Chris 2010 Viewings #43: Resident Evil 2 - Torontocalypse!

You will believe Milla Jovovich can run down the face of Toronto City Hall in Resident Evil: Apocalypse! This is the second movie in the series of motion pictures based on the video games of the same name. I am not a gamer, but my understanding of their attitude towards this series is that it sucks because they did not call it Biohazard like the original Japanese versions, and that the games have no Milla Jovovich character in them and that will not stand.

The sad thing about this is that you can't take Milla Jovovich out of the Resident Evil movies because, while these movies have many pleasures, not many of these pleasures actually have anything to do with being quality movies. The primary pleasure is always Milla Jovovich and whatever supporting female character the films give her kicking zombie dogs in the face and shooting many many many but never enough bullets. I don't have a lot of time for male action stars, but Uma in Kill Bill and Milla Jovovich in these movies make me understand why other people might.

Resident Evil is not the kind of movie I would ever have seen but for a recommendation. An acquaintance who is now a highly paid movie critic at a notable publication told me it was like a Dario Argento movie. I still think he is insane for saying that, but I was surprised to find that I enjoyed it for creative moments like people being sliced into cubes by lasers and then sliding apart, but mostly for Milla Jovovich kicking zombie dogs in the face.

These visceral thrills can get you all excited while you watch them, but they do tend to fade as the distance from your last viewing grows. So I didn't see any of the other Resident Evil pictures until I had a marathon this last weekend so that I could go see the new one at the drive-in. A visit to the Mustang Drive In in Guelph is an annual ritual for me and not much they showed this year had turned my crank so to speak. So a double bill of Resident Evil 4 and Piranha 3D not in 3D? That is the kind of thing drive-ins were made for.

Anyway this second installment begins where the first one ends, with Milla emerging from the death trap of the first movie to find the entire city around her descending into zombie madness. The city is called Raccoon City, a hangover from the game, and one which never fails to shake me out of the movies and say "oh right, this is based on a video game". In reality it is Toronto, and I will say this: if the mere sight of a Pizza Pizza sign gives you cravings, do not watch this movie unless you have cash on hand to pay the delivery guy.

The city has been quarantined by the evil Umbrella Corporation, to prevent the zombie plague from spreading. Milla meets up with a ragtag group of uninfected comrades including a woman in a Lara Croft costume who is almost as enjoyable to watch as Milla. Richard Harris' son, an evacuated scientist, gets in touch with them and tells them that if they rescue his left-behind daughter, he will get them out of town. It all ends with a rootin' tootin' showdown at Nathan Phillips Square, with Milla taking on snipers and a genetically mutated killing machine who was formerly a guy she knew.

I was not bored watching this movie, but I will not pretend it is any good, not even on the non-Milla levels the first one succeeded on. If it had not been shot in Toronto, I may not have enjoyed it as much, but it also probably wouldn't have looked so cheap and loaded with actors you see in Canadian Tire commercials and the like. So, a win-lose situation there.

I hope it will not spoil things too much to reveal that Milla survives and shows up in Resident Evil 3 as well.

Chris 2010 Viewings #42: Toy Story 3

For me, as a parent, Pixar movies are a sure thing. I take my daughter to see most of the kids movies that hit theatres because I remember what life was like when I liked movies and want to encourage that in her. Hopefully that love of movies will not end in an uncomfortable estrangement like it did for me.

Anyway, most of the movies we go to see are pretty crappy, but I enjoy the conversations we have afterwards. Not always about "what saccharine moral lesson did you have imparted on you this time", but about the ethical concerns various scenes have for her, what her favourite part was and why (only once was it a flatulence joke, thank you G Force), and the like. She always asks what I liked about it, and I try to stray from the negative because, frankly, I am a bit of a fusspot and I want her to like what she likes. So I usually talk about some narrative strategy I found interesting, in terms that she'll respond to.

So Pixar is always a blessing, for any number of reasons. First of all, their aesthetics are ace. Their films look fantastic, unlike the majority of CGI kids pictures which are full of ugly design (Shrek) and awakward execution (Shrek) made palatable by sitcom-quality comedy (Shrek). Secondly, they either only hire genius story developers/script writers or their writing undergoes rigorous quality control. My favourite Pixar film is Up (second place, a close thing, is Wall-E), which is one of an ungererous handful of family films I've seen that can genuinely be enjoyed on completely different levels by adults and children.

A few years ago, the consensus of most of the film writers I respect was thatthe Toy Story films as the masterpieces of the Pixar canon (The Incredibles seems to be usurping them of late). At the time I undervalued Pixar because: a) I did not have kids yet so had not yet confronted the myriad lousy films made for the under-10 set; b) my two favourite Pixar films had not yet been made; c) I don't really respond to spot-the-celebrity voice casting that every Pixar film except my two faves indulges in; d) I do not like the characters in the Toy Story films.

I don't like art that feels the need to tell me how much I should like it. So every time a Toy Story character tells me how much I love bloody Woody I feel my muscles tense from head to toe. Especially since Woody is just Tom Hanks doing the two Tom Hanks schticks I hate the most: laconic dontcha-just-love-me charm and manic, high-pitched exasperation. Buzz Lightyear I would respond better to as a supporting character you only have to hear from every once in a while (which is why Spanish Buzz in TS3 sat so well with me). None of the characters strike me as especially inspired bits of personality/voice casting that Pixar otherwise seems to excel at.

Anyway, the way the Toy Story series overcomes my serious reservations about its characters is by being generally excellent in all regards (in spite of my being mostly unmoved by the universally beloved "When She Loved Me" sequence from TS2, which loses me by being so obviously designed to make me an emotional mess and by partially relying on some howl-at-the-moon vocals to sell its accompanying song). Toy Story 3 continues in this tradition by being excellent, albeit treading some of the same territory that its predecessors did. What makes Toy Story 3 tip over the edge into greatness is that this is the most existentially terrifying film of 2010, ruthless and bleak to an extent that I forgave it its one poo joke.

Toy Story 3 is the animated film companion to Ingmar Bergman's early 60s "silence of God" trilogy: Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence. Like those awesome and depressing movies it is about what happens when people who have absolutely believed in the goodness of the universe as they've had it defined for them suddenly have to deal with the permanent absence of that around which they've organized their belief system (squeaky-clean now-teenager Andy / God / something else like cola, Burton Cummings, or what have you). The questions raised by the situation are troubling, especially the big one: in the absence of "God", what do you have to fall back on while facing the void?

That these heady questions are tackled in a narrative about toys being donated to a preschool is formidable indeed. The Pixar kids are smart, and load the film with great new characters, with Michael Keaton's take on Ken a particular standout. Also impressive are a terrifying deformed baby doll who utters the film's most heartbreaking line, and cuddly bad guy Lotso (Ned Beatty) who utters the most chilling one.

I will warn you, this film may not be suitable for children, with its profound and troubling questions and particularly the terrifying climax, which is set in - I kid you not - an incinerator/the fires of hell. The final scene ends the film on a whimsical and sentimental note that also factors in the Woody-sure-is-the-goddamned-greatest-thing-ever-isn't-he-folks stuff that makes me not embrace these films as firmly as others do. But here I forgive it, because I take it as the Pixar people's admission that they know they went too far with that fires of hell bit, and even though it all ends happy my daughter was still convulsing in tears when we left the theatre. But the conversations we had afterwards were amazing. So Pixar are still batting a perfect game in my book, probably because I haven't seen Cars.

Chris 2010 Viewings #41: A Prophet

I watched this moving picture, A Prophet, something like two months ago. Before I wrote my last review, that of The White Ribbon. I then gave the DVD to Mike, who watched it but will never review it (because spoiler: he will never write a review here ever again), then to Maggie, who reviewed it much better than I will (because that is what she does). I think Wendy has the DVD now, but she is in Europe for a few months, so don't expect a review from her, either.

