All of my life I have been a fa of movies. My earliest memory is of some Hammer Frankenstein in lurid color at a drive in in North Carolina. I can vividly recall sitting in the Sunrise theater in Ft Pierce Florida watch Escape from the Planet of the Apes, and while in the navy the day before we deployed to the Western Pacific for a six-month cruise, I spent twelve hours in various theaters watching movie after movie. In short going out to a movie is a valuable experience for me and one that I have dearly missed since the pandemic induced shut started in March.

On social media I can see that in some states the theaters are re-opening with enhanced procedures to help fight the spread of COVID-19 but not yet here in California and honestly as much as I miss the experience I’m very hesitant to return to that sort of public exposure without the benefit of a vaccine.

I am not passing judgement on others if they are taking every available precaution but this is not a game and people are dying. I know that with the medication I take for my arthritis avoiding infection is particularly important for me and that’s a major if not the dominate factor in my thinking. But I also interact with others, albeit fewer that I have before this crisis started, and I must do my part in preventing to spread, sparing my community, my friends, and my loved ones.

Despite my 55″ 4K television watching movies at home is not the same experience but for 2020 it will have to suffice.

To be clear I am speaking of the 1977 thriller directed by John Frankenheimer and not the 1960 horror movie directed by Mario Bava.

In a decade of growing terrorist attacks and twenty-four years before the terrible events of September 11th, Thomas Harris, whose fame as an author would be cemented with his creation of Hannibal Lector, penned his first novel Black Sunday about an attack on that most American of institutions, The Superbowl.

Robert Shaw plays David Kabakov an elite Israeli agent who when leading an assault on a terrorist cell in Lebanon uncovers a plot to attack the United States early in the year. With nothing more to go on that a glimpse of the face of the woman planning the attack David, his partner Robert, and the FBI face nearly insurmountable challenges in thwarting the murderous plans.

As the plot unwinds and mysteries are resolved David’s awareness grows that he has been part of the growing problem and he begins to doubt the righteousness of his prior actions.

Black Sunday seems today like a movie that simply could not be produced. Central to the terrorists’ plot is using the Goodyear Blimp as part of the attack and it is not a no name knock-off in the film but the actual blimp. It is inconceivable that a major public corporation would allow their most recognized symbol used as part of a plan to murder tens of thousands, and yet there it is. A quick bit of research showed that Frankenheimer had good relations with Goodyear and with a few restrictions, such making it clear that Bruce Dern’s deranged blimp pilot was a contractor and not a Goodyear employee, sweet talked the company into cooperating. The massive crowds of a Superbowl were achieved by again getting some unlikely cooperation, the NFL allowed the production to film at the 1976 Superbowl, which accounts for the bicentennial iconography in the movie, which was intercut with staged scenes of panic and chaos during the movie thrilling conclusion.

All in all, Black Sunday is a well-made, well-acted, and entertaining piece of cinema. It is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

2016, a year before his enormous popular and critical success of Thro: Ragnarök Kiwi writer/director Taika Waititi enjoyed praise for his more modest release The Hunt for the Wilderpeople.

Wilderpeople is the story of Ricky Baker a rootless boy in foster care bouncing from home to home until he winds up in the care of Bella and her gruff husband Herc. Bella manages to pierce Ricky’s defensive anti-social shell but Herc remains aloof, and distant to the troubled boy. The film’s central genre, mismatched odd couple, flowers when Herc and Ricky end up on the run from the authorities and are forced to survive for several months in New Zealand’s wild and mountainous bush country. While the premise and even the eventual mutual understanding the characters achieve are typical for the odd couple genre Taika’s unique and slightly absurdist style both visually and in the script elevates Wilderpeople to a charming emotional ride with the sort of unexpected gut punches that Taika would later deploy in films such as JoJo Rabbit.

The Hunt for the Wilderpeople is currently streaming on Hulu and should not be missed.