This is not your average film biography. Only the last four or five months of Lincoln's life are covered as we see his drive to get the 13th Amendment passed. Daniel Day-Lewis gives a performance which turns the Best Actor Oscar contest into an actual race as I honestly can't decide if I liked him or Joaquin Phoenix better (and if Philip Seymour Hoffman decides to try for Actor rather than Supporting, count him too). Interestingly, the role of Lincoln is in total contrast to Day-Lewis' most recent lead roles in "There Will Be Blood" and "Gangs Of New York". There are a handful of scenes where Lincoln raises his voice, especially once the deadline to the amendment vote draws near, but for the most part this is a very reactive performance. We learn more about the character from what others say about him, rather than directly from his actions.
I read the first half of the 700 page "Team Of Rivals" (the direct inspiration for Spielberg's "Lincoln) which covered everything up to his first inauguration and I loved how the historical person I read about was accurately portrayed on screen. Day-Lewis chooses to give Lincoln a high reedy (almost annoying) voice which is nothing like the deep bass most people imagine him having. Lincoln had a massive sense of humor and loved to tell stories and anecdotes in his argument all of which is represented here during his various meetings with his cabinet, other politicians, and his family.
Most striking about Day-Lewis' performance is how he's able to bring a sense of gravitas to Lincoln's life by just inhabiting the role so he becomes a real person. Lincoln is the closest thing American history has to a "god" and by the end of the two and a half hours, the tragedy of his death is very apparent. But alongside that, we get to see Lincoln close to how he probably was, with his first scene being of him basically chilling with some Union soldiers before a battle. His legend looms large today, but back then he was just a guy and it's nice to see that.
The Presidency and White House have changed a lot over the past 150
years. I didn't even realize Lincoln's small dark office was suppose to
be the West Wing until the very end of the film. There are no secret
service agents as Lincoln and Secretary Of State William Seward ride
around Washington DC in a topless carriage. There are lines of people lining the walls of the White House waiting for a chance to pester the President in some fashion and there seems to be little fear of him being attacked, even during the end days of the war.
The House of Representatives back then was a precursor to pro wrestling with both the Democrats and Republicans basically shooting promos at the other side like they were building up to a match. And with everyone having some sort of bizarre facial hair or wig, it's self-explanatory why the upper balcony is full of audience during these House meetings and votes. I originally registered as a Republican in college due to learning about the old Republican party in history class, but somehow over the past century and a half, the two main parties have totally switched agendas. Here the Democrats are the clear bad guys, wanting to squash the anti-slave amendment for both political or personal reasons.
The way Spielberg shows the proceedings firmly places the Democrats as the villains which is how I see most politics today (being black and white, I mean). There is always a clear good guy and a clear bad guy. During the elections this year, the Republicans basically came across as the super villain party, looking to impede the rights of various groups (minorities, homosexuals, the lower classes) while spouting Christian bullshit. Alongside the southern Democrats of 1865, these are two parties who stand for hate, while claiming the opposing side is evil.
Spielberg builds the whole film towards the big vote at the end and somehow is able to make it suspenseful even though we all know slavery has been abolished for over a century. The tricks he uses aren't the most genius, but they sure are effective, as we learn that the timing of this amendment is crucial to getting it passed. Some of Lincoln's cabinet members feel that the war is almost over and that he should focusing on receiving the South's surrender rather than push this vote through, but Lincoln intelligently feels that once the war ends, the push to end slavery will lose momentum due to the returning Southern states putting the kabosh on it. So it's a race against time to gather the votes needed to succeed, with all Republicans needed to vote "Yay" and various moderate Democrats needed as well.
James Spader, John Hawkes, and Tim Blake Nelson provide a lot of humor to the film in their scenes as operatives who go around to different congressmen, lobbying for their vote. Alongside those three and Daniel Day-Lewis is a veritable who's who of quality actors, with Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, David Strathairn, Hal Holbrook, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce McGill, Lee Pace, and Jackie Earle Haley being just some of the names here. Jones and Strathairn especially stand out as abolitionist congressman Thaddeus Stevens and Secretary Of State William Seward respectively, with both probably on the shortlist for a Supporting Actor nod.
It's impossible for Jones to give a bad performance if he's motivated and here he's called on to play a man who's so anti-Slavery, he may prove to be an obstacle to the Amendment passing as he thinks it doesn't go far enough. Strathairn plays Seward who was the largest contender to Lincoln heading into the Republican convention where Lincoln was chosen as the Presidential nominee in 1860. Lincoln chose to make Seward Secretary Of State as he was more interested in getting the best quality of cabinet rather than just his friends and the two ended up becoming great allies and friends. Seward was just as anti-slavery (if not more) as Lincoln, but is forced to stand in as the voice of reason as Lincoln chooses to make the end of slavery a more important issue than the end of the war.
The first thing we see is a Civil War version of the
famous opening scene of "Saving Private Ryan" with a huge bloody battle
taking place. Unfortunately it only lasts a matter of seconds, but I'd
love for Spielberg to revisit this time period for an actual film
focusing on the war itself.
This is Spielberg's strongest film in well over a decade and is one of the greatest films of American history I've ever seen. Still, Spielberg doesn't seem to know how much is too much regarding sentimentality and comes very close to over saturating the film with it, especially near the end. I could do without the sun's "heavenly glow" shining down on both Lincoln and Stevens during key scenes in the movie and Spielberg still doesn't know how to end a film, with "Lincoln" peaking at the conclusion of the amendment voting process, but still continuing on for another fifteen minutes or so. Also, despite adoring Day-Lewis' performance as Lincoln, I still think the Abraham Lincoln we see here is too flawless. We get some very minor moments where his golden veneer starts to crack, like a scene with him and his wife Mary (Sally Field who would be more appropriate playing Lincoln's mother) where she confronts him on his seeming insensitivity toward her when their second son died many years before, but even that blows over it's explained that he just kept his own emotions bottled up. I loved his character throughout the film, but I feel there's a disservice done to his memory to just portray him as a perfect human being.
In general though, you're not going to find many big Oscar-bait films of better quality than "Lincoln". A large amount of information and events are able to squeeze into 150 minutes and make total sense which is not always easy to accomplish. When I wrote about "Argo", I explained that I want every story from history to be made into a film and "Lincoln" only serves to increase that wish tenfold.
Rating - 4.75 out of 5 stars
This will be my last post for around a couple of weeks. With the holidays coming up, I'm getting kind of busy, but I plan on recharging and reviewing stuff like "The Hobbit" and "Django Unchained" in December as well as more vintage films.
Check out my older stuff if you haven't already and if you like what you read, leave a note and let me know. I'm doing this purely for myself, but I'd love to get some feedback, positive or negative as long as it's constructive.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Singin' In The Rain - Way Too Much Of That
Movie musicals are not totally in fashion anymore although from time to time something like "Chicago" and the upcoming "Les Miserables" will sneak through the studio system and become a big hit. But at one time, they were consistent "Best Picture" contenders and so popular that "Singin' In The Rain", possibly the most recognized one of all, is actually a parody of what was considered "the musical genre" back in the fifties. Much like "Rock Of Ages", "Singin' In The Rain" is mostly made up of already known songs from previous musicals, all bundled up together for easier consumption by the public. Yet "Singin' In The Rain" has transcended its comedic roots to become one of the most acclaimed American films of all time. It's one I held off seeing for many years, even taking into account how highly it ranks in the "Sight And Sound" great films list done every decade. I've nothing against musicals, but there's a formula in these older ones which gets tiring after awhile. But it was about time so I bit the bullet and checked it out.
"Singin' In The Rain" starts in with the singin' right from the very second the film begins. You would NEVER see this done sincerely today, but here we have stars Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O'Connor dressed up as the Gorton's Fisherman, gleefully performing "Singin' In The Rain" as they walk towards the camera. Then the story starts proper as we are introduced to huge silent film stars Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) at the premiere of their latest smash in 1927 Hollywood. Although Lamont is a huge diva, the two continue to make smash after smash until the invent of sound film throws an obstacle their way due to Lamont's grating voice which sounds like a Brooklyn/Southern infant rubbing a balloon. The clips we see of their first attempt at a film with sound are very funny as is most of the first thirty minutes. Luckily, Lockwood meets Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) an aspiring actress with a fine voice and gets the idea to have her dub Lamont's lines to save the film. Along the way, we get a bunch of musical numbers, which start out endearingly with fun choreography, but which eventually become increasingly grating to watch.
The movie is just one hour forty-three minutes, but the plot is only able to fill about half of that, leaving us with a bunch of song and dance, only some of which have to do with what we're seeing on screen. I was surprisingly on board for this for a long time with classics like "Make 'Em Laugh", "Good Morning", and "Singin' In The Rain" very fun to watch. I loved the way the songs were integrated into the plot and they all felt perfectly natural. However, once the "Beautiful Girl" montage began I started to lose my patience. It's a totally weird musical number with green screen craziness (disembodied legs doing a can-can) and no characters we've seen before or will ever see again. It feels like it never ends and I literally had no idea what the hell I was watching. Then comes "Moses Supposes" (one of the few original songs in the film), which starts with Lockwood preparing for his sound debut by taking diction lessons only to be joined by his partner Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor) who turns the tongue twisters of the class into a crazy song and dance where they abuse the teacher and make a mess of things. At this point it was like "Just Stop". And that's not even getting to the "Broadway Melody Ballet" which lasts for at least ten minutes, feels like double, and is an example of the types of ballets which were the craze of the biggest musicals of the time like "Oklahoma". I played Ali Hackem in "Oklahoma" in college and was lucky enough to be the only major character not needed for our ballet and this scene brought back the boredom I was accustomed to every time that scene was rehearsed. Again, the choreography for these songs is awesome, but the scenes very much stand out as relics of their time.
The acting is much better, with all four main characters getting some great comedic moments. Gene Kelly goes around the whole film with a huge smile plastered on his face, coming across as Mandy Patinkin doing Michigan J. Frog. I never realized how indebted "The Artist" and Oscar winner Jean Dujardin are to Kelly and "Singin' In The Rain" as Kelly and Dujardin are basically giving the same performance. Kelly was also co-director of the film and I was disappointed to learn he was a staunch perfectionist who drove Donald O'Connor to exhaustion and Debbie Reynolds to tears. Here though he's a thoroughly likable guy with some spectacular dance moves. Donald O'Connor has a real spotlight in "Make 'Em Laugh" which has some of the best physical comedy that's ever existed, but he's a weird case where his physical charisma is fantastic while his verbal charisma is lacking. He's funny and has some great lines, but he just comes across as very bland. A hyperactive Andrew McCarthy/Matthew Perry type of comedian, by the end of some of his numbers I'd want to punch him out just to make him stop.
Debbie Reynolds was only twenty when this came out, but she's an old twenty, giving off a sense of intelligence and maturity in her scenes with Gene Kelly (a young forty). She should have been bigger than she was (Maybe she was, but I just regard her a Las Vegas "star") since here she's quite good. Jean Hagan as the bitchy Lina has the best comedic opportunities and pulls them off with great aplomb. I wasn't surprised to see she understudied Judy Holliday as "Billie Dawn" in the great "Born Yesterday" as that's the role Lina Lamont reminded me of the most. She had an interesting career starring in three classics ("Adam's Rib", "The Asphalt Jungle" and "Singin' In The Rain") and doing the first few seasons of "Make Room For Daddy" with Danny Thomas before an illness seriously derailed her career. Again, here she's very funny. Overall, the acting in general is very broad, like a play, but it works to the benefit of the story which in itself is very theatrical.
The reputation of this film precedes it and I found myself wondering if the best thing going for it is that very reputation. I feel like I my overall opinion of it is shaded by the knowledge that it's regarded as one of the best and unlike my feelings toward "Citizen Kane" (which I think is AWESOME), I found myself disappointed. It's a quality film, but I'm not familiar enough with the early musicals to know if it's just run of the mill for that time or something more special. It's another film that I've seen recently that starts off with a head of steam only to be derailed in the second half, here with the nonstop musical numbers, but at the same time, I bet that if I was in a theatre in 1952, I'd be drooling over those amazing sequences while shoveling popcorn in my face. If it came out today I'd hate it, absolutely, but as it stands I can totally respect and appreciate it, but it's just not my sort of thing.
Rating - 4 out of 5 stars (Again, despite the overall negativity of my review, I did actually like this. Just very disappointed).
Random Thoughts -
I've done a lot of musicals and actually enjoy them very much. My father is not a theatre lover, but happened to introduce me as a child to two fantastic older musicals, "Damn Yankees" and "Paint Your Wagon". One is about baseball and the other about the gold rush. Both have awesome songs. And both movies are fast, fun, and not to be taken too seriously. I think the difference between "Singin' In The Rain" and those two is that neither are held up to the standard of being an all-time great and the song and dance in "Yankees" and "Wagon" move the story along rather than exist in a vacuum.
I do have a hard time watching movies dealing with Hollywood or acting in general; it's one of the reasons I held off on watching this and films like "Sunset Blvd." for so long ("Sunset" by the way is an INCREDIBLE picture). Living in Los Angeles, the magic of watching a film dealing with things far away from your normal life is missing, and watching other people live and portray that profession hits too close to home in some respects. But in the end, a great film is a great film and I do find that great films about acting are sometimes better than the average great film.
Selden meets Lockwood after he falls into her car running away from adoring fans. They get along sourly at first with Selden being nonplussed by Lockwood's repeated jokes about her aspirations in theatre (serious acting). Even when Lockwood, the biggest star in Hollywood, repeatedly tracks her down to romance her, she shrugs him off. All I know is if say Natalie Portman and I met somehow and she was all about what I was offering, I'd say yes and take that no questions asked, both for the personal attraction and because of the professional opportunity.
I so dig the old Hollywood studio system, especially when it's portrayed in films. Guys dressed up clowns having a smoke with guys dressed up as astronauts while guys dressed up as pirates make fun of guys dressed up as hobos. That's what the movies are all about. Here we see Lockwood and Brown walk across a huge sound stage where due to the silent nature of these pictures, multiple movies can be filmed all at once. So we first see them travel through a "Darkest Africa" scene full of natives with giant scary wooden masks (horribly racist, but hey I bet Disney still has those stereotypes on their Jungle Cruise), then past a bleacher set full of cheering college students, and finally past a stagecoach fight scene from a Western. Absolutely love that stuff.
My sister took dance for a few years and I use to go to her recitals. We'd sit in a dark auditorium for what seemed like hours, but was probably only one, and watch a bunch of different dance routines. Sitting there watching routine after routine, my body and mind would enter an almost zen like boredom. At that point the advanced dancers would come out to do their stuff and the combination of darkness, Enya/Enigma music, and fairly complicated dance moves brought me an amazing sense of serenity. I even wanted to try dancing myself after that, but my mother justifiably told me that was a bad idea.
Next - "Lincoln" on Monday, November 19th.
"Singin' In The Rain" starts in with the singin' right from the very second the film begins. You would NEVER see this done sincerely today, but here we have stars Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O'Connor dressed up as the Gorton's Fisherman, gleefully performing "Singin' In The Rain" as they walk towards the camera. Then the story starts proper as we are introduced to huge silent film stars Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) at the premiere of their latest smash in 1927 Hollywood. Although Lamont is a huge diva, the two continue to make smash after smash until the invent of sound film throws an obstacle their way due to Lamont's grating voice which sounds like a Brooklyn/Southern infant rubbing a balloon. The clips we see of their first attempt at a film with sound are very funny as is most of the first thirty minutes. Luckily, Lockwood meets Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) an aspiring actress with a fine voice and gets the idea to have her dub Lamont's lines to save the film. Along the way, we get a bunch of musical numbers, which start out endearingly with fun choreography, but which eventually become increasingly grating to watch.
The movie is just one hour forty-three minutes, but the plot is only able to fill about half of that, leaving us with a bunch of song and dance, only some of which have to do with what we're seeing on screen. I was surprisingly on board for this for a long time with classics like "Make 'Em Laugh", "Good Morning", and "Singin' In The Rain" very fun to watch. I loved the way the songs were integrated into the plot and they all felt perfectly natural. However, once the "Beautiful Girl" montage began I started to lose my patience. It's a totally weird musical number with green screen craziness (disembodied legs doing a can-can) and no characters we've seen before or will ever see again. It feels like it never ends and I literally had no idea what the hell I was watching. Then comes "Moses Supposes" (one of the few original songs in the film), which starts with Lockwood preparing for his sound debut by taking diction lessons only to be joined by his partner Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor) who turns the tongue twisters of the class into a crazy song and dance where they abuse the teacher and make a mess of things. At this point it was like "Just Stop". And that's not even getting to the "Broadway Melody Ballet" which lasts for at least ten minutes, feels like double, and is an example of the types of ballets which were the craze of the biggest musicals of the time like "Oklahoma". I played Ali Hackem in "Oklahoma" in college and was lucky enough to be the only major character not needed for our ballet and this scene brought back the boredom I was accustomed to every time that scene was rehearsed. Again, the choreography for these songs is awesome, but the scenes very much stand out as relics of their time.
The acting is much better, with all four main characters getting some great comedic moments. Gene Kelly goes around the whole film with a huge smile plastered on his face, coming across as Mandy Patinkin doing Michigan J. Frog. I never realized how indebted "The Artist" and Oscar winner Jean Dujardin are to Kelly and "Singin' In The Rain" as Kelly and Dujardin are basically giving the same performance. Kelly was also co-director of the film and I was disappointed to learn he was a staunch perfectionist who drove Donald O'Connor to exhaustion and Debbie Reynolds to tears. Here though he's a thoroughly likable guy with some spectacular dance moves. Donald O'Connor has a real spotlight in "Make 'Em Laugh" which has some of the best physical comedy that's ever existed, but he's a weird case where his physical charisma is fantastic while his verbal charisma is lacking. He's funny and has some great lines, but he just comes across as very bland. A hyperactive Andrew McCarthy/Matthew Perry type of comedian, by the end of some of his numbers I'd want to punch him out just to make him stop.
