Sunday, September 28, 2008

Obama/Biden '99

Mickey Blue Eyes (1999)
directed by Kelly Makin
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Was it only 1999 when Elizabeth Hurley and Hugh Grant loved each other enough to run a production company together? Did David Chase look any further than Mickey Blue Eyes to cast low-level mobsters for The Sopranos? Janice? Paulie? Big Pussy? Artie? The nice twist on Grant's fish-out-of-water routine is James Caan's transformation from father-of-the-bride adversary to odd-couple ally. Caan's a great tough guy because he's more of a sneak and a bully, which means he'll go along with anything. Here, instead of tiresome Meet the Parents intimidation tactics, a blowhard sweet-talks a charmer over the phone. Pulling the "yes" lever (that's what the kids call it, anyway) is as easy as 1-2-3.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Lt. Col. Thursday, Get Your Dopey Mug in a Driving Cap

You Only Live Once (1937)
directed by Fritz Lang
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Fritz makes the most of his Hays Code constraints by letting the actions of two of the film's most desperate characters - Fonda's Eddie Taylor being the third - transpire in contradiction to reason and common sense. Since society's inhumanity is to blame for putting Eddie on defense, Eddie is no agent of his own destiny. Sympathy (ours) and justice (Law and Order's) are dealt to him in turn. But his wife makes a choice to follow him whatever doom awaits, and the man - her boss - who loves the wife ruins his career to let her choose. The women in Lang's films are often put-upon by the single-minded men they love, so I like that Sylvia Sidney's Joan (who looks oddly like a serpent) is alone responsible for the independent streak that so clearly inspired Bonnie and Clyde.

On a side note, Fritz was so much better than the lumbering, inhuman Metropolis he's known for. The director who made Mabuse an unearthly surface-world itinerant in love with the political machinations of mortal men sold cynicism beautifully as the right questions asked by big-picture minds.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Savannah Doldrums

The Naked Prey (1966)
directed by Cornel Wilde
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Why is stock footage of animals in the outback always twenty years older than the movie that incorporates it? Why do movies from the fifties and sixties with lots of stock footage (like Journey to the Center of the Earth) slow to a narrative crawl when that footage is featured? Were cheetahs still such a novelty in 1966 that editors stopped doing their jobs just to watch them?

Anyway, I don't think the switch from a real-life story about escape from the Blackfoot Indians to a tax-break tale of a British safari hunter running from anonymous naked Africans did Wilde's promotion of cultural understanding too many favors. The ineptitude and irrationalism of the African hunters definitely qualifies for racism in my book, and I really don't see the point beyond “Africa man is savage,” and maybe the novelty of long passages of un-subtitled conversation.

Maybe The Naked Prey is best as a comedy, when Wilde unsuccessfully tries to kill lizards, slugs, or gazelles; passes out face down in the dust waiting for a snake; or finds a pool of water and tries to make out with it. Even better, a silent comedy!

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Louisiana Purchase

Louisiana Story (1948)
directed by Robert J. Flaherty
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

I know it gets boring to watch me tie on cravats like Peter getting ready for a night out at the Impersonators' Guild, but if the Rockefeller millions can't sell me on a movie's worth, I wouldn't be the civic-minded patriot I am. This tiny myth is many things - a testament to hard work, to innovation, to faith in fellow man - but first (literally, first) a boy threading his way through the ferns and moss of a bayou while a quiet voice intones a song of mermaids beneath the sea and werewolves in moonlit fens. Everything after grows out organically, even the steel behemoth that leaves as quietly as it came. I don't remember Nanook of the North having half as much to show about the northern tundra as Louisiana Story imparts about a southern swamp. Maybe because here the hero is a kid. Truly beautiful.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Breakheart Class

Hard Times (1975)
directed by Walter Hill
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Imagine your favorite noir movie. Think of the review. "The doomed protagonist cornered by his fate." But what about when it works in the other direction? If Charles Bronson's Chaney can't lose in a brawl - if he mincemeats the first brick-pile he battles - the drama doesn't come from the final bout with a well-dressed Chicago ringer. Sure, there's tension there, but we know that Chaney's unbeatable. So Hill makes the fight about other things: leaving the girl, making amends for the promoter who treated Chaney badly. It's a clean plotline without any easy assumptions about what to expect from the film, and it's great. Let it Ride is like that - what if the good luck never runs out? - and movies should do it more often.

