Vertigo (1958)

The worst thing that can happen to “Vertigo” after being named the Best Movie of All Time by Sight and Sound is that the movie will turn into homework.

For decades, “Citizen Kane” carried the burden of being seen as a good helping of cultural vegetables. I know how people are. They think they’ve seen a lot of movies in their life, then stumble across a list like Sight and Sound and proceed to boastfully challenge the top choice.

“I don’t see what makes it so great.” Maybe if the Sight and Sound poll weren’t treated like a figurative film canon, then maybe people wouldn’t be so quick to write off masterpieces as stodgy, arty, no fun movies for critics and old people.

So naturally upon rewatching “Vertigo” with my family, I quickly asked my dad if he knew why “Vertigo” was considered worthy of the number one spot. He gave the best answer I could’ve imagined. “Because other movies just aren’t as good?”

In terms of film auteurs, Alfred Hitchcock is far and away the most approachable, the least “challenging,” the least stodgy and often the most fun. His films are technical flourishes. Where other directors fail to set the mood, where other directors use a plot device that is all too obvious or where other directors incorporate a twist that is all too ridiculous, Hitchcock never stepped wrong.

We call him the master of suspense because he brought no-nonsense thrills into the cinema and became a household name before anyone else. If his movies lacked the emotional heft of other Old Hollywood classics, it’s because he played his films with such virtuosity and perfection that stray feelings never got in the way.

“Vertigo” on the other hand is his most personal and his most emotionally complex. That’s why this is in the number one spot; because it’s excellent. Continue reading “Vertigo (1958)”

Lawless

There are enough movies about moonshining and the Prohibition Era as there were crime families getting rich off the swill. John Hillcoat’s “Lawless” is just another one of those burning cellar lights in the Virginia countryside, and it’s hard to see why this particular story is worth telling.

“Lawless” is a dusty, brown-looking film about the three Bondurant brothers in 1931 Virginia. The oldest brother Forrest (Tom Hardy) is a legend ‘round these parts because everyone believes he’s “indestructible.” He and his brothers make an honest living of dishonesty. Legendary gangsters roll in from Chicago with Tommy Guns, and they put up with it as part of their daily routine. Even the appearance of a ruthless federal officer (Guy Pearce) doesn’t seem to phase them, as they get richer, fall in love and live like kings.

It’s more of a character drama about people with different disciplines and convictions for violence than something with a stirring plot, but you wish they had more sense and purpose in life than to just start a blood war.

Hillcoat’s film is a super violent affair that glamorizes the bloodshed without pretense or reason. They slit throats, tar and feather bootleggers, cut off people’s testicles and walk blindly into gunfire, but the characters don’t act out of family values or morality, just a misguided sense of rage and maintaining a way of living. Continue reading “Lawless”

Premium Rush

When YouTube was still in its infancy, some of the earliest viral videos I remember watching were bicyclists doing trick moves to hop up steep inclines and thread the needle in tough to reach places.

It was parkour… but with bikes!

And you know what I always thought those videos were missing? Bumbling cops chasing these daredevils for absurd comic relief.

Thankfully, “Premium Rush” delivers.

And “delivers” is the right word, because “Premium Rush” is about that most loved of all groups of people, bike couriers. Yes, now those annoying people who you just want to run over in traffic (unless they’re bringing you your Jimmy Johns) have their own movie dedicated to making you wish you were as constantly amped as they are. Continue reading “Premium Rush”

Rapid Response: Breakfast at Tiffany’s

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s” may just be the singular, classic girl movie. It may even be the first. Back in 1961 when this was released, Old Hollywood was still marketing movies to everyone, not just men or women. It also existed in a time when being chic and stylish was coveted no matter your gender.

But today ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s” the film, I can’t really speak for Truman Capote’s novel, has attained a new sensibility. Holly Golightly’s party animal sex appeal and looseness, her free-spirit conviction and her cute, yet sophisticated style and flair has made her an iconic symbol of the girls just wanna have fun lifestyle.

