we didn't go the Moon ain't some of them. This lack of trust in public offices and the conjoined notion that science ain't all it's cracked up to be has no small part in the current debacle the United States lays claim to as a public health response to a global pandemic. In a world where people profess to believe the Earth is not only flat but only six thousand years old, confidence in the rigors of science does not prosper. The end of the "Enlightenment" is at hand amigos. 

Tomorrow change arrives in the Dojo! 

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Two!

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is a magnificent epic fantasy and after the peculiar cartoon adaptations by first Ralph Bakshi and later the Rankin/Bass finale to that version, I rather despaired ever seeing it brought properly to the big screen. But Peter Jackson's trilogy did so magnificently. The Two Towers of course is the title of the second book and the second movie installment. LotR as adapted by the Kiwis was to my mind the pinnacle of this kind of movie making. The ability to do even more digitally and the financial standing to go at that approach with nigh unlimited vigor created in The Hobbit a wasted opportunity, a movie that asked only if it could do a effect and not if it should do a effect. 

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Three!

I don't' exactly remember when I first ran across 3 Days of the Condor but it was a hit with me immediately. Max Von Sydow is a cold assassin and Robert Redford is totally credible as a sometimes hapless espionage agent who just wants to live another day. This ain't super spies by any means and that's fresh in and of itself in the matter-of-fact cold-blooded nature of murdering for one's country.  I like that I rarely see it, long enough between times for the small touches to fade from memory and let me enjoy all over again. 

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Four!

I have really grown to appreciate Fantastic 4 more and more as I've seen the film now several times on TV and elsewhere. It's a hard movie to love for a comic book fan as it's not really on model all that much. What it does do exceedingly well is evoke the spirit of discovery which informed the earliest issues of the Fab 4 when they super-scientific explorers as much as superheroes. It's one of those movies that demands the watcher discard preconceptions and for me as a longtime FF fan that was hard to do, but now I've shuffled off those expectations and I can take this movie as is -- a pretty decent adventure. 

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Five!

Five Million Years to Earth is in my pantheon of all-time fave films. It always delivers when I see it and I've seen many many times. Getting hold of a copy of his Hammer offering has proven difficult over the years for some reason but I recently got hold of the Blu-Ray and am positively chuffed to have it at my beck and call. Andrew Keir is outstanding as the always-grumpy Professor Quatermass and Barbara Shelley makes me tingle, she's so sexy. It's a great scary story well told and a movie fan can ask no more. 

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Six!

Deep Star Six was along with Leviathan and The Abyss one of those instances when several movies with every similar themes hit the screens about the same time in the late 80's. The classic model was established by The Thing in which a group of capable folks are stranded in a remote location and must deal with a deadly monstrous enemy on their own. In The Thing the heroes are isolated in the Arctic, but in these movies the depths of the ocean are the settings. Deep Star Six was the least of the three with The Abyss being the most compelling and Leviathan the most frightening. But Deep Star Six still offers some nifty shocks -- great B-movie offering. 

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Seven!

Seven (sometimes written Se7en) is a movie that lingers in the depths of your brain. It is my favorite Morgan Freeman film with him as a world-weary but almost a regretfully brilliant detective, and another example of the dexterity that Brad Pitt can bring to a part. The murders are at once grotesque and fascinating, the puzzle bewildering and inspired. The inspiration is the product of sheer evil which allows the villain to exist in a nightmare world of his own fashioning, a hell of his own making as if not only to punish himself but all of mankind for the pain  he feels and the feels the need to inflict. Seven seeps into you like its nigh omnipresent rain which doesn't wash you clean but merely cover you in grime. 

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Eight!

Super 8 is the most Steven Spielberg movie not directed by Steven Spielberg. He does co-produce so it's not completely out of his control, but clearly J.J. Abrams had seen all of Spielberg's sci-fi movies and they had seeped deeply into his essence when he wrote the script for this tale of a bunch of misfit kids who find themselves battling a deadly alien to save their town and maybe the world. Emotion drips from every frame, perhaps a bit too much at times, but it's all good in the end. 

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Nine!

District 9 is one of those movies you think about when it's over. The presentation creates a feeling of verisimilitude which empowers the narrative in ways we as audience aren't immediately aware of. It takes the utterly fantastic notion of space aliens forced to live in slum conditions outside a major city and forces us as viewers to identify with them. It demands we see ourselves potentially in their suffering and of course that's whole point of Neill Blomkapp's best movie. He's tried, but he's never topped it yet. 

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Ten!

Cloverfield was one of the more inventive monster movies of recent years. A giant kaiju seen through the narrow lens and limited perspective of an every man on the streets as the buildings fall down and the people die. Making a sequel posed problems since the core gimmick was so specific, but 10 Cloverfield Lane does a good job. It's good because it doesn't ape the original in any way but rather offers up another limited perspective to world shattering event and keeps the audience at bay, as confused as the protagonist. It's a winner and has a dandy upbeat ending -- for a movie about impending apocalypse.

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Eleven!

Frank Sinatra is a peculiar figure in American pop culture -- part pop idol and part gangster. His "Danny Ocean" (the titular hero of Oceans 11) is the essence of what it was to be cool in the years just after World War II, a suave and confident man who "grokked" the world in all its complexity and move to make his piece of it a little shinier. I'm struck by the "11" too. Dean Martin is the eptiome of cool self control, Joey Bishop is a sad clown of negativity, Peter Lawford is suave but suspected of being feckless, Sammy Davis is the black man movie goers forgot was black, and Angie Dickinson is what sexy girls were supposed to want to be. The others fill out various stereotypes, even the luckless Richard Conte whose death is advertised from the very beginning. I watched this show recently and was struck at how Cesar Romero dominated the flick, an actor who I pretty much only know through the Joker lens. 

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Twelve!

Six months ago or longer this original Rip Jagger's Dojo broke. Eager to stay up and running in the blogosphere I fashioned an "Other Dojo" and it has served well. But I find this old place is active again, and frankly I want to come home. For the past several weeks, both Dojos have operated more or less identically, but that's about to change. With today's post we begin a countdown to changes at the Dojos. For the most part don't expect expansive posts for the next dozen days while I use the time to spruce up things attend to necessary house cleaning. 

And now for 12 Monkeys. This movie by director Terry Gilliam is a thoughtful time travel yarn with many of the bizarre touches associated with the director who once upon a time gave Monty Python its distinctive appearance. But what I most remember about this flick is that it convinced me that Brad Pitt could act. Despite a reputation as a wonderful specimen of mankind's loveliness, I realized there was more to him. Other movies, most notably the recent Once Upon a Time in Hollywood have convinced me I was right. Pitt is not just another pretty face. 

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