Mash review

 Number 616 on the top 1000 films of all time is the Robert Altman's war-comedy film Mash.

Mash follows the antics of three medical officers Captain Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland,) Captain Trapper John Mcintyre (Eliot Gould) and Captain Duke Forrest (Tom Skerrit) during the Korean war. Robert Duvall, Sally Kellerman and Rene Auberjonois co-star.

If you don't know the film Mash then you certainly know the subsequent TV show. Sufficed to say, it was one of the most popular American sitcoms with the most watched TV show finale ever. This is all in spite of how Altman absolutely despised the show.

And like how he despised the TV show, i despised the film. Many critics including the distinguished Roger Ebert, regard it as one of the funniest satires of war ever. Evidently, we we were watching different films, as I, far from my sides hurting from laughing, my eyes were hurting from rolling back in my head.

I barely cracked a smile through the two-hour run-time. it wasn't a funny film. Through a modern lens, you could certainly argue the humour hasn't aged well. I'm sure many modern women wouldn't be happy with how Margaret Houlihan was the butt of every joke.

Through every other lens, it just wasn't funny. It didn't help all the characters were really unlikeable. Hawkeye and Trapper were supposed to be loveable rogues, but they're also insubordinate jerks who like to cause trouble. They were obnoxious and annoying. They weren't characters I wanted to laugh with or at. And even the poor victim Houlihan was too much of a wet blanket to be truly interesting to watch.

In some ways, their characters reflected the actors playing them. Sutherland and Gould famously clashed with Altman and his improvisational directorial style - going so far as to try and get him fired by studio execs. Scriptwriter Ring Lardon JR also had his own problems with Altman. This is despite how he won the Oscar for best screenplay. It definitely changes your perspective of the film.

And my perspective? It was an unfunny film with unlikeable characters.

Heathers review

 Number 932 on the top 1000 films of all time is the teen black-comedy 'Heathers.'

Veronika (Winona Ryder) is part of a high-school clique consisting of three girls all called Heather: Heather Duke (Shannon Doherty,) Heather McNamara (Lisanne Falk) and Heather Chandler (Kim Walker.) The same time she realises that her friends are ruthless bullies, she falls in love with the mysterious outsider JD (Christian Slater0 who has a plot to kill all the popular kids in school.

How to describe this film? Natural Born Killers set in a high school. But instead of the psychopathic Mickey and Mallory Knox, we have JD and the naive Veronika who he manipulates into being his unwitting accomplice.

In creating this film, director Michael Lehmann wanted to portray a darker side to high-school by turning the standard coming-of-age drama on its head. He certainly succeeded there. JD is a long way from Ferris Bueller. He is a damn sight creepier too although I'm not sure whether that was the character or Christian Slater. Seriously. JD is what I would imagine Klebold or Harris being like...

Although I think a more accurate comparison could be the Moors Murderers or Paul Bernado and Karla Homolka. However, the key difference is that Veronika quickly wisens up to JD's true agenda and decides to confront him.

In Heathers, Winona Rider was urr riding her success in Beetlejuice - a wave she continued riding throughout the nineties. She was good as Veronika who was perhaps the most self-aware character and perhaps the only character who wasn't some distorted stereotype. Christian Slater leaned too heavily into the moody outsider while the football players were overly-simplistic as well as the group of nerds they bullied. Yet, the Heathers knew exactly what they were doing, but they still weren't much more than your standard mean girls.

Heathers is also clever in its dissection of contemporary society - particularly with the romanticisation of suicide. Suicide is a recurring theme and we see how it affects different people in different ways. In some ways, Lehmann satirises this dark theme through his comical approach to it. But despite this satire, it is still treated with the respect it deserves.

Heathers was certainly an effective way to deconstruct the coming-of-age films that directors like Justin James Hughes made famous. It's just a shame that Christian Slater was so damn creepy.

Network review

 Number 180 on the top 1000 films of all time is the 1976 black-comedy satire Network.

Howard Beale (Peter Finch) long time news anchor of the fictional news network UBS declares on-air that he will commit suicide live. UBS, which has long been struggling with low ratings, immediately tries to fire him, but his friend and division president Max Schumacher (William Holden) permits Beale to have one more broadcast to say goodbye. Beale takes this as a chance to rant about how life is "bullshit." When the network's ratings spike, UBS decide to exploit this with programming chief Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) deciding to give Beale his own "angry man" segment.

For a film that is so damning about the evils of everyday life, Network shares many tropes with your average melodramatic soap opera. We have lots of people yelling at each other (more on this later,) an extra-marital affair, ham-fisted messages, graphic violence and even a cheesy catchphrase. 

Perhaps I'm the wrong target demographic of this film. Being a millennial living in 2022, I am well aware of the pitfalls of modern society. For me, TV is little else than something I would just play in the background. But back in the seventies, TV was king and so the messages of the film may have resonated more with a 70's audience. I found everything very preachy and soapboxey. Beale's rants were like something you would see from a TV evangelist. They quickly lost their novelty and bloated out a film. It was only two hours long but it felt much longer.

This film was a critical success and was nominated for nine Oscars including the four acting Oscars. Finch, Dunaway and Beatrice Straight, who played Schumacher's wife, all won. Holden and Ned Beatty were also nominated but lost out. Yet I'm at a loss as to why any of them were nominated. As previously said, all they did was yell at each other. There was a lot of screaming and shouting in this film and not much else. Again, it did make for a very repetitive watch.

All in all, I'm probably the wrong audience. Network is a film that just doesn't hold the same relevance as it might once have done. After all, who still watches television?