Debbie Reynolds was only twenty when this came out, but she's an old twenty, giving off a sense of intelligence and maturity in her scenes with Gene Kelly (a young forty). She should have been bigger than she was (Maybe she was, but I just regard her a Las Vegas "star") since here she's quite good. Jean Hagan as the bitchy Lina has the best comedic opportunities and pulls them off with great aplomb. I wasn't surprised to see she understudied Judy Holliday as "Billie Dawn" in the great "Born Yesterday" as that's the role Lina Lamont reminded me of the most. She had an interesting career starring in three classics ("Adam's Rib", "The Asphalt Jungle" and "Singin' In The Rain") and doing the first few seasons of "Make Room For Daddy" with Danny Thomas before an illness seriously derailed her career. Again, here she's very funny. Overall, the acting in general is very broad, like a play, but it works to the benefit of the story which in itself is very theatrical.
The reputation of this film precedes it and I found myself wondering if the best thing going for it is that very reputation. I feel like I my overall opinion of it is shaded by the knowledge that it's regarded as one of the best and unlike my feelings toward "Citizen Kane" (which I think is AWESOME), I found myself disappointed. It's a quality film, but I'm not familiar enough with the early musicals to know if it's just run of the mill for that time or something more special. It's another film that I've seen recently that starts off with a head of steam only to be derailed in the second half, here with the nonstop musical numbers, but at the same time, I bet that if I was in a theatre in 1952, I'd be drooling over those amazing sequences while shoveling popcorn in my face. If it came out today I'd hate it, absolutely, but as it stands I can totally respect and appreciate it, but it's just not my sort of thing.
Rating - 4 out of 5 stars (Again, despite the overall negativity of my review, I did actually like this. Just very disappointed).
Random Thoughts -
I've done a lot of musicals and actually enjoy them very much. My father is not a theatre lover, but happened to introduce me as a child to two fantastic older musicals, "Damn Yankees" and "Paint Your Wagon". One is about baseball and the other about the gold rush. Both have awesome songs. And both movies are fast, fun, and not to be taken too seriously. I think the difference between "Singin' In The Rain" and those two is that neither are held up to the standard of being an all-time great and the song and dance in "Yankees" and "Wagon" move the story along rather than exist in a vacuum.
I do have a hard time watching movies dealing with Hollywood or acting in general; it's one of the reasons I held off on watching this and films like "Sunset Blvd." for so long ("Sunset" by the way is an INCREDIBLE picture). Living in Los Angeles, the magic of watching a film dealing with things far away from your normal life is missing, and watching other people live and portray that profession hits too close to home in some respects. But in the end, a great film is a great film and I do find that great films about acting are sometimes better than the average great film.
Selden meets Lockwood after he falls into her car running away from adoring fans. They get along sourly at first with Selden being nonplussed by Lockwood's repeated jokes about her aspirations in theatre (serious acting). Even when Lockwood, the biggest star in Hollywood, repeatedly tracks her down to romance her, she shrugs him off. All I know is if say Natalie Portman and I met somehow and she was all about what I was offering, I'd say yes and take that no questions asked, both for the personal attraction and because of the professional opportunity.
I so dig the old Hollywood studio system, especially when it's portrayed in films. Guys dressed up clowns having a smoke with guys dressed up as astronauts while guys dressed up as pirates make fun of guys dressed up as hobos. That's what the movies are all about. Here we see Lockwood and Brown walk across a huge sound stage where due to the silent nature of these pictures, multiple movies can be filmed all at once. So we first see them travel through a "Darkest Africa" scene full of natives with giant scary wooden masks (horribly racist, but hey I bet Disney still has those stereotypes on their Jungle Cruise), then past a bleacher set full of cheering college students, and finally past a stagecoach fight scene from a Western. Absolutely love that stuff.
My sister took dance for a few years and I use to go to her recitals. We'd sit in a dark auditorium for what seemed like hours, but was probably only one, and watch a bunch of different dance routines. Sitting there watching routine after routine, my body and mind would enter an almost zen like boredom. At that point the advanced dancers would come out to do their stuff and the combination of darkness, Enya/Enigma music, and fairly complicated dance moves brought me an amazing sense of serenity. I even wanted to try dancing myself after that, but my mother justifiably told me that was a bad idea.
Next - "Lincoln" on Monday, November 19th.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Skyfall - James Bond Does Home Alone, Seriously
When Daniel Craig started playing James Bond in 2006's "Casino Royale", he stunned the naysayers calling him "James Blond" by spearheading one of the better received Bond movies ever. His Bond was less of a charmer and more of a bulldog and in this "Bourne Identity"-loving world, it seemed like the perfect next step for the evolution of Bond to take. Then came "Quantum Of Solace", a movie with such fast, sloppy cinematography, I turned it off halfway through. Suddenly, the future of James Bond was in doubt and the good will built up from six years was in danger of running out. But as it turns out, "Skyfall" is getting some of the best notices of a James Bond film ever, shattering box office records, and even being talked about for Academy Award nominations. And although I wouldn't go that far, I would say that out of the seven or so Bond films I've seen, this is certainly the best and the one that comes closest to actually playing out like a movie/story than just a collection of spy vignettes.
We start in media res with Bond in Istanbul tracking down the theft of a list of the identities of MI6's undercover agents. After some awesome action sequences, Bond is accidentally shot by fellow agent Eve (Naomie Harris) when M (Judi Dench) orders her to take a shot at the bad guy despite Bond being possibly in the way. Bond falls to his death over a waterfall and life moves on in England with that presumption. But this is only twenty minutes into a one hundred forty-three minute film so he's actually just hiding out somewhere in the Pacific, having sex, drinking, and relishing in "retirement" before he rushes back to England after seeing MI6 blown up on the news. After some action in China, Bond tracks down Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), a former British agent who is gunning for M, after she left him captured by the Chinese many years ago. Thus, the second half of the film becomes more of a one on one battle between Bond and Silva, with M in the middle, finally coming to an end at Bond's childhood estate, "Skyfall".
My biggest problems with the last two Bond films were the unclear action sequences and lack of a cohesive plot both of which are solved with "Skyfall". First off, the action sequences we do get (and we get a lot of the two hour-plus running time) are frickin' amazing. Starting with Bond using a caterpillar bulldozer to open up a train like a can opener, to Bond fighting some unnamed henchmen in a Komodo dragon pit, to Bond chasing Silva through the packed London Underground, to the final battle at "Skyfall" manor, there's just a ton of awesome set pieces here, still fast and kinetic, but much easier to follow. The MI6 undercover agent is list is nothing extraordinarily original, but it does provide the necessary emotional attachment for the audience to get involved in Bond's need to get it back before more agents die. Craig's Bond, while charismatic, doesn't have the same presence as Connery's or Brosnan's and is more of an unstoppable force that the wilder characters and plot points revolve around. "Skyfall" uses that to its advantage by having Bond almost killed and then come back much too soon for active field duty. We finally get a vulnerable Bond, one who just might not be able to survive everything that is thrown at him.
Bardem's Silva doesn't appear until over one hour into the film, but when he does, the film becomes something totally different and better immediately. Le Chiffre from "Casino Royale" was on the verge to being a classic Bond villain (what with his damaged eye and tears of blood), but Silva is Blofeld levels of awesome. Formerly a Bond-level British agent, Silva was left to rot by M in a Chinese prison, withstanding torture for thirteen months before trying to commit suicide using his hidden cyanide capsule. Unfortunately, the pill was defective and instead of a merciful death, Silva's jaw was destroyed, basically leaving him with a prosthetic mouth. We're introduced to him when Bond is tied up after following Silva's involuntary mistress to his secret island base and it's a wonderful, memorable introduction with Silva appearing at the far end of a large room, giving a long monologue as he walks closer and closer to Bond and the camera. There's some homosexual subtext in this scene, but it's unclear whether Silva is sexually attracted to Bond or if he's just playing with his mind. He's certainly obsessed with M and he stages almost every action sequence in the second half of the film just to get close enough to see the terror in her face as he kills her. Soon Bardem will be able to form a four-piece rock band of awesome villains now that Silva joins drummer Anton Chigurh on lead vocals.
This is the fiftieth anniversary of the Bond franchise and there are a ton of references to past Bond films, possibly too many if you ask me. We just went over the same sort of deal when "Casino Royale" came out and a new era of Bond began, so it is way too soon to be going back to the well of "Look how our new Bond is different from the old one" with Q (Ben Whishaw) disparaging the concept of an exploding pen to the final revelation of just who Eve is, I'm ready for the Bond franchise to stop looking towards the past, especially since the status quo at the end of "Skyfall" leaves me very excited for what's to come. What does work are the small revelations we get about Bond's past. There are no overt answers, but we are again reminded that Bond was an orphan and it is revealed he grew up at a large manor in Scotland overseen by ALBERT FINNEY (HELL YEAH). I don't need any more Bond legacy jokes, but it will be interesting to see if the next few movies touch upon Bond's past. With every other villain being a former MI6 agent lately, having a long-lost relative of Bond's or some other old friend as the next bad guy would work very well.
Rating - 4.25 out of 5 stars
Random Thoughts -
The Bond series reminds me of "Doctor Who" in the sense that both franchises are British and fell into disrepair in the late 80's/early 90's before become huge successes again. Doctor Who does something Bond should do, which explain different actors playing the part over fifty years as the Doctor character dying and regenerating into another personality. I'm not the one who thought of this, but "James Bond 007" should just be the moniker given to different agents. It would be amazing if when Craig decides he's done with the franchise, he dies in the opening sequence of his last film. I mean really dies. And after the always spectacular credits we see M assigning the 007 James Bond codename to the next agent. Then in ten years you could have a special film with all the old Bonds reuniting to defeat some evil force. Connery and Moore would be super old and Dalton's getting up there too, but I think it'd work.
There's an all-star cast here, with Craig, Bardem, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, and ALBERT FINNEY. It's nice to see Bond becoming a popular franchise again like the Marvel films, where great actors sign up for a payday and the chance to be in an awesome spectacle of a film. Dench has played M since "Goldeneye", but this is the first time she's been such a large player in the story. I saw this as a detriment however, since I find her character uninteresting, possibly due to the way she's changed film to film without any sort of rhyme or reason. She's portrayed as an incredibly useless leader, always making mistakes and being on the wrong pulse of things. In the past two films she's horrified by Bond killing without authorization (despite him having a LICENSE TO KILL), but here she's incredibly callous towards the lives of Bond and his fellow agents. Hell, that's why Silva wants to kill her in the first place. I didn't buy any sort of mutual respect between Bond and this M, despite Dench playing the role fine every time.
ALBERT FINNEY again gets the "with Albert Finney" credit at the start of the film and shows up near the end much like he did in "The Bourne Ultimatum". I love FINNEY because in franchise films like these, he can just appear as a random never before mentioned character and every time it just works. It's like "Of course Albert Finney would be "so and so", because he's ALBERT FINNEY". I love ALBERT FINNEY.
"Skyfall" is very much reminiscent of the Nolan Batman films, in both positive and negative ways. Some of the plot points here (Bond believed dead, crazy villain who just wants to see the world burn, stoic hero) seem like direct copies of those films, but it's probably more an example of Hollywood doing everything "The Dark Knight way" right now, rather than director Sam Mendes purposefully cribbing from Nolan's work. Anyway it does work, and it's fine for the moment to have Bond be that sort of film series, although it certainly won't work for every franchise (psst. Superman psst.).
The final set piece here is basically James Bond does "Home Alone". Bond and M are hiding out at "Skyfall" with ALBERT FINNEY and have had Q leave clues for Silva to follow them there. The three of them spend the afternoon devising traps for the Silva's mooks to stumble into when attacking and it is AWSOME. It's literally what if Kevin McAllister had tried to brutalize Harry and Marv. It's also a wonderfully shot sequence with the dusk of Scotland slowly turning into complete darkness. It's very suspenseful and makes me want to pop in "Home Alone" for the first time in more than a decade, just in time for Christmas. I just wish someone had said "That was the sound of a tool chest falling down the stairs".
Next - Thursday the 15th, "Singin' In The Rain"
We start in media res with Bond in Istanbul tracking down the theft of a list of the identities of MI6's undercover agents. After some awesome action sequences, Bond is accidentally shot by fellow agent Eve (Naomie Harris) when M (Judi Dench) orders her to take a shot at the bad guy despite Bond being possibly in the way. Bond falls to his death over a waterfall and life moves on in England with that presumption. But this is only twenty minutes into a one hundred forty-three minute film so he's actually just hiding out somewhere in the Pacific, having sex, drinking, and relishing in "retirement" before he rushes back to England after seeing MI6 blown up on the news. After some action in China, Bond tracks down Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), a former British agent who is gunning for M, after she left him captured by the Chinese many years ago. Thus, the second half of the film becomes more of a one on one battle between Bond and Silva, with M in the middle, finally coming to an end at Bond's childhood estate, "Skyfall".
My biggest problems with the last two Bond films were the unclear action sequences and lack of a cohesive plot both of which are solved with "Skyfall". First off, the action sequences we do get (and we get a lot of the two hour-plus running time) are frickin' amazing. Starting with Bond using a caterpillar bulldozer to open up a train like a can opener, to Bond fighting some unnamed henchmen in a Komodo dragon pit, to Bond chasing Silva through the packed London Underground, to the final battle at "Skyfall" manor, there's just a ton of awesome set pieces here, still fast and kinetic, but much easier to follow. The MI6 undercover agent is list is nothing extraordinarily original, but it does provide the necessary emotional attachment for the audience to get involved in Bond's need to get it back before more agents die. Craig's Bond, while charismatic, doesn't have the same presence as Connery's or Brosnan's and is more of an unstoppable force that the wilder characters and plot points revolve around. "Skyfall" uses that to its advantage by having Bond almost killed and then come back much too soon for active field duty. We finally get a vulnerable Bond, one who just might not be able to survive everything that is thrown at him.
Bardem's Silva doesn't appear until over one hour into the film, but when he does, the film becomes something totally different and better immediately. Le Chiffre from "Casino Royale" was on the verge to being a classic Bond villain (what with his damaged eye and tears of blood), but Silva is Blofeld levels of awesome. Formerly a Bond-level British agent, Silva was left to rot by M in a Chinese prison, withstanding torture for thirteen months before trying to commit suicide using his hidden cyanide capsule. Unfortunately, the pill was defective and instead of a merciful death, Silva's jaw was destroyed, basically leaving him with a prosthetic mouth. We're introduced to him when Bond is tied up after following Silva's involuntary mistress to his secret island base and it's a wonderful, memorable introduction with Silva appearing at the far end of a large room, giving a long monologue as he walks closer and closer to Bond and the camera. There's some homosexual subtext in this scene, but it's unclear whether Silva is sexually attracted to Bond or if he's just playing with his mind. He's certainly obsessed with M and he stages almost every action sequence in the second half of the film just to get close enough to see the terror in her face as he kills her. Soon Bardem will be able to form a four-piece rock band of awesome villains now that Silva joins drummer Anton Chigurh on lead vocals.
This is the fiftieth anniversary of the Bond franchise and there are a ton of references to past Bond films, possibly too many if you ask me. We just went over the same sort of deal when "Casino Royale" came out and a new era of Bond began, so it is way too soon to be going back to the well of "Look how our new Bond is different from the old one" with Q (Ben Whishaw) disparaging the concept of an exploding pen to the final revelation of just who Eve is, I'm ready for the Bond franchise to stop looking towards the past, especially since the status quo at the end of "Skyfall" leaves me very excited for what's to come. What does work are the small revelations we get about Bond's past. There are no overt answers, but we are again reminded that Bond was an orphan and it is revealed he grew up at a large manor in Scotland overseen by ALBERT FINNEY (HELL YEAH). I don't need any more Bond legacy jokes, but it will be interesting to see if the next few movies touch upon Bond's past. With every other villain being a former MI6 agent lately, having a long-lost relative of Bond's or some other old friend as the next bad guy would work very well.
Rating - 4.25 out of 5 stars
Random Thoughts -
The Bond series reminds me of "Doctor Who" in the sense that both franchises are British and fell into disrepair in the late 80's/early 90's before become huge successes again. Doctor Who does something Bond should do, which explain different actors playing the part over fifty years as the Doctor character dying and regenerating into another personality. I'm not the one who thought of this, but "James Bond 007" should just be the moniker given to different agents. It would be amazing if when Craig decides he's done with the franchise, he dies in the opening sequence of his last film. I mean really dies. And after the always spectacular credits we see M assigning the 007 James Bond codename to the next agent. Then in ten years you could have a special film with all the old Bonds reuniting to defeat some evil force. Connery and Moore would be super old and Dalton's getting up there too, but I think it'd work.
There's an all-star cast here, with Craig, Bardem, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, and ALBERT FINNEY. It's nice to see Bond becoming a popular franchise again like the Marvel films, where great actors sign up for a payday and the chance to be in an awesome spectacle of a film. Dench has played M since "Goldeneye", but this is the first time she's been such a large player in the story. I saw this as a detriment however, since I find her character uninteresting, possibly due to the way she's changed film to film without any sort of rhyme or reason. She's portrayed as an incredibly useless leader, always making mistakes and being on the wrong pulse of things. In the past two films she's horrified by Bond killing without authorization (despite him having a LICENSE TO KILL), but here she's incredibly callous towards the lives of Bond and his fellow agents. Hell, that's why Silva wants to kill her in the first place. I didn't buy any sort of mutual respect between Bond and this M, despite Dench playing the role fine every time.
ALBERT FINNEY again gets the "with Albert Finney" credit at the start of the film and shows up near the end much like he did in "The Bourne Ultimatum". I love FINNEY because in franchise films like these, he can just appear as a random never before mentioned character and every time it just works. It's like "Of course Albert Finney would be "so and so", because he's ALBERT FINNEY". I love ALBERT FINNEY.
"Skyfall" is very much reminiscent of the Nolan Batman films, in both positive and negative ways. Some of the plot points here (Bond believed dead, crazy villain who just wants to see the world burn, stoic hero) seem like direct copies of those films, but it's probably more an example of Hollywood doing everything "The Dark Knight way" right now, rather than director Sam Mendes purposefully cribbing from Nolan's work. Anyway it does work, and it's fine for the moment to have Bond be that sort of film series, although it certainly won't work for every franchise (psst. Superman psst.).
