Is the second part of my title not the greatest idea for a sitcom/cooking show/spinoff ever? I think it is. This is a year with a lot of variety, which is good because it allows for a wide spectrum of ranting. Although overall I'd describe the films of this year to be at least tolerable and sometimes even really good. See? The 70s are better already. And as I mentioned before, there's only one winner that I haven't seen already so I at least know that the winners are good. We'll mix it up a bit and be optimistic, just for a change of pace.
We will begin with a shockingly good movie: All That Jazz. I say shockingly good because at first I didn't like it. With the title and the subject matter (the semi-autobiographical story about a Broadway choreographer/dancer/director) I figured I was in for a lot of fun dancing and singing. I thought it'd be funny and enjoyable and uplifting. This was not the case. It was depressing. Like, really depressing. Once I got over the initial shock that the movie was going to be depressing, I remembered that I love depressing movies because they're entirely more interesting than uplifting ones. This movie reverse-reminded me of The Singing Detective. That sentence requires explanation. When something "reverse-reminds" me of something else, it means that the second thing came out after the first thing but I saw the second one first. Wow, I just made it more confusing. To clarify: this movie from 1979 reverse-reminded me of the 1980s British miniseries about a hospital-confined mystery writer who hallucinates elaborate dance sequences. Both the movie and the miniseries are about men with debilitating diseases who become more and more engrossed in their fantasy worlds. This film begins as an interesting look into the hectic life of a high-profile Broadway personality. So interesting that my dreams of working in show business were briefly shattered since I'd rather not require alcohol, pills, and sex to simply get out of bed in the morning. The manner in which this ritual was displayed reverse-reminded me of Requiem for a Dream. I'm going to coin that phrase, I am not even kidding. Anyway, after a good forty minutes or so of pill-popping we learn that the main character doesn't have long to live. And that's when the movie becomes way better and way more of a downer. But it makes up for it by being so ahead of its time in terms of style and by having a truly powerful ending. Even though it's my second favorite of the year's nominees, I think it should've won. I'll explain why in the next paragraph. But before that, the last thing I'll say about this film is that it wasn't afraid to just run with its own style and go against expectations for artistic reasons (instead of Battlestar Galactica "the only creativity behind our doctor's character was that we wanted to create the opposite of Dr. McCoy" reasons). It does its own thing not to shock people but to make the great movie that they wanted to make.
But as I said, it wasn't my favorite movie from the year. This was: Apocalypse Now. I have strict rules about when to mention film titles, and I don't mention them until I reach that film's paragraph. Which is why I won't say what the winner in 1978 was, only that it was a Vietnam movie. So I can see why they wouldn't want another Vietnam movie winning in this year, even though it's far and away the best Vietnam movie ever made (of the ones I've seen. So basically all of them). The reason for this is that it's not really a "Vietnam movie." It takes place during the war and it illustrates many negative aspects of the war, but it's really a movie about human nature. It's based on Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (which I wrote a 100% paper on in high school by writing about Batman and the Joker and substituting their names for the protagonist and antagonist of the novel) but I think there are also some strong comparisons to be made to Dante's "Inferno" even if those comparisons were unintentional. The film brilliantly delves further and further into the darkness of humanity as they travel deeper into the heart of Vietnam. That's pretty much what the book is about, but the subtle ways that Coppola achieves this are outstanding. For instance, Harrison Ford is in the movie at the very beginning and pretty much never again. So you're all excited because there's Han Solo! This movie will be awesome because there's Han Solo! Well we leave the civilized world behind and Ford with it. Then we see Robert Duvall and he's being kind of disturbing with his "napalm in the morning" bit but we kind of enjoy it anyway. Because who doesn't appreciate a "hate to love him" crazy general? Well we leave him behind too. And as the characters travel further and further into the country we are less and less familiar with the characters (and the actors who portray them) and the situations become tougher and tougher to understand morally. As moviegoers, we can forgive certain acts when we see it from a certain point of view. But this movie does a great job at showing us human depravity at its most base. And where the comparisons to the "Inferno" come into play is that all of these people seem like they've been in their respective situations for a long time, and that they'll never leave. The whole "Ride of the Valkyries" helicopter sequence was enthralling for us, but for Duvall's character it was a regular occurrence. The men who revolt by trying to grope the visiting Playboy bunnies have probably faced the same situation countless times. I don't want to come off as a chauvenist, but that scene is reminiscent of many classic visions of Hades. The one guy can see the water and the food but the closer he gets, the further away it goes. And poor Sisyphus has to push that rock up the hill only to have it fall again. So in this movie they can have scantily-clad women paraded before them but they're not allowed to touch. That's just cruel, I'd rather not see any women at all because it'd be easier to forget about Vietnam's abysmal dating situation. And then when we finally reach the end of the journey, we begin to understand by Colonel Kurtz was driven mad. It's made even more perfect by the fact that it's Marlon Brando: the only man who was masculine enough to both lead a crime family and sire Superman. Excellent casting, as was the casting of Martin Sheen as the hero of the piece. Everything about the movie is just outstanding, in fact I've gone on entirely too long about it. It's a rough movie and it's not for everyone, but it's amazing and young Laurence Fishburne is in it so if you can take it you should watch it. I haven't yet watched the "Redux" version but when I get the recent ultimate Blu-Ray release for Christmas (mom and dad: hint!) I will certainly check it out.
Perhaps it's good that I said even more than usual about that movie because I don't have much to say about the next two, beginning with Breaking Away. It's not a bad film by any means but it's not particularly original either (even in 1979). The film quality looks like an old camcorder that was in widescreen for unknown reasons, so I hope that was intentional and not indicative of a super low budget. It gives the film a more realistic quality and makes the characters more relatable. Or maybe it's just the same 70s film stock that makes all the women on Family Feud look funny. It's entirely possible. The film dates itself in several other ways, such as using the term "cutter" to describe people other than emo kids that harm themselves in order to impress Twihards who find that attractive. The movie is the classic "coming of age" story that I ordinarily find annoying but since the characters in the movie actually aim to do something with their lives instead of spending the majority of the film whining, it's actually pretty good. So it kind of weaves in a story about competitive bicycling with the "angst over going to college and leaving home" story. This is something I keep emphasizing and this movie seems to get it: some plots can't carry a movie on their own. Since this movie has two distinct threads that drive the story, neither of which would be enough on their own, it all kind of works. Seeing young Rorschach and young Dennis Quaid is also entertaining on its own. I also loved that the dude in the movie lied about being Italian to impress a girl. Not because of its inherent entertainment value, which reeks of a rejected Brady Bunch script, but simply because such things could never work today. As soon as you were Facebook friends with the girl the lie would fade away and you'd be seen for the schmuck you really are. It was way easier to fabricate Venitian playboy bicyclist identities back then, it was a better time. So that's pretty much it. The movie is kinda funny, kinda touching, kinda good.
