Category: Rapid Response

Friday Night Channel Surfing

Switching between “Quadrophenia,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Superman” and “Lethal Weapon.”

I wouldn’t recommend the habit of channel surfing when it comes to selecting an evening’s movie. Jumping into the middle of even a great movie and catching a few seconds of dialogue out of context can look mighty odd. It’s something that doesn’t happen with TV, which is often designed for people to jump in at any moment. I liken the sensation to listening to a random 30 second clip of a song on Amazon and believing you’ve got a full sense of what that track sounds like or how it is they got to that weird, minor key transition.

Regardless, I did not have control of the remote Friday night, and it’s amazing what you can pick up when you’re dividing your attention between an iPad and the TV.

Our family was fortunate enough to turn on the TV right as the ’50s diner scene of “Pulp Fiction” was starting. I commented that Buddy Holly was actually Steve Buscemi, and the DVR confirmed it. John Travolta asked what a $5 milkshake tastes like, and although AMC dubbed it to a “freaking” good shake, it prompted our own ice cream run. Tarantino’s movie is one you can jump into at any moment, and we would’ve remained there were it not for the dubbed swears and commercial breaks.

The next stop was the original “Superman” on HBO. My sister commented that Christopher Reeve is not as attractive as Henry Cavill by a mile, but I noticed that even the cheesy effects as the Fortress of Solitude grew and erupted out of the North Pole looked cooler, prettier and more compelling than the ugly gray shades permeating every moment of “Man of Steel.” Then Marlon Brando showed up as Jor-El and I knew that I was watching a real classic. Will Zack Snyder’s film have the same watchability 30 years from now?

Starting at just about the same time was the original “Lethal Weapon,” and we watched that up until the point that Danny Glover unironically said “I’m getting too old for this shit.” It’s hard to believe there was a time when these cliches seemed less egregious. It was at least interesting to see Mel Gibson in his prime. Too often I’ve caught one of the “Lethal Weapon” sequels on TNT and rolled my eyes at Joe Pesci being irritating or Glover sitting on a toilet rigged to explode. Continue reading “Friday Night Channel Surfing”

Rapid Response: The Last of the Mohicans

“The Last of the Mohicans” is a rare action epic in this age of CGI mayhem.

Daniel Day-Lewis is not what you would call an action star, but he’s the kind of actor with a compassionate edge and a sense of intensity that makes him ideal for the role of Hawkeye in Michael Mann’s “The Last of the Mohicans.”

“I ain’t your scout. And I ain’t in your damn militia,” Day-Lewis says with a glower, a fine example of how Mann gets him to wear this man-of-action face.

He truly helps make “The Last of the Mohicans” feel iconic, watching him sprint through a battlefield or leap through a darkened waterfall in slow motion, his hair flowing behind him.

It’s a treat, as this is a rare film today to have flesh and blood battles of this scale and scope. Mann relishes in the opportunity not just to blow stuff up but to watch how smoke billows through the frame from these unique cannon and mortar blasts. He puts hundreds in the spotlight at once, just marveling in wide vista shots and cutting swiftly from just about every angle. Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Last of the Mohicans”

Rapid Response: Gigi

“Gigi” is a quaint and cutesy Old Hollywood musical that in 1958 won more Oscars than any film before it.

How grand it would be to live in Paris in the 1890s with no responsibilities, no job and to only be concerned with gossip, parties, “love making”, winning gems as party favors from royalty and wondering what to lavish piles of money on.

Such concerns define the society in “Gigi,” a stuffy, expensive-looking, pleasantly inconsequential Old Hollywood musical. The film is named for its spritely, bouncy and immature title girl Gigi (Leslie Caron), a name only correctly pronounced when done with an overstated French lisp (“Zhee-Zhee!”), but it’s actually the story of the stiff, stuck-up, rich grump Gaston (Louis Jourdan). Gaston is a playboy unimpressed with anything this life can offer, be it the garish parties and bourgeois lifestyle or the beauty to be found in nature.

“It’s a bore!” he asserts time and again in one of the film’s more grating songs. “The world is round, but everything in it is flat,” he says in an example of how the film dashes in intellectual prose amid the coquetry and scandalous whispering.

Continue reading “Rapid Response: Gigi”

Rapid Response: Trouble in Paradise

What is “The Lubitsch Touch”? It’s on full display in “Trouble in Paradise.”

“What would Lubitsch do?” This was the famous phrase Billy Wilder had emblazoned on his office wall, a testament to the German director’s impeccable taste. Where one director would be cynical, Lubitsch would be sweet. Where another would be zany, he would be sincere. And where most would be sexually blunt and awkward, he could be deceptively delicate and no less racy.