The final set piece here is basically James Bond does "Home Alone". Bond and M are hiding out at "Skyfall" with ALBERT FINNEY and have had Q leave clues for Silva to follow them there. The three of them spend the afternoon devising traps for the Silva's mooks to stumble into when attacking and it is AWSOME. It's literally what if Kevin McAllister had tried to brutalize Harry and Marv. It's also a wonderfully shot sequence with the dusk of Scotland slowly turning into complete darkness. It's very suspenseful and makes me want to pop in "Home Alone" for the first time in more than a decade, just in time for Christmas. I just wish someone had said "That was the sound of a tool chest falling down the stairs".
Next - Thursday the 15th, "Singin' In The Rain"
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World - The Password Is Whatever
I know it's a flaw, but I form unwavering opinions on entertainment even if I end up never seeing them. Whether it be a movie preview, television commercial, or even just an overheard synopsis, I know what I like and will go to great lengths not to see things that don't sound promising. "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" started off as one of those movies. When it was released in 2010 I put it on my mind's "Do Not Want" list for many reasons, some of which were;
A) It stars Michael Cera who is great on "Arrested Development", but meh in everything else.
B) It's based on a graphic novel series that is not about superheroes (Why even have pictures?)
C) It looked like a 21st century video gamer's wet dream.
Now despite taking unnecessary glee from the dismal business "Scott Pilgrim" did at the box office, I've only heard good things about it over the past two years. The director, Edgar Wright was already responsible for some of my favorite things ("Spaced", "Shaun Of The Dead", "Hot Fuzz", the upcoming "World's End") and most of the twenty-something cast has gone on to become standouts in this current generation of up and comers (Cera, Anna Kendrick, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Alison Pill, "Captain America" Chris Evans). So I knew it was only a matter of time before I bit the bullet and checked it out.
Consensus - It's good.
Set in Toronto, Scott Pilgrim is a 23-year old bass player for the unknown band "Sex Bob-omb" (a play on the name of a Super Mario villain) who shares a bed with his gay, deadpan roommate, Wallace and is dating Knives Chou, a 17-year old high school student. He runs into newly arrived American, Ramona Flowers at a party and falls head over heels in lust with her setting into motion the plot of Scott facing off with Ramona's Seven Evil Exes, a league of her ex-boyfriends (and girlfriend). This is a world much like our own, just more influenced by comic books and video games, so we get visual flourishes like sound effects that are written out on screen when we hear their noise as well as fights that end with the loser turning into a bunch of Canadian coins (the number of which depends on the difficulty of the fight). Once we accept that these things happen (and the characters don't comment on them at all), it's easy to just go along for the ride and enjoy everything Edgar Wright brings to the overall experience.
Right from the opening shot of the Universal Studios logo remade as a video game start screen, this is a film that is full of flash and style. It's the definition of a 21st century film with a ton of postmodern references. I'd consider it first a romantic comedy, but it's also full of super intense action sequences with knowing nods to classic video games as Scott battles the seven exes. The pace is extremely quick (ADD-like) which gets exhausting by the time Scott faces the final boss, but it was still fun to see what type of things Wright would throw in (like a pee bar icon that appears in the upper right hand corner of the screen when Scott enters a restroom; it empties as he does his business). And while the story does revolve around Scott encountering the seven exes, it's also full of quiet downplayed scenes dealing with the lives of young people in the today's day and age. In a way, "Scott Pilgrim" is almost like opening presents on your birthday or Christmas morning; there's a ton of mystery gifts waiting for you and while you may be able to guess one or two, there's definitely going to be a few things that throw you for a loop.
Because the world of the film is video game based, there is a problem with stakes and making us care about the plot. Most of the characters other than Scott have no real arc, including Ramona who is just as fleshed out as Super Mario's Princess Peach (which is to say not very much). The video game influence extends to Scott dying during the last battle which is treated like a "Game Over", after which we find that he's able to pull a "Groundhog Day" and get as many restarts as he'd like, as long he picks "Continue". There's no real danger or suspense of whether Scott will come out victorious, but at the same time I didn't find the conflict super important to being with. The battles are fun enough, but start to get repetitive by the end. But again, it's not the plot, but all the side garnishes which make this film fun to watch.
I've never seen a film that brings to mind the experience of reading a comic or playing a video game more. This is how a lot of people wish life was and it's certainly amusing to experience it for a couple of hours. Edgar Wright is the real star of the show here; he always does a wonderful job with attention to detail and the big picture here is astounding. "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" is a new type of picture and while I in no way want to see every movie become something like this, it does its job well. It's super quirky and full of tons of characters I didn't get around to mentioning and even you don't know video games at all and much of this doesn't make a lick of sense to you, trust me that it's worth seeing and will explain itself by the five minute mark.
Rating - 4.25 out of 5 stars
Random Thoughts -
"Scott Pilgrim Vs The World" is a great example of 21st century detachment and need for immediate gratification, but I think it's also trying to comment on the absurdity of those concepts as well. Everything moves very fast and the characters spend more time commenting on the situations rather than interacting. Every group scene has side characters apathetically commenting on music or some other pop culture example and the seventh ex, Gideon Graves complains about how he spent so much time (two whole hours!) tracking down the other exes to send them against Scott.
Michael Cera is actually really good in this which surprised me since he's known for doing the same quiet, nervous guy in every film. His Scott seems more in control of the situation than any previous role I've seen and that in turn made him more endearing. He's also not a totally good guy at times, but Cera actually displays a likable quality that kept me on his side. After the catastrophe that was "Juno" (don't get me started) I had sworn off anything that seemed overly quirky, but Cera is actually just one of a ton of well done performances here, including Kieran Culkin as Wallace and Allison Pill as Scott's drummer, Kim. "Juno" tried to have the same detachment and hip dialogue while telling a semi-serious story with real consequences which didn't work at all for me, but "Scott Pilgrim" is the perfect vehicle for that sort of thing.
The randomness of this film includes a scene where Scott comes home to his apartment after a date with Ramona and tells Wallace about what happened while the "Seinfeld" incidental music plays along with a laugh track punctuating some pretty cheesy jokes. I love stuff like this and it reminded me of senior year of college, where I had to direct a short student written play. I chose one that had some horribly corny jokes (not on purpose I later found out) and decided to portray it as a lousy 80's sitcom, complete with the "Perfect Strangers" music introducing the scene and having another student sit in the audience and laugh loudly at every joke. When my teacher asked how I came to the idea of directing it that way, I had to BS my way through some explanation about the repetitiveness of modern culture or something. But yeah, I love things like that.
Ramona's seven exes is a fun concept and each of them are entertaining in different ways. They're treated like bosses of a video game and are as follows:
1) Matthew Patel, who dated Ramona for 1.5 weeks in the 7th grade. He's Indian which means he has mystical powers and breaks into a Bollywood-inspired song and dance routine after attacking Scott during a Sex Bob-omb gig at a battle of the bands.
2) Lucus Lee (Chris Evans), a skateboard pro turned douche bag action star (reportedly based on the author's experiences with Jason Lee). He uses his stunt doubles to fight Scott for him before crashing and burning while trying a dangerous 'board trick.
3) Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh), a rival bassist who is dating Scott's ex-girlfriend. He's vegan which means he has super telekinetic powers, until Scott tricks him into drinking coffee flavored with half-and-half.
4) "Roxy" Richter, a remnant from Ramona's brief lesbian phase who is defeated when Ramona tips off Scott to touch the back of Roxy's kneecap, causing her to collapse in a fit of orgasmic ecstasy.
5 and 6) The Katayanagi Twins who face off against Sex Bob-omb in the semi-finals of the battle of the bands, using their Japanese techno music as a weapon.
7) Gideon Graves (Jason Schwartzman), the founder of the League of Ramona's Evil Exes and owner of a major music club.
There's also a final bonus boss, Mega Scott, who is presumably a super evil version of Scott himself, but turns out to be exactly like him and they spend their time chilling instead of fighting.
Next - "Skyfall", the morning of Tuesday, the 13th.
A) It stars Michael Cera who is great on "Arrested Development", but meh in everything else.
B) It's based on a graphic novel series that is not about superheroes (Why even have pictures?)
C) It looked like a 21st century video gamer's wet dream.
Now despite taking unnecessary glee from the dismal business "Scott Pilgrim" did at the box office, I've only heard good things about it over the past two years. The director, Edgar Wright was already responsible for some of my favorite things ("Spaced", "Shaun Of The Dead", "Hot Fuzz", the upcoming "World's End") and most of the twenty-something cast has gone on to become standouts in this current generation of up and comers (Cera, Anna Kendrick, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Alison Pill, "Captain America" Chris Evans). So I knew it was only a matter of time before I bit the bullet and checked it out.
Consensus - It's good.
Set in Toronto, Scott Pilgrim is a 23-year old bass player for the unknown band "Sex Bob-omb" (a play on the name of a Super Mario villain) who shares a bed with his gay, deadpan roommate, Wallace and is dating Knives Chou, a 17-year old high school student. He runs into newly arrived American, Ramona Flowers at a party and falls head over heels in lust with her setting into motion the plot of Scott facing off with Ramona's Seven Evil Exes, a league of her ex-boyfriends (and girlfriend). This is a world much like our own, just more influenced by comic books and video games, so we get visual flourishes like sound effects that are written out on screen when we hear their noise as well as fights that end with the loser turning into a bunch of Canadian coins (the number of which depends on the difficulty of the fight). Once we accept that these things happen (and the characters don't comment on them at all), it's easy to just go along for the ride and enjoy everything Edgar Wright brings to the overall experience.
Right from the opening shot of the Universal Studios logo remade as a video game start screen, this is a film that is full of flash and style. It's the definition of a 21st century film with a ton of postmodern references. I'd consider it first a romantic comedy, but it's also full of super intense action sequences with knowing nods to classic video games as Scott battles the seven exes. The pace is extremely quick (ADD-like) which gets exhausting by the time Scott faces the final boss, but it was still fun to see what type of things Wright would throw in (like a pee bar icon that appears in the upper right hand corner of the screen when Scott enters a restroom; it empties as he does his business). And while the story does revolve around Scott encountering the seven exes, it's also full of quiet downplayed scenes dealing with the lives of young people in the today's day and age. In a way, "Scott Pilgrim" is almost like opening presents on your birthday or Christmas morning; there's a ton of mystery gifts waiting for you and while you may be able to guess one or two, there's definitely going to be a few things that throw you for a loop.
Because the world of the film is video game based, there is a problem with stakes and making us care about the plot. Most of the characters other than Scott have no real arc, including Ramona who is just as fleshed out as Super Mario's Princess Peach (which is to say not very much). The video game influence extends to Scott dying during the last battle which is treated like a "Game Over", after which we find that he's able to pull a "Groundhog Day" and get as many restarts as he'd like, as long he picks "Continue". There's no real danger or suspense of whether Scott will come out victorious, but at the same time I didn't find the conflict super important to being with. The battles are fun enough, but start to get repetitive by the end. But again, it's not the plot, but all the side garnishes which make this film fun to watch.
I've never seen a film that brings to mind the experience of reading a comic or playing a video game more. This is how a lot of people wish life was and it's certainly amusing to experience it for a couple of hours. Edgar Wright is the real star of the show here; he always does a wonderful job with attention to detail and the big picture here is astounding. "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" is a new type of picture and while I in no way want to see every movie become something like this, it does its job well. It's super quirky and full of tons of characters I didn't get around to mentioning and even you don't know video games at all and much of this doesn't make a lick of sense to you, trust me that it's worth seeing and will explain itself by the five minute mark.
Rating - 4.25 out of 5 stars
Random Thoughts -
"Scott Pilgrim Vs The World" is a great example of 21st century detachment and need for immediate gratification, but I think it's also trying to comment on the absurdity of those concepts as well. Everything moves very fast and the characters spend more time commenting on the situations rather than interacting. Every group scene has side characters apathetically commenting on music or some other pop culture example and the seventh ex, Gideon Graves complains about how he spent so much time (two whole hours!) tracking down the other exes to send them against Scott.
Michael Cera is actually really good in this which surprised me since he's known for doing the same quiet, nervous guy in every film. His Scott seems more in control of the situation than any previous role I've seen and that in turn made him more endearing. He's also not a totally good guy at times, but Cera actually displays a likable quality that kept me on his side. After the catastrophe that was "Juno" (don't get me started) I had sworn off anything that seemed overly quirky, but Cera is actually just one of a ton of well done performances here, including Kieran Culkin as Wallace and Allison Pill as Scott's drummer, Kim. "Juno" tried to have the same detachment and hip dialogue while telling a semi-serious story with real consequences which didn't work at all for me, but "Scott Pilgrim" is the perfect vehicle for that sort of thing.
The randomness of this film includes a scene where Scott comes home to his apartment after a date with Ramona and tells Wallace about what happened while the "Seinfeld" incidental music plays along with a laugh track punctuating some pretty cheesy jokes. I love stuff like this and it reminded me of senior year of college, where I had to direct a short student written play. I chose one that had some horribly corny jokes (not on purpose I later found out) and decided to portray it as a lousy 80's sitcom, complete with the "Perfect Strangers" music introducing the scene and having another student sit in the audience and laugh loudly at every joke. When my teacher asked how I came to the idea of directing it that way, I had to BS my way through some explanation about the repetitiveness of modern culture or something. But yeah, I love things like that.
Ramona's seven exes is a fun concept and each of them are entertaining in different ways. They're treated like bosses of a video game and are as follows:
1) Matthew Patel, who dated Ramona for 1.5 weeks in the 7th grade. He's Indian which means he has mystical powers and breaks into a Bollywood-inspired song and dance routine after attacking Scott during a Sex Bob-omb gig at a battle of the bands.
2) Lucus Lee (Chris Evans), a skateboard pro turned douche bag action star (reportedly based on the author's experiences with Jason Lee). He uses his stunt doubles to fight Scott for him before crashing and burning while trying a dangerous 'board trick.
3) Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh), a rival bassist who is dating Scott's ex-girlfriend. He's vegan which means he has super telekinetic powers, until Scott tricks him into drinking coffee flavored with half-and-half.
4) "Roxy" Richter, a remnant from Ramona's brief lesbian phase who is defeated when Ramona tips off Scott to touch the back of Roxy's kneecap, causing her to collapse in a fit of orgasmic ecstasy.
5 and 6) The Katayanagi Twins who face off against Sex Bob-omb in the semi-finals of the battle of the bands, using their Japanese techno music as a weapon.
7) Gideon Graves (Jason Schwartzman), the founder of the League of Ramona's Evil Exes and owner of a major music club.
There's also a final bonus boss, Mega Scott, who is presumably a super evil version of Scott himself, but turns out to be exactly like him and they spend their time chilling instead of fighting.
Next - "Skyfall", the morning of Tuesday, the 13th.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Classic Phil Review Number Five - My Best Friend
Phil note from 2012 - Here's another of my reviews from three years ago. At the time it was rumored Wes Anderson was writing an American remake of this; obviously that never happened.
Word on the street that Wes Anderson's next project is a remake of the french film "Mon Meilleur Ami" aka "My Best Friend". Released in 2006 this film apparently was noticed by foreign movie fans when it was first released in America, but I have no recollection of it. The plot revolves around a rich antique dealer, Francois who is confronted by his gallery partner and acquaintances at a dinner one night after attending the sparsely attended funeral of one of his former clients. Upon remarking on the fact that only seven friends & family (including himself) showed up at this memorial, the rest of his dining partner turn on him and declare he'll have no one at his funeral. Turns out he has no friends. When he protests, his smoking hot partner Catherine bets him the 200,000 euro ancient Greek statue he had just purchased at an auction that he can't produce a best friend in 10 days.
This leads him to discover that French people are real assholes when encounters various people and tries to befriend them. One person randomly keeps popping into his life, a taxi driver named Bruno. Noticing that Bruno is the gregarious type, he asks for tips on making friends. This leads to some sitcomy like adventures until Francois realizes that he's becoming friends with Bruno. They see a soccer match, they meet each other's families, all seems awesome. He blows it however when tries to go to far in proving to Catherine and his asshole acquaintances that he has made a buddy. This reveals to Bruno that their friendship was the result of a bet which leads to the last half hour of the film as Francois shows everyone he's learned his lesson.
I have mixed feelings about this film. It was enjoyable enough and the performances were good all around. I chuckled a few times at some funny bits, but for the most part the comedy seemed to be at the level of your basic Hollywood screenplay. It wasn't cliche, but there were moments where characters' reactions or witty remarks made it seem so. It was much better than the average processed comedy coming out every week here though. Francois' journey for a friend brings up some interesting thinking points and Bruno has a deep enough backstory that slowly leaks out.
Right from the get go I was struck by how assholeish the majority of the characters were in this movie. Francois is supposably so cynical, selfish, and work-oriented that he hasn't accumulated any friends over his 50 years of life. However, when that's revealed 10 minutes or so into the movie at a dinner, I was feeling sympathy toward him instead of scorn. He hadn't come off as a jerk really, and all of a sudden these French antique dealers are saying how much they hate him, even though they spend a ton of time with him. It was kind of ridiculous. He sees a woman at the opposite end of the table and asks his partner who that is, since she's kind of cute. Catherine, his partner, responds that it's her girlfriend. Francois is kind of taken aback because it turns out he didn't know she was a lesbian. This is the boiling point which leads everyone to personally attack him. We are constantly reminded by different characters that Francois has no friends because he's an asshole, but everytime he tries to have a civil conversation with either his acquaintances or a stranger, he gets insulted. The only time he really insults someone himself is during the part of the movie where he's attending find-a-friend functions to find a best friend quickly. He's approached by the geekiest man ever who tries to bond with Francois over their mutual lack of friends. Francois pretty much ignores him and walks away, but the guy was a total spaz. He tracks down his best friend from junior high who also looks like a spaz and says he hated him in junior high as well.
