Archive for Movies & TV

Monday Movie Reviews: Wyatt Earp

August 4, 2008 / / 3 comments

Wyatt Earp (1994) 5/10
The life of Wyatt Earp (Kevin Costner), from his early teens to old age.

Wyatt Earp is long (so! long!), ponderous, and moody. Well, not moody. Gloomy. Not dark so much as gray. It is meant, perhaps, as a character study, but after more than three hours, I didn’t feel I knew Wyatt Earp especially well, except in the broad strokes of a grief-stricken man, deeply influenced by his father’s wanderlust and devotion to family. After the death of his young wife, Wyatt goes on a bender, and then straightens up, closing off his heart and becoming a stiff and difficult man, rigid in his ideas, not all of which are good or honorable.

What comes up here for me is the difference between history and storytelling. Wyatt Earp had a complicated life that has been told and retold many times. He was in Tombstone and in Dodge City. He was friends with Doc Holiday (Dennis Quaid) and Bat Masterson (Tom Sizemore). The gunfight at the OK Corral is famous, its lead-in and aftermath less so. Earp had three long-term relationships: The aforementioned wife, and unmarried partnerships with Mattie Blaylock and Josephine Marcus.

This particular movie is determined to squeeze every fact in so as to be “true.” But truth is found in narrative, in emotional reality, in a character arc, and none of that is really here. Lives don’t happen in narrative arcs, they peak and fall, cluster events together and spread them apart, and the storyteller’s job is to create a flow out of the jumble. There’s no storyteller here, just a plodding biographer.

Helped not one bit by James Newton Howard‘s overstated soundtrack. I don’t often mention soundtracks in my reviews, but this is just egregious. “Let’s go,” Earp says in his “This is a Western line” way, and zing go the strings to underscore it. Oy vey.

Finally, let’s talk a little about Costner. He gets plenty of hate from some film buffs, but I like him fine. He’s a good everyman, a regular Joe in the Jimmy Stewart mold (complete with twangy accent). He’s done wonderfully as that guy in Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, and lots more. (I always thought someone who could make two baseball movies in a row and have them be distinct and different and interesting had some chops.)

But these very qualities make him all wrong for Wyatt Earp. I think there’s no doubt that the real Earp was a charismatic figure; he had a strong influence over his brothers, many of whom were strong men themselves; it was Virgil, not Wyatt, who was the Marshall in Tombstone during the OK Corrall incident. He had passionate romances and deep friendships with colorful characters who respected him. In real life, he must surely have had the presence that someone like Burt Lancaster was able to bring to his portrayal. Costner is unable to show why everyone is so fascinated by the guy.

More non-movies

July 21, 2008 / / 12 comments

I didn’t watch a single movie this week. Nor did I write up a God of the Week, only a couple of weeks after starting the feature.

Arthur and I are deeply, deeply committed to So You Think You Can Dance. That’s three hours of TV a week, so that definitely cuts into the movie-watching. I love the show. I love the beauty and excitement of the dance, and I love that it’s committed to dance as an art form. It doesn’t “tart up” the dancing too much to make it crowd-pleasing. I mean, sure it does. But the producers and judges also pay attention to the technical and artistic integrity of dance; this ain’t no Dancing with the Stars. And I find that I care about it; about the people and about the pure artistry. We talk about it all week long.

We’re also catching up on our Angel DVDs. I bought all five seasons. Many of the shows we’ve seen only once, so this is a real pleasure. Except when it isn’t. Some episodes really don’t hold up. I’ve watched the 14 episodes of Firefly four or five times straight through, and none of them get tired, but the whole Pylea excursion in Season 2 is mostly only fun once. Don’t get me wrong, there’s great stuff here, but rewatching it is educational.

Speaking of the Whedonverse, I am probably the only Whedon fan who is unimpressed with Dr. Horrible. Neal Patrick Harris is awesome, but it’s a whole lot of mildly amusing for me.

