Cheruby and Suz's Movie Project

Review of American Graffiti

2010-11-08T13:52:00.004-06:00

American Graffiti is a coming-of-age flick set in Modesto, California in 1962. It put director George Lucas in the Hollywood spotlight, made him a millionaire, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. It inspired the creation of Happy Days. It is also number 62 on AFI's list, hence my watching.

Despite the praise this film has garnered, I found it to be lame. I recognized it instantly as the inspiration for another film I found lame, Dazed and Confused. Both of these films are slice-of-life, nostalgic, plotless, limp and self-indulgent. They both expect that if they feature some vehicles, showcase some stereotypical characters and make you listen to period music, you'll feel so overcome with nostalgia that you'll forget that there's no story. Some nice kid loses his innocence and his world changes forever. Next.

What is interesting about this film is that it is bad in a way much different than George Lucas' later bad work, before he got obsessed with the Hero's Journey, images moving so fast the viewer can barely see what's going on, and computer animation replacing actors. American Graffiti is very personal, not detached like his later work. There is no absurd urge to entertain the shit out of the audience so much that it's grating. Yet American Graffiti is still lame. It's boring in a very un-Lucas-like way.

Here's a question for you all. We are all aware that if a character expresses concern for the well-being of his car in a movie, something bad is going to happen to it before the end of the picture, usually several bad things. Did American Graffiti start this cliche, or was it well-known even by the time of filming?

Part of the problem is that I wasn't alive in 1962. This movie would be much more interesting to somebody who was. This review sounds like I really hated American Graffiti. That's not the case. This movie isn't terrible, it's just meh with a touch of banal. For me, movies are enjoyable if they're so terrible that they're funny. Being meh, banal and wimpy is just completely uninteresting.
2 attempts to pull booze out of 5

Review of Cabaret

2010-10-26T11:27:00.006-06:00

Next on the list of AFI's movies is Cabaret, #63. It is a loose adaptation of the Broadway musical of the same name, set in the last days of the Weimar Republic in Germany. Liza Minnelli is Sally Bowles, a performer at the Kit Kat Klub in Berlin, who gets entangled in a confused relationship with a visiting English teacher, Brian Roberts (Michael York). The two try to live their decadent lives under the growing shadow cast by the Nazis.

This movie, despite what you may think of it, has actually aged well. Unlike many movies made in the 70's on this list, historical pics included, there are no distracting hallmarks that date it: mainly, the weird hairstyles and sappy/raunchy 70's music. Regardless of the dating and lack thereof, I quite enjoyed it. It has a style all its own. It is a musical where the characters do not spontaneously burst into song. When a character's inner emotions need to be expressed, the scene usually cuts to a relevant musical number at the Kit Kat Klub.

One of the things I like best about this movie is the character of Brian. While Sally Bowles is a familiar character, the artsy, flakey, over-emotional performer who wants to be a real actress, Brian's reactions to her are original. Sally abuses their relationship in the way we would expect, but instead of being driven to violence, the standard Hollywood response, Brian responds with either understanding or his own abuses. He is never a victim and that's refreshing. I won't go into many details for fear of spoilers. Well okay, ***here's a vague SPOILER***: it's very rare that all points of fictional love triangles connect. ***end spoiler alert***

Cabaret contains a scene that is famous in movie history, the powerful "Tommorow Belongs to Me" scene, and I don't feel bad about describing it because it appears in many books on cinema and film school classes. Brian and Maximilian are chatting at an outdoor cafe when a young man stands and begins singing in a beautiful tenor. The cafe-goers are enchanted by the loveliness and earnestness of the song, and perhaps so is the film's viewer. That is until the camera pans downward and we see the young man is dressed in a Nazi uniform. As the cafe's attendees rise in rousing song and Brian and Max skedaddle, I felt the hairs on my back prickling in terror. This scene perfectly encapsulates the madness that led the Nazis to power and the world to war in 1939.

As a side note, this scene once again just goes to show that interpretation of art is all in the eyes of the audience. While the reaction I experienced to this scene was the one, I believe, that the filmmakers intended, it is not so with all audiences. "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" has been embraced as an anthem by White Pride groups. Some people, I tell you.

Cabaret is complicated and heartbreaking (for a musical). Once again, not for all tastes, but it certainly was for mine.
Beedle-dee dee dee dee! 4 1/2 Ladies out of 5, and I'm the only man

Review of Network

2010-10-05T15:24:00.004-06:00

Number 64 on AFI's movie list is Network, directed by Sidney Lumet. It is the story of Howard Beale (Peter Finch) a TV news reporter who has a psychotic break with reality and finally begins to broadcast the truth about the world. Meanwhile, the struggling network who controls his contract battles to harness his madness for their own benefit. It is a satire of television in the 1970s, which then becomes a satire of capitalism, spouting truths that are still relevant today. If you have never heard of Network before, you have surely heard the movie's most famous quote, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" and its many derivatives.

This is certainly a complicated movie. It is more of an intellectual exercise in satire than a traditional story. The characters are icons rather than real people. Yes, they have depth, but it is character depth piled upon symbols. Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), for instance, bears this comparison: "You are television incarnate, Diana. Indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality." Max Schumacher (William Holden), who delivers this line, represents Journalism in the traditional sense. Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) is capitalism incarnate.

Did I like it? I suppose I did. I wasn't that crazy about the second of the story's two plots, in which Diana and Max conduct an illicit and age-mismatched affair. However, this story is essential to understanding the satire. I don't want to say more for fear of spoilers.

I should also say that this is not the ha-ha sort of satire. It is a black sort of satire that you know can't end well. Not once through this picture did I get a rosy-feeling.

Network is prescient. As with most things prophetic, the prophecy took longer to realize than the prophet predicted. But twenty-five years after Network satirized television, reality TV finally sank to the depths predicted by the movie (shudder). It also predicted FOX news pundits: rabid, delusional madmen ranting about Arabs and capitalism.

Network is, without a doubt, an important film. Enjoyable? Well, maybe. It depends on your interests. I liked it well enough.
$3 1/2 billion dollars out of $5 billion.

Review of The African Queen

2010-09-28T15:31:00.008-06:00

After taking a break for spring and summer because of moving and getting settled into our new lifestyle, the AFI movie project continues unabashed for past sins. Number 65 is The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn, directed by John Huston. It was originally a novel by C.S. Forster.

This is another one of those movies that is important because of its production rather than its entertainment value to modern audiences, I suspect. Its history is steeped in the McCarthy era, when suspected commies were being persecuted by the government of the United States. The African Queen got several prominent lefties out of the country to avoid McCarthey, simultaneously producing a patriotic pic they hoped would repair their reputations. At this time, going on location with bulky technicolor cameras was rare. Going to Africa to shoot on location in the Congo was unheard-of. The shoot was long and hard, with cast and crew falling ill and exposed to tropical dangers of all sorts. The film's release was triumphant, with Bogart winning an Oscar for best actor.

But its entertainment value? Sadly, it has not aged that well. The romance between the two main characters has a charming and silly quality which modern cinema lacks outside of comedies. But as for thrills and spills, modern cinema has learned much better ways to make us bite our nails. The special effects, which were cutting-edge in 1951, are outclassed: models and superimposed studio images. In a story more compelling, I could have suspended disbelief enough to enjoy it. But the story is not that compelling.

I did find it very interesting to observe the accents in this film. Back in the day, it was apparently not such a big deal to perform without mastering an accent. Katherine Hepburn's character, Rose, is from Norther England, but she performs it with her standard, clearly-enunciated half-Boston, half-English, half-Hollywood stagey lilting that was popular for starring females at the time. Humourously, Humphrey Bogart's part had to be rewritten because it had him speaking in a thick Cockney and he just couldn't do it. He was rewritten as a Canadian, but he plays it standard Bogey-style: "Nyah, I'm Canadian, see? Maa!" And yet he won an Oscar.

