“There are very few women that have anchored four action movies — the only one I can think of is Sigourney Weaver with the ‘Alien’ movies. And Sigourney really was the jewel in the crown of that franchise. She made you believe in the alien,” Anderson said. “She made you believe in the horror of the situation, and I think in a very similar way, Milla makes you believe in the reality of the ‘Resident Evil’ universe.”

Both actresses have enjoyed long runs as one character in a film franchise. Weaver’s Ripley, the ultimate protective mother figure, and Jovovich’s Alice, a rogue construct born of a corrupt corporation, are both survivors, and both display a strength that may not be apparent on the surface.

Anderson recognized Jovovich’s ‘it’ quality early on.

“She was so committed and she really made that character and the franchise sort of her own. So after that, I definitely started writing to fit her strengths, and I think her strengths are immense.”

In Anderson’s eyes, the actresses at the center of their franchises have a similarity that has made each successful in their own right.

“I think it’s the kind of commitment that Sigourney gives to the ‘Alien’ franchise and Milla gives to the ‘Resident Evil’ franchise that makes them so long-lasting.”

– Jevon Phillips

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A scene from "Monsters"

The title suggests something like “Alien,” and the guerrilla filmmaking style will be inevitably compared to “Cloverfield” and “District 9.” Writer-director-cinematographer Gareth Edwards’ “Monsters” is simultaneously all of those movies and none of them, a hard-to-categorize hybrid. More than anything else, “Monsters” is a love story: both in how the film’s main characters fall for each other as they must travel through an alien-riddled zone, and in the obvious affection Edwards shows for unadorned cinema.

Gareth Edwards (Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)

Many modern us-against-them movies are loaded with so many computer tricks that the protagonists vanish under countless rendered pixels. Edwards, a British visual effects artist making his feature debut, doesn’t avoid such digital tricks entirely but endeavors to make his low-budget laptop effects look organic, not always fully revealed, while allowing the real sounds of the jungle (the eerie screams of howler monkeys, in one scene) to give “Monsters” an otherworldly air. “The audience has a job as well — to imagine stuff,” Edwards says. “If you show them everything, you’re making them redundant.”

As written by Edwards (but also largely improvised by his cast), “Monsters,” which opens Oct. 29, follows photojournalist Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) and his boss’ daughter, Samantha Wynden (Whitney Able), as they navigate a perilous path between Mexico and the United States. The Infected Zone, as the region is known, is populated with 747-sized aliens, the fruits of a space mission gone terribly wrong. “I wanted our movie to begin where all the other monster movies ended,” Edwards says.

Shooting with a skeletal crew of as few as four people in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Costa Rica, Edwards wasn’t married to a shot list or scripted pages. When Kaulder tries to get into Wynden’s hotel room for a potential hook-up in one sequence, Edwards told his actors (who in fact are a real couple), “Scoot, just try to get in her knickers — whatever you can do. Whitney, do whatever you can do to not let him in the door.” He shot the two inventing the scene for two hours, cutting it down to two minutes in the finished film.

“The whole point of the digital revolution is lost if you still need 100 people following you around,” Edwards says of his run-and-shoot approach. “The perfect version of this film is filled with imperfections. That’s what we were going for.”

— John Horn

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Spider-Man (Marvel Comics)

Peter Parker has always been a hard-luck character so maybe it’s appropriate that his wobbly  ”Spider-Man:  Turn Off the Dark,” has been under a nasty black cloud as the most expensive Broadway production ever planned. On Friday, though, the creative team behind the venture hopes to spin a new success story as  Bono, the Edge, director Julie Taymor and star Reeve Carney bring a one-song preview to “Good Morning America.”

– Geoff Boucher

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Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger in "The Expendables." (Lionsgate)

Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger share the screen in “The Expendables,” and they are forever linked in the public mind by their 1980s-era rivalry as box-office action stars. But their history, according to Stallone, goes back to a glittery night in January 1977 when the two Hollywood newcomers shared a table at the 34th Golden Globes, and each walked away with a trophy. Other winners that night included Barbra Streisand, Laurence Olivier and Robert Redford.