Monday Movie Review: Hellboy II: The Golden Army

July 14, 2008 / / 3 comments

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) 7/10
Hellboy (Ron Perlman), a demon foundling raised by humans, works for a secret US government agency that combats supernatural threats. Together with Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) and Hellboy’s girlfriend Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), they must prevent Prince Nuada of the Fairy (Luke Goss) from raising the indestructible Golden Army in a final war against humankind. Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro.

The first Hellboy movie created a conventional Judeo-Christian universe of evil demons and dark forces that must be battled by warriors of light. Hellboy is a demon struggling with a massive nature vs. nurture conflict. This is almost invariably how the supernatural is portrayed in movies and on TV; anything supernatural is either evil or deeply conflicted, and has a connection to Hell. The original movie also connected Nazis and demons, which is a comforting way of viewing evil; it is large and colorful and Satanic, rather than banal.

This movie drops all of that and posits a mythic, even Pagan, worldview. There are mythic beings and there are humans, and they war because they are different, with neither being evil. Hellboy II explores the nature of these worlds living side-by-side, and the anger in the mythic realm at the increasingly destructive presence of humans. Again, Hellboy is asked to choose sides; he sure doesn’t look like he belongs among the humans. This is all much more interesting than the same-old-same-old Dark Evil Forces™ storyline, so I wish it had occured in a better movie.

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed myself; Hellboy II brings a lot to the table. But it’s also cliché-ridden, and del Toro doesn’t know how to construct a plot worthy of his premise. Hellboy’s conflicts with Liz are lowest-common-denominator stuff—they fight because he’s messy? Really? She claims it points to a deeper problem, but can’t articulate what that problem is. Instead, the conflict devolves into a (very, very funny) comedic scene of the two guys (Hellboy and Abe) getting drunk and whining about relationships. Most of the structure is on the too-easy-to-write side; meet the new boss, encounter with villains from a childhood story, supernatural artifacts at an auction, Liz has a secret that Abe knows and doesn’t know how to tell Hellboy, the sidekick gets smitten with the beautiful new character. Some of the folkloric elements are absolutely delightful, but the elven beings bear too much resemblance to Tolkein, and the garbled Irish mythology (Nuada is the son of Balor? And has a twin sister?) doesn’t help.

What does help is a fantastic cast and great visual beauty. Ron Perlman is, again, perfect. Something about him is so much larger than life that, in the monster makeup, he’s life-sized and utterly human. Selma Blair can bring depth and complexity to a shampoo commercial, and newcomer Anna Walton is haunting as Nuala. These are well-drawn and interesting characters, and the actors really embody them.

So, yeah, it’s a summer blockbuster. Stupid plot tricks are easy enough to forgive. It’s a fun movie a cut above the typical fun movie. And by the way? Two silly scenes that seemed like they would get old and never did; I laughed and laughed.

Monday Not-Movie Review: “Mad Men” Season 1

July 7, 2008 / / Comments Off on Monday Not-Movie Review: “Mad Men” Season 1

Mad Men Season 1 (2007) 10/10
It’s 1960 and Don Draper is the Creative Director of Sterling Cooper, a mid-sized Madison Avenue advertising company. The series follows the lives and uncovers the secrets of Don, his secretary Peggy, the staff of Sterling Cooper, and their families.

Okay, so I haven’t watched a movie in two weeks. Has that ever happened before? But my Mad Men DVDs came, and I’m obsessed with this show. Yes, so obsessed I’ve got a blog.

You’re probably not watching Mad Men, even though it was on everybody’s “Best of 2007” list and won awards and shit, because it wasn’t well-promoted. But season 2 starts on July 27 (AMC, 10pm Eastern), and there’s a season 1 marathon on July 20 (AMC, noon-1am), and you can watch the first episode of season 1 online. But why do you care?

Each Mad Men episode is constructed like a movie. The strongest influences on th show are The Apartment and the films of Alfred Hitchcock. (If the opening credits don’t remind you of Vertigo, and Saul Bass in general, you’re not paying attention.) I was noticing that episode 3 pulls a trick that Notorious is famous for; it folds in on itself. In Notorious, it’s a back-to-front reflection, with the final scene echoing the first scene, the penultimate scene echoing the second, until it meets in the middle. In the Mad Men episode Marriage of Figaro, it’s divided in two; the first half in the city on a Friday, the second half in the suburbs the next day. Each half begins and ends similarly, with similar events happening throughout. You don’t really notice it cognitively (unless you study it obsessively) but it gets under your skin, building the sense of claustrophobia in the second half.