A Prophet is a film by Jacques Audiard, whose entire filmography is what the hip kids say is "made of win". A Prophet is also a French prison movie, and I have never seen a bad French prison movie. Two of my favourite films ever, Le Trou and A Man Escaped, fall into this genre. So watching A Prophet was, as the hip kids said 20 years ago, a "no-brainer".

I stopped attending the Toronto International Film Festival 8 years ago. I stopped for a lot of reasons, but one of them was that if I watch too many movies in close succession they become one big blur and I don't remember too much about them. I watched A Prophet in the middle of a close succession of movies two months ago and my memory of it suffers accordingly. So bear with me.

It is about a young Arabic man in France. He goes to jail, and winds up straddling two factions: the other Arabic inmates, and a middle-aged crime boss who decides to make him a protege of sorts due to his "in" with the other Arabs. I don't want to spoil anything, but the crime boss gets egg on his face eventually.

This movie won an armload of Cesars (the French Oscars) and probably deserved them, though I will withhold judgment until I see every French film of 2009. It was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar, and like most great Best Foreign Film Oscar nominees, it did not win. Audiard is a filmmaker with a great eye for telling details and powerful imagery, like a man who is casually on fire (see above). The two leads (Tahar Rahim and Niels Arestrup) are fantastic, and make the power shifts that take place believable and affecting. That doesn't sound like a big deal, but usually when movies depict that, they just have a guy who was previously the weak one slick back his hair and put on bigger clothes and expect that to do all the work. Rahim and Arestrup reflect their stations in every ounce of their physical beings. Good work, guys.

That's all I have to say about A Prophet, which I will watch again because it deserves it.

Chris 2010 Viewings #40: The White Ribbon

OK, so the backlog is cleared. So I'm ready to embark on the bold movie-watching experiment discussed here: to only watch movies I am virtually certain that I will love. None of this namby-pamby taking a chance on something that I might like B.S. Very few video store customers these days browse and take chances, so I won't either! I don't know why I didn't think of this before.

The object is to get me enjoying movies again, instead of the oh geez do I have to, I'd rather listen to music/read/eat/watch my kids sleep/go to sleep myself response that the idea of watching a movie has occasioned in me for almost a decade. But also to write up the results here on the blog, which can be as much as a deterrent to watching movies as watching the movies themselves. So, because I am fundamentally lazy, I will be borrowing a page from the Dude Movies book penned by our beloved K-Cog (not that he is lazy, he writes a blog called Sloth after all). The page dictates that all of my Moviepalooza (as I have informally dubbed the Experiment) reviews will be written in template form, for lack of a better expression I am too lazy to remember.


Movie: The White Ribbon (2009, Michael Haneke)

Credentials (why it seems like a sure thing): Haneke directed two of the best films of the 1990s, Code Unknown and Caché, and even his misfires are of interest. This one won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, so seems to not be one of the misfires. Nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, but did not win, which is another plus as the Foreign Film Oscar winners tend to be the blandest of the nominees. Seems to be about creepy, if not outright evil, kids - always a good time at the pictures. Trailer and clips I've seen are in drop-dead-gorgeous black & white.

Stolen Plot Synopsis: Strange events happen in a small village in the north of Germany during the years just before World War I, which seem to be ritual punishment. The abused and suppressed children of the villagers seem to be at the heart of this mystery.

Results:

Not Caché-caliber, but very little is, in this viewer's opinion. The theme seems to be the seeds of fascism and extremism, how a succession of small (and not-so-small) sins, as well as the absence of a reliable moral compass, eventually lead to a torrent of evil. In this case, we only see the initial manifestation of the evil, with the historical timeframe of the tale virtually guaranteeing that many of the children in this village will become Nazis. The White Ribbon documents the creeping unpleasantness that penetrates the calm before the storm.

Lest this make it sound like a dry history lesson, it should be emphasized that the events themselves are entirely fictional, and - it is strongly implied - unreliable, being the hazy memories of the town's schoolmaster, at more than a half-century's remove. Haneke does have the streak of a didactic scold to him, which showed itself nowhere as much as his love-it or hate-it assault on the movie audience and its appetite for screen violence, Funny Games. In his best work - and I'm lumping The White Ribbon in there - this tendency is tempered by a moral and narrative ambiguity that poses many more questions than it raises. As a result, viewers seeking a cut and dry story that ties up its loose ends will find Caché and The White Ribbon immensely frustrating. But not having all the answers makes these two films infinitely more unsettling and thought-provoking, not puzzle films exactly, but ones that leave themselves open to multiple viewings and, most importantly, infinite re-considerings of the moral questions that the films pose.

This is a creepy, creepy movie. The children are perfectly chosen - a couple of dud child actors in there and all of the disturbing ambiguity and atmosphere that Haneke creates here would go up in flames. But they're perfect: convincing, and hard to accurately read. When the schoolteacher confronts the town's minister with his theories, the scene would be outright ridiculous if these were Village of the Damned-type embodiments of evil. Haneke's work is more nuanced and troubling than that.

Conclusion: A strong start for Moviepalooza, with another new movie (and Oscar nominee!) on deck next.

Chris 2010 Viewings #39: Different from the Rest

The following review was written for the newly launched GLBT publication, Proud. Everyone at Gen X pitched in at least one. This one was rejected. I do not blame them one smidge as it is dry as dust and what I might generously call "strained". Anyway, publishing it here gets me one movie further in the great Gen X watch-off. Now my decks are truly cleared and Moviepalooza can begin in earnest.

Different from the Rest

Germany, 1919. Directed by Richard Oswald. Starring Conrad Veidt.

The preamble to the recent restoration of Different from the Rest claims that it is the first film ever to deal with homosexuality head-on, rather than allude to it. It's heartening to report that the film is enlightened, even by today's standards, taking an activist stance against Germany's rigid anti-homosexuality laws. Ahead of its time, to be sure, as it wasn't until 1994 - 75 years after the film was made - that the last remnants of the laws were abolished. The film was banned outright in 1920, and only exists today in a fragment discovered at a Russian film archive. Not even a continuity script survives, so the restoration of the film had to rely on contemportary reviews of the film and scholarly papers either affirming or decrying the film. Needless to say, it's not a film on which one can make a definitive stand - enough of the film is missing that one of the three most important characters, one of the gay men's sister, does not exist in the extant footage, and only appears via two production stills.

The plot concerns an esteemed concert violinist, Paul Korner, played by Conrad Veidt, Cesare the somnambulist in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (made the same year) and Major Strasser in Casablanca. He and a younger male student fall in love, an affair torn apart by a vicious blackmailer. One of the film's central theses is that the existing laws could not prevent homosexuality, being biological rather than a choice, but would create a boom in blackmail.

The extant footage sticks pretty closely to Veidt's home, where much of the drama takes place, thus reducing the dramatis personae who exist strictly in subplots. Extensive intertitles and use of stills help fill in the blanks, of which there are many. The acting is quite fine, with little of the over-the-top angst once expects from many silent films, remarklably missing given that the footage we are left with is primarily concerned with angst.

In all, Different from the Rest is a curiosity. It is inarguable that what we are left with is primarily of historical interest, but one can't fault the filmmakers for that. Some of the production stills suggest a touch of expressionism to a series of dream sequences that depict a parade of historical figures destroyed by society's cruel intolerance of homosexuality (Oscar Wilde, King Ludwig II, with Paul Korner joining the ranks when the parade appears again at the end), which makes one even more anxious to see the footage denied us by history.

Chris 2010 Viewings #34-38: Tidying up. (with UPDATE!)

Hopelessly behind in the great Gen X watching/blogging challenge, I came up with an exciting way to keep myself interested in watching movies: only watching movies I really want to see and am virtually certain I will like. I know, it's crazy, right? So I've started, and only 5 films in, I have managed three great new movies, one auteurist dud, and a re-viewing of an all-time great. I will blog those soon, but first I have to clear the decks of some pre-moviepalooza viewings.



34. A Girl Cut in Two (2007, Claude Chabrol)

With Eric Rohmer recently deceased, Chabrol is almost certainly my favourite living director. I never meet anyone who agrees with me, and I understand why: Chabrol alternates masterworks and throwaways like no other great filmmaker. But each of them is unmistakeably his work; it's a flavour I like as much or more than any other, and any chance I get to taste a new one is a treat, regardless of whether it's one of his peak confections or not.

