NEVERENDING FILM FESTIVAL #386

every movie ever made, in alphabetical order
(we’re in the I’s, with random anti-alphabetical cheats)

Icarus Montgolfier Wright (1962)

It’s August 22, 1970, the night before the first manned flight to the moon, and astronaut Jedediah Prentiss is so keyed up he can’t hardly sleep. He imagines himself Icarus, the legendary feathered flyer of Greek myth, and Etienne Montgolfier, the first to fly in a hot air balloon, and Orville Wright, first pilot of a powered flight.

Based on a short story by Ray Bradbury predicting what Neil Armstrong did for real a few years later, this animated short is gee whiz to the max, purdy and poetic and inspirational, and perhaps an inch or two over the top.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Ice (1969)

Made at the peak (so far) of American political unrest, this is alternately astounding and ludicrous. It starts by reciting a narrator’s heartfelt radical beliefs and strategies, most of which I agree with, but that doesn’t make them less boring, and then we’re in a cafe at night with revolution in the air.

Filmed in black-and-white and matter-of-fact, it’s about an effort to bring all the era’s counterculture groups — the blacks, the pinkos, the college crowd, the anti-war-warriors, women’s liberation, political theater geeks and papier-mâché maskmakers, etc — into a unified mass movement, called the National Committee of Independent Revolutionary Organizations. Basically, they’re building an executive-level bureaucracy for the counterculture. I’m not sure that’s the best strategy, but the movie’s sure sure.

There are bursts of frightful violence, political meetings as boring and pointless as meetings at work, and long stretches of passionate political dialogue that seems very college-educated — “Don’t be so solicitous,” says one radical to another.

Instead of a war in Vietnam, this flick has the USA at war with Mexico, an ill-advised switcheroo. All the other political talk seems authentically of the era, so it’s jarring every time they talk about the Mexican front. Huh?

Ice is extremely indy and made with passion, and if passion is enough it would be a BIG YES. But it’s so talk-talk-talky, all the 1960s clichéd arguments get in the way of the story.

And it’s sad to see all these characters so fervently believing that a revolution was about to happen. Spoiler: It didn’t.

Written, directed by, and starring Robert Kramer, a filmmaker respected enough that I’ve heard of him, though this is his first work that I’ve seen. For all its faults, Ice is intriguing, and I’ve added a few of Kramer’s other efforts to my movies-I-hope-to-watchlist.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Ice Storm (1997)

Saw this when it first came out, and liked it. Still liked it on a rewatch.

Big problem, though: An ice storm is freezing rain, and in freezing-rain territory, you’re a fool if you drive a car with only the windshield — not the side and back windows — cleared of the caked ice.

Ben and Elena Hood (Kline, Joan Allen) are middle-class 1970s suburban parents, best buddies with Jim and Janey Carver (Jamey Sheridan, Sigourney Weaver). Ben’s having an affair with Janey, and Elena knows it but doesn’t know what to do about it.

The movie’s also about both family’s next generation, adolescents and young adults who are all friends. They’re more interesting than their parents, just because they still have the potential to become something other than ordinary.

Everyone in this movie is itching for something, nobody really knows what, but most of them scratch the itch via sex, or try to. Booze and drugs can help, too.

Tobey Maguire, pre-Spider-man, has understandable hots for Katie Holmes, pre-Dawson’s Creek, and Christina Ricci is 17 playing 14 playing easy-to-get. Wish she’d been my neighbor in junior high.

Ang Lee made this flick, and despite him being Taiwanian there seems to be nothing he doesn’t understand about Americans and our emptiness within. We’re all in danger of slipping on the ice.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Zero Hour! (1957) and Airplane! (1980)

Airplane! is a hilarious spoof of Airport and its sequels, but it’s also an uncredited remake of Zero Hour!, so I watched both movies back-to-back.

Both movies are about a former military pilot with a troubled past who has to fly and land a commercial flight after food poisoning takes out the pilot and co-pilot. Zero Hour is based on a novel by Arthur Hailey, who also wrote Airport, and it probably works as an overwrought thriller, but only if you haven’t seen Airplane.

For those of us who’ve seen Airplane, Zero Hour is a low-key comedy, warm-up act for the real laughs to come. It has a bombastic, over-dramatic score, and it’s jammed with dialogue so corny, it almost demands to be made fun of.

“You ever been in a cockpit before?” the pilot asks a little boy, named Joey in both movies. Other familiar lines include “That’s not important right now,” and “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.” The only line I was hoping to hear in Zero Hour but didn’t was, “Surely you can’t be serious.”

Airplane is a surprisingly faithful remake, with the same plot, the same terse, manly talk all through it, the same central character, Ted Striker (Dana Andrews in Zero Hour, Robert Hays in Airplane), and the same unnecessary exclamation point after the title.

In Airplane, there’s a silly guy at the control tower, based on a guy in Zero Hour who has the same chubbiness, balding pate, and is only slightly less zany. There’s the same panning shot of the cockpit’s control panel, as Striker realizes he’ll have to fly this dang thing. There’s the same flashback to Striker’s memories of the war, which might be the same footage in both movies.

In Airplane, Peter Graves has a hilarious death scene, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar gets outted, Barbara Billingsley speaks Jive, and the flight detours to make fun of Saturday Night Fever. Most of the jokes are stupid, and almost all are funny. It took my mind off everything else, and put me in my first good mood of the month.

Verdict: YES for Zero Hour!, BIG YES for Airplane!

6/8/2025

Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer. No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff. 

Neverending Film Festival

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