Movies

DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME: eat your broccoli

by
DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME

When there’s a movie that is supposed to be good for you, but you really don’t enjoy it, I call it an “eat your broccoli” movie, and the documentary Dawson City: Frozen Time is an example.

An estimated 75% of all silent movies have been lost.  Dawson City: Frozen Time is about the discovery of hundreds of silent films.  It turns out that Dawson City, a mining hamlet in the Canadian Yukon, was the last stop on a movie distribution circuit.  When a movie played Dawson City, it was already two years after the initial release, so the distributors didn’t find it worthwhile to pay for the return of the film.  Accordingly, many movies from the silent era were stored or disposed of in Dawson City, where they were uncovered by a construction bulldozer in 1978.

That’s all interesting enough, and 5-10 minutes would be enough to tell this story, and then we could focus on the most compelling of the actual Lost Films, and that could make a fine documentary.  But the two hours of Dawson City: Frozen Time is a loooong two hours.

There are some interesting documentary nuggets.  One example is an illustration of how hand grenades were manufactured for WW I.

Baseball fans will treasure clips from the 1919 World Series, which is infamously known for the “Black Sox” scandal.  Some Chicago White Sox stars took money from gamblers to throw the series.  In Dawson City, we actually get to see some of the suspiciously inept plays by the heavily favored Sox.

The best part is about two-thirds through – a montage of found films.  The images are compelling, and the performances have a surprising magnetism.

By far the worst part of Dawson City is its off-putting score.   The drone of discordant chords (is that an oxymoron or just impossible?)  played on various keyboard instruments is distracting and then finally unbearable.  I was annoyed enough, but then The Wife, from another room in the house, called out, “That music is TERRIBLE”.

I need to tell you that I’m outside the critical mainstream on Dawson City: Frozen Time, which has an impressive Metacritic score of 85.   Major critics that I highly respect have described it as “instantaneously recognizable masterpiece”, “thrilling”, “hypnotic” and even “elevates…to the level of poetry”.  But not for me.

Dawson City: Frozen Time can be streamed from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

 

THE UNKNOWN GIRL: even geniuses have an off-day

by
Adèle Haenel in THE UNKNOWN GIRL

The Belgian writer-director brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardennes are among my very favorite filmmakers.  Their movies about everyday people in gritty industrial Belgium have been startlingly authentic and emotionally  gripping.  However, their latest, The Unknown Girl, is a bit of a slog.

In The Unknown Girl, a compassionate and hardworking doctor (Adèle Haenel) is working late and doesn’t answer the office doorbell after hours.  It turns out that a young woman had been trying to get inside just before she was murdered.  The cops can’t even identify the victim.  The doc is wracked with guilt and embarks on a quest to identify the young woman and to solve the crime.

So this is a murder mystery – the closest thing  ever to a Dardennes brothers genre movie.  Unfortunately the deliberate, real-time pace that intensifies the emotional experience of the Dardennes’ other work just drags in The Unknown Girl.   And there are just one or two coincidences in the plot to swallow.

Adèle Haenel (recently so good in In the Name of My Daughter) is excellent and the best thing about the film.  She’s in every scene and portrays a driven and remarkably self-aware character, who often intentionally suppresses her emotions to do the best job possible for her patients.

This isn’t a bad movie, just not a spectacularly good one.  By all means, see a Dardennes film, just make it The Son or The Kid with a Bike.

DVD/Stream of the Week: SHORT TERM 12 – compelling and affecting, in the world of foster kids

by
SHORT TERM 12

The compelling and affecting Short Term 12 is set in a foster care facility unit named Short Term 12; since the kids can live there for years, it seems pretty long-term to me. These are kids who have suffered abuse and neglect and who act out with disruptive and dangerous behaviors. Runaways, assaults and suicide attempts are commonplace, and some of the kids thrive on creating drama.

The gifted lead counselor on the unit is Grace (Brie Larson), who isn’t much older than the kids. She’s kind of a Troubled Kid Whisperer who, in each impossible situation, knows exactly what to do to defuse or comfort or protect. But while she is in total command of her volatile and fragile charges, she is profoundly troubled herself. She and her boyfriend Mason (John Gallagher Jr.), who also works on the unit, are themselves survivors and former foster youth. Mason seems to have resolved his issues, but Grace’s demons lurk just under her skin.

In Short Term 12’s taut 96 minutes, we watch Grace navigate through crisis after crisis until she must face her own. We share many of the most powerful moments in 2013 cinema, particularly one kid’s unexpectedly painful insightful and sensitive rap, another kid’s authoring a wrenching children’s story and Grace’s own outburst of ferocity to protect a kid from a parent.

Brie Larson’s performance as Grace is being widely and justifiably described as star-making, and I think she deserves an Oscar nomination. I noticed her performances in much smaller roles in Rampart and The Spectacular Now , and I’m really looking forward to the launch of a major career. Think Jennifer Lawrence.

John Gallagher Jr. must be a superb actor, because nobody in real life can be as appealing and sympathetic as his characters in Margaret, Newsroom and Short Term 12. I’ll watch any movie with Gallagher in it, and he’s almost good enough to help me stomach Newsroom.

In his debut feature, writer-director Destin Cretton has hit a home run with one of the year’s best dramas. Some might find the hopeful ending too pat, but I say So What – I have met many former foster youth who have transcended horrific childhoods to become exemplary adults.

Short Term 12 is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, GooglePlay and Xbox Video. It was high on my Best Movies of 2013.

The films of Taylor Sheridan

by
Chris Pine and Ben Foster in HELL OR HIGH WATER

The actor Taylor Sheridan has written three recent films, and he has emerged as one of America’s most important filmmakers.  The three movies are Sicario, Hell or High Water and Wind River (which is his directorial debut – I’m not counting the low budget horror film Vile). I named Hell or High Water as the very best movie of 2016.

Here are some observations about Sheridan’s movies so far.

Western settings: This is the most obvious Sheridan signature: Sicario is set on the border between Mexico and Texas and New Mexico.  Hell or High Water is set in West Texas (but primarily shot in New Mexico).  Wind River is set in Wyoming.  Sheridan, very comfortable with wide open spaces, grew up on a ranch outside the hamlet of Cranfills Gap, Texas, between Fort Worth and Waco.  He isolates his characters in sparsely populated landscapes under Big Skies.  But he’s not sentimental – the Mexican border city in Sicario and the Indian Reservation in Wind River are horrible places.

Great dialogue:  From “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” to “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night!” to “Forget it, Jake.  It’s Chinatown,” great movies are known for iconic dialogue.  Sheridan is reviving that lost art.

From Hell or High Water:

Toby: “You’re talkin’ like you don’t think we’re going to get away with it.”
Tanner: “I never met anyone who got away with anything.”

And from Wind River:

“Who’s the victim today? Looks like it’s gonna be me.”

and

“This isn’t the land of backup, Jane. This is the land of you’re on your own.”

Elizabeth Olsen and Jeremy Renner in WIND RIVER

Resists the easy: Sicario revolves around a fish-out-of water female cop, but he doesn’t mate her her with one of the male stars.  In Hell or High Water, Toby insures the family’s security – but that isn’t enough for his ex-wife to take him back.  In Wind River, Cory and Jane meet cute (in a way) but don’t fall into bed; and Cory’s ex-wife doesn’t comfort him, either.

Not everything is going to be okay:  Sheridan knows how to craft a satisfying movie ending, but it’s not going to Happily Ever After for everyone.  In Hell or High Water, the action that brings peace to Chris Pine’s character brings eternal unease to Jef Bridges’.
Wind River’s reservation still devoid of hope.  Sicario’s border region is still poisioned by drugs and the drug war.

Populist politics:  Sheridan hates that, in much of our society, people are disposable.  Sheridan explores this theme with the victims of the drug wars in Sicario, the flyover-state working class in Hell or High Water and the Native Americans on the reservation in Wind River.

It’s an impressive body of work from Sheridan.  I’m looking forward to his next screenplays, a follow-up to Sicario named Soldado and a TV drama titled Yellowstone.

Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt in SICARIO
Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt in SICARIO

LUCKY: Harry Dean Stanton and the meaning of life

by
Harry Dean Stanton in LUCKY. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Let’s not bury the lede: Lucky is Harry Dean Stanton’s last film. Lucky was written for Harry Dean, and the main character is reportedly not dissimilar to Stanton. Here’s my Harry Dean Stanton remembrance.

Lucky is a vivid portrait of a singular character.  It’s also a meditation on life and the end of life and how you can control how you live.

Stanton plays Lucky, a nonagenarian who lives in his isolated house on the edge of a Mojave desert town.  The town is so small that everyone knows everyone else.  There’s not a lot of action in Lucky.  We watch Lucky as he purposefully plods through his modest daily routine: to his refrigerator, to the diner, to the local bar, plopped in front of his TV to watch “my shows”.   Lucky is sometimes confused by age, but retains great strength of conviction and a formidable will.

Lucky is not really anti-social but he is minimally social.  He values his privacy and doesn’t seek human interaction, but he accepts it as it occurs organically.  He is not a stereotypical movie curmudgeon with a heart of gold.  He’s prickly, but capable of authentic  tenderness, as when he shares a joint with a waitress friend and when he belts out the Mexican tearjerker Volver, Volver.

He’s also an atheist.  Being areligious doesn’t mean that someone is amoral. Not at all.  Lucky lives by a firm code – he is so offended when thinks someone is exploiting a grieving friend, he fiercely tries to fight a man fifty years his younger.

But as we observe Lucky not doing much, we are pulled into an increasingly profound contemplation.  How do we choose to live our lives if there’s no afterlife?  How afraid are we of the finality of death?  What is meaningful? What’s in our control?

This is also a pretty funny film.  Lucky reminds us that Harry Dean was a master of both the deadpan and the sarcastic jibe.  And Lucky has lived decades without female or other supervision, and his habits, like watering cactus in his underwear and cowboy boots, are pretty entertaining.

Lucky is the first film directed by the actor John Carroll Lynch, so creepy in Zodiac and so heartbreaking in The Founder. Lynch is a confident enough director to take his time. And, if you have any doubt about where Lynch sees Lucky on the continuum of life, check out this shot.

Harry Dean Stanton in LUCKY. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Lynch gets excellent performances out of the rest of the cast: Ed Begley, Jr., James Darren (yes, the 60s heartthrob), Ron Livingston, Barry Shabaka Henley (recently so good in Paterson), Yvonne Huff and, surprisingly, the director David Lynch. Tom Skeritt delivers a moving monologue.

But, in the end, this is Harry Dean Stanton’s film. And, to Lynch’s credit, it’s a fine way to remember Harry Dean.

HARRY DEAN STANTON

by
Harry Dean Stanton in PARIS, TEXAS

I’ve been traveling and haven’t had a chance until now to recognize the life and career of the actor Harry Dean Stanton, who died this month at the age of 91. Coincidentally, Harry Dean was on my mind because I had just watched his masterpiece Paris, Texas on the flight to my vacation destination, and I was preparing to watch the screener for his last film, Lucky, to be released in the Bay Area next weekend.

Once of the most noticeable of the prolific character actors, he improbably became a leading man at age 58 and, in his 80s, starred as the menacing leader of a polygamist cult in Big Love.  I’ll be writing about Lucky tomorrow.

Harry Dean was a great favorite of mine – and of many other cinephiles.  Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel once posited that a movie could not be entirely bad if Harry Dean Stanton were in it.  Harry Dean often seemed like that uncle/neighbor/mentor who had Lived A Life but would let you inside and let you learn from his journey.  He was ever accessible and always piqued the audience’s curiosity about his characters.

Harry Dean Stanton garnered 200 screen credits, including scores of 1960s TV shows.  He appeared on seemingly every TV Western:   Rawhide, Bonanza, The Big Valley, The High Chaparral, The Virginian, Laramie, The Rifleman, Bat Masterson and Stoney Burke.  Think how many times we Baby Boomers must have seen him in The Fugitive, Adam 12, Mannix, Combat!, The Untouchables, and even The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin.

