Sullivan’s Travels (1941) **

Preston Sturges is one of my favorite Classic Hollywood directors; I am especially fond of his The Lady Eve (1941) and The Palm Beach Story (1942). His brand of sophisticated comedy is risqué and witty, just like my other favorite director from the period: Ernst Lubitsch.  What I appreciate most about Sturges’ is his ability to successfully blend sophistication into a screwball comedy—that’s why I adore The Lady Eve. And, that is also why I was somewhat let down by Sullivan’s Travels (1941). Now, I’m not saying it’s not a good film—I just found it uneven. If I were a psychiatrist I would diagnose it as manic depressive. At times it is a screwball comedy and then it turns into a drama, and then it’s a comedy and then back to a dramatic social commentary. 

John L. Sullivan, aka Sully, (Joel McCrea) is a successful Hollywood director who specializes in lightweight comedies but longs to make movies about the human condition.  No more Ants in Your Pants for Sully—he wants the studio to back his O Brother Where Art Thou?  To prove he’s capable of telling an honest and powerful story about the sufferings of everyday people in the Depression Era, Sully decides to disguise himself as a hobo and live amongst them. However, the head of the studio (Robert Warwick) wants none of this and enlists a team to follow his prized director around in a RV.  Of course, this would never work, and so Sully gets them to leave him alone after an incredibly wild, slapstick chase scene that would have made the Keystone Cops green with envy. Soon after this he meets a young Hollywood ingénue (Veronica Lake) at a diner who buys him a cup of coffee and some ham and eggs.  Down on her luck and wanting to escape the perils of the casting couch, the girl (really, she’s never given a name) becomes his traveling companion.  Even after she learns who he really is and that he’s involved in a “noble experiment” she continues on the road with him to soup kitchens and shelters.  Eventually they return to Hollywood and seem to be destined for happiness (if he can ever get a divorce from his harpy wife [Jan Buckingham]), but things go awry when Sully is mugged by a hobo and believed to be dead. 

Okay, how can you start your film off with a rip-roaring, hilarious chase scene and then about halfway into the movie launch into a heavy social commentary about the hardships of the poor?  Heck, not only is it heavy, but it’s also silent.  That’s right, the master of witty repartee made a mini-silent film around the halfway mark of this movie.  Yes, it’s quite effective in conveying the despair of the downtrodden, but I thought this was supposed to be a comedy? What the hell?  And, then it goes back to being a comedy for a few minutes and the next thing I know Sully is working on a chain gang run by the father (Alan Bridge) of the Captain from Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Jess Lee Brooks is leading a black church congregation in singing “Go Down Moses” (i.e. the classic refrain, “Let My People Go”). Double what the hell? Can you see how I found Sullivan’s Travels a tad uneven and in need of a bottle of lithium? I know Sturges was attempting to poke fun at the likes of Frank Capra and Leo McCarey, but he fell in league with them here with this script.  Perhaps this is why Sullivan’s Travels didn’t receive one single Oscar nomination.

Overall, the acting performances are quite good. McCrea is his usual even self, and I must admit, he does shine in the dramatic scenes.  Like any Sturges production, there are some stock character actors who steal several scenes. Robert Grieg and Eric Blore are delightful as Sully’s servants. They had some of the best lines in the film. I wish they’d been in more scenes—perhaps some of the ones in which Veronica Lake stood around doe-eyed and pouty.  Not long after she said, “Give him some ham and eggs,” I couldn’t get over the fact that I knew both Sturges and McCrea grew to despise her over the course of the production.  To say that her acting range was limited would be kind.

I think I would have liked Sullivan’s Travels more if it had been more Ants in Your Pants and less O Brother Where Art Thou?—of course, I don’t mean the Coen Brother’s 2000 film starring my husband, Mr. Clooney. They named their film that in honor of Sturges and this movie, though.  I agree about Sturges…a little less about Sullivan’s Travels, though. 

Jurassic Park (1993) **

I’m one of those people who as a child could have cared less about dinosaurs. I never had a desire to learn all of the dinosaur names or go to museums and look at their skeletal remains. When I visited the Field Museum in Chicago I was more interested in looking at the Aztec, Inca and Maya collections that anything else.  As such, it should come as no surprise that I just wasn’t that into director Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993). Yes, there are a lot of stunning visuals (CGI can work miracles), and it is somewhat interesting to see what dinosaurs might have looked like, but that’s really all I can say for this horror/disaster film. 

Michael Crichton was paid $500,000 to adapt his best-selling novel, Jurassic Park, for this Spielberg and Universal Pictures enterprise.  Crichton was aided in this endeavor by fellow screenwriter David Koepp, who cut out large segments of violence from the novel and simplified the final screenplay. Still, the movie justly garnered a PG-13 rating—there was more than enough violence and terror for me, let alone the minds of young children, whose parents still took them to see this $900 million world-wide grossing adventure.  Oh, and bought them the t-shirts, lunch boxes, and other merchandise that made this one of the most profitable franchises ever—two sequels and a river adventure at Universal Resort created what seems like an endless revenue stream. 

