Category: Directed by Richard Donner
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Timeline is really bad. The opening sequence starts Donner regular Steve Kahan in a terrible bit part but at least there’s the stunt casting; the rest of the poorly edited sequence has ER doctors and anonymous law enforcement looking into the mysterious death of a man who appeared in the middle of the highway for…
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The extended version of Superman runs three hours and eight minutes, approximately forty-five minutes longer than the theatrical version (Richard Donner’s director’s cut only runs eight minutes longer than the theatrical). The extended version opens with a disclaimer: the producers prepared this version of the film for television broadcasts (three hours plus means two nights).…
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The Omen is a terrible bit of cinema. It’s a long bit, almost two hours, filled with Jerry Goldsmith’s–shockingly Oscar-winning–chant filled “scare” score. It doesn’t scare. It annoys, which just makes everything go on longer. Director Donner certainly doesn’t help with it. He drags things out too. Like anyone needs more scenes of Gregory Peck…
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Two things about Ladyhawke without getting to the script or some of the acting. First, Andrew Powell’s music. It’s godawful; it’s stunning to see a director as competent as Richard Donner put something so godawful in a film. Intentionally put it in a film. It’s silly. It sounds like a disco cover of the “Dallas”…
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Lethal Weapon 3 is an expert action movie. Director Donner, cinematographer Jan de Bont, editors Robert Brown and Battle Davis do phenomenal work. Even though the cop action thriller plot of the film is its least compelling–dirty ex-cop Stuart Wilson is funding real estate development through arms dealing–those sequences are still good. The actors carry…
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Nightmare at 20,000 Feet races. Director Donner and writer Richard Matheson pace out the episode perfectly–though it being a “Twilight Zone” episode means they can also utilize some of the series’s credit formula to great effect. The episode has a few phases. Introducing William Shatner and Christine White (they’re married, he’s just recovering from his…
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There’s a lack of consistent mood to The Goonies. The film has its phases and the mood and tone change from phase to phase, but Chris Columbus’s script changes characterizations between these phases as well, which is rather disconcerting. For example, while the film introduces the villains–Anne Ramsey as the mother, Robert Davi and Joe…
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Maverick is a lot of fun. In fact, it’s so much fun, when the film runs into problems in its second act, it’s impossible to be disappointed. It’s still so likable, one just feels bad it doesn’t maintain its quality. There are two major problems. The first is the music. When the film starts–and for…
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If watching Richard Donner’s director’s cuts have taught me one thing, it’s Donner probably shouldn’t have final cut. His director’s cut of Lethal Weapon, for example, is atrocious. He adds about nine minutes to Superman and, much like Coppola’s revision of Apocalypse Now, it’s a testament to the original film it can weather the additions.…
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Lethal Weapon 2 opens with the Looney Tunes music. It’s appropriate. I don’t think any other film series has so successfully adapted the sitcom to the big screen. The whole point of Lethal Weapon 2 is not to think–maybe as a ten year-old, I believed the South Africans could get away with all their crimes…
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One of the more impressive things about Lethal Weapon is Danny Glover convincingly playing a fifty year-old at, approximately, the age of forty. It’s never a problem in a film rife with problems. First, Lethal Weapon‘s plot doesn’t really make any sense. There are huge jumps in logic as Glover and Mel Gibson’s “investigation” proceeds.…
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Almost thirty years after producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind fired Richard Donner from the SUPERMAN sequel, Donner constructed his own cut from deleted scenes, screen tests, and even some newly shot footage. Besides offering some great Gene Hackman material, the new cut doesn’t have much to recommend it. For example, the highly touted Marlon Brando…
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I love how the end of Superman, with the spinning back of the earth, causes so much trouble for people. My fiancée–before Marlon Brando had even gotten the kid into the spaceship–made me stop the movie twice (I had to tell her to stop, though I love her line about Superman having just as many…
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Not a buddy movie buddy movie about aged New York cop Bruce Willis transporting witness Mos Def the titular number of blocks while Willis’s cop buddies are trying to assassinate Def. Great performance from Willis, great chemistry between him and Def, strong direction–with a just right, lighter tone–from Donner. Phenomenal (of course) supporting performance from…
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