A Girl Cut in Two isn't a masterpiece, neither is it a throwaway confection, it's a solid piece of work. With Chabrol's reputation as the French Hitchcock, one might expect the title to refer to a literal murder, rather it's an unexpectedly moving metaphor for the title character that I won't spoil here. The impossibly hot Ludivine Sagnier is a perky small-town television weathergirl who finds herself torn between two suitors: a famous, married author whom she deeply loves but treats their relationship as a trifle; and a mostly worthless playboy who loves her passionately but she can only muster feelings of friendship for.

Chabrol is blessed with a marvelous trio of actors to embody this romantic triangle. Sagnier and François Berléand are fine as the girl and the author, but the real surprise is Benoît Magimel, whose character seems at first glance a ridiculous caricature, but generates considerable depth and pathos as the plot unfolds.




35-36. Little Big Man (1970, Arthur Penn) and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979, Robert Benton)

Two famous performances by Dustin Hoffman; two films that get the top rating (****) in Leonard Maltin's movie guide, my one-time bible. The former is a bit of a cult favourite, the latter an Oscar-winning juggernaut. The former is a western epic, with Hoffman playing Jack Crabbe from a young adult who's been raised by Indians, to being the only white survivor of Custer's last stand, to a 100+ year old man telling the tall tale that is his life to a journalist. The latter is a small family drama of the effects of divorce on a man and his young son, especially when his ex-wife decides she wants custody.

I much prefer Hoffman in Kramer: I'll always take his smaller, quieter performances to his brash, loud ones. I realized the bigger-than-life quality of his emoting at the various stages of Little Big Man is part of the point, but I'm always drawn to the charisma he exudes when seemingly essaying the small moments in everyday life.

Neither of these movies is a masterpiece, but as to which is better, there is no contest. Little Big Man is alternately hilarious and moving, especially the moments between Hoffman and his Indian "grandfather" Chief Dan George, who steals every scene that he's in. Every time the film settles into a nice, comfortable groove, it pulls the rug out from under you, throwing Jack into a new dilemma and environment, leaving multiple myths about the frontier days of the United States destroyed in its wake. Numerous actors (George, Faye Dunaway, Martin Balsam) make impressions in small roles, with Richard Mulligan a particular delight as the insane General Custer.

Kramer vs. Kramer, on the other hand, is a shocking movie. It's decent if unexciting for much of its running time, and it's very much Hoffman's show, running the gamut of emotions as he deals with the fallout from his divorce and his new status as single dad. Then Meryl Streep shows up again and declares that she is going to seek custody, and after 80 minutes the vs. Kramer starts to come into play. I think the movie becomes a little less special here, less time being spent on the nice little character touches that are the major plus of the first half, and more on court drama. Then the verdict comes down and everyone is sad.

But then... holy crap, how have I never been made aware over the years what a bullshit ending this movie has? I mean, everyone knows that Psycho and The Crying Game have big twists, everyone says that one instance of Hayden Chistensen yelling "Nooooooooo!" ruins Star Wars 3... how has the bullshit ending of Kramer vs. Kramer not entered the pantheon of things everyone knows about even if they haven't seen it? I mean, I don't want to ruin it, but this movie basically spends 110 minutes building up to a devastating emotional blow, and then a character says "I changed my mind! Happy birthday!" and everything's OK. In that one moment I want to revoke American Beauty's claim to the crown of worst Best Picture Oscar winner ever. But Kramer is still an OK movie, just... bullshit.


37. Oceans (2009, Jacques Perrin)

Oceans is the second entry in Disney's DisneyNature series, following Earth, last year's recycling of moments from the BBC's Planet Earth series. Oceans is an actual movie, made by the team behind Winged Migration, a film popular with people who won't seen Oceans because it's a Disney movie. The director was also the juvenile lead in my favourite film of all time, which has no bearing on the merits of Oceans, but made me happy anyway.

I'll tell you one thing that didn't make me happy, though: Oceans. Don't get me wrong, this is an impressive piece of work, filled with jawdropping imagery that not only made me wonder several times whether its incredibly imagery was faked (it wasn't), but kept my narrative-driven 6-year-old rapt for the film's entire running time.

But I saw Oceans on its second weekend, a few days after the BP leak started, on the day it first started to get major media attention. So when Pierce Brosnan's voice over spends the last 10 minutes musing about delicate ecosystems, I wanted to curl up on the floor and die. I can't imagine how I would feel if I watched it now.

So... this is a flabbergastingly well-done film. I just can't imagine watching it any time soon and not wanting to commit suicide.


38. The Wolfman (2010, Joe Johnston)

Eight years ago I was still a movie maniac. I watched roughly 7 movies a week and wrote them up. Then I saw a movie called My Big Fat Greek Wedding and it all came crashing down. I was broken. Since then I have considered it a productive movie watching year if I managed to see 20 films of my own accord.

These days I still don't watch a lot of movies, in spite of my job. I mean, here we are having this viewing-and-blogging contest and I've still only managed 38 movies in the first half of the year. That's when I'm motivated. Then I saw a movie called The Wolfman.

We have spent enough time chewing out the staff member who told us this movie is not that bad. But I will say she was wrong. It is worse. Here are the only positive things I have to say about this movie:

1) Max von Sydow shows up for a minute near the beginning.

2) There is a scene where Anthony Hopkins is walking up the stairs and Emily Blunt is coming down and they both stop halfway, on the landing and Emily Blunt asks Anthony Hopkins a question. He does not reply verbally, but by chewing an apple in a way that is pretty hilarious.

3) The Wolfman make-up is based on the makeup Oliver Reed wore in the Hammer film Curse of the Werewolf. During the climax, the bad werewolf (there are two) rips off his shirt and fights the good werewolf in front of a fireplace. I was briefly amused by the similarity to the scene in Women in Love where Oliver Reed and Alan Bates wrestle nude in front of a similar fireplace.

Now, those three "plusses" considered, the following becomes clear:

1) Max von Sydow doesn't actually do anything awesome, I was just happy to see him, so that can't really be said to be something the film did well.

2) The similarity to Women in Love was probably just my imagination searching for something to be entertained by.

Therefore:

3) The best thing in the entire running time of The Wolfman is SOMEONE EATING AN APPLE.

And Mike informs me that part is only in the extended director's cut. Is apple eating worth an extra 15-20 minutes of pain? It is not.

Oh, and there is CGI. Piles and piles of crappy, unconvincing CGI. I'll tell you, when a CGI werewolf is running over CGI roofs beneath a CGI sky, one thing I am not is excited. What I am is watching a cartoon, and not a good one. And this movie is not content to just use CGI in place of actual physical things. Many of the lighting "effects" are achieved by laying some CGI shadows across objects and faces. These do not look like shadows, they look like dirt on my TV.

It is a little sad that the 1941 Wolf Man has makeup that, while excellent, looks like a guy in Wolf Man makeup. It features sets that are clearly fake trees on a studio backlot. It is 70 minutes long. In spite of all this it still manages to generate actual pathos and sadness for its characters, and has a poweful air of tragic inevitability to its tale of a poor schmuck who has the bad luck to get bitten by a werewolf. The 2010 Wolf Man defies you give a rat's ass about the characters its Oscar winning cast portray and can't even manage an air of tragic inevitability in a story about a guy whose DAD IS A WEREWOLF AND TURNS HIM INTO ONE.

UPDATE: I was in a hurry to finish writing this, so I forgot two really important things about The Wolfman.

1) Mike also informs me that Max von Sydow is only in the extended director's cut as well.

2) There is a CGI bear in this movie. The bear is required to do two things: 1) walk about on all fours; 2) get agitated when the wolfman is loose in the gypsy camp. I will argue that the difference in cost between renting a circus bear to do these two basic things is negligible compared to paying some hotshot to animate one on a computer. It is also the only sane choice when you use a CGI bear as ridiculously unbelievable (and this in the context of The Wolfman!) as the one on display here. Would you like to see how to create a more believable bear than the one in this film? Here you go:


You're welcome.