If you think about it it is more than bizarre that there is Jurassic Park River Adventure at Universal Resort.  The film is about a dinosaur theme park (Jurassic Park) situated somewhere near Costa Rica that has some liability and security issues—namely man-eating dinosaurs.  Why would anyone who has seen humans terrorized by giant reptiles want to go on a vacation to a resort that mimics many aspects of the film?  Granted, the dinosaurs aren’t real, but this doesn’t negate the fact that Jurassic Park was most assuredly not the happiest place on earth. 

Seeing the life-size dinosaurs and the lush rainforest were both highlights.  Spielberg has a unique talent for creating stunning visuals for his adventure movies.  He and cinematographer Dean Cundey produced lasting images with the help of the special effects of Stan Winston, Phil Tippett, Michael Lantieri, and Dennis Muren.  Enhanced by a memorable musical score by John Williams, Jurassic Park’s visuals are truly a sight to see.

Ah, but stunning visuals does not make me love a movie.  The story itself is utterly ridiculous.  Could a man (Sam Neill) really safely navigate through lush terrain infested with carnivorous dinosaurs?  But wait, he has to drag along two kids (Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello), too? 

When you have a lot of screaming and running something usually happens to the quality of acting—this film is no exception.  Laura Dern relies on a variety of facial expressions for emotive purposes, and Neill just looks pissed off in most scenes.  Richard Attenborough, who plays the eccentric owner of the park, fully delves into his character’s quirkiness.  Quite simply, this movie does not rely on the performances of the humans to push it along—that honor rests solely with the CGI created dinosaurs. 

Final analysis: extraordinary visuals; ridiculous plot; and, lackluster cast.  One out of three isn’t necessarily bad, but it is definitely not good, either. 

1900 (Novecento) 1976 **

 

So this film is really long—really long: 317 minutes.  I’m not always opposed to films that take an inordinate amount of time to watch. I liked Shoah (1985), War and Peace (1967), and Fanny and Alexander (1983). But then there are films like director Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 (1976), which seem to drag on for way too long.  Granted, Bertolucci was working for a producer (Alberto Grimaldi) who locked him out of the editing room, but someone had to shoot all of that footage in the first place, now didn’t they?  There are two versions of this movie, one with a run time of 245-minutes and another with 317.  I had the not so pleasure of watching the NC-17 version which runs 317—graphic violence, nudity, and explicit sex abounds.

The story begins in 1900 when two boys are born on the same day at the Berlinghieri plantation in Emilia, Italy.  Alfredo Berlinghieri (Robert De Niro) is the grandson of the padrone (Burt Lancaster), while Olmo Dalcò (Gerard Depardieu) is the illegitimate grandson of the plantation’s foreman (Sterling Hayden). Despite their social positions the boys become friends, and the movie traces the unlikely pairing’s intersecting lives until 1945 (Liberation Day). Along the way we learn that Alfredo is a bit of a coward and Olmo is nobly heroic, but that doesn’t mean that one is more likable than the other.  When Olmo becomes involved with the Socialist movement there is a visible darkness to his personality; whereas, Alfredo always seems more accepting of others’ oddities (he idolizes his gay uncle [Werner Bruhns] and marries a crazy woman [Dominique Sanda]). The complexity of Alfredo and Olmo’s friendship is the best thing about the entire film.

Of course we couldn’t have an Italian movie set between 1900-1945 that didn’t examine the rise of the Fascists and the would-be liberation of the Italian peasants.  Bertolucci’s political metaphor is heavy-handed, and, at times, difficult to stomach (he obviously had certain leanings).  His decision to make the psychotic and sadistic overseer of the Berlinghieri plantation the face of Fascism was telling. Naming said overseer Attila (Donald Sutherland) and pairing him with a woman as deranged as him (Laura Betti) was just an added bonus.  Sutherland plays his character in such an over-the-top manner that it borders on camp.  I blame Bertolucci for this—a better director would have reigned in this cartoonish performance.

Still, the production values of 1900 are top-notch. As usual Ennio Morricone creates a memorable score and soundtrack, and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro exquisitely captures the Italian countryside.  For the most part the set designs and costumes are period appropriate, but something happened in the editing room—not enough cuts!  Franco Arcalli and Grimaldi did a great disservice by not trimming a lot of excess nonsense.  I don’t know if I can blame them alone, though, as it was Bertolucci who thought it was a good idea to shoot prolonged scenes with full frontal male nudity, and, most absurdly, a scene where Lancaster attempts to get an erection so he can molest a peasant girl.  Oh, and lest I forget the scenes where Sutherland kills both a cat and a young boy.  Did Bertolucci really have to shoot such graphic scenes of depravity to illustrate that Attila was a mean bastard?  Ick!