I have even less to say about Norma Rae. Please read that sentence to yourself in a way that doesn't rhyme as blatantly, because rhyming is silly in this context. This movie was the only truly less-than-mediocre one in the entire year. So I really shouldn't complain about it because of what I was subjected to in the 80s. But I will. Basically this was the precursor to Erin Brockovich. I'm not going to use my newly coined phrase to describe this situation though, because if I overuse it now then I can't use it later. I know it sounds silly to say that this movie based on a true story was the precursor to another movie based on another true story, but they're so similar that it's frightening. Except that the Julia Roberts movie is good. I'm told that this movie was praised in large part because of its relevance to the whole sexual liberation situation, a theme common to many 70s movies I've seen so far and I'm not even through 1978 yet with my viewing schedule. This is kind of like the Vietnam thing where making a movie that voices things that everyone has already voiced isn't really interesting, unless you make it interesting like Coppola did. So while I'm certainly in favor of movies that cast a positive light on women, I don't think this movie does that. Erin Brockovich (the character and real woman, not the movie) knew how to use her femininity as a weapon and also put forth a logical and well-constructed argument in order to save the day. I'd say that's pretty empowering. Whereas Sally Field's character in this movie, Norma, just gets up and whines in a Southern accent until people listen to her. If anything that makes her look like the type of female stereotype the feminist movement was trying to stifle. Is she an independent woman because she works in the factory and supports her kids much like a stereotypical man might? Sure. But in order to fight injustice she just complains louder than anybody. In fact, I'm feeling brave here so I'll say it: she nags. She might as well be hitting her sugar daddy up for new earrings except the sugar daddy is the labor union and the earrings are improved working conditions and rights. I'll take Erin any day over this lady, and not just because she's better looking. She's simply more admirable from any standing point.
Well with any luck you're thinking to yourself, "wow what an enlightened and forward-thinking man." I sincerely doubt you are thinking that, but even if you are you probably won't be after I discuss this year's winner: Kramer vs. Kramer. I swear to God I am not trying to crap all over the female gender. In fact, a girl in the dorm once drunkenly stated: "I think Domenic is gay because he's around drunk women all the time and he never tries to take advantage of them." See? I'm so chivalrous that women think I'm not attracted to them! Ponder that for a minute and what it means societally. I'll wait. You done? Okay, good. My point is that this film is touted as another step forward for women because it shows both the father's side and the mother's side of a divorce. Dustin Hoffman plays the dad and Meryl Streep plays the mom. I usually don't particularly like either of them, but they're both good here. Here's my problem though: Meryl is in a little bit of the first ten minutes and then she's gone for almost an hour. So how are we supposed to see things from her point of view when she's not even in it? She leaves her husband and her son for initially undisclosed reasons, and if I didn't already know that the film centered on their custody battle in court (and if she was played by a less well-known actress) then I'd have thought she was gone for good and the movie was about a workaholic father who learned to spend more time with his son. Instead, just as the movie is getting all nice and touching the mom shows up again and wants to take the kid back. So then the audience hates her because they've spent the entire movie watching the father and son build a loving relationship. How is that showing both sides equally? She redeems herself at the end of the movie, and we certainly eventually see her side of things but the hero of the movie is far and away the father. Remember way back when I ranted about The Hours? Just to clarify: I thought that was a really good movie and I hyperbolize a lot so that my blogs won't be more repetitive than they probably already are. But I did have one legitimate problem with that movie: Julianne Moore left her husband and her son. I could totally roll with it if it was just the husband but I can't forgive anyone leaving their children. If Kramer had switched things up and the father was the one who left I can guarantee you he would be universally viewed as a villain. She abandoned her child! She abandoned her boy! I had to say it, sorry. Just be glad I didn't make the "milkshake" reference. Overall point: this movie is well-done but it's far beneath Best Picture standards. And since the Internet tells me it was a big hit simply because of its societal impact, I dislike that for two reasons. One: as I've said before, societal impact alone is enough for a nomination and not a win. Two: it doesn't even make a good societal statement. Still in all, it's a ton better than most 80s nominees so let's try to bring it back to optimism a little bit.
Overall, a great start to the decade. I can't even tell you how excited I am to have a lot of great movies ahead of me to watch instead of drivel. I might even rewatch a few things I've already seen because they're so good. We won't quite be at that point yet in my next entry, but I can tell you that it will include: Bugsy Segal having a supernatural identity crisis, Jake LaMotta having a post-traumatic stress identity crisis, and yet another woman having a sexual liberation-style identity crisis that will probably get me some more negative press even though that's not what I intend. Positive though! Let's be positive!
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
1980: The Year that Had Elephants, and Bulls, and Sundance Kids...Oh My?
If Judy Garland and co. encountered those three things on the way to Oz instead, it would've been a very different movie. No, this isn't the year of Paul Newman and Robert Redford as the iconic duo. So don't get your hopes up. But good old Sunny D (a nickname for Redford's character that never seemed to take off) was behind the camera this year so I guess that's something to be excited about (not really though). Something to actually get excited about is that two of the movies are in black and white and they're the only two good movies in the bunch. Neither one was the winner of course because that is the way of things. None of the movies in this year are particularly light...and I know I've mentioned how much I love drama and intense stuff but things don't have to be dreary all the time. Some of the most dramatic and heart-wrenching movies I've ever seen also made me laugh at times. These films need a sense of humor. Only the bad ones though.
