104 in 2009 Week 4: The Big Combo and Stardust

Two more this week, two very, very different movies to make up for last week's themed double feature.

The Big Combo
Joseph H. Lewis, 1955

The Big Combo is a mostly empty movie at its core, a fairly standard police procedural in which a dedicated cop pursues a powerful criminal, despite opposition from all corners, until finally, in the end, he gets his man. To be honest, despite a few decent mystery elements, following the plot of this movie is quite dull.

The details, though, make it worth watching. For one, the lighting scheme in this movie is perhaps the most extreme example of the film noir style ever committed to film, with characters continually walking in and out of tiny pools of light. The character relationships are a bit more off-key and odd than one typically sees in movies of the era, with our hero, Lt. Diamond, seeming less like a dedicated cop trying to do his job and more like an obsessed madman our for personal revenge. Unfortunately, Cornel Wilde isn’t up to the task of conveying those contradictory elements, and the character winds up muddled and dull. Richard Conte’s Mr. Brown, on the other hand, is a smart, complex, magnetic villain. Although his quickly-spewed patter occasionally slips into caricature, he’s never boring and usually interesting.

There are also several interesting stylistic touches throughout, most notably the final moments of Brian Donlevy’s Joe McClure. There’s actually a lot to like about The Big Combo, it’s just unfortunate that it’s all hung on such a tattered frame, and supported by such a weak lead.

6/10

Stardust
Matthew Vaughn, 2007

The vast majority of reviews for Stardust suggest that it is a sort of lesser, modern Princess Bride. In many ways, this tells you all you need to know (although I have to admit to preferring Stardust over The Princess Bride, which I never saw when I was younger and, as a result, don’t have any strong feelings toward). In other words, it’s kind of big, kind of ridiculous, kind of romantic, and full of potions and spells and narration by a grandfatherly old guy. The climax does tend to drag on a bit, as climaxes in such films are wont to do, but it is still paced well enough to not get boring and has several rather wonderful bits of humor (the goat that becomes a man, the ghosts) which help it to overcome the occasional slip into schmaltz (Yvaine’s declaration of love to a transformed Tristan).

7.5/10

Progress: 9 (Par +1)

That Movie Awards Thing

Rachel has informed me that I ought to have posted some thoughts on the recent Oscar Nominations, so I’m going to try to do that.

Hmm.

I don’t actually have a lot to say. I’ve only seen one of the best picture nominees (although I deliberately avoided some of the others, since I assumed they would be nominated, and that I would therefore see them in this year’s AMC best picture marathon). I guess I do have a few comments, which I will organize in handy bullet-point form:

---I was disappointed that the Wrestler didn’t get more love, but hooray for Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei. Hopefully Rourke wears a wallet chain to the show. And punches someone.

---I’m actually kind of surprised that The Dark Knight didn’t make much of a showing. Sure, it doesn’t seem like an “Oscar” sort of movie, but then, honestly, neither did any of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is the biggest box office hit since Titanic and better reviewed than any of the Best Picture Nominees other than Slumdog Millionaire. Seems like an obvious choice. Still, I’m not bothered by this, just a little surprised.

---Seriously? Tropic Thunder yielded an acting nomination? What the shit?

---Hey, look. Wall-E got nominated for Best Pixar Movie. I mean Best Animated Film.

---And I’m spent. Be on the lookout for information on the somethingth-annual Superhouse Oscar Pool, coming soon to an email near you.

EDIT- One more thought:

---Herzoooooooooooooooooog!!!!!!

104 in 2009 Week 3: Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House and Adam's Rib

Only two movies this week. As it turns out, both were oddly similar (beyond the obvious genre match), but what worked in one didn't so much work in the other.

And I'm thinking no more comedies next week.

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House

H.C. Potter, 1948

What a strange, unpleasant little comedy this is. At first glance, it appears to be a screwball Cary Grant comedy in the vein of The Philadelphia Story or Bringing Up Baby. Once it gets underway, however, things look very different. Still a comedy, Mr. Blandings. . . is much slower paced than others of its ilk and quite a bit drier in its humor, largely thanks to the acerbic narration (which I quite enjoyed). There’s a bizarre undercurrent of anger in this movie, though, which threw it off-kilter. Many of the characters, especially Cary Grant’s, spend a lot of time being angry – and not the fun, frazzled, frustrated kind of angry – the miserable kind of angry. This aspect reaches its apex with an extended subplot in which Cary Grant increasingly suspects his wife of infidelity – a subplot that yields no jokes, no laughs, and only a mild catharsis at the end of the movie.