Besides the friendship of Alfredo and Olmo, what I liked most about 1900 is that I got to see Depardieu when he was handsome.  It sounds a bit shallow, but since he has now morphed into a bloated old Frenchmen, it is nice to remember that he used to be a somewhat good looking man. 

 

The Story of a Cheat (Le Roman d’un Tricheur) 1936 **

Never heard of this film or its director, writer, and star, Sacha Guitry?  If you answered yes, you are probably not alone.  Guitry was a prolific French playwright who liked to make cynical films (he directed 33). So, how did such a busy director fall into obscurity?  He fell in with the wrong crowd—notably, he collaborated with the Nazis during WWII.  Guitry has only recently be reintroduced to the cinematic world due to a 4-film DVD collection issued by the Criterion Collection.  Having seen the four films, I can honestly say that Le Roman d’un Tricheur (1936) was my least favorite of the group. 

Guitry plays the Cheat (we never learn his name) and narrates 99% of the film. That’s right, this is in almost every way a silent film.  His voiceover replaces the title cards, and, save the last two minutes of the film, no character speaks a word.  The only other sound you hear is Adolphe Borchard’s music (good thing he was introduced in the odd intro to the movie!). Okay, by 1936 the only other person I recall making silents was Chaplin—and let me tell you, Guitry is most assuredly no Chaplin.  At first, you expect the narration to soon come to an end, then as time continues and so does the narration you try to remember when they started making talkies in France—1929? 1930? Then, by the time you remember, Guitry decides to end his picture by allowing spoken dialogue for the last few minutes—what was the point, then?  It seems gimmicky—and I don’t like gimmicks.

Le Roman d’un Tricheur’s screenplay was adapted from Guitry’s novel Les Mémoires d'un Tricheur. The story itself is somewhat interesting: a boy is saved from eating poisonous mushrooms due to having stolen money from his father and being deprived of that night’s dinner.  While in his heart he wants to be an honest man, the Cheat always seems to find himself involved with people (mostly women) who want to lure him into various acts of theft. His reflections on Monte Carlo and Monaco are hilarious, and there is an abundance of irony throughout.

Still, the humor of the Le Roman d’un Tricheur is not enough for me to overlook just how drawn-out the film seems (and it was only 81 minutes!). Perhaps it’s the idea of being directly spoken to for 79 minutes that makes it seem so long and, at times, boring.  In France, Guitry was viewed as an ego-maniac…maybe that had something to do with his choice to be the only voice heard throughout most of the film. 

Overall, I was not impressed with Le Roman d’un Tricheur.  Now, if you want to see a good Guitry movie, I suggest Désiré, which is far more entertaining. 

The Big Lebowski (1998) **

A plethora of who’s who comprises the cast of this 1998 Coen Brothers comedy about a case of mistaken identity gone terribly awry.  The Big Lebowski is chock full of memorable performances and has a far-out plot loosely based on the 1939 Raymond Chandler novel, The Big Sleep (which was first made into a movie in 1946, starring Humphrey Bogart as Detective Philip Marlowe). Like many early Coen Brothers’ films this was not a commercial success; however, over the years it has become a cult favorite. While I’m not a huge fan of this, I do admire the acting and the bizarre plot.

Jeff Bridges plays “The Dude” (AKA Jeffrey Lebowski), a white Russian-drinking and pot-smoking slacker who likes to bowl.  The Dude’s world becomes complicated when a porn kingpin named Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara) sends his goons to the wrong Jeffrey Lebowski’s house looking for payment of Jeffrey’s wife Bunny’s (Tara Reid) debts. The thugs soon realize they have the wrong Lebowski, but not before one of them urinates on his rug. Why is this important?  Because after relaying this story to his bowling buddies one of them, a crazy Vietnam vet named Walter (John Goodman), convinces him that he should make the other Lebowski pay to have the rug cleaned. This is how The Dude meets the Big Lebowski (David Huddleston), a wheel-chaired millionaire married to a slutty trophy wife.  Soon after Bunny is kidnapped and The Dude is asked to serve as the bagman for the ransom. What ensues is one of the most peculiar story plots in the history of motion pictures—but what should you expect, it is the Coen Brothers after all.

What I like about most Coen Brothers’ films is that they are always unique in their own special way.  This one has a quirky hippie vibe—what with The Dude always smoking a doobie and Walter constantly referring to ‘Nam—but it also has a biting edge to it, especially when depicting the art world and nihilism.  Somehow these people from completely different social spectrums meet and create a chaos that is, well, rather paradoxically, a form of artistic nihilism.  While the story has some fat that could be trimmed (specifically the two appearances of Sam Elliott as “The Stranger”), overall most of the pieces of the messy plot come together in the end.

