Saturday, June 7, 2014

I Discuss John Milius

Here's something else I copied and pasted from Letterboxd. I recently finally got the Epix block of channels. That makes me happy, as they do show quite a few recent movies along with some interesting older ones. Plus, they have a standard definition only station known as Epix Drive-In, where they don't always show drive-in programming but it looks interesting nonetheless. Anyhow, I finally got to see the Epix exclusive documentary known as Milius, released last year and all about the famous writer/director of old John Milius. Now, what I said about the film in my 4 star review on Letterboxd:

Around these parts I doubt I need to do much elaboration of the career of John Milius, writer of such films as Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, Apocalypse Now and Conan the Barbarian and the guy who wrote the all-time classic U.S.S. Indianapolis speech for Jaws, and director of Conan and the infamous Red Dawn... also, he is close friends with Coppola, Lucas and Spielberg and they all influenced each other during their glory days. He's an unheralded guy in general so I was glad a documentary-more than 6 years in the making-was made which recapped his movie-making career.

The film recaps his life and demonstrated clearly how much of an iconoclast he was, especially when the Hollywood landscape changed and morphed to the corporate business it has become and he was unwilling to change; the movie is willing to show faults such as this. It offered up many entertaining tales concerning his wild over the top nature and how he idolized such figures as samurais and Teddy Roosevelt.

I shamefully knew too little about this important figure to cinema in the past 45 years and this documentary did a quality job in learning about the man and his contributions, and makes me sad that with what Hollywood has become we'll lose the participation of wild and passionate and spirited individuals such as him, people who are needed to add flavor and character to Hollywood cinema.

I'll return tomorrow night.

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