Ironically, the first on the list actually does have quite a bit of humor in it: Coal Miner's Daughter. Can you tell that I don't sketch out an outline for my blogs? Don't sit there and feel like I'm jipping you though, I've never outlined a paper in my life. Except when people made me, and then it was sub par. And I'm not sure how much of this movie was actually supposed to be funny, or perhaps I should say "humorous." Because you don't really laugh out loud but you sit there and think to yourself: "hmm, that is amusing." That's actually something I found annoying about the film. All of the humor should have been removed. Wow, I should really go back and delete all of my talk about adding humor earlier. I won't though. Because I stand by it for the other two movies in technicolor, just not this one. The reason being that all of the humorous elements in this movie come from the main character being a stereotypical backwater hick trying to make it big in the music industry. The woman was still alive when the movie was released. So either she really is that dumb and didn't notice that they were making fun of her, or she's fully aware of her quirks and allows the movie to display them because she knows how the game is played. Maybe neither, I don't know. But the movie displays her husband as a money-hungry jerk who didn't care much about his wife's singing until it started bringing in the big bucks. Presumably any negative portrayals are offset by the title song, which says something along the lines of: "I'm proud to be a coal miner's daughter because it made me a bunch of money and so even though I might be a dumb hick I'm a lot smarter and richer than you are." The actual lyrics are more touching and heart-felt than that but if I'm here to lightly touch on the movie while I complain about it. If I just re-capped everything that would be boring. There's already a website for that which I frankly can't compete with and it's called IMDB. I will say that Sissy Spacek does a good job and has a really good singing voice. I also found it entertaining that earlier in her career she tried to break into country music but couldn't because she sounded too much like Loretta Lynn (who she plays in the movie). I was also really annoyed by the fact that the movie doesn't begin with "a" or "the" but since it refers to a song title I guess it's okay. Overall, the film falls into the "Hallmark" category for me. Fairly solid acting, it doesn't have bad dialogue, and it doesn't have bad direction. But none of it is particularly good either. I'm totally cool with Sissy's nomination (that is a ridiculous name, even for Hollywood). But the movie itself isn't anything too special.
A far better film is The Elephant Man. I just finished it, in fact. Notice I said "just finished it" and not "I'm currently watching it." Nowadays I spend literally all of my time watching movies and TV, as opposed to before when I spent all of my free time watching movies and TV. There's a huge difference, believe me. This means that I find it difficult to watch a whole movie or show without whipping out various Apple products to distract me. But all of my attention was easily focused on this beautifully filmed movie. David Lynch directed and co-wrote the film which stars the always amazing Anthony Hopkins. He's usually not upstaged by anyone but the title character is played to painful perfection by John Hurt. It's so rare that any of these nominees get me to cry, because even the good ones are just well-done and don't necessarily pull me in. But this one pulled me in, thanks mostly to Hurt's acting and a haunting musical score. The film centers around the real-life story of John Merrick: a horribly disfigured man who was a sideshow exhibit for most of his life. The film refrains from showing us his face until a good half an hour into the film, and it's a little longer before we hear him speak. People in the film, and presumably in life, wrongfully assumed that he was a dumb brute because he looked like a disfigured monster. But as it turned out he was quite articulate and intelligent for a man of any age at the time, and when Hopkins' character discovers him in the movie he was slightly younger than I am. He almost reminded me of a Phantom of the Opera type character: the hidden genius who never reaches his full potential because of his physical deformities. Of course it turns out that high society treats him with the same type of morbid curiosity that the lower-class circus goers did. This inevitably brings up the central theme of many stories of this type: the real monsters are the "normal" people. Thankfully, unlike the Phantom, Merrick never became what other people perceived him to be. The oft-quoted "I am a human being!" scene brought me to tears, even though I knew it was coming. Also, in case you were wondering, this film is the first one in black and white that I alluded to. It gives the movie the same feel as all of those Universal horror pictures, which is highly appropriate since they were all about the humanization of monsters. The original ones anyway. The countless sequels were about the monetization of celluloid. It also reminded me, in retrograde of course since the movie came first, of one of the best episodes of The X-Files: "The Post-Modern Prometheus." Everything about the episode from the music to the visual tone is a big throwback to this movie. I'm pretty sure I only mentioned that to showcase the fact that I watched that entire series 3 years ago and I can still recall episode titles from memory. Anyway, I was tempted to say that this was the best film of the year but that was before I remembered the other black and white film. It's still an excellent film that everyone should watch. Because you don't have to be deformed to be a societal outcast and you don't have to be a 19th century aristocrat to be a bigot.
Easily the best film of the year is in black and white for an entirely different reason: Raging Bull. The reasons for the color change aren't quite as clear as the film I just talked about but I suppose it's because the movie is about a boxer in the classic age of boxing and when you think of that era you think of cheap TVs in sports bars of the 50s. Or at least I do. Whatever the reason, it gives the film a distinct visual style which has never been emulated by anyone. Perhaps because no one would dare to try. This is my favorite Scorsese picture and I've been waiting to talk about it ever since I alluded to it in my 2006 entry. And if I didn't allude to it, I was thinking about it so my internal continuity is in tact. The film was perhaps not savory enough to be the winner but thankfully DeNiro's performance earned him an Oscar. The film itself deserved it too but DeNiro is the driving force. He plays Jake LaMotta, a man who could never leave his rage in the ring. The film examines the unfortunate dichotomy that is caused by his internal fury and penchant for self-torture. These are the factors that allowed him to succeed as a boxer, but they destroyed his personal life. He emotionally and at one point physically abuses his wife because he thinks she's cheating on him. Was she? It's irrelevant, because to him it was a reality. For a personality like that, even if everything is perfect they make things worse because for some reason they love to be miserable. This also adds to the boxing scenes, where DeNiro rarely shows any signs of pain during the unusually brutal fights. I mean, he shows signs of pain but he doesn't go and moan on the sidelines like Rocky. Because Jake loves the pain. The scenes are fleshed out by the entirely classical musical score. They make the scenes operatic tragedies. With every punch that Jake throws he is drawn further into his personal abyss. Eventually all he has left are stories and bad jokes that he tells to anyone in his club who will listen. I'm not sure what made the real Jake LaMotta the way he was but DeNiro was channeling it through every second. He immersed himself in the role to the point that he gained 60 pounds during shooting for the scenes where Jake is old and washed up. It's a fascinating character study because you don't feel bad for the man per se because he's kind of a huge jerk. But you have to wonder: why does talent have to come with a price? Whether he was a raging bull by nature or by nurture, that facet of his personality drove him to success and then took it all away. Marty Scorsese said he wanted the movie to show that life itself is one big boxing match and I think that came off splendidly. Ah well, much like another one of my favorites in 1971 I think this movie was a little too intense to be the winner. But it's widely considered one of the greatest films of all time and this year's winner isn't on any of those lists so there.