As for the acting, just about every character is memorably played by some of the finest actors in Hollywood today. However, there are three performances that standout above the rest.  First, John Turturro is virtually unrecognizable as Jesus, a bowling rival of The Dude’s team.  Playing a Latino with a heavy Cuban accent who went to prison for exposing himself to an eight-year-old girl, Turturro plays on every stereotype you can imagine.  Jesus’ clothes are way too tight, he is overtly sexual, and his machismo is beyond measure.  For such a small part, it turned out to be one of Turturro’s most memorable.

The second standout performance has to be Julianne Moore as Maude Lebowski, the Big Lebowski’s estranged daughter.  When you make your entrance in an overhead harness completely nude you must have gusto.  Playing an avant-garde artist with no inhibitions, Moore makes you pay attention to every word that comes out of her mouth in a clipped, faux British accent.  Maude would be pretentious if she weren’t so damn serious!  Some of the words that come out of Moore’s mouth would sound so wrong if they weren’t delivered by an actress who knew how to play her part to the fullest.

Finally, while I know Bridges is the star of the movie, it is Goodman who is the standout.  I don’t know what it is, but he has a habit of stealing whatever film he is in—even as a co-star or in a cameo performance.  His Walter is the most memorable thing about The Big Lebowski. Extremely gifted when it comes to voice inflection, body language, and most definitely facial expressions, Goodman turns what otherwise would have been an irritating idiotic sidekick into an exasperating psychopathic wingman. Whether he is jumping out of a moving car or interrogating a teenage boy, or most memorably throwing a paralyzed man to the ground, Walter is outrageously believable.  For me, if there is one reason to watch The Big Lebowski it is Goodman—he is most assuredly not an amateur.

Overall, this is a typical Coen Brothers’ comedy: uniquely written and strongly acted. Other than a few standout performances and an unusual plot there is nothing that makes me want to watch The Big Lebowski over and over again.

A Fish Called Wanda (1988) **

Don’t call me stupid for not loving this 1988 comedy from director Charles Crichton (with an assist from John Cleese). Yes, it has some funny parts, but it is definitely a film I could have died without having seen (although some man in Denmark did laugh himself to death while watching it).  Perhaps it’s the decade in which it was made (the 80s) that makes it shine a little less brightly for me.  There is something about the hideous fashion and over-synthesized songs of that decade that really irks me, and when it is on full display, as it is here, it is even more distressing because it is forever imprinted (quite literally) in the annals of cinema that the 1980s sucked. 

Written by Crichton and Cleese, this comedy-heist film about four eccentric jewel thieves takes place in jolly old London.  The thieves are led by George (Tom Georgeson), a cockney gangster who picks three of the worst criminals in the world to help him pull the job: Wanda, Otto, and Ken.  His girlfriend Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a complete slut and an even bigger liar. Otto (Kevin Kline) is a pseudo-philosopher and an outright psychopath who pretends to be Wanda’s brother, but is really her jealous lover.  And, then there is Ken (Michael Palin)—a stammering animal lover with absolutely no sense.  When the heist goes awry and George is arrested, the other three scramble to tie up loose ends and engage in wacky acts of betrayal.  In the middle of all this treachery is Archie Leach (Cleese), the barrister working on George’s case who becomes ensnared in Wanda’s sleazy web of lies.  And, no, it is not a coincidence that Cleese chose to name himself after Cary Grant (the real Archie Leach)—he was born 20 miles from Grant’s birthplace and greatly admired him. 

Obviously 1988 was a weak year for the Academy Awards, specifically in the Best Supporting Actor category, because Kline won an Oscar for his turn as Otto.  To me, watching him in this was like taking a class in overacting. If anyone in the movie deserved an Oscar nod it was Palin, and even that would have been a stretch.  Of course his scenes attempting to kill Mrs. Coady (Patricia Hayes) are my favorite, so I think that might skew my point of view.  But really, he is quite hilarious as the murderer of three innocent Yorkshire Terriers.  And, when I come to think of it, the only time I found Kline entertaining was when he was doing a scene with Palin.

The story is entertaining and Cleese’s straight-man act is enjoyable, so I can’t really give A Fish Called Wanda a poor rating. Still, Kline and Curtis’ less than stellar performances are grating to me.  Yet, the wardrobe and music are worse.  Costume designer Hazel Pethig definitely did not benefit from what passed for fashionable in the 80s.  I wonder how much Curtis cringes every time she sees how horrid her wardrobe was.  Oh, and the music (if you can call it that) by John Du Prez is a complete representation of what was wrong about 80s music.