Bruno is a trivia buff who knows a bunch of useless crap, but he gets too nervous everytime he auditions for the French "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire". He's friendly to everyone he meets, but has no friends either. He says at one point to Francois that having no friends and having everyone as your friend is the same thing. He seems like a great guy and the scenes of him and Francois hanging out are really fun to watch. This movie falls into the trap of having that "person A does something to person B for the wrong reason, but ends up better because of it, person B finds out and doesn't want anything to do with person B" cliche that almost every movie has. It's not as bad in this one, but still somewhat forced.
The vase Francois is attracted to so strongly, strongly enough to pay 200 grand for, is an ancient Greek vase in tribute of friendship. He outbids a couple of other people for it, including one rich TV producer who offers to give him a blank check for it. The vase was made for a man in honor of his dead friend, a man who was so saddened that he filled the vase with his tears. Achilles and Patroclus are the focus of the vase which is weird since they were cousins who had sex with each other, which is a little more than friendship.
The major weakness in this movie is that the story is filled with minor plot holes and events that never get followed up on. Catherine is pretty much the 3rd main character in the movie, but other than knowing she's a lesbian and Francois' partner, she only seems to exist to move the plot along. Francois' daughter appears early on having a sneezing fit. Then it turns out she lives with her father, but parties every night. When she meets Bruno, who stayed overnight at Francois' house after a bout of drinking, he helps her discover a food allergy that had tormented her throughout her life. This makes Francois appreciate Bruno even more, but we barely know his daughter and the only time we've really seen her is when she's agreeing that her father is a jerk with no friends. There is one character who's purpose might have gone right over my head. Francois has a fuckbuddy it seems, who's actually at the dinner where he's challeged to find a best friend. I don't know who she is, but apparently she wasn't his friend even though the only other times we see her are either after she's spent that night at Francois' place, at a party with him, and interupting his night of fun with Bruno in search for some sex. I don't know why a booty call would be interacting with his work acquaintances, but that's what happens. A stronger screenwriter and/or director would have either tightened the script and made every scene seem valuable.
I look forward to Wes Anderson's adaptation. I imagine he'll only take the basic story (Man is bet that he can't find a friend in 10 days) and work from there. This movie is very un-Wes Anderson, but the plot could be. He has a history of making unsympathetic characters the focus of his plots, which might've been a factor in his interest in this story. This original French version is somewhat pedestrian at times, but can be entertaining. It would appeal to the average moviewatcher as Saturday night DVD movie or something. Better this than "The Proposal".
Word on the street that Wes Anderson's next project is a remake of the french film "Mon Meilleur Ami" aka "My Best Friend". Released in 2006 this film apparently was noticed by foreign movie fans when it was first released in America, but I have no recollection of it. The plot revolves around a rich antique dealer, Francois who is confronted by his gallery partner and acquaintances at a dinner one night after attending the sparsely attended funeral of one of his former clients. Upon remarking on the fact that only seven friends & family (including himself) showed up at this memorial, the rest of his dining partner turn on him and declare he'll have no one at his funeral. Turns out he has no friends. When he protests, his smoking hot partner Catherine bets him the 200,000 euro ancient Greek statue he had just purchased at an auction that he can't produce a best friend in 10 days.
This leads him to discover that French people are real assholes when encounters various people and tries to befriend them. One person randomly keeps popping into his life, a taxi driver named Bruno. Noticing that Bruno is the gregarious type, he asks for tips on making friends. This leads to some sitcomy like adventures until Francois realizes that he's becoming friends with Bruno. They see a soccer match, they meet each other's families, all seems awesome. He blows it however when tries to go to far in proving to Catherine and his asshole acquaintances that he has made a buddy. This reveals to Bruno that their friendship was the result of a bet which leads to the last half hour of the film as Francois shows everyone he's learned his lesson.
I have mixed feelings about this film. It was enjoyable enough and the performances were good all around. I chuckled a few times at some funny bits, but for the most part the comedy seemed to be at the level of your basic Hollywood screenplay. It wasn't cliche, but there were moments where characters' reactions or witty remarks made it seem so. It was much better than the average processed comedy coming out every week here though. Francois' journey for a friend brings up some interesting thinking points and Bruno has a deep enough backstory that slowly leaks out.
Right from the get go I was struck by how assholeish the majority of the characters were in this movie. Francois is supposably so cynical, selfish, and work-oriented that he hasn't accumulated any friends over his 50 years of life. However, when that's revealed 10 minutes or so into the movie at a dinner, I was feeling sympathy toward him instead of scorn. He hadn't come off as a jerk really, and all of a sudden these French antique dealers are saying how much they hate him, even though they spend a ton of time with him. It was kind of ridiculous. He sees a woman at the opposite end of the table and asks his partner who that is, since she's kind of cute. Catherine, his partner, responds that it's her girlfriend. Francois is kind of taken aback because it turns out he didn't know she was a lesbian. This is the boiling point which leads everyone to personally attack him. We are constantly reminded by different characters that Francois has no friends because he's an asshole, but everytime he tries to have a civil conversation with either his acquaintances or a stranger, he gets insulted. The only time he really insults someone himself is during the part of the movie where he's attending find-a-friend functions to find a best friend quickly. He's approached by the geekiest man ever who tries to bond with Francois over their mutual lack of friends. Francois pretty much ignores him and walks away, but the guy was a total spaz. He tracks down his best friend from junior high who also looks like a spaz and says he hated him in junior high as well.
Bruno is a trivia buff who knows a bunch of useless crap, but he gets too nervous everytime he auditions for the French "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire". He's friendly to everyone he meets, but has no friends either. He says at one point to Francois that having no friends and having everyone as your friend is the same thing. He seems like a great guy and the scenes of him and Francois hanging out are really fun to watch. This movie falls into the trap of having that "person A does something to person B for the wrong reason, but ends up better because of it, person B finds out and doesn't want anything to do with person B" cliche that almost every movie has. It's not as bad in this one, but still somewhat forced.
The vase Francois is attracted to so strongly, strongly enough to pay 200 grand for, is an ancient Greek vase in tribute of friendship. He outbids a couple of other people for it, including one rich TV producer who offers to give him a blank check for it. The vase was made for a man in honor of his dead friend, a man who was so saddened that he filled the vase with his tears. Achilles and Patroclus are the focus of the vase which is weird since they were cousins who had sex with each other, which is a little more than friendship.
The major weakness in this movie is that the story is filled with minor plot holes and events that never get followed up on. Catherine is pretty much the 3rd main character in the movie, but other than knowing she's a lesbian and Francois' partner, she only seems to exist to move the plot along. Francois' daughter appears early on having a sneezing fit. Then it turns out she lives with her father, but parties every night. When she meets Bruno, who stayed overnight at Francois' house after a bout of drinking, he helps her discover a food allergy that had tormented her throughout her life. This makes Francois appreciate Bruno even more, but we barely know his daughter and the only time we've really seen her is when she's agreeing that her father is a jerk with no friends. There is one character who's purpose might have gone right over my head. Francois has a fuckbuddy it seems, who's actually at the dinner where he's challeged to find a best friend. I don't know who she is, but apparently she wasn't his friend even though the only other times we see her are either after she's spent that night at Francois' place, at a party with him, and interupting his night of fun with Bruno in search for some sex. I don't know why a booty call would be interacting with his work acquaintances, but that's what happens. A stronger screenwriter and/or director would have either tightened the script and made every scene seem valuable.
I look forward to Wes Anderson's adaptation. I imagine he'll only take the basic story (Man is bet that he can't find a friend in 10 days) and work from there. This movie is very un-Wes Anderson, but the plot could be. He has a history of making unsympathetic characters the focus of his plots, which might've been a factor in his interest in this story. This original French version is somewhat pedestrian at times, but can be entertaining. It would appeal to the average moviewatcher as Saturday night DVD movie or something. Better this than "The Proposal".
Tell No One - To Watch This Movie
Eight years ago, Alexandre Beck was knocked unconscious and was
unable to stop his wife Margot from being murdered by a serial killer.
Initially thought to be the prime suspect, the case has been long closed
and he's done his best to move on, focusing on his career as a
pediatrician. Suddenly, his life is turned upside down when two
long-buried bodies are found in the woods near the site of his wife's
death and the police find clues that lead them to suspect Alexandre.
Also, he beings receiving mysterious e-mails which direct him to a link
showing security cameras displaying his now-alive wife. Thus begins two
hours of non-stop, frantic, suspenseful awesomeness, that unfortunately
becomes a boring, unbelievable mess by the last half of the film.
We don't hear too much about foreign films unless they are spectacular and if they're too spectacular, Hollywood decides that a remake is necessary and that's when I get the urge to watch the original. "Tell No One" was a huge hit in France (Michael Caine believes it to be one of the best films he's ever seen), so it's no surprise Ben Affleck is thinking about making a remake as his next directorial project.
I knew this was a thriller, but I was pleasantly surprised by the first section of "Tell No One" which is straightforward look into how grief can effect the rest of a man's life. After a brief introduction showing the death of Margot, we meet Alexandre Beck in the present watching him go along with his life as well as he can, despite losing the love of his life in a brutal manner. Francois Cluzet as Alexandre does a masterful job of changing his body language in subtle ways, in order to convey the passage of time and differences to Alexandre's pre and post murder behavior. There is an utterly fantastic montage that begins with Alexandre reminiscing about meeting Margot as children and then moves onto their wedding, but then slowly starts to include scenes from Margot's funeral as well. I'm not an emotional guy, but this was very effective and gets the audience immediately on Alexandre's side. At this point in the film, I was also very impressed with its use of flashbacks, with them filling in the blanks in a believable and interesting manner. Even when the thriller aspects ramp up, the following surprises are smart and make sense when compared to what we already know. Then things seriously start to go off the cliff.
Slowly at first, with "Tell No One" becoming a copy of "The Fugitive" when Alexandre goes on the run from the police who now believe he's a mass murderer. This is a result of meddling by my least favorite plot device, the "shadowy organization" that has something to do with Margot's death and is now following Alexandre after finding out Margot may be alive. They frame Alexandre for the murder of one of Margot's friends and soon Alexandre is leading the police on a foot-chase on a freeway and hiding out with a local thug whose kid he once operated on. At this point, I was becoming frustrated, but was still interested in finding out what was actually going on. And at least the action scenes are well done (with moments that also bring to mind "Homeland" and "Taken"), but just like "Headhunters", "Tell No One" sets us up with a quality film and then decides to throw that all away for something that has been done a million times before. And then it gets awful.
I like "Law And Order SVU" when I've got nothing to do all week and can just crash and watch Netflix twenty-four/seven, but I've never thought that it was blow away television. I bet Michael Caine has never seen "SVU" so he found the final plot twists here incredibly satisfying, but after two hours of a racing, suspense film, I'm offended that the makers of this film decided to wrap things up as a simple pedophile revenge story. Mentioning a character in passing ninety minutes earlier, with no mention of their relationship to the murdered woman or what crimes they may have committed is not foreshadowing. It's lazy writing and is not satisfying in the least.
If you read my notes (and boy is it hard writing down notes while watching a foreign film (subtitles)), you'll see that for the first half I thought I was watching a five star movie, but by the end I HATED it. I literally wrote down things like "No stupid surprises" and then had to cross them out one hour later. When a film sets up mysterious circumstances they don't necessarily have to explain them, but if they decide to, I'd appreciate the explanation making some sense in the context of what we've just spent over two hours watching. I wanted to like this film, but "Tell No One" made it so hard to do so. At the same time, I do somewhat recommend it because parts of it are spectacular. Unfortunately, there are so many wrong turns that by the end "Tell No One" is lucky to be at least an average movie.
Rating - 2.5 out of 5 stars
Random Thoughts -
I was all ready to write some thoughts on how foreign films always seem to be awesome because we only hear about them if they're of amazing quality, but that doesn't seem appropriate right now. I will say that I wish American film studios would try and market the original version of these films to the general public as blockbusters or something rather than just remake them so they're easier to swallow for the American audience. There is literally no reason "Let The Right One In" had to be remade into a less interesting, less intelligent copy. But, I actually bet that Affleck will be able to make "Tell No One" better. Hopefully.
I really, really, really, really wish I could be interrogated by cops who think I committed a crime. If I actually did, I wouldn't be able to lie convincingly, but if I actually had no idea what they were talking about, I feel like I'd have so much fun arguing with them. Same thing if I was on trial in a courtroom. I wouldn't be able to stop myself from reacting to testimonies and witnesses and all that jazz. I go through life yearning to have to defend myself from what I consider unjust treatment, but unfortunately nothing ever gets that far and I'd feel stupid blowing up over some trivial arguement.
The opening scene is Margot and Alexandre in happier times at dinner with friends, with Otis Redding's version of "For Your Precious Love" playing in the background. Because I wasn't sure what I was hearing at first and Redding's voice is kind of gravelly, I thought I was hearing some French dude sing "Unchained Melody".
Every movie I've recently watched has had at least some nudity in it. Except "The Iron Giant" I think. I'm not complaining because it sure is a nice bonus, but you'd almost get the sense people have been OK walking around naked in public for the past forty years so.
I'm gonna start keeping track of actresses and roles I find especially attractive. In "The Last Picture Show", Ellen Burstyn is like prime Catherine Zeta-Jones levels of smoldering hotness and here Kristen Scott Thomas is again surprisingly ravishing.
Next - "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World", late Friday the 9th.
We don't hear too much about foreign films unless they are spectacular and if they're too spectacular, Hollywood decides that a remake is necessary and that's when I get the urge to watch the original. "Tell No One" was a huge hit in France (Michael Caine believes it to be one of the best films he's ever seen), so it's no surprise Ben Affleck is thinking about making a remake as his next directorial project.
I knew this was a thriller, but I was pleasantly surprised by the first section of "Tell No One" which is straightforward look into how grief can effect the rest of a man's life. After a brief introduction showing the death of Margot, we meet Alexandre Beck in the present watching him go along with his life as well as he can, despite losing the love of his life in a brutal manner. Francois Cluzet as Alexandre does a masterful job of changing his body language in subtle ways, in order to convey the passage of time and differences to Alexandre's pre and post murder behavior. There is an utterly fantastic montage that begins with Alexandre reminiscing about meeting Margot as children and then moves onto their wedding, but then slowly starts to include scenes from Margot's funeral as well. I'm not an emotional guy, but this was very effective and gets the audience immediately on Alexandre's side. At this point in the film, I was also very impressed with its use of flashbacks, with them filling in the blanks in a believable and interesting manner. Even when the thriller aspects ramp up, the following surprises are smart and make sense when compared to what we already know. Then things seriously start to go off the cliff.
Slowly at first, with "Tell No One" becoming a copy of "The Fugitive" when Alexandre goes on the run from the police who now believe he's a mass murderer. This is a result of meddling by my least favorite plot device, the "shadowy organization" that has something to do with Margot's death and is now following Alexandre after finding out Margot may be alive. They frame Alexandre for the murder of one of Margot's friends and soon Alexandre is leading the police on a foot-chase on a freeway and hiding out with a local thug whose kid he once operated on. At this point, I was becoming frustrated, but was still interested in finding out what was actually going on. And at least the action scenes are well done (with moments that also bring to mind "Homeland" and "Taken"), but just like "Headhunters", "Tell No One" sets us up with a quality film and then decides to throw that all away for something that has been done a million times before. And then it gets awful.
I like "Law And Order SVU" when I've got nothing to do all week and can just crash and watch Netflix twenty-four/seven, but I've never thought that it was blow away television. I bet Michael Caine has never seen "SVU" so he found the final plot twists here incredibly satisfying, but after two hours of a racing, suspense film, I'm offended that the makers of this film decided to wrap things up as a simple pedophile revenge story. Mentioning a character in passing ninety minutes earlier, with no mention of their relationship to the murdered woman or what crimes they may have committed is not foreshadowing. It's lazy writing and is not satisfying in the least.
If you read my notes (and boy is it hard writing down notes while watching a foreign film (subtitles)), you'll see that for the first half I thought I was watching a five star movie, but by the end I HATED it. I literally wrote down things like "No stupid surprises" and then had to cross them out one hour later. When a film sets up mysterious circumstances they don't necessarily have to explain them, but if they decide to, I'd appreciate the explanation making some sense in the context of what we've just spent over two hours watching. I wanted to like this film, but "Tell No One" made it so hard to do so. At the same time, I do somewhat recommend it because parts of it are spectacular. Unfortunately, there are so many wrong turns that by the end "Tell No One" is lucky to be at least an average movie.
Rating - 2.5 out of 5 stars
Random Thoughts -
I was all ready to write some thoughts on how foreign films always seem to be awesome because we only hear about them if they're of amazing quality, but that doesn't seem appropriate right now. I will say that I wish American film studios would try and market the original version of these films to the general public as blockbusters or something rather than just remake them so they're easier to swallow for the American audience. There is literally no reason "Let The Right One In" had to be remade into a less interesting, less intelligent copy. But, I actually bet that Affleck will be able to make "Tell No One" better. Hopefully.
I really, really, really, really wish I could be interrogated by cops who think I committed a crime. If I actually did, I wouldn't be able to lie convincingly, but if I actually had no idea what they were talking about, I feel like I'd have so much fun arguing with them. Same thing if I was on trial in a courtroom. I wouldn't be able to stop myself from reacting to testimonies and witnesses and all that jazz. I go through life yearning to have to defend myself from what I consider unjust treatment, but unfortunately nothing ever gets that far and I'd feel stupid blowing up over some trivial arguement.
The opening scene is Margot and Alexandre in happier times at dinner with friends, with Otis Redding's version of "For Your Precious Love" playing in the background. Because I wasn't sure what I was hearing at first and Redding's voice is kind of gravelly, I thought I was hearing some French dude sing "Unchained Melody".
Every movie I've recently watched has had at least some nudity in it. Except "The Iron Giant" I think. I'm not complaining because it sure is a nice bonus, but you'd almost get the sense people have been OK walking around naked in public for the past forty years so.
