Category: Rapid Response

Rapid Response: The Birds

If Hitchcock knew that a group of crows is actually referred to as a murder, do you think that would be enough to attract him to making “The Birds?”

Viewed as his last important and “unflawed” film in his otherwise spotless canon, it is unarguably one of Hitchcock’s most gimmicky pictures, but at times it is also one of the most gruesome and bloody he ever made.

The first stand out segment for me was the gory glimpse of a man with his eye sockets picked out by birds that had attacked his bedroom. Hitch paces this scene brilliantly, starting with Lydia’s (Jessica Tandy) slow walk down an eerily centered corridor and then first giving us a glimpse of a bloody pair of legs on the floor, the pajama pants poked through with tiny beak-shaped holes. Three quick edits that bring us closer and closer to the body confirm our suspicions in the best way possible without allowing it to linger on the shocking image for a second too long.

It’s a good example of how technically perfect “The Birds” is, despite some special effects and puppetry that aren’t quite up to today’s standards. We see his precision in the absolutely gripping finale as the birds attack the Brenner household as well as when Melanie (Tippi Hedren) silently approaches their house to leave young Cathy her present of two lovebirds. Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Birds”

Rapid Response: Reservoir Dogs

As far as debuts from notable directors go, Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” is up there with the finest. For other famous American directors today, Scorsese, the Coens, Coppola, Malick, Nolan, Spielberg and many more, may have had good if not great first films, but “Reservoir Dogs” is so dripping in the style that would govern all of Tarantino’s future films that is impossible to forget “Reservoir Dogs” in a discussion of them.

From his opening scene of an ultimately mundane and irrelevant conversation about Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and the merits of tipping, we still get a good sense of the kind of dialogue Tarantino is keen on, but more importantly a sense for the characters. Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) is a very good example of this in the opening scene. He doesn’t throw in a buck. He has principles that go against the norm. But let someone tougher, like Joe (Lawrence Tierney), pressure him a bit, and he’ll bend his position and hide.

If you knew ahead of time that “Reservoir Dogs” was a sort of gangster Shakespearean drama, you probably could’ve guessed Mr. Pink would be the one to survive at the end. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Reservoir Dogs”

Rapid Response: Dirty Harry

Well you just gotta ask yourself one question: Why am I watching “Dirty Harry?”

Truth be told, my roommate picked it by chance and I was instantly sucked in.

It follows the beat of a number of renegade cop movies, but it follows many of the beats, cliches and tropes that it created. Harry Callahan’s dialogue is just too badass to just be relegated to standard genre fare, and Clint Eastwood so embodies the role that you really do feel lucky watching him work. “Dirty Harry” certainly wouldn’t be as interesting without Clint, and you couldn’t have a franchise without him.

But suffice it to say, there are enough strong elements throughout “Dirty Harry” that help it stand up on its own. It gives a good indicator of how much differently, and arguably better, they made movies at the peak of the American New Wave in the early ’70s. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Dirty Harry”

Rapid Response: The Palm Beach Story

Preston Sturges’ “The Palm Beach Story” remains sharp and biting in its sly parody of other Old Hollywood Screwball Comedies like it.

The most self-aware of all the Classic Hollywood directors is Preston Sturges. Making your work meta and self-conscious is one of the most modern things you can do on TV and in the movies today, despite the fact that not all of Sturges’ films have aged as well as those of some of his peers.

His film “The Palm Beach Story” is so knowing of the time period it exists in and the films that were popular in its day that although it remains as sharp and as biting as ever, the audience has changed and is less familiar with the screwball comedies Sturges is poking fun at.

From the opening credits Sturges toys with his audience. A couple has an obvious meet cute, she’s seen tied and trapped in a closet, and he’s running to the alter before a frazzled and confused looking priest before a set of intertitles announces, “And they lived happily ever after… Or did they?” Is this a movie we need to have seen? Will this summary flashback be critical to the understanding of the movie?