She has a cat too.  Continue reading “Rapid Response: Breakfast at Tiffany’s”

Rapid Response: Once

For the tiny little indie film “Once,” have its reputation, music and stars exceeded the expectations for the movie itself?

I remember falling in love with “Once,” once. It was the little Irish indie that could, a handmade love story and musical with non-actors, a budget that just barely exceeded $100k, shot with two handi-cams and in only 17 days. With hardly a story and already established music that was more folky and soothing than Top 40 radio friendly, it made it across the pond from Ireland on sheer pluck and warmth.

Since then, I became a big fan of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, The Swell Season and now Hansard’s solo work (I’ll get around to Spotifying The Frames, I promise). The “Once” soundtrack became a staple of my listening rotation, and in subsequent viewings of the film I found myself in love with both the songs and the presences.

I also remember thinking how easily something like this could be turned into a play: very small cast, no elaborate sets and a surefire collection of songs. Thankfully Broadway has done that adaptation tactfully instead of blowing it out of proportion as they usually do, and it’s not only won the Tony for Best Musical but also made a steady profit in no time at all.

In fact, everything about “Once” has made it larger than the movie itself. The film will be remembered for its Oscar and for introducing the world to Glen Hansard. But I wondered if it still held up as a movie. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Once”

The Grey

The howling of wolves seems to echo around you whichever way you turn. They don’t attack, but they let you know of their presence.

“The Grey” is a film about being surrounded. You must learn to embrace all your senses while watching it, or this film will eat you alive.

I admittedly had low expectations for “The Grey” when it was released in early January. The ads gave the gist that it was a movie about Liam Neeson fighting wolves. Awesome.

Well yes, it is. It’s a gross, claustrophobic, allegoric monster movie in everything but setting. A team of ex-convict workers take a job in Alaska and end up surviving a plane crash in the frozen tundra only to be hunted by wolves in their nesting territory. Continue reading “The Grey”

The Bourne Legacy

After four movies in the Jason Bourne franchise, the only real thing we need to know about Treadstone is that it’s bad, it’s embarrassing to the American government and it’s a PR nightmare that needs to be erased.

So why do we need “The Bourne Legacy” to tediously fill in the details in the same dry, gritty, copycat style as though it were 2+ hours of deleted footage from the Bourne trilogy?

“The Bourne Legacy” is an absurd film bogged down with an endless arsenal of uninteresting characters, pseudo-science jargon and strictly serious attitudes. It’s about as ridiculous as a Bond film but hardly any fun. Continue reading “The Bourne Legacy”

Ruby Sparks

Great fiction is almost always as good as its most interesting character. Zoe Kazan has written for herself a wonderfully infectious sprite in this film’s title character, Ruby Sparks. Her bright red hair beams off the screen, she’s charming as hell and we don’t seem to mind that’s she blatantly a mystical, hipster dream girl.

But the big problem with “Ruby Sparks” is that the film is really about Ruby’s fictional creator, Calvin (Paul Dano), and not her.

Calvin is the modern equivalent of J.D. Salinger, a visionary who wrote the next great American novel at 19, now plagued with writer’s block trying to envision the next big idea. Calvin’s surrounded by pretentious, faux-intellectuals and his shallow, sex-craved brother Harry (Chris Messina), so you can see why Calvin would feel like a hack if these were the people who admired him.

In a desperate fervor to understand himself, Calvin puts into words the girl of his dreams. In his imagination, she’s constantly backlit with God-like sunlight, and his vision of her is an amalgam of romantic quirks. She’s from Dayton, Ohio, doesn’t know how to drive, is an amateur painter, and so on. Ruby is perfect in all her imperfections. Continue reading “Ruby Sparks”

Beasts of the Southern Wild

The lovely independent film “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is set in the near future when the polar ice caps have begun to melt, the Earth is being slowly flooded and the civilized world has constructed giant levees to stave off inevitable destruction.

