

Dear Steve --

Steve Kong at the Hard Boiled movie page gave me your address.  I'm 
hoping to get reviews indexed through rec. arts. and IMDb.

Could you tell me the requirements (format, etc)?

Don't know if background is necessary, but I teach high school English 
and (as an adjunct) freshman English at Miami of Ohio.  I've been 
publishing stories, poems and essays in lit mags since 1981.  Went to 
Glassboro State College (in NJ) and Miami University.

I'm enclosing a review for your review.  Look forward to hearing from 
you.  Thanks very much for reading!  Hope it's OK I sent this to you at 
two addresses.

--Mark O'Hara

The X Files (1998)

Although the first shots of THE X FILES are corny (c'mon, a location 
title that reads "North Texas, 35,000 B.C."?), director Rob Bowman shows 
solid work in most other aspects of the film.  

One likable side of the film is acting.  Perhaps because I have seen 
probably half a season's worth of shows throughout the run of the 
series, I was not used to David Duchovny's deadpan looks.  I enjoyed his 
character's own reference to this stoicism,  and soon got used to Fox 
Mulder's tendency to display emotion through actions rather than facial 
expressions.  Conversely, Gillian Anderson's Dana Scully -- though 
governed by cold logic -- often seems more emotionally reactive.  A 
certain glossiness about her looks in the film bothered me, the gloss 
extending to her eyes, as though she experienced discomfort with 
contacts or with tears of frustration about to spill at any second.  
Applause to the director and make-up people, who give Scully's cheeks 
broken blood vessels late in the film, after an ordeal that surely would 
have caused them.  On the whole, Mulder and Scully exploit well their 
level of comfort, after several years of interacting.

Layers of conspiracy lie at the center of the plot, and the aging white 
males cast as the conspirators turn in believable if humorless 
performances.  Armin Mueller-Stahl, apparently the highest-ranking 
conspirator (operating beyond the ken and control of the FBI), does not 
get a great deal of screen time.  But he is very good at using his scowl 
and his accent to portray a sinister secrecy.  Martin Landau plays Dr. 
Alvin Kurtzweil, who is himself the victim of conspiracies - attempts to 
frame him and, no doubt, discredit his way-out-there writings.  
Kurtzweil has to scramble to convince even Mulder of his credibility.  
To me, the most incredible side of Landau's character is his wandering 
the dark alleys, unarmed, wanted by at least the local police, behind 
the bar in which he meets Mulder.  The "cigarette-smoking man" plays the 
main heavy here -- besides the aliens themselves.  What confuses me 
about his motivation is that, despite countless reasons to rub out 
Mulder, he and his secret agency keep letting the tireless G-man get 
away.

The sets and special effects are grand in THE X FILES.  "Grand" in the 
old meaning of the word -- full of wonder and modesty, like the behavior 
of an honorable person.  I did find the bomb-sheared office building 
tacky -- too close to a re-enactment of Oklahoma City.  But other 
catastrophes, afflictions and icky creatures find their ways seamlessly 
into the narrative.  The implosion of the tundra -given away too much in 
trailers - is a superb computer creation that is edited with both 
patience and skill.  Remarkable illusions are created with the large 
sets and their gruesome inhabitants in subterranean Antarctica.

Mark Snow's music frequently lends suspense at the right places, though 
it seems a red-herring when the notes cut in as Mulder  glances behind a 
soda machine that has cheated him out of his change.   Some fast-paced 
pieces seem too densely New Age, layered as thickly as suspicions in 
viewers' minds.

The script, by Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz, nicely sets alarms that 
go off later in the film at crucial times, including a joke from Scully 
just after she is resuscitated by Mulder.  In a way that I don't believe 
would insult  die-hard fans of the series, we are informed about the 
backgrounds, quirks and quests of the main characters.  Just from the 
hype surrounding the movie I learned enough -- Scully's return to faith, 
for instance - to help me chip away at plot twists.  

I would rate THE X FILES as a satisfying and intelligent story, though 
it should not be mistaken for an important film.  A question I have for 
SEQUEL?

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