I could choose any episode to discuss its imagery and motifs. Episode 5, Babylon, is about exile, and we see people isolated from each other, strangers in their own lives, romances that cannot be, and the longing for a promised land. We see that simply, in scenes of home life, extramarital affairs, and advertising pitches.

Much has been made of the pitch-perfect depiction of the era, complete with smoking, drinking on the job, rampant sexism and sexual harrassment, and routine racism and anti-Semitism. Yet Mad Men is one of the most feminist shows on television. One episode focuses on female desire, and two female characters discover masturbation; one of whom is even able to discuss it (albeit with an enormous amount of hemming and hawing and blushing and shuffling). These are women discovering whether or not they can be free, and can succeed, and can have their own lives, and desire is an important part of that.

On Mad Men, no one behaves predictably, and everyone has a secret self they dare not share. They hide desire, they hide rage, they hide mistakes. And, like real people, the things they say are not the things they think; words are masks; they are advertising pitches, not truth.

The DVD package is robust. The first release is a limited edition box that resembles a Zippo lighter. Some people have reported trouble fitting the DVDs back into the fancy but perhaps impractical box (I’m not having trouble). The extras are top-notch, including commentary tracks for each episode (often more than one), and several high quality additional features.

If you watch the first episode (which I strongly recommend), you may be irked by a couple of coy jokes (like the line about how there’s “no magic machine that makes copies”). That’s not what the show is about, and the winking is pretty much gone by episode 2. Other than that, I think the first episode is an excellent representation of the series.

Monday Movie Review: The Eagle Has Landed

June 30, 2008 / / 2 comments

The Eagle Has Landed (1976) 8/10
In the final days of World War II, an unlikely plan to kidnap Winston Churchill seems as if it might succeed. Directed by John Sturges.

I believe this is what is meant by a “corker.” What a cast of characters! What a delightful assortment of oddities and quirks, and what an adventure!

The oddest thing about The Eagle Has Landed is that our “heroes” are all Nazis or Nazi collaborators. Tom Mankiewicz‘s screenplay goes to great lengths to give most of them motivations that are palatable to the audience; Col. Steiner (Michael Caine), for example, is court-marshalled for attempting to help a Jewish woman escape being transported to a concentration camp. But Himmler (Donald Pleasance) has given the highest authority to this kidnapping plot, and so Col. Radl (Robert Duvall) gets Steiner and his men—crack paratroopers—released.

The fact remains, you’re rooting for Nazis. It’s “safe” to do so because you know their plot fails and the war is essentially already lost, and because there is virtually no Nazism per se in the film (except for a brief remark about the “order” that England lacks). It’s pretty much World War II as convenient backdrop for an adventure story.

And it really is a terrific adventure, with a little humor, a little slapstick, a lot of action, and a touch of romance. Donald Sutherland, as an Irishman working to defeat England to further the cause of a united Ireland, is terrific. He arrives in a small village, where Churchill is scheduled to vacation, in advance of the paratroopers; befriending locals, learning the lay of the land, and preparing for the attack. Meanwhile, he gets into fights, falls for a local girl, and does a generally poor job of maintaining a low profile. He’s certainly the best part of the movie.

(And by the way, this movie passes Mo’s Movie Measure: The interaction of local women is crucial, even though most of the characters are men.)

You can already tell it’s a kickass cast, and I didn’t even mention Jean Marsh, Larry Hagman, Treat Williams, or Jenny Agutter. The movie looks good (production design by Bond veteran Peter Murton) and moves beautifully.

The primary downside is the accents, many of which swallow the German names so badly that I had to use the IMDb to figure out who was who.

There’s less to say about this film because it’s fundamentally meaningless; it’s meant only for fun, and it provides fun. It’s one of those movie that makes the rounds on television, and it’s worth catching.