Overall, A Fish Called Wanda is a passable 1980s comedy.  Unfortunately, to watch it you must hear and see everything that makes the decade one of the worst of the Twentieth Century.

 

The Phantom of the Opera (1925) **

What is the price of fame? According to this 1925 silent classic staring Lon Chaney a deal with the devil…no, no, no that’s Faust; I mean a creepy Phantom. Please excuse my mistake; it was an easy one to make seeing as the opera performed in this film is Faust. Coincidence? I think not.

Christine (Mary Philbin), the understudy to the prima donna, has a mysterious voice coach who first communicates to her through the walls and then later in a face to mask meeting that she will be the star of the show, but only if she gives everything up but him and the opera. No, she’s not a schizophrenic, just so hell-bent on being a diva that she’ll do just about anything to get ahead—think Mariah Carey in the Tommy Mottola years. He causes all kinds of mischief to ensure this—threatening notes to the lackluster prima donna and dropping a chandelier on the audience to end a performance. Christine’s very annoying boyfriend, Raoul, wants her to give it all up and marry him, and since she is starting to get weirded out by the Phantom she agrees. This makes the Phantom jealous and so he kidnaps Christine and takes her to his man-cave. Instead of seeing posters of his favorite team and his collection of shot glasses, she sees his hideous skullface. To emphasize how shocking his face was the camera actually went out of focus. Eventually, Christine is rescued and the Phantom is chased by an angry mob to his drowning death in the Seine.

This film is ultra-melodramatic, but it is watchable due to the creepiness of Lon Chaney’s Phantom and the great set designs. The underground tunnel scenes are the best, with the unmasking of the Phantom and Raoul’s near-death experience in a torture room where the heat is unbearable (see Hell and Faust), Personally, I wished he had used the provided noose. But I digress. Anyway, the music is eerie and Lon Chaney is stellar. A good watch in October.

Zero Kelvin (Kjærlighetens kjøtere) 1995 **

Set amidst the artic elements of Greenland, this Norwegian film from director Hans Petter Moland examines the effects of isolation and brutality on the human psyche.  Beautifully photographed by Philip Øgaard, Zero Kelvin (1995) is predominately a psychological thriller without the usual histrionics associated with the genre. While it is interesting to watch the volatile relationship between the two major characters, the film does drag in a few places, which hampers my overall appreciation of it.

Henrik Larsen (Gard B. Eidsvold) makes a fateful decision when he signs on with the Greenland Company as an animal trapper. Commissioned to write a book about the life of outdoorsmen, the Norwegian gentleman poet is thrown completely out of his element when he finds himself working for a crude, alcoholic foreman named Randbæk (Stellan Skarsgård).  The men are polar opposites, coming from two very different social classes and intellectual levels, and they immediately clash.  The only thing that stands between them killing one another is the pleasant camp naturalist, Jakob Holm (Bjørn Sundquist). When the two rival’s incessant and violent bickering becomes even too much for the peaceful Holm he deserts the camp and leaves the two men to their deathly feud.  It is at this point that the film takes an even darker turn, as Larsen is forced into a duel of survival on the artic terrain against a menacingly cruel Randbæk.

One of the most recognizable Swedish actors of his generation, and known throughout all of cinema as a prolific and versatile actor, Skarsgård plays Randbæk as a deplorably reprehensible character. He seethes with antagonism and almost every word he says drips with venom.  You can’t help but hate Randbæk and feel sympathetically towards Larsen. From his constant belittling and taunting of Larsen to his extreme cruelty exacted on the sled dogs, you find yourself hoping that he ends up dying painfully slow.  I usually don’t completely despise a character, but with Randbæk I had no choice. Skarsgård has said of the role that he “could see from the outset that it was a rewarding character to play because there were absolutely no limits to what he could do. It's one of the most delicious parts I've ever played. I've never been such a bastard before." That’s more than an apt description of Randbæk—he is a complete bastard. 

Perhaps it was the icy, artic air that contributed to how mean Skarsgård made Randbæk appear, because the crisp, austere images captured by cinematographer Øgaard would lead one to believe that only a certain type of person could survive in such an environment.  Working above the Arctic Circle in Svalbard, Norway, Øgaard adeptly uses the setting’s natural elements of ice, snow, and wind to create a vast, desolate wasteland which compounds both the characters’ and viewer’s sense of isolation. With his photography he creates a completely punishing atmosphere for an equally punishing story.

However, my biggest complaint with Zero Kelvin stems from Øgaard’s cinematography: the film sometimes drags because so much time is spent looking at the harsh terrain.  I think Moland and his editor, Einar Egeland, could have slightly cut some of the environment shots to keep the story’s pace a bit more engaging.  Yes, Øgaard’s images deserve to be admired for their beauty, but a good director knows when enough is enough.