“Trouble in Paradise” is his finest film, a pre-code movie that embodies the best of his sophisticated, classy approach to farce as well as his gift with suggestive innuendos, romance and goofy, quick witted characters who would later define an entire genre of screwball comedy.

That “Trouble in Paradise” is so decidedly not a “screwball” but a satire in which the characters talk swiftly, their intentions are in the wrong place and their situations are absurd and exaggerated is exactly what makes it so perfect and indicative of the “Lubitsch touch.” His signature is also, as Andrew Sarris put it, “a poignant sadness infiltrates the director’s gayest moments,” and its these genuine moments of pathos and niceties in his characters that sets it apart from the screwballs that tend to be all one-sided. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Trouble in Paradise”

Rapid Response: Oldboy

“Oldboy” is the pinnacle example of the Cult film in the 21st Century.

“Oldboy” is the finest example of a cult film we have in the 21st Century. “Pulp Fiction,” “Fight Club,” “American History X,” “Memento”: all these movies have attained ubiquity to some extent, the Internet uniting all these factions to raise these movies from the underground and into the mainstream. All it means to be a cult film today is to have a ravenous fan base or for a passionate fan base to emerge when the mainstream wasn’t there to swoop it into the stratosphere.

“Oldboy” on the other hand has the same kinetic style, the same cryptically impossible story and the same rebellious themes of the classic cult favorites, and because it comes from Korea, it somewhat has the capability of flying beneath the radar, able to be made into an American studio film by Spike Lee without ruffling too many feathers.

In a way, “Oldboy” is a standard revenge drama. Oh Dae-su (Min-sik Choi) is a flawed, but good man driven to pitifulness by alcohol, and he is abducted without explanation and forced to right a wrong done to his family. Later when he is freed, he will meet a beautiful girl to help him on his journey, he’ll get a mysterious phone call from a suave sounding villain, and he’ll become a Charles Bronson-esque vigilante skilled in combat. The cryptic nature of the mystery will culminate into an epic twist and climax, and many will be killed along the way. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Oldboy”

Rapid Response: The Caine Mutiny

“The Caine Mutiny” aims to paint a uniquely tragic figure, but even Humphrey Bogart’s great performance falls short.

On paper, “The Caine Mutiny” instantly reminds of “K-19: The Widowmaker” or “Mutiny on the Bounty,” which this movie even slyly alludes to as Humphrey Bogart makes his excellent and provocative introduction as Lt. Cmdr. Queeg. And yet far from a film about revolution, rebellion or loyalties, “The Caine Mutiny” is dedicated to the Navy and those who have suffered great trauma due to the effects of war. It’s a film about paranoia and mental illness, not morals or valor.

And yet working against “The Caine Mutiny” right out of the gate is that we’ve now developed a deeper, more complex understanding of human psychology than this movie has to offer. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a well-known term today, and although films like “The Best Days of Our Lives” were peddling it for melodrama earlier than this film, Director Edward Dymtryk tries to make the ruthless perfectionist Captain Queeg into a uniquely tragic figure.

Brought to manage the minesweeper Caine during World War II, Queeg’s new crew quickly suspects that his affinity for seamen with their shirts tucked in or the location of a key have rendered him mentally incapable of helming their ship. Bogart convincingly barks orders and demonstrates fear, and he received an Oscar nomination for the role, but the film neglects informing us what personal war demons he may carry. He’s a flat, silly character, and our only emotional attachment comes in the form of him manipulating steel ball bearings nervously and in Bogart’s magnetic face during one of the film’s few arresting close-ups during its climax.

Some of the performances, including Jose Ferrer’s sarcastic Lt. Greenwald, Fred MacMurray’s lying scumbag of an officer and Van Johnson’s calm, careful first mate help raise the caliber of “The Caine Mutiny,” but too much is wasted on the debut performances of Robert Francis and May Wynn. Their romance is a dud, and his attachment to his mother is a plot line left hanging. It would be less distracting if the on-board events were more compelling, but Queeg’s hunt for a quart of strawberries is the absolute pits if it’s made to be taken seriously, and the resulting courtroom drama leaves little to the imagination on a narrative or visual level.

“The Caine Mutiny” was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor Humphrey Bogart and Best Screenplay, but lost out to “On the Waterfront.” That film depicted what you could call a paranoid character, and it did so with bounds more gravitas than this film unfortunately.

Rapid Response: Au Hasard Balthazar

“Au Hasard Balthazar” achieves an understanding of a complete life with more complexity and understanding than most movies combined… and it’s about a donkey.