But before we talk about the winner we have to talk about Tess. I was a bit thrown off when I watched this movie because Netflix described it as "Roman Polanski's retelling of the classic novel." To me, when you call something a "retelling" then you're putting the story in a different context. Either you're adapting the same overall story and putting in your own words with your own characters, like how The Lion King is essentially Hamlet, or you're doing the same words and story in an updated context like Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet. The only thing that Polanski seemed to change was the title, and all he did was take away the "of the d'Urbervilles." How does it constitute a "retelling" if it's the same exact story in the same exact time period? Yeah you could say it's Polanski's take on the story, but then why don't they say that with every movie? You wouldn't call Milk Gus Van Sant's retelling of the tragic and inspiring true story. And I doubt Harvey Milk actually died with the reflection of Tosca on his face (just a thought) so that was Van Sant's "retelling" wasn't it? I ranted about all of that because for the first twenty minutes or so of the movie I was wondering if we were seeing the ancestor of the Tess that the movie was about. It's an entirely too long movie and so twenty minutes of backstory would have made sense. I thought maybe it was one of those "I'm a descendant of the first Tess and now the same things are happening to me in modern day" deals, and yes I've seen that done so it's not too much of a stretch. I can't remember any examples though because this paragraph is being written the morning after the first four and my brain takes a while to start up in the morning. But even in my diminished state I can recount the entire movie: servant chick becomes involved with her boss who then quasi-rapes her and she bears his child which dies shortly thereafter. Then she falls in love with this other dude who finds out about the first dude and thus breaks off his engagement with Tess. Then some other inane things happen over the next hour and a half and the ending scrawl tells us she was eventually hanged. That's pretty much it. The music was really good, I'll say that. And the performances were pretty good and everything, but nothing really happened in the whole movie and it was almost 3 hours long. I still stand by my previous assessment that "a period piece is a movie that is about nothing but takes place in the past." For some reason it wasn't quite as tough to watch as other movies of its type, probably just because of the music.
It's been far too often throughout the 80s that I felt the worst movie of the nominees turned out to be the winner. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say it was the worst but it was tied for the worst: Ordinary People. Oh how I wish the title was some kind of joke referencing the fact that nothing in the movie is normal, and that perhaps it was some sort of social commentary about yuppies or something. Sadly it's a movie that's literally about normal people dealing with normal issues in a normal way. This is the type of refreshing idea that would make a good TV melodrama, because it would be nice to see a range of issues dealt with realistically. But as a movie it's just pointless. As I've explained on many occasions, I'm not a fan of movies that are acclaimed because they're "the first film to (fill in the blank)." This was apparently the first movie to heavily feature psychiatry in a way that didn't make it seem nutty. My only knowledge of how people viewed psychiatry prior to 1980 comes from what I've seen on Mad Men, but if that's any indication then the portrayal in the film is quite contrary to popular beliefs. Because the kid going to therapy is a regular guy, he's not Norman Bates. It would've been a lot more interesting if he was Norman Bates. As it stands, the film centers on an ordinary middle class family that suffers the loss of a child and how they cope with that loss. The other son predictably rebels and that's why he's in therapy. He's all mean to his parents and they don't know how to deal with him because it's tough enough dealing with teenagers let alone one that's lost a brother and yadda yadda. Now I realize that there are many who have been touched by such tragedies, and thankfully I am not one of them. So there's admittedly an emotional aspect to the story that I can't realistically tap into. But from an objective standing point this is a good thing. And objectively there is nothing special about this movie, and I know that was the point but did it really have to win? I can totally stand behind nominating a movie that dares to be a little different by being normal. And Robert Redford is awesome but if this is any indication of his other directorial efforts, he's way better in front of the camera. The whole thing feels like a side plot in another movie. Like maybe a movie about all of the various problems that a street has to deal with and this is just one of them. Sound like too much to pack into one movie? That's why it's better as a show. Not a show I would watch, just to clarify. So I applaud them for their depiction of therapy, easily the best part of the film even though it takes up a total of about 12 minutes, but they've got nothing on Lynch or Marty. Not even close.
And with that, we have completed the 80s. When I began my descent into this decade I was a bright-eyed hopeful college graduate (or at least as close to bright-eyed as I can be) and now I'm a broken shell of a man evaluating his next step in life. See what the decade did to me? Well I hope the 70s bring some better news. Maybe when I'm writing my closing paragraph on that decade I'll say: "gee, remember how down and out I was in the 80s? This is the opposite of that." I've already seen almost all of the winners so that's a good indication, hopefully the nominees will be of the same quality. For the immediate future all I can say is the next installment will include: Tootsie in tort, President Bartlet smelling napalm, and Morpheus piloting a sea vessel. Okay those last two were from the same movie but I never get to reference Morpheus so I couldn't resist.
Ironically, the first on the list actually does have quite a bit of humor in it: Coal Miner's Daughter. Can you tell that I don't sketch out an outline for my blogs? Don't sit there and feel like I'm jipping you though, I've never outlined a paper in my life. Except when people made me, and then it was sub par. And I'm not sure how much of this movie was actually supposed to be funny, or perhaps I should say "humorous." Because you don't really laugh out loud but you sit there and think to yourself: "hmm, that is amusing." That's actually something I found annoying about the film. All of the humor should have been removed. Wow, I should really go back and delete all of my talk about adding humor earlier. I won't though. Because I stand by it for the other two movies in technicolor, just not this one. The reason being that all of the humorous elements in this movie come from the main character being a stereotypical backwater hick trying to make it big in the music industry. The woman was still alive when the movie was released. So either she really is that dumb and didn't notice that they were making fun of her, or she's fully aware of her quirks and allows the movie to display them because she knows how the game is played. Maybe neither, I don't know. But the movie displays her husband as a money-hungry jerk who didn't care much about his wife's singing until it started bringing in the big bucks. Presumably any negative portrayals are offset by the title song, which says something along the lines of: "I'm proud to be a coal miner's daughter because it made me a bunch of money and so even though I might be a dumb hick I'm a lot smarter and richer than you are." The actual lyrics are more touching and heart-felt than that but if I'm here to lightly touch on the movie while I complain about it. If I just re-capped everything that would be boring. There's already a website for that which I frankly can't compete with and it's called IMDB. I will say that Sissy Spacek does a good job and has a really good singing voice. I also found it entertaining that earlier in her career she tried to break into country music but couldn't because she sounded too much like Loretta Lynn (who she plays in the movie). I was also really annoyed by the fact that the movie doesn't begin with "a" or "the" but since it refers to a song title I guess it's okay. Overall, the film falls into the "Hallmark" category for me. Fairly solid acting, it doesn't have bad dialogue, and it doesn't have bad direction. But none of it is particularly good either. I'm totally cool with Sissy's nomination (that is a ridiculous name, even for Hollywood). But the movie itself isn't anything too special.