Overall, Zero Kelvin is a somewhat engrossing psychological thriller with engaging cinematography, but it is not a film that I would categorize as must-see.

Strange Days (1995) **

Loud, obnoxious, and inexplicably unbelievable is how I would define director Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days (1995). I’ll admit that I dislike most science fiction movies, so I already had a proverbial chip on my shoulder when I watched this. Plus, this is one of those Y2K films that forecasts the world on the brink of anarchy as the new millennium approaches, and since I know that was all much ado about nothing it irks me even more.  Now, I’m not saying it’s unwatchable, because it’s not horrible, I just don’t think it’s very good, either. I’m obviously not the only person who viewed it as such, since this James Cameron $42-million production was a huge box office disaster.  Over the years it has developed a cult following, but so has Pink Flamingos (1972), so that’s nothing to brag about in my opinion.

The beyond handsome Ralph Fiennes plays Lenny Nero, an ex-L.A.P.D. cop who has morphed into a complete sleazeball who sells bootleg recordings for something called a SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device). Basically this device allows the wearer to record whatever they see. These recordings are then sold to virtual reality addicts. While some of these images are benign, most of them are for adrenaline junkies, perverts, and/or budding psychos.  When Lenny comes into possession of a Blackjack recording (what we call a snuff film) of a woman being raped and killed he finds himself embroiled in a web of corruption and multiple murders.  Things are only exacerbated by the fact that his slutty ex-girlfriend, Faith (played by Juliette Lewis),  is at the center of the whole sordid mess.

Where to start?  The story is just too bizarre for me.  For some reason Lenny is obsessed with the whorish Faith. Juliette Lewis spends the entire film scantily (if that) clad in what can only be described as Fredrick’s of Hollywood couture.  Her character is a punk rock singer who likes to do covers of PJ Harvey songs. Lewis does her own singing, and while her voice isn’t bad, the songs (to me) are.  Anyway, Faith obviously has a thing for sleazy men, as her current one, Philo (Michael Wincott), is a sadistic freak (he is also her manager).  Because he can’t have Faith, Lenny watches old recordings of them having sex to compensate.  Can anyone say yuck…oh, and pathetic, too!  In what world would a man who looks like Fiennes need to be pining over a former heroin-addicted prostitute?  This is one of the biggest reasons I couldn’t get behind this story—why would anyone want to risk their life to save such an unlikable character?

Then there’s Angela Bassett as Mace—Lenny’s ass-kicking, limo-driving friend.  It’s obvious she has a thing for Lenny, but for the life of me (besides his hotness) I can’t figure out why.  There is some unexplained backstory about how they came to know one another, but other than this I don’t know why they would be friends.  It’s apparent she’s actually a decent human being—why would she want to be friends with someone as despicable as Lenny?  Well, she does, and so she joins him on his quest to save Faith from Philo and the mystery murderer.  I like Bassett, but her character here is one of those I want to help the man that I love besides my better judgment women that I always find myself despising.  As such, I dislike all of the female characters in this flick. 

There’s so much tech-speak about the SQUID that it is really difficult to keep everything straight. Yes, like most sci-fi films they do quick, passing explanations of what the hell they are referring to—this is another convenient role that Mace plays since she is a strict non-user of the device she has to have tutorials (just like the viewer) as each new thing about this virtual reality world is introduced—but it just sounded like sci-fi geek stuff to me and I found myself not caring what did what.  Since James Cameron, along with Jay Cocks, wrote the screenplay I guess I shouldn’t be surprised there is a heavy reliance on gadgetry, but that doesn’t mitigate the fact that I felt bogged down with information overload. 

And, the ending: it was so trite.  Was I supposed to be surprised about who the killer was?  I wasn’t.  It was beyond clichéd. Oh, and the whole allusion to the Rodney King police brutality incident was just so over the top for me.  I know the film was made in 1995 and America was in the throes of the OJ Simpson murder case and the entire country was led to believe the LAPD was full of rogue racist cops, but sometimes a director should take a step back and look at the message they are sending to their audience. 

One of the main reasons I couldn’t enjoy this film was how loud it was.  Punk rock just isn’t something I find enjoyable to listen to, and when it was unnecessarily amplified in what seemed like every scene I found myself reaching for the Aleve. I’m sure Bigelow and Cameron used it to create an atmosphere of anarchy, but it just gave me a headache.

At the end of Strange Days I just couldn’t find anything I liked about it (other than Fiennes’ hotness).  All of the characters were either reprehensible or annoyingly flawed; the story was bogged down in tech-jargon; and, everything just came off too loud.  Yes, the film has a lot of style, but, to me, it lacks substance.