Of course not. But everything in these images looks pulled from some mediocre screwball comedy Hollywood had been churning out in droves. It’s Sturges’ way of winking to his audience that although this movie isn’t going to look or feel different than any other popular genre movie like it, this movie knows better. It knows Hollywood leans on the crutches of its obscenely attractive leads and stereotypical character actors needlessly inserted for comic relief. “The Palm Beach Story” will do the same, but there’s an added layer of depth and observance here that everyone seems to know. Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Palm Beach Story”

Rapid Response: Scream

Some people like to guess the way a movie is going to end, unraveling the mystery and naming the killer before the characters do. It can be a fun way of engaging with a movie.

But sometimes, don’t you kind of hate the guy that tells you what’s going to happen next?

“Scream” is a movie that has it both ways.

I remember how immensely popular the movie was (although I must’ve been a few years removed because the movie came out in 1996 when I was only 6, and that’s very young). It was scary, shockingly gory, clever, self-aware and featured a simple, creepy and iconic villain that instantly became a Halloween costume staple.

Today, my generation remembers “Scream” as a sort of cult relic from the ’90s (“Why are you carrying a cellular phone, son?”), embodying all the best things about modern horror movies while providing a much needed throwback to ’70s and ’80s horror classics that arguably hold up better for horror fans than the torture porn films released today. All the while, it stays one step ahead of the audience and seems to be winking back at us every step of the way.

But “Scream” is winking so much it looks like it has an eye twitch. The famous “Do you know the rules” scene in which Jamie Kennedy explains the dos and don’ts of staying alive in a horror movie to me feels very forced. It’s Wes Craven’s act of showing his own hand, toying with our expectations such that he can yet another twist at the end.

Obviously this is all cheeky and self-referential, but by this point we get the joke. To be standing in a video store (what’s that?!) and claiming that “It’s all one great big movie” sounds like Craven screaming, “Look at how self-aware we are!”

The fact that it’s meta and self-aware shows why “Scream” has aged well in the 21st Century, because although it is very knowledgeable of horror movie cliches and formulas, “Scream” is not precisely a movie for horror movie buffs but for people who are simply familiar with the genre.

But beyond that, there are some stylish and suspenseful murder sequences that hold up un-ironically, most notably the opening scene with Drew Barrymore. It’s a good reminder that a horror movie can have a sense of humor and self-awareness, but it must be genuinely scary first.

Rapid Response: The Thing (1982)

John Carpenter’s remake “The Thing” has stellar makeup and special effects, but it’s lacking in the narrative department that its horror counterparts share.

If there’s something missing from “The Thing” it’s certainly not The Thing. We see plenty of it.

John Carpenter’s “The Thing” is a remake of a number of sci-fi B-movies from the ’50s that played on the Red Scare, and while this film lacks that cultural poignancy, it makes up for it in the stylish special effects of the day. Like David Cronenberg’s “The Fly,” it has stunningly outrageous makeup applied in all the wrong places, and it holds up because they’re tangible make-up effects rather than CGI.

Carpenter is of course the horror legend behind “Halloween” and a number of other ’70s and ’80s horror staples. “The Thing” however has a firm place on the IMDB Top 250, presumably for its unseemly effects and people that die really good. Some are incinerated, some are eaten by The Thing’s opening chest cavities or heads, Wilford Brimley shoves his fist into another guy’s mouth. It’s ridiculous, over the top violence that is handled all too gratuitously, but it at least works as a novelty.

Unfortunately, the movie is missing character depth, wit, charm, and even an eerie sense of cabin fever that dominates trapped on the far side of the moon monster movies.

As did the ’50s “The Thing from Another World” or “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “The Thing” is a movie about paranoia and being uncertain about your safety when the enemy could be any of your closest friends. But it’s not an engaging story when all of the characters are one-dimensional, underdeveloped and uninteresting. We catch glimpses of faces and names but are only even partially attached to Kurt Russell’s character MacCready.

And allow me to say now, it’s a bad thing when Kurt Russell is the one giving your movie’s strongest performance. The acting throughout is pretty stilted, and my guess is that the camp appeal in the characters better fits the preposterous goriness.

The verdict is that “The Thing” can barely hold a candle to say, “Alien” or “The Fly,” amongst many others, although I’ll give this ’80s version benefit of the doubt that it is more visually inventive and absurd than the CGI gore-fest of a remake that’s being released in theaters today.