The African Queen is yet another selection from this list that was ground-breaking and important for its time, but sadly dated. One can appreciate it for its historical value, but the story, when the special effects which were mind-blowing in their day are stripped away, left me a little cold.
2 1/2 increasingly treacherous sets of rapids out of 5

http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com/

Review of Raiders of the Lost Ark

2010-03-02T21:46:00.006-06:00

At last we come to number 66 on AFI's list, Raiders of the Lost Ark. That means that my excellent wife and I are one third of the way finished! And it only took us two and a half years! At this blinding speed, AFI will publish a new list before we're finished watching the movies.

It's hard to review Raiders of the Lost Ark. In my life, Raiders of the Lost Ark was one of the most influential movies... no, scratch that... THINGS that warped my childhood. There was Mom, Dad, Sis, The Public School system and then there was Raiders of the Lost Ark. How can I possibly detach myself enough to give an impartial review? I've decided I'm not even going to try. Instead, here is a summary of the way this movie made me the way I am.

I'll start with Indiana Jones. He is an icon whose fedora, bullwhip and roguish five-o'clock shadow represent machismo, adventure and courage. He's a perfect alliance of brawn, smarts and tenacity. To my developing mind, he was the unfailing symbol of manhood. To complicate matters, I thought my dad kinda looked like him.

When I was a kid, I wanted to look exactly like Indy. I still think I want to look like Indy. Here's a news flash, ladies. You're not the only ones with body-image issues. Every Gen-X man wants to be Indiana Jones, yet suffers in stoic silence.

It's funny how the tongue-in-cheek aspect of this movie and indeed all the Indiana Jones movies went over my head when I was a lad. Indy was just Indy and went on amazing adventures. Little did I know that Indiana Jones was George Lucas' reworking of corny adventure serials from his own childhood.

My reaction to this dramatic irony changed as I grew older. As a child I was oblivious. As a teenager I began to detect that some aspects of these movies were a bit stupid, over-the-top, and corny. I began to hate Indy. I felt betrayed. Then one day, I got it. "These movies are meant to be cheesy," I exclaimed. And then I started liking them again.

Yet I never could love them as much as I did as a boy, when I took them very seriously. I miss the way they excited me and feel slightly irritated that Indiana Jones is just a joke to George Lucas. Perhaps this why I have such negative reactions to irony in places where it is unwelcome. Little self-references, technical and directorial "jokes" and easter-eggs in movies drive me crazy. In comedies, it's great. Elsewhere, I loathe them. I don't want to know that a shoe flies past the Millenium Falcon in Return of the Jedi. I hate the Wilhelm Scream. I hate anything that winks to the audience and reminds us that we're just watching a movie. I watch a movie to escape, to experience a seamless dream that whisks me out of reality. Unnecessary breaking of the fourth wall ejects me from the movie and reminds me, "Oh yeah, I'm a penniless writer and don't look like Indiana Jones".

The soundtrack to Raiders of the Lost Ark was composed by John Williams. Along with Star Wars, it sealed his reputation as Hollywood's greatest soundtrack composer. The score is exciting and imaginative, as was everything he composed from about 1976 to 1989. It is the standard by which I judge all film music.

There is another way in which Raiders of the Lost Ark affected me. Some readers may be wondering why my personal blog's address is at http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com and I don't blame you. Pharoahphobia is the fear of mummies. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and his gal Marion are escaping from an Egyptian ruin. Marion gets separated in the dark and finds herself surrounded by moaning, screaming mummies that grasp at her with withered arms. It culminates when she sees a snake emerging from a mummy's mouth. Indy comes to the rescue and guides her away from mummy chamber, leaving the imagined screams behind. It's all over and everybody's happy. But not for Jeremy. The scene stays in Jeremy's mind and festers with other negative mummy associations, emerging as a full blown phobia a few years later.

I have one last item. It's about what Indiana Jones has become. Like many of my generation, I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and was disgusted. We all saw The Phantom Menace, another George Lucas sequel, ten years ago and felt disgusted as well. What made these sequels so awful for us? There are truly a lot of differences in tone and style, but not subject matter. I think these differences can be summed up with one word: dignity.

It seems strange to be discussing dignity in reference to Raiders of the Lost Ark, a movie in which somebody's face melts. It's is also strange to be discussing it in relation to a movie that is based on an ironic premise. But really, compared with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Raiders of the Lost Ark has dignity. Crystal Skull just seems like it's trying too hard to entertain us. It's partly in the overuse of computer graphics, but it's also in the writing too. There are no moments of repose. It's just action action action and it's so grating!

*SPOILER ALERT*

Let me use an example. Some of you may be familiar with the Greek term Deus ex Machina. It means "god from a machine" or "god from a box". It's a phrase used to describe a situation in a story when all hope is lost for the heroes, when suddenly the cavalry arrives, a random meteor squishes the villain or something otherwise happens that defeats the antagonists without the hero having to do anything. In ancient Greek theatre, this was accomplished by Zeus being lowered toward the stage inside a pretty box upon ropes, at which point he would vanquish all evil and put everything to rights. God from a box.

Raiders of the Lost Ark has a Deus ex Machina. Literally. A box, the Ark of the Covenant, is opened by some hapless Nazis and God zaps them. The writers knew the phrase "Deus ex Machina" and knew they were writing one. It's something clever that's there to investigate and think about if you care, but you can ignore it if you don't. No attention is drawn to it. Dignity.

If Raiders was written today, I have no doubt that George Lucas wouldn't be able to resist pointing out how clever he is. Some comic relief character would be there at the end, and he would say something like, "Holy moly! Thatsa a real Deus ex Machina, Indy! Meesa funny! Whoa whoa!" and then he'd slip on something and fall down. Tell me I'm wrong, George Lucas. I fucking dare you.

*END OF SPOILER*

These are, of course, not the full extent of what I feel is wrong with the George Lucas sequels. Star Wars is coming up on the list eventually and I'll save the rest of this rant for the future. George Lucas must be brought to literary justice for systematically taking a dump on my childhood.

So. Anyway. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Good movie. Honestly, a must-see if you wish to understand Western Culture.
5 1/2 kadams out of 5, but take back one kadam to honor the Hebrew God, whose Ark this is

Review of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

2010-02-23T10:42:00.002-06:00

Okay. Wow. This is a great film. It has fantastic dialogue, fantastic acting and a very thoughtful plot.

Movies that are faithful adaptations of stage plays have a feeling all their own. The focus of the playwright is dialogue while the focus of the screenwriter is action. When play dialogue makes its way onto film, the effect is curious. Cinematography stops mattering as much. Instead of switching scenes every few minutes, it's every twenty or so. Some might even say that the freedom which film affords over the stage is being lost. As long as you lose yourself in the dialogue, it doesn't matter. Dialogue-driven tension has an intensity that is very different from action-driven tension. Shades of emotion, pauses and powerful language can cause gasps just as easily as any car chase.

This is another film with a twist ending. It is to my shame that when the credits rolled, the subtleties of the ending had gone over my head. I didn't understand and I was forced to re-watch. I should mention that it was a complete pleasure to watch a second time. And yes, I "got it" the next time through.

While the actors were great all around, I think the most groovy were the women-folk. Elizabeth Taylor is loveably awful as Martha, the discontent and obnoxious professor's wife who, despite her protests to the contrary, brays. Sandy Dennis, who I had never heard of before this viewing, surprised me with her performance, starting out little and mousy and becoming loud, drunk and hilarious, especially when she claps her hands in glee, shouting, "Violence! Violence!"

It's truly a movie that approaches perfection for what it is. It achieves its every goal and has absolutely no down side.
18 immoderately consumed alcoholic beverages out of 20

Review of Unforgiven

2010-02-10T19:23:00.005-06:00

I first saw Unforgiven when I was a fifteen. At that age, as many readers can confirm, certain things go over your head. The moral ambiguities were lost on me and the action seemed boring. I'm glad I had a chance to see it as an adult.

One of the great things about this movie that defies the Western genre is its realistic depiction of killing. Without giving much away, I'll say that certain characters have problems with the act of pulling the trigger and its aftermath. Unlike many of its Western sisters, Unforgiven goes to great lengths to show that it takes a special kind of hombre to kill a man and be okay with it. Much of the action deals with the characters coming to grips with the reality of death.