Comedy and misery are, admittedly, closely related – and sometimes they work to enhance one another (Being John Malkovich, for one example off the top of my head). Unfortunately, that is not the case here, and the movie never seems to find its footing as a result. Still, Cary Grant and Myrna Loy are always watchable, and just about everything that comes out of Melvyn Douglas’s mouth is golden – so it’s not a total loss.

4/10

Adam’s Rib

George Cukor, 1949

This is the first movie I’ve seen featuring the famous Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy duo, although I’d enjoyed separate performances from them before (Bad Day at Black Rock for Tracy, and several movies for Hepburn). The pairing, as it turns out, lives up to the hype, and the chemistry between the two of them carries the movie over some rough spots that could have sunk it.

Gender inequality is an ongoing topic of discussion throughout the movie, and the nature of the discussions is probably the most dated aspect. Even looking beyond that, though, things don’t tend to progress much beyond very basic disagreements – men and women are the same/no they’re not, there’s a double standard/no there isn’t, etc. It gets tedious, and edges Hepburn’s character toward being unsympathetic, since she is the one typically forcing these discussions to occur.

Much more interesting than that is the disillusionment and eventual recovery of Hepburn and Tracy’s marriage. The actors’ natural chemistry is key here - in the beginning, they really feel like they’re in love. When they’re angry, they really feel hurt. I should also mention David Wayne, who plays the creepy, overbearing, piano playing neighbor. His attempted seduction of Katharine Hepburn late in the movie has a tremendously skeevy quality worthy of some of the better horror movies; and the scene where he (very unfunnily) narrates home videos while Spencer Tracy glares at him in the darkness was a highlight of the movie.

As screwball romantic comedies go, it’s no Philadelphia Story (probably the apex of the genre), but it’s certainly not bad, either.

7.5/10

Progress: Par +1 (still)

Movie Saturday Memories Volume 8

I meant to write this up a week or two ago, but you know how the holidays can be. Anyway, when last I left you, Movie Saturday had just died an ignoble death, born of our own hubris. This was early 2005. A few months after that, the core group of participants who lived together (Luke, Shawn, Me, and Jeff, if you still want to count him at this stage) moved out of the Superhouse and spread across the Denver Metro area. I think this was probably the main reason why the post-Movie Saturday projects didn’t materialize like I expected – life was marching on for everyone and getting in the way.

All was not lost, though. The next summer, Luke and Rose announced their plans to move out of state, and this provided the catalyst we needed to make one last project with them before they were gone. This turned out to be “A Month, and Change,” which I may talk about in more detail somewhere down the line. It was a forty-minute (give or take) project starring Bruce, Trevor, and Cate, a new addition. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how snide you’re feeling), it’s not available online, so I can’t link to it.

“A Month, and Change” fell victim to the same post-production failings as my previous full-length movie, “The Unwritten Rule.” As a result, it took nearly an entire year before it was completed and screened. This meant that no one was willing to spend time on another movie during that entire period, so there were no more projects throughout 2007.

In early 2008, Rachel and I began discussing the idea of putting together another short, something a bit less ambitious than “A Month, and Change.” This was our first ground-up screenwriting collaboration, and, to my amazement, it worked out pretty well. The project came together very quickly, and we wound up with Intuition (which is available online).




That was eleven months ago, now, and was the last movie production I’ve been involved with. Rachel and I did put together another script afterward, a longer one, which we didn’t manage to get into production. I’m still hopeful that something might come of it, though. Also, over the holiday, I met with some old friends (including Movie Saturday veteran Mavi Graves) who reignited that creative spark, and we’ve started tentatively discussing a new project for this summer. Will it materialize? Who knows. History suggests it won’t, but I’ve always found history to be kind of a condescending jackass. There are always possibilities.

