Much more than the mature plot, however, Dressed to Kill’s kaleidoscopic atmosphere – its watery, soft-focus lens, garish colour palette and flashy, optical tricks such as slow-motion, mirrored surfaces, split screens and dioptres – was a feast for my languorous, pre-teen senses. On several occasions, I would wake up to catch the film at its midpoint or nod off before the ending, allowing the collage of images and music to splice into the edges of my sleep. The tense melodies of Pino Donaggio’s soundtrack and the likeness of an androgyne wielding a straight razor would soon become a Proustian madeleine from which countless reveries of my nocturnal childhood would unfold.

De Palma’s mastery of atmosphere was on no greater display than in the film’s early, museum set-piece – a 10-minute, dialogue-free sequence in which the director’s viewfinder glides around Dickinson’s character and through the Met’s galleries and corridors while she pursues, then is pursued, by a potential suitor. As the scene’s tension and pace builds, the labyrinthine interior assumes the contours of a De Chirico painting, or to my child’s eyes, the floating floorplan of a dream. Multiple viewings would reveal another surprise: a split-second cameo of the murderer embedded in the set dressing.

This scene, followed by another silent, slow-burn sequence that culminates in Miller’s grisly death in an elevator, proved to be an exhilarating initiation into the architecture of suspense. The lead character’s abrupt exit from the screen and the subsequent narrative switcheroo to Blake’s story also demonstrated how film could manipulate red herrings and false leads so that, more than mere plot devices, they appeared to me like celluloid apparitions captured in time. While the role reversals of the “good” doctor and “bad” hooker, and the multiple doubles in the film’s climax, hinted at cinema’s intimate bond to secret identities and masquerade.

These lavish visual and rhetorical sleights of hand fed into the richness of cinema’s dream language.

The film’s pleasures were not only abstract. Within the nests of set-pieces and dream sequences, De Palma’s images also produced a montage of New York City at the beginning of the 1980s, a place and an era that I recognised only from a distance. The elegant uptown and slummy downtown, insular high-rise and turbulent subway car, baroque interior and darkened streetscape. These landmarks helped to plot my own imaginary atlas years before I would move to the city as a university film student and discover its very different, millennial landscape.

To a suburban child with an appetite for suspense, De Palma’s masterpiece of urban atmosphere both terrified and enthralled, and inspired in me a lasting passion for genre cinema.

Casualties of War (1989)

Best known for his work in the genres of suspense, crime, horror and thrillers (like Carrie, Scarface, The Untouchables and Body Double), director Brian de Palma takes a harrowing plunge into the battlefield with this take on a real-life incident about how an American soldier finds himself on the outside of his rogue squad when they kidnap a young Vietnamese woman and rape her. Michael J. Fox (who took time off from TV’s Family Ties to film) and Sean Penn give riveting performances on opposite sides of the situational-ethics line, and the movie marks the first film appearance of John C. Reilly.

The conflict in Vietnam spanned decades of fighting, from the outbreak of the war with France in 1946, through to the political and ideological division of the country into north and south which formed the foundation for the US involvement in Vietnam. That involvement escalated through advisory roles through the early 1960s, until emerging as full conflict around 1965.

For the USA, the era of the Vietnam War is surrounded by socially and culturally significant events in the homeland, the passage of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon through the presidency and a rich depiction in a wide range of movies. There are a vast number of productions that owe their stories Vietnam, from the Rambo series, to Forrest Gump, the characterisation of The Simpson's Principal Skinner - "I was in 'Nam" - to those movies that actually tell the stories of Vietnam itself.

Here we present many of the best films that address Vietnam. We think the best order is chronological, based on the dates of the events depicted. But we're also giving a number of different approaches, which you can jump to in the table below, avoiding spoilers if you want to.

...

The best Vietnam movie viewing order (spoilers)

These are the movies we consider to be essential viewing not only for the stories that they tell, but how they tell those stories. They are ordered to fit the unfolding of events in the Vietnam War, although in some cases we deviate from that timeline when the emphasis of the film is on the return home, for example. Where there's no clear event being portrayed - because it's a fictionalised work - we've placed that movie in its position based on its content and context in the passage of the conflict.