Unforgiven also pulls yet another great genre-buster: heroism is nowhere to be found. And unlike certain other Westerns on AFI's list, for example (glorious fanfare of bum-music) The Wild Bunch, the characters are still likeable. William Munny (Clint Eastwood) and his escort are assassins lurking on the fringes of a quiet small town to murder two men who probably don't deserve it. Yet we like and identify with them. Heroism is particularily absent when killing is afoot. The shootouts are unhappy affairs that involve a lot of misery and running away.

If this show has a down side, it's probably Clint Eastwood's stilted acting during some of the early scenes where he is conflicted about the impending assassinations. Or perhaps it's some on-the-nose writing in those scenes. Or a combination of both. Regardless, when William Munny leaves this phase and hardens, Eastwood's acting also improves when he enters familiar dramatic territory and gets lots of chances to deliver his characteristic icy squints.

Something about the ending doesn't seem quite right to me either. Perhaps I missed the important philosophical message, but it lacks a coda wherein we see how the characters lives are affected by the story. Instead we are treated to a some scrolling captions which hint at a coda but answer few questions. This violates the old rule, "Show, don't tell". I won't go into more detail for fear of spoilers.

It's a complicated movie that has something for action-craving Western fans and intellectuals. However, the sudden ending keeps it from being perfect.
4 shots left in the Spencer Rifle out of 5

Review of Tootsie

2010-02-01T17:29:00.001-06:00

It's the simple tale of a man who falls in love with a woman while he's impersonating a woman. And she thinks he's a lesbian. And he attracts every old man he meets. And his current girlfriend begins to suspect that he's gay. Okay, maybe it's not that simple.

Cross-dressing stories are familiar to us all. They were well-trodden territory for writers in the English Renaissance and thereafter. They were probably popular before too, but I wouldn't know because I haven't investigated. What Tootsie has to offer that was not-so-familiar in 1982 was the added complication of sexual-orientation ambiguity. When starving actor Michael Dorsey cross-dresses to get a female part on a soap opera, it is purely for monetary reasons. He finds himself in a variety of sexually uncomfortable mixups.

It's pretty funny. The dialogue is well-written. Perhaps it's not a masterpiece of American cinema as the AFI claims, but it's still worth watching.

It just wouldn't be a review by me if I didn't mention something about the music, would it? See, in Tootsie there's this song called, "It Might Be You" that pops up during a montage and the credits. It's a simple number with male voice (Stephen Bishop) and electric piano. It's also awful. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered that this piece a' shit was nominated for Best Original Song in the Academy Awards and spent eight weeks in the Top 40.

I'd like to go on a rant about the 80's and the strange cultural warping of taste that occurred. What were we thinking, honestly? Why did we think those primitive synthesizers and electric pianos sounded cool? Sadly, this digression must be ranted another time because I have not thought it through fully.

So, funny movie, funny characters, funny dialogue, miserable music.
4 deadpan Bill Murry lines out of 5

Review of a Clockwork Orange

2010-01-27T13:40:00.007-06:00

Here's another Stanley Kubrick entry on AFI's list. I've seen this movie before and enjoyed it quite a lot. Since then, I've read the book and I'm afraid this viewing confirms my suspicion: the book is just better.

Firstly, there is the fact that this movie was based on a version of the book that was incomplete. For some reason, Anthony Burgess' New York publisher thought that Americans wouldn't get the ending. You know, the part that actually makes the book make sense. If I was an American, I'd be insulted that some New York bigshot thought I was too stupid to understand an ending where somebody decides to give up violence.

And what an ending it missed. Therein is contained a fundamental message of truth. It's about youth. Permit me to quote:

...No, it is not just being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines.

My son, my son. When I had my son I would explain all that to him when he was starry enough to like understand. But then I knew he would not understand or would not want to understand at all and would do all the veshches I had done, yes perhaps even killing some poor starry forella surrounded with mewing kots and koshkas, and I would not be able to really stop him. And nor would he be able to stop his own son, brothers.

This is the message that lies at the heart of A Clockwork Orange. Apologies to Anthony Burgess, who seems to be embarassed of his novella, but I think it's brilliant and truthful writing. It's also not in the movie.

This movie misses yet another fundamental truth, not related to the ending. About mid-film, antihero Alex undergoes brainwashing that makes him feel violently ill whenever he thinks about violence or sex. However, he discovers that because Beethoven's 9th Symphony was playing during the brainwashing, listening to it makes him ill as well. Beethoven's 9th specifically.

Not so in the book. After Alex's brainwashing, all music makes him ill. What Burgess is trying to say is that music taps into violent emotions within the human psyche. It comes from the same place as violence and sex. This may seem like an odd quibble, but it's very important to me as a musician. What was the point of this cinematic change? What difference does it make other than remove an important message from the story?

All this being said, A Clockwork Orange is still a good movie of its own merit, assuming you can stomach the violence and rape. Many of the book's important messages are still tapped and the cinematograpy is fantastic. It revels in that odd feeling of dramatic tension skirting the border between comedy and terror, a tension that Kubrick does very well in his other movies, The Shining and Full Metal Jacket.

4 cracks in the gulliver out of 5

Review of the Wild Bunch

2009-12-14T19:06:00.006-06:00

So, it occurs to me that I forgot to write a review for #80 on AFI's list, The Wild Bunch. I forgot to write the review because the movie sucked. Really sucked.

If I was to say that The Wild Bunch is violent, you'd probably say, "What? A violent Sam Peckinpah movie? Get outta town," in a really sarcastic tone. But no, really, it's violent. I wish I could say the violence was shocking in an artistic way, but it's really not. For one thing, they just didn't understand how to make fake blood in the 70's. It looks awful and subtracts from the visceral power that the violence was intended to inspire.

And yes, the violence was intended as artistic. Sam Peckinpah wanted to shock audiences by presenting images that invoked the Vietnam war, which still broadcast awful things into the homes of Americans every night. It's too bad that, aside from the violence being silly instead of artistic, the plot is also stupid. It basically involves several groups of people trying to shoot each other, successfully and in large numbers.

Rarely in movie history have so many unlikeable characters been collected onscreen. There is seriously nobody for whom to root. Pike Bishop, the film's "protagonist" is the leader of a gang of outlaws in the early 20th Century. He is a cold-blooded asshole who cares little for anything but money. His sidekick is Dutch, a cold-blooded asshole who cares little for anything but money. They meet this Mexican warlord, a cold-blooded asshole who cares little for anything but money. Feel free to repeat this process to gain an accurate discription of every character in the movie. The one exception is an outlaw named Angel who, while being a CBAwCLfABM, has mild concerns about the lawlessness of the Mexican Revolution and its effect on his hometown. As such, he is the moral pinnacle of this film's characters, but it's also worth noting that he murders his ex-girlfriend in a jealous rage during the course of the show.

In short, don't waste your time. Excessive violence may have been a cinematic novelty in the 70's, but it's been done many times more successfully and artistically since.

500 dead Mexicans out of 5000

Review of Saving Private Ryan

2009-12-13T19:28:00.004-06:00

The action in Saving Private Ryan begins with the amphibious invasion of Normandy on D-Day in 1944. It is a tremendous, terrifying spectacle that blows your mind, eyeballs and hundreds of GIs out of the water. It is powerful and horrifying. Machine-gun bullets whiz past your ears and kill men struggling in the water. Meat hits the camera. A boy with his guts splashed on the beach screams for his mother. In the end, the Americans exact revenge upon the Germans by murdering them after they've surrendered. It's real, it's bloody, it's all hell. After you watch this scene, you don't want to go to war.

And yet, Saving Private Ryan contains another scene which ruins the effect of the first. At the end of the movie, the Army Rangers sent to find Private Ryan and the Airborne soldiers link up and stage a last-ditch effort to keep the Germans from crossing the only intact bridge left on a river. This too is a powerful scene filled with blood and meaty chunks flying everywhere, but the effect is different. Here, the action makes any red-blooded man wish he could go back in time and kill some Germans.