Monday Movie Review: The Apartment

June 23, 2008 / / 2 comments

The Apartment (1960) 10/10
Insurance actuary C.C. “Bud” Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a bachelor who allows managers to use his apartment for their adulterous trysts, hoping that he’ll curry favor and earn a promotion. He has a crush on elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), but his ambitions and his relationship hopes may be in conflict. Directed by Billy Wilder.

The worst thing about The Apartment is that it is categorized as a “romantic comedy,” and while technically there is both comedy and romance, it is so far from that genre as to confuse the viewer who might be expecting something more along the lines of, I dunno, Notting Hill. The Apartment is best appreciated as a dark story—with comedic moments and a touching romance—about ambition, compromise, and treating people as less than people.

The first time I saw it, I had rom-com expectations, and I couldn’t get comfortable with the darkness. What is this movie? You want to stick it in a genre, but it doesn’t fit. So the second time I saw it, I knew it would be dark, and I let go of even thinking of it as a comedy. Definitely a not-comedy with funny scenes, but it’s not sorrow or angst that makes it not-comedy, it’s hatefulness, disregard for human decency, and a system working to crush the relative goodness of Baxter and Fran.

Again, when I first saw the movie I thought of Bud Baxter as a nebbish, and again, this is because a nebbishy, put-upon character is a cliché in such movies, and Lemmon’s character fits into the slot where such a nebbish would be. I hate those characters in films; I hate cringing, it’s one of the reasons I don’t watch many comedies.

But I saw a brief summary of the film somewhere that referred to Baxter as “ambitious.” Not put-upon, not abused by his higher-ups. “Ambitious.” And that made me rethink the film quite a lot. When I saw it again, I saw that Baxter isn’t abused by his bosses, although they take advantage of him and treat him like crap, he tolerates it willingly, not because he doesn’t know how to say no (nebbish) but because it will help him achieve his goals (ambitious). The minute the abusive managers can no longer help him, Baxter is entirely able to, and in fact delighted to, say no.

Which paints him in a different light, no? He’s a decent guy, who cares about people, but he is climbing up the ladder, corporate-wise, and he is okay with compromising himself to do so.

The managers are slimey sons-of-bitches, beautifully portrayed by Ray Walston (whose skull you kind of want to crush), Fred MacMurray (who’s more a punch in the face and then stab in the gut sort), and others. MacLaine is a vision, delicate, vulnerable, honest, and Lemmon gives a nuanced performance of a man trying to be true to himself and discovering how complex that can be. Both deserved their Oscar nominations.

There is a lot going on here about American business. Baxter really cares about insurance; he thinks and communicates in actuarial numbers. The higher you go up the management ladder, the less people care, but the product is significant, the numbers are significant. Look at how that changes: By the time of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), no one in the company knows what their product even is. And yes, How to Succeed… is significantly more comedic, but it’s also more cynical. In the seven years between the two films, the notion of a corporate “home” became darker and darker.

The underlying message seems to be that the purpose of rising up the corporate ladder is to crush others, and Baxter has to choose whether or not to be crushed, and whether or not to crush Fran and anyone else who happens to be in the way. What’s interesting, and what makes the performance so great, is that you aren’t really all that sure what his choice will be, even though he’s a lovable guy.

Tuesday Trivia: This Time, It’s Literary

June 10, 2008 / / 33 comments

It has been said that movies and literature go together like bananas and sardines1; that banana/sardine synergy is the subject of this week’s Tuesday Trivia quiz. Your task is to identify an actor who has appeared in adaptations of the work of all three listed authors; for example, if I gave you Tom Robbins, William Gibson, and William Shakespeare, you might answer Keanu Reeves (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Johnny Mnemonic, and Much Ado About Nothing or My Own Private Idaho). For extra credit: one of the actors I have in mind also appears in the work of a fourth (unnamed) author (who should be very familiar to Deborah’s readers).

Get it? Got it. Good.