I'm gonna start keeping track of actresses and roles I find especially attractive. In "The Last Picture Show", Ellen Burstyn is like prime Catherine Zeta-Jones levels of smoldering hotness and here Kristen Scott Thomas is again surprisingly ravishing.
Next - "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World", late Friday the 9th.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
The Last Picture Show - The Quality Of A 2012 Cable Show
Episodic films are hard to do well. Hopefully, the vignettes will be entertaining enough on their own to keep your interest for two hours, or at the very least will come together into something more meaningful at the end. "American Graffiti" is able to pull this off because it takes place over one night so there's an immediate impact. "A Christmas Story" envelops the holiday season and does a wonderful job laying out an overview of a nine-year-old's life in 1940's Indiana. Peter Bogdanovich's "The Last Picture Show" has the hard sell of being set over a full calender year, and like real life, has characters go in and out, without worry of whether it's the beginning, middle, or end. Set in a dying Texas town between November 1951 until October 1952 (the senior year of H.S. for most of the main characters), "The Last Picture Show" would probably play better as a book of short stories, but it's still a pretty great movie.
It's strange watching "The Last Picture Show" for the first time in 2012 because there are now so many layers of nostalgia separating it from today's reality. Based on a semi-autobiographical novel written in 1966 by Larry McMurty (writer of "Hud" of my favorite films, and "Lonesome Dove" which I need to see), who was writing about life that took place 15 years ago. By the time the film came out, 20 years had passed and you can tell in the reviews by people like Roger Ebert that "The Last Picture Show" was able to stir up memories long thought eroded. When I watch it, I get a look at a world I've never known and will never be able to. In some ways, it's just as exotic as a foreign film with it's display of small town Texas life. There are a number of characters with their own intersecting plots, but the main action follows two high school athletes, Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges). Their home lives aren't touched upon much and the majority of the time we see them is at school or having fun. Sonny has a father-son relationship with Sam The Lion (Ben Johnson), owner of the local diner, pool hall, and movie theatre while Duane is in a heavy relationship with "the only attractive girl in school", Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepard).
In this time between World War 2 and Rock and Roll, we see a sleepy town just going through the motions. Year-round, the town is dusty and grimy with only the mute street sweeper (Timothy Bottoms' younger brother Sam) showing any sort of care as to how things look and while we see a few people die, there are no births in response. Sonny and Duane are just drifting through life, hoping that they may get a decent construction job after school to make ends meet. Sonny starts off with a dumpy looking girlfriend who celebrates their one year anniversary by removing the gum from her mouth for a kiss. Splitting with her, he enters into an affair with his coach's wife Ruth Popper, (Cloris Leachman) in a deal that gets him sex and her attention. Sonny was the only major role not to get awards attention after the fact and I think that has more to do with his role in the story and less with Bottoms' performance. Sonny sleepwalks through life and has no major character traits or flaws other than perhaps a lack of awareness towards himself and how he treats others.
Peter Bogdanovich was the Tarantino of the seventies, with the same immense interest in films growing up. I've read a few of Bogdanovich's books dealing with his interactions with and memories of various major movie actors and directors of the fifties and sixties and of course he famously was mentored by Orson Welles (who told him he MUST shoot "The Last Picture Show" in black and white). This is Bogdanovich's first major film and it's actually very daring. Shot in B&W with no major starpower, the film is filled with a constant stream of music and chatter with numerous minor characters coming and going around the main cast. He films perhaps the most uncomfortable sex scene I've ever witnessed (on film) between Sonny and Ruth (full of overly deliberate thrusts, loud bed creaking, and Ruth crying) and isn't afraid of showing a high schooler's naked pool party either. But what comes across most is how much fun this must have been to make for Bogdanovich. He goes all out to make this world come across accurate and for a movie-lover like himself, I bet he woke up every morning super anxious to shoot more scenes.
Plot-wise there isn't a ton to say. Some characters grow and move on, some don't. Some die while others just don't interact with the main characters anymore. The acting across the board is superb, but by the end of the film I realized I wasn't totally fulfilled by what I had just seen. Much like the world it's depicting, "The Last Picture Show" starts out if not full of life, at least full of hope and fun. By the second half things slow down to a crawl and the sense of despair and desolation overruns the picture. Like the memoir it's based on, things happen with no rhyme or reason towards character development, but that's OK since we get a view of how a real small town might function and most of us don't get the same arc in real life that someone like George Bailey might in a movie. If this was a book of short stories or a television show, there would be more of a chance to get to know these characters better, but overall it's a great piece of film-making.
Rating - 4.25 out of 5 stars.
Random Thoughts -
The world of the movie is displayed perfectly. The camera moves around the main street, following characters almost like you'd see in a "Grand Theft Auto" video game. The town is small, but that only helps towards getting us familiar with all that it contains. We get a few mentions of and sojourns to the nearest "big" city, Wichita Falls, but for most of the time, we feel just as surrounded by the main town as the characters do.
The use of music is all-encompassing and I bet there isn't even ten music-free minutes in the entire two hours. It's fantastic, with mostly Hank Williams playing on the radio, jukebox, and people's turntables. As the movie goes on and Hank's songs start to be repeated, it only adds to the sense that we are watching real people go through life in a real town over the course of a real year. I will also say that I can almost guarantee the use of Williams' "Kaw-Liga" here inspired its use in Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom". Actually, this film is almost best described as "Wes Anderson's Dazed And Confused".
There were four acting nominations for this movie with Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman both winning Best Supporting Awards from the Academy and Jeff Bridges and Ellen Burstyn both nominated for the same awards. Johnson's Sam The Lion is the pillar of the community, a man you respect from the moment he appears. He plays the role of decency in the first half of the film, but shockingly dies slumped over his pool table about halfway through the film while Sonny and Daune have gone to Mexico for a wild weekend. Johnson, who spent the majority of his career as John Wayne's stoic sidekick, does wonderful with the speeches he is given and my only complaint is that he didn't get more to do. Leachman as Ruth Popper, the older woman Sonny is having an affair with, won her award for her work in the last scene of the movie. Sonny had thoughtlessly thrown her to side in favor of the now-available Jacy, but after that falls apart, he's got nowhere to go, but back to Ruth who unleashes upon him all her pent-up anger and frustration.
I honestly don't see how Jeff Bridges earned his nomination other than it's a strong performance by a young up and coming actor. Duane is one of those guys who is king of the high school, but you know isn't going to do much afterwards. He doesn't go through much character development, other than his embarrassment about not being able to perform the first time Jacy tries to get him to deflower her. He ends up enlisting in Korea while Sonny stays in town which makes perfect sense by the end. Ellen Burstyn plays Jacy's mother, who at first comes across more as an older sister, encouraging her daughter to have sex to disprove the "magic" of it. However, it turns out that she and Sam have a shared history together which goes a long way towards making her more sympathetic.
The sole mention of Sonny's home life comes at a town Christmas dance when a drunken man wanders up to Sonny and gurgles out "Hi, Sonny" and Sonny responds, "Hi, Dad". They stare at each other for a second or two and that's it. It's a great moment and gives us a ton of information about Sonny without dwelling on it or looking for more meaning. Sonny actually has a surrogate family in the town with Sam The Lion as a father, Genevieve the waitress as a mother, and Billy the street-sweeper as a younger brother. There's a scene early on in the film where he, Duane, and a few other friends take Billy to the local prostitute to get him laid. Much like "The Last Detail", Billy erupts immediately and the fat old whore punches him the face for getting her "all sticky". When Sam The Lion finds out, he's so disgusted, he bans Sonny and his buddies from all of Sam's establishments. This little section of the film is where I realized I was starting to care about these characters and was very happy when Sam was able to let bygones be bygones.
Next - The French thriller "Tell No One", tomorrow the 7th.
It's strange watching "The Last Picture Show" for the first time in 2012 because there are now so many layers of nostalgia separating it from today's reality. Based on a semi-autobiographical novel written in 1966 by Larry McMurty (writer of "Hud" of my favorite films, and "Lonesome Dove" which I need to see), who was writing about life that took place 15 years ago. By the time the film came out, 20 years had passed and you can tell in the reviews by people like Roger Ebert that "The Last Picture Show" was able to stir up memories long thought eroded. When I watch it, I get a look at a world I've never known and will never be able to. In some ways, it's just as exotic as a foreign film with it's display of small town Texas life. There are a number of characters with their own intersecting plots, but the main action follows two high school athletes, Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges). Their home lives aren't touched upon much and the majority of the time we see them is at school or having fun. Sonny has a father-son relationship with Sam The Lion (Ben Johnson), owner of the local diner, pool hall, and movie theatre while Duane is in a heavy relationship with "the only attractive girl in school", Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepard).
In this time between World War 2 and Rock and Roll, we see a sleepy town just going through the motions. Year-round, the town is dusty and grimy with only the mute street sweeper (Timothy Bottoms' younger brother Sam) showing any sort of care as to how things look and while we see a few people die, there are no births in response. Sonny and Duane are just drifting through life, hoping that they may get a decent construction job after school to make ends meet. Sonny starts off with a dumpy looking girlfriend who celebrates their one year anniversary by removing the gum from her mouth for a kiss. Splitting with her, he enters into an affair with his coach's wife Ruth Popper, (Cloris Leachman) in a deal that gets him sex and her attention. Sonny was the only major role not to get awards attention after the fact and I think that has more to do with his role in the story and less with Bottoms' performance. Sonny sleepwalks through life and has no major character traits or flaws other than perhaps a lack of awareness towards himself and how he treats others.
Peter Bogdanovich was the Tarantino of the seventies, with the same immense interest in films growing up. I've read a few of Bogdanovich's books dealing with his interactions with and memories of various major movie actors and directors of the fifties and sixties and of course he famously was mentored by Orson Welles (who told him he MUST shoot "The Last Picture Show" in black and white). This is Bogdanovich's first major film and it's actually very daring. Shot in B&W with no major starpower, the film is filled with a constant stream of music and chatter with numerous minor characters coming and going around the main cast. He films perhaps the most uncomfortable sex scene I've ever witnessed (on film) between Sonny and Ruth (full of overly deliberate thrusts, loud bed creaking, and Ruth crying) and isn't afraid of showing a high schooler's naked pool party either. But what comes across most is how much fun this must have been to make for Bogdanovich. He goes all out to make this world come across accurate and for a movie-lover like himself, I bet he woke up every morning super anxious to shoot more scenes.
Plot-wise there isn't a ton to say. Some characters grow and move on, some don't. Some die while others just don't interact with the main characters anymore. The acting across the board is superb, but by the end of the film I realized I wasn't totally fulfilled by what I had just seen. Much like the world it's depicting, "The Last Picture Show" starts out if not full of life, at least full of hope and fun. By the second half things slow down to a crawl and the sense of despair and desolation overruns the picture. Like the memoir it's based on, things happen with no rhyme or reason towards character development, but that's OK since we get a view of how a real small town might function and most of us don't get the same arc in real life that someone like George Bailey might in a movie. If this was a book of short stories or a television show, there would be more of a chance to get to know these characters better, but overall it's a great piece of film-making.
Rating - 4.25 out of 5 stars.
Random Thoughts -
The world of the movie is displayed perfectly. The camera moves around the main street, following characters almost like you'd see in a "Grand Theft Auto" video game. The town is small, but that only helps towards getting us familiar with all that it contains. We get a few mentions of and sojourns to the nearest "big" city, Wichita Falls, but for most of the time, we feel just as surrounded by the main town as the characters do.
The use of music is all-encompassing and I bet there isn't even ten music-free minutes in the entire two hours. It's fantastic, with mostly Hank Williams playing on the radio, jukebox, and people's turntables. As the movie goes on and Hank's songs start to be repeated, it only adds to the sense that we are watching real people go through life in a real town over the course of a real year. I will also say that I can almost guarantee the use of Williams' "Kaw-Liga" here inspired its use in Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom". Actually, this film is almost best described as "Wes Anderson's Dazed And Confused".
There were four acting nominations for this movie with Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman both winning Best Supporting Awards from the Academy and Jeff Bridges and Ellen Burstyn both nominated for the same awards. Johnson's Sam The Lion is the pillar of the community, a man you respect from the moment he appears. He plays the role of decency in the first half of the film, but shockingly dies slumped over his pool table about halfway through the film while Sonny and Daune have gone to Mexico for a wild weekend. Johnson, who spent the majority of his career as John Wayne's stoic sidekick, does wonderful with the speeches he is given and my only complaint is that he didn't get more to do. Leachman as Ruth Popper, the older woman Sonny is having an affair with, won her award for her work in the last scene of the movie. Sonny had thoughtlessly thrown her to side in favor of the now-available Jacy, but after that falls apart, he's got nowhere to go, but back to Ruth who unleashes upon him all her pent-up anger and frustration.
I honestly don't see how Jeff Bridges earned his nomination other than it's a strong performance by a young up and coming actor. Duane is one of those guys who is king of the high school, but you know isn't going to do much afterwards. He doesn't go through much character development, other than his embarrassment about not being able to perform the first time Jacy tries to get him to deflower her. He ends up enlisting in Korea while Sonny stays in town which makes perfect sense by the end. Ellen Burstyn plays Jacy's mother, who at first comes across more as an older sister, encouraging her daughter to have sex to disprove the "magic" of it. However, it turns out that she and Sam have a shared history together which goes a long way towards making her more sympathetic.
The sole mention of Sonny's home life comes at a town Christmas dance when a drunken man wanders up to Sonny and gurgles out "Hi, Sonny" and Sonny responds, "Hi, Dad". They stare at each other for a second or two and that's it. It's a great moment and gives us a ton of information about Sonny without dwelling on it or looking for more meaning. Sonny actually has a surrogate family in the town with Sam The Lion as a father, Genevieve the waitress as a mother, and Billy the street-sweeper as a younger brother. There's a scene early on in the film where he, Duane, and a few other friends take Billy to the local prostitute to get him laid. Much like "The Last Detail", Billy erupts immediately and the fat old whore punches him the face for getting her "all sticky". When Sam The Lion finds out, he's so disgusted, he bans Sonny and his buddies from all of Sam's establishments. This little section of the film is where I realized I was starting to care about these characters and was very happy when Sam was able to let bygones be bygones.
Next - The French thriller "Tell No One", tomorrow the 7th.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Headhunters - Two Movies Are Not Always Better Than One
"Living way beyond his means, corporate recruiter Roger Brown steals
rare
artwork to maintain his lavish lifestyle. But when he plans to boost an
especially valuable painting, he targets a man who has headhunting
skills of a different variety." That's the Netflix summary for
"Headhunters" and all I knew about it before I watched it. If you
haven't seen it yet, I'd recommend not reading further than this
paragraph because while there's no huge plot twist that if revealed will
spoil a future viewing for you, the way "Headhunters" plays out from
the second half of the film on is a big shock. So there's your warning.
This film, man oh man, this film. As the Netflix summary says, Roger Brown (imagine James Spader in Steve Buscemi's body) leads a double life as a corporate recruiter/art thief. We're introduced to him in a similar fashion as to Ed Norton's character in "Fight Club", with voice-over combined with stylish visuals. Brown is a bit of a scoundrel with a napoleon complex, overcompensating for his short stature (5'6'') by being an asshole to everyone he meets, including at times his tall, blond wife, Diana. Under the guise of interviewing prospective clients for jobs, he teases out if they own expensive paintings and whether a dog or wife is at home during the day, collecting information for future art robberies. He lives his life as if it were a game, never showing he cares, especially if it's regarding something he wants.
At the opening of Diana's new art gallery she introduces Roger to Clas Greve (played by f'n Jaime Lannister!), former CEO of a surveillance company, who has contacted her regarding a painting his grandmother left him. This painting (Rubens' "The Calydonian Boar Hunt"), long thought lost after being stolen by the Nazis in World War II could be worth upwards of 100 million dollars if Roger can get his hands on it. Fortunately he's headhunting for the rivals of Clas' former company and is able to get information about the Rubens under the false pretense of an interview. The theft goes down flawlessly with help from Roger's inside man at the home security company (who's also responsible for fencing the stolen art), but while leaving the scene of the crime, he's surprised to find Diana's cell phone left by Clas' bed. In response he sabotages the job offer to Clas and prepares to confront his wife, only to find that his fencer has yet to make the big sale, having been poisoned and left in the front seat of Roger's own car.
So it seems like "Headhunters" is setting itself up as a Hitchockian thriller (there's even a Bernard Herrmann-like score), with art theft, love triangles, and retaliatory murder, but instead things get f'n crazy. We've already learned that Clas originally got his job at the surveillance company because of his prior experience as an army commando known for his tracking skills so when the plot turns toward him hunting Roger using microscopic trackers it's not a huge surprise. What is, is how the film becomes a totally different film for the second half.
The tone continues to be semi-serious, but the plot begins to morph into more of a Coen Brothers-type black comedy with lots of quirky, sometimes gross set-pieces and then goes way past even them to the point where it's almost like Roger Brown got transported to a different move. Characters (and animals) die in unexpected, silly ways. Clas is a terminator, chasing Roger like if Wile E. Coyote actually knew what he was doing. Roger hides out in an incredibly deep port-a-potty, is trapped in a police car that gets rammed off a cliff by a mack truck, and is involved in a slow speed tractor chase. And it continues in that vein until we find just about everything and everyone we know is wrong. It's not a plot twist, it's a totally different film.
I respect the risks this film takes, but I have to say I stopped being along for the ride once everything became topsy-turvy. The world of the film is set up in a certain manner and Roger Brown, despite being an asshole is a character you identify with (at least I did). Once everything goes from zero to one thousand in the span of a few minutes, it's almost impossible to continue to care about the characters because it's like watching a cartoon. To the film's credit, there's no winking at the camera and everything is played relatively straight. And it's cool Norwegian filmmakers can be like F this, we're doing what we want, but I kept feeling like this is not what I signed up for. I do have to admit I enjoyed the film as a whole, and I can't get angry because "Headhunters" didn't go exactly the way I wanted. I wish more American films would try and pull off something as audacious as this. But the first half of the story sits there like an unfinished short story and I would have loved to see how it might have been wrapped up without changing everything completely.
