Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Tuesday, July 12, 2022

ROLLERBALL (1975)

A mixed reception on release, something of a cult fave now, this dystopian fable imagines a world of Bread & Circus for the masses in a future run by a mysterious entity known as The Corporation.  Meant as an anti-violence cautionary, it never gets past a William Harrison script with too many missing pieces (he barely worked again), there’s really nothing but RollerBall, a game for punk gladiators that’s half Roller-Derby/half Quidditch and all Death Race.*  Even with a lot of second-unit work, director Norman Jewison not a fellow known for his action chops.  When we finally do get cookin’ on a semi-finals match, he abruptly leaves the arena to hunt up deep explanations at Computer Headquarters.  (No answers; but a neat comic turn from Ralph Richardson.)  Elsewise, James Caan is the aging player whose refusal to retire threatens to arouse a docile public happily sedated by this ‘opiate of the people.’  (Caan wears #6, but there’s something very #9 Gordie Howe about him.)  John Beck his bigger, hairier teammate; John Houseman dreadful as the corporate overlord (if only he & Richardson had swapped roles); Maud Adams the girl so we don’t get ‘ideas’ about Caan & Beck*; and the furnishings all leftovers from A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.  Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe emphasizing a Stanley Kubrick color scheme so we don’t miss the reference.  And Jewison repurposing classical music cues also in Kubrickian fashion; Bach, Albinoni, Shostakovich, with André Previn at the helm.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *There really is something very Quidditch about this sport.  J.K. Rowling a rollerball fan?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Indeed, just a hint of a Caan/Beck/Girl threesome at a massage session in Japan.

No comments: