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Sydney (1996)
Understated Impact
Ahh, the dawn. The bright, strange dawn of an auteur career that has rustled the jimmies of film lovers the world over. Indeed, Paul Thomas Anderson has made a name for himself as a man whose movies are worth watching, a comedic contrast to cinema's other Paul Anderson, the monkey who makes Resident Evil movies. But I digress. Hard Eight!
This is a good movie. Rough around the edges in parts, but it's clearly setting up the tone and style that would define this director's interesting career, from Boogie Nights to There Will Be Blood. Unlike another first feature we recently discussed, David Fincher's Alien 3, Hard Eight definitely feels like a movie made by its director. Thoughtful, pensive camerawork, realistic dialogue, and left-of-center characterization all strum up a quiet concerto of PTA goodness.
Hard Eight is a film that's simultaneously impactful and understated. John C. Reilly plays a hard-luck drifter who meets up with an old gambler (Philip Baker Hall), who shows him how to get ahead. John falls in love with a waitress/prostitute (Gwyneth Paltrow, back when she was an actress and not the figurehead of snake oil products for bored, affluent housewives), and things eventually go sideways.
This film revels in a slow simmer of understatement. The direction and score, and the way the scenes linger, imbue the viewer with a subtle and pulsating sense of tension, like you're just waiting for the pin to drop. You're never quite sure what's lurking beneath the surface of things, but you know some monster will eventually come out to bite. This is the power of a strong vision, and good directorial skill.
The heart of the film is Philip Baker Hall as the old gambler Sydney. We learn, without spoilers, that he takes John under his wing as a sort of atonement. The performance is much like the film itself, a veneer of unshakeable calm that belies its depth. Hall is, in a word, tremendous. Reilly is also a winner (he always is, whether in comedy or otherwise), as is Paltrow in a portrait of damaged goods, although we don't get too in depth with her character, as the film is mainly centered on Sydney. Samuel L. Jackson is also terrific, a calculating, black-gloved menace with the aspect of a snake in the grass.
Hard Eight almost feels like a Tarantino movie at times, although with less edge and explosivity. It sometimes functions as a hangout movie (a la Jackie Brown), and luxuriates in its well-sculpted dialogue. It's not as showy as Tarantino, but I suppose the reason I draw the comparison is some ineffable sense of cool that can't be manufactured, but is instead the result of a filmmaker's natural style. Paul Thomas Anderson gave up the naming rights (he wanted it to be called Sydney, which is telling) in order to have control over the final cut. It shows. This is a PTA movie through and through. A young one, and on a budget, but the tone is there, illuminating the dark side of Americana with atypical movie characters and glamorously seedy environments.
FINAL TAKE: PTA likes his strange, messed up characters, and he likes his shadowy American corners. We'll see this later on in the more accomplished Boogie Nights (a wild epic about the porn industry) and the sociopathic masterpiece There Will Be Blood (my personal favorite, and a strong contender for my favorite film of all time), but Hard Eight lays the groundwork. Welcome to the film world, Mister Anderson. We're glad to have you.
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
A Darker Looming
Something was beginning to happen in the world of American cinema around the turn of the 1950's. Widescreen formats were on the horizon, colorization was dawning into its eventual ubiquity, and my oh my, is that a couple sleeping in the same bed!? How racy! However, none of these are quite on the agenda today. Instead, I want to focus on darkness. Heretofore, it was a rarity for a film to be thoroughly miserable, as audiences were conditioned by the expectation of levity, or at least some form of redemption. Films like Streetcar and others began a new era where a film could wallow in the absolute muck of human possibility, and be brilliant.
Streetcar is a film where every person is either evil or broken, and where the conception of purity is as far off as from the depths of any invented hell. Brando and Malden are thoroughly detestable men, though in different areas. Brando's Kowalski is a reprehensible, slavering mumble-animal, an unconscionable abuser and rapist. Malden's Mitch is gross, lame, pathetic, and finally shows his irredeemable nature in his treatment of the suffering Blanche, in a heart-wrenching performance given by Vivien Leigh. Blanche starts the story cracked, and thanks to Kowalski and Mitch, ends the story as a pile of jagged pieces, smashed by the inhumanity directed towards her.
This was of course Marlon Brando's breakout performance, and speaks to a further point about the evolution of cinema. To this point, most great actors played to type. Humphrey Bogart played the Bogart character, John Wayne the Wayne role, Cary Grant was charming, and Jimmy Stewart was an affable bumbler. There were of course variations to the theme. Stewart proved his mettle in more serious roles in Anthony Mann westerns, and actors like Henry Fonda took on a variety of personas, but you never forgot it was them. Brando, through his sheer magnetism and method acting style, changed the game, paving the way for the greats to come, your Robert De Niro's, your Philip Seymour Hoffmann's, and Daniel Day Lewis's. Seeing an actor completely disappear into a role is incredible, no matter the era, and few would disagree that it was Brando who set the stage for acting to reach a new, wild level.
It's an interesting internal dialogue one has when one considers a film a masterpiece, which Streetcar is, in my book. You have to ask yourself why, and this is often a tricky question. The reasons are far more clear in some cases than others. Streetcar is not a film that will make you feel good. It will not teach you anything positive about the human condition. Rather, it portrays the precise opposite. It is a closed circuit of mental and psychological abuse, a constricting four-walled human horror. If I had to say what makes it great, it's because these elements, combined with the thorough effectiveness of great direction and acting, make it feel real, and timeless. Humans have good qualities, no doubt, but we are equally an iniquitous breed of savage simian, oozing with psychopathy's. And like it or not, there are Blanche's and Stanley's all over the world, caught in the maze of their own brutishness and delusions. Streetcar does not align with a comfortable truth, but it is a truth nonetheless.
FINAL TAKE: Movies like this showed what cinema could do, if it didn't care to spare the delicate feelings of a general audience. It also showed what acting could be, and would become, in the best of the best. The claustrophobic filmmaking, the indelible performances, and the absolute thematic wallow are just as pointed and magnetic today as they were in 1951. Things were changing, in the 50's. The Beat Generation and motorcycle gangs, those emblems of cultural shift, were just taking their first breaths of fresh air, born of the stagnant womb of cultural repression. Although another Bando film to follow, The Wild One, is more significant in this regard, Streetcar bears mentioning in this conversation, as it signified the unshackling of narrative to the constraints of palatability. Streetcar is a great film, maybe even a perfect one, and is as resounding for its signification as it is for its immaculate quality.
Errementari (2017)
Alluring Del Toro Lite
Errementari is a strange film, and seems to approximate what you get when you mingle a tonality and visual style reminiscent of Guillermo Del Toro (specifically Pan's Labyrinth), an obsession with Catholic myth, and quality lower budgeted filmmaking.
Much like Pan's Labyrinth, the story centers around a girl in historical Spain (I forget when exactly, maybe 1800's? I'm a pro reviewer!) who is being raised by the minister of a small town. Her mother committed suicide shortly after she was born, and she don't believe in no Gods and Devils! On the outskirts of town, there is a blacksmith, an errementari, who, according to legend, has made a deal with the devil. The narrative goes in some pretty wild directions, and I won't spoil too much, but it turns out this is true, and he's got one of the demons under lock and key.
You can synthesize the preliminary narrative thrust here pretty well by the trailer, which appreciably does not spoil the whole movie, as many modern trailers tend to do:
The look of the film is something that comprises both a point of praise and, perhaps for some, equally a point of contention. The movie is generally very good looking, impressing the viewer with lots of deep cold blues and heated reds, and both color temperatures are imbued with an appreciable mistiness. The cinematography is quality, and the production design, especially, I found to be really impressive. Much of the time is spent in and around the blacksmith's hut, and the reliance on visual motifs like crosses and spikes both looks cool and serves the general vicious Catholic spirit that imbues the movie. What some people might take umbrage with, and may distract them, is that the devil is quite clearly a guy in a rubber devil costume. Personally, I love this choice. Whether the inspiration for it was budgetary, or simply an homage to the monster pictures of the pre-2000's, when such concessions were technically necessary for lack of computer graphics, give me a rubber costume any day. Even The Lord of the Rings knows the glory of this. The Hobbit not so much.
It's a good costume, as well. Possibly the best you could do in bringing a devil to life through latex, but it does stretch believability somewhat, and this keys into a tonal point about Errementari. Like the costume, the film rides a curious line between good cinema and a good B movie. It establishes tension fairly well throughout, with good camera work, great acting, and the aforementioned cinematography and production design, but often crosses the line into schlockier territory where the tension was surmounted by a silliness that had me either smiling or laughing. This is particularly pronounced towards the end, in a wonderful scene I won't spoil, but you'll know it when you see it.
The point here is that all things considered, the tone might not jive with some people. It's not entirely consistent, as the line is blurred between a serious narrative and fun, slightly goofy, rubber-monster elements, but I thrive in this environment. It scratches the Well Done Movie itch as much as it scratches the Reel Weirdo itch, if you get my drift, and almost feels like a remake of some classic 80's flick in some regards, right down to the plotline, which toys with revenge, redemption, damnation, and familial entwinement in a classic sense. It's very much like a weirdo fairy tale, and as easy as it is to draw Guillermo Del Toro inferences, I could just as easily see this being a movie Lucio Fulci made for 7 dollars in 1989, but resurrected by a good modern filmmaker.
FINAL TAKE: In all, I quite enjoyed my time in Errementari, although it's a little hard to know who to recommend it to. I think Pan's Labyrinth is probably a good metric, in that regard. You have a little girl facing down mythological forces, a fair degree of darkness in both the tone and narrative elements, and a tone that flits between serious and slightly silly. It must be said that this is certainly not the equal of Del Toro's masterpiece (almost nothing is), but if this sounds like it might be up your alley, I'd give it a shot. There's some really fun stuff here.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Timeless Americana
Out of all the directors who created, defined, and subsequently embodied the mythologized early years of Hollywood, Huston might just be my favorite. While I would be remiss, as any film buff would, not to hold aloft filmmakers like John Ford, Billy Wilder, and Howard Hawks as well (to name but a few), none of them directed The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which stands even today as an absolute masterpiece. Let's not forget that Huston's first feature was both the invention and the apex of film noir, The Maltese Falcon, but that's a story for another day.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre follows 3 men, played by Bogart, Holt, and Walter Huston (who netted a Supporting Actor Oscar for this picture, shot just a few years before his death) as they search for gold in the Sierra Madre mountains. They strike it big, and must thereafter contend with strangers, bandits, and internal strife born of greed, both real and imagined, as they plot to get the gold home.
What makes this movie work? It's lazily tempting to say "everything"... and so I shall. The photography is gorgeous, the acting superb, and the story utterly engrossing. While the picture has a lot of those fun Western hallmarks, such as the old flap-gum prospector and his WEEE-HAWW's, gunfights, and so forth, the main hook is its portrayal of greed and psychological descent. In a certain sense, Sierra Madre can be said to be something of a brother film to There Will Be Blood, as both Bogart's Fred C. Dobbs and Daniel Day Lewis's Daniel Plainview succumb to their rapacious nature, to the point of psychopathy and murder. While Huston was the one who netted the Oscar for this, it is truly Bogart that defines the film, giving perhaps the best performance of his storied career. It is one of cinema's finest "going crazy" performances.
And yet, for all of the mental horrors the film explores, it bookends itself with a lightness of spirit that borders on poetry, as at the very last, Sierra Madre has us laugh at the comedic futility of all the grasping and violence and golden dreams. It does so not in a fatalistic or depressive way, but with a tone that has a strange affirmation of existence, an acknowledgement of the strangeness and silliness of life.
FINAL TAKE: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is perhaps the greatest work from one of cinema's most legendary directors, and is an absolute favorite of mine As a snapshot of a bygone way of life, as a story, as an actor's picture, and a confluence of all the things that make a movie great, it is an apex. If you're a fan of film, this is a must see. No excuses.
The Libertine (2004)
I'm not even sure it's good, but I kind of love it
Anyone can drink, Johnny."
"Not many can match my determination."
The Libertine is a mostly forgotten film about the Earl of Rochester, John Wilmot. He drank, buggered, wrote some poems, and drank some more. This is, I can safely say, a very strange film.
Both in style and heart, The Libertine is as a poisoned wine. The look of the film is sickly, imbued with an endless feverish yellow, and this does not belie the core, which traffics in a similar sense of decay. And yet, this garish uneasiness is strangely inextricable from the lure of the picture, at least for me. I've a soft spot for poets, scoundrels, and the debonair. Mingle them to a mixture, and pour two generous shots of cynical, "F the world and the idiots within it" gut rot into it, and my aesthetics are well tickled.
But this would not suffice, this succumbing and sinful poet of a character and film, were the verse not there to back it. The dialogue, wondrously spat from Depp like a spiteful serpent, is where the movie works best. It is pointed and often tremendously funny, albeit laced in a dark venom. It rings quasi-Shakespearian at times, and the performance that gives it life is like the wrathful child of Byron and Bacchus.
Despite it's strengths, however, The Libertine crumbles in some areas. The last act is a mess, and the picture seems to stumble over what, precisely, it's trying to say. It meddles with redemptive qualities, but does not go very far, leaving any thematic takeaways in a haze. The visual detritus and perversion the movie embraces also go overboard at times, and while the context is in keeping with the character and subversive motivations of Wilmot, it rides the line of the farcical.
Essentially, your enjoyment of the film will stem from your interest in a beguilingly grotesque character. While all the actors do a great job, it is Depp, and the dialogue, that constitute the core of allure. The story is muddled, and the visuals ceaselessly uneasy and often perverse.
Somewhere in the core of all of this nastiness, however, lies something true, and something that resonates, for all the faults. The great artist who cannot reckon with the world, or himself, is a rich theme, and one we've seen in all the greats who died young, clutching the bottle or the needle. When a brilliant mind stares into the Nietzschean abyss, that mother stares right back, a strange and indelible woe. Better get some more wine.
"So here he lies at the last. The deathbed convert. The pious debauchee. Could not dance a half measure, could I? Give me wine, I drain the dregs and toss the empty bottle at the world. Show me our Lord Jesus in agony and I mount the cross and steal his nails for my own palms. There I go, shuffling from the world. My dribble fresh upon the bible. I look upon a pinhead and I see angels dancing. Well? Do you like me now?"
The Djinn (2021)
Interesting attempt
When I saw the score on this one, I knew I had to see it. Let's see what the consensus says: "The Djinn serves up a scary, sleekly effective cautionary tale about being careful what you wish for." Well, after having seen the film, I can say that roughly half of this is true. It is indeed a cautionary tale. Quite obviously.
The Djinn is about a mute kid whose dad is a night time DJ. They move into a new apartment, the kid finds a magical book and mirror, and waits for pops to leave and do his thing while kid does magic ritual to gain a voice. I was on board at this point. The 80's synthwave score was a really unique choice, and a genre I love, and the movie was doing a really good job in setting up a simple, almost 80's horror tone to go along with the soundtrack.
It all falls apart when it tries to be a horror movie, however. But at least it falls apart slowly, and not all at once. There is definitely some craft here, suspense-wise, but it continually winds down the more the Djinn (who turns into different people, based on images he sees) is on screen. By the time we're at the final act, where the djinn is just a lady with a stupid looking demon mouth, and jump scares abound, I'm no longer interested. The ending, as well, for anybody with even part of a brain, will be telegraphed long in advance.
Despite this, I did not hate The Djinn by any means. The kid is great, and the motif of silence (there is no spoken dialogue for 80% of the movie) is an effective and interesting choice. It just dovetailed into a flatline, personally. It's worth noting, definitely not for the last time, that I am a poor indicator for what is cinematically "scary," as after 20 years of crazy horror movies I'm pretty desensitized, so your mileage may vary. What I am not desensitized to, however, is tension, and any genre can elicit that if it's well done. For this, I'll give The Djinn half marks for effort. It's far above some of the basement level dreck you see in the Horror section of Prime or Netflix, and I think these directors could definitely go on to do something good.
FINAL TAKE: In all, this little horror fairy tale feels like Baby's First Guillermo Del Toro. The seeds of something interesting are here, tonally and stylistically, and I liked the acting and the score, but it was just too bad that the horror, the main draw of the film, did nothing for me. The Djinn is probably worth a watch for horror fans, if only because it stands above most of the other garbage we tend to wade through to find the gems, but the critical celebration and wanton salivation over it are totally beyond me.
Busanhaeng (2016)
Great Character Motivated Mayhem
Over the last 20 years or so, zombies have been terribly overdone in the movie world. I'm pretty tired of them, frankly, so when I find a newer film that works well in this flesh-hungry context, I know something special is going on. Leave it to the Koreans, I suppose, those vanguards of horror cinema, to do things just right.
Tonally, Train to Busan is not scary. Let's get that straight. Instead, it rides a line between tension, explosivity, and comedy, doing service to all three. The story follows a father who takes his daughter to see mom in another city. A zombie apocalypse occurs in the surrounding world, which infects the train, and a widening cast of characters must do what they can to survive. Engage action thrusters!
Right off the bat, as evidenced by the trailer, the movie looks great. This is a quality production. Whether we're seeing a locked down camera for dramatic character scenes, or engaging in wild carnage, the shots, camera movement and the editing are, in a word, perfect. This is not a small point, either. Action movies are frequently a mess if the direction is poor, and an overreliance of quick cuts is used as a smokescreen for a lack of talent. It's an easy target, but any Transformers film is a great example. The action is terrible for many reasons, not least of which is that all sense of orientation is lost in the chaos of edits. For action to work, you need to know where you stand, where things are in relation to things. It sounds simple, and you'd think it would be, but it's amazing how often it goes wrong. You could also look at the last few Die Hard movies for contradistinction, although I wouldn't recommend it.
There are two things in particular that make this movie work, beyond the technically excellent action filmmaking. The first is a devotion to character, manifested in the entirety of Train to Busan's excellent cast. Each player on this kinetic, blood-drenched stage is defined by subtle relationships, whether it be to their child/parent, wife, sister, or boyfriend/girlfriend. These connections are never overstated, as the script does not dive into needless expository elements. Instead, you understand their dimensions right off the bat, and therefore everyone's motivations are clear, and each character is immediately believable and thoroughly humanized, even if they're all essentially just archetypes. This is all to say that the film does a nimble job of introducing and exploring relatable, likeable people. Big check mark.
The other lovely thing about this film is its pure kinetical motion, underscored by a love for B-movie splatter. Train to Busan is almost comedically bloody in the best possible sense, as zombies munch humans and humans batter zombies, and once the films starts escalating it becomes epic fun, while still finding time for the characters and audience to breathe. It's very much a game of plateaus. You reach the next level of crazy, take a breather, and then dive back in to the chaos, always with a goal in mind. Save the ones you love.
Interestingly, this last thought brings the question of tone to the forefront. As I said, it's not particularly scary, but it has this weird mixture of comedy and drama that almost shouldn't work, but does, thanks to Sang-ho Yeon's immaculate direction. The character elements, all of their fears and relationships, are treated seriously, but the film knows when to indulge in the wackiness of its scenarios to the point that I would characterize the movie as "fun." Essentially, the knowledge of when to play things straight, and when to chew the scenery, and not have either element tip the scales too much, is the film's biggest victory. If you want an insane action movie, Sang-ho's got you covered. Ditto for an oddly touching character drama. Just be ready for the metric fuck-tons of gore.
FINAL TAKE: Train to Busan is fantastic. It's a simple story that evolves into an absurd spectacle, but the context never overtakes or surmounts its characters. Therefore, even in its most hectic moments, it retains a strong emotional core that carries you through. Train to Busan knows that good action requires good motivation. Splattering skulls is all well and good, but we need to know why doing it matters.
Rashômon (1950)
A Perfect Movie
Rashomon Temple sits, half-ruined, framing a sky that pours rain. The rain is relentless, but the temple, though uninhabited and worn, provides succor for those seeking escape from the downpour. The men gather round, pull off planks of wood, the very skin of the temple, to make a fire. Thus, the story begins.
There are a lot of movies out there. Bold claim, right? However, only a very select few can be said to be absolutely perfect. Rashomon is one of them. Rashomon is, without a hint of qualification from me, a perfect movie.
From the opening framing device of the temple, we are told the same story, four times, from four different points of view, about a specific event, where a bandit leads a man into a trap so that he can force himself on his wife. Each version of the story is very different, and we see each version play out in immaculate detail. Who is telling the truth? How do we parse and interpret the differing accounts, and who is truly the most wicked actor in this multifarious drama?
Every frame of this film is gorgeous. Kurosawa is in true master mode here, as every movement of the camera, every still shot, every little movement is astonishingly evocative. The actors are perfect, engaging in multifaceted dimensions of their characters to suit the diverging narratives. Each one, moreover, plays a range that covers reprehensibility as thoroughly as they do a sad, quiet grace. This depth of texture is emblematic of the core of the film itself.
The beauty, and the brilliance, is that we never know the true nature of events. It is as if to say, at the end, that deceit is endemic to the human soul, and the truth of things is, and always will be, hidden under a cloud of obfuscation. And yet, without spoiling the tender final moments of this beautiful film, there is also a small and transcendent grace that imbues humanity with dimension. Just as the rain finally subsides at Rashomon Temple, so too does kindness act as a parting of the clouds. This is the best thing that art can do, in my opinion, and what all the best art does: it takes both the beauty and the horror of humanity, meshes them together with exquisite craftsmanship, and offers it with open hands.
The human spirit, the film seems to say, is like Rashomon Temple. A marvelous structure, half-ruined, and yet still capable of offering protection from the ceaseless storm.
FINAL TAKE: Do you need one? Just find the restored version, and watch the damn thing. It is an unequivocal masterpiece.
1917 (2019)
OMT: 1917
S 1917 a masterpiece? That's the question I've been pondering. I'm not sure of the answer. Time will let us know. But the fact that the question is there at all is a telling one. This is a profoundly affective film.
Two boys are tasked to deliver a message, through enemy lines. DO NOT ATTACK! The battle is a ruse, a deception of the enemy. Many men will die. This is the call to action, propelling into motion a story that is really quite simple. It is a hero's journey of sorts, and quite classically so. There is a quest, there are trials and monsters (or enemies, rather), helpful guides, and imagery of descent, all framed in the hellish chaos of World War 1, in the trenches and beyond. We will return to the narrative discourse a bit later.
It might be, and has been said, that 1917 is something of a style over substance movie, a sort of intense rollercoaster moreso than a complex meditation. I can see the argument. It is a "one take movie," wherein the conceit is that the entire film is shot in one incredibly complex take, with no cuts. Cuts, of course, do exist, as it would have been impossible to shoot otherwise, and you can pick them out if you're paying attention, but my god is this glorious technical filmmaking. The way the camera operates in 1917 is thoroughly stunning, some of the best I've ever seen, and I think the relative simplicity of the story in juxtaposition with the complexity of this visual device is what has led to some critics dismissal of the film.
This is why I think they're wrong: Yes, it is a rollercoaster. Yes, the story is relatively simple. But what surrounds and informs the visual splendor is so thoroughly evocative that it envelops the simple narrative in a relentlessly profound way. Put more simply, you really feel that you are there, in the trenches and fields and burnt out cities, and the dirt and the grime and stories written on men's faces imbue the film with the reality of war in a way few others have managed to achieve. It's a strange balance between acrobatic filmmaking and ruthless realism. For some, I believe, this is problematic, as the filmmaking itself, for them, surmounts the content, and becomes the focal point rather than what is being filmed. I acknowledge this argument, but do not agree. The lack of cuts, instead, lends the camera a curious authorial voice, like a fluid and omniscient ghost, and the experiential nature of witnessing this war, from this vantage, involves the audience in a very special way. It does not matter if the story is simple, because the experience IS the story, drawn in agonizing detail.
It's funny, because I tend to hate movies I would describe in this way. Movies that act as theme park rides (I'll draw your attention to most modern horror) are generally devoid of substance and depth for this very reason, feeling like those haunted houses where people pop out of the walls, shriek, and whatever minor thrill this elicits is immediately forgotten. 1917, owing to how painstaking and wrenching the context of it is, and the complexity of the production, transcends this and becomes something wholly more.
FINAL TAKE: 1917 succeeds for me on all fronts. It is a small yet marvelous human story surrounded by horror and chaos, a hero's journey with touching characters and an unshakeable sense of place. It is also a technical marvel, which, far from being diverting, excels simultaneously in eliciting that cinephile thrill of a thing well made and in drawing you in to the gritty reality of its world. Whether you end up in agreement or not, it is definitely worthy of your time and attention. There has never been a film quite like it.
127 Hours (2010)
One More Take: 127 Hours
127 Hours chronicles the true story of Aron Ralston, who got his arm crushed by a rock whilst galivanting around in Utah. The title, rather obviously, refers to just how damn long he survived in the situation before, spoilers, cutting off his arm and hobbling to salvation.
I like the director, Danny Boyle, quite a bit. Trainspotting is a weird masterpiece of unhinged dark comedy and horrifying humanity, and 28 Days Later is one of the best zombie films ever made, opting for a pure dreadful realism not often inhabited by the genre. This is to name but two in an eclectic career, but shows his capacity for doing vastly different films very well. 127 Hours, unfortunately, doesn't rise to the heights of these, or Slumdog Millionaire. And yet, it feels like it almost could have, given some different stylistic choices.
There are two ways, in my mind, to approach a story like this. Let's look at both.
1. Keep a tense and narrow focus, both emotionally and visually, on the stark reality of the situation. This would be the more difficult of the two (you'll see why in a moment), mostly due to visual limitations. A filmmaker must be very inventive and creative to have a single-location movie keep up its visual dynamism. A perfect exemplar for this is 12 Angry Men, the masterpiece courtroom drama, wherein Sidney Lumet gradually shifts the framing to make things feel more and more claustrophobic. In a different way, Tarantino's The Hateful Eight similarly functions as almost a stage play, within the confines of a single cabin, but never lacks for dynamic interaction. In terms of spacing, these are relatively tight pieces, but they have the advantage of being about multiple people, and people who can move. When it's just James Franco stuck under a rock for an hour, the task probably seems much more difficult, and likely why Boyle elected the latter:
2. Shift your focus. There are a few ways to do this. Thankfully, Boyle didn't go in what would be the obvious direction for a less inventive filmmaker, in cutting away to some parallel story where the protagonist's family, or girlfriend, or (insert character) goes out of their mind with worry. Instead, the film shifts focus by indulging in a form of psychological interiority, where Ralston's life reflections and dehydrated fever dreams come to life in imagination sequences which serve to break up what Boyle probably feared would be the perceived visual monotony of, like we said, James Franco stuck under a rock.
Trouble is, these focus shifts had the opposite effect for me, and led what could and should have been an intense claustrophobic scenario into a backslide into indie quirk, which does a tonal disservice to the situation. Yes, it added variety, as Franco dreams of his girlfriend and family and past and so forth, but none of these elements really inform the character in a way that couldn't have been achieved, without losing focus and tone, by him simply speaking these things into his camera, which he does at various other points. This feels strange to say, since "show over tell" is generally my soapbox for exposition, but this really isn't exposition. It's not about plot. It's about a man coming to terms with his life and fears and failings, and when you have Franco doing some of the best acting of his life (he's the best part of the movie), keeping the focus right on him would have been, in all ways, better. In addition, we don't really learn anything we don't already infer about the character from these cut-aways. He's a loner, he wishes he wasn't, etc. There's no point in me going too deep into all of that, except to reiterate that starkly focalizing the character and the dire situation would have engendered far more gravity than these quirky imagination scenes. 12 Angry Men works because the camera never leaves that room. 127 Hours should have done the same, and Boyle should have trusted himself, and his audience, enough to persevere in that. The tendency towards quirky interlude may inject visual variety, but it deflates the rawness. We really didn't need the pillow. Let us inhabit the reality of the situation, along with the character, and we'll feel it all the more.
FINAL TAKE: Despite this pretty major criticism, 127 Hours is still worth watching. James Franco is much more at home in these small movies than he is in big pictures (one need only look at his flavorless, narcoleptic performances in Oz the Great and Powerful or Rise of the Planet of the Apes for proof), and he is really, really good here, and when the film does keep its focus, it's a winner. The procedural, survival-oriented stuff is great, particularly in the agonizing, pull-no-punches finale. These elements, which comprise the lion's share, earn a recommendation. It's just too bad it didn't stick to its guns. Given the 28 Days Later treatment of brutal, don't-look-away reality, it might have been something really special.
Ying (2018)
Rewarding and Beautiful
Shadow rewards the patient. 20 minutes into the film, I still didn't understand what was going on, despite lengthy and very clunky chunks of exposition. There is one scene in particular, where one character is speaking to another, in a single shot, painfully (for me) describing events both of them already know about, just so the viewer can be clued in to context. This is particularly unfortunate because the primary strength of Shadow is its cinematography, and often astounding visual flair. Above all else, however, it is a movie. A visual medium. If you can show rather than tell, it's usually to your benefit.
So why did I stick with it? Well, other than a pretty superb critical reception, it was directed by Yimou Zhang, who readers might know as the helmsman of such exceptional films as Hero, starring Jet Li, or the immortally good House of Flying Daggers, a personal favorite in the Chinese canon. And while Shadow, for certain, is not the measure of these titles in the story department, it eventually picks up, earns its intrigue, and the visuals make the effort more than worthwhile.
I was speaking to my friend Jeff about this, after I recommended the movie to him, and he quite succinctly summed up the inaugural problems. I've gone back, and will relate what he said verbatim: "It took a good 1/3 of the movie for me to understand what is really a basic fucking plot." Indeed, Jeffrey, and thanks for your contribution. Essentially, there is intrigue in the kingly courts, hinging upon tensions with another kingdom. The king is a tool, and unbeknownst to him, the commander of his armies, having been wounded in a previous battle, and now near death, is working behind the scenes to influence events through the use of a body double. Things move forward from there. Cue politics, a web of questionable motives, and badass martial arts action.
The name of the film takes itself from two elements: the characterological and the visual. The first is more obvious, in that that the film swirls around the centrality of the body double character, who is essentially our hero, and the only one whose motivations are clear. He is promised that if he plays his part in the war, he will be reunited with his estranged mother, from whom he was taken as a child. A fine motivation. The second is the astonishing way the film plays with light. There are numerous, breathtaking shots that play with shadows and veiling, to the effects of doubling, magnification, and more, where reality is diffused through soji screens and work as visual metaphors to underscore emotional moments and character motivations. It's tough to say more than this without spoiling, but you get the idea. Duplicity and texture are visually represented in a very unique and beautiful way.
Concomitant with these more subtle moments of shading is the general look of the film, nicely desaturated so as to be borderline monochrome, which serves the Yin/Yang motif that the film inhabits. The action scenes are, and I feel I'm running out of similes here, breathtaking. There is a fantastic and highly inventive battle sequence in the second half, the highlight of the film, that takes all these visual cues, as well as haunting slow-motion capture and a sweet use of diegetic/non-diegetic sound mixing, to really reward your patience through the lead-up.
FINAL TAKE: While it may be rightly stated that Shadow is something of a "style over substance" movie, as the visuals tend to surmount the story, said story does eventually pay off in a satisfying way, and I really don't mind anyway if the visuals are this good. And I don't mean CGI. This is no action-schlock Transformers rollercoaster of indistinct bludgeoning. I mean filmmaking, both in quiet character framing and kinetic martial arts savagery. Get past the shaky start, get your bearings, and you will reap some real benefits for your investment.
Side note: I probably don't need to say this, but just in case, please watch the movie in its original language. This goes for all movies. Dubbing automatically drops a film at least a whole letter grade, no matter how well done. Seriously.
Shadow is available, for the time being, on Netflix. Give it a shot.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
A Fun, Contemplative Human Tale
Ah, the poor hunchback. Even in the titular role, whose aspect wallows in sadness in the poster framed above, he does not inhabit a role of centrality, nor can he find companionship. It is his movie, and yet it is not, in a strange sort of opposition. He is not the one for whom happy endings come. He is not the one who gets the girl. His actions and heart ring the bells, cause the momentum for these things to occur, but, with a tender finality, these things are not for him, nor will they ever be.
Most of you are familiar with this tale, though likely moreso because of the Disney version, of which I can make no comment, since I haven't seen it in 25 years, nor do I intend to. For those not, however, here's the quick rundown. Esmerelda, a gypsy, sneaks into the city, in an attempt to get King Louis XI to help her people. She is thus drawn into a spiraling tug of war between all sorts of forces enamored with her, for good or ill. Catching the eye of an amoral Cardinal, her lack of reciprocity in his advances leads him to murder, for which she is framed, and said forces try different routes to save the damsel from death.
The cast is superb, from the villainous Frollo (Cedric Hardwicke) to the dashing Gringoire (Edmond O'Brien), and especially Charles Laughton as the eponymous hunchback. The production, in addition, is beautiful and lavish. No expense was spared, seemingly, and the movie looks great as a result, with huge, complex sequences that stand the test of time. All of this is to say, the movie holds up completely on a technical front, and this serves to bolster a tone that encompasses many shades, from daring adventurousness to borderline fairy-tale whimsy to the contemplation of abject sadness and rejection inhabited by the hunchback.
In all places, the movie works. The production, characters, story, all things really function in concert to make this a great film, but it is the ending which, like the hunchback himself, rings the bells with sad, heartfelt power, because it inhabits a deeper human shade than usual. Esmerelda is saved, finally, after the hunchback single-handedly fends off invaders from Notre Dame, acting the unlikely movie hero in a confrontation with the villainous Frollo, and Gringoire, through the power of the presses, elicits the sympathy and action of King Louis.
Why does the hunchback do this? Why risk everything for a girl who, he must know, will never love him? It's not about love. It's because she gave him water. When he was in the stocks, earlier in the film, being pelted by the ghoulish townspeople, she alone displayed basic sympathy as he cried for water. Humanity begets humanity. And yet the happy ending is not for him. The day is won, and Esmerelda rides off with handsome Gringoire and the promise of help for her people. It is your classic movie ending. But it is only half the story. She rides away, born on the wind of the fairy tale momentum endemic to story's end, but the hunchback can merely watch from the tower. It's quite a powerful image, the depth of which comes from inference rather than exposition. There is no stupid line, telling the audience how to feel, no "oh, poor Quasimodo, he will never know anything but loneliness," but, if you have some modicum of emotional intelligence, you feel the gravity of it anyhow, that bittersweet mingle of joy and sadness at this juxtaposition, and the eternal lot that is the hunchback's. This is what makes the movie feel human. I could see this frustrating a more fly-over audience: "Well what happens to hunchback, huh? He just stands there on the tower? Why doesn't he get to be happy, and why aren't we told something?" No, you moron, that's the point. The movie could have easily done this, could have easily played to the cheap seats, but the contemplation and restraint of these final moments are what makes for a resonating emotional core, whose delicacy could have easily been surmounted by a backslide into kitsch.
FINAL TAKE: In all aspects, this movie is a winner. It is by turns fun, absorbing, sad, and ultimately a great tonal balance of all. The production is complex, and still looks fantastic, and the cast of characters are strong. Ultimately, however, the reason that it endures for me is because underneath all these machinations, whether they be the plotting or the filmmaking, the movie has a real heart, and recognizes that happiness for one is not happiness for all. I use this word all the time, and will continue to do so, because, depending on your movie, it is often the most important element of all: humanity. The recognition of sadness within the beautiful, or vice versa. It's a tricky thing to adequately explicate, and there is no hard and fast rule of incorporation, especially since film is so wide and vast, and there are infinite ways for a movie to succeed and fail, but The Hunchback of Notre Dame knew what it needed to do for its story, and pulled it off perfectly. It's the little things, after all, which make all the difference. Life is a burden, and often a lonely one. It might always be. Who knows? But we'll never forget those who, in a time of dire thirst and pelting torture, gave us water. Nothing can touch those moments.
Stagecoach (1939)
A Beautiful Ensemble Narrative
Rounding out our 1939 discussion of John Ford, alongside Drums Along the Mohawk and Young Mr. Lincoln, is Stagecoach, far and away the best of the three, and still eternally referenced by filmmakers themselves as an unimpeachable classic. Orson Welles famously viewed the film over 40 times to engender the proper headspace in order to craft his own masterwork, Citizen Kane, calling it a "textbook example of filmmaking" (thanks, IMDB). While it may be harder these days for a modern viewer, accustomed to a medium possessed of far more glitz and explosivity, to appreciate the craftsmanship on display here, I like to think that a strong emotional core, and a great story and characters, tend towards the timeless in any medium.
The story, shockingly, is centered around a stagecoach, and follows a band of characters as they take a trip across the ol' American West for reasons as different as the characters themselves. You have a whiskey vendor, a drunken doctor (the combo of which, naturally, leads to some comedic interplay), a gentlelady far along in pregnancy, a mysterious gentleman scoundrel, a banker on the take, and another woman strongly intimated to be a prostitute, kicked out of town by the "good people." John Wayne joins the cast a little down the road as the infamous Ringo Kid. Complications arise as a Comanche threat looms on the journey's horizon.
While there's a lot that can be said for directorial choices like shot composition, which is fantastic throughout, I won't bore you much with technicality... this time. What really makes this movie work, and stand the test of time, is its strength as an ensemble narrative. The characters are all tremendously well-drawn, the acting is superb, and their interplay creates a nuanced, thoroughly humanistic meditation.
For instance, there is the aforementioned comedic juxtaposition of the drunken Doc Boone and the whiskey vendor, a nebbish individual played by, of course, Donald Meek. Perfect casting. Easy laughs, perhaps, in a different film, but it serves to highlight the grace and humanity of what everyone assumes to be a belligerent, fallen man, in the doctor, as even with a reserve of drink at hand, having been outcast by the town, he rises with aplomb when needs must. Special kudos to Thomas Mitchell in the role. It's one of his very best, and he dominates his scenes, inhabiting a character that is also representative of the film's thorough, and yet understated, comedic tone.
Concomitant with the doctor is the archetype of the Fallen Woman, Dallas, played by Claire Trevor, ostracized and similarly banished from town. She is treated with disdain by everyone besides the doctor, and later, the Ringo Kid, another "undesirable." Within these two characters, Doc Boone and Dallas, there emerges a theme classism, if you will, or at the very least the often blind nature of human superiority, as, without wishing to spoil anything, she also displays a touching and ineffable humanity. These two characters, specifically, are beautiful, flawed souls that transcend the archetypal modalities of station and shine at the heart of the film.
We also, of course, have John Wayne, in the movie that made him a star. If you're familiar with John Wayne, well... he plays John Wayne. You know what you're in for on that count. His swaggering machismo, however, does not feel parodical, such as it can seem in some of his later work when he became an icon, and this is precisely because the film is not just a "John Wayne Movie," but because he is a cog in a greater machine, a distinct color in service to a full palette. His burgeoning relationship with Dallas, moreover, is representative of something I always love in a movie, if done well, in broken people finding connection, and a sort of fullness, together, and it's through them that the movie earns its ending.
FINAL TAKE: Stagecoach retains its status as a cinematic icon. That's a tough thing to do, given 82 (and counting) intervening years. While John Ford puts on an early cinematic masterclass in technique, the real treasure here is the interplay of the ensemble, and the narrative weaved from the characters they impeccably inhabit. While not as well-known in general conversation as other classics of the era like Gone With the Wind, or the aforementioned Citizen Kane, it really, really deserves to be, and stands at the apex of the Ford canon alongside The Grapes of Wrath.
True Detective (2014)
One More Take: True Detective Season 1
"To realize that all your life, all your love, all your hate, all your memories, all your pain, it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream, a dream that you had inside a locked room, a dream about being a person. And like a lot of dreams, there's a monster at the end of it." -Rust Cohle
When it all comes together, a film is a glorious thing. Or, in this case, a series. Not my usual bag, if you will. My mind is too fickle for television. Even if I enjoy it, I get distracted, and usually leave it unfinished. Limited series, for this reason, are a bit more manageable, and the first season of True Detective functions almost perfectly. 8 episodes, a complete story, and quite possibly the best show I have ever seen.
Deep in the Louisiana bayou, people are going missing, sometimes found in rape-murder scenes that read like a demented pagan nativity. Small town America reckons itself to the horrors of the Southern Gothic aesthetic, voodoo and marshlands and a duffel bag of psychosis and drug abuse. Enter our detectives, Rust Cohle and Marty Hunt (McConaughey and Harrelson), the former a cynical insomniac given to hallucination, and the latter a more typical family man whose core hides a petulant man-child.
The reasons why this series is phenomenal are almost too many to count, and pretty much encompass all of cinematic technique, from direction to acting to cinematography to musical choice, all the way down the list and ticking each box along the way, from great writing to sound design. Don't worry, I won't linger on all of them, but it's important to note that True Detective is the rare "full package," where all elements work in concert to create a cinematic symphony.
While the plot itself is intriguing, as the two detectives trace down leads, gradually narrowing in on the truth of the crimes, it is really a vehicle for a complex and nuanced character study about broken people. Marty (Harrelson) is a hypocrite, a cheater and a liar, a self-deluded man's man who cannot reckon with the responsibility of a wife and children. In a word, he is often disgusting. Cohle (McConaughey) is maximally eccentric, a chain smoking ex-undercover narco with a dead daughter, nothing to live for, and a mainline of drastic pessimism, rooted in what he perceives as the futility of human identity. His character, specifically, has some of the best writing I've come across in years.
And yet, given these attributes, the triumph of the show is that broken, sometimes awful people can also be good men, darkness turned against darkness. There is a relativity at work here, a comment about shading and interplay, and the nuance of the human soul. It is a story about opposition, whether that be the struggle to identify, communicate, and connect with those closest to you, or how to combat psychotic forces when one can barely navigate one's own ill-lit internal maze.
"The world needs bad men. We keep other bad men from the door." -Rust Cohle
The centrality of the narrative, as noted, is a human one. The interplay between the two detectives is the emotional nexus, and they mostly don't even like each other. Harrelson is great, and McConaughey is legendary. Michelle Monaghan rounds out the tremendous cast as Harrelson's embittered wife, a small and doomed lifeline for both men, and a further addition of nuance informing the detectives relationship. The world they walk in is, in effect, literary, littered with symbolism and characters representative of strange motifs and archetypes of suffering, all meshed together to manifest a tapestry of pain. The bankrupt morality and predatory inclinations of the religious pastoral mingle with the innate sadness of prostitution, the brutish thuggery of the amoral, and the general, inescapable violence of life, where after all, ain't nobody a saint. It is also a cyclical world, wherein the pull of gravity endemic to thought patterns and circumstance create behavioral circles, typified by murder, alcoholism, cheating, and the inescapable swirl of one's patterns.
"In eternity, where there is no time, nothing can grow. Nothing can become. Nothing changes. So death created time to grow the things that it would kill and you are reborn but into the same life that you're always born into. I mean, how many times have we had this conversation, detectives? Well, who knows? When you can't remember your lives, you can't change your lives, and that is the terrible and secret fate of all life. You're trapped, by that nightmare you keep waking up into." -Rust Cohle
If the show has a flaw, it is that the last third is not quite as compelling as what founded and preceded it, as the maze of the characterological gives way to a more singular corridor of plot resolution, but even here, the core of the relationship, how it has evolved, and the thorns that indelibly scarred it, are by no means left by the wayside. Without going deep into spoilers, the terminus of the journey is a literal and metaphorical maze, littered with signs and signifiers of physical and psychological horror, through which, after all, survival is sustained through the characters' reliance on their broken brotherhood.
I could go on. There are a galaxy of moments in this series worthy of lengthy explication, whether narratively or cinematically: there is a brutal, extended action sequence with almost no cutting and glorious camera work that cinephiles will rightly drool over; Rust Cohle's name itself, speaking of a gleam now tarnished, simultaneous with an ugly lump of rock that hides a gem, and his vast pool of dark, ruminative monologues; the moment where that Nick Cave song hits at the end of an episode, encapsulating and magnifying the beauty and ugliness of the show's visuals and tonality; and so forth. You get the idea.
FINAL TAKE: True Detective is tremendous. On a filmmaking level, it is nearly perfect. On an emblematic level, it is simultaneously a requiem for the doomed animal man and a finger pointed at the beauty of constellations, where the burning of stars can breach the void. While the plot resolution is a bit shaky and, to some viewers, might seem rushed, the human and thematic narratives it creates outstrip and surmount mere plotting, making the show, ultimately, a discordant theme song for the twisted spirit of humanity, wherein some grace and meaning can be attained even in the most perilous of swamps, be they literal or psychological. I cannot recommend it enough.
Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
One More Take: Young Mr. Lincoln
A little while ago, we covered one of three John Ford films released in 1939, the solid yet none-too-memorable... I had to pause here to look back for the name. Telling. Drums Along the Mohawk, it was called, yes. Ford does love his Americana, as we will continue to see, and was instrumental in the formation of its vast cinematic embodiment, with varied results. Apropos, we move on to number 2 of that year, Young Mr. Lincoln.
This is what I would call, if it's not already coined, an Apple Pie Movie. Prototypically American, inoffensive, and almost obsessively mythological in tone. Don't get me wrong here, however, in thinking this is necessarily a bad thing. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington could equally be classified as such, for instance, and is a pretty timeless excursion. Ditto for a lot of movies we've covered, and will cover, from this era, but none of them quite hold a candle in typifying this idyllic tonal snapshot as Young Mr. Lincoln. I'll point you to one sequence in particular, a small-town festival, where the film indulges in an extended montage of parades, tug-of-war, log-chopping contests, and, suitably, a pie judging, wherein Lincoln just can't decide which pie is best. None of this is really a value judgment so far, but in thinking back to the film (it's been a month or two), this old-timey-American sensibility is what my mind goes to first.
The first half is concerned with drawing a little portrait of Lincoln's character, and the second half sees him essentially involved in a courtroom drama, attempting to get two brothers off the hook for a questionable murder. Those expecting a more broadly biographical picture should know, as intimated by the title, that it's really not that. All told, I would characterize the film as 'slight." It works well enough, paints Lincoln as a nice young man who upholds the law and so forth, and Henry Fonda has some nice moments in inhabiting the character, but Ford doesn't end up teaching us a whole lot in the process, nor do we permeate the surface of the man with much subtlety or depth. It's all just... fine. Good enough. No major problems, but no major victories, either.
Narratively, there is one strange stumble that's worth pointing out. Very, very early in the film, ol' Honest Abe is shown to be sweet on a girl. They walk along the river, talk about the future, etc., and in the next scene he's visiting her grave. Sure, history is history, presumably this is based on a real occurrence, but in movie terms, one would expect this to have some sort of impact later down the line. Something she said, perhaps, informs a decision later down the line. Or, I don't know, something. Anything. Instead, it just sort of happens, is loosely referred to somewhere later on, but otherwise serves no narrative purpose. I suppose it's there to show that Abe, like most humans, lost something? Question mark? Far be it for me to say, hammering a gavel, that all things must have meaning or be paid off in terms of traditional movie structure, especially in a historical biography, but the placement of this scene and its lack of any demonstrable ripples in the narrative stood out as an oddity, and something Ford could have used to greater effect.
FINAL TAKE: Young Mr. Lincoln is a piece of light entertainment that has some good character acting and a moderately interesting courtroom plot, but isn't the sort of movie that will stick to the memory banks or elicit the desire for a rewatch. This is minor Ford, and will only be of great interest to those who want a full view of the director's canon, or maybe hardcore Lincoln buffs. For everyone else, just watch Stagecoach instead, which is by far the strongest point of the 1939 triangle, and still rightly revered as an all-time classic.
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
One More Take: Only Angels Have Wings
Oh, those dashing flyboys of yore. No flight too dangerous, no bottle too deep, no emotionality given to the face of things, and yet deeply felt, in an expressible simmer. This is the conceit of Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings, a meditation on what is now a bygone archetype of manliness (before stricture and regulation hunted this particular breed to extinction in the modern era) and the women who loved them.
The film concerns a small airway in South America, and the lives of those working there, led by flyboy ace Geoff Carter (Cary Grant). The plot, however, is secondary to the narrative as it relates to dailiness, as the film functions mainly as a sort of snapshot, a day in the life of the expat pilot. Howard Hawks, in this outing, is far more concerned with showing us these people, how they deal with the day, the work, each other, and the death of their comrades, than he is in telling a straight story, if you will, although a story is definitely told.
The movie starts with a woman, Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur, best known to me as the sassy secretary from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), arriving at the island ostensibly on a stopover. She has dinner with two pilots, one of whom is called on a mission, crashes, and dies. The other pilots seem not to mourn him, and even to forget his name. This could be seen as irritating, at first, an embodiment of that stolid man's man archetype (boy do I seem to end up talking about this them a lot as regards old movies) of impenetrable emotionality, but the gradual opening of this seemingly iron-clad trunk, to peek at the swirl beneath the surface, is ultimately the point of the film, as expressed through the internal struggles of its cast of pilots.
Does this work? Absolutely. While the plot, as I've mentioned, is not really sequential in the way of, oh, I dunno, Indiana Jones, the variety of character arcs coalesce into a satisfying narrative. It does indulge in some of the aforementioned era cliché's a bit too much for my taste at times, particularly as regards the female treatment, but it understandably fits into the "just accept it as part and parcel" that a more modern lens requires for enjoyment of movies of the time. It must also be said, apropos, that this element reaches nowhere near the level of profound irritation it engenders in something like Dodge City. Here, it's more a minor nuisance only indulged in a couple of scenes, easily forgotten in the embroidering of more interesting things, including an affective and highly annoyed performance by Jean Arthur. All told, despite a few of these hiccups, the romance angle works well in its role not as centerpoint (although some viewers might see it that way) but as an added texture that works to inform the wider tapestry and bring about a well-earned conclusion.
FINAL TAKE: Only Angels Have Wings is an interesting meditation on what is now a very specific vanished culture, and one that succeeds in spite of a few faults, bolstered mainly by the strength of its characterization. While I wouldn't regard it as a masterpiece to be slotted into any and all watchlists, a good character arc is always a timeless thing, and having a variety of them interwoven into each other is not an easy feat for any movie. The script, acting, and editing really entranced me into this world, and Hawkes guided me through its contours to a satisfying payoff. Recommended.
Ninotchka (1939)
One More Take: Ninotchka
The more old romantic comedies I happen to see, the more I'm convinced that the world of movies has forgotten why they worked in the first place. It's possibly the worst modern genre, a dumpster full of disposable fast-food detritus, wherein the least talented directors, writers, and comedians come together to make an easily digestible, and thoroughly forgettable product.
The key word there is product. The genre tends to feel, more often than not, thoroughly produced, an attempt to a elicit negligible emotional response while making enough money to move on to the next lazy production. In fact, comedy itself seems to be similarly dying, but this is another topic for another review. We're here to talk and Ninotchka, a romantic comedy that genuinely works.
Here's the setup: the Russian economy is failing, and must sell off its assets. Three chuckleheads are sent from the Kremlin to oversee a transaction in Paris, involving jewels that once belonged to a Grand Duchess, who happens to live there. The Duchess catches wind, throws a wrench (in the form of Melvyn Douglas) into the works, and Ninotchka, a firm, patriotic official is sent to clean up the mess. Cue comedy and romance.
It's a fairly simple set up that belies a lot more depth than one might think, and works mainly through juxtaposition. The three hapless Russians are delightful as they bumble through Paris, a virtual land of delights compared to their floundering motherland. Moreover, Ninotchka herself (for which Garbo received an Oscar nomination), in her firm and humorless philosophical idealism, is a perfect counterweight to the effervescent Douglas. These elements bring a thorough comedic charm.
However, this tendency towards juxtaposition also works dramatically, as the tone of the film is turned on its head in the third act. Ninotchka, having been metamorphosed through romance, must return to Russia, along with her three comrades (but without Douglas), and the sparse depressive nature of their surroundings, so removed from elegant Paris, is therefore not imbued with the light comedy of what preceded it. There is a wonderful scene in which the four of them attempt to recapture some of the magic by cooking an omelet together in Ninotchka's apartment (which she shares with many others), and attempt to cheer each other up by talking of the good days in faraway France. It is touchingly human, and emblematic of the emotional core of the film. Yes, unlike the romantic comedies of today, Ninotchka has a center rooted in genuine humanity.
While the set-up and the wooing portions can seem a bit quaint, the movie deftly builds an undercurrent of dramatic momentum within the juxtaposition of its romance, and the factors at play in sublimating it, leading to an unexpected tonal transformation through which the happy ending is earned.
FINAL TAKE: Ninotchka is a great little story. It's full of genuine characters (helped immensely by great character acting across the board... see if you can spot Bela Lugosi), emotional growth, and light comedic touches. All things combined, it's a winner, through and through.
The Cat and the Canary (1939)
One More Take: The Cat and the Canary
Alrighty folks, this is a quick and easy one. The Cat and the Canary is classic proto-gothic mystery stuff, straight out of an episode of Scooby Doo. You've got an old manor, supposedly haunted, a cast of characters gathered for a purpose (the reading of a will), and, Bum Bum Buummmm, a killer on the loose! Who could it be?? The scared old lady? The doting ex-boyfriend? The cat man, loose from the insane asylum? Tune in to find out!!!
The eyes of paintings replace themselves with those of the watchful scoundrel, secret passages steal people away from in front of bookcases, and suspicion abounds as all the characters, along with the audience, participate in a Whodunnit. You know all you need to know, just from this sentence.
So is it any good? Well, the black and white photography is great, particularly the lighting, so we're covered on the looks front. Bob Hope is fun to watch as the classic character Bob Hope (not really, but you know what I mean), flustered and quippy and affable, and the rest of the cast shines as well, the ensemble and their interplay being the highlight of the movie.
Narratively, it's about what you'd expect. Things play out, clues are found, the mystery deepens, and is resolved. If there's a kink in the machine, however, that keeps this fun movie from being totally solid, it lies within the details. Certain character motivations remain unanswered, and logical details about the functioning of the house itself and aforementioned supernatural elements are never properly elucidated. It's as if the movie put them in because that's what you do in a movie like this, and then hopes you'll forget to ask why and how. Scooby and the Gang would have explained these mechanics with aplomb in a nice end scene, so it's mildly frustrating that the movie sees fit not to.
However, at the end of the day, these things don't matter too much. You're not watching a movie like this for the superb logic of its machinations, most likely, but to indulge in some good old fashioned murder mystery fun, and at an incredibly light 70 minutes, it does all it needs to do in order to scratch that itch.
FINAL TAKE: The Cat and the Canary isn't going to blow anybody away, but at this point in history, that's almost the point. It's a comfy blanket of a type we no longer get anymore in movies, a relic of a bygone story archetype long since parodied to extinction, but it does said archetype earnestly. Some mechanical and character logic problems aside, it thoroughly entertains.
Willy's Wonderland (2021)
One More Take: Willy's Wonderland
We take a break from our regular schedule of ancient programming, tonight, to look at a movie that might have been good... Were it a completely different movie.
If you know me at all, you know I love Nicolas Cage, horror movies, and general schlock (Dead Alive is a masterpiece of cinema, and not nobody gonna tell me otherwise). And if all three of said ingredients are in the mix? I'm there. Granted, this has about the success rate you would expect, but I consider it a worthy endeavor. Take that as you will. The best example of this trio in action can be found in 2018's Mandy, or, more classical in structure (Mandy essentially being an experimental film), 2019's Color Out of Space. Willy's Wonderland is neither of these pictures, and barely deserves to be seen by anyone, save for a few fun elements.
First things first, you can click out of this review right now if you don't like slasher movies. I won't hold it against you. If the idea of light-hearted movie murders don't appeal, luckily there are plenty of other options. Unfortunately for the rest of us, Willy's Wonderland cannot even reach the low standards set by a fairly simplistic genre archetype.
Let's set the scene. Demonic animatronics are murdering people in an abandoned theme restaurant, a-la Chuck-E-Cheese. The townspeople are luring drifters for sacrifice, and choose Nic Cage as their next victim, baiting him with the promise of fixing his car should he clean said restaurant overnight. In a fun, voiceless performance, he proceeds to thrash said animatronics, and there are some stupid teenagers who get involved for the sole purpose of dying at the hands of the bad guys, in service to the classic slasher structure. Pretty simple stuff, although the plot immediately loses points for being a more or less direct ripoff of an inexplicably popular video game franchise.
The plot, such as it is, is explained through tedious, uncreative dumps of exposition, and is pointed at here to highlight the general dumbness of the writing throughout the movie. The teenage characters, for instance, are infuriatingly stupid and annoying from the outset. Now, this doesn't have to be a problem in a slasher movie, as generations have been drawn to the screen to watch Jason dispatch hapless young'uns in the woods in a never-ending string of Friday the 13th movies, but it all just grates so much here when you want the movie, and not just the characters, to simply shut the hell up. This is especially exacerbated when the big payoff, the kills themselves, are lacking, and Willy's Wonderland bungles the execution. The kills made by the puppets are dull, robbing the movie of potential genre-inspired kicks. Concomitant with this, the monsters indulge in some of the most rote, uninspired, and lazy dialogue ever to be lifted from the hack-writer handbook: "Playtime is over, girlfriend!" Zero effort, zero reward. My eyes were rolling and my groans were probably audible.
Needless to say, the movie is not scary, although I can't actually say if it intended to be. Rather, it plods along, often feeling twice its 90-minute length, and indulges in so much general audience-irritation (special shout out to the unnecessary and distracting CGI) that it's not even worth a further explication.
And yet...
Whenever Nic Cage is on screen, the movie becomes fun. Something about this voiceless man, slowly cleaning a dilapidated fun palace, taking periodic breaks to chug soda, play pinball, and brutally smash animatronics (after which he invariably changes his shirt), is magnetizing and odd in all the right ways. Those little details, to the movie's credit, are unexplained. Cage remains a thorough enigma, and his performance is perfect. Even on a meta level, Cage is like an audience surrogate, going through the motions of this stupid movie with a passive face, just doing his job, whether its cleaning toilets or smashing Andy the Alligator to pieces. On top of this, most of Cage's kills are really fun, if not creative. This is due to both the actor himself and the juxtaposition of his stoic character to the irritatingly talky animatronics and their terrible lines. He even ignores the teenagers, leaving them to their fate if his watch beeps, signaling break time. In yet another sense, then, he becomes our avatar, the counterpoint and executor of the movie's lack of cleverness.
In this way, Willy's Wonderland could have almost been brilliant. Here's how we fix it:
1. Hire a writer with even a remote semblance of talent. We'll be getting rid of most of the dialogue anyway, so it only needs to be serviceable. Some memorable quips from the animatronics, and we're good to go.
2. Strip out anything related to the plot.. Exposition as dumb and lifeless as this would be better left unexplained. Spoilers, some serial killers did a satanic ceremony and got trapped in the puppets. Riveting. So, like Nic Cage and a robot spinal cord, just rip that stuff out. The movie should revel in its nonsense. Logic need not apply. Alternatively, you can just scatter visual cues throughout the movie, as Cage explores and cleans his surroundings, that point to a vague explanation. Let the audience engage in some sleuthing. Either way, you're making ground.
3. No ancillary characters. Besides what's needed to contrive the situation in the first place, getting rid of all other character stuff not relating to Cage is just cutting unnecessary fat.
If we did all this, and focused on the rhythm of the cleaning and the killing and played to the weirdness of some of the imagery, Willy's Wonderland would have just ridden that line between dumb and amazing that is the hallmark of many a classic B-movie.
FINAL TAKE: Willy's Wonderland is stupid and corny in all the wrong ways. Stupid and corny, in a very specific mixture, can make for amazing entertainment, tapping into a very specific tone characterized by classics like Dead Alive and Evil Dead 2, to name but a few. Instead, outside of the diamond in the rough that is any sequence solely focused on the core element of Cage himself, it ends up being a movie I can't really recommend to anyone. Maybe for idiot teenagers, looking for surface level scares and memes? Ugh. Such a waste.
All this being said? If your life just isn't complete without the pure magical bliss of Nicolas Cage curb stomping a gorilla into a urinal, I completely understand. You are one of the few, the proud, the beautiful, and I solute you. For you alone, the endeavor may be worth the pain.
Gunga Din (1939)
One More Take: Gunga Din
Let's get this out of the way. Depression-era Hollywood is not known foremost for its overt cultural sensitivity. Some representations are problematic. However, as long as they don't overwhelm the picture (ahem, Birth of a Nation), let's agree to just take it in stride, ok? We all enjoy Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, right? Alright then. Moving on.
Gunga Din, despite a few *cough cough* moments in its Indian representations, which drew eyebrows upwards even at the time, is a piece of epic fun, centered on the comedic camaraderie of three British officers, played by Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. As they fumble and bumble towards the discovery and destruction of an ancient Indian murder cult. This plot, however, is really just a framework for these actors to play off of each other, and indulge in some great, old-timey action sequences.
This is not to say that the entirety of the movie is played for laughs, however. Gravity is given where gravity is due, to the effect that the tone maintains a good balance, but the heart of the movie really does lie within the interplay of the three, who are thoroughly enjoyable to watch, and I had a smile on my face whenever they shared the screen.
Somewhat secondary to this is the titular Gunga Din, subject of the famous poem by Rudyard Kipling (from which the film takes obvious inspiration), who tags along and saves the day with a nicely foreshadowed hero moment.
What I appreciate about Gunga Din most of all, despite whatever cultural accusations one might throw at it, is a complete sense of sincerity on the part of the movie itself. When you're not laughing with the picture, it's almost hard not to laugh at it, at the way it indulges in old action hero, "I can punch ten bad guys at a time" clichés. You end up with this mixture of enjoyment that is both genuine and ironic in sometimes equal measure, but, to reiterate, always feels 100% sincere, and I find that absolutely charming.
FINAL TAKE: This is not the deepest review, I'll grant you that, but really, neither is Gunga Din the deepest film. It's a light, funny old action flick that succeeds on the strength and interplay of its ensemble. Check your PC outrage goggles at the door, take it for what it is, and you'll have a grand old time.
Gone with the Wind (1939)
One More Take: Gone With the Wind
I mean we had to, right? Gone With the Wind is one of those films that will likely always be at least on the periphery of any conversation about The Best of All Time, and the reasons for this are clear. A sprawling, emotional Civil War epic, it serves as a dialectic on the nature of that period of history, whilst at the same time functioning as a window into the psychological evolution of a ruthless woman undone by a simultaneity of brutal ambition and romantic indecision. It's also about 4 hours of stunningly good movie making.
It goes without saying that Gone With the Wind is great. You don't need me to tell you this, although I do affirm it, and the vast tapestry it brings to life holds up in almost every regard. It is a remarkable piece of history, cinematically and culturally, and is 100% worth watching if you've not yet gotten around to it. It wends seamlessly from a paradigm of idealized romanticism to the fallout and human deprecation inherent to war, on into the sociopathic swirl of Scarlett's manipulations as she barrels headfirst into the Reconstruction era. Coupled with the charming simmer of Clark Gable's performance as Rhett Butler, as well as a vivid supporting cast, epic production design, and glowing technicolor photography, and, well, the result is that everything just works.
All this being said, the tone of the movie can feel a bit, well, old. Not old in the sense that it's a period film, but in that its meditation on romanticism, on the surface at least, seems to speak to a human condition that might not translate well in this age of cynicism. Put bluntly, it is "old Hollywood" tonality through and through, and your enjoyment may be predicated somewhat on your ability to synthesize said tone. I could see a younger viewer, for instance, being uninterested in the somewhat stodgy surface of sentimentality and therefore failing to hook a line with the creatures swimming in the depths. It would be easy to mistake Gone With the Wind as a hokey romance, and not understand that it's almost in the same category Citizen Kane, in a sense. Whereas Kane drives everyone away through an iron wall of uncompromising ideals, however, Scarlett does so through sheer manipulation, and remains blind to her role in the suffering of those around her. Point being, viewed from an oblique angle, the film is less a treatise on old-school, dashing romance, and more a psychological portrait highly informed by historical circumstance.
So, with all the cards on the table, do I subscribe to the dogma that it's one of the greatest films of all time? To be honest, no, at least not on a personal level. Not through any tremendous inherent fault, but because it's impossible to shirk, even with all I've said, some sense of distance from it. While it works exceedingly well, and earns its place in the cinematic canon with no questions asked, I simply don't find myself as deeply invested in it as in similarly resonant films of the time, like Casablanca. It's difficult to say precisely why this is, but it comes back to something I was saying about Drums Along the Mohawk, and the indefinability of how some films remain timeless (I'll point again, and will never stop pointing, at Casablanca), while others feel very much of their time, almost to a fault. Gone With the Wind, with the distance of time, inhabits enough of the latter category to not resonate quite as deeply as it might have even 50 years ago, much less 80.
FINAL TAKE: If you like movies, you need to watch Gone With the Wind. Even if it doesn't totally land for you, and I hope I've outlined well enough why that might be, should you choose to think about it, there can be no doubt of its place in history. If nothing else, it's sort of like visiting the Colosseum. Yes, perhaps it's hard to grasp the full significance of the thing, being so far removed from its heyday, but no tour of Rome would be complete without it. And no tour of cinema is complete without at least one thoughtful watch of Gone With the Wind.
Jesse James (1939)
One More Take: Jesse James
Jesse James is a sprawling biographical film about, you guessed it, Jesse James, famed outlaw, bank robber, and enduring icon of early America. Props to the man himself, if I may, for having a great name. History needs more badass Jesse's, although I admit to some bias. The film centrally stars Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda as the James boys. The film is directed by Henry King, whose work, besides this film, I am completely unfamiliar with. So how does it come out? Well... unfortunately, the best word I can conjure is "decent." Jesse James is a decent movie that could have been better, had it chosen to infuse a bit more humanity.
Despite being ably performed (Fonda and Powers both do their best with the material), with strong showings both in acting and cinematography, the movie feels somewhat clunky in both its scope and pacing, which stand strangely at odds. We follow James from farm boy to famous outlaw to his eventual death at the hands of the coward Robert Ford (shoutout to Andrew Dominik's far superior 2007 outing with Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck), but the sprawling chronology does a disservice to the substance that could have been gleaned by lingering a bit more on any of the periods in between. Simultaneously, and somewhat paradoxically in theory, the film lacks inertia, and seems to meander from scene to scene at times, a result, perhaps, of the lack of weight and internality in the interstitial space between the larger bullet points of the narrative. It's just a bit too big, and at the same time, just a bit too thin.
The big problem with the film, even more so than the somewhat lethargic direction and pacing issues, is one of interiority. The context of the James boys, as set up by a playful yet dramatic introductory sequence wherein the brothers knock the daylights out of a railroad con-man come to swindle their mother out of her land, is prime for some demythologizing, and yet the film fails to capitalize on this potentially interesting avenue, and instead goes for the opposite. Outside of a select few scenes, we are never given to understand the depth of James' character. He remains at a distance to us. Furthermore, almost all of his motivations are established through dialogue with other characters. In essence, the film does such a poor job of showing us James, that it has to continually tell us about James. This seems intentional, as a way of mythologizing, but consequently leads to a feeling of shallowness, on the whole.
This is all quite negative, but I feel I must reiterate that the movie is not some grand failure. Many of the scenes are quite good, and, as noted, the performances are excellent. The movie shines whenever Fonda and Power get to play together, and James' relationship with Zee (Nancy Kelly) provides the film a solid enough emotional core, but this is once again hampered by our somewhat distanced view of James, who never gets "that scene." You know what I mean, that movie moment that defines the character and etches itself indelibly on the memory banks, like Henry Fonda's speech at the end of The Grapes of Wrath. And it really could have used it.
FINAL TAKE: Jesse James is a fine movie, even a pretty good one at times, but lacks the cohesion necessary to elevate it into a title that you'll remember for years to come. In taking the long view, its major failing is in making James a character of relatability and depth, and instead inhabits that well-populated space of entirely watchable yet overall stolid movies that, for some reason or another, failed to reach the mark. Worth watching once? No problem, but it'll likely be a one-and-done experience.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
One More Take: Mr Smith Goes to Washington
Who doesn't love Jimmy Stewart? A lanky bumbler who defeats bad guys with the power of morals, he is oddly magnetic and eminently personable in virtually every picture he stars in. My mother, in this vein, calls him the "Old Hollywood version of Tom Hanks." While Stewart had enjoyed a string of roles leading up to this, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is, in retrospect, one of the great standouts of the actor's early era, next to It's a Wonderful Life.
Similar to that film, and as a bolstering of my little lead-in, the movie at its core is about a good person winning out, after much tribulation, against forces that seek to oppress and ruin him. This is framed here in a narrative that concerns a young, innocent senator with high-minded classical American ideals (cut to Stewart staring at awe at the pensive, austere statue of Abe Lincoln) doing battle against the forces of government corruption.
The film, at the outset, is fully steeped in Stewart's own naivete, so that you could be forgiven for thinking the entire picture might continue rapt in its somewhat corny, apple-pie tonality, but it does not. Instead, and appreciably, it leaves the baseball game running on the TV upstairs, goes down to the cellar, and pokes around in the corners. Which is to say, the idealized vision of America that define both Stewart and the film take a drastic nosedive when within the heart of the cherished governmental system, with all its grandiloquent language of freedom and unimpeachable morality, a seemingly unbeatable cancer is found to lurk. The film thus follows the well-known hero's journey path, resulting, of course, in victory for the little guy, as Smith mounts a heroic filibuster against the forces of greed and corruption.
Granted, this is Hollywood. We've had 80 years of evidence since Smith went to Washington in support of the fact that the vast majority of the time, the hyenas and greedheads of the world come out on top, pockets lined with blood money that seems to lose them no sleep. Some might consider this a mark against the film, marking it as an idealization incongruous with reality. I would posit otherwise, however. The fact that things like this do not often happen, but could, even if that window feels more and more diminished as America continues its swan dive into inequality and general horror, is an important gesture towards the concept of holding strong to ideals even as the jaws snap down.
But let's back up, before I journey too far into this little minefield. After all, it is not through starry eyes of idealism that I like this movie, but because it's a damn good movie, and what we like about films like this IS the fact that the good guy wins out over, as Hunter Thompson might say, "the forces of old and evil," regardless of realism. To reiterate, it's Hollywood. If you want hardcore fatalism, there are plenty of other movies that will fit the bill, but a feel-good Capital Hill romp with spastic, geeky, affable everyman Jimmy Stewart is not where you want to look. This is not Fight Club (although you should definitely see Fight Club).
FINAL TAKE: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is simultaneously a bolstering of the American ideal, and an indictment of those that would take advantage of it. However you view said ideal, however, whether it lives in your heart or you call "Fraud!" on the whole damn architecture from the get-go (I tend to fall into the latter category, in all honesty), these things are essentially a backgrounding for a well-done, gripping, and often very funny story of a man who refuses to sacrifice ideals. The filmmaking is superb, the central and supporting cast are just fantastic (special mention to the great Jean Arthur as Stewart's cagey, disillusioned secretary), and it draws your attention from the first frame to the closing credits, leaving you with the gratified sense of a victory well-earned. It may not be the sort of victory we get to enjoy very often in reality, but hey, that's why we have movies, and one of the reasons we love them. In a way, it makes such a sensation even more special. Life is often bleak, ponderous, and wholly cruel, where the payoffs are thin, if they exist at all. A movie needn't submit to this reality, but can give us something different, and, should it choose to do so, something better. And if Jimmy Stewart is stammering and fumbling with his hat? Sign me up, baby.
All right. I'm done. I'd like to thank the Academy. Kisses to all of you.