Rating - 3.5 out of 5 stars
Random Thoughts -
One of the reasons I got so involved with the first section of "Headhunters" is because I love heist films. I can't get enough. Every time I see something like "Rififi" or "Le Cercle Rouge" or even something like "The Great Escape it makes me want to be part of a plan. I'm no criminal, but if I found out a bunch of my pals had some sort of scheme set up, I'd be all over that. I just have to decide whether I'm an explosives expert, master of disguise, or the guy who makes the mistake which gets us caught.
Despite being disappointed with the path this films takes, there are some great set-pieces in the second half of the film. There is a port-a-potty scene which overtakes "Trainspotting"'s as the grossest poop related thing I've ever seen in a movie. I can't imagine Norway actually has public toilets deep enough that you could immerse yourself completely in them. And I do admire how everything comes together in the end, with Roger using the same attention to detail he paid to stealing artwork to cleaning up the mess his life has become and defeating Clas.
The first clue Clas is not someone to mess with is when Roger spots a mess of mysterious scars on his back while changing after a friendly game of squash. It's what you'd imagine Batman's body must look like under the costume. I'd have forgotten about stealing from him right then and there.
Next - "The Last Picture Show" early Tuesday, November 6th (Before I vote).
This film, man oh man, this film. As the Netflix summary says, Roger Brown (imagine James Spader in Steve Buscemi's body) leads a double life as a corporate recruiter/art thief. We're introduced to him in a similar fashion as to Ed Norton's character in "Fight Club", with voice-over combined with stylish visuals. Brown is a bit of a scoundrel with a napoleon complex, overcompensating for his short stature (5'6'') by being an asshole to everyone he meets, including at times his tall, blond wife, Diana. Under the guise of interviewing prospective clients for jobs, he teases out if they own expensive paintings and whether a dog or wife is at home during the day, collecting information for future art robberies. He lives his life as if it were a game, never showing he cares, especially if it's regarding something he wants.
At the opening of Diana's new art gallery she introduces Roger to Clas Greve (played by f'n Jaime Lannister!), former CEO of a surveillance company, who has contacted her regarding a painting his grandmother left him. This painting (Rubens' "The Calydonian Boar Hunt"), long thought lost after being stolen by the Nazis in World War II could be worth upwards of 100 million dollars if Roger can get his hands on it. Fortunately he's headhunting for the rivals of Clas' former company and is able to get information about the Rubens under the false pretense of an interview. The theft goes down flawlessly with help from Roger's inside man at the home security company (who's also responsible for fencing the stolen art), but while leaving the scene of the crime, he's surprised to find Diana's cell phone left by Clas' bed. In response he sabotages the job offer to Clas and prepares to confront his wife, only to find that his fencer has yet to make the big sale, having been poisoned and left in the front seat of Roger's own car.
So it seems like "Headhunters" is setting itself up as a Hitchockian thriller (there's even a Bernard Herrmann-like score), with art theft, love triangles, and retaliatory murder, but instead things get f'n crazy. We've already learned that Clas originally got his job at the surveillance company because of his prior experience as an army commando known for his tracking skills so when the plot turns toward him hunting Roger using microscopic trackers it's not a huge surprise. What is, is how the film becomes a totally different film for the second half.
The tone continues to be semi-serious, but the plot begins to morph into more of a Coen Brothers-type black comedy with lots of quirky, sometimes gross set-pieces and then goes way past even them to the point where it's almost like Roger Brown got transported to a different move. Characters (and animals) die in unexpected, silly ways. Clas is a terminator, chasing Roger like if Wile E. Coyote actually knew what he was doing. Roger hides out in an incredibly deep port-a-potty, is trapped in a police car that gets rammed off a cliff by a mack truck, and is involved in a slow speed tractor chase. And it continues in that vein until we find just about everything and everyone we know is wrong. It's not a plot twist, it's a totally different film.
I respect the risks this film takes, but I have to say I stopped being along for the ride once everything became topsy-turvy. The world of the film is set up in a certain manner and Roger Brown, despite being an asshole is a character you identify with (at least I did). Once everything goes from zero to one thousand in the span of a few minutes, it's almost impossible to continue to care about the characters because it's like watching a cartoon. To the film's credit, there's no winking at the camera and everything is played relatively straight. And it's cool Norwegian filmmakers can be like F this, we're doing what we want, but I kept feeling like this is not what I signed up for. I do have to admit I enjoyed the film as a whole, and I can't get angry because "Headhunters" didn't go exactly the way I wanted. I wish more American films would try and pull off something as audacious as this. But the first half of the story sits there like an unfinished short story and I would have loved to see how it might have been wrapped up without changing everything completely.
Rating - 3.5 out of 5 stars
Random Thoughts -
One of the reasons I got so involved with the first section of "Headhunters" is because I love heist films. I can't get enough. Every time I see something like "Rififi" or "Le Cercle Rouge" or even something like "The Great Escape it makes me want to be part of a plan. I'm no criminal, but if I found out a bunch of my pals had some sort of scheme set up, I'd be all over that. I just have to decide whether I'm an explosives expert, master of disguise, or the guy who makes the mistake which gets us caught.
Despite being disappointed with the path this films takes, there are some great set-pieces in the second half of the film. There is a port-a-potty scene which overtakes "Trainspotting"'s as the grossest poop related thing I've ever seen in a movie. I can't imagine Norway actually has public toilets deep enough that you could immerse yourself completely in them. And I do admire how everything comes together in the end, with Roger using the same attention to detail he paid to stealing artwork to cleaning up the mess his life has become and defeating Clas.
The first clue Clas is not someone to mess with is when Roger spots a mess of mysterious scars on his back while changing after a friendly game of squash. It's what you'd imagine Batman's body must look like under the costume. I'd have forgotten about stealing from him right then and there.
Next - "The Last Picture Show" early Tuesday, November 6th (Before I vote).
Monday, October 29, 2012
The Last Detail - JD Salinger Meets Wes Anderson? Yes Please.
There is no feeling I dislike more than dread. When you know something bad is on the horizon, yet you have to get through however many days it takes for it to actually happen. Whether it's an end of the month bill payment, a trip to the dentist, or in seventeen year old sailor Larry Meadows' case, a trip up the coast from Virginia to New Hampshire where he will be spending eight years (six if he behaves himself) in the brig, punishment for trying (but failing) to steal forty dollars out of the Navy's charity poor box. Fortunately, he's got "Badass" Buddusky and "Mule" Mulhall as the chaperones assigned to his detail and despite the sword of Damocles hanging over his head, they're not planning on letting him miss the best days of his youth in prison without one last good time.
Jack Nicholson plays Buddusky and here in 1973 we get him as a star just about to breakout into the superstar stratosphere. After a decade of doing various gigs in Hollywood, "Easy Rider" in 1969 launched him onwards and upwards with his charismatic intense performances showing he was not going to be forgotten without tasting some more of the big time's pie. He's got a plum role here, as the Navy "lifer" who starts out planning on sprinting Meadows up to New Hampshire as fast as possible and then using the rest of his week and pay on a "lost weekend" in the major cities of the Northeast, until he decides that Meadows must experience the sex, drugs, youthful indiscretions he will sorely miss in prison and he's the guy that's gotta lead him to it. He's not an immediately likable character (it's a role you'd normally see someone like Joe Pantoliano in) and the Nicholson persona is not complete yet, but Nicholson's unparalleled charisma and ability to play every scene in an interesting, but unobtrusive way make Buddusky a character we enjoy spending time with. Meadows (played by a baby-faced 22 year old Randy Quaid; he and Nicholson both got Oscar nominations for this film) isn't a fully formed man yet with no opinions of his own and Buddusky takes it upon himself to act as his Id, lashing out at mistaken burger orders and cheap prostitutes on Meadows' behalf. Buddusky is able to paint himself and his feelings onto the blank canvas that is Meadows and it's only right for him to give him the best time he can before he and Mulhall are forced to pull an "Old Yeller".
There's not much to the first two-thirds of this movie other than watching the three sailors engage in "Animal House"-like activities throughout Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston, but the way it plays out reminded me of two of my favorite storytellers, JD Salinger and Wes Anderson. I've never seen any other piece of fiction that captured the tone of "The Catcher In The Rye" as well, even if it wasn't on purpose. There's obvious comparisons between the two, what with immature youths wandering through the big city, grime and all, trying to delay bad times to come, but there's also a melancholia that hangs over the proceedings that called to mind many of Salinger short stories. Wes Anderson, so influenced by Salinger in "The Royal Tenenbaums" also calls Hal Ashby (director of "The Last Detail") one of his favorite directors. Ashby's "Harold And Maude" might contain more of the whimsy associated with Anderson's oeuvre, but "The Last Detail" more accurately predicts Anderson's obsession with the things left unsaid. Meadows, Buddusky, and Mulhall spend a lot of the picture on trains where subtle explanations to their behavior are sometimes revealed and I can only assume Anderson remembered those scenes when he made "The Darjeeling Limited". I see a lot of "The Royal Tenenbamus" here as well. The cities Buddusky and friends travel through merge into one gigantic uber-Metropolis with an atmosphere that reminded of "Tenenbaums" New York except slightly more real.
There is a constant malaise that hangs over the first two-thirds of "The Last Detail" despite the fun the main characters seem to be having. Meadows displays very little outward emotion toward his unfortunate future, but happily participates with glee once Buddusky starts feeding him beer and buying him prostitutes to "pop his cherry". The three become first acquaintances and then friends, with Meadows even classifying Buddusky and Mulhall as his very best friends but it's clearly not meant to last. The circumstances lend themselves to the three characters having a memorable time, but it's not something that could ever be repeated in another walk of life. I've had many a wild time in places like New York City and London with people who were great companions at that time, but just at that time and any attempts are reliving those early twenties years would end in disaster I suspect. These three work well together precisely because of the circumstances. This is not a farewell party and there's no light at the end of this tunnel. Thus, the film ends exactly how you'd imagine it end were it to happen in real life.
It's a simple story and most definitely a product of the seventies, and as a time capsule it holds up well. You're not going to get a ton of surprises when the entire film is basically a travelogue of good times, but the overarching plot looming in the background adds sobriety to every scene. We get to know these guys, especially Meadows and Buddusky very well and I spent the last half of the film waiting for the shoe to drop. When it did, I was left with a despondent feeling of hopelessness, but the best kind of hopelessness. The kind you get from watching a great film.
Rating - 4 out of 5 stars.
Random Thoughts -
I didn't say much about Otis Young's performance as "Mule" Mulhall and that's because there's not much to say. It's a fine job and his character is amiable enough, but he's mostly used as a counterpoint to Buddusky's wild plans and doesn't have a whole lot to do. I do think it's cool that only fifteen or so years after "The Defiant Ones" was a whole film about how hard it is for a black guy and a white guy to be handcuffed to each other, "The Last Detail" doesn't bring up race once. It's perfectly normal for two men of separate races to be in the navy together and treat each other civilly.
The first twenty minutes of "The Last Detail" could have been a stand alone short film. There are many serene shots of the characters traveling on trains with little character idiosyncrasies popping up, like Meadows' constant kleptomania. We learn a little of everyone's backgrounds and it plays out with a patience that is only seen in "art house" films today. Actually, this would totally be a Fox Searchlight production in 2012.
The first scene is Buddusky and Mulhall being assigned shore duty because it's their turn. Both of them accept the duty without much excitement, but I'd been thrilled. I used to love when teachers would choose me to deliver messages to the principal's office, like a little quest. I even remember in middle school being called over the intercom to the guidance counselor's office where she asked me to show a new student around. I still don't know why I was asked out of the 200 kids in my grade, but any excuse to get out of class was awesome. Here I just would have been like "Mission? Hell yeah!".
The score is at various points polka and classical and both work great. The polka that plays over quiet scenes on the train is surprisingly perfect. I don't normally notice scores unless the melody stands out, but the juxtaposition used with different styles of music and scenes going on were interesting enough for me to make note of.
There's a few future stars who pop up here. Gilda Radner has a cameo as a member of the super seventies Buddhist church thing Meadows finds alluring in New York City. She even gets to do a silly monologue. Carol Kane is the waif-like prostitute who ruins Meadows' quest to lose his virginity by causing him to explode with one stroke. My favorite "Law And Order" actor ever, Michael Moriarty is the asshole Marine Duty Officer who pisses of Nicholson at the end.
Next - On Halloween, the Swedish thriller "Headhunters"
Jack Nicholson plays Buddusky and here in 1973 we get him as a star just about to breakout into the superstar stratosphere. After a decade of doing various gigs in Hollywood, "Easy Rider" in 1969 launched him onwards and upwards with his charismatic intense performances showing he was not going to be forgotten without tasting some more of the big time's pie. He's got a plum role here, as the Navy "lifer" who starts out planning on sprinting Meadows up to New Hampshire as fast as possible and then using the rest of his week and pay on a "lost weekend" in the major cities of the Northeast, until he decides that Meadows must experience the sex, drugs, youthful indiscretions he will sorely miss in prison and he's the guy that's gotta lead him to it. He's not an immediately likable character (it's a role you'd normally see someone like Joe Pantoliano in) and the Nicholson persona is not complete yet, but Nicholson's unparalleled charisma and ability to play every scene in an interesting, but unobtrusive way make Buddusky a character we enjoy spending time with. Meadows (played by a baby-faced 22 year old Randy Quaid; he and Nicholson both got Oscar nominations for this film) isn't a fully formed man yet with no opinions of his own and Buddusky takes it upon himself to act as his Id, lashing out at mistaken burger orders and cheap prostitutes on Meadows' behalf. Buddusky is able to paint himself and his feelings onto the blank canvas that is Meadows and it's only right for him to give him the best time he can before he and Mulhall are forced to pull an "Old Yeller".
There's not much to the first two-thirds of this movie other than watching the three sailors engage in "Animal House"-like activities throughout Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston, but the way it plays out reminded me of two of my favorite storytellers, JD Salinger and Wes Anderson. I've never seen any other piece of fiction that captured the tone of "The Catcher In The Rye" as well, even if it wasn't on purpose. There's obvious comparisons between the two, what with immature youths wandering through the big city, grime and all, trying to delay bad times to come, but there's also a melancholia that hangs over the proceedings that called to mind many of Salinger short stories. Wes Anderson, so influenced by Salinger in "The Royal Tenenbaums" also calls Hal Ashby (director of "The Last Detail") one of his favorite directors. Ashby's "Harold And Maude" might contain more of the whimsy associated with Anderson's oeuvre, but "The Last Detail" more accurately predicts Anderson's obsession with the things left unsaid. Meadows, Buddusky, and Mulhall spend a lot of the picture on trains where subtle explanations to their behavior are sometimes revealed and I can only assume Anderson remembered those scenes when he made "The Darjeeling Limited". I see a lot of "The Royal Tenenbamus" here as well. The cities Buddusky and friends travel through merge into one gigantic uber-Metropolis with an atmosphere that reminded of "Tenenbaums" New York except slightly more real.
There is a constant malaise that hangs over the first two-thirds of "The Last Detail" despite the fun the main characters seem to be having. Meadows displays very little outward emotion toward his unfortunate future, but happily participates with glee once Buddusky starts feeding him beer and buying him prostitutes to "pop his cherry". The three become first acquaintances and then friends, with Meadows even classifying Buddusky and Mulhall as his very best friends but it's clearly not meant to last. The circumstances lend themselves to the three characters having a memorable time, but it's not something that could ever be repeated in another walk of life. I've had many a wild time in places like New York City and London with people who were great companions at that time, but just at that time and any attempts are reliving those early twenties years would end in disaster I suspect. These three work well together precisely because of the circumstances. This is not a farewell party and there's no light at the end of this tunnel. Thus, the film ends exactly how you'd imagine it end were it to happen in real life.
It's a simple story and most definitely a product of the seventies, and as a time capsule it holds up well. You're not going to get a ton of surprises when the entire film is basically a travelogue of good times, but the overarching plot looming in the background adds sobriety to every scene. We get to know these guys, especially Meadows and Buddusky very well and I spent the last half of the film waiting for the shoe to drop. When it did, I was left with a despondent feeling of hopelessness, but the best kind of hopelessness. The kind you get from watching a great film.
Rating - 4 out of 5 stars.
Random Thoughts -
I didn't say much about Otis Young's performance as "Mule" Mulhall and that's because there's not much to say. It's a fine job and his character is amiable enough, but he's mostly used as a counterpoint to Buddusky's wild plans and doesn't have a whole lot to do. I do think it's cool that only fifteen or so years after "The Defiant Ones" was a whole film about how hard it is for a black guy and a white guy to be handcuffed to each other, "The Last Detail" doesn't bring up race once. It's perfectly normal for two men of separate races to be in the navy together and treat each other civilly.
The first twenty minutes of "The Last Detail" could have been a stand alone short film. There are many serene shots of the characters traveling on trains with little character idiosyncrasies popping up, like Meadows' constant kleptomania. We learn a little of everyone's backgrounds and it plays out with a patience that is only seen in "art house" films today. Actually, this would totally be a Fox Searchlight production in 2012.
The first scene is Buddusky and Mulhall being assigned shore duty because it's their turn. Both of them accept the duty without much excitement, but I'd been thrilled. I used to love when teachers would choose me to deliver messages to the principal's office, like a little quest. I even remember in middle school being called over the intercom to the guidance counselor's office where she asked me to show a new student around. I still don't know why I was asked out of the 200 kids in my grade, but any excuse to get out of class was awesome. Here I just would have been like "Mission? Hell yeah!".
The score is at various points polka and classical and both work great. The polka that plays over quiet scenes on the train is surprisingly perfect. I don't normally notice scores unless the melody stands out, but the juxtaposition used with different styles of music and scenes going on were interesting enough for me to make note of.
There's a few future stars who pop up here. Gilda Radner has a cameo as a member of the super seventies Buddhist church thing Meadows finds alluring in New York City. She even gets to do a silly monologue. Carol Kane is the waif-like prostitute who ruins Meadows' quest to lose his virginity by causing him to explode with one stroke. My favorite "Law And Order" actor ever, Michael Moriarty is the asshole Marine Duty Officer who pisses of Nicholson at the end.
