21. ”Get To Know Your Rabbit” (1972)
The last of De Palma’s purely silly comedies, which embraced their shaggy absurdism and relied heavily on zippy wordplay and visual gags, and as far as goodbyes go, they don’t get much more inglorious than “Get to Know Your Rabbit.” Tom Smothers (yes, one of the Smothers Brothers), plays an executive who leaves the corporate world behind to follow his dreams of becoming a tap dancing magician. Hmm. The script, although intended for a major studio release, was heavily influenced by off-the-wall British comedy, but the problem with the film is that its zippy exuberance can’t replace an actual narrative worth investing in, and after the movie’s first hour it just starts to grate. Supposedly, Smothers was unhappy with the way the film was shot, and had Warner Bros effectively fire De Palma when the film was in post-production, leaving a film that both the star and the director have publicly distanced themselves from. But even with De Palma out of the movie, it still carries with it some of the filmmaker’s hallmarks, especially during the outstanding opening, which involves split screen, an overhead shot of a man walking through an apartment building (vertically and not laterally) and an attempted bombing (something that would return to the De Palma arsenal in “Phantom of the Paradise“). Ultimately, “Get to Know Your Rabbit” proved to be a dud, with barely any kind of theatrical release and no presence on home video until the Warner Bros. manufacture-on-demand technology resurrected it. Nowadays it’s more notable for being the movie that convinced De Palma to move away from comedies and into the shadowy realm of the thriller, than for anything that’s actually in the movie (although Orson Welles, playing a master magician, is a hoot at least). [C-]
20. ”Home Movies” (1980)
During Brian De Palma’s sexy, suspenseful streak of either out-and-out masterpieces or interesting, adventurous entertainments, he stopped to make “Home Movies,” a clunky, low-budget, disarmingly autobiographical comedy about a young man (Keith Gordon, who’d go on to become an excellent, underrated director himself) who, distraught over his parents’ rocky marriage, starts obsessively filming his home life. (Some of its handmade charm came from the fact that De Palma made the movie with his students from a class he was teaching at Sarah Lawrence College.) Voyeurism has been a constant theme in De Palma’s work, supposedly stemming from an early childhood incident where he tried to capture photographic evidence of his father’s philandering ways. This is De Palma dealing with that situation directly, although diffused through the trappings of a gonzo indie comedy, wherein the Gordon character is visited regularly by Kirk Douglas playing a kind of magical film professor who guides Gordon in the best ways to photograph his father. Sometimes this is kind of funny, but more often it just sits there in its weirdness. De Palma regulars Nancy Allen and Gerrit Graham make memorable appearances but get lost in the muddy, boxy photography, and snared in the script’s confused tonal mishmash. De Palma movies are often notable for being wholly understandable just by the images alone; even without music or dialogue you can grasp what’s happening. With “Home Movies,” he was boldly reverting back to the more experimental material of his early films but in a way that fails to connect in any meaningful way. He was certainly going for something with “Home Movies,” but what that something is remains wholly obscured. Not even the imagery can muster much enthusiasm, even from the De Palma faithful.
19. ”Mission to Mars” (2000)
Based very loosely on a Disney theme park ride, “Mission To Mars” is for the most part a disappointingly conventional space adventure, wherein an exploratory mission to Mars (led by Don Cheadle) goes disastrously awry when the astronauts run afoul of the planet’s original inhabitants. Cue a rescue mission manned by an emotionally damaged genius (Gary Sinise), a young hotshot (Jerry O’Connell), and a team of married scientists (Connie Nielsen and Tim Robbins). The more science-based middle section of the movie, with the second team traversing the cosmos to get to Mars, is ultimately more emotionally satisfying than the movie’s otherworldly conclusion, which ends up drowning in forced sentiment and iffy creature effects. There are a number of notably gonzo moments in “Mission to Mars,” where you can feel De Palma stretching under the obvious creative constraints of mounting such a sizable movie for such a sizable studio, things like the initial attack on Mars, the zero-G dance number (to a Van Halen song, no less) captured largely in a single shot, and the torturously agonizing death of one of the cast members, scored to an ominous, organ-heavy piece of music by Ennio Morricone (not your first choice to score a space odyssey, but ultimately a brilliant decision). And it’s fun to watch De Palma play in a genre that he’s never tried before, even if the results range from fun to frustrating. Ultimately, “Mission to Mars” proves too dopey to rank amongst his best, but there are t0o many little pieces to marvel at to be able to completely dismiss it either. It’s middle-of-the-road De Palma, which is the filmmaker at his most frustrating; even when he fails, he usually fails big. This, on the other hand, just feels like a damningly minor effort, undone by a mix of studio compromise and just plain old bad decisions.