But it gets worse! While searching the web for a still of this CGI bear, we discover that the Wolfman crew didn't even create this CGI bear, they lifted it from the effects of The Golden Compass, where it was a polar bear, and they made it brown. So they already knew it was a ridiculous-looking CGI bear, which invoked ridicule in the film for which it was created! They saved money, but knew that what they were using was ass! The shame of The Wolfman gets deeper every time one looks back at it.

Chris 2010 Viewings #32 & 33: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo / Birdman of Alcatraz

NOTE: This review was written over the course of 1.5 months, almost a sentence at a time, days apart, usually with no attempt to re-read what came before it. I finished it so I could get it out of my life and move on. No reflection on the films themselves, which are good, just my own lack of interest in my dud premise. I encourage you to NOT read this.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Sweden, 2009) Directed by Niels Arden Oplev. Starring Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Lena Endre.

Birdman of Alcatraz (US, 1962) Directed by John Frankenheimer. Starring Burt Lancaster, Karl Malden, Neville Brand, Thelma Ritter, Telly Savalas, Edmond O'Brien.

Back when I watched these movies, one of the things that intrigued me most about the main characters was their ultimate unknowability, even though in both cases we follow their story for two and a half hours. Both are antisocial loners: Tattoo's Lisbeth Salander is a young computer hacker with a mysterious past who can't be pinned down; Alcatraz's Robert Stroud is a convicted murderer, jailed in his early twenties, and spent the remainder of his life in prison.

Both are abnormally intelligent, Lisbeth having a photographic memory and mighty investigative skills, Stroud undertaking an ambitious study of disease in birds in spite of being confined to solitary. Salander's unknowability is enhanced by her being a fictional character, a creation of Swedish novelist Stieg Larsson. Stroud is unknowable because the film presents him that way: a man of violence who is seemingly tamed by his exploration of the avian world, in spite of giving very little about himself away. In real life, Stroud remained a violent psychopath who killed two more people in prison than we're permitted to know about by the filmmakers.

Still, the film makes Stroud become an admirable character in some regards and my only real qualm with the film is that I've spoken to enough people over the years who seem to think that, by the end, Stroud's continued imprisonment is an injustice and the film is a social tract about the limitations of the penal system. In reality, the film does no such thing and that's what makes the film genuinely interesting: Stroud's behaviour changes, but is so directed towards his life with birds that it's impossible to know - is he rehabilitated or just redirecting his considerable energies? What kept me rapt for the last half of the film's running time was not knowing whether he would snap or was genuinely under control. Lancaster's performance plays into that beautifully: there's nothing extraneous about it, as if he couldn't give a damn what anyone else is thinking about him. Is the film's Stroud a benign figure at the finale or is the evil still lurking? In the end and to the film's infinite benefit, Frankenheimer and co don't even try to answer the question. They are merely interested in the unlikeliness and striking contrasts of the story.

The unknowability of Salander, on the other hand, becomes a bit of a plot device to Tattoo's filmmakers. As written by Larsson, Salander is a savant type, but in a bid to tame the 700-odd page novel, she is given even more prowess. One note rings particularly false: when she cracks a mysterious code in a missing persons case that has been cold for 40 years. There's not a single aspect of the character's persona that suggests she would have the slightest interest in the text that would give her this insight, and sure enough when one looks to the source material, the solution comes from a much more plausible (and ultimately more affecting) source.

Salander teams up with a disgraced journalist who has been hired by a wealthy industrialist to solve the mystery of what happened to the latter's niece, who disappeared many years ago. The novel balances the investigation with the backstory of both Lisbeth and the journalist, an aspect that has led many readers seeking a straight mystery to lose patience with it. The film streamlines the narrative considerably, and will delight those who found the book too digressive.

I saw the film first and delighted in the mystery, a sturdy one in the tradition of the recent Scandanavian thriller vogue, in spite of some nagging tonal flaws. The book reads well even with the details of the mystery resolved because the extra material definitely enhances the narrative. Two scenes of intense sexualized violence are a bit jarring and tasteless in the film's streamlined form, but sit better in the extended form (though, appropriately, still are not even remotely comfortable). It is worth noting that Tattoo and its forthcoming sequels were shot as one super-production, and exist overseas in a lengthy TV miniseries version that add hours of running time to the saga.

Chris 2010 Viewings #31: Bullitt

US, 1968. Directed by Peter Yates. Starring Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, Simon Oakland, cars.

Didn't think I'd like this one, because:

1) while I find Steve McQueen an agreeable film presence, I have to say the cult of McQueen is one of those things I find a bit mystifying.

2) all anyone ever says about it is that it has a great car chase sequence. I don't like cars, either in real life or movies. I don't even know offhand what the make of the car I drive is. You tell me I should watch a movie because it has a great car chase in it and I will make the same face that most customers make when I tell them Let the Right One In is a vampire movie, like it's Twilight or some such thing.

But this movie is actually pretty good. I almost went for "really good" there, but it is overlong. This is mostly due to a subplot regarding McQueen's relationship with pretty young thing Jacqueline Bisset, which exists solely to introduce the theme that McQueen walks on the dark side of life because he is a committed cop who has to see dead bodies sometimes and even put his jacket over them so that women and small children don't see the blood. This is silly and unnecessary and stops the movie dead several times. It could just have been about Steve McQueen being a cop who tries to protect a senate subcomittee hearing's star witness from the mob.

Truthfully, nothing else in the movie is as awesome as the opening credit sequence, before Steve McQueen even shows his face once. They are stylish and sharp and intriguing, and prominently feature striking imagery and Lalo Schifrin's super-groovy score. The plot setup that follows is solid and exciting, and hits few wrong notes as McQueen tries to do his job in spite of the mob and pushy senator Robert Vaughn. An unexpected plot twist or two pop up, which is nice; several expected plot twists do not, which is even nicer. Peter Yates had a great eye for detail at this phase in his career, a way of always putting the camera in an unexpected place or somewhere that adds to the intrigue of the scene at hand. Nicely played all around.

As for the car chase sequence, it is very good indeed. There are several sequences I like better (the chase in the hospital was more exciting to me, but keep my above car caveat in mind), but it's exceedingly well put together. Still, this sequence was responsible for so much cinematic evil in the years that ensued that I can't really get on its side. Nonetheless, Bullitt is a solid cop picture with some outstanding elements. I give it 7.5 stick shifts out of 10.

Chris 2010 Viewings #30: Jazz on a Summer's Day

US, 1960. Directed by Bert Stern & Aram Avakian.

It may pain me to say that most jazz films suck, but it pains me even more that it's true. This is true of both major subgenres of the jazz film. Fictional/biopic narratives are mostly sabotaged by either B.S. "jazz mythology" and/or non-musician actors miming along painfully with pre-recorded tracks. Documentaries are mostly sabotaged by either B.S. "jazz mythology" or the filmmakers' belief - probably correct - that an audience won't sit still for sustained performance, resulting in voiceovers drowning out music or frequent cutting away from it.

The two greatest jazz features are both documentaries and both are guilty of the faults listed above, but use them in enough moderation that one can forgive them somewhat. Plus both have priceless, compelling, aesthetically interesting footage that gives them a core of real substance. The first is Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser, which features the usual talking heads style but is mostly extensive and mostly terrific footage of Monk himself, circa 1967, at close quarters during his day to day life and work.

The other is Jazz at a Summer's Day, a major arthouse title in its day, photographed at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. Most extant footage of major jazz figures of this vintage is indifferently preserved kinoscopes of television appearances whose master recordings were usually destroyed soon thereafter, if they were recorded at all. Major figures like Billie Holiday, Lester Young, and Charlie Parker remain ghosts in these hazy transcriptions. Jazz on a Summer's Day was shot on quality film stock, in beautiful, highly saturated colour, which is perfectly preserved on DVD. The bright, crisp, striking imagery brings these performers to life.