Why does this happen? I can only assume it's because the later scene is filled with imagery that builds the romance of war. Guys fighting to the end despite all odds, the cinematic nature of the tension built as the advancing armour rumbles and shrieks like some great beast, Captain Miller falling mortally wounded, the return of the released German soldier, all of it was cinematic. Cinematic as opposed to real, like the first battle is. Add some images of fluttering American flags and you have a typical Hollywood-war-is-great-rah-rah-rah picture.

Was this effect intended? If it was intended, then this movie is pretty hypocritical, considering the effect which the first battle inspires in the audience. If I would, I'd like to call your attention to Band of Brothers, HBO's amazing WWII epic about the 101st Airborne Division, Easy Company (Private Ryan's unit, incidentally). As far as I'm concerned, Saving Private Ryan is merely a rehearsal for Band of Brothers. It's made by the same people (Spielberg, Tom Hanks, etc.) It's just better. Why? Because Band of Brothers has the feel of that first scene of Saving Private Ryan and never descends into flag waving and letting flow the Hollywood sap. It's real, and because it stays real, it's more effective. Normal men become heroes not because they gun down Nazis by the thousand, give speeches about freedom and come up with plans so crazy that they might just work. They are heroes because they lived through all war's bullshit so the rest of us didn't have to. When Band of Brothers is over, you want to travel back in time, not to kill Germans, but to share a beer with those paratroopers and thank them.

All that said, despite the hypocrisy, Saving Private Ryan is okay.

4 brothers killed out of 5

Review of The Shawshank Redemption

2009-12-13T19:25:00.004-06:00

The Shawshank Redemption is, according to the Internet Movie Database, the best movie of all time. It has stayed in that spot on the IMDb's list for most of the database's life, and I suspect it will be there for years to come. How odd that this movie was an unpopular choice with theatre-goers when it was first released.

I saw this film for the first time in 1994 at the long-gone Paradise Theatre in Saskatoon. In those days the Paradise stayed alive by showing double-features, and as I recall the first feature was Legends of the Fall. Let's say that after that particular monsterpiece, I was in barely a mood to enjoy yet another epic. But Shawshank won me over.

This was the movie that established Morgan Freeman as Hollywood's narrator of choice. After this, producers, being an unimaginative lot, could only think of him when they wanted somebody to talk about penguins or parapelegic boxers.

Also making a familiar appearance in this show is the Stephen King villain. In Shawshank, he appears as Warden Norton and Chief Hadley. The way you can identify a Stephen King villain is that he's a character with no redeeming personality traits whatsoever.

There was something about the dialogue in this show that struck me as being very similar to Titanic. It was a clunkiness that comes from uneducated characters waxing poetic when the screenwriter needs them, but saying really obvious, cheesy things at other moments.

You know, looking back on this review, it looks like I didn't like this show very much. But you know what? I did. I don't think it's the greatest movie ever made, but I still remember how the movie thrilled me when we discover what happened to Andy Dufresne the night he smuggled rope into his cell. While the dialogue may seem cheesy at times, there is enough poetry in it to keep me satisfied. Lastly, the ending is very satisfying.

4 rocks that have no business being in a Maine hayfield out of 5

Review of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

2009-11-13T16:33:00.003-06:00

This film marks the second entry on AFI's Top 100 American Movies list for screenwriter William Goldman, the other being All the President's Men. You also might remember him as the guy who did the screenplays for The Princess Bride, Misery, The Ghost and the Darkness, Marathon Man, and a host of other famous movies. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a great screenplay and it's a great movie too.

The dialogue is witty, Paul Newman and Robert Redford are insufferably charismatic, and the plot is offbeat and fun. Butch and Sundance are two-bit outlaws in a world that is changing. They know they are destined to die bloody and the only thing they can do is choose where. A Superposse is on their trail. Their flight takes them across the American southwest, to New York, and finally to Uruguay. It's a fun adventure that has aged well, except for a bizarre 1970s soundtrack.

I would like to take this opportunity for a digression about the 70's. I once read a screenwriting book by William Goldman entitled “Adventures in the Screen Trade”. Apparently, after BCatSC and AtPM (you figure out the acronyms), Goldman was Hollywood's darling-boy. I may just be engaging in ass-speak, but “Adventures in the Screen Trade” may very well have been the first in a series of recent books written to capitalize on suckers who want to write and sell a screenplay for a million dollars; you know, suckers like me.

Anyway, at the back of the book is included the original screenplay for BCatSC. I read the screenplay before I saw the movie. In some respects, the movie was exactly as I imagined. The obvious exception was the 70's music. In his book, Goldman says he likes the music of the movie, claiming that in many ways, the popular music of today is similar to popular music of the 1900s. I think he's wrong. Nothing, no decade in history was like the 70's. Today, when one views the famous scene in which Butch pedals Etta around on a bicycle, the musical addition of “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head” inspires laughter. One expects a feather-hatted pimp in a purple suit to strut past them.

What the hell was up with the 70's, anyway? I may have been born in 1976, but my earliest memory is from 1980. I've asked a few members of the previous generation what was up with the 70's and I've received only knowing smiles and evasive answers. The impression I get is that the boomers are embarrassed of the 70's but loved it while it was happening.

From what I understand, the 70's were a time of unprecedented freedom of expression. It was the triumph of the 60's hippie movement. Many view the 70's as Hollywood's golden age. People could truly “do their own thing” and be respected for it. There was an explosion of weirdness in pop culture. Clothing was outrageous. Musicians explored minimalism and trance. Drugs were cool.

All of this shows in the movies of the time. You want to put modern music in a historical western? Cool, man. You want to end your crime thriller on an ambiguous note? Groovy. You want to go to Peru, spend the film's budget on drugs, waste two years editing it and then sober-up naked by the side of a desert highway holding a rock in your left hand? Here's a million dollars.

Freedom of expression is good, right? Ditto with artistic freedom? So why is it that the movies produced in the 70's have, for the most part, aged so poorly? Even Star Wars, a movie that defined the modern blockbuster, has distracting 70's hairstyles. What went wrong?

I blame the corporate mindset. I believe that, as a result of corporate meddling, North Americans have become more conservative since the days of bell bottoms. While it is true that sexism and racism have diminished significantly since those days, or at least gone underground, we seem to have less tolerance for art and expression which is “different”. When we view the 70's through a modern, conformist lens, of course it looks ridiculous.

In the 70's, the director and screenwriter had control of the picture. Nowadays, movies are conceptualized by producers and committees. Very few blockbusters start with a great screenplay. They start in a board room where a bunch of bigwigs decide which nostalgic toy or old television show they should make a movie about. The screenplay comes later, after Hasbro has been consulted as to which characters and action sets they will be manufacturing. Producers tell writers which action sequences they want featured. Dialogue and action are edited according to the standards set by the MPAA so that more kids can attend. It's a soulless way to make a movie and I believe it has limited our artistic tastes as a society.

So which is worse, the off-the-leash, overly-artistic and bizarre filmmaking 70's hits, or the cynical, greedy and formulaic blockbusters of today? Would you rather watch the interminable Dennis Hopper piece of garbage, The Last Movie, or the shitfest that is G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra? You decide.

The issue is too hard for me. It all comes back to William Goldman, who said regarding how movies are made and predictions of their financial success, “Nobody Knows Anything”. All I know is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is an amusing show.
4 ½ lawmen on your tail out of 5

Review of Silence of the Lambs

2009-11-11T17:25:00.005-06:00

This is it, folks. The movie that set the standard for all those crime thrillers about an unlikely cop/detective/federal agent on the trail of a quirky and brutal serial killer. It's the genre that a generation of beginning screenwriters have tried to mimic to make a million dollars. The Silence of the Lambs did it first, and as far as I'm concerned, it did it the best.

Anthony Hopkins in the role of Hannibal Lecter is truly scary in a compelling way. When the movie takes a major digression from the plot to follow his escape attempt, the viewer really doesn't mind. While movies are filming, do actors know they are playing roles that will become icons?

On the opposite end of the spectrum of creepiness is Ted Levine's Buffalo Bill character. He is a gigantic, terrifying moth. He lives in darkness. With the aid of night vision goggles, he sees in the dark. He follows his desires to become a woman, just as a caterpillar becomes a moth, with horrifying result.