18. ”Casualties of War” (1989)
When “The Untouchables” proved to be an unexpected box office bonanza, De Palma utilized his newfound popularity to get “Casualties of War,” a singularly bleak war movie, off the ground. Inspired by an actual event that was covered in a New Yorker article from 1969, “Casualties of War” concerns a small deployment in Vietnam whose highest ranking officer (Sean Penn) orders his men to kidnap a young Vietnamese girl for, in his words, “a little portable R & R.” A sorely miscast Michael J. Fox stars as a young infantrymen, recently deployed, who serves as the moral compass for the movie. We watch, in horror, as Fox wrestles with his guilt and culpability. Sex crime during war is a subject that has largely gone unattended to in movie warfare, but it’s hard not to feel that De Palma wasn’t the person to tackle it: it’s undoubtedly a De Palma picture, with the exploitative, voyeuristic, heightened qualities that that entails, and the form works against the content in large part. “Casualties of War” is not without its merits; most of the performances are great, notably Penn, Ving Rhames and John Leguizamo, and occasionally the filmmaking is dazzling in a way that only De Palma movies are dazzling, like when the camera moves below ground, to show the inner workings of the Viet Cong’s tunnel system, hollowed out like an ant farm. It’s not without its supporters (Quentin Tarantino called it his favorite war film ever) and it’s infinitely better than De Palma’s later, thematically similar “Redacted.” But that’s damning it with faint praise. “Casualties of War” is an essential movie in the De Palma filmography, but more for the role that it played in his life rather than the film itself. The film’s failure led to De Palma falling into a deep depression, and then taking on “Bonfire of the Vanities,” because he was eager for an easy, surefire, crowd-pleasing hit…
17. ”Snake Eyes” (1998)
Following the international success of “Mission: Impossible,” De Palma reteamed with his scribe on that and “Carlito’s Way,” David Koepp. The results weren’t nearly as successful, either creatively or commercially, as their earlier collaborations, though “Snake Eyes” isn’t as dismissable as some suggest. Part of the fun is watching Nicolas Cage, as a morally muddy detective who is drawn into a sinister conspiracy involving an assassination plot on the night of a heavily touted boxing match, turn in a performance that’s just as loopily acrobatic as any of De Palma’s sophisticated camera moves. When these elements are in synch, like during the glorious opening sequence that appears to be constructed as a single shot (it is, in fact, three), “Snake Eyes” soars. Other times, though, you can feel De Palma’s signature style start to creak under technological advancements; his fuzzy dream logic and insistence on Hitchcockian doubles makes even less sense in an age of endless surveillance footage and security cameras. If the movie had followed the more stringent rules of the procedural, the central mystery could have probably been solved in a matter of minutes, the labyrinthine conspiracy uncovered moments later. If the film feels hopelessly unfinished, that’s because it is: the original ending, where the casino is hit by a tidal wave (!), was nixed by executives after test screenings, and the film feels compromised and half-baked as a result. Still, thanks to Cage’s turn, which bridges the ‘90s-action-star’ and ‘crazy person who will do literally any movie and chew scenery throughout it’ phases of his career, and the movie’s glittery production values, it’s highly watchable in its corkscrew plotting. And if nothing else, it’s a throwback to a time where an auteur could get a big mainstream thriller like this released.
16. “Passion” (2013)
Something of a return to classic De Palma territory after the more atypical “Redacted” — it’s voyeuristic, it’s got femme fatales entangled, and it has plenty of thriller and mystery intrigue wrapped in its crimes of passion/revenge story — if the director hadn’t made “Passion,” one might have believed it was conceived as an homage to him. Ironically, “Passion” is a remake of the French erotic thriller “Crime d’amour” by director Alain Corneau. Deliciously twisted, playful and arch, “Passion” centers on two black widow spiders in the corporate advertising world whose competitiveness turns ruthless and cutthroat — literally. Noomi Rapace plays Isabelle, a rising star in the advertising world and Rachel McAdams is Christine, her venomous, manipulative, insecure boss, who’s not above stealing other people’s ideas to keep her executive status intact. Calculating and devious, Christine enjoys toying with her adversaries, so when she and Isabelle cross swords, things get ugly quick and the movie spins into a De Palma-esque Grand Guignol goulash of murder, lust, and cunning revenge. Bordering on two movies in one again, “Passion” is delirious, entertaining, and gnarly in its first half — arguably a compendium of all that makes Brian De Palma great. But like a naughty schoolboy who believes no one is looking, the filmmaker can’t resist slathering layers of style and conspicuous film technique in its second half and it spills over into sensationally overwrought overkill. Granted, the plot becomes increasingly ridiculous, but instead of dialing it down for counterbalance, De Palma runs straight at it, culminating in a sensual and melodramatic climax that is off the leash entirely. Though, we suspect that’s exactly why diehard De Palma-ites adore this movie, even if hardly anyone else saw it (it made just $90,000 theatrically)
15. “Greetings” (1968)
Audiences that only know (and perhaps adore) De Palma for the stylish, immaculately crafted Hitchcockian postmodern movies that dominated his career, might not even recognize the De Palma from the early ‘70s with his socio-political bent and anarchic, silly, freewheeling comedic style. An amusing, socio-political satire about three New York men trying to dodge the Vietnam draft, “Greetings” is offbeat and wacky with musical segments that resemble something taken from “The Monkees” TV show or the Beatles during their Help! days. Starring Robert De Niro (in one of his first major roles), Jonathan Warden and Gerrit Graham, the vignette-heavy picture wryly plays like a self-mocking spoof of free love and ‘60s culture while at the same time embracing the anti-establishment zeitgeist. Discursive, episodic and very loose (to see this in contrast to De Palma’s modern work is like seeing night and day), the film follows three characters: Paul (Warden) the shy love-seeker who uses a computer dating service to get laid, Jon (De Niro), the amateur filmmaker-cum-peeping tom who helps coach his friends out of the draft with all kinds of hilariously wild ideas, and Lloyd (Graham), the Kennedy assassination conspiracy nut. While De Niro is largely defined as the super-serious unhinged tough guy in “Mean Streets,” his De Palma collaborations came way ahead of Marty’s breakthrough film and it’s wonderful to see him this loose and playful in this nebbish part (more akin to Rupert Pupkin in “The King Of Comedy“) — he even breaks the 4th wall at one point. While still very ragtag, De Palma’s affection for the French New Wave is very much in evidence, and while enthusiasm once again eclipses focus, “Greetings” is nonetheless vibrant, spirited and often times a hilarious portrait of the anxiety of living in the shadow of the draft.