Some not-strictly-jazz performers make appearances (Big Maybelle, Chuck Berry, and a riveting Mahalia Jackson finale), but overall great jazz is the order of the day. The highlights that make this film absolutely invaluable to me:

The film opens with the Jimmy Giuffre trio, with Bob Brookmeyer and Jim Hall playing "The Train and the River", one of Giuffre's loveliest pieces of the chamber jazz so popular at the time this was filmed. Stern betrays his career as an influential photographer by capturing Giuffre and Brookmeyer's subtle interplay in one lovely sustained shot, Giuffre from the side, Brookmeyer head on, whichever player is more dominant (usually Giuffre) receiving the sharper focus.

Thelonious Monk (billed as "Thelonius") follows, for one of the film's major missteps, as Stern cuts away early from visuals of the performance, allowing Monk's music to be accompanied by footage of the concurrent Americas Cup sailing contest tryouts. Colour footage of Monk - especially of this quality - is hard to come by, so it's impossible not t0 be disappointed by the break, even if this performance of "Blue Monk" is the man at his most restrained.

Anita O'Day steals the film. In spite of being in the midst of a brilliant run of records for Verve, O'Day was at the time mostly remembered as the girl singer in Gene Krupa's early 40s big band. Jazz at a Summer's Day ensured her a place in the pantheon, with two glorious small group numbers showing off her impossibly great rhythmic sense. Vocal jazz fans who dwell on the singer's connection with the words tend to disdain O'Day, who functioned more a musician does, breaking up phrases and words to suit her musical conception, not the words of a long-absent lyricist. Stern's cameras assume position to capture the performance from two angles - a side view and a lower frontal placement - that give us iconic views of a genuinely iconic perf0rmance.

Dinah Washington is in terrific form, singing "All of Me" backed by an all-star group featuring a jubilant Max Roach. The vocal is quite wonderful, but most memorable is Dinah's joining Terry Gibbs on vibes for a musical duel, spiritedly pushing each other away from the instrument when it's their turn, both of them having a ball.

Gerry Mulligan's new quartet featuring Art Farmer only had one rehearsal before this gig, and it shows. Farmer's notes are uncharacteristically scattershot, and the tempo is too fast, but the performance is key to understanding what makes jazz so exciting. Musically, the quartet would go on to make much more perfect music, but here, fighting to hold everything together inside Mulligan's challenging conception that discourages glib cliches - and they do hold it together - it makes for absolutely compelling listening. They're all in the moment, thinking quick for solutions and inevitably making it. The way it's photographed, with the intensity on Mulligan's face truly s0mething to behold, enhances the exitement.

Chico Hamilton's quintet with Eric Dolphy is featured twice - once in rehearsal in what was obviously a stifling room, and once at the concert. The concert performance shows Stern's technique at its most dramatic - holding Hamilton in a single, largely unmoving close-up with a blazing red background making him look like his life depends on his subtle drumming keeping him from slipping backwards into the gate of hell. We also get a few precious glimpses of Dolphy, another who we mostly have to rely on blurred video footage to see these days.

Louis Armstrong climaxes the film with some loose, spirited playing with his all-stars, capped by a lovely duet with Jack Teagarden on their showcase piece, "Rockin' Chair". They're caught in another tight closeup that sees them going in and out of focus depending on who's singing, with the immense affection these two men felt for each other radiating from every frame.

Chris Plays Catch-Up on Cold Medicine

OK, I am light years behind on writing up my movie viewings here at the blog, I mean even the part timers are kicking my ass. No more. It does not matter that I am on day 4 of the flu or that NyQuil is possessing my brain, I will catch up. I have kept off watching any more movies for fear of building up my backlog and that can't be good in my goal of knocking Wendy off her perch of 2010 Gen X movie champion. So here are my short reviews of the new release movies I have seen since my last entry, whenever that was.

By the way I am not going to do that DVD MIA thing anymore. Why I should put in the effort of promoting movies that the studios are too lazy to release is something that I cannot justify anymore.


Shutter Island (2010, Martin von Scorsese)

What the hell, people. This is clearly the best Scorsese picture since GoodFellas, and that was 20 years ago. Any dismissal of this movie due to "the twist" being hackneyed are just plain crazy - a) "the twist" comes 20 minutes before the movie ends!; b) Scorsese plainly is not a "twist" moviemaker and even makes fun of twist convention. I mean, Ben Kingsley even pulls a Glenn Beck and brings out a blackboard to illustrate one of the points of the twist. The twist is but a prism through which to view the events which have so far transpired so you can understand the absolute hell on earth someone would rather live in rather than actually face the real world, which is way, way worse. Stop worrying for twists and feel the heartbreak behind the final line which is like an emotional kick in the gut. Way to go Scorsese and even if it was just a lame twist movie I give you the following words to explain why it would still be a kickass movie: Ben Kingsley Mark Ruffalo Emily Mortimer Patricia Clarkson Max von fucking Sydow.

Alice in Wonderland (2010, Timothy Bertin)

On the other hand: Tim Burton - worst director to ever be deemed great? Discuss. This guy is a mega-hack. There is no question that the man is a genius of visual design, but do you know what other visual designers do? They become art directors or painters or set designers or costume designers but they do not necessarily become film directors, a job that requires more than mere visual design. Watch the opening and closing (non-Wonderland) scenes of this goddamned abomination to see what a pedestrian, plodding filmmaker this clown is. One you get to Wonderland its another crappy Lord of the Rings knockoff, just this time in Alice in Wonderland drag. Marvel at how a "great" filmmaker could take one of the key texts of all time and not add anything of interest to it, make any intriguing commentary on it, find a unique twist on it.... NOTHING. Just another outsider slays the dragon and frees the people story. With characters from Alice in Wonderland in it. Bearing little resemblance to their original selves. Did no one look at the original text and say "oh, this shit is good, perhaps we should step up our game". No. Instead the damned Cheshire Cat spends his days pining for Johnny Depp to do a magic dance and builds it up through the entire film and when you get to see it in the end it is some sub-par breakdancing with CGI enhancement. The more I think of this piece of garbage the angrier I get so now I will stop thinking of it ever again.

The Beaches of Agnes (2008, Agnes Varda)

This is my favourite film of the year unless something really crazy happens, which it won't. Mind you, Varda and her husband Jacques Demy are the authors of 5 or 6 of my 50 favourite films of all time so her autobiographical essay film is like a warm and sunny homecoming, spend with dear friends. I'm not an unbiased observer, then, but honestly, this is the most pleasant time I've had at the movies in eons. Varda sees her life as a succession of beaches, ones she grew up on, holidayed on, lived on. Familiar faces come and go in clips and Chris Marker (represented by his cartoon cat) pops up every now and then for ironic commentary. Less predicatable guests - Zalman King, Harrison Ford - also materialize. What one is left with is a warm impression of a life well-lived, embracing art, family, and love.

Broken Embraces (2009, Pedro Almodovar)

Well, they can't all be masterpieces. All of Pedro and Penelope's collaborations up to this - Live Flesh, All About My Mother, and Volver - rank as major favourites of mine, so it's a little dispiriting to find them coming up with a project I'd qualify as merely solid. Actually, the problem is one of structure - Penelope and her role, that of a secretary turned rich man's mistress turned would be movie-star, are the heart of the movie and they're a flashback. None of the other characters is even remotely as interesting and none of the other actors can hold a candle to her presence and talent. So when she disappears from the screen for all but 10 minutes of the last third, the film goes pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft even as it unloads all of its climactic revelations. I'll still take it over the majority of new releases, because when it works it's a knockout.