But Hard Times is still a movie that just wouldn't be what it is without its actors: Coburn as Spencer "Speed" Weed; Bronson; and Bronson's wife Jill Ireland. Syl's right, Bronson and Ireland are as good as Bogart and Bacall. Coburn's best when he knows he's right and can have some fun with it - he has that same tick that fellow tall-man Jim Stewart had, loping forward with his left arm bent at the elbow and wrist like he's wearing a sling - and he's an actor who stretches out into the open space around him more than you think, whether it's covering his live-in fiancée with the sheets or windmilling a stack of bills in an indoor New Orleans pool. New Orleans is the deal-maker here, whether it's Coburn and Bronson convening over oysters on the half-shell or pouring beer from pitchers to glasses in some Louisiana marsh.

In a good seven days, still pick of the week.

PS - I'm assuming the five optional Southeast Asian language tracks mean that Hard Times was put on DVD with the Bronson street-fighter fanbase in mind, but there is absolutely no excuse for what pan-and-scan does to this film. Write your congressman!

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Jack Kirby's Dreamland

Chameleon Street (1989)
directed by Wendell B. Harris, Jr.
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

In his debut, Flint native Harris is purposeful, funny, and fatalistic to a degree someone like Peter Fonda could never imagine. Detroit cameraman Daniel Noga's Michigan is an impermanent and inviting place, two worlds away at least from Zsigmond's indulgent New Mexican dissolves. The pointed social commentary inherent in the story of a black con man in the cold north during the Reagan administration - or, for that matter, Harris's clinical and unsuccessful (especially juxtaposed against the early scenes Street shares with his wife) intellectual deconstruction of a marriage - doesn't do justice to the warmth Harris finds in his subject's most personal autobiographical details. Chameleon Street's best in those moments - with Street as a black bête at a Cocteau-centric costume party, or Street and his friends talking about money at the bar - and not because they're innocuous or culturally "smart," but because Harris, for all his amazement at Street's life story, and Harris's sympathy for the anger of helplessness, clearly revels in the details that would make Street unique with or without the well-known public record that made him famous.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

I Know What it's Like to Be Dead

The Hired Hand (1971)
directed by Peter Fonda
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Unique because it's bolstered by Peter Fonda's smart collaborations: Vilmos Zsigmond, Warren Oates, Dean Wormer's wife. But so dreary! Fonda goes about it quietly enough (it's amazing how much he sounds like his dad), but he's the last wild child I need to see making sober apologies for 60s excess and abandonment. Which, as a strong "feminist" narrative - meaning Verna Bloom is stern and lonely - is where The Hired Hand tries to surpass the scope of its first small ambitions and turns the nice touches (soundtrack, camera, Fonda's beard) back into the drab dressings of too much ego. Over a modest hour and a half (you see how I'm inclined towards positive adjectives?), Fonda finally convinces you to withdraw the credit you lend him on the good faith of first impressions. Shoebox under the bed, kids.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Starring Andrew Mullins as Roy Boone

White Lightning (1973)
directed by Joseph Sargent
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

White Lightning is about reunions: Gator McKlusky and his dead drowned brother; Burt and Ned, west out of north Georgia together; two suckers from the Lincoln sheriff's office of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, suckers still. Unexpectedly gentle towards outwardly comic setups like a home for unwed mothers - the eager girl isn't funny so much as sweet - director Sargent manages what most big-name historical dramatists never seem to be able to get right: when it's hot and there's no A/C, people sweat. Beatty is a surprisingly good heavy, maybe because his soft delivery is more menacing than half a dozen fuck-knuckled New York City sergeants. Worth a reunion with your TV before summer's gone for good.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Fabienne my love, our adventure begins...

Charley Varrick (1973)
directed by Don Siegel
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Don - dean of the underdog - leaves the last honest cop in San Francisco for the last honest crook in Tres Cruces, New Mexico. I'd be willing to believe that it's Walter Matthau's best role (hands in his pockets and no trace of sarcasm) if I could shake the impression that most people only really love him for Grumpy Old Men. For all Siegel's realism - the cops suspect the bank robbers right off the bat, no one has much trouble chasing down the cash - only Matthau's ungainly, hilarious embrace of forever doomed Dean Wormer is unguarded enough to admit to the contrivances that get both men to movie's end. Something about these sap-as-hero revenge fantasies (Mr. Majestyk, The Silent Partner, Dirty Harry) leaves me cold every time.

Maybe the best thing Quentin Tarantino ever did was take women out of the sex rut and leave just enough room in their march to the top of the body count to be women: sweet (Fabienne), gentle (Jackie), in love (Beatrix). Every new-to-me cult classic only makes me admire him more.