I'm glad I watched it.
4 skinned murder victims out of 5

Review of In the Heat of the Night

2009-10-30T15:33:00.004-06:00

It's very interesting to think about how films age. Viewed from modern eyes, In the Heat of the Night is nothing special. To many, the primitive methods used by police to solve a murder mystery are cliched from countless detective stories produced since, and are pretty obsolete when compared to the high-tech and far-fetched ways in which murders are solved on CSI. The moralizing around racism in Mississippi is old news: we're modern people and most of us agree that violent lynchings are bad.

However, this was not the case in 1967. Then, America was in the midst of a raging civil rights battle. Songs like "Nigger Hatin' Me" received radio play. To many people, the idea of a black man slapping a white man was truly shocking. It happens in this movie, and it was apparently one of the first times something like that had happened on the big screen. As for the policing, I can imagine the forensic work was, at the time, considered to be quite clever and cutting edge.

But now, it's not. It's all been done countless times and developed in new ways since. While this movie may have done it first, but it's hard not to see it as cliche. During the screening, I told myself repeatedly that it wasn't cliche, it was iconic, but it didn't work. In short, it didn't age very well.

This is not to say I didn't enjoy it on some level. It had some great dialogue, including the very powerful and famous line, "They call me MISTER Tibbs!", which went on to become the title of a sequel. Sidney Poitier was a powerful screen presence. Taken together, all of these things added up to a solid "meh".

2 1/2 drunken rednecks out of 5

Review of Forrest Gump

2009-10-23T13:40:00.005-06:00

Back in 1995, my first reaction to Forrest Gump was very unfavourable. You see, I watched it on video after the Academy Awards in which it won best picture. At the time, I REALLY wanted Pulp Fiction to win. I was a rabid fan, and in my young mind any film that competed with my favourite movie had to be utter shit.

My criticisms of the film were quite scathing. I came up with this whole theory about how it is the perfect Dumbass American movie. The soft-hearted and soft-headed Forrest gump blunders through life and succeeds utterly. The message seemed to me to be, "Don't think very hard, follow your heart and you'll succeed." Kindly semi-retardation was being glorified as the ultimate American virtue. Yet, at that time in my life I loved Homer Simpson. Funny, that.

I was fully conscious of my old feelings as I turned on the DVD player, but I was willing to give the movie a chance. I'm glad I did. It turns out that Forrest Gump is a decent show.

I'm not saying that what I thought in 1995 wasn't correct on some level: there is a certain sector of American society that rejects contemplation and introspection, glorifying rushing through life roaring and knocking stuff over. However, I'm no longer certain that this is what Forrest Gump is about. Rather, Forrest's governing trait is selflessness.

Forrest loves those he cares about without concern for appearances and strikes out at those who harm them without fear of physical or social retribution. It makes him fearless. His selflessness is what allows him to float (like the feather at the beginning and end of the movie) from opportunity to opportunity without fear for losing what he has. Near the end of the movie, Forrest addresses this himself: "I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at the same time." Something about this line strikes me not as dumb Americanism, but rather Taoism. Is the ultimate message of Forrest Gump to approach each moment in life with love and without fear?

One symbol in the movie still perplexes me: "Run, Forrest, run!" Running appears everywhere in the film. Forrest runs from rednecks chasing him in a truck. Does this mean that he runs from his problems? No, because he also runs back into the jungle to save fallen soldiers. So he runs to solve his problems? No, because near the end of the movie, after a particularily awful jilt from the love of his life, he runs across America several times and it gets him nowhere. Answers.com is equally unhelpful. In answer to the question "Why was Forrest running?", it says "Because he felt like it." This answer is unsatisfying unless viewed from a Zen perspective.

Again with the Eastern philosophy. Some may accuse me of reading too much into a dumb movie like this. Well, I know enough about screenwriting to say that most scripts are written by brainy people. Even Transformers had hidden moral messages.

So it appears that Forrest Gump is a complicated movie about a simple man. It is definitely worth watching again, although many scenes are marred by some awful product-placements and an overly sappy musical score.
4 Presidential audiences out of 5

Review of All the President's Men

2009-10-14T13:25:00.005-06:00

Here is a movie that truly strives for realism. In the dialogue, characters make slip-ups and have to correct themselves. Dramatic camera angles are not used, but rather shots that linger on a single character's face for minutes on end. There is no music for the first 25 minutes of the movie. It's an artistic technique that sets this movie apart and also fills it with tension.

From almost the first scenes, I was sucked into the plot. It is intensely thrilling. And here's the interesting part: nobody dies. Nobody fires any guns. How is that possible in a political thriller? It's all in the tone. Richard Nixon, the film's adversary, is only ever seen on TV. Yet, his menacing presence is felt throughout the entire film. It is not long before Woodward and Bernstien begin to feel their actions shadowed by mysterious adversaries that track their movement and hush witnesses. For most of the movie, the danger is implied.

The ending of this movie is very interesting (no real spoilers ahead, if you know the history). It ends on a down-note, with our heroes embarassed and frightened. They are at the height of the danger to their lives. Nixon has clearly won this battle. They are told they have to persevere to do this thing right and work hard by their boss. The rest of history is then told without dramatic action. It's an ending that is gutsy, if nothing else. Knowing the history, one would expect the film to end with Nixon resigning and the reporters basking in their victory. It is different and refreshing to have the dramatic action end with the reporters losing. Some might find it anticlimactic, but not I.

See this movie. Even if you have no interest in the Watergate cover-up or politics, you will enjoy it.
4 1/2 CRP Directors out of 5

Review of Modern Life

2009-10-07T13:15:00.011-06:00

The opening image of Modern Times is a herd of sheep pouring through the gate of an open pen which melds into an image of men rushing to work. I'm not sure if this image was iconic then, but it certainly is now. It is also an icon for the whole movie: a satire of industrial society. Seeing this film, it makes sense that it alarmed many wealthy industrialists and their allies in government, and earned the ire of such men as J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI.

Charlie Chaplin's also iconic Tramp character and his thief girlfriend get jobs, systematically lose them, and waltz in and out of jail more times than you can count. It's all very funny. I also find it interesting that The Tramp, in one scene, is mistaken for a communist and gets in trouble with the authorities. Was this a prophetic vision of things to come, or was Chaplin already getting in trouble for his leftist leanings in the 1930's?

Although films had ceased to be silent many years in the past, Modern Times plays like a silent film, with only sound effects, music and brief snippets of dialogue. The only dialogue spoken is phrases like, "Get back to work!" Regarding the music, I wish I had read about the movie beforehand, because apparently the love theme from the movie became famous later as the song "Smile".

Watching this movie made me think about the 1930's as compared to the 1990's. While life must have surely been harder for people in the 30's, in retrospect, my time as a Gen-Xer in the 90's recession was similar. Jobs were scarce for young people and many found themselves depending on the elder generation for support. Droughts were common. Both eras were followed by a baby boom as the elder generation aged and the newer one took over their jobs.

The comparison is interesting when examining how each generation bore the hardships. In the 30's, throughout all media, including Modern Times, one can see a simple message: "Times are tough, but smile, because things will get better". Compare that with the 90's, when times were easier than the 30's, but still pretty bad (but not for rich people). My generation's culture was saturated with sarcasm, cynicism, disillusion, depression, anger and apathy. If Gen-X 90's culture could speak about life, it would sullenly say, "It's all bullshit anyway." Both cultures valued smiles, but my generation appreciated a sardonic, knowing smile.

I'm not saying one generation handled it better than the other. I'm just saying it's interesting how they coped.

This is, no doubt, a strange digression from the subject of the movie review. Returning, I heartily commend it for its courage in dealing with what must have been painful subjects with humour and smiles. It is fascinating and funny.

4 1/2 cogs in the machine out of 5

Review of The Apartment

2008-07-18T18:34:00.004-06:00

I find myself at a loss for words. This is not because the movie was exceptionally good or bad. I think it is because I have no strong opinion about this show.