A far better film is The Elephant Man. I just finished it, in fact. Notice I said "just finished it" and not "I'm currently watching it." Nowadays I spend literally all of my time watching movies and TV, as opposed to before when I spent all of my free time watching movies and TV. There's a huge difference, believe me. This means that I find it difficult to watch a whole movie or show without whipping out various Apple products to distract me. But all of my attention was easily focused on this beautifully filmed movie. David Lynch directed and co-wrote the film which stars the always amazing Anthony Hopkins. He's usually not upstaged by anyone but the title character is played to painful perfection by John Hurt. It's so rare that any of these nominees get me to cry, because even the good ones are just well-done and don't necessarily pull me in. But this one pulled me in, thanks mostly to Hurt's acting and a haunting musical score. The film centers around the real-life story of John Merrick: a horribly disfigured man who was a sideshow exhibit for most of his life. The film refrains from showing us his face until a good half an hour into the film, and it's a little longer before we hear him speak. People in the film, and presumably in life, wrongfully assumed that he was a dumb brute because he looked like a disfigured monster. But as it turned out he was quite articulate and intelligent for a man of any age at the time, and when Hopkins' character discovers him in the movie he was slightly younger than I am. He almost reminded me of a Phantom of the Opera type character: the hidden genius who never reaches his full potential because of his physical deformities. Of course it turns out that high society treats him with the same type of morbid curiosity that the lower-class circus goers did. This inevitably brings up the central theme of many stories of this type: the real monsters are the "normal" people. Thankfully, unlike the Phantom, Merrick never became what other people perceived him to be. The oft-quoted "I am a human being!" scene brought me to tears, even though I knew it was coming. Also, in case you were wondering, this film is the first one in black and white that I alluded to. It gives the movie the same feel as all of those Universal horror pictures, which is highly appropriate since they were all about the humanization of monsters. The original ones anyway. The countless sequels were about the monetization of celluloid. It also reminded me, in retrograde of course since the movie came first, of one of the best episodes of The X-Files: "The Post-Modern Prometheus." Everything about the episode from the music to the visual tone is a big throwback to this movie. I'm pretty sure I only mentioned that to showcase the fact that I watched that entire series 3 years ago and I can still recall episode titles from memory. Anyway, I was tempted to say that this was the best film of the year but that was before I remembered the other black and white film. It's still an excellent film that everyone should watch. Because you don't have to be deformed to be a societal outcast and you don't have to be a 19th century aristocrat to be a bigot.
Easily the best film of the year is in black and white for an entirely different reason: Raging Bull. The reasons for the color change aren't quite as clear as the film I just talked about but I suppose it's because the movie is about a boxer in the classic age of boxing and when you think of that era you think of cheap TVs in sports bars of the 50s. Or at least I do. Whatever the reason, it gives the film a distinct visual style which has never been emulated by anyone. Perhaps because no one would dare to try. This is my favorite Scorsese picture and I've been waiting to talk about it ever since I alluded to it in my 2006 entry. And if I didn't allude to it, I was thinking about it so my internal continuity is in tact. The film was perhaps not savory enough to be the winner but thankfully DeNiro's performance earned him an Oscar. The film itself deserved it too but DeNiro is the driving force. He plays Jake LaMotta, a man who could never leave his rage in the ring. The film examines the unfortunate dichotomy that is caused by his internal fury and penchant for self-torture. These are the factors that allowed him to succeed as a boxer, but they destroyed his personal life. He emotionally and at one point physically abuses his wife because he thinks she's cheating on him. Was she? It's irrelevant, because to him it was a reality. For a personality like that, even if everything is perfect they make things worse because for some reason they love to be miserable. This also adds to the boxing scenes, where DeNiro rarely shows any signs of pain during the unusually brutal fights. I mean, he shows signs of pain but he doesn't go and moan on the sidelines like Rocky. Because Jake loves the pain. The scenes are fleshed out by the entirely classical musical score. They make the scenes operatic tragedies. With every punch that Jake throws he is drawn further into his personal abyss. Eventually all he has left are stories and bad jokes that he tells to anyone in his club who will listen. I'm not sure what made the real Jake LaMotta the way he was but DeNiro was channeling it through every second. He immersed himself in the role to the point that he gained 60 pounds during shooting for the scenes where Jake is old and washed up. It's a fascinating character study because you don't feel bad for the man per se because he's kind of a huge jerk. But you have to wonder: why does talent have to come with a price? Whether he was a raging bull by nature or by nurture, that facet of his personality drove him to success and then took it all away. Marty Scorsese said he wanted the movie to show that life itself is one big boxing match and I think that came off splendidly. Ah well, much like another one of my favorites in 1971 I think this movie was a little too intense to be the winner. But it's widely considered one of the greatest films of all time and this year's winner isn't on any of those lists so there.
But before we talk about the winner we have to talk about Tess. I was a bit thrown off when I watched this movie because Netflix described it as "Roman Polanski's retelling of the classic novel." To me, when you call something a "retelling" then you're putting the story in a different context. Either you're adapting the same overall story and putting in your own words with your own characters, like how The Lion King is essentially Hamlet, or you're doing the same words and story in an updated context like Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet. The only thing that Polanski seemed to change was the title, and all he did was take away the "of the d'Urbervilles." How does it constitute a "retelling" if it's the same exact story in the same exact time period? Yeah you could say it's Polanski's take on the story, but then why don't they say that with every movie? You wouldn't call Milk Gus Van Sant's retelling of the tragic and inspiring true story. And I doubt Harvey Milk actually died with the reflection of Tosca on his face (just a thought) so that was Van Sant's "retelling" wasn't it? I ranted about all of that because for the first twenty minutes or so of the movie I was wondering if we were seeing the ancestor of the Tess that the movie was about. It's an entirely too long movie and so twenty minutes of backstory would have made sense. I thought maybe it was one of those "I'm a descendant of the first Tess and now the same things are happening to me in modern day" deals, and yes I've seen that done so it's not too much of a stretch. I can't remember any examples though because this paragraph is being written the morning after the first four and my brain takes a while to start up in the morning. But even in my diminished state I can recount the entire movie: servant chick becomes involved with her boss who then quasi-rapes her and she bears his child which dies shortly thereafter. Then she falls in love with this other dude who finds out about the first dude and thus breaks off his engagement with Tess. Then some other inane things happen over the next hour and a half and the ending scrawl tells us she was eventually hanged. That's pretty much it. The music was really good, I'll say that. And the performances were pretty good and everything, but nothing really happened in the whole movie and it was almost 3 hours long. I still stand by my previous assessment that "a period piece is a movie that is about nothing but takes place in the past." For some reason it wasn't quite as tough to watch as other movies of its type, probably just because of the music.