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Frank Tashlin, Patriot

The Girl Can't Help It (1956)
directed by Frank Tashlin
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Frank Tashlin began as a Looney Tunes director, so who better to animate the debut of cartoonishly-proportioned Jayne Mansfield? Brought in by 20th Century Fox to facilitate America's transition from Marilyn Monroe to the next blonde bombshell, Mansfield had nothing in common with the chanteuse behind "Happy birthday, Mr. President," except, apparently, JFK. Tashlin treats her suitors like a roomful of Elmer Fudds hitting up Bugs Bunny in drag, but he does it with an eye to the era. Anyone can crack a pair of glasses looking at a pretty girl, but where else but the fifties could the milk man and the ice man join in on the joke? A decade earlier and no one could be so crude in a major studio picture; a decade later and the ice was already in the fridge. Generally, though, the adults seem out of place. Tashlin is no one if not the kid hawking newspapers to blondes in convertibles; kids get what the grown-ups are talking about, but they can still leave when they want to go play with their friends.

Friday, September 05, 2008

TV We Watch is TV We Need

Gossip Girl: Season 1 (2007-2008)
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults

Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008)
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Battlestar Galactica: Episodes 4.1-4.10 (2008)
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Steve

Loving a show like Twin Peaks is no different from loving a movie like Portrait of Jennie - each unique, each abnormal. I can skirt the TV issue easily enough, say I like Gargoyles but would never watch 30 Rock, and shouldn't it be obvious why?

For two seasons I gritted my teeth through Battlestar Galactica's melodramatic squabbles, barked from the half-dressed script of some time-travelling Republican conventioneer. Not only did I disagree with Ronald Moore’s politics, I was bored by the window dressing. Steve insisted, so I persisted. The periphery fell in, and the ethical relativism of the show’s worst character became my first convincing religious experience, apparently through new writers’ acts of sheer, generous will (helped in part by the paucity of my own theological engagement, I’m sure). The man I hated most changed completely without changing at all. I changed, certainly.

Avatar is well-reared, if not particularly original: the Joe Campbell mythology playbook by way of Joe Camel, who knows that every franchise needs its Ewoks. The Sopranos was best when Tony dreamed, or else acted the innocent, so I’m not reflexively drawn to cruelty as my private Emmy money-shot, but the “blood bending” episode made Avatar smart by reducing the wow factor of well-executed animated martial arts to its lurching, crippling conclusion, which is the perverse, inevitable spectacle of a body lying physically ruined on the floor. The heroes are fated to be young and in love forever, but it is already the witch who comes out at the full moon who I remember most clearly.

And what about Gossip Girl? How far do I have to dig to excuse it? I can’t, which means that, given the right reason to watch almost any show on TV, I could probably find an excuse to keep watching it. Every show needs its romantic and its villain, and maybe Gossip Girl is prettier, or meaner, but Chuck and Blair aren't uncommon. A little elevated, maybe - taking a limo to the airport, staring down the girl over a pink houndstooth sweater - but so, in their way, are the friends you admire. And a lot of it is just junk, but that's no excuse not to hear K. Bell sing "xoxo" like a song.

In other words, I'm grateful it isn't all The Wire.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Heaven is Horror

The Beyond (1981)
directed by Lucio Fulci
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults

I was surprised, I remember, to learn that the "dawn of man" segment of 2001 was shot on a soundstage. There was so much space - more, if possible, than even Africa. Kubrick liked to control his sets, of course, but give the production designers their due: what they imagined and could not find in the world around them, they built.

Fulci, like Kubrick, needed things he couldn't tease from a location shoot. Probably for different reasons ($), but both men clearly respected their crew. Fulci begins in New Orleans, but never uses the city as shorthand. Take a scene at a funeral outside a crypt, for example, where he elects to put a skyscraper in the center of the frame. Fulci steals what we recognize away from us. The nightmare must be earned, and, like all nightmares, revealed by degrees - the trap found out only from inside.

Only, isn't it a dream at the very start? With a painter and his oils in a hotel outside of town? The torchlight, the wooden boats, the texture of the canvas? And aren't all seven doors of hell thrown open, and not just the door beneath the stairs?

There is the blind girl on the bridge on the highway over the bayou. The vision of the woman running from the house (straight from the set of Inferno, I guess!). The house itself. The hospital. The dog who defends the girl before it kills her (the turn in demeanor is far worse than the blood). The call from the room. The eyes. Those that Fulci doesn't mutilate are some of the prettiest eyes in movies, and even the final seconds are as much escape as damnation - Blade Runner beat by a year.

Not perfect, but still perfect - the official unofficial start of fall.