• Good Morning, Vietnam
• We Were Soldiers
• Casualties of War
• Rescue Dawn
• Tour of Duty
• Platoon
• Full Metal Jacket
• Hamburger Hill
• Apocalypse Now
• Tigerland
• Born on the Fourth of July
• The Deer Hunter

And here is Hall's description of Casualties Of War:

Casualties of War takes us into 1966, telling a true story reported by Daniel Lang in The New Yorker in 1969. Michael J Fox plays Max Eriksson, a "cherry" in Vietnam who joins a squad to head out to Hill 192. Squad leader Sergeant Meserve, played by a powerful Sean Penn, has other ideas for the mission, kidnapping a Vietnamese girl to take with them for a little "R&R". It's a haunting tale, depicting the breakdown of any sort of moral standards and the conflict between comrades that ensues. The 1989 film from director Brian De Palma pulls at many of the threads we see across Vietnam movies, particularly the dehumanisation of the Vietnamese reflected in the US GIs. Watch out for Dale Dye's appearance, who also stars in Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July.

The second season of Homecoming premiered yesterday, with Esmail keeping no more than an executive producer role. It turns out that the new director, Kyle Patrick Alvarez, who directed all seven episodes of season two, was a big fan of the first season and fought hard to get the job. The Advocate's Daniel Reynolds has the details:

Another exciting addition is Kyle Patrick Alvarez, a gay Latinx director known for films like C.O.G. and The Stanford Prison Experiment; he also holds TV credits with Netflix's 13 Reasons Why. For Alvarez, these were great expectations of steering the second season of Homecoming after its acclaimed debut in 2018. “You want to live up to people's expectations,” said Alvarez, who said his goal was to create a “digestible and fun season that moves quick and surprises you [and] keeps you really engaged throughout.

This is the first time Alvarez has helmed an entire season of television. Since The Stanford Prison Experiment, the director has worked in TV to direct episodes of various shows, but nothing of this scope. He landed the job the old-fashioned way, through lobbying a producer. “I was a massive fan of season 1,” he said. He then “fought really hard” for the position; he pitched creators [Eli] Horowitz and [Micah] Bloomberg with specifics on how he would film the entire season. His pitch worked. “I'm grateful that they certainly took a chance on me,” he said. “I’m not quite sure how I got that lucky.”

One of the challenges for Alvarez was making the show his own following Esmail, who directed the first season with the distinctive visual style of aspect ratio changes, an “inspired move,” said Alvarez. Alvarez said he had an “open-door policy” in his own artistic choices. While he did not “want to rewrite the book on how this show is shot,” he also did not want to establish Homecoming as “that show where the bars change.”

Thus, the bars no longer change in season 2 — although split screens between characters provide their own moments of dramatic tension and revelation that reference the techniques of the first season while also expanding their meaning. “I was trying to stay in the spirit of it while following my own intuitions,” Alvarez said.

Additionally, Homecoming brought in a composer for the music of its second season; the first used classical scores. Alvarez characterized season 2 as more of a “traditional thriller,” with chase and suspense scenes that require customized sound. Thriller titans Alan J. Pakula and Alfred Hitchcock were clear artistic influences in season 1. And while Alvarez also channeled these filmmakers, he additionally “leaned into” the “grandiose style” of Brian de Palma, especially in the split-screen sequences.

There’s also the cast itself. Notably, [Julia] Roberts does not appear in season 2. While Alvarez did “love” her performance, he would have been “wary” of including her character with the way her storyline ended. “It was a relief to say hey we're going to start at a different place with a different person,” said Alvarez. That person is [Janelle] Monáe, who Alvarez was “thrilled” to have on. “PrimeTime,” from her work as a musician, is the most played song in his iTunes library, he admitted.

What was your favorite scene, second season, that you've got to make?

Kyle Patrick Alvarez: Oh, man. Probably the end of episode ... There's a few, but I think the sequence I was most excited about, or the most invested in myself, was the end of episode two when Janelle and Hong see each other from across the crowd as the balloons are falling, and we go into split screen. Because I remember in my first pitch, I said, "Look, I think this season ..." Split screen was used in a very utilitarian way in season one. It was, "Hey, we're going to be ..." It's an immense amount of phone calls in season one, but it never weighs on you because the split screen is always keeping you engaged on both sides of it. So here it was like, "Okay, we only have two phone calls this season, maybe three. So how else can we utilize split-screen as a narrative device?"