In the early 1970s, I first really noticed Harry Dean for his quirkiness, singularity and forlorn humor in his sidekick roles in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and The Missouri Breaks. That’s when you had to sit through the end credits to find out who that actor was.

Along the way, he made three Monte Hellman cult films (Ride the Whirlwind, Cockfighter, Two-Lane Blacktop) and was friends with fellow Hollywood outlaws Warren Oates and Jack Nicholson.  He shared a house with Nicholson for a while (can you imagine?).

Also a fine musician, Harry Dean left us with touching vocal renditions of Just a Closer Walk with Thee in Cool Hand Luke and Volver, Volver in Lucky.

Natassja Kinski and Harry Dean Stanton in PARIS, TEXAS

In 1984, at the age of 58, Harry Dean Stanton broke through in two wonderful lead performances.  He played the old school mentor of the punk Emilio Estevez in the cult film Repo Man.  And he made his masterpiece, Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas.

In Paris Texas, Harry Dean plays Travis, a man so traumatized that he has disappeared and is found wandering across the desert and mistaken for a mute.  As he is cared for by his brother (Dean Stockwell), he evolves from feral to erratic to troubled, but with a sense of tenderness and a determination to put things right.  We see Travis as a madman who gains extraordinary lucidity about what wrong in his life and his own responsibility for it.

At the film’s climax, Travis speaks to Jane (Natassja Kinski) through a one-way mirror (she can’t see him).  Spinning what at first seems like parable, Travis explains what happened to him – and to her – and why it happened.  It’s a 20-minute monologue so captivating and touching that it rises to be recognized as one of the very greatest screen performances.

Kinski, Stockwell and the child actor Hunter Carlson are also exceptional.  Paris, Texas is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes and FilmStruck.

We’ll miss you, Harry Dean.

Harry Dean Stanton in LUCKY. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

LOGAN LUCKY: amiable hillbilly heist

by
Channing Tatum and Adam Driver face Daniel Craig in LOGAN LUCKY

There’s not much to say about Stephen Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky, except that it’s a benign and sporadically entertaining two hours at the movies. A couple of down-on-their-luck West Virginia brothers, played by the always appealing Channing Tatum and Adam Driver, mastermind a high-profile heist. These guys have never had a bit of success in their lives, and they are Not Bright, but they are seeking to outsmart an icon of American corporate culture. The funniest aspects of Logan Lucky stem from their need to enlist an imprisoned safe-cracker, improbably played by Daniel Craig; Craig, deadpan in his bleached buzz-cut, is very funny.

The heist is cool because I hadn’t seen this particular money delivery system before (it ain’t an armored car), and one of the guys gains some critical intel because he’s a coal miner. There’s an effective plot twist AFTER the heist, and Hilary Swank shows up to presage a sequel.

I was moderately glad that I saw it and haven’t thought much about it since.

DVD/Stream of the Week: ELLE – subversive and absorbing, with Huppert’s stunning performance

by
Isabelle Huppert in ELLE
Isabelle Huppert in ELLE

The extraordinary performance of French actress Isabelle Huppert makes the already subversive Elle into a Must See. Huppert plays the middle-aged businesswoman Michèle, who is raped in her home in the first seconds of this movie. Elle is likely to be controversial; Michèle’s reaction to the rape will not meet anyone’s expectations. At first, Elle seems like it will be a looks like a whodunit (who is the attacker?), then it shifts into a revenge fantasy, all the while remaining, at its core, an amazing study of Michèle, a character that we haven’t seen before. This is a woman who refuses to accept – and may not be capable of – victimhood.

The screenplay, which turns upside down any expectations we may have, is written by David Birke from a Philippe Djian novel. The hunted becomes the hunter, we never know what to expect from Michèle and shockers abound. Who better than Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct) to direct? Especially since the willful Michèle has a lusty sexual appetite, with adventuresome tastes.

Michèle needs to be in control, and she’s generally tough enough to stay in charge. The way to understand her actions is that she will do anything to regain that control and to avenge any moment that someone else has wrested it from her. One would expect the rape to be shattering enough, but Michèle starts getting messages from her attacker that would send ANYONE into a puddle of paralyzing terror; instead she’s only momentarily unnerved.