How to Train Your Dragon (2010, not Pixar)

Pixar > Dreamworks and always will, no matter how bad the trailers for Toy Story 3 look. Kung Fu Panda is the best Dreamworks has managed and ever will manage. This movie is agreeable while it is on, and then disappears like a puff (ha) of smoke as soon as it's over. The voice cast is unimpressive, with major anti-props to the irritating guy they got to do the lead. Major problem here is that Pixar or Miyazaki would have you head over heels in love with the dragon without even trying but in the land of Dreamworks it's a bit of a non-entity and thus kind of hard to get emotionally worked up about during the third act. Aforementioned lead voice aside, this movie is completely inoffensive, but I can't remember a positive thing about it one week later. Oh, I thought the CGI ocean water was very impressive.

Madame Bovary (1949, Vincente Minnelli)

The novel is one of my favourites, and I remember reading some of it for the first time while working the box office at a movie theatre. "I read that!" offered a patron, "The whole time I wanted to slap her and say stupid woman!" I wanted to kill that man, but if I had watched this movie instead of read the book, I would kind of understand where he's coming from, even though the narration is provided by James Mason as Gustave Flaubert (on trial), justifying Emma Bovary's behaviour. He is acquitted in the end (spoiler), but based on the evidence provided by Minnelli and co. I would have voted to convicct. Sorry, Gus. Minnelli is always a fascinating filmmaker even when he is not fully engaged with his material, as I would argue is the case here. The ballroom sequence that comes at midpoint and brings about Emma's decline is a jawdropping piece of work, MGM at its opulent, cinematic best. Van Helfin is an ideal Charles Bovary, resolutely admirable throughout, but only a Heflin junkie like me will get too worked up about how he gets treated.

Chris 2010 Viewings #23: The Strangers

US, 2008. Directed by Bryan Bertino. Starring Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman.

When people ask what my favourite film genre is, I give them my honest answer: French movie with talking. When they tell me that isn't a real genre, please stick to the Blockbuster-approved section names, I pause and tell myself that "Foreign" isn't a genre for heaven's sake, so I give them my honest answer: Horror. This disgusts many people, but it is true.

That said, I don't watch any straight-to-video crap, I've only ever seen one Friday the 13th movie (the first one - I don't count Freddy vs Jason, which I watched strictly because Ronny Yu directed it, back when that meant something), the only "torture porn" movies I've bothered with were the first Saws, and those were only for a writing assignment. This doesn't make me superior, I'd rather watch that stuff than all the "nice" British movies that come through the store.

What I like about horror is how it embodies a kind of pure cinema that is driven largely through images and atmosphere. My ideal horror is embodied by Hitchcock, Polanski, Dreyer, Lewton, De Palma, Kobayashi, Kubrick, Mario Bava and a bunch of other great names I'm forgetting. The thing is, I think a lot of people misrepresent the genre in ways that are well illustrated by an effective but ultimately objectionable movie like The Strangers.

It's certainly pure cinema, as the plot bears out: a young couple arrive late to the man's isolated and deserted family home. Three mysterious figures descend upon the house and begin a campaign of scaring them, and then attacking them. That's about it, and you pretty much know the outcome from square one, when a narrator and onscreen titles tell you it's "based on a true story" and little is known of what really happened. Sounds like no witnesses are around to tell their story, I wonder why that could be?

The director, Bryan Bertino, has a pretty sure hand and I admire his decision to eschew sudden-shock-accompanied-by-music-sting nonsense in favour of slow burn suspense most of the time. It's refreshing, after forty-five minutes of a movie to know that a moviemaker is playing fair, so you can at least feel safe from lousy, easy tricks. Occasionally he overplays certain effects: one character frequently appears in the distance, in plain view of the victims, the victims look away, and when they look back the threatening presence has completely vanished from sight. I hate it when people play how-likely-is-that logic games when watching horror films as if most people behave calmly and rationally in a pulse-pounding, scary crisis, but how likely is it that when
someone plays this now-you-see-me-now-you-don't game repeatedly with only split-seconds to make their escape that you wouldn't see their leg moving behind a bush or something? It's a great - albeit now cliched - effect once or twice, but eventually you start to call b.s.

The performances are rather good, with both Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman considerably better than I would ever have imagined, the suspense is taut, the film is no longer than it needs to be, and Bertino realizes that country music is the scariest music of all. All that said, I sort of hate this movie.

A lot of people who refuse to watch horror pictures paint a picture of them as strictly blood, guts, and tension, and why would you subject yourself to that? Some of the film fans I know and most respect feel this way. The truth is that the best horror films rise above such a basic template - usually through pure filmmaking chops, but also through actually being about something, having a point, having something to say. Vampyr, the great Lewton cycle, Psycho, The Shining, up through Shutter Island, great moviemakers use the form the way they would any other, to suit their artistic needs, not to simply throw unpleasantness at the screen and walk away with some cash.

Bryan Bertino has nothing to say except "I can scare you". His film ends nihilistically, pointlessly, in a way that genuinely does make you wonder "why the hell did I watch that?" He is talented, but not a master in the sense that he can transcend the basic fact that his movie is about two already emotionally wounded people who are set upon by psychopaths, terrorized, and butchered. A great horror film can resonate in your mind for years to come because it used fear to touch on something deeper in you than worrying about whether your home security system is up to snuff. Even having an open ending, all The Strangers leaves you with is a bad taste. And bad tastes fade away, leaving... nothing.

Chris 2010 Viewings #22: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - The Lightning Thief

US, 2010. Directed by Chris Columbus. Starring Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Sean Bean, Rosario Dawson, Steve Coogan, Catherine Keener.

Ah, Chris Columbus. The Spielberg of hacks. The hack of whom other hacks wonder "what does that hack hack that I don't hack?" A man who wrote a promising screenplay (Gremlins) that dealt in sick and sadistic humour and then proceeded to sit in the director's chair for some of the most odious family entertainment ever made. Along the way he lucked into the first two Harry Potter movies (the mediocre first one and the almost-good second one). Percy Jackson is, from what I can gather, based on a series of books that are a shameless attempt to mimick the success of Potter. How apropos that Chris Columbus should take the reins for the film version.

Percy Jackson is a troubled youth who lives with his mom (Keener) in a NYC apartment with his smelly stepfather (Joe Pantoliano) - his smelliness is a plot point! Percy is a misfit at school - the bullies hate him, because he is hunk who doesn't fit in. He also has been diagnosed with dyslexia and ADD, and only his wheelchair bound teacher (Pierce Brosnan) and crippled comic relief black friend seem to understand him.

But Percy Jackson is no ordinary mortal! He is the son of Poseidon, god of the sea! And Brosnan is only in a wheelchair to disguise the fact that he is a centaur! And his crippled friend only walks with crutches to disguise the fact that he is a satyr! And his uncle Zeus (Sean Bean) is pissed off because he believes that Percy Jackson stole his lightning bolt and is threatening Poseidon with a war of the gods! Percy is whisked away to a summer camp for the mortal children of gods (there are quite a few) until he and his pals decide to take a road trip to collect pearls that will help them travel to the underworld and get Percy's mom back from Hades (Steve Coogan - who, for a moment, seems to be about to play the devil as a young Tommy Saxondale, but this is a Chris Columbus movie, so nothing that cool would be allowed), who has kidnapped her because he wants the lightning bolt.

It's all very involved and, if you think about any of it at all, doesn't make a lot of sense. I put it down to chopping a lot of exposition to make a book fit into a 119 minute movie. I don't know that for sure, but the few seconds I could stand to read fans of the books bitching about what was cut seems to confirm my suspicions. My six year old enjoyed it, and truthfully it never does get dull - there's always a new monster or bit of magic or celebrity cameo at each turn to keep you awake. Plus it has Uma Thurman (Medusa) and Rosario Dawson (Persephone), who are teh hott.

But really, you should just rent Coraline instead.

Chris 2010 Viewings #21: Mamma Mia!

UK, 2008. Directed by Phyllida Law. Starring Amanda Seyfried, Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Julie Walters, Colin Firth, Christine Baranski, Stellan Skarsgard.

I'm increasingly fascinated by major stars taking roles in retreads of material they would never have taken part in back when the material was fresh. For example, I feel very sure that Liam Neeson would never have appeared in an episode of "The A Team" back in the 80s, but there he is taking George Peppard's role in the sure-to-be-fabulous big screen version. And back when ABBA were doing their spandex-clad thing in stadiums worldwide I don't imagine a big screen musical based on their song catalogue would have lured the young Meryl Streep to bypass Sophie's Choice or, hell, even Plenty.