And so for me, when I came in, I said, "Well, look. Episode two is all about her tracking this woman. She has no idea who she is, and tracking her and tracking her, and it's this labyrinthine thing going around this building. And we need to make this the biggest, De Palma, over-the-top kind of meeting we can, because obviously it leads to a bit of a twisty moment. And so for me, that's one of those rare moments where everything you conceive of, it ends up working and clicking.

Usually, filmmaking is about unexpected surprises, both good and bad ways, and that's one of those scenes that just ... It worked. It was how we storyboarded it, it was the score fit in how we imagined it. It all clicked into place, and so I watch it, and it feels very planned and fulfilling to me because I'm like, "Oh, that worked." So I'd say I'm the most proud of that. It was just technically really difficult having that incredible amount of extras, only being able to afford to drop those balloons a couple of times. There was a lot of pressure on how we're going to pull that off.

I would call this quite a departure from your work on Tales of the City or 13 Reasons Why. This is a potboiler thriller, and at times, a very surreal one. How did you land the job? How did you develop your approach?

Getting the job meant a lot to me. I was a big fan of Season 1, and actually watched it while we were shooting Tales. I was in New York and watched it all in my hotel room and loved it so much. It’s a show that asks a lot from a director. The visual style is baked into what the show is and how it’s built. Sam [Esmail, director of Season 1] had built this beautiful fresh thing for TV, so it became about evolving it, making it different. For me, the last movie I’d done was The Sanford Prison Experiment which was in the same style of 70s filmmaking, all the stuff Sam was drawn to. I suspect we like all the same movies, because watching Season 1, it felt like someone made the show for me.

Awesome.

In the interim, I’d done a lot of TV work with Tales and 13 Reasons. So was going back and forth between a lot of genre stuff. Honestly, I was waiting for an opportunity like this to get to direct every episode and have a voice. It’s not like directors don’t have a voice in TV, but it’s different. You’re the substitute teacher. You come in, do your episode, and leave. Here, I was there from the moments the scripts were finished until the very last special effects shot. It feels really gratifying.

Absolutely. And it is very much yours. That’s one thing I love about it—it has a cohesive voice and visual style. You like to use a lot of very long takes, and a lot of split-screen. I’m guessing you’re a fan of Brian DePalma, in that sense. The long zooms feel like something out of Kubrick, especially The Shining. What do you love about that approach?

You know, it’s interesting. Even though I think the styles are relatively similar between the seasons, I feel like Season 1’s North Star, in terms of a director, was Alan J. Pakula, with The Parallax View being essential. This season I kind of went into a little bit pulpier, like let’s do DePalma. I always joke that there are a couple of moments where, if he is watching, he’ll roll his eyes. I obsessively watched the end of Carrie and especially Blow Out. It’s one of my favorite movies.

Right.

It’s just about making sure you’re not copying a filmmaker you love; you’re taking inspiration from how they evoke a feeling. That’s how you avoid imitation. Kubrick, obviously, the set was out of 2001. But zooms kind of went out of fashion. I love them. I think it’s kind of wrong; there’s a lot you can do with them. I just love what they do.

That’s wonderful. And I wouldn’t be too self-conscious about borrowing from DePalma. He’s borrowed from other directors—Hitchock, Eisenstein, Antonioni—his whole career. It’s everywhere.

That’s very true. He may have invented the idea of referential directing.

But it fits. It adds an almost surrealistic feeling to the action. Do you storyboard or rehearse?

We didn’t have the time to rehearse. We did storyboard a lot. Weirdly, for me, the process of storyboarding is where you get the value. Storyboards themselves are more for everybody else. Me and the storyboard artist would meet from 6-7:30 every morning before everyone showed up and try to draw as much as we could. When you have 500 extras, you can’t improvise.

Sure.

A crane shot can take three hours to set up, so you have to be so exact. If not, you won’t make the days.

