Rapid Response: Slap Shot

George Roy Hill’s “Slap Shot” is a much smarter and interesting film than its cult status gives it credit for.

As far as cult comedies about hockey go, they don’t get any better, funnier, likeable or thought provoking than “Slap Shot.”

I say that non-existent comparison because for a cult comedy about hockey, “Slap Shot” is hardly as low brow as its scenario suggests. Director George Roy Hill (“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Sting,”) inserts more ideas into the opening moments of “Slap Shot” than a similar film would dare shake a hockey stick at.

The title credits role in front of a ratty American flag hanging in a gymnasium as a chintzy band plays The National Anthem in the background. Before long, the social commentary, not the hockey or violence, is brought to the forefront as blue-collar Americans are losing jobs and housewives are on the brink of snapping.

Somehow, Paul Newman is perfectly cast as the aging hero, a man whose face in the late ’70s was the embodiment of a worn American everyman rather than the distinguished, old age movie star he would become. He’s thrown into a world where everyone wears their hatefulness and vulgarity on their sleeve. The movie is unabashedly despicable in these early moments, i.e. a little taboo and a little racist, and it only proceeds to get worse as the mentally challenged goons employed as cheap team ringers end up abusing every player on the ice. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Slap Shot”

Rapid Response: Torn Curtain

“Torn Curtain” finds Hitchcock dipping his toes into a pool he never has before: politics. It’s one of Hitchcock’s more disappointing films.

I don’t think I ever thought this day would come: the day that I would find an Alfred Hitchcock movie I didn’t like.

They say that Hitchcock’s last perfect film was “The Birds” in 1963, and from then on he struggled with old age and a changing of the guard in Hollywood to more jarring, violent and hyper kinetic films. Although I’m still very keen on “Frenzy,” with something like “Torn Curtain,” how is Hitchcock really supposed to compete when the rest of the world is looking to James Bond for their suspense?

“Torn Curtain” struggles because it finds Hitch trying to adapt to New Hollywood and the surrounding culture, but in completely the wrong way. With “Frenzy,” Hitch would embrace the despicable sexual instincts of his murderers and what they would be realistically likely to do to his blonde-bombshell victims. Here, Hitchcock tried to make his film as tied to the Cold War as the 007 movies, and he dips his toe into a pool he never had before: politics. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Torn Curtain”

Rapid Response: The Hudsucker Proxy

It’s always fun to see how far the Coen Brothers have come. There was a time after “Blood Simple,” before “Fargo” and surrounding the time of their Cannes victory for “Barton Fink” that the Coens had a peculiar reputation in the critical community, not like today when they are practically revered beside Scorsese, and some of the few American directors people actually eagerly anticipate movies from.

Rather, they were seen as remarkable stylists so in love with the movies that the Coens established a cult following and cult hatred long before “The Big Lebowski.” Some of their movies, as critics argued, were all style over substance, exotic plunges into cinema itself with plots that were intentionally contrived or outrageous, dialogue that was purposefully literary and fantastical and characters that were not just aiming for parody but were steeped in it.

The other three movies they made in this time period were “Raising Arizona,” which is a cult classic comedy that I couldn’t even get through, “Miller’s Crossing,” which I haven’t seen and is probably one of their lesser known dramas, and “The Hudsucker Proxy,” which I watched last evening.

“The Hudsucker Proxy” so perfectly sums up the moment in cinema history that were these infuriating and revolutionary characters the Coens before they were the Coens. It is a film that was generally panned when released but today has a solid following for the strongest of Coen fans. The reason for it is that it was thought they had made a film so in love with their own cinema dissertation that even fans would not get past it, a film so intentionally cliche it was maddening.

Roger Ebert’s two star review wonderfully analyzes each school of thought in either reviling the film or hailing it as a masterpiece. “The problem with the movie is it’s all surface and no substance,” one side of his brain says, while the other chimes in that, “That’s the tired old rap against the Coens… How many movies do have heart these days?… One good reason to go to the movies is feast the eyes, even if the brain is left unchallenged.”

Except the movie does have mental challenges, just not for the moral side of the brain. How and why the Coens choose to recreate so many historical cinema cues without actually making them a parody is part of the film’s mystique. At times it undoubtedly is too excessive even in its excess, but it falls back on its own sense of quirk and charm even if you’re not familiar with all the references they drum up.

It also continued to prove to me why Paul Newman is one of my all time favorite actors. He along with Tim Robbins and especially Jennifer Jason Leigh channeling Rosalind Russell in “His Girl Friday” are terrific. I will say though that if the Coens made this movie today, they would have cast J.K. Simmons in the part of the newspaper editor.