Schwarzenegger hefts Raquel Welch at the Golden Globes in 1977. (Getty Images)

Here’s how Stallone remembers that first meeting of future Hollywood titans: “We were the outsiders, believe me. People were looking at us. I think that was the very first time we met, if I remember right. We were seated at the same table, and I remember thinking, ‘Who is this guy?’ I had heard of him, but I didn’t know what he was all about. I’m there for ‘Rocky,’ and he was there for the best-newcomer category [for 'Stay Hungry']. And of course they sat at us the same table. Put the two piano movers together, right? The lugs who don’t fit in.”

Sly Stallone and Talia Shire in "Rocky." (United Artists)

Stallone is enjoying a return to the spotlight with “The Expendables,” the all-star commando fantasy that has grossed $184 million worldwide with its throwback spirit and a cast that includes Jason Statham, Jet Li,  Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture , Terry Crews and fleeting cameos by Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis. Stallone directed and co-wrote the film and there is talk of a sequel. For Stallone, the most memorable part of the “Expendables” experience might have been the chance to work again with the governor of California.

“When people ask me who is the most extraordinary guy I’ve ever met, I answer that it’s him. Think about it — the force of will and the fact that he is successful in three diverse and impossibly difficult areas. The politics of bodybuilding? Forget about it. And he was and is the most influential bodybuilder who ever lived, by far.  Then, in Hollywood, with his background of being Austrian and all this baggage of not being American, and he became No. 1. And then politics, it’s off-the-chart hard, he’s the governor of California. That’s all, just the governor of the biggest state in population. This is not some city council somewhere. And he would make it as a presidential candidate. It’s mind-blowing.”

– Geoff Boucher

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H.P. Lovecraft (Los Angeles Times archives)

Has there ever been a better time to brush up on your Lovecraft? The author died more than 70 years ago but he’s a red-hot Hollywood player these days with Guillermo del Toro’s announcement that he will be directing a film adapation of “At the Mountains of Madness” and Ron Howard’s own percolating Lovecraft project. This Saturday, you can get your Cthulhu on at the first Los Angeles edition of the  H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, which will slither and shamble into our mundane mortal dimension at the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro. There are six films scheduled, including the dark, dastardly 1985 classic “Re-Animator,” and plenty of   off-screen activities as well. You may conjure up ticket and programming details right here.

– Geoff Boucher

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They’re an interesting team in that, for a while now, Wolverine and his merry band of hardcore mutants were doing the things that the X-Men (as heroes) couldn’t touch (i.e. killing!). An undercover squad sanctioned by Cyclops, they were recently outed to other members of the X-Men, and promptly disbanded.

Or at least, that’s what everyone, including Cyclops, thinks. Have a look.

– Jevon Phillips

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Ryan Reynolds stars as Paul Conroy in "Buried." (Lionsgate)

Sometimes it’s necessary to think inside the box.

That was the strident belief of Rodrigo Cortés, the Spanish director behind “Buried,” the most deliriously claustrophobic film imaginable – the entire movie is set inside a wooden coffin beneath the sands of the Iraqi desert, and the only person ever shown on screen is Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds), the desperate man trapped inside that casket.

The unsettling film, which opens Sept. 24 in limited release and then goes wide on Oct. 8, uses an intricate system of sliding panels that allowed Cortés and cinematographer Eduard Grau a wide array of unexpected vantage points and dynamic storytelling opportunities. Conroy’s cellphone connects him to the world above and to the unfolding mystery of predicament while his Zippo lighter’s flickering flame illuminates his face and his fear. Still, despite all that, the film is 94 tense minutes spent inside of a box, and Cortés concedes that there were plenty of skeptics as the project got underway.

“From the very beginning, I received every kind of, um, let’s call them kind suggestions to take the camera beyond the coffin,” Cortés said. “I was told it would bring some oxygen to the audience if we were to show the surface or to cut out to the other side of the [phone] line, for instance, or if we showed the other characters, like the leader of the hostage-taking group or his wife or the federal authorities. There was talk of doing flashbacks. All of this, I thought, was the perfect way to spoil everything and ruin the film.”