More details on the Donaggio cues used in Homecoming

Each week, Chang presents a list of 16 summer movies from 1975 to 2019, and asks readers to vote for their favorites via his Twitter acount, @JustinCChang. De Palma's Mission: Impossible is one of the 16 movies Chang listed this week.

Meanwhile, over at Forbes today, Scott Mendelson takes a look at the ten biggest Memorial Day weekend releases "that aren’t Star Wars or Indiana Jones" movies. It turns out that if you remove those two franchises, and adjust the grosses for inflation, De Palma's film is the eighth biggest Memorial Day weekend release... and John Woo's sequel is the ninth biggest. Here's how Mendelson describes each of these:

Mission: Impossible (Paramount)

$181 million in 1996/$383 million adjusted

Brian DePalma’s low-key, adult-skewing thriller, one which emphasized espionage over action, is still one of the best films in the franchise. It grossed a then-record $75 million over its Wed-Mon Memorial Day weekend. The film would be rather frontloaded, partially due to folks being appalled at having to (gasp) pay attention in order to follow the tricky plot. That Mission: Impossible II was both more streamlined and had scenes where characters stopped the movie to explain what had happened up to that point makes this franchise a rare example of filmmakers “listening to the Internet.” Oh, and turning the TV show’s hero into the villain didn’t fly any better in 1996 than it would in 2020.

...

Mission: Impossible II (Paramount)

$215 million in 2000/$374 million adjusted

Released 20 years ago this summer, John Woo’s ridiculously over-the-top romantic melodrama (“Notorious meets Hard Boiled”) almost qualifies as self-satire, both from the director and his top-billed star as Ethan Hunt is turned into (conventionally speaking) the coolest (and hottest) action hero ever. The film marked the end of an era where star-driven, non-fantasy action movies were expected to rule the box office. It also began the transformation of Tom Cruise from “biggest movie star on Earth who occasionally does action movies” to “American Jackie Chan who mostly makes action movies.” In a time when Hollywood was starting to embrace “gritty” realism even in its blockbusters, Mission: Impossible II was gloriously surreal.

Barnes later adds that in Scarface, Silva's "foreboding character never speaks a word while he guns down Montana with a shotgun from behind at the end of the Brian De Palma-directed classic. One poll placed The Skull No. 7 on a list of the best henchmen in movie history."

Silva also appeared in three of Steven Spielberg's films: 1941 (1979), Amistad (1997), and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). In another significant film role, Silva was cast by David Lynch as the MC of Club Silencio in Mulholland Drive (2001). In 2002, Silva talked to the magazine Wrapped In Plastic about how that came about:

So I go there, and Johanna Ray is a wonderful, lovely woman. I'm talking to her, and she brings up this thing about being an ethnic actor in Hollywood, and she asked me about Spanish. So I threw some Spanish into the videotape mix - we're talking, and I spoke Spanish. I talked about doing Zoot Suit on Broadway. And that was it.

Nine months go by, and my agent calls me: "Geno, remember that David Lynch film?" "Yeah?" (I had assumed it had moved on.) "Well, he wants you to do it." I said, "Do what!? (Laughter) I couldn't believe it! He said, "Listen, I had some clients work on Fire Walk With Me, and this is the way he does it. He works on the fly." I said, "But is there a script?" He said, "Geno, do you want to work with David? And I said, "Well it's kinda of hard to say 'yes' when you don't know what you're going to do. Let me get a look at something." It was Friday and I said, "When does this go?" And he said, "It goes Monday." (Laughter) So he sends me over what, I guess, was supposed to be sides. All it said was, "Mexican emcee introduces Rebekah Del Rio." No dialogue. Nothing. I was really mad, and I threw it across the room! I said, "I'm not going to do this. this is s---!" You get really angry at stuff like that. You think you're being exploited, and you think that somehow you're Tom Cruise or something!

So I go to wardrobe, and they present that incredible, beautiful red suit. It fit like it was made for me. Then I found those old black-and-white shoes, and I thought, "Well this could be some fun."

...