I think what makes The Apartment different from other movies is that it has distinctly dark subject matter. Halfway through, a character attempts suicide and the threat of suicide lingers for the rest of the film. What made this so disorienting for me was that IT'S A COMEDY! Not only that, but a comedy in the hokey, all-American style with tons of snappy dialogue, which seemed to be the fashion in the 40's to 60's.

Frankly, I don't know what to make of it. While it certainly had its share of laughs, I didn't think there was much chemistry between the two leads. Something just seemed missing for me.

What is perplexing is that I think I was alone in being confounded. The rest of the audience present at the screening seemed to really enjoy it. I guess you'll have to ask somebody else why they thought it was great. Sorry!

2 and a half tennis raquets out of 5

Review of Spartacus

2008-05-11T03:27:00.005-06:00

This was my first time watching Spartacus. In many ways it is a remarkable movie. There are breathtaking shots that you will never see in any other film. But on another level it is very long-winded and imperfect. I'll start with the good things.

A word about extras. Hollywood seems to hate them these days. Perhaps for good reasons, monetary-wise. They must be paid, wrangled, clothed and managed in every way. They are necessary, but computer animation has found ways to reduce their number. Look at the epic battle sequences of today and you will see hordes of clone warriors clashing on a computer-generated canvas.

I always knew it was no substitute and now I have proof. Spartacus contains wonderfully framed shots with throngs of extras. These shots stole my breath. Imagine, if you can, a hillside crowded with pilgrims spilling down its side like rivulets of rainfall. Imagine thousands of Roman soldiers in tight battle-lines marching-in step toward you in such vivid detail that you can see the sunlight reflected in their weapons and shields.

I've seen movies with a cast of thousands but never before like this.

But now for the not-so-good. Let's start with the star, Kirk Douglas. Spartacus is a man of few words. Usually characters of this stripe have impressive things to say when they deign to open their mouths. Not so with Spartacus. He tends to say obvious stuff. Douglas lends to the role a certain gravelly manner of growling, but fails to convey to the audience what Spartacus is thinking when he's not talking. Spartacus has no dimension of character beyond all the gruff and gravel, other than a perfectly virtuous soul. It kinda made me want him to die.

Because I didn't buy the uncharismatic Spartacus, I didn't buy his romance either. It made me want the girl to die.

The plot is compelling up until the last act. The movie essentially ends after a climactic battle sequence. But wait, no! It keeps on going and going! The minutes turn to millennia as the story repeatedly fails to resolve itself. It made me wish director Stanley Kubrick, writer Howard Fast and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo would die. But how do you kill that which is already dead?

Maybe it's just me, but the dubbing seemed to have problems too. Half the characters spoke with gruff voices that sounded straight out of the mouth of a big thug from an Anime flick.

That all sounds pretty negative, but most of the bad fell to the wayside as I was watching it. In the end, I was always curious to find out what happened next and dazzled by the spectacle of it all. I would recommend strongly it for history buffs like myself, but I suspect it would irritate most people.

3 defeated Roman cohorts out of 5

Review of Sunrise

2008-05-06T02:20:00.003-06:00

A surprisingly good film. I know I have said many times that movies don't age very well. Sunrise defies my blanket statement.

Sunrise surprised me. I had no idea that I could ever enjoy a silent film. As somebody who has lived his entire life in the era of sound, specifically the era of the blockbuster, I might naturally believe that films with sound, realistic sets and special effects are just BETTER than anything that could be produced in 1927. How wrong I was.

The sets and models, laughable by modern standards, simply melted into the background like they should in any stage play. I was perfectly willing to suspend my disbelief for the sake of the story. I simply wanted to find out what happened next and not once did I find myself scoffing at the studio sets, model city and water tank.

As for the sound, this really threw me for a loop. I'm a pretty auditory guy, so dialogue and sound are very important to me. Yet this was no hamper for my enjoyment. I wasn't counting, but the movie probably used only ten dialogue legends on the screen. TEN in an hour and a half! The rest was simply implied by the action. Amazing that the story could be told so lovingly through imagery only! Let this be a lesson to screenwriters! Film is a visual art form first and foremost. Dialogue is simply entertaining fluff. A story can be told without it.

I know I already mentioned I liked the story, but I'll mention it again. It was simple, touching and especially at the end, tear-jerking. There was a bizarre scene in the middle involving a pig, but I can't criticize it for that, mainly because one of my own screenplays has a bizarre scene involving a pig as well. Each scene flows lovingly into the next, somehow more affecting because of the visual style.

In short, the more I think about it, the more I love it.
4 1/2 sunrises out of 5

Review of Titanic

2008-03-31T15:36:00.003-06:00

What is it about this movie? Why exactly is this movie the highest grossing movie of all time (unadjusted for inflation)? What sent people into the theatres over and over?

Surely it wasn't the love story. I've heard the love story described as vapid. I've heard many references to clunky dialogue. I've heard people call it boring.

Surely it wasn't the spectacle. Nobody wants to see a movie about a big boat going boom. Who in their right mind would want to see people fall a hundred feet off the stern of a boat and go splat in the water? Drowning children? Bobbing frozen corpses? What bloodlust and sadism!

Surely it wasn't the attention to detail. In our day and age, it is merely expected that a historical pic like this will be well researched. If a movie does not elaborately reconstruct sets so that the audience feels like they've entered another era, it has failed its job. Why should Titanic feel so special?

The answer is: all three of those things. Despite what people who were "too cool" for this movie say, millions of people found the love story compelling. People liked seeing other people go squish in the water. And above it all floats the love and care that the cast and crew put into making everything seem perfect. The costumes, the research, the sets, the fact that they recreated a life-size Titanic (!), all of these delight the viewer's senses.

I don't care what all y'all say. I really like this show.

4 hearts of the ocean out of 5

ps- If you need more evidence that the MPAA is corrupt, ponder why this film with shocking violence, swearing, and naked Kate Winslet is rated PG-13.

Review of Easy Rider

2008-03-24T18:59:00.006-06:00

O. My. God.

So terrible. So unworthy.

And yet, I'd like you all to try an experiment. If you have parents or other relatives that were young (ages 16-29) in 1969, I challenge you to ask them if they liked Easy Rider. If they've seen it, they'll tell you they liked it.

Why? WHY WHY WHY?

I guess you just had to be there. Some movies age better than others and Easy Rider hasn't fared well. Two guys ride on motorcycles, accompanied by music. They meet some guys. They leave. They ride around on their bikes, accompanied by music. They meet some more guys. They leave. They drop acid in a graveyard. Then before you know it or care, they're dead and the movie's over.

Oops! Did I spoil that for you? Too bad, sucka! Because, the fact is, if you manage to make it to the end you won't care either.

"But Jeremy," you say, "Easy Rider is an avant garde masterpiece. It's not meant to have a conventional Hollywood plot."

Well, my friend, I've seen The Last Movie, also by Dennis Hopper, and I can say without reservation that if Easy Rider has anything good in it, it's an accident. Dennis Hopper was stoned out of his mind for both these films. Easy Rider is considered to be a "good" movie, and The Last Movie is considered to be a "bad" movie. The Dennis Hopper of Easy Rider is portrayed as a gutsy, thoughtful filmmaker, but the Dennis Hopper of The Last Movie is considered to be a drug-crazed, self-indulgent lunatic. But you know what? Both movies are shitty, pointless and incoherent, and the same guy directed them!

Like most avant garde works of art, these movies are only good if people say they're good. Easy Rider has a good reputation, but that's all it is. Don't believe me? Watch it and find out. My prayers are with you.

The scenery is nice, though.
1 acid tab out of 5

Review of A Night at the Opera

2008-03-18T18:58:00.005-06:00

Meh.

Not that great. I didn't hate it, but the laughs didn't come very fast nor furious. One cannot even really say, "It was okay for the time it was made", because Bringing Up Baby was made during this same era and was HILARIOUS by modern standards.

Honestly, I think the big problem was that the plot wasn't that good. Like a lot of comedies, it was events strung together to highlight a series of gags and musical numbers. Yeah, those Marx Brothers were talented musicians, but for me it didn't fly.