With the exception of two monsters, all the men in Elle are weak (despite any internal sense of bravado), and she handles them all easily. (Those two monsters better watch out, too.)

One way of watching Elle is to keep score, as in: Michèle 6, Men 0. But Elle is not a man-bashing film – Michèle’s ridiculously self-centered mom and her son’s abusive nightmare of a girlfriend are just as unsympathetic as all but two of the men.

There’s plenty of dark humor in Elle. For example, immediately after the opening rape scene, we watch Michèle at work as the founding CEO of a video game company. She’s watching a clip from her company’s newest video game in development. The clip is so hyper-violent and misogynistic that it would trigger massive PTSD for any rape victim, but Michèle’s complaint is that it’s NOT VIOLENT ENOUGH.

Isabelle Huppert may be the best screen actress working today, she’s certainly the most fearless. She’s so fearless, you gotta wonder if there any scripts that she rejects for being TOO weird, challenging or transgressive. She is comfortable with roles that range from the kinky (The Piano Teacher) to the most twisted (Ma Mere).

Huppert is especially gifted at playing impenetrable. She is at her best when she simply REGARDS other characters, assessing and judging them. With almost no lines,and very little screen time, her sphinx-like character dominated the recent Louder Than Bombs.

I also have to note that her character in Elle is in her early 50s – a sexy early 50s – while Huppert herself is 63. She seems to have somehow stopped the aging process about 15 years ago.

Elle ends in a moment of friendship, with the final line an homage to my favorite movie of all time. There’s a difference between perverse and perverted, and Elle keeps just inside that fine line. The shockers, the very dark humor and Huppert’s singular and compelling performance make Elle one of the year’s most absorbing films. Two weeks after screening it, I’m still thinking about it. Elle is available on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

DVD/Stream of the Week: GONE GIRL – 2014’s best Hollywood movie

by
Rosamund Pike in GONE GIRL
Rosamund Pike in GONE GIRL

In the marvelously entertaining Gone Girl, Ben Affleck plays Nick, a good-looking lug who can turn a phrase. At a party one night, he’s on his A game, and he snags the beautiful Amy (Rosamund Pike). She’s smarter, a good rung on the ladder more attractive than he is, has parents with some money and is a second-hand celebrity to boot. Not particularly gifted and certainly not a striver, he knows he’s the Lucky One. He has married above himself, but he doesn’t have a clue HOW MUCH above until she suddenly disappears.

Based on the enormously popular novel by Gillian Flynn (who also wrote the screenplay), Gone Girl is the mystery of what has happened to Amy and what is Nick’s role in the disappearance. Plot twists abound, but you won’t get any spoilers from The Movie Gourmet.

This is Rosamund Pike’s movie.  Her appearance is so elegant – she looks like a crystal champagne flute with blonde hair – that pulling her out of Victorian period romances and into this thriller is inspired. And Pike responds with the performance of her career. She’s just brilliant as she makes us realize that there’s something behind her eyes that we hadn’t anticipated, and then keeps us watching what she is thinking throughout the story.

Gone Girl is directed by the contemporary master David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en, Zodiac, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). Here, Fincher has successfully chosen to rely on Flynn’s page turner of a story and the compelling characters, so Gone Girl is the least flashy of his films, but one of the most accessible. I’ll say this for Fincher – I can’t remember a more perfectly cast movie.

Kim Dickens (Treme, Deadwood) is superb as the investigating detective – this time almost unrecognizable as a brunette. Tyler Perry is wonderfully fun as a crafty celebrity attorney. The previously unheralded Carrie Coon is excellent as Nick’s twin sister (she’s gone on to cash in on the Avengers franchise). Missi Pyle does such a good job as a despicable cable TV personality that I thought I was actually watching a despicable cable TV personality. And David Clennon and (especially) Lisa Banes positively gleam as Amy’s parents. (Carefully observe every behavior by the parents in this movie.)