Behind the scenes with director Rodrigo Cortés and Reynolds on the set of "Buried." (Lionsgate)

The keep-a-lid-on-it aesthetic choice appears to have been the right one. In January, the movie earned some especially enthusiastic reviews at the Sundance Film Festival — Rob Nelson of Variety, for instance, called it “an ingenious exercise in sustained tension that would make Alfred Hitchcock turn over in his grave” – and sparked a bidding war that ended with Lionsgate acquiring the North American rights for a reported $4 million. “We were absolutely determined to bring it home,” said Jason Constantine, the Lionsgate president of acquisitions and co-productions at the time.

The biggest challenge the film may face may be the anxiety of moviegoers – how many people are willing to watch a film that is an extended panic attack? As Cortés put it, it’s “something you feel more than you watch; it’s extremely visceral.”

The movie starts with several long minutes of complete darkness and the labored breathing of an injured man. Then, as he regains consciousness, the sounds switch to hyperventilating terror, clawing and whimpering. Reynolds said the performance was a hard one because “it was so vulnerable and raw” and required him to “do things that as a man we don’t usually show” when it comes to pure, sputtering fear.

Reynolds plays a truck driver confined in an underground coffin in Iraq. (Lionsgate)

The movie benefits, certainly, from the surging profile of Reynolds, who starred with Sandra Bullock in last year’s romantic comedy hit “The Proposal” and also has the title role in “Green Lantern,” the 2011 superhero film that Warner Bros. hopes will yield a major franchise.

Reynolds said he was instantly intrigued by Chris Sparling’s script for “Buried” but became passionate about  the project after meeting Cortés.  After a 40-minute lunch, he agreed on the spot to make the film. “Buried” is just the second feature film for the 36-year-old Cortés, and he’s an unknown to American audiences, but Reynolds gushed about the director and said he’s eager to work with him again even though “we have very different tastes in material, quite honestly.”

Reynolds has worked with proven veteran directors such as Martin Campbell and Joe Carnahan, but he said he took more away from his whirlwind collaboration with Cortés than from any other filmmaker. “I call him an architect, not a director,” Reynolds said. “This is a guy that can make any movie of any size, and believe me, he will be doing alright after this.”

The film was shot over 17 days in Barcelona, and Reynolds still shuddered when he recounted the experience, which had him in a box, often in the dark and wailing for help. He charred his fingers black while holding the cigarette lighter in awkward positions and gobbled mouthfuls of sand during a scene where part of the casket buckles. At one point, Reynolds had to share the tight space with a snake that, in the story, slithered into the coffin through a crack.

Paul Conroy (Reynolds) intently watches his cellphone -- his lifeline. (Lionsgate)

“I spent the days in such a heightened state of anxiety and panic that I don’t remember a lot of it, and it’s hard to watch it now,” Reynolds said. “I’ve seen it twice, and it’s hard to see. It feels a lot like a fever dream. There was points where I’m in there screaming that I’m running out of air, that I’m running out of time, and the crew kept ripping the lid off the coffin. They thought I was really in distress. It happened like three different times. It reached such a fever pitch of panic, they thought it was real. I told them, ‘If I need help, I’ll yell, ‘Cut!’ It was harrowing for everyone. I didn’t sleep well, and it really stuck with me. You’ll never complain on any movie set ever again after something like that.”

Cortés said his compass point for the film was pure Hitchcock – the real-time suspense of “Rope,” the confined quarters of “Lifeboat” and the paralyzed point of view in “Rear Window.” Cortés acknowledged the movie had “topics of the moment” with the Iraqi setting, terrorism backdrop and the commentary on both corporate cruelty and government bureaucracy, but he said the greater goal of “Buried” was always to dig deep into Hitchcock’s old turf, a place of tension and intense craft challenges.

“I always saw the film as something very big, something Hitchcockian,” Cortés said with a chuckle. “When they asked me if it would be strained” by the setting limitations, “I said, ‘No, it will be Indiana Jones in a box.’ ”

Reynolds wasn’t sure about the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” allusion, but he agreed that “Buried” had unearthed something special.