So yes, maybe the origin story of the Hula Hoop is not the most riveting or heartening tale of the rat race and romance in the 1950s, but “The Hudsucker Proxy” deserves to be seen as a relic of film history, both past and present.

Rapid Response: The Hustler

It occurred to me as I was watching “The Hustler” that you could never make a pool/billiards movie today. Not that you couldn’t make a sports movie with its similar structure, but 2011 in America is the wrong time and place for a movie about pool. How many people actually watch it, play it professionally, go to pool halls (is that even a thing anymore?) and least of all attempt to make a living by going around hustling other people through gambling?

That’s not to say “The Hustler” is dated, but the gravitas Robert Rossen’s film pays it seemed a bit much to me. Think of what are intended to be staggeringly dramatic shocks when Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson gets his thumbs broken or realizes that he won’t be playing the rich gentleman in straight pool but in billiards (who knew there was a difference?).

The film was nominated for nine Oscars, won two, put Paul Newman on the map as not just a movie star but a genuine A-lister (for that I am thankful as he is one of my favorite all-time actors) and inspired a quasi-sequel over 20 years later starring Newman, Tom Cruise and directed by Martin Scorsese. Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Hustler”

Rapid Response: The Verdict

In honor of the late great Sidney Lumet, I watched “The Verdict” one of the four films for which he was nominated for Best Director. It’s a courtroom drama starring Paul Newman and written by David Mamet, both of whom were nominated for Oscars as well in 1982.

What sets it apart instantly is how we follow Newman as Frank Galvin, a struggling drunk of an attorney with a reputation for being an ambulance chaser after a divorce, a disbarment hearing and the loss of four cases in the last three years of his career. The movie starts on a note that other films might climax on, showing him trashing his office before his first case in months shows up at his doorstep. It’s a simple malpractice case intended to be settled out of court. He would make a clean $70,000 and the plaintiffs would go away happy too, and although he starts out as a lying dirt bag, putting on performances to explain to his client why he was late and making up pseudonyms and stories to get into funerals and hospitals, he instantly gains a change of heart when he sees his client, a girl in a coma whose life has been taken away by negligent doctors.

As a craggy old man, it’s a bit of a reversal of the norms. Usually the down in the dumps guy is always fighting for social justice and has his morals compromised or vice versa. It was refreshing to see Newman in a weak, old man role rather than his young, good looking self. He was in his early 50s at the time, but he plays a character looking to be in his 60s at least. It’s a stark contrast to even his role reprisal in “The Color of Money,” where his character is old but his spirit is not.

The performances are all great and the dialogue is well written, but I sometimes take exception to courtroom dramas that have flaws in their case proceedings. That’s the point of “The Verdict,” I know, that the system is broken and the poor are powerless, but this movie had a judge out to get Galvin and actually opening his mouth to ask questions to the witness, and later a key testimony is stricken from the record on a technicality. There’s also a big twist that comes later, but it and the character’s other purpose both seemed tacked on.

I did enjoy it, if specifically for Newman’s work and Lumet’s ability to keep the camera hidden and let the characters speak for themselves. But the AFI lists it as the 4th best courtroom drama of all time, and that may be pushing it.

Rapid Response: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

I chose to watch “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” because of Elizabeth Taylor’s recent death, but I probably would have given any reason to watch a Paul Newman movie. Newman is one of my favorite actors, and he along with Taylor give some of the first great performances of their career in this adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s play.

The story follows the Pollitt family throughout the one day of Big Daddy Pollitt’s (Burl Ives) birthday party. He’s arriving home on his 65th birthday from the doctor, who did tests to find if Big Daddy has cancer. The doctor lied and told him he would be fine, but he confides in secret to Big Daddy’s son Brick (Newman) that he will in fact die, and soon. Brick has become an alcoholic and he’s fallen out of love with his wife Maggie (Taylor) following the death of his best friend. Brick’s brother and sister-in-law have five annoying children, who Maggie constantly refers to as “No-Neck Monsters,” and they are trying to secure their proper inheritance.

The film is a stirring family drama that considers from each character their love of the others. Brick has grown annoyed with Maggie, Big Daddy seems to have never loved anyone, and the sister-in-law Mae seems only interested in earning her family fortune. The news of Big Daddy’s illness shakes this family from head to toe, and we truly see these characters grow and change over the course of the day.

The dialogue feels authentic and the performances are rich throughout. Only Newman and Taylor were nominated for Oscars, but the entire supporting cast is just as strong. The film was also nominated for best color cinematography, and while it’s not exactly a visually striking film, there’s something about the way the color camera can reveal Liz Taylor’s remarkable beauty.