-----

Now that I’ve gone back through all of Movie Saturday, and seen just how wide a range of quality we had, I’d like to identify my favorites. If you haven’t checked out Movie Saturday yet, and don’t want to commit the time to watching the whole thing, you’d be safe with any of the following:

THE TOP FIVE MOVIE SATURDAYS, IN REVERSE ORDER

5. Peephole
When I first started writing about Movie Saturday, I would not have expected Peephole to make the top five (I probably would have picked “The Lamp” in its place). The years have softened my disappointments with it, however, and the things I like are just as good, so in it goes. As an interesting side note, since I put these movies up on Vimeo, Peephole has had more than fifteen times as many views as any other Movie Saturday, and shows no signs of slowing down.

4. Because it was Dead
This one is near and dear to my heart because it was the first, and it proved to me that we were capable of doing something worthwhile. There are some technical issues, particularly with the sound, that keep it from placing higher, but it’s still a wonderful way to spend four minutes.

3. Try Again
As I explained in the original write-up, this is the one where I felt every department contributed something vital, and the one with the strongest vibe. Watching it just feels good.

2. Shadow
It’s short, it’s sweet, it’s simple. Maybe we work better without a script.

1. Safety in Numbers
This is our most professional looking production, and certainly my strongest script. Everything just came together on this one. And how can you miss out on the movie so good it killed Movie Saturday?

I know, I know, clearly I have some sort of bias, since three of my top five are movies that I directed, and one of the other two is one that I wrote. Well, if anyone has a better list, I’d like to see it. Hell, if anyone has a worse list, I’d like to see it.

Seriously, though. I really do want to hear what anyone else out there thinks is the best (or worst, if you prefer) of our movies. Especially any of you who helped make them.

And speaking of the worst, if anyone was wondering, my pick for the worst Movie Saturday is “What You Want!!”, which I also directed. Hmmph. Bias my sine function.

104 in 2009 Week 2: Allegro, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and Hudson Hawk

Three movies this week, although the legitimacy of the first one is somewhat debatable (an argument could be made that it is a 2007 release). Quite an impressive spread in the scores, as well.

Allegro
Christoffer Boe, 2005

Quite the frustrating movie, this. The central conceit (A man’s repression of his own painful memories and imperfections expresses itself physically as a natural disaster, creating an area of the city which no one seems able to enter until the man solves his issues) is interesting, and right up my alley (see my discussion of the Phillip-K-Dickian literalization concept in the last Movie Saturday post). The execution is lacking, however. The first problem is the intrusive voiceover, which accomplishes nothing but to allow the filmmakers to skip over parts of the story that they don’t want to deal with. Fortunately, this is really only an issue for the first half hour and the last few minutes. Second, the story is put into motion due to the trauma of a relationship the protagonist has with a woman who is barely seen in the movie. Her absence makes it hard to understand the impact that she had. Third (and probably a result of the first two), the whole thing had a very cold, clinical feel to it. I never really felt anything for the characters, try as I might. This is especially bizarre since the filmmakers spend a lot of time repeating the fact that, without his painful memories, the protagonist (a concert pianist) plays perfectly but soullessly. The whole movie revolves around the idea of regaining a spark of warmth and humanity, but the movie itself lacks that very spark.

That said, the middle hour, in which our hero wanders around the surreal zone that he created, is very interesting, and there are some wonderfully evocative sequences – particularly one in which he must play, badly, on a tiny piano in the middle of a public square. The final image is an arresting one as well. I wanted very badly to like this movie and, in the end, I did – but only just.

6.5/10

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg)
Jacques Demy, 1964

This movie is insane. Whoever came up with the idea (whether Demy or someone else) of making a musical in which every single line of dialogue is sung, but there are no actual songs, has no business living in a rational world.

And yet.

And yet it worked, magnificently. The dialogue is, for the most part, fairly pedestrian, but gains a certain magic in this context. There’s just something wonderful about hearing someone sing the question, “regular or premium gasoline?” The plot (Two young lovers are separated by war) is straightforward and conventional, but perhaps it had to be, in order to allow the rest of the experimentation to hang together. And even then, it winds up someplace that I didn’t expect - that is to say, it ends in precisely the way that a French musical romance should not.

The film is not without its flaws, as it drags somewhat in the middle, and the lovers’ proclamations that they want to stay together and will wait forever to be reunited grew wearisome after the thirty-eighth iteration. When I’m presented with images as gorgeous as these, however, and a production infused with as much madness as this, it tends to put me in a forgiving mood.