It's been far too often throughout the 80s that I felt the worst movie of the nominees turned out to be the winner. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say it was the worst but it was tied for the worst: Ordinary People. Oh how I wish the title was some kind of joke referencing the fact that nothing in the movie is normal, and that perhaps it was some sort of social commentary about yuppies or something. Sadly it's a movie that's literally about normal people dealing with normal issues in a normal way. This is the type of refreshing idea that would make a good TV melodrama, because it would be nice to see a range of issues dealt with realistically. But as a movie it's just pointless. As I've explained on many occasions, I'm not a fan of movies that are acclaimed because they're "the first film to (fill in the blank)." This was apparently the first movie to heavily feature psychiatry in a way that didn't make it seem nutty. My only knowledge of how people viewed psychiatry prior to 1980 comes from what I've seen on Mad Men, but if that's any indication then the portrayal in the film is quite contrary to popular beliefs. Because the kid going to therapy is a regular guy, he's not Norman Bates. It would've been a lot more interesting if he was Norman Bates. As it stands, the film centers on an ordinary middle class family that suffers the loss of a child and how they cope with that loss. The other son predictably rebels and that's why he's in therapy. He's all mean to his parents and they don't know how to deal with him because it's tough enough dealing with teenagers let alone one that's lost a brother and yadda yadda. Now I realize that there are many who have been touched by such tragedies, and thankfully I am not one of them. So there's admittedly an emotional aspect to the story that I can't realistically tap into. But from an objective standing point this is a good thing. And objectively there is nothing special about this movie, and I know that was the point but did it really have to win? I can totally stand behind nominating a movie that dares to be a little different by being normal. And Robert Redford is awesome but if this is any indication of his other directorial efforts, he's way better in front of the camera. The whole thing feels like a side plot in another movie. Like maybe a movie about all of the various problems that a street has to deal with and this is just one of them. Sound like too much to pack into one movie? That's why it's better as a show. Not a show I would watch, just to clarify. So I applaud them for their depiction of therapy, easily the best part of the film even though it takes up a total of about 12 minutes, but they've got nothing on Lynch or Marty. Not even close.
And with that, we have completed the 80s. When I began my descent into this decade I was a bright-eyed hopeful college graduate (or at least as close to bright-eyed as I can be) and now I'm a broken shell of a man evaluating his next step in life. See what the decade did to me? Well I hope the 70s bring some better news. Maybe when I'm writing my closing paragraph on that decade I'll say: "gee, remember how down and out I was in the 80s? This is the opposite of that." I've already seen almost all of the winners so that's a good indication, hopefully the nominees will be of the same quality. For the immediate future all I can say is the next installment will include: Tootsie in tort, President Bartlet smelling napalm, and Morpheus piloting a sea vessel. Okay those last two were from the same movie but I never get to reference Morpheus so I couldn't resist.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
1981: The Year that Indy Wasn't Solely Present as a Snappy Pop Culture Reference
That's right ladies and gents, Indiana Jones broke the nerd's glass ceiling. Well that's not really true, it was broken in 1977 in real life but for the purposes of my blog it was Indy. Characters like him never seem to get any attention from the Academy. And yet, without his movies Hollywood would cease to exist because it wouldn't have any money. Who knows what combination of events and planet alignments allowed such a miracle to occur to make the people who hand out the Oscars say: "hey why don't we nominate a movie that's good and that people have seen?" The concept boggles the mind. Ironically I actually like the 3rd Indy movie more than the first one, but we'll discuss that when we get to it. I'd like to make a snide comment about the winner for this year but I haven't watched it yet due to a strange colliding of circumstances involving my movie-OCD and my PS3's own personal OCD. So I figured I'd write the rest of it first so I don't fall too far behind.
And we shall begin for once with the letter "a" and Atlantic City. On this escapade I've been surprised at how many mobster-type movies I actually haven't seen or heard of before. I mean once you've seen the big ones you can pretty much stop there for the sake of film history, but the smaller ones have some good nuances too. I wanted to dislike this movie at first because it began by toting the fact that it won Lichtenstein's "Golden Squirrel" award or another such snobby-sounding thing. First: no one knows or cares what that is except for people who awarded it and already know who won. Second: putting things like that into the movie itself, as opposed to on the DVD cover or something, taints the movie in my opinion. It makes the movie seem like an exhibition and not a piece of art. I ended up liking the movie anyway though. It centers on a low-level gangster in Atlantic City during a time when it was becoming a low-level town. It's not played in a sorrowful manner but the underlying sadness is present through the whole movie. Even the way the city is portrayed feels cold and ancient. The only scenes with warmer visual and audio tones are the scenes with Susan Sarandon. That really helps the film to subtly make you feel the redemptive qualities of her character in relation to Burt Lancaster. Burt is perfectly cast as the washed-up and never-taken-seriously gangster. When I first saw that he was the star I thought to myself, "I can't take him seriously in this part." Then I noticed that no one in the movie takes him seriously either so the casting turned out to be good. Essentially he's playing a character who is running rackets like the old days but who was never a big shot in the old days. It would be like if the last surviving member of the Justice League was the guy who used to fix Batman's car and he was trying to be taken seriously as a superhero. Susan Sarandon plays the young woman with the dark past, looking for a new beginning yadda yadda. Something about her sister and ex (or should be ex) husband coming into town, and she's been impregnated by him and they're druggies. Or hippies. Tough to tell the difference sometimes. The sister is kind of hilarious in how out of place she is within the film with her talk about "vibes" and "inner chi." That's pretty much the whole movie, it's kind of funny, kind of sad, kind of touching. Of course Burt ends up falling in love with Susan, since the opening scene of the movie is her rubbing lemon juice all over herself in plain view of him. So he either has to be in love with her and she says, "ew gross, you're like forty years older than me" or she says "all right then." Since the guy could never catch a break in life, it's good that it worked out the way it did otherwise the movie would have been needlessly depressing. So I can't go all out in recommending the film since it's not overly excellent, but it was well done for what it was.