"I had finished the day about four in the afternoon. We were shooting downtown, and my wife owns a dance studio in Hollywood. So I drive over there on my way home and call my answering machine to check my messages. There are these three frantic messages: 'Geno! Oh my God! Call us back as soon as you can! This is Frank -- the AD on Mulholland Drive -- you've got to come back! You've got to come back!' They were, like, nuts! I called back and they said, 'Can you come back now!?' And I said, 'What happened? Did you guys burn the film?' He said, 'David wants to know if you want to play another part.' I said, 'When?' 'Right now. Can you come back to the set?' I said, 'He wants me to play another part, now, at the same set?'

I go back there and as I drive into the lot a hundred walkie-talkies go off: "Geno's here!" It was echoing across the block. It was so weird. I said (to the costumer), 'Look, before anything happens, I need to talk to David. Give me a walkie-talkie.' So I get David and I say, 'David, what am I doing?' He said, 'Ah, Geno, I'm so glad you got back. I have an idea. I think it will be some fun.' I said, 'Do you want me to change my look? Change my hair or shave, maybe?' He said, 'No, no. I want you to look exactly the same.' Then he said, 'What it's going to be - this is your day job. The other one's your night job.' (Laughter) I had no idea. I still have no idea! But I'm just loving this!"

David was so happy. He said, "That was great, Cookie." He kept calling me Cookie. What was funny to me was that nobody makes movies like this. That's like guerilla filmmaking, except the guy is one of the top directors in the world. That's what you would do if you were on college. But he can pull it off because of his incredible vision in true collaboration. That's what's fun about it.

Heartbroken at the passing of Geno Silva. My love and prayers go out to his amazing wife, Pam, their wonderful daughter Lucia, and her family especially the beautiful grandchildren Eva & Levon.

Geno was my friend. A father figure. An artistic warrior brother. A confidante. A lover of life.

He was generous, passionate, bold, strong, intelligent, joyful with a regally imposing physical presence which never shut down his magnetic curiosity or spirituality. He was proud of his roots, and even prouder of his friends and family.

I knew him for 26 years, and since day one it felt ancestral.

In the first 5 years of knowing Geno, I was lucky enough to act alongside him on 3 different intense projects as his lover, his business partner, and his son.

By the end of the 3rd project, we knew we’d be in each other lives forever.

I loved having meals and conversations with him that lasted for hours and hours. I loved his stories. One of my favorite things to do was to ask him about any of the hundreds of beautiful photos in his home because he would regale me with the most vivid, entertaining stories. I admired his love for his family. I loved his home. So comforting, so cozy, and filled with so much love. I was always welcomed by him and Pam, and I took full advantage. Showed up at random times, sometimes unannounced, but always greeted with the warmest smile and the biggest hug. He had that amazing quality of making people feel like the most important person in the world, me included.

He often believed in me more than I did in myself.

The greatest gift my profession has given me is the ability to meet some of the most interesting and dynamic people in the world. If I’m lucky, a few of those meetings might grow into a long lasting, transformative relationship.

My relationship with Geno certainly grew into one of those meaningful relationships.

I’m so grateful for the time we had and for the Silva spirit that will continue to live on in so many people lucky enough to have crossed paths with him.

Thank you, Geno, you giant of a man.

Rest In Power.

The latest episode links Garry Marshall's Pretty Woman and Brian De Palma's Body Double, which, Amanda and Tara note, both take place in Los Angeles, with shared themes of authenticity and performance. "Can we call ourselves feminists and still enjoy these movies?" they ask in the episode description. "(We can and we do.) But we can admit it’s a BIG problem. BIG. HUGE. The lesson this week: Life is not a fairytale. Princesses need to save themselves. So pry yourself away from the telescope and join us."

Previously:

With Fuqua back, new writer for Scarface remake

Fuqua circles back to Scarface remake

David Ayer drops out of Scarface remake

David Ayer in talks for Scarface remake

Coen Brothers will rewrite Scarface script

Fuqua drops out of Scarface remake; Diego Luna will play lead

Terence Winter to tackle Scarface script

The Scarface remake just got a lot less interesting

Scarface remake is Larraín's dream project

The Scarface remake just got a lot more interesting

Anderson notes that Dmitri’s (Adrien Brody) walk down the hotel hall feels inspired by Brian De Palma. “We were talking earlier about Brian De Palma,” he adds a beat later.