9/10

Hudson Hawk
Michael Lehmann, 1991

From the writing/directing team that brought you the terrific Heathers comes one of the most infamously terrible bombs in my lifetime, a flop that nearly ended Bruce Willis’s career and was widely lambasted for its obscene $50 million budget, back in the days when $50 million wasn’t the cut-off for the “low-budget indie” category.

This reputation is somewhat undeserved. Hudson Hawk is not one of the worst movies ever made. This is not to say that it’s a good movie. It isn’t. At all. Well, maybe a little bit. A very little bit. Somewhere, buried deep within the bowels of the script, there was some funny, clever dialogue – dialogue so funny that I could actually see the humor, even when obscured by the way it was delivered. This is a film completely out of control, where the only law is the law of slapstick and restraint has been outlawed (so only outlaws have restraint). It’s the sort of movie where Bruce Willis does a double-take and the soundtrack makes a helpful “BOING” sound to emphasize. Where dogs are launched out of windows by tennis ball machines (okay, I actually liked that bit). Where viewers are forced to watch and listen to Sandra Bernhard. Need I go on?

The rating below is probably a tad generous, but I still seem to be in the mood to reward insanity, and Hudson Hawk has it in spades.

2/10

Progress: Par +1

104 in 2009 Week 1: Lessons in Darkness and Pickup on South Street

Lektionen in Finsternis (Lessons in Darkness)
Werner Herzog, 1992

I love Werner Herzog. Whether eating his shoe, hauling a steamboat up a mountain, pulling Joachim Phoenix from a wrecked car, or continuing an interview after getting shot by an air rifle, the man continually proves himself to be better than everyone else. He’s basically my hero.

That said, I didn’t enjoy Lessons in Darkness very much. Herzog is probably best known for his documentaries, but I tend to prefer his narrative works – although, to be fair, I prefer narrative films to documentaries in general. It’s more of a clear distinction with Herzog than with many other filmmakers, however, because his style of documentary leans in a very unstructured direction – he likes to present you with images and music, maybe a little narration, and leave it at that. There is rarely a strong through-line or story to be told – it’s all about the experience. In general, I think this is laudable – but in practice, I just can’t handle it for the length of a full movie. The somewhat overbearing (particularly the choral passages) classical music score didn’t help.

This is not to say there weren’t some amazing things to be seen. My favorites were the melted, twisted oil reservoir (which I thought was a tarp at first) and the bit at the end where the firefighters re-ignited some of the oil wells. And, while there was not much narration, what we did get was in Herzog’s own voice, which is second only to Roger Corman for being soothing and comforting.

5.5/10

Pickup on South Street
Samuel Fuller, 1953

I’ve not, historically, been a fan of Samuel Fuller. He’s a prominent figure in the history of cinema, so I keep trying to watch his movies – but so far (Shock Corridor, House of Bamboo), it hasn’t really worked out. The third time has turned out to be the charm, however, with this rather wonderful little film.

I chalk the difference between this and the other two Fuller films up to Thelma Ritter’s Oscar-nominated performance, mostly. She manages to convey a lot about her character and engender a lot of sympathy without a lot of effort – and in fact, the parts of her final scene in which she gets to speechify about herself are her weakest moments. The movie also benefits from the presence of the late, great Richard Widmark, in one of his more heroic roles.

There are a few sour notes in the mix. The ending (in particular, the final line) is kind of awkward and kind of edges the film in a different thematic direction than it seemed to be going. Also, our heroes fall deeply, deeply in love at a breakneck pace (as movie characters from the 50’s are wont to do). It’s a little ridiculous. Still, the pacing is nice and lean, the dialogue is snappy, and the fight scenes are remarkably brutal for the era. In particular, keep an eye out for the scene in which Richard Kiley assaults Jean Peters, all done in one take (with no stuntwoman!).

8/10

Progress: Par

Total Success

Around this time last year, I noticed that I hadn't been reading nearly as much as I used to. In fact, I was barely reading at all. I forget what the count was, but it was somewhere in the low single digits. I decided I was going to do something about it.

Now, at the end of 2008, I see that I managed to read a whole 17 books over the course of the year (see them here). Hooray for me! More than one per month!

. . . actually, that's still kind of sad. But since it is an improvement, I'm calling it a win.