In every review of “Au Hasard Balthazar,” it’s clarified that Robert Bresson’s masterpiece is NOT about a donkey. The donkey that shares the film’s name and is followed from birth to death is not a cartoon character, he does not get reaction shots and he does not have thoughts or feelings; he is a donkey. In this fashion, the film is a haunting portrait of life, an often solemn depiction of reality and a religious parable in numerous ways. It is again not a fantasy in the way a movie about a donkey might imply.

And yet Bresson’s film is something of a fantasy. The donkey itself is not merely alive but is baptized at the beginning, presumably bestowing it a soul. One of the main characters Gerard (Francois Lafarge) is hardly a teenager but a sadistic monster. The town drunk Arnold (Jean-Claude Guilbert) happens to come into a large inheritance. And the way in which Balthazar the donkey changes hands and finds its way back to the protagonist Marie (Anne Wiazemsky) time and again bares a resemblance to Steven Spielberg’s “War Horse.”

When looked at in this way, “Au Hasard Balthazar” doesn’t always seem so grim. Its initial set up is something of a paradise for the young animal and the young children, and that along with the use of Schubert in the score makes the whole thing feel ethereal and spiritual, as though life can be dour and rough, but it is still a life. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Au Hasard Balthazar”

Rapid Response: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” put Pedro Almodovar on the map with its strong and wacky female lead.

“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” could be the title to a number of female-fronted comedies both old and new. “Bridesmaids” and “30 Rock” come to mind, but then so do “My Man Godfrey” or “The Awful Truth,” to an extent.

That’s because unlike men, who are often simply extremely irritated by a comic foil in such movies, women tend to display an utmost level of poise and steadfast resolve about how they are going to change their life right before it implodes.

Or at least that’s how they act in screwball comedies. Maybe that’s seen as a bad thing, but leave it to Pedro Almodovar to overcome the stereotype. Ever since “Women” he’s been making female fronted movies with as much color and surreal charm as is on display here. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”

Rapid Response: Bullitt

“Bullitt” has not fully achieved the iconic status of some of its other ’60s cop movie peers.

Despite “Bullitt” being one of the definitive ’60s cop movies and being hailed as the starting point for all modern car chases, Peter Yates’s film lacks many of the in-movie charm and out-of-movie extras that would make it iconic.

No sequels, no catch phrases, no spin-offs or copycats, not even a classic villain. It does have the green Mustang, which Ford released as a special edition model in 2008 to commemorate the film. But for all “Bullitt’s” original critical accolade and box office success in 1968, perhaps the film has simply not aged well.

That’s not to call it bad, but it’s approach does not even begin to embellish the more cathartic pleasures of the action genre. Steve McQueen as Lt. Frank Bullitt is one of the era’s flatter male leads. He lacks a backstory, an attitude and even much dialogue, regardless of McQueen’s steely glances and reserved delivery. We realize how quiet he really is when he finally does have an “outburst” near the end of the film. He does have a girlfriend in the lovely Jacqueline Bisset, but her appearances seem superfluous.

I see “Bullitt” not as a gung-ho cop mystery with a salty Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry, nor as a gritty, hard-nosed thriller like “The French Connection” (which in my view tops “Bullitt’s car chase), but as a strict procedural designed to show a cop immersed in the job, one whose tragedy is that he has no outside life. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Bullitt”

Rapid Response: Rio Bravo

Rio Bravo sets the foundation for a longstanding movie formula and is a gem at the tail-end of Howard Hawks’s career.

My 4th of July movie was a John Wayne Western, Howard Hawks’s “Rio Bravo,” and it don’t get more American than that.

According to Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies, the film was a direct response to “High Noon” (it’s been a long while since I’ve seen it, but I think it’s a bit overrated myself) in that a sheriff would never go around asking for help.

In my mind, this meant to me that “Rio Bravo” would be one of Wayne’s gruffer, stubborn performances for not asking for help, but after arresting the murderer Joe Burdette, his real reason is a noble one; he’d rather not see a bunch of innocent amateurs serve as “more targets to shoot at” for the wealthy Nathan Burdette’s men.

In fact, all of “Rio Bravo” is built on this sense of misguided morality, not logic, and it establishes a long-running formula of a hero, a hotshot kid, a drunk and an old man fighting for what’s right. Wayne’s John T. Chance (T for Trouble) is only the sheriff because it’s a job he’s been doing for a long time and is good at. Dude (Dean Martin) doesn’t have anywhere else to be because he’s a pathetic alcoholic. Stumpy (Walter Brennan) is a sly, funny old coot, but is best served staying put inside the jail. Colorado (Ricky Nelson) is good enough that he could move on if he wanted, but he sticks around because he feels needed. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Rio Bravo”