Hidden (Caché) 2005, **

(While I try to avoid including too many spoilers, I have to discuss a big one in the following post.)

There is absolutely no music in Hidden (Caché) (2005). I don’t know why this is a big deal to me, but it is.  I suspect the slow, deliberate style of director Michael Haneke seemed even more drawn out than usual to me because this film literally lacked rhythm. I’m a fan of cerebral dramas, but sometimes directors just take things one step too far intellectually even for me.  Haneke has said that his films are “polemical statements against the American ‘barrel down' cinema and its disempowerment of the spectator—they are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false answers.” He has illustrated this cinematic philosophy in such other films as Funny Games (1997), The Piano Teacher (2001), and The White Ribbon (2010).  If you have seen those films (along with the one being reviewed here), then you know what I do: Haneke makes movies that are uncomfortable to watch.  His films are filled with mentally unstable people who do extremely irrational things in very calm manners.  As such, he presents cinema that is jarring and exhausting to watch.

Caché is a French film that will make you ask a lot of unanswered questions. The first few minutes of the movie are a static long shot of a quiet suburban street in Paris. This is followed by the screen turning into a fast-forwarded VHS tape with an unseen couple discussing why they are watching a recording of the front-side of their home.  Soon we are introduced to Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne Laurent (Juliette Binoche), a married couple who start to receive strange tapes, drawings, and phone calls from a creepy anonymous source.  Not long after this it is revealed that a sordid incident from Georges’ adolescence may be connected to these events. When he confronts the person he thinks may be responsible (Maurice Bénichou), things begin to slowly-spiral out of control. 

Okay, I can’t give this movie a poor rating because the dialogue and acting are superb. Other than the fact that Binoche is dressed like some Bohemian bag-lady in many of her scenes, there isn’t much that irks me about the characters or how they communicate with one another.  Yes, it is strange how calm they remain when horrible things happen, but I can overlook this because, well, they are French and lets face it, the French have a strange jena se qua.  Yet, there is just something I don’t like (other than the lack of music) about Caché: I had too many unanswered questions at the end of it.  (Spoiler alert) After being totally shocked upright out of my seat by Majid (Bénichou) slitting his own throat, I thought I had a clear understanding of what had taken place and who was responsible for what.  Then his son (Walid Afkir) showed up and all of my understanding slowly dissipated.  To make matters worse, the film ended in the most idiotic fashion, with yet another static long shot of the front of a school, and that’s it.  Will there be a sequel? I certainly hope not.

While it may have won all sorts of awards and earned the praise of many critics, Caché is not what I would classify as must-see cinema.  It just really pissed me off—but not in such a way that I loathed it and wanted to write hate-mail to Haneke.  Now that I’ve seen most of Haneke’s oeuvre, I think I know what to expect from him.  His work makes me uncomfortable and I am forced to think about it after the credits roll—I’m sure that is his intention. 

The Battle of San Pietro (1945) **

The Germans weren’t the only country that made propaganda films during World War II—the United States enlisted top-tier directors like John Huston and Frank Capra to shore up troop morale and to keep the homefront abreast of what was happening in the European Theater, too.  Of course, there was a very significant difference between Joseph Goebbels and John Huston: Huston had a conscience.  It was his understanding of right and wrong that shaped how he composed what is considered the greatest war documentary ever made, The Battle of San Pietro (1945). 

San Pietro is an Italian town located in a flat corridor surrounded by mountains near the Mignano Gap, which leads to the Liri Valley, which at that time was the road to Rome. As Allied Forces made their jump from Northern Africa to Sicily and then the Italian mainland in September 1943, retreating German forces began building parallel defensive points to the south of Rome, which they called the Winter Line.  Unfortunately for San Pietro it was in a strategically important location to the Germans, who built overlooking pillbox fortifications and mined the surrounding hillsides. By December 1943, after a month of fighting, the Germans were holding on for dear life against the Allied offensive.  It was the Battle of San Pietro, which lasted for ten brutal days in early December and cost the 143rd Regiment of the U.S. Army over a thousand soldiers, that led the Germans to retreat further north and set up what would later become the pivotal Battle of Monte Cassino in 1944. 

What makes The Battle of San Pietro so memorable is its gritty realism. Cameramen Jules Buck and his crew filmed right beside the 143rd Regiment as heavy artillery and machine gun fire reigned down on them from overlooking German fortifications. Today people talk about how realistic the battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan (1998) are—well, you don’t get more real than the filming of an actual prolonged assault.  Chaotic in nature and unflinching in the reality of what takes place on the field of battle, this is a testament to the true nature of warfare. There are shots of dead soldiers and rows upon rows of makeshift graves, as well as aerial shots of the completely destroyed town itself. 