  1. Dashiell Hammett, Somerset Maugham, Fyodor Dostoevsky
    [solved by Maurinsky, comment #6]
  2. Jane Austen, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Leo Tolstoy
    [solved by Melville, comment #1]
  3. Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton, Lawrence Sterne
    [solved by Hogan, comment #3]
  4. Charles Dodgson, Ernest Hemingway, John O’Hara
    [solved by Melville, comment #8]
  5. Steven King, Graham Greene, Raymond Chandler
    [solved by Hogan, comment #10]
  6. Philip K. Dick, Robert Howard, August Strindberg
    [solved by Melville, comment #2]
  7. Samuel Clemens, William Thackeray, John Steinbeck
    [solved by Melville, comment #13]

Note: I have one person in mind for each of these, but if you identify someone else who qualifies you will of course get full credit (and the question will remain open).

1I just said it, so it has in fact been said.

Monday Movie Review: The Savages

June 9, 2008 / / Comments Off on Monday Movie Review: The Savages

The Savages (2007) 8/10
John Savage (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his sister Wendy (Laura Linney) are faced with placing their estranged father (Philip Bosco) in a nursing home.

You might have to talk yourself into seeing this one, because the description sounds relentlessly sad. The previews tried to overcome this by showing funny lines and painting it as a family comedy. But The Savages is neither relentlessly sad nor a family comedy. Instead it is a human story about flawed, struggling people with a surprising naturalism to their relationships. For several days after seeing it, I felt John and Wendy as if I knew them. Over a course of days, I gained understanding about their flaws and their behaviors, just as I do with people I know, when I mull over the things they do and say.

Particularly striking is the way that John and Wendy interact like siblings; a little dependent, a little defensive, a little loving, and very, very familiar.

It is impossible to discuss The Savages without comparing it to You Can Count On Me. Both are movies about the relationship between a brother and sister (both times played by Linney) who have not really grown up. In You Can Count on Me, the Prescott siblings are arrested at the emotional age they were when their parents were killed in a car crash; in The Savages, it’s when they were abandoned by their mother (who went out to dinner and never came back). In both, Linney’s character is acting out her childish neediness by having an affair with a married man. And, too, both are very good movies.

John and Wendy’s names are obviously a reference to Peter Pan, but instead of feeling hammered with the “won’t grow up” theme, I thought about the odd, disconnected parents who thought that was a clever thing to name their kids. The reference is never explictly mentioned on-screen (thank God!). Even the names end up with an additional subtlety, as I noticed that “savage” is something like the opposite of “darling.”

The Savages, as a family, are not clichéd, and sometimes that feels surprising. John is a failure at relationships; he is allowing his long-time girlfriend to return to Poland rather than marry her. He is defensive about his weight, and his house is a mess. Yet he is steady, and thoughtful, and comforting, and Wendy knows she can count on him. Wendy is the flighty, irresponsible one, yet she, too, has a lot more to her than is readily apparent. They are not their character sketches; they are people.

And that’s what I keep coming back to. I could tell you more about the story and the characters, but what I keep coming back to is the people-ness of John and Wendy, and how I felt like I’d spent time with smart, sad, interesting people who I was glad to get to know.

Monday Movie Review: Iron Man

May 26, 2008 / / Comments Off on Monday Movie Review: Iron Man

Iron Man (2008) 7/10
Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) is a boy-genius weapons developer and one of the richest men in the world. In Afghanistan to demonstrate a new missile, he is kidnapped and ordered to build the missile for his kidnappers. With the equipment his captors provide and the assistance of another imprisoned scientist (Shaun Taub), he invents a device to keep the shrapnel in his chest from invading his heart and killing him, and creates an Iron Man suit to effect his escape. Directed by John Favreau.

I could totally review The Apartment, but here I have that rare occasion when I’ve actually gone to a blockbustery movie on a holiday weekend, and okay, not “the” blockbustery movie, but whatever. So I feel obligated to review Iron Man.

There is something about the Iron Man comics that has always been a little stiff, a little stodgy, a little “establishment.” Tony Stark is that rare creature among superheroes; his job is basically not threatened by his secret, nor is his day to day life made particularly more difficult. Okay, sure, heart condition. But the iron suit helps that, it doesn’t cause it. Iron Man comics, even when they were a brand new thing, somehow seemed Old Guard; he’s about America and Industry and he’s got that kind of Bruce Wayne wealth and power and butler and women, and all of that adds up to, “They made a movie? Really? What for?”