Suzi seemed to hate it.

2 bearded Russian pilots out of 5

Review of Platoon

2007-11-06T11:31:00.001-06:00

I somehow think that it would be very wrong to say that I love Platoon, or even like Platoon. When watching this movie, for me it became very difficult to separate the movie's atmosphere from my enjoyment of it. The atmosphere is hateful.

Perhaps that's what Platoon does best. It was one of the first movies to capture the hateful experience of being an American soldier in Vietnam. The soldiers do and witness hateful things, live in filth and misery, and try to escape it all with drugs and alcohol. They not only kill the enemy, but kill each other: sometimes with misplaced artillery barrages, sometimes purposefully fragging each other.

How can somebody enjoy being in that place? At the same time one has to admire the portrait that has been painted, even if its subject is horrible to view. I think comparing this movie to a painting is rather apt, actually. The plot is simple: it can be summed up in a few sentences. It is merely filled in with terrifying images of men slaughtering each other and getting stoned.

So if you don't mind being thrown into the mud and shit of the Nam, you'll like it. If you'd rather stay home, don't watch it.
3 1/2 dog tags out of 5

Review of 12 Angry Men

2007-10-30T11:14:00.001-06:00

It is obvious from viewing 12 Angry Men that you are watching a play adapted for the screen. What is remarkable about this film is how well the movie works despite this. Most movies adapted from the stage feel excessively wordy and the locations get boring very quickly.

Not so with 12 Angry Men. As the film's plot progresses the camera angles get more claustrophobic, heightening the tension. As the balance of power in the hot, cramped jury room shifts, the film gets more exciting. The outcome of their verdict is never certain.

I liked it a lot. Go see it.
4 switchblades out of 5

Review of Bringing up Baby

2007-10-17T15:06:00.001-06:00

I really liked this movie.

The real star of the show is Katherine Hepburn. She is astoundingly funny. The sense of humour is quite modern compared to comedies from this period, and it all gets pumped into her character. The leopard doesn't play as big a role in the show as the posters suggest, it is merely a part of the weirdness that constitutes Katherine Hepburn's character.

If there is one thing I will take with me from this movie forever, it is the gardener character. He's hilarious, wandering about mumbling about how if one more thing upsets him it will drive him to drink, and everything upsets him. Love it.

The show collapses just a little bit near the end at the police station when Katherine Hepburn starts pretending to be a gangstress, but other than that the show blew me away, considering when it was made.

4 brontosaurus intercostal clavicles out of 5

Review of the Sixth Sense

2007-10-09T14:06:00.002-06:00

I think that it's only possible to view and love The Sixth Sense twice. The first time you watch it, you love it because it's so creepy and the twist ending blows you out of the water. The second time you love it because you marvel at how intricately the twist ending is woven into the fabric of the movie and how all the clues were there the whole time.

After that? This was my third time. This time it was only okay. I think the reason why is related to the twist ending. Once you know the twist ending and have digested it with a second viewing, there is not much left. This problem is compounded by another problem, encapsulated in this bit of dialogue in the movie, regarding Cole's ghosts:

COLE: What if they don't want help? What if they're just angry and they want to hurt somebody?

A creepy line to be sure. But once you have seen the movie and know the answer to these questions, there is not much tension in repeated viewings. The ghosts become a little less scary because they are demystified.

Is it fair to judge a movie based on re-watchability? I think so. Speaking as somebody who watched The Fellowship of the Ring 19 times in theatres, some movies are re-watchable in the extreme. The Sixth Sense is not one of them. However, the first viewing was amazing, so I have to give the movie its due.

4 dead people out of 5

Review of Swing Time

2007-10-01T09:09:00.001-06:00

Swing Time is what it is: a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie. As such, coming into the movie, one should not expect anything sublime or extremely moving. It's just a bit-o'-fun.

I came into the show expecting this, and I must say it helped that I was drunk while I watched it. From my buzz, the dancing seemed fun, the lame-duck humour of the 30's just seemed innocent and charming, and the plot didn't seem all that bad. As I said, being drunk helped. Luckily, there was a sober person next to me, Suzi, who thought the movie was okay.

Ever seen a movie with a cool blackface routine in it? Come to think of it, have you ever seen ANYTHING with a cool blackface routine? Swing Time has it. It's a trippy little number entitled, "Mr. Bojangles". For all you folks who like getting high and watching pretty imagery, this scene is a must-see.

To sum up, it was true to itself and what it was, mildly entertaining, and expertly executed. At least while drinking.

3 out of 5 lucky quarters

Review of Sophie's Choice

2007-09-19T16:26:00.001-06:00

Sophie's Choice is two movies for the price of one. One of the movies is a young writer's coming-of-age story in New York. The other is a Holocaust movie. It is very dialogue driven. Does it succeed?

In one sense, yes. Kevin Kline is great as Nathan Landau: charismatic and funny. Meryl Streep is convincing on all levels as Sophie. The actual moment of Sophie's choice is one of the most powerful moments I've ever seen on film.

But then we come to the problem of the movie seeming very long. I found that the Holocaust movie disrupted the coming-of-age movie. Once we are thrown back in time to Sophie's suffering in the death camp, the tribulations of Stingo in the present day seem quite trivial. It seemed to suck away the energy of the primary story, if that's possible.

Then there is the other side of the character Nathan Landau. I won't give away what happens. Let's just say the audience discovers that he is not just a bad drunk. The effect of this realization is not shocking. It is disappointing. Imagine if you can a comedy starring a really stupid guy. The audience laughs at him and near the end they discover the character is retarded. The whole thing seemed like a huge deflation of Nathan's character.

Sophie's Choice is not for everyone. I loved many things about it. Other things frustrated me. Generally, I'd say they cancel each other out.

3 great American novels out of 5

Review of Goodfellas

2007-09-07T15:51:00.001-06:00

Goodfellas is great. There are so many things to praise. I like the epic quality to the story. I like the acting. The direction and photography are stellar.

There is something to be said for the violence as well. There is something very casual about the way violence is presented in this movie. I believe it has to do with directorial choices. For example, in one scene, our protagonist walks across the street, pulls out a pistol, beats his girlfriend's neighbor in the face with it several times, and then walks back across the street. This is all done in one shot from start to finish: no reaction shots, no close-ups. It somehow makes it feel that much more real.

I have a minor quibble with the ending, however. For some reason, the action cuts to Joe Peschi emptying his revolver into the camera, then cuts back to the scene in progress. It's weird and pointless. I wonder if it was the suits upstairs with a brilliant idea that the show should end with a BANG and pressuring the director to insert something. Anyway, it was weird.

Summarizing, there is some justification to the idea that this is the best gangster movie of all time. If you haven't seen it, you're missing out.

4 out of 5 slices of garlic so thin they liquefy in the pan

Review of The French Connection

2007-09-03T11:26:00.002-06:00

A disappointment, I'd say.

There were lots of good things about it. I liked the car chase where Popeye follows the skytrain through New York, wrecking stuff. I liked the scene where he tracks the crafty villain throught he subway. However, the sum of the parts didn't seem to add up.

Boredom was the main problem for this flick. I'm sure the intended effect of the cops stalking the smugglers with increasingly scary music, watching them eat and doing nothing bad, was tension. For me it didn't seem to work. It was okay for awhile, but it just goes on and on.

Did I say boredom was the main problem? I change my mind. The ending was terrible! I will not spoil it for you, but I will say that the filmmakers forgot how important climaxes are. Instead of providing the audience with the climax it needs, we hear a gunshot and then the ending is written with captions on the screen! Bad filmmaking! Bad! No buscuit!

To conclude, The French Connection was an art-fag movie masquerading as a thriller. Sigh. Why are films that people classify as "innovative" turn out to be boring?

2 out of 5 porkpie hats

Review of Pulp Fiction

2007-08-24T10:41:00.001-06:00

I'm not sure I'm qualified to write a review of Pulp Fiction. After all, I'm very biased. As I was watching I realized just how well I knew the movie. It's not from seeing it that many times. It's just that all the conversations have been rehearsed and repeated so many times in my group of friends and in the media that I pretty well knew them off by heart. I felt a little bored watching it this time, which is hardly the fault of the movie.