While the film was held back from general population until after the war in Europe ended in May 1945, it was used as a training film for the army.  General George Marshall said it was the type of film that would make soldiers take their training more seriously—I would hope so!  The finished product that was shown to the American people was narrated by Huston himself and exalted the courage and tenacity of the 143rd Regiment.  It also had a bit of an anti-war feel to it, which brought Huston some criticism from the Army.  To me, this is the least offensive thing about the documentary.

What I find more disturbing about this documentary is the overtly religious music and imagery that Huston uses.  There is no sanctity in war and it always bothers me when anyone attempts to say that God favors one country over another in acts of death and destruction.  When you end a film by saying that the children of San Pietro will wake up tomorrow and it will be as though the bad things never happened, and then you show an image of Saint Peter, I think you may have overstepped just a tad.  Ah, but isn’t that why war propaganda films are made in the first place?

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) **

On the morning of November 25, 1970, Yukio Mishima (Ken Ogata) was recognized as Japan’s greatest modern writer. By the end of the day he was viewed as a narcissistic madman, after he and four cadets from his own private army took the general of the 32nd Garrison of the Japanese Armed Forces hostage and then asked that the army join him in  bringing the Emperor back to power. When his request was impolitely turned down he proceeded to commit seppuku (a ritualistic form of self-disembowelment), and then he and his trusted lieutenant, Morita, were beheaded by one of the other cadets.  This act of rebellion came as a shock to the Japanese people, but it shouldn’t have, as Mishima’s novels had been filled with such plots as this one for several years. 

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) depicts this bizarre real-life drama by not only showing the day of rebellion itself but by also focusing on four chapters (and three of the author’s fictional stories) in Mishima’s life: (1) Beauty, (2) Art, (3) Action, and (4) Harmony of Pen and Sword.  As each chapter is unfurled the viewer comes to understand Mishima’s almost pathological desire to unite art with the samurai mentality (i.e. harmony of the pen and sword). Supported by the deep pockets of executive producers Francis Ford Coppola and George Lukas, director Paul Schrader helmed a highly stylized film that is told in several tenses: present, flashback and literary, with each time frame represented by its own color palette. Elko Ishioka’s masterfully designed sets are the star of the film.  Beautifully photographed by John Bailey and set to a powerful musical score by famed composer Philip Glass, Mishima is a visually stunning art film with a generous budget. 

The color composition is what stands out about this movie. When shooting in the present Schrader chose to use a very flat color base, primarily in dreary browns with heavy lighting.  This created an atmosphere of unease for the chaos that Mishima was about to release. Flashbacks of what led Mishima to make his fateful decision are shot in reflective black and white, and are always accompanied by voice-over narration from Ogata. It is when the story delves into the literary elements of Mishima’s fictional writings that the movie pops off the screen.  Three stories are interwoven into the real-life drama: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956), Kyoko’s House (1959), and Runaway Horses (1969). All are designed as stage plays and end in the suicide/death of the male protagonist.

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion is shot, not surprisingly, in golds and greens.  It is the story of a stuttering, homosexual Zen acolyte who is tormented by the power of beauty, which is embodied by the temple itself.  When you first see this section of the film it takes a few minutes to realize that this isn’t part of the real-life story.  It can be jarring to see the theatrical set design with its creative use of scale and scene backdrops, but once you adjust to it you begin to appreciate the creativity that went into designing it.

The second chapter, Kyoko’s House, is effeminate in nature and relies heavily on pinks, reds, and grays. It is a contemplation on the idea of the human body as the highest art form. It is decided that the body must be destroyed at the height of its beauty. In addition, there is a need to reconcile the duality of male and female for Mishima’s surrogate in this story.  This is perhaps the most disturbing of the four chapters in the movie, primarily because there is a sadomasochistic element running throughout.

While it might not be as colorful as the two previous chapters, Runaway Horses is the most visually striking of the three stories.  The lighting is much darker here, and the color tone is primarily in orange, brown and black.  In it, a young man decides to lead a revolt against those who support capitalism and he wants to bring the Emperor back to power (perhaps the most foreshadowing of the chapters).  Two set designs stand out to me: the house of cards (really cubicle panels) which fall down upon the conspirators and the endless open jail cells that follows this scene.  Images like these have a way of implanting themselves in your subconscious.

The story itself can be difficult to follow if you don’t pay close attention. It’s in Japanese, so while you’re looking at the amazing set designs and hearing Glass’ pounding score in the background, you also have to focus on reading the subtitles.  As such, I think this film takes at least two viewings to fully appreciate and understand.  The non-linear narrative can be off-putting to some, but I don’t think that it is too disjointed for someone to figure out when and what is happening. 

Overall, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is an art-house movie that is actually enjoyable to watch.  Yes, you have to do a little bit of work, but it does not require much heavy lifting.