Just like the thug in The Guard who forgets whether he had been diagnosed in prison as a sociopath or a psychopath, I had the ask The Wife, who turned me on to this passage from Psychology Today. It’s useful to read this because, although you don’t realize it for forty-five minutes or so, Gone Girl is also a study of psychopathy.

Psychopaths … are unable to form emotional attachments or feel real empathy with others, although they often have disarming or even charming personalities. Psychopaths are very manipulative and can easily gain people’s trust. They learn to mimic emotions, despite their inability to actually feel them, and will appear normal to unsuspecting people. Psychopaths are often well educated and hold steady jobs. Some are so good at manipulation and mimicry that they have families and other long-term relationships without those around them ever suspecting their true nature.

When committing crimes, psychopaths carefully plan out every detail in advance and often have contingency plans in place. Unlike their sociopathic counterparts, psychopathic criminals are cool, calm, and meticulous. Their crimes, whether violent or non-violent, will be highly organized and generally offer few clues for authorities to pursue. Intelligent psychopaths make excellent white-collar criminals and “con artists” due to their calm and charismatic natures.

Gillian Flynn changed the story’s ending for the movie. The Wife, who is a big fan of the novel, didn’t mind. Gone Girl is recommended for both those who have and have not read the book. I understand that there’s more humor in the movie, as we occasionally laugh at the extremity of the behavior of one of the characters.

It all adds up into a remarkably fun movie and one that I was still mulling it over days later. Gone Girl was the best big Hollywood studio movie of 2014 (not counting releases from the prestige distribution arms of the major studios). It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

coming up on TV: rock concerts in their time

by

All Posts

Otis Redding in MONTEREY POP

On September 21, Turner Classic Movies presents five movies with some of the most unforgettable rock concert footage:

  • Monterey Pop (1968):  This is one of the few DVDs that I still own, for the performances by Mamas and the Papas, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Canned Heat, Simon and Garfunkle, Jefferson Airplane, Eric Burdon and the Animals, Country Joe and the Fish and The Who.   It’s okay with me if you fast forward over Ravi Shankar.  Pete Townsend and Jimi Hendrix had a guitar-destroying competition, which Hendrix, aided by lighter fluid, undeniably won.  The Otis Redding set is epic.
  • Woodstock (1970):  TCM is airing the director’s cut of the film chronicling the most iconic rock concert ever, also a pivotal social and cultural phenomenon.  Performers include: Joan Baez, Crosby Still & Nash, Arlo Guthrie, The Who, Sha Na Na, Richie Havens, Joe Cocker,  Country Joe and the Fish, Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, Santana and (wait for it…) Ten Years After.
  • Gimme Shelter (1970):  The anti-Woodstock – the ill-fated Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, showing what happened when someone tried to put on a major free concert without Bill Graham or any other adult supervision, depending on the (literally) murderous Hell’s Angels for security.   Includes some footage of that notorious publicity grabber,  attorney Melvin Belli in real-time negotiations.  What’s unforgettable, of course, is watching Mick Jagger dealing with a murder at the foot of his stage.
  • Bob Dylan: Don’t Look Back (1967):  The story of Bob Dylan’s 1965 tour of England, when he was transitioning from an acoustic to an electric artist.  This film opens with what must be the first music video, as Dylan holds up cards with the lyrics for Subterranean Homesick Blues.
    The pump don’t work
    ‘Cause the vandals took the handles
  • Jimi Hendrix (1973):  I haven’t seen this movie, which contains  1967-70 concert footage and interviews with his contemporaries.  Here’s a tip for Hendrix fans – the Hendrix display in his hometown’s Seattle Rock and Roll Museum (now Museum of Pop Culture) is superb.

D.A. Pennebaker directed both Monterey Pop and Don’t Look Back.  Pennebaker also excels in political documentaries; he was the cinematographer for Primary and the director of The War Room.

I would argue that the Janis Joplin and Otis Redding sets in Monterey Pop are the best live performances ever filmed. Watch for Mama Cass in the audience reacting to Janis with a “Wow”.

Great music and lots of stoned people.  Set that DVR.

D.A. Pennebaker invents the music video in BOB DYAN: DON’T LOOK BACK