But there she is in this movie, belting out the Andersson/Ulvaeus songbook with complete abandon, apparently loving every minute of it. So something rather fascinating has happened to the division between high culture and kitsch in the last 20 years. The general lack of good roles for actresses of Streep's age bracket may have something to do with it, though it hasn't stopped her from picking up her first Oscar nomination in a while this year (for Julie and Julia), and it still doesn't explain Neeson. The next few years should be fascinating, especially once we've run out of grade-A shows like "The A Team" to reboot and have to move on to the likes of "Manimal" and musicals based on the M.C. Hammer songbook.

Of course ABBA are miles better than Hammer, and their brand of cheerful pop lends itself rather well to something like Mamma Mia, where the plot is so insubstantial that no five minutes of movie pass without a new hit everyone knows starting up. It keeps the movie going at a decent clip, never really becoming boring even for someone like me who only saw it because the girls were watching. It's not a good movie by any acceptable definition, but it has a lot of spirit, helped both by the wise selection of catchy songs (except for two or three deep cuts and the inexcusible absence of "Knowing Me, Knowing You") and enthusiastic performances. Even when the performances and vocal performances made me cringe, I was filled with a lot of admiration for name actors being willing to sacrifice their dignity so ruthlessly onscreen. For that reason, even though Streep gives far and away the best performance, my MVP award goes to Pierce Brosnan, saddled with a singing voice only a deaf person could love, but who nonetheless puts it all out there at every opportunity and remains immensely likable in spite of, and because of it.

Chris 2010 Viewings #20: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

US, 1957. Directed by John Sturges. Starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas.

John Sturges directed some great movies (Bad Day at Black Rock, The Great Escape), some overrated ones (The Magnificent Seven), and some crappy ones (Marooned), but was overall an above-average helmer for a testosterone-heavy action picture. Not a Hawks or a Ford or a Boetticher, but solid.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is par-for-the-course Sturges. It has some excellent elements, it moves at a good clip, never really bores, while never showing any really sign of a directorial personality. I wasn't especially excited to watch it, but I figured what the hell, Burt Lancaster is always good, I'm falling behind in the movie-watching contest, let's roll. Kirk Douglas in in there too, whatever, he's been in a lot of good movies, even if - Ace in the Hole aside - he's never much rocked my world. And I hold Michael Douglas against him, how could you not? In fact, this is my favourite thing associated with Kirk Douglas:



And that's not even his voice, it's Frank Gorshin! Anyway, I'm not saying I don't like him, just never meant that much to me.

After Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, I wish to apologize to Kirk Douglas for my prior indifference. You, sir, are the bomb. I even forgive your son's hiney in Basic Instinct.

The story in this film is the familiar one of Wyatt Earp (Lancaster) and Doc Holliday (Douglas) and their showdown with the bad ol' Clanton boys at the O.K. Corral. Lancaster is surprisingly boring in this film: Earp is just so damned good and incorruptible that it's hard to be much interested in anything he does. I never dreamed he could be so lacking in screen magnetism. It's shocking.

But Douglas, who admittedly has the much more interesting role as the much-loathed, frequently almost-lynched Doc Holliday, is just fabulous, I would have been happy to watch him for hours more. Burdened with self-loathing, alcoholism, tuberulosis, and a passive-aggressive relationship from hell, Douglas grabs hold of this role and savours every ounce of the dramatic potential. He tackles it like it's the tastiest multi-course dinner ever set before him and invites you to enjoy every last nibble and drop with him. This movie has an insanely good supporting cast - JOhn Ireland, Joe Van Fleet, Frank Faylen, Earl Holliman, young Dennis Hopper (as the one potentially redeemable Clanton), Jack Elam, DeForrest Kelley, Ted de Corsia, Whit Bissell, Kenneth Tobey, Lee Van Cleef - but what lingers from this movie for me is Douglas, Douglas, Douglas. Well played sir, and I will hereby shut my mouth on the matter.

Chris 2010 Viewings #19: Night Nurse

US, 1931. Directed by William Wellman. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Blondell, Clark Gable.

The thing I love about these pre-Hays Code talkies is how reliably bonkers the best of them are. It's almost as if the restictions on sex, violence and conduct that Hollywood imposed upon itself post-1934 also included a narrative control clause as well. Night Nurse is featured on the Forbidden Hollywood Collection, volume 2, along with four other peculiar relics from this oddball period.

The film doesn't start promisingly, though 30s audiences hadn't been E.R.ed and St. Elsewhered to death, so maybe the life of two nurses in training (Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Blondell) at a big city hospital would have been more fascinating then. For a modern audience, the first half hour is mostly carried by the charm of the two ladies and Wellman's need to show them dressing and undressing every few minutes.

The fun really begins when the girls become full-fledge nurses and get a placement, taking care of two angelic little girls whose slow descent towards death doesn't seem to bother their alcoholic floozy of a mother. And why does surly chauffeur Nick (Clark Gable) refuse to allow the nurses to seek outside help? The tone is full tilt Victorian-tragedy-meets-Reefer Madness as Stanwyck fights furiously to save the youngsters while Mom holds debauched parties with free-flowing liquor a few rooms away.

Luckily, Stanwyck has an ace up her sleeve: a prohibition-bustin' bootlegging potential boyfriend with mob connections. The final scene, which combines the cute couple finally coming together while casually discussing the violent death of one of the other characters, is delightful, especially the grim punchline.

Chris 2010 Viewings #18: Point Blank

US, 1967. Directed by John Boorman. Starring Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, Keenan Wynn, Carroll O'Connor, John Vernon.

So they sez "Have you seen Avatar yet?" they sez.

"No," I reply, "I can't do it."

They stare blankly back at me, and I scan their eyes for any sense that they understand where I'm coming from but they just need some clarification, but it's not there. Damn it, I have to go back into it again.

"I can't..." I sputter, trying to say as much with as few words as possible, "It's just... James Cameron... those shitty screenplays with the cardboard cutouts standing in for... not even for characters, but for types... child in danger... tough woman... cold-hearted capitalist/scientist/evil du jour... the ham-fisted way he says everything... Even the movies of his that I like I can never actually embrace..."

"Yeah, the script is incredibly bad," they say, and I wait for the word. I know it's coming. I watch their lips purse as if in slow motion. If it was a hitman coming for me I could crouch into a position and take him out, unawares, that's how sure I am that it's coming at me... here it is....

"BUT..."

It can't end well. They want me to give in, and I know I never will. I feel so very, very tired. I have fought this fight dozens of times and it always ends the same way. It's usually someone I like, too, so I can't get too uppity about it because I know they mean well and I know that the movie really excited them and after a while they forgot the whole digital planet was pretend and got immersed in the experience and I don't begrudge them that. It doesn't make me better than them or vice versa and I could say it all looks like a video game but I know that no video game actually looks that good but it's as close as I can get to explaining my disconnect, and I just don't want to go into it again.

I mutter something non-commital and completely incoherent. "That's awesome that you liked it so much" and I will wonder for the next half hour or so if that sounded really condescending and what an asshole I must have come off as. But I cannot say "maybe I will see it" even if that is indisputably true - that I may. Anything's possible. But I will not. And now I am tired.

I haven't seen Point Blank in 10 years or so, but last year I read all but one book in Richard Stark/Donald E. Westlake's Parker series (everything except "Plunder Squad" - if you can loan it to me I'll be your friend forever; if you give me a copy I will maybe even see Avatar in exchange). Point Blank is loosely based on "The Hunter", the first in the series. It's on in HD. No better time to revisit it, I should say.

"The Hunter" is irrelevant to my enjoyment... no, my immersion in Point Blank. If fidelity to source material mattered one whit to me, I would be infuriated by the film, its relocation to the west coast, re-naming the lead character, the addition and removal of characters, the re-jigging of the back story, the restructuring of the plot. I could give a rat's ass. "The Hunter" is "The Hunter" and it is fantastic. Point Blank is Point Blank and it is transcendent.