Next - On Halloween, the Swedish thriller "Headhunters"
Thursday, October 25, 2012
The Iron Giant - A Perfect Animated Film
My favorite band is the Zombies. They had a couple of hits back in the sixties, but that's all they're really known for. I got heavily into them after "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou" had one of their songs on the soundtrack, plus when I discovered Rolling Stone Magazine had ranked their album "Odessey And Oracle" as the eightieth greatest album of all time. The album was released in 1967 and it took a year for one of its songs to break out, "Time Of The Season". Too bad the band broke up in between, as the immediate response to the album was of such mass indifference they felt there was no point in continuing. There's no question "Odessey And Oracle" is one of the greatest albums I've ever heard and it's a tragedy that it was the grand finale on their career. "The Iron Giant" falls into the same category. This is the greatest non-animated Disney film I've ever seen. Future Pixar director Brad Bird was able to make a film with little to no studio interference and was able to produce a real masterpiece. Why were there no more films like this? Oh, because no one saw it and it made no money.
In 1957 Rockwell, Maine, young Hogarth Hughes discovered a giant robot who fell from space in the woods near his home where he lives with his widowed mother. He develops a "Boy And His Dog" relationship with the Iron Giant and ends up having to hide him from FBI agent Kent Mansley and the US Military who are investigating strange goings-on around the area. I vaguely remember seeing previews for this back in 1999 when it was first released. The prior decade had been a gold mine of animated awesomeness. Disney put out a murderer's row of titles like "The Little Mermaid", "Beauty And The Beast", "Aladdin", and "The Lion King" that were the introduction to movies for my generation. But starting with "Pocahontas" the formula had begun to get stale and by the end of the decade, I was thirteen and more interested in buying tickets for "Tarzan" and sneaking into "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo". That's why watching this film almost made me sad in a way. We don't see too many classically animated films anymore. It's hard to even write a review for this because it's practically perfect.
Pixar and Dreamworks have cornered the market on celebrity voiced computer animated films with enough adult humor to appeal to both small children and the parents forced to watch with them. Unfortunately when the balance shifts towards the adults, you're stuck with films like "Shark Tale" and when it shifts towards the children you get "Cars". "Iron Giant" would be two different films for both groups, and both would be spectacular. I'll never know how I would have viewed this as a youngster, but as the twenty-seven year old I am at the moment, I was blown away by the story, the animation, the voicework, and the combination of it all. It wears its influence on its sleeve by naming the town after the great Norman Rockwell, and his influence shines through the faces of the people and the scenery surrounding them.
The traditional animation works well for a film set in the fifties. There are shades of the classic Disney style from films of that period like "Sleeping Beauty" and "The Sword In The Stone", but also a more hyper-kinetic style similar to works from the nineties. The pace reminded me at times of the energy of "The Simpsons" while the humor had a dryness to it like "King Of The Hill". The animation of the faces was especially entertaining. There are moments where I wanted to freeze the frame just to study the different expressions characters were making. The amount of detail put into every character's personality and movement would be something most live action films would like to achieve. At the same time, there are no breaking the fourth wall, wink at the camera moments, and no out of place modern references like you'd get in rival children's films. You do get all the classic fifties trademarks, diners, beatniks, G-men investigating aliens and commies, "duck and cover" and when an anomaly like the Giant is thrown into the mix, it's treated with humor, but also with realistic responses from every character involved. That's what's so refreshing about "The Iron Giant". There's no reason why an animated film or a children's movie can't also be of strong quality. Here the story is so well told, that every visual flourish is just a great bonus. And were it but for the Iron Giant himself, this easily could have been a film like "Stand By Me" or "A Christmas Story", it's that well developed.
The Iron Giant himself should have been the big toy of 1999. Voiced by Vin Diesel (his voice mostly sounds like the grinding of metal, but Diesel's voice is low enough that when he enunciates, it does sound like what a giant robot would sound like), the Giant was created as a weapon, but after losing his memory and befriend Hogarth, he's basically Andre the Giant from "The Princess Bride" only easier to understand. The physical humor his giant form allows is some of the funniest I've seen from any genre of film. If he's damaged, his body automatically repairs itself, which lends itself to hilarious scenes of Hogarth trying to hide the giant's huge hand (acting like a dog) from the view of his mother and Kent Mansley. I wasn't predisposed to like the Giant (I'm inherently afraid of anything from outer space made to kill humans), but his character is surprisingly sympathetic and so full of childlike naivety that by the middle of the movie I was totally on his side.
I've glossed over most of the plot to focus on everything else, but rest assured it's pretty amazing. Bird is able to tell a story combing the Cold War fears of the 1950's with a parable about being who you want to be. The Iron Giant may have been built as a weapon, but he chooses to believe "I am not a gun" which is a great message every young child should learn. And while the undercurrent of the red scare which populates the film is old hat to me, a young child would most likely be encountering this era of American history of the first time, hopefully leading them to find out more about it. And it's still relevant in today's post-911 political landscape. It's scary how close we were getting to the days of "The Crucible" and I'd hope films like this would open kids' eyes to the dangers of hysteria, despite who their parents may vote for.
Warner Brothers hasn't made a traditionally animated full length film since this came out thirteen years ago. As it stands, this is one of the last connections to the prior sixty-five years of animation. Again it all comes down more to the quality of story over how it's told and here we have a simple, but fantastic story told very well. Bird went on to make "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille", and while I like Pixar I've always found myself left wanting more their pictures. "The Iron Giant" stands tall among both animated and non-animated films as an example of a film that succeeds on every level. I just wish I'd gotten to it sooner.
Rating - 5 out of 5 stars
Random Thoughts -
I usually don't like seeing films with plots like this. I'm not a fan of stories where the world is undeniably changed forever because in real life, I'd be absolutely terrified. The universe has certain rules and if I ever saw a ghost or if a stuffed animal starting moving around by itself, I wouldn't be able to live rationally anymore. Here we have a giant iron robot crashing on earth opening the door to all sorts of problems, eventually leading to the threat of total destruction. Even after everything turns out fine for the most part, I wouldn't be able to live knowing that things like the Giant exist. And the last scene, which is supposed to be reassuring and happy, kind of horrified me.
Fantastic voice work all around here.The standout to me is Christopher McDonald who plays the G-Man, Kent Mansley as a combination of Fox Mulder and Shooter McGavin. McDonald hits all the right notes as a smug buffoon, who nevertheless has connections to the US Army and is a genuine threat to the boy and his giant. If this was a live action film, it would have to be one of the most amusing performances in the history of film.
The timing of the comedy is this film is astounding. I laughed out loud a bunch of times and the detail paid to everything on the screen is remarkable. The whole section after Mansley moves into the spare room Hogarth's mother has rented out is a masterclass in perfect timing.
There's a great scene where we find out how a giant robot would react to seeing "Bambi's mother getting shot (He gets sad).
This film already had me on its side since its set in the fifties and I'll read/watch/listen to anything set in that time. Hell, the only reason I enjoyed "The Majestic" was because of the time period. One of the best books I've read over the past year is Stephen King's 11/22/63. The first 500 pages were honey to my brain as it's just a guy using a time machine to live in the fifties until 1963 where he can stop the Kennedy assassination. That first half is him living a life from 1958 onwards, but once he gets closer to the assassination I started skimming the rest, hoping it would get back to just living in the fifties.
Comic books were undoubtedly a big influence of the film. Hogarth reads to the Giant from his Superman comics and the Giant later chooses to identify with the "Man Of Steel" rather than his original fate as a giant weapon. For those of you who read comic books, I see the film "The Iron Giant" as the design of Mignola's Hellboy + the humor of Giffen/Dematteis' Justice League + the tone of Robinson's Starman.
Next - Monday the 29th, The Last Detail
In 1957 Rockwell, Maine, young Hogarth Hughes discovered a giant robot who fell from space in the woods near his home where he lives with his widowed mother. He develops a "Boy And His Dog" relationship with the Iron Giant and ends up having to hide him from FBI agent Kent Mansley and the US Military who are investigating strange goings-on around the area. I vaguely remember seeing previews for this back in 1999 when it was first released. The prior decade had been a gold mine of animated awesomeness. Disney put out a murderer's row of titles like "The Little Mermaid", "Beauty And The Beast", "Aladdin", and "The Lion King" that were the introduction to movies for my generation. But starting with "Pocahontas" the formula had begun to get stale and by the end of the decade, I was thirteen and more interested in buying tickets for "Tarzan" and sneaking into "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo". That's why watching this film almost made me sad in a way. We don't see too many classically animated films anymore. It's hard to even write a review for this because it's practically perfect.
Pixar and Dreamworks have cornered the market on celebrity voiced computer animated films with enough adult humor to appeal to both small children and the parents forced to watch with them. Unfortunately when the balance shifts towards the adults, you're stuck with films like "Shark Tale" and when it shifts towards the children you get "Cars". "Iron Giant" would be two different films for both groups, and both would be spectacular. I'll never know how I would have viewed this as a youngster, but as the twenty-seven year old I am at the moment, I was blown away by the story, the animation, the voicework, and the combination of it all. It wears its influence on its sleeve by naming the town after the great Norman Rockwell, and his influence shines through the faces of the people and the scenery surrounding them.
The traditional animation works well for a film set in the fifties. There are shades of the classic Disney style from films of that period like "Sleeping Beauty" and "The Sword In The Stone", but also a more hyper-kinetic style similar to works from the nineties. The pace reminded me at times of the energy of "The Simpsons" while the humor had a dryness to it like "King Of The Hill". The animation of the faces was especially entertaining. There are moments where I wanted to freeze the frame just to study the different expressions characters were making. The amount of detail put into every character's personality and movement would be something most live action films would like to achieve. At the same time, there are no breaking the fourth wall, wink at the camera moments, and no out of place modern references like you'd get in rival children's films. You do get all the classic fifties trademarks, diners, beatniks, G-men investigating aliens and commies, "duck and cover" and when an anomaly like the Giant is thrown into the mix, it's treated with humor, but also with realistic responses from every character involved. That's what's so refreshing about "The Iron Giant". There's no reason why an animated film or a children's movie can't also be of strong quality. Here the story is so well told, that every visual flourish is just a great bonus. And were it but for the Iron Giant himself, this easily could have been a film like "Stand By Me" or "A Christmas Story", it's that well developed.
The Iron Giant himself should have been the big toy of 1999. Voiced by Vin Diesel (his voice mostly sounds like the grinding of metal, but Diesel's voice is low enough that when he enunciates, it does sound like what a giant robot would sound like), the Giant was created as a weapon, but after losing his memory and befriend Hogarth, he's basically Andre the Giant from "The Princess Bride" only easier to understand. The physical humor his giant form allows is some of the funniest I've seen from any genre of film. If he's damaged, his body automatically repairs itself, which lends itself to hilarious scenes of Hogarth trying to hide the giant's huge hand (acting like a dog) from the view of his mother and Kent Mansley. I wasn't predisposed to like the Giant (I'm inherently afraid of anything from outer space made to kill humans), but his character is surprisingly sympathetic and so full of childlike naivety that by the middle of the movie I was totally on his side.
I've glossed over most of the plot to focus on everything else, but rest assured it's pretty amazing. Bird is able to tell a story combing the Cold War fears of the 1950's with a parable about being who you want to be. The Iron Giant may have been built as a weapon, but he chooses to believe "I am not a gun" which is a great message every young child should learn. And while the undercurrent of the red scare which populates the film is old hat to me, a young child would most likely be encountering this era of American history of the first time, hopefully leading them to find out more about it. And it's still relevant in today's post-911 political landscape. It's scary how close we were getting to the days of "The Crucible" and I'd hope films like this would open kids' eyes to the dangers of hysteria, despite who their parents may vote for.
Warner Brothers hasn't made a traditionally animated full length film since this came out thirteen years ago. As it stands, this is one of the last connections to the prior sixty-five years of animation. Again it all comes down more to the quality of story over how it's told and here we have a simple, but fantastic story told very well. Bird went on to make "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille", and while I like Pixar I've always found myself left wanting more their pictures. "The Iron Giant" stands tall among both animated and non-animated films as an example of a film that succeeds on every level. I just wish I'd gotten to it sooner.
Rating - 5 out of 5 stars
Random Thoughts -
I usually don't like seeing films with plots like this. I'm not a fan of stories where the world is undeniably changed forever because in real life, I'd be absolutely terrified. The universe has certain rules and if I ever saw a ghost or if a stuffed animal starting moving around by itself, I wouldn't be able to live rationally anymore. Here we have a giant iron robot crashing on earth opening the door to all sorts of problems, eventually leading to the threat of total destruction. Even after everything turns out fine for the most part, I wouldn't be able to live knowing that things like the Giant exist. And the last scene, which is supposed to be reassuring and happy, kind of horrified me.
Fantastic voice work all around here.The standout to me is Christopher McDonald who plays the G-Man, Kent Mansley as a combination of Fox Mulder and Shooter McGavin. McDonald hits all the right notes as a smug buffoon, who nevertheless has connections to the US Army and is a genuine threat to the boy and his giant. If this was a live action film, it would have to be one of the most amusing performances in the history of film.
The timing of the comedy is this film is astounding. I laughed out loud a bunch of times and the detail paid to everything on the screen is remarkable. The whole section after Mansley moves into the spare room Hogarth's mother has rented out is a masterclass in perfect timing.
There's a great scene where we find out how a giant robot would react to seeing "Bambi's mother getting shot (He gets sad).
This film already had me on its side since its set in the fifties and I'll read/watch/listen to anything set in that time. Hell, the only reason I enjoyed "The Majestic" was because of the time period. One of the best books I've read over the past year is Stephen King's 11/22/63. The first 500 pages were honey to my brain as it's just a guy using a time machine to live in the fifties until 1963 where he can stop the Kennedy assassination. That first half is him living a life from 1958 onwards, but once he gets closer to the assassination I started skimming the rest, hoping it would get back to just living in the fifties.
Comic books were undoubtedly a big influence of the film. Hogarth reads to the Giant from his Superman comics and the Giant later chooses to identify with the "Man Of Steel" rather than his original fate as a giant weapon. For those of you who read comic books, I see the film "The Iron Giant" as the design of Mignola's Hellboy + the humor of Giffen/Dematteis' Justice League + the tone of Robinson's Starman.
Next - Monday the 29th, The Last Detail
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
The Guns Of Navarone - This Is A Movie
The purpose of movies has changed dramatically over the past fifty years. We live in an age of blockbusters, full of sound and fury signifying nothing and sometimes even less than that. These are quick snacks, as disposable as the popcorn you eat while watching them. But when you look back half a decade ago, it's clear that while large scale movies existed, they were made with loftier goals. This was still a time where going to the movies was an event. Television existed, but its overall quality paled into comparison as to what Hollywood was putting out. You'd spend the week looking forward to Saturday, when perhaps your mother and father would bestow upon you a dollar to spend the day watching a double feature, a newsreel, and maybe even a cartoon at grand local theatre. And the blockbusters? Well they were the big events, the ones where the studios would tell an epic story, using the biggest actors at their disposal. There would be action, humor, special effects, maybe some romance and songs, but above all a sense of quality.
"The Guns of Navarone" is a fine example of this. This is not one of the best films I've ever seen, and probably not the best of this type of film either, but I had a great time watching it. Some of that would be attributed to seeing it on the big screen at the New Beverly Cinema (the Quentin Tarantino owned revival house in Hollywood), but also because it felt like something that I hadn't seen in a long time. The story is of a fictional 1943 World War Two mission to destroy the titular "Guns of Navarone", radar-directed guns located on a German fortress in the Aegean sea, preventing the British navy from rescuing two thousand British soldiers marooned on a nearby Greek island. The guns are hunkered away in a cave on top of an unconquerable peak, meaning they are safe from any aerial attacks. With only a week until to destroy these weapons, the British assemble a super team consisting of "The Human Fly", Capt. Keith Mallory (Gregory Peck) the greatest mountain climber in the world, Cpl. John Miller (David Niven) an explosives expert, Col. Andrea Stavrou (Anthony Quinn) Mallory's Greek buddy, Pvt. Butcher Brown (Stanley Baker) handy with a knife, and Pvt. Spyros Pappadimos (James Darren) called a "born killer", who are all led by Maj. Roy Franklin (Anthony Quayle), nicknamed "Lucky". These six men are responsible for traveling to Greece by boat, scaling an unscalable cliff, making their way through the country unseen, and entering the German fortress to blow up the invulnerable guns. Great concept for an adventure film. And so begins a two and a half hour odyssey with tons of surprising twists and suspenseful turns.
It's a paint by numbers story and it checks off all the major sixties action film plot points. There are quiet character moments where private trials and tribulations are revealed, encounters and escapes from the enemy, injuries, deaths, and of course a mole. "Navarone" does pull most of them off however. Looking back at my notes, there are many places where I've written things like "F'n ships mast falls off" or "F'n shot a bunch of Nazis" in reference to instances that played against my expectations in hugely positive way. This is a relic of a different age, a fictional war film. Whereas today films like "Band Of Brothers" and "Saving Private Ryan" want to convey the World War Two experience as accurately as possible, "Navarone" was instead trying to entertain and thrill a nation still reeling from a war that had only ended fifteen years earlier. As such, this is much closer in tone to "The Expendables" then to something like "The Hurt Locker".
As to why it's not the greatest movie; It's not a huge deal in a film like this, but there is a distinct lack of character development. Similar to things like "The Magnificent Seven", "The Great Escape", and "The Dirty Dozen", each character has a hook and that's how we're suppose to know them. Here and there a line will be thrown out to supposedly explain their back stories, but it's done very lazily. For example, while the six are first getting to know each other on their way to Greece, Mallory and Franklin share a chat where Mallory reveals that while he and Stavrou are best buds, Stavrou has sworn to kill him after the war for mercifully leaving some Germans alive who later killed Stavrou's wife and children. That's some heavy stuff, but it's never mentioned again. On one hand it adds some tension to every scene between Stavrou and Mallory from then on in, including one where Stavrou has an opportunity to let Mallory fall to his death from the previously mentioned unscalable peak, but this happens so immediately after the reveal that all subtlety is lost. And by the end, it doesn't even matter.