What's with Quentin Tarantino and his continuity problems? They seem to happen a lot in his movies. For instance, the bullet holes are already in the wall before Jules and Vincent are assaulted with the hand-cannon. Then, at the end of that scene, everybody leaves without the briefcase.

I was reminded as I watched how violent Hollywood became after Pulp Fiction was released. For awhile in the mid-90's, it seemed like all movies had callous murders and gouts of blood spilling from bullet holes. Maybe that's just me.

Shockingly good performances from everybody in the show. Oh wait. Except for Julie Sweeny.

It's worth noting that the most exciting story in the show, "The Gold Watch", was actually written by Roger Avery, not Quentin. Whatever happened to Roger Avery anyway?

So to sum up, the show is still good. Even if you've seen it before, it's good to watch it an marvel at the number of cultural sayings and phenomena this movie spawned.
4 gold watches out of 5

Review of The Last Picture Show

2007-08-17T16:51:00.002-06:00

Ho-hum.

The Last Picture Show is based on a novel and it shows. The movie meanders from one event to the next with little underlying plot. I tried very hard to discern the movie's message and couldn't find it. I also tried very hard to like it, but could not. It was boring. Mind you, its boringness never made me angry.

On the plus side, it has Jeff Bridges, some good acting, and some nice boobs to look at. Other than that, I really can't reccomend it.

1 1/2 unsatisfying deflowerings out of 5

Review of Do the Right Thing

2007-08-08T21:39:00.001-06:00

Hmmm...

A complicated movie for sure. A good movie? That's hard to say.

On one hand, the show has awful pacing issues. The opening credits are laughable. Only slightly less laughable is the way that Spike Lee preaches at his audience, with characters speaking directly to the camera to pound his message in. Irritating characters yell at each other and drift pointlessly in and out of the plot.

Yet, when the lights came up, those of us who attended the viewing had a lot to say about what we had just seen. We talked about why we liked it and hated it. We talked about this or that character's actions. We talked about our own personal views on racism. These are the tell-tale signs that a movie has struck a chord with its audience.

If you haven't seen this show, I think it's important for you to know that Spike Lee is trying to preach at you. Secondly, it's important to know that Spike is going to preach at you with symbolism. One of the first images we see in the movie is a photgraph of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X standing side by side. The movie also ends with quotes by both of these men. The show is essentially about the conflict between the ideas represented by these men. King says never to use violence, Malcolm X says it is permissible. Moderation vs. Extremism. These are the underlying themes of Do the Right Thing, and if you are expecting a fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat plot, you will be disappointed.

So in the end, I'll admit the movie affected me. But I have to take points off for being boring and for being preachy. Sorry, Spike.

2 1/2 out of 5 Slices of Pizza

Review of Blade Runner

2007-08-03T15:45:00.001-06:00

Wow. What a movie. Was it enjoyable? Kinda. Was it original? God, yes.

There were things to see in Blade Runner that you will see nowhere else. Screwed-up things. Fantastic things. Frightening things. I don't want to give too much away, but the sight of two mechanical midgets in Prussian uniform saying, "Home again, home again, jiggity-jig" and then walking into a wall sums it up pretty well.

The movie's biggest problem, I believe comes from expectations. For the first half of the movie, we don't know what might happen to the Blade Runner Decker. We have no idea how tough the replicants he faces are and the horrible things they could do to him. We don't know what consequences face him if he gives up, fails or succeeds. As an audience we are given little for which to hope or fear. It is only later that we discover how terrifying and powerful the replicants are. The result is confusion at Decker's actions, and resulting boredom.

The climax is, in a word, profound. I will not ruin it. It has to be seen.

To sum up, expect some boredom, but also expect to be shocked. How weird does that sound?
2 1/2 out of 5 cryogenically frozen eyeballs

Review of Yankee Doodle Dandy

2007-07-27T22:38:00.001-06:00

The movie sucks.

I'm not talking about just the rah-rah America bullshit in it. The patriotism is of the sweet, hokey pre-World War II variety that makes you roll your eyes, not the badass, tough-guy Don't-Mess-with-Texas variety that makes you want to kill somebody. No. I'm talking about story and the structure.

It's not enough to have a good dancer and some good tunes in a movie. There has to be a story. For the last hour and fifteen minutes of Yankee Doodle Dandy, the characters just dance and sit around in rooms agreeing with each other. There is zero conflict. The result is boredom.

My advice to curious viewers, if they can stomach it, is to fast forward to the song and dance numbers and watch one or two of them. The Grand Old Flag number is the best thing in the show, but even that may make you groan in disgust.

Alternately, you could opt not to watch the movie at all.

1 out of 5 Glorious Stars

Review of Ben-Hur

2007-07-27T10:48:00.001-06:00

I first saw Ben-Hur three years ago. I was really unimpressed. It seemed very long. The ending seemed weird.

I am pleased to say that this viewing was much different. I think it had a lot to do with expectations. During the opening credits of Ben-Hur, a legend reads, "A Tale of Christ". Yes, this is a Christian movie. If you watch Ben-Hur not understanding this you will be unprepared for the ending, which is miraculous rather than the direct result of Judah Ben-Hur's actions, and it may seem sudden or confusing. Perhaps another reason I disliked the movie the first time I saw it was that I had just watched the Passion of the Christ, which is an awful, bloodthirsty movie. I was feeling very spiritually raw from watching it, and the religious stuff in Ben-Hur rubbed me the wrong way. In any case, I really liked it this time I watched it.

The scope of the movie is huge. The "cast of thousands" gives the viewer the impression that they are watching something really special. The chariot race is really fantastic, and so is a sea-battle between Romans and a pirate fleet. Even Charleton Heston is tolerable in the role of Ben-Hur, giving an especially shiny performance. The soundtrack is cool, and I especially like Jesus' theme. All-in-all, you can sense how much love went into the making of this flick. Everybody involved really wanted it to be something special. And it is.

Is it too long? Maybe. There are many over-long glances and head-hangings while muted violins wallow in misery on the soundtrack. I'd suspect the movie could lose a half-hour if the director had been willing to make the dialogue a bit more snappy.

So if you have an evening to spare and the willingness to make popcorn several times, sit down and watch this one. At the very least, you'll be entertained the first time you see somebody get trampled in the chariot race.

4 out of 5 Stars of David

Review of Toy Story

2007-07-12T13:41:00.001-06:00

I was a little worried when I fired up Toy Story. I generally find children's entertainment to be vacuous, irritating and often in bad taste. However, as the opening scenes of the movie started up, I began to understand that I was mistaken to apply any kid's movie prejudice to Toy Story. It was clear that this movie was designed not just for the brats, but for me as well. It held my interest right throughout and gave me several belly laughs.

What I find remarkable about Toy Story is how good it looks. This movie is now over ten years old and the animation still looks good. Maybe the Incredibles or talking cars or whatever people are animating these days look better, but my untrained eye can't tell the difference. The toys just look good. And here's another important thing: at no point did my eyes get lost during the action. I find that many computer animators put too many things on screen at once, whether its too much action, too many colours or poor framing I'm not sure. All I know is that I couldn't tell what the hell was going on in the previews for Robots. Toy Story always kept my eyes interested without tiring them out.

The plot is really good. The computer animation is in service to the plot, not the other way around. My one complaint would be that Woody, the main protagonist, pissed me right off. The plot doesn't seem to make him sympathetic at the beginning of the story, so his political macinations against Buzz just seem petty.

The voice acting is great. Tom Hanks gives the weakest performance as Woody, but (and I shudder to praise this man) Tim Allen was fantastic as overly-heroic Buzz. Maybe I still have a soft spot for R. Lee Ermey, but I just love that drill sergeant schtick he does, and his deadpan performance as the army-man sergeant cracked me up.

Anyway, fantastic little movie that I wouldn't mind my theoretical children watching. If you haven't seen it, stop being such a jackass and watch it.

4 out of 5 army-men