Many of these adults will know what it is to survive nature and the struggle of living with it. But like the film’s young hero, Hushpuppy, generations will be born with no memory of a world without water everywhere. For them, every move they’ve ever made has and will have an impact on the natural world around them.

Benh Zeitlin’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is a wondrous, poetic, beautiful film about all the things humans can do when we stop acting like people afraid of nature and start living like brave beasts that become one with the world. It’s about color, light and discovery. It’s about being loved by the world, loving it back and understanding how to truly live. It’s about facing the other beasts of the world, and doing it head on.

Doing this with such strength, conviction and attitude is Hushpuppy, played by the young, first time actress Quvenzhanè Wallis. Wallis was only 5 at the time of filming, now 8. Boy does she have the spark. Standing scrawny, but tall with a commanding pout, she owns the screen. She’s capable of it because her character believes so strongly that her actions and responsibilities have consequences on the entire universe. Hushpuppy bonds with the world, and Wallis bonds as deeply with us.

She lives on a newly formed island in the Deep South known only as The Bathtub. The ragged shacks, dirty streets and wild vegetation remind us of the images immediately after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. But politics and history are the furthest thing from this film’s mind. This community is full of life and beauty.

The camera bobbles around like an excitable child, looking up at the natural world with a short attention span to all the colors, light and details exploding from the frame. It’s as if we’re sharing Hushpuppy’s innocent perspective. We can only pin down a few specifics of what we see, but this place is home.

Contrast that with the pallid white and blue lighting of the “civilized world.” Never has such a place looked so foreign, and never has a little girl looked so lost in a cute powder blue dress. Hushpuppy and her father Wink (another first time actor, Dwight Henry) end up in the hospital after a horrible storm has nearly drowned The Bathtub. Wink has been coughing blood, and in a desperate attempt to find dry ground so he can recover, ends up blowing up a levee wall.

The heartbreaking beauty of “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is that, in her naïve innocence, Hushpuppy feels responsible for her father’s illness. She was angry at him, and his sickness seemed to send the rest of the planet into imbalance. For her, everything is connected, and she can’t let the world fall into ruin any more than she can allow her father to die.

Hushpuppy observes death and life with practical metaphors. Her childlike pronunciation achieves a poetry of its own that’s typically absent from gritty indies such as this. To her, being put on life support means being plugged into a wall. Or before there were people, all the beasts in the “Iced Age” were strong and didn’t act like “pussies.” Wallis grants the movie such authenticity by just acting her age.

And “Beasts’s” authenticity is its greatest gift. It views a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world of sorts, and yet it maintains a rustic, at home flavor that feels wondrous and fantastical. Zeitlin has the film’s tone in the right place. There are some gruesome images of poverty and the violence of Mother Nature, but it doesn’t drown the audience in depression or inundate us with parables and winning spirits. Like the tough-love fire in Wink’s eye as he yells at Hushpuppy to eat her crab not with a knife but with her bare hands, the movie has a hard-knock pluck that inspires and moves us in every moment.

It forces us to use our bodies and our hearts, not our tools of logic, to appreciate its charms. “Beasts of the Southern Wild” will demand some patience and strength to appreciate its vivid, visceral charms. But those who embrace their wild side will discover a whole new, beautiful world.

4 stars

In Need of a Franchise

There is currently a lack of a compelling action franchise in Hollywood today that isn’t attached to a book or superhero.

We need a hero.

The American movie going audience has plenty of them in spandex and intergalactic armor, but like Batman at the end of “The Dark Knight,” they’re not the heroes we need right now.

American cinema currently lacks a quality, classical, legacy franchise. We have plenty of franchises constantly in production, but very few of them match the action movie template of the ‘80s and early ‘90s that were unadulterated fun and were marketed to people other than ravenous fanboys.

These movies were original ideas that didn’t draw from comic books, graphic novels, teen romance novels or TV shows. But what’s more, they featured men and women without superpowers or futuristic gizmos who performed stunts that were ridiculous, but at least they were down to Earth. They were fun and only rarely something more. Continue reading “In Need of a Franchise”