Lee Marvin is the rechristened "Walker", career criminal, seeking revenge on the people who betrayed him and seeking the money he is owed from the job he was working when double-crossed. Lee Marvin is an actor who gives little if your preference is for performances that win Academy Awards. But he gives way more than any grandstanding soliloquy ever could, the way he moves, the unpredictable way he reacts. John Boorman knew this, and right after he made Point Blank with Lee Marvin, he made Hell in the Pacific with Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune as American and Japanese WWII soldiers stranded on an island together, and most of the film is without dialogue, just watching the way these two guys who don't understand each other interact.

Boorman made lots of great movies, but none is greater than Point Blank, his second. Point Blank has images that live inside you long after you've seen it and even if you have forgotten their context. Lee Marvin emptying his revolver into an empty bed that he thinks his enemy is sleeping in. We see it a couple of times, most rivetingly in slow motion, partially because Boorman knows how much there is to digest in this deceptively simple shot of a man's body recoiling from the immense force he has unleashed. This shot is a permanent part of my brain, and it took one camera, one man, one gun. Fait accompli. But a different eye behind the camera, a different man, even with the same gun; not the same thing at all.

Later in the film Angie Dickinson and Lee Marvin are checking out a hotel from a distance. Angie stands in the foreground, with the hotel behind her. John Boorman cuts to a reverse shot, with Lee Marvin isolated in one corner of the widescreen frame with the ocean behind him and my breath is taken away. The scene is a matter of routine investigation in script terms, even in a good script like Point Blank. But the imagery is otherwordly in its perfection, its evocation. A man and the sea and the camera. Sensual. Deep. Limitless. And I wouldn't trade it for anything any computer has done in any movie, anywhere, ever. I couldn't.

Chris 2010 Viewings #17: Mogambo

US, 1953. Directed by John Ford. Starring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly.

Manly man Clark Gable lives at an outpost in Africa, capturing big game for circuses, zoos, and the like. He also takes high-paying folk on safari. His only companions are some natives, a roly-poly Brit and a drunk Russian, who defied my expectations and at no point in the film gets anyone killed due to negligence or shiftiness. Into Gable's orderly life of macho comes vexy Ava Gardner, with whom he spars verbally and then gets it on. Soon uptight British anthropologist Donald Sinden and his uptight British wife Grace Kelly show up and Gable becomes convinced that Kelly is the one for him, and she gets the same feeling.

Gardner is upset and gets snippy with everyone, rendering her likeable character annoying for a full hour or so of the running time. Gable and Kelly go for walks when hubby isn't around and hold on to each other and wonder what they should do. They all go on safari, to observe and maybe capture some deadly gorillas. Will hubby get killed by a gorilla, thus removing the one obstacle to their great and wonderful love? Will Kelly and Gardner get into a catfight? Will the drunk Russian get someone killed by accident? (No, I told you that already.)

There is a lot of beautiful colour location shooting in this film, some good suspense, and reasonably entertaining melodramatics. The major cog in the wheel is that Gable and Kelly have no onscreen chemistry whatsoever (in spite of their offscreen affair), while Gable and Gardner have it by the bucketload, rendering the whole passionate Gable/Kelly love dilemma fairly ridiculous. Other than that the only thing really wrong here is that I spent the entire movie waiting for the Russian to get someone killed and it never happened.

Chris 2010 Viewings #16: Cabin in the Sky

US, 1943. Directed by Vincente Minnelli. Starring Ethel Waters, Eddie Anderson, Lena Horne, Rex Ingram.

I watched this 10 days ago or so and have been dreading writing about it ever since. It's the kind of film that's a racial minefield, an all-black musical created mostly by whites. Packed to the rafters with African-American stereotypes most of us would love to see buried forever, but brimming with performing talent like few films can command.

Eddie "Rochester" Anderson is a lazy gambler wh0 gets shot during a high-stakes game. Perched on the brink of death, his life is temporarily spared because God appreciates the prayers and pure soul of Anderson's wife, played by Ethel Waters. Anderson is given six months to mend his ways, with Satan's son, Lucifer Jr. (Rex Ingram) and noble angel The General (Kenneth Spencer) trying to sway him to their side the entire time. Lucifer Jr. enacts a plan involving a lottery ticket and town hussy Lena Horne.

The problem is that, after over an hour of piousness, mixed with demeaning racist grammar like "I'm about the most miserabelest person that ever died! " from even the loftiest characters, the finale, in which most of the players have given themselves over to sin, evil seems a lot more fun. Waters is a truly gifted performer, but the conventionally-blocked and syrupy sweet numbers she gets to deliver on the homefront pale next to the wild tap dance of "Bubbles" Sublett. Spencer is stiff as a board as the General, but Ingram (the djinni from 1940's Thief of Bagdad) is riotously enjoyable as the devil's son. Not to mention that one of Junior's minions is Louis Armstrong, not given nearly enough to do, but blowing some fine trumpet and giving one of the film's better performances. Duke Ellington's classic early-40s band also appears in the den of sin at film's end, blowing great renditions of "Things Ain't What They Used to Be" and "Going Up".

Entirely too cringeworthy to be recommended, then, but loaded with many pleasure, some of them major.

Chris 2010 Viewings #15: The Freshman

US, 1925. Directed by Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor. Starring Harold Lloyd.

The quickest way to set my teeth a-gritting when discussing classic films with me is to dis Chaplin in order to elevate Keaton. Both were masters, indisputably great, leave it at that. Like one better than the other? Good on ya. Still, I’m immediately suspicious of someone who needs to rigorously assert their Keaton fandom, as if it were a badge of non-conformity against the big, bad popular favourite Charlot. If someone tells me they think Harold Lloyd is greater than either, I just dismiss them as crazy.

This not to say Lloyd is a poor silent screen comedian. On the contrary, he’s a very likable screen personality and his gags are always pure in conception and clear in execution. But I’m always surprised anew at how vague a screen personality Lloyd is. Everyone knows the glasses, but what else does Lloyd stand for? The “everyman” we’re meant to identify with, but not a striking screen persona.

The Freshman is a fine Lloyd comedy, usually reckoned to be his best, except by those who pretend to have seen Safety Last because they once saw a poster of Lloyd hanging off the clock above traffic. He plays a young man who goes off to college with a healthy savings account and an overwhelming desire to be the most popular guy at school. He blows most of his money on day one, buying ice cream for his new “friends”, and quickly earns a reputation as the school buffoon, thinking his is on the football team when he’s really just the waterboy.

My general problem with Lloyd’s films is that, as good and as cleanly designed as his gags are, the setups are glaringly obvious, the complications broadly telegraphed, and most gags usually work out exactly as you expect them to. Example: Lloyd holds a huge party to further his bid to be big man on campus, but his tailor does not complete his suit on time. At the party, the tailor says “I will ring a bell if your outfit splits”. We see a couple at a table with a bell. We think “the man will ring it and Lloyd will panic because he thinks his outfit has split”. This is exactly what transpires. Lloyd eventually notices the couple with the bell and think “I bet his outfit will split and the tailor will ring the bell and he will think it’s the couple and laugh it off.” And he does.

There are exceptions, but rarely do you get the wonderful sense of wonder and surprise that are the mark of the great physical comics: Chaplin, Keaton, Chan. There is a wonderful gag during the party sequence where Lloyd appears to be sitting at the table with a pretty young thing. In reality, his lower body is bent back through the curtain behind his chair, where the tailor is furiously working away on Lloyd’s pants. The tailor passes out, and we see Lloyd slowly sinking down in his seat. The effect is wonderfully funny and like a tonic amidst the conventional gags.

The party scene and climactic football game are the showpieces here and each works like a charm. As a primer in the mechanics of silent screen comedy, this is a terrific and likable film. Still, after years of trying, it's hard as ever for me to see Lloyd as deserving a place above the second tier of silent comics.