Another film I moderately enjoyed was On Golden Pond. Ordinarily this would be one of those times where I'd say, "it's not that I don't like this movie, but the fact that it was nominated for Best Picture irks me." Well either I really am losing my curmudgeon-ness or there was such a slew of bad movies in the 80s that I'll take whatever I can get. I wouldn't quite call this a Hallmark movie, but since it contains once-great actors after their prime, a relatively small cast, and a predictable story I'd say it at least qualifies as an above-average HBO film. It's a character study of characters we all recognize from other movies and from real life. My dad tells me that everybody pretty much knew it would be Henry Fonda's last film, and Katharine Hepburn was on her way out of the business too, and Jane Fonda's relationship with her father somewhat mirrored their relationship in the movie. Actually my dad only told me those first two things, the third one was from IMDB. I just didn't feel like starting a new sentence. Anyway, the film centers around some old people at their vacation home reflecting on how much time they've spent there and looking to what little future they have left and trying to come to terms with some family issues. It's totally predictable but it's still enjoyable, and it had a few nice touches that provided more of an emotional hook than I expected. My favorite one of these was during a fishing scene between Henry Fonda and his in-movie grandson wherein they catch a fish and Henry decides to throw it back. It's a small little scene but the way that he says to throw it back and the sorrowful manner in which we see him toss the fish back come together to tell us that he was contemplating his own mortality. Oddly enough, and this is one of my stranger comparisons, it reminded me of a similar scene in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. That's a fairly overlooked movie that had the misfortune of coming out opposite the first Pirates of the Caribbean. It's not a terrific film but it's pretty cool and Sean Connery is in it. And Sean's character is the classic "aging adventurer" who compares himself early in the movie to an old tiger. Then later in the movie he is standing guard at a cave entrance while the others are sleeping and a tiger approaches, and he can't bring himself to shoot it for the same reason that drove Henry to throw the fish back. It's the little scenes such as this that are often the highlights of films for me, and it brought me into On Golden Pond enough that I felt a connection to the characters. I realize I spent about as much time talking about LXG as the movie I was supposed to be talking about, but it's tough to think of things to say about a movie that features a cast of about 10 (including extras) and spends most of its time showing old people bickering. For what it was, I enjoyed it. And I look forward to seeing more of Henry Fonda, because though this movie was the end for him it is the beginning for me.
That would have been a nice end to this blog entry, but there's plenty more to go. And now is the paragraph I've been waiting to write for months: Raiders of the Lost Ark. This might have been the last time that an awesome summer movie with a nerd following and actually impressive filmmaking was nominated. Which might imply that summer action movies with bad filmmaking get nominated sometimes. They don't. Thankfully. Because they give movies like this a bad name. Speaking of the name, the title doesn't begin with "Indiana Jones and the" and I refuse to write it as such. Because the film itself remains with the original title. This is not the case with another HUGE nerd movie from 1977, but I'll discuss that when I get to it. Now then, as I said before I do like the third movie a bit better but that's largely because I like the trials at the end and Sean Connery is in it. He's gotten two shout-outs this entry, that's pretty good. I wish I could reference him more because that would be an indication of better films in the queue. This first film paved the way though, and in a lot of ways it set the standard for the modern summer film. It has action, a great story, amazing and iconic music, but also an interesting character at the forefront. In this way it was far ahead of its time because only recently have we seen a lot more summer action films that can be similarly described. Most of them are more along the lines of Die Hard (which came out after Raiders but is the best example I can think of) which is a pretty great action movie but not an achievement as a film. But Indiana Jones is a great character with a great director at the helm: Steven Spielberg. The film isn't without its flaws, or perhaps I should say "flaw" because Karen Allen's character is really the only annoying aspect of the movie. When they reunite for their adventure we see Indy's shadow on the wall, larger than life, and with her reaction we are told everything we need to know about the character. He is perceived by others as this monumental and flawless hero and adventurer, but that's really just a projection of the real man. We see this real man in his true colors near the end of the film, in easily my favorite scene in the movie and one of my favorites ever. Before I describe it, here's a little background on the story: (in case you are deprived and haven't seen it) Indiana Jones is an archaeology professor who also hunts down ancient artifacts in exotic and dangerous places. In this particular movie, he's been hired to find the Ark of the Covenant so that the Nazis can't get their hands on it. Right then: onto the scene. Near the end, Indy has a rocket launcher pointed at the Ark and the main villain steps aside to allow him to fire and blow it up. But he can't do it. Because the villain knew that Indy wanted to see what was inside just as much as anybody. See now, your classic action hero would never do that. He would always do what was best for the world or for morality or whatever. But Indy isn't really a hero, he's more like an adventurer. He does what he does for his own personal satisfaction and he'll probably save some people along the way but that's not his primary objective. So even though the day ends up being saved (by none other than God Himself as it turns out) the fact remains that things could very easily have gone the other way because of Indy's own personal gratification. The fact that they made a movie that could be enjoyed by the casual theater-goer while still employing creative filmmaking and writing a conflicted main character is astounding. So I think it fully deserved the nomination it received and though we don't live in a world where it would ever win, I'm glad we live in one where it exists anyway.
Boy what a pleasant blog entry this has been, too bad commies had to ruin it with Reds. Now let's all say this in unison: just because you made a 3-hour plus movie that is coherent doesn't mean you should have. I'm being more harsh on this movie than I should, stylistically speaking, but it's pretty much a movie that wants you to feel for communists. I can recognize with a lot of people, but they're not among them. I wept for Luthor. I wept for Vader. I won't weep for Marx (except Zeppo because he never got any good lines). Facetiousness aside, my main problem with this movie is that its pacing is all off. It intercuts interviews with people who experienced the events of the film in real life with the fictionalized portrayal. While I do like the interviews, I think that format worked a lot better on the miniseries Band of Brothers because they put the interviews at the beginning and then the rest of it was the fictional portrayal. This allows the viewer to become immersed in the story. When I was watching this movie I felt like I was watching a really, really, really well-produced History Channel documentary. I can appreciate the scope of the film and certainly the impressive cast it assembled, including: Diane Keaton, Gene Hackman, and Jack Nicholson (who is in freaking everything except for stuff that he turned down). And of course the main star is Warren Beatty, who also directed, wrote, produced, and likely catered it. It's probably a good thing he made this in 1981 when the fight against communism was in the form of the Cold War and didn't involve any McCarthyism. Otherwise the whole cast and crew would've probably been deported. Then Jack Nicholson never would have played the Joker, so that's why that would have sucked. Diane Keaton never reprising her Godfather role for Part III: would've been mildly disappointing but whatever. Okay, I'll stop ripping on the pinkos (promise). Any time that there's a person like real-life journalist John Reed, Beatty's role, who is passionate enough about something to put himself in harm's way to gather info about it and then put himself in the spotlight by writing about it: that's admirable. So I admire his personal story, and the movie is well-done at times and well-acted but I don't think it earns its running time (not even close) and with the added issue of the pacing it makes the film kind of boring. And I hate to say that because I love long movies and I hate when people are bored by them, but I was quite honestly not interested during a lot of the film. And I'm unemployed and have nothing to do. If I paid money to see this in theaters I'd have been pissed. So I give them credit for pulling together the resources necessary to make the film, but I also give the Academy some rare credit for not tossing the Oscar to the longest film nominated simply for its "epic" scale.