Another, but different kind of example is Butcher Brown's story. He's a knife expert who we see almost get himself killed after stopping to polish his knife while the crew is fighting Nazis. Mallory pulls him aside like a football coach asking why his star player missed the important play and Brown reveals that the stress of killing people close and personal for the past six years has made him weary to ever take another life. Again, perfectly fine character plot point, but it's never mentioned again until the very end and I'm not sure if he gets another five lines over the next two hours. I'm not complaining because honestly who cares in a genre like this, but the script is very haphazard in trying to push these character moments into the picture just because.
The momentum builds and builds as they are able to make their way in the nick of time to the German fortress to being the final step of their mission, but then the film falls flat. This should have been the big moment, a half hour of seeing the soldiers accomplish their goal, but it's just boring. "The Dirty Dozen" has the great attack on the Nazi-filled chateau while "The Great Escape" has well the great escape, but this final assault on the guns isn't done particularly well. A mole is revealed to have sabotaged the explosives, but it doesn't really effect the mission. This is true of most of the setbacks they suffer, no real consequences. And the mole reveal is unremarkable and unnecessary. The writer of the book this is based on (Alistair MacLean) also wrote "Where Eagles Dare" which also deals with a mole(s), but in way that's much more related to the plot. This one seems like it's done because that's what the template of movies like require. There are a couple of deaths thrown in here as well and both are shot very clumsily to the point where you know people died, but are not sure how.
I don't mean to make it sound like this is in any way a poor picture, because it's not. It's jam packed with enough greatness that it's certainly worth seeing. It's a real studio system era production and those moguls surely knew how to make films that filled theatres. And there's definitely room for films like this today. It's not incredibly intelligent, but not hopelessly stupid either. And there's aspirations here to be more than just a waste of two hours. I wish the summers of today weren't choices between Comic Book Film 4 and Special Effects Franchise 6. And that's why I'll be heading to the New Beverly a few times a year to get my fix of this.
Rating - 3.5 stars out of 5
Random Thoughts -
Gregory Peck is awesome. If this film was remade today, Jon Hamm would be the perfect replacement. Peck's character "speaks Greek like a Greek and German like a German" and he has an awesome scene near the beginning of the mission where the six are on a shabby Greek fishing boat, disguised as swarthy-looking fisherman trying to sneak their way past the Nazis. When they encounter a Nazi vessel whose Captain wishes to inspect their boat, Peck plays up the Greek fisherman act to great comedic relief. I'd never seen him so charismatic. And in an example of subverting my expectations, instead of playing Greek to get around the Nazis undetected, the guys just blow them all away. That's when I knew this was going to be an awesome movie. Plus I can't watch a film from this era that takes place on a boat without thinking of Steve Zissou, so that added another couple of points from me.
This is sort of the "Space Cowboys" of World War Two pictures. Four of the six main characters were in the age range of 45-55 when filming this movie. David Niven especially looks like he's everyone's father. I'm not a World War Two expert (he says modestly), but I am almost certain the Allied forces would have had some soldiers in their thirties who were just as useful. Apparently, much was made of the advanced age of the cast at the time as well, so good to know it was noticed.
Seeing the Greek people made me realize that if Zeus and his pantheon of gods were Greek, then they probably looked Greek. Zeus as a dark haired mustachioed man is a concept that needs to be followed up on. Same thing with the Roman versions. There is no reason that a "Sopranos"-type show dealing with these gods of old should not be made.
The whole plot is based around destroying these guns to make it safe for the marooned British soldiers to be rescued, but how the hell did they get marooned in the first place? The reason it's so dangerous to rescue them is because the Germans have the whole place surrounded, so were they just joyriding and crashed their ship?
The British Commodore who hands out the mission sounds exactly like Matthew Berry from "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace". Look it up
Back tomorrow with "The Iron Giant".
"The Guns of Navarone" is a fine example of this. This is not one of the best films I've ever seen, and probably not the best of this type of film either, but I had a great time watching it. Some of that would be attributed to seeing it on the big screen at the New Beverly Cinema (the Quentin Tarantino owned revival house in Hollywood), but also because it felt like something that I hadn't seen in a long time. The story is of a fictional 1943 World War Two mission to destroy the titular "Guns of Navarone", radar-directed guns located on a German fortress in the Aegean sea, preventing the British navy from rescuing two thousand British soldiers marooned on a nearby Greek island. The guns are hunkered away in a cave on top of an unconquerable peak, meaning they are safe from any aerial attacks. With only a week until to destroy these weapons, the British assemble a super team consisting of "The Human Fly", Capt. Keith Mallory (Gregory Peck) the greatest mountain climber in the world, Cpl. John Miller (David Niven) an explosives expert, Col. Andrea Stavrou (Anthony Quinn) Mallory's Greek buddy, Pvt. Butcher Brown (Stanley Baker) handy with a knife, and Pvt. Spyros Pappadimos (James Darren) called a "born killer", who are all led by Maj. Roy Franklin (Anthony Quayle), nicknamed "Lucky". These six men are responsible for traveling to Greece by boat, scaling an unscalable cliff, making their way through the country unseen, and entering the German fortress to blow up the invulnerable guns. Great concept for an adventure film. And so begins a two and a half hour odyssey with tons of surprising twists and suspenseful turns.
It's a paint by numbers story and it checks off all the major sixties action film plot points. There are quiet character moments where private trials and tribulations are revealed, encounters and escapes from the enemy, injuries, deaths, and of course a mole. "Navarone" does pull most of them off however. Looking back at my notes, there are many places where I've written things like "F'n ships mast falls off" or "F'n shot a bunch of Nazis" in reference to instances that played against my expectations in hugely positive way. This is a relic of a different age, a fictional war film. Whereas today films like "Band Of Brothers" and "Saving Private Ryan" want to convey the World War Two experience as accurately as possible, "Navarone" was instead trying to entertain and thrill a nation still reeling from a war that had only ended fifteen years earlier. As such, this is much closer in tone to "The Expendables" then to something like "The Hurt Locker".
As to why it's not the greatest movie; It's not a huge deal in a film like this, but there is a distinct lack of character development. Similar to things like "The Magnificent Seven", "The Great Escape", and "The Dirty Dozen", each character has a hook and that's how we're suppose to know them. Here and there a line will be thrown out to supposedly explain their back stories, but it's done very lazily. For example, while the six are first getting to know each other on their way to Greece, Mallory and Franklin share a chat where Mallory reveals that while he and Stavrou are best buds, Stavrou has sworn to kill him after the war for mercifully leaving some Germans alive who later killed Stavrou's wife and children. That's some heavy stuff, but it's never mentioned again. On one hand it adds some tension to every scene between Stavrou and Mallory from then on in, including one where Stavrou has an opportunity to let Mallory fall to his death from the previously mentioned unscalable peak, but this happens so immediately after the reveal that all subtlety is lost. And by the end, it doesn't even matter.
Another, but different kind of example is Butcher Brown's story. He's a knife expert who we see almost get himself killed after stopping to polish his knife while the crew is fighting Nazis. Mallory pulls him aside like a football coach asking why his star player missed the important play and Brown reveals that the stress of killing people close and personal for the past six years has made him weary to ever take another life. Again, perfectly fine character plot point, but it's never mentioned again until the very end and I'm not sure if he gets another five lines over the next two hours. I'm not complaining because honestly who cares in a genre like this, but the script is very haphazard in trying to push these character moments into the picture just because.
The momentum builds and builds as they are able to make their way in the nick of time to the German fortress to being the final step of their mission, but then the film falls flat. This should have been the big moment, a half hour of seeing the soldiers accomplish their goal, but it's just boring. "The Dirty Dozen" has the great attack on the Nazi-filled chateau while "The Great Escape" has well the great escape, but this final assault on the guns isn't done particularly well. A mole is revealed to have sabotaged the explosives, but it doesn't really effect the mission. This is true of most of the setbacks they suffer, no real consequences. And the mole reveal is unremarkable and unnecessary. The writer of the book this is based on (Alistair MacLean) also wrote "Where Eagles Dare" which also deals with a mole(s), but in way that's much more related to the plot. This one seems like it's done because that's what the template of movies like require. There are a couple of deaths thrown in here as well and both are shot very clumsily to the point where you know people died, but are not sure how.
I don't mean to make it sound like this is in any way a poor picture, because it's not. It's jam packed with enough greatness that it's certainly worth seeing. It's a real studio system era production and those moguls surely knew how to make films that filled theatres. And there's definitely room for films like this today. It's not incredibly intelligent, but not hopelessly stupid either. And there's aspirations here to be more than just a waste of two hours. I wish the summers of today weren't choices between Comic Book Film 4 and Special Effects Franchise 6. And that's why I'll be heading to the New Beverly a few times a year to get my fix of this.
Rating - 3.5 stars out of 5
Random Thoughts -
Gregory Peck is awesome. If this film was remade today, Jon Hamm would be the perfect replacement. Peck's character "speaks Greek like a Greek and German like a German" and he has an awesome scene near the beginning of the mission where the six are on a shabby Greek fishing boat, disguised as swarthy-looking fisherman trying to sneak their way past the Nazis. When they encounter a Nazi vessel whose Captain wishes to inspect their boat, Peck plays up the Greek fisherman act to great comedic relief. I'd never seen him so charismatic. And in an example of subverting my expectations, instead of playing Greek to get around the Nazis undetected, the guys just blow them all away. That's when I knew this was going to be an awesome movie. Plus I can't watch a film from this era that takes place on a boat without thinking of Steve Zissou, so that added another couple of points from me.
This is sort of the "Space Cowboys" of World War Two pictures. Four of the six main characters were in the age range of 45-55 when filming this movie. David Niven especially looks like he's everyone's father. I'm not a World War Two expert (he says modestly), but I am almost certain the Allied forces would have had some soldiers in their thirties who were just as useful. Apparently, much was made of the advanced age of the cast at the time as well, so good to know it was noticed.
Seeing the Greek people made me realize that if Zeus and his pantheon of gods were Greek, then they probably looked Greek. Zeus as a dark haired mustachioed man is a concept that needs to be followed up on. Same thing with the Roman versions. There is no reason that a "Sopranos"-type show dealing with these gods of old should not be made.
The whole plot is based around destroying these guns to make it safe for the marooned British soldiers to be rescued, but how the hell did they get marooned in the first place? The reason it's so dangerous to rescue them is because the Germans have the whole place surrounded, so were they just joyriding and crashed their ship?
The British Commodore who hands out the mission sounds exactly like Matthew Berry from "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace". Look it up
Back tomorrow with "The Iron Giant".
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Change Of Plans And New Schedule
I found myself busier than usual the past three days and now I'm left with three hours or so to watch "The Iron Giant" and write up a review. I don't like to rush these things so I'm calling an audible. Instead, here are four reviews I wrote up in January-February 2010 when I tried a film blog for the first time. They are a little different style-wise, but I'm proud of them and hope you all find them worthwhile.
To keep myself on track here is my schedule for the next eight reviews.
Wednesday, October 24th - The Guns Of Navarone
Thursday, October 25th - The Iron Giant
Monday, October 29th - The Last Detail
Wednesday, October 31st - Headhunters
Monday, November 5th - Flight
Wednesday November 7th - Tell No One
Thursday, November 8th - Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
Wednesday, November 14th - Lincoln
To keep myself on track here is my schedule for the next eight reviews.
Wednesday, October 24th - The Guns Of Navarone
Thursday, October 25th - The Iron Giant
Monday, October 29th - The Last Detail
Wednesday, October 31st - Headhunters
Monday, November 5th - Flight
Wednesday November 7th - Tell No One
Thursday, November 8th - Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
Wednesday, November 14th - Lincoln
Classic Phil Review Number Four - Billy Liar
Phil note from 2012 - This is my all-time favorite film.
Billy Fisher is an incrediblely relatable young man who lives with his parents, has a boring job at a funeral home, two fiancee's, and tries to keep himself sane by spending as much time as possible daydreaming about Ambrosia, a perfect world where he is the king, war hero, and all other types of interesting people. He does believe that he has a job waiting for him in London working for a famous comedian as a writer, but first he needs to quit his job and get rid of the fiancee's he doesn't want anyways.
I was instantly struck by how easy it was to emphasize with Billy. He knows that he's better than the situation he's found himself in and just has to find a way to get out. He uses little fibs to make social situations easier, but these have snowballed into him finding himself with two unappealing fiancee's. When he seemingly catches a lifeline from comedian Danny Boon, it seems like everything will be easy from then on in. Boon however has never even heard of him and was probably just sending him a polite thank you for his material. It's a completely accurate representation of what happens when you build something up in your head as being much more important than it is. This setback just kills Fisher inside and might be the thing changes the course of his life forever.
Tom Courtenay made Billy into the most everymanish everyman possible. I constantly thought I was watching scenes from my life play out on screen, not by what he was doing, but by how he reacted to everything. Here is this young man who just wants to be comfortable, but has sank so deep into the rut that is his average life that he can't find a way out. The daydream sequences are entertaining to be sure, but the scenes where we see Billy truly react against his life are my favorites. When he is in the graveyard with one of his fiancee's and he has to lie to keep his facade going, but he becomes so frustrated he almost blows up at her; it's such a great example of the daily balance one must go through between one's own needs and society's. Billy has his own little successes like having a song he wrote be played at the local club, but he is so overcome by the dampers on his life that this seemingly important moment has no effect on him. By the end of this film, I felt like someone had took all my character traits and made a film to mock me with them.
The first time I watched this, I was drained by the ending. I was hoping to see the perfect ending play out as what I'd like to happen in my life, but then it all slipped away. The second time I watched it, it was even worse because I knew it was coming, and I was really hoping that somehow it would change. The ending involves the most frusterating yet entertaing part of the movie, Liz, played by a really attractive Julie Christie. She's a girl that Billy had a fling or something with sometime before the setting of the movie. She represents what Billy wishes he could be. At her first appearence in the movie, Billy remarks to a friend that "She's crazy. She's does anything she's feels". We then see her walking carefree past a bunch of shops and then encountering Danny Boon at a store opening ceremony. When she finally meets up with Billy, he's at the end of his rope. She convinces him to go with her to London where they could live free and pretty much do whatever they wanted. Billy could visit with Danny Boon and try to sell him some jokes. It would be the perfect scenario. He meets up with her at the train station and they board the train. At the last moment, he tells her he wants to grab some milk to bring on the train and we see him agonizing over whether he should go or not. We hear the train leave and when he aimlessly walks after the leaving train we see that his bag is waiting for him on the side of the tracks. He goes home and imagines himself in Ambrosia again. It makes sense, but still fills me with a combination of anger, confusion, and most of all despair. Billy just didn't have the courage to go after the dreams he constantly pined for, instead choosing to retreat to his boring, yet comfortable home. I would be on that train in a heartbeat with 1960's Julie Christie.
Billy Fisher is an incrediblely relatable young man who lives with his parents, has a boring job at a funeral home, two fiancee's, and tries to keep himself sane by spending as much time as possible daydreaming about Ambrosia, a perfect world where he is the king, war hero, and all other types of interesting people. He does believe that he has a job waiting for him in London working for a famous comedian as a writer, but first he needs to quit his job and get rid of the fiancee's he doesn't want anyways.
I was instantly struck by how easy it was to emphasize with Billy. He knows that he's better than the situation he's found himself in and just has to find a way to get out. He uses little fibs to make social situations easier, but these have snowballed into him finding himself with two unappealing fiancee's. When he seemingly catches a lifeline from comedian Danny Boon, it seems like everything will be easy from then on in. Boon however has never even heard of him and was probably just sending him a polite thank you for his material. It's a completely accurate representation of what happens when you build something up in your head as being much more important than it is. This setback just kills Fisher inside and might be the thing changes the course of his life forever.
Tom Courtenay made Billy into the most everymanish everyman possible. I constantly thought I was watching scenes from my life play out on screen, not by what he was doing, but by how he reacted to everything. Here is this young man who just wants to be comfortable, but has sank so deep into the rut that is his average life that he can't find a way out. The daydream sequences are entertaining to be sure, but the scenes where we see Billy truly react against his life are my favorites. When he is in the graveyard with one of his fiancee's and he has to lie to keep his facade going, but he becomes so frustrated he almost blows up at her; it's such a great example of the daily balance one must go through between one's own needs and society's. Billy has his own little successes like having a song he wrote be played at the local club, but he is so overcome by the dampers on his life that this seemingly important moment has no effect on him. By the end of this film, I felt like someone had took all my character traits and made a film to mock me with them.
The first time I watched this, I was drained by the ending. I was hoping to see the perfect ending play out as what I'd like to happen in my life, but then it all slipped away. The second time I watched it, it was even worse because I knew it was coming, and I was really hoping that somehow it would change. The ending involves the most frusterating yet entertaing part of the movie, Liz, played by a really attractive Julie Christie. She's a girl that Billy had a fling or something with sometime before the setting of the movie. She represents what Billy wishes he could be. At her first appearence in the movie, Billy remarks to a friend that "She's crazy. She's does anything she's feels". We then see her walking carefree past a bunch of shops and then encountering Danny Boon at a store opening ceremony. When she finally meets up with Billy, he's at the end of his rope. She convinces him to go with her to London where they could live free and pretty much do whatever they wanted. Billy could visit with Danny Boon and try to sell him some jokes. It would be the perfect scenario. He meets up with her at the train station and they board the train. At the last moment, he tells her he wants to grab some milk to bring on the train and we see him agonizing over whether he should go or not. We hear the train leave and when he aimlessly walks after the leaving train we see that his bag is waiting for him on the side of the tracks. He goes home and imagines himself in Ambrosia again. It makes sense, but still fills me with a combination of anger, confusion, and most of all despair. Billy just didn't have the courage to go after the dreams he constantly pined for, instead choosing to retreat to his boring, yet comfortable home. I would be on that train in a heartbeat with 1960's Julie Christie.
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