Rapid Response: Juliet of the Spirits

If “Juliet of the Spirits” is Fellini’s love letter to his wife Giulietta Masina, then it is the strangest love letter ever made. This remarkably surreal film with its haunting spectral beauty is a deliciously maddening portrait of love as seen through an other worldly lens of spirits, memories and religious symbolism.

A number of critics sight this film as the start of Fellini’s decline as a filmmaker, saying that “Juliet of the Spirits” lacks the autobiographical poignancy of his masterpieces “La Dolce Vita” and “8 1/2.” “Juliet of the Spirits” was made right after “8 1/2” in 1965, and it’s been said that this film is so frustrating because it feels like Fellini is going on autopilot with half baked visuals and symbols designed precisely to recall his previous films.

Yet Fellini just running on autopilot is a thousand times better than hundreds of other directors working at full capacity, and “Juliet of the Spirits” is so affecting because despite all the criticisms, it remains remarkably exotic, strange, nonsensical and yet all so infectious. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Juliet of the Spirits”

Rapid Response: The Pride of the Yankees

“The Pride of the Yankees” has not aged well. It holds up for its famous closing speech and Babe Ruth, but makes Lou Gehrig one-dimensional.

We’re working on a Sports Movie issue for WEEKEND, and I hadn’t gotten around to seeing “The Pride of the Yankees” despite how I knew it was essential inspirational Old Hollywood.

And now that I have, it is certainly a staple of the old studio system. It’s corny, tame, rousing and a complete lark. It stars Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig, a huge star at the time who must’ve only been cast because of how damn well he could deliver that ending speech in front of Yankee stadium, the infamous, “Today, I feel like I’m the luckiest man on the face of the Earth” speech.

The rest of the movie, I hate to say it, Cooper’s a bland, nervous and clumsy mama’s boy. He only knows baseball, he’s awkward in front of everyone but his parents and his stabs at personality are captured only in his own lame prat falls and his frolicking wrestling matches with his wife. Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Pride of the Yankees”

Rapid Response: Sweet Smell of Success

 

There’s a jazz quintet featured in the credits before “Sweet Smell of Success” that makes a few appearances throughout this journalistic and cerebral noir. It’s fitting because the film’s dialogue is executed in such a devilishly playful dance as though it were trading off jazz riffs and improvisation, offering hints of beauty and sultry sex appeal the way any good jazz number should.

“Sweet Smell of Success” is a contender for best film dialogue ever written. Everything that’s said is punched out with such speed, vigor, bite and wit. No one ever says precisely what they mean and they all speak in clever and cynical analogies, metaphors and snarky back talk. The whole thing is so modern, so harsh and so intellectually biting. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Sweet Smell of Success”

Rapid Response: Gates of Heaven

Errol Morris’s debute documentary “Gates of Heaven” remains a beguiling and fascinating movie.

I may have just watched one of the most controversial, intensely debated and best movies ever made without even knowing it. That is the enigma of Errol Morris, who’s legendary mystique started with this film in 1978, “Gates of Heaven.”

The film is a documentary about a man who starts a pet cemetery, fails, has over 450 pets displaced to yet another cemetery, and then about the people who work there and take their job very seriously.

It is a damned peculiar documentary. It is not a documentary that advocates political or social change or provides a thorough historical document of people’s lives. It tells a story of these people who live in California and does not offer any commentary or internal narration as to what it thinks about them.

The same is true of Morris’s great new film “Tabloid,” in which we can’t quite believe it all to be true, yet Morris never tells what to believe nor give us any reason to doubt any of it. But watching “Tabloid,” there’s no question that watching much of it is intended to be outrageous and shockingly hilarious, even if he does wholeheartedly sympathize with the woman who raped a Mormon (don’t ask).

“Gates of Heaven” is much more subtle. The film’s ironic, sardonic twists are not necessarily intended for comic relief. But Roger Ebert’s Great Movies review of the film, one in which he refers to the time he called “Gates of Heaven” one of the 10 best movies ever made, gives me the sense that I am not alone in this feeling. “The film they made has become an underground legend, a litmus test for audiences, who cannot decide if it is serious or satirical, funny or sad, sympathetic or mocking,” he writes. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Gates of Heaven”