“There’s a freedom in the restriction — it becomes a big movie because of those restrictions,” Reynolds said. “You see the size of the story because of that limited space. The limited space magnifies everything. … People say, ‘Weren’t you worried to do a film this risky?’ And I say, ‘No, why would I be worried?’ If it didn’t work, we all get a big pat on the back for trying something different. The main thing was surviving the shoot.”

– Geoff Boucher

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Clint Eastwood as Superman? (Photo illustration by Kevin Lingenfelser)

Clint Eastwood is watching the contemporary superhero craze in Hollywood with a bit of generational relief. “Thank God that I didn’t have to do that,” says the the 80-year-old star.

The Oscar-winning actor and filmmaker is best known to moviegoers as a cowboy or a cop, but during a recent interview in Carmel, the Hollywood icon said that in the 1970s he was an early candidate to play the Man of Steel. He added that, a few years before that, he was approached with an offer to join her majesty’s secret service in the role of suave spy James Bond.

“I can remember – and this was many years ago – when [Warner Bros. President] Frank Wells came to me about doing Superman. So it could have happened. This was when they first started to think about making it. I was like, ‘Superman? Nah, nah, that’s not for me.’ Not that there’s anything wrong with it. It’s for somebody, but not me.

“I was also offered pretty good money to do James Bond if I would take on the role. This was after Sean Connery left. My lawyer represented the Broccolis,” who produce the Bond franchise, “and he came and said, ‘They would love to have you.’ But to me, well, that was somebody else’s gig. That’s Sean’s deal. It didn’t feel right for me to be doing it.”

In December 1978, the same month that a relatively unknown actor named Christopher Reeve soared to fame in Richard Donner’s “Superman,” Eastwood had a new comedy hit on his hands with “Every Which Way but Loose,” which did not bring with it the indignity of wearing tights but did pair the tough-guy icon with a saucy orangutan named Clyde. The Superman film had taken a number of years to reach the screen, and Eastwood was 48 by that point, so he was too old to play the superhero.  Still, had he been 30, the star said his answer would have been the same: “No, thanks.”

Eastwood explained: “I always liked characters that were more grounded in reality. Maybe they do super things or more-than-human things — like Dirty Harry, he has a knack for doing crazy things, or the western guys — but, still, they’re not caped crusaders.”

For most of Eastwood’s time in Hollywood, comic-book roles were career kryptonite. That’s changed now, certainly,  with Jack Nicholson, George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr., Christian Bale, Michael Keaton and Hugh Jackman as just a few of the leading men who have played costumed heroes or villains and avoided the typecasting that haunted actors of the past, such as Superman stars George Reeves and Christopher Reeve.

Clint Eastwood, reimagined in the role of James Bond. (Photo illustration by Kevin Lingenfelser; images from MGM and Warner Bros.)

“That was part of the  consideration, a big part,” Eastwood said. “Look at Reeve, he was excellent. That was a big factor. You get a role like that, and it locks you in a bit. True, I had the western genre and the ‘Dirty Harry’ role, but everybody made westerns and did cop movies; they didn’t seem as bad,” as far as typecasting.

I told Eastwood that, after watching him dispatch criminals as San Francisco cop Harry Callahan, he was probably a better fit for the alleys of Gotham City as opposed to the skies of Metropolis. Eastwood surprised me by, with a wink, boasting  that his funny-book allegiance was to Namor,  Bill Everett’s imperious sea prince.

“Hey buddy,” Eastwood said with a thumbs-up gesture, “the Sub-Mariner, that’s the one I always liked. I had all of those comics when I was a kid.”

As for Bond, no American has played Ian Fleming’s spy. Connery is a native of Scotland, and Roger Moore and Daniel Craig were born in England. Pierce Brosnan was born in Ireland, Timothy Dalton is from Wales and George Lazenby hails from Australia. Though it’s hard to imagine Eastwood in the coolly ironic mode most associated with 007 of the 1970s, it’s interesting to note that the two most recent films in the venerable series have taken the secret agent to a gritty, stoic style with Craig that has far more in common with Eastwood’s signature screen personae than, say, the safari-suit work of Moore.

