American Graffiti review

 Number 777 on the top 1000 films of all time is George Lucas' directorial debut and coming-of-age drama 'American Graffiti.'

Curt Henderson (Richard Dreyfuss,) Steve Bolander (Ron Howard,) John Milner (Paul Le Mat) and Terry 'Toad' Fields (Charlie Martin Smith) are four high-school graduates preparing to go their separate ways in life. Across one summer night, we see how they spend their last hours of adolescence.

It's hard to believe this is the same director who created Star Wars and produced Indiana Jones - two of the most action-packed, fun-filled, entertaining franchises in movie history. Francis Ford Coppola also produced this film. And he directed the legendary Godfather films. But American Graffiti was so boring. Once it gets going it's okay, but it takes so long to get going.

The first half of the film, which is roundabouts an hour, nothing much really happens. The four main characters spend most of the time just driving around Modesto, California. They all have their own personal goals: Curt is trying to find a beautiful girl he saw in passing while Toad schemes and plots to impress another girl called Debbie. But none of these goals were particularly interesting or relatable. And I think relatability is one of the most important parts of a coming-of-age drama. But American Graffiti was sorely missing this key aspect.

Once things do get going, there are moments of humour and poignancy, but these are few and far between. When Toad tries asking an older man to buy alcohol for him and his date, the man instead buys wine and sneaks out of the back of the store. A second man robs the store, but at least buys the alcohol for Toad. 

When Curt scratches the car of a group of greases, they coerce him into joining them for the night and force him to engage in petty crime like robbing arcade machines. If he refuses, they'll beat him up. It was entertaining if not the most realistic. Surely the greasers would just beat him up in the first place.

I also could have done without the ending epilogue revealing the fates of the different characters. These aren't real people. We don't need to know where they end up. That can be left up to the viewer to decide.

Although American Graffiti had its funny and touching moments, it was too slow and took too long to get going. How was this the same director who did Star Wars?

Brazil review

 Number 299 on the top 1000 films of all time is Terry Gillam's dystopian black comedy drama Brazil.

Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a low-level bureaucrat in an unnamed dystopian future. He frequently dreams of saving a mystery woman from death. When a typing errors results in the erroneous death of cobbler Archibald Buttle, instead of rogue heating engineer Archibald Tuttle (Robert De Niro) Lowry tries to undo the mistake which brings him into contact with the woman he has been dreaming about.

Surreal? Arthouse? Experimental? A satirical look at the modern world? However you look at it, there is no denying that Brazil is a weird film. Made by Terry Gillam and co-starring Michael Palin, it was a bit like a twisted Monty Python misadventure. Rather than one cohesive narrative, the film jumped from surreal scene to surreal scene - we have Sam Lowry dreaming of being a winged warrior saving a woman from falling to her death, the next we jump to Archibald Buttle being arrested and sentenced to death and then Sam is fighting this massive robotic samurai. It really was just bizarre and after a while the weirdness all became a bit much. I just don't have the patience for it. Maybe if there was an obvious deeper meaning than I would get it, but it just seemed like it was being weird for the sake of being weird.

Having said that, Terry Gillam was inspired by 1984, despite having never read it. Gillam was also highly inspired by Fellini and I could see his influence here. Brazil was like a grotesque parody of both Fellini's work and of 1984. Lowry is the stand-in for Winston Smith, another low-level bureaucrat stuck in a totalitarian system. It's not Big Brother and Emmanuel Goldstein, but it is dystopic nonetheless. The origins of this world are not explored in any great detail, but there is an over-reliance on technology which usually malfunctions. And *spoiler alert* just when it looks like Lowry has escaped and will live happily ever after, it was all a torture-inspired hallucination.

And I know this was in the eighties, but the special effects looked awful. From the tinny explosions to the flamethrowers that were obviously painted paper, they really looked like they were from a cheap B-film. Terry Gillam has referred to this as the second in his trilogy of imagination, and it was nominated for best original screenplay. There is no doubt that this was an original, imaginative film. Confusing, surreal and abstract, but definitely original. I can safely say that I haven't seen anything like it before.