On the other side of the equation is Robert Downey, Jr. Hollywood was clamoring to Give That Man a Franchise, which was a damn good idea. Downey is at the peak of his watchability in this film, he is infinitely entertaining to just slap up on the screen and let him do his thing, which Favreau (a talented director who tends towards the very-good-but-not-great) is smart enough to let him do.

Most first superhero movies have 3 parts; the origin, the becoming a hero, and the actual adventure. And most such movies spend too little time on the actual adventure. Iron Man definitely suffers here; the origin in Afghanistan could easily lose twenty percent; the invention of the super-sophisticated suit back home could lose thirty. But for all of those scenes, Downey is on-screen approximately one hundred percent of the time, and every time your mind wanders he pulls you back.

This is a good cast; Terence Howard and Gwyneth Paltrow are both far better than they have the right or reason to be, Jeff Bridges phones it in, but his telephone work is better than most actors live. Shaun Taub is wonderful. But this is a one-man show and the movie would, in a word, stink without Downey.

Everything that isn’t Downey is technology and effects, and they are damn good. The suit both looks like the comic book version and is believable; it blends with the rest of the action, and that’s not easy; we’ve seen plenty of movies screw that up. The script avoids several clichés that had me cringing when I thought I saw them coming; only the villain is cardboard.

There’s an ending that kind of irritated me and charmed me in equal parts, and then a post-credits bonus ending that is delightful. So stick around for the very end.

So You Think You Can Dance & The FAT Guy

May 23, 2008 / / 7 comments

Oh NOES! FAT PEOPLE!

…is basically the attitude, right? Scary to even think of a fat person on a dance show. And this guy actually lifted his shirt to show his big fat belly during his dance, so of course that clip made the “coming up” segment before every commercial. Let’s laugh at the fat person!

But I happen to love So You Think You Can Dance so I decided to set aside my strong misgivings about the way fat people are treated and watch the season premiere last night. Overall, it wasn’t a great premiere; a lot more focus on gawking at the losers than at showcasing dance, but let’s get back to Fat Guy.

First, we are gawking at a fat guy. And not just any fat guy, a weird fat guy with a fur hat. Lookie! Fat people can’t dance, they can only do shtick. And that’s a choice. Hundreds upon hundreds of people auditioned; a dozen got shown on TV; fur hat guy was not the only big person who auditioned, so the choice was, let’s show someone laughable.

Second, the judges leap right into OMG FAT WILL KILL YOU. It’s unhealthy. We’re telling you this for your own good.

But there were a couple of things that I actually liked. Crazy, right?

First of all, these judges are choreographers and former dancers, so I have a certain sympathy for any anti-fat prejudice they may have; they are from a world where it is so much the norm, I kind of doubt they’ve been exposed to any alternate views. What Nigel ultimately said to the guy was this: ‘Every dancer’s heart rate goes up when they dance; health is measured by how quickly your heart rate comes back down. And look, you’re still panting. That’s not okay.’

That’s great advise, because it’s not about weight; if he’s fat and not panting that’s healthy, and if he’s thin and panting that’s unhealthy. So yay Nigel.

Finally, Mia pointed out that the guy’s written bio said he didn’t want to be a thin dancer, and she asked him about it, and the conversation got to that he didn’t think he was a good enough dancer to compete with “real” dancers, he just thought his size and costume made him amusing to watch. And Mia engaged that directly, telling him to learn to love himself and not to pigeonhole himself, and that perhaps he could be a great dancer but he needed to let go his own preconceptions and find out. And after the initial question about his size, she never added “and lose weight,” which I thought was miraculous.

Maybe it’s the tyranny of soft expectations. Maybe it’s like being so happy that a woman is allowed to get a job in a traditionally male field that you tolerate the lower pay. But after that offensive promo spot, there was something lovely about engaging with the guy as if he was a real human being. Fancy that.

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