I was in Carmel to interview Eastwood about “Hereafter,” which he directed. The film, a tender story about three broken souls and their lurching quest to understand the great beyond,  hits theaters on Oct. 22, and we spent more than three hours together talking both on and off the record. We chatted about the Superman and Bond roles for all of three or four minutes, but, later in the day, I joked to Eastwood that I was having trouble shaking the image of him in blue tights.

“That was a long time ago. I was a little more pumped,” Eastwood answered with a wink. “But believe me, I can get it out of my mind. I got it out of mind back then. It was easy.”

– Geoff Boucher

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FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this post misstated the birthplace of Timothy Dalton.

Eighty-five years ago, moviegoers saw Lon Chaney unmasked as “The Phantom of the Opera” at the classic film’s premiere, and while the movie was silent, the audience certainly wasn’t.

There were plenty of screams and gasps on Sept. 6, 1925, at the New York premiere of the film that gave us one of the most indelible scenes in screen history — aspiring singer Christine Daae (portrayed by Chicago-born beauty pageant queen Mary Philbin) pulling the mask off the Old Hollywood icon known as “The Man of a Thousand Faces.”

Chaney earned that nickname with his uncanny ability to transform himself into various characters, including Quasimodo in the 1923 masterwork “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” He created the Phantom’s skull-like visage by using cotton and collodion for his exaggerated cheekbones. By attaching a strip of fish skin to his nose, he achieved the up-tilted nose. He used black paint to accentuate the nostrils and used dark eyeliner to achieve that sunken-eyed look. Finally, he wore a serrated set of false teeth.

Though “The Phantom of the Opera,” which also boasts a Technicolor sequence when the Phantom appears at the masquerade ball, is considered one of Chaney’s best films, it was a tumultuous production. The actor and director Rupert Julian clashed from the outset, and their relationship became so toxic that Chaney wouldn’t talk or take direction from Julian, who was best known for completing the film “Merry-Go-Round” after Erich von Stroheim was fired (that film also featured Philbin). Several scenes weren’t lit properly, including the smashing crash of the chandelier at the opera house, and had to be re-filmed.

And, just so you know, Hollywood test marketing is hardly a new thing: After one sneak preview, audiences suggested the film needed a romantic subplot as well as some comic relief. Comedy director Edward Sedgwick was brought in to direct some lighter scenes with Chester Conklin, but those were all discarded after another preview audience gave the thumbs down to the tacked-on sequences.

A third and final version finally had its premiere on Sept. 6 at the Astor Theatre in New York; it opened in Los Angeles about a month later. That final version was a resounding success, grossing more than $2 million at the time.

After the introduction of sound at the end of the 1920s, Universal wanted to cash in on the new format. Ernst Laemmle re-shot about 40% of the film with sound and the rest of the film featured music and sound effects. Because Chaney was under contract at MGM in 1929, he couldn’t dub in his voice, so a voice-over was used for the Phantom when the characters were seen in the shadows (Philips Smalley supposedly provided this “third-person” work). The reconstituted film opened in early 1930 and made another million.

Chaney only made one sound film, 1930’s “The Unholy Three,” which was a remake of his 1925 silent classic. He had been signed to collaborate once again with his favorite director Tod Browning in “Dracula,” but died of bronchial cancer on Aug. 26, 1930, at the age of 47.

But lore has it that Chaney is still very much with us. The opera set built for “ Phantom” was never completely pulled down and, on Stage 28 at the Universal lot, employees and visitors still whisper that a spectral figure in a black cap has been seen prowling the catwalks and hiding up in the rafters.

– Susan King

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PHOTOS: Top, Lon Chaney in his signature role (Los Angeles Times archives). Second, Chaney and Mary Philbin (UCLA Film & Television Archive); Third, the opera house of Stage 28 at Universal (Universal Studios)

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