Not to say I exactly think the winner is one of the all-time greats, but it's a good movie: Chariots of Fire. This is one of those films I probably should have seen as a child, instead of an hour ago. Because when you've seen as many movies and TV shows as I have, it's tough not to look at it like a piece of meat. It makes me sad to say that since I used to really get caught up in movies as a true viewer and now I'm flirting with being a film snob. In fact, the only things stopping me from being a film snob are my frequent pop culture references to things film snobs would never watch. Also my obsession with Batman. And the fact that I own Prince of Persia because it's fun and the girl is hot. Okay, you've convinced me. I'm not a snob. Which is good because I'm about to sound pretty snobby, you ready? I think this movie was over-hyped for me because I previously thought it centered on Eric Liddell's refusal to run on a Sunday. Not only is that a small part of the movie (though crucial, to be sure) but I also thought that the film focused more on Eric's quasi-rival Harold Abrahams. I found him a lot more interesting in some ways, because he was running as a result of rampant anti-semitism. Whereas Eric was running for the glory of God, which is cool too but it's also a little cheesy. And even though things worked out, if I read a story in the paper about a guy who refused to run on a Sunday for religious reasons and then was disqualified, I'd be pissed. Not for reasons of religious persecution, but instead because my feeling is: if you've been given a talent and you believe it's from God (not saying I don't believe that, but this is a rant blog not a pamphlet one) then shouldn't you use it to glorify God? The way I see it, as long as you get your worship time in there at some point then you should be good to go. I never understood how me sitting around watching DVDs on Sundays after church would bring more glory than me going and doing something productive like working. But that's just me ranting about non-film stuff. The movie itself kind of reeks of the 80s, but it doesn't bother me too much. I'm glad the famous music isn't overused too, because I've heard it so much in parody that I now can't take it seriously. Some of the audio sounds like it's a badly dubbed foreign film, but maybe that's just representative of Britain's production qualities (zing!). It's an inspiring story, and I'm glad that popular movies that are uplifting get a win sometimes. Depressing movies are good every now and again to admire as movies, but when you watch a bunch at once (like I've been doing) it can get to you. So I must admit that even a quasi-snob like me who looks at films like meat managed to shed a few tears for Eric Liddell and his story.
See how I made it sound like I never cry during movies when I do that all the time? Usually it's during superhero movies though, or every episode of Lost. Well, aside from the commie lovefest (had to get one more shot in there) this was a pretty great year. Will the next one be as good? Probably not. It will be the last year in the 80s that I review though, which is uplifting. All I know now is that it will contain: normal people, the daughter of normal people, and DeNiro in black and white instead of sepia.
And we shall begin for once with the letter "a" and Atlantic City. On this escapade I've been surprised at how many mobster-type movies I actually haven't seen or heard of before. I mean once you've seen the big ones you can pretty much stop there for the sake of film history, but the smaller ones have some good nuances too. I wanted to dislike this movie at first because it began by toting the fact that it won Lichtenstein's "Golden Squirrel" award or another such snobby-sounding thing. First: no one knows or cares what that is except for people who awarded it and already know who won. Second: putting things like that into the movie itself, as opposed to on the DVD cover or something, taints the movie in my opinion. It makes the movie seem like an exhibition and not a piece of art. I ended up liking the movie anyway though. It centers on a low-level gangster in Atlantic City during a time when it was becoming a low-level town. It's not played in a sorrowful manner but the underlying sadness is present through the whole movie. Even the way the city is portrayed feels cold and ancient. The only scenes with warmer visual and audio tones are the scenes with Susan Sarandon. That really helps the film to subtly make you feel the redemptive qualities of her character in relation to Burt Lancaster. Burt is perfectly cast as the washed-up and never-taken-seriously gangster. When I first saw that he was the star I thought to myself, "I can't take him seriously in this part." Then I noticed that no one in the movie takes him seriously either so the casting turned out to be good. Essentially he's playing a character who is running rackets like the old days but who was never a big shot in the old days. It would be like if the last surviving member of the Justice League was the guy who used to fix Batman's car and he was trying to be taken seriously as a superhero. Susan Sarandon plays the young woman with the dark past, looking for a new beginning yadda yadda. Something about her sister and ex (or should be ex) husband coming into town, and she's been impregnated by him and they're druggies. Or hippies. Tough to tell the difference sometimes. The sister is kind of hilarious in how out of place she is within the film with her talk about "vibes" and "inner chi." That's pretty much the whole movie, it's kind of funny, kind of sad, kind of touching. Of course Burt ends up falling in love with Susan, since the opening scene of the movie is her rubbing lemon juice all over herself in plain view of him. So he either has to be in love with her and she says, "ew gross, you're like forty years older than me" or she says "all right then." Since the guy could never catch a break in life, it's good that it worked out the way it did otherwise the movie would have been needlessly depressing. So I can't go all out in recommending the film since it's not overly excellent, but it was well done for what it was.
Another film I moderately enjoyed was On Golden Pond. Ordinarily this would be one of those times where I'd say, "it's not that I don't like this movie, but the fact that it was nominated for Best Picture irks me." Well either I really am losing my curmudgeon-ness or there was such a slew of bad movies in the 80s that I'll take whatever I can get. I wouldn't quite call this a Hallmark movie, but since it contains once-great actors after their prime, a relatively small cast, and a predictable story I'd say it at least qualifies as an above-average HBO film. It's a character study of characters we all recognize from other movies and from real life. My dad tells me that everybody pretty much knew it would be Henry Fonda's last film, and Katharine Hepburn was on her way out of the business too, and Jane Fonda's relationship with her father somewhat mirrored their relationship in the movie. Actually my dad only told me those first two things, the third one was from IMDB. I just didn't feel like starting a new sentence. Anyway, the film centers around some old people at their vacation home reflecting on how much time they've spent there and looking to what little future they have left and trying to come to terms with some family issues. It's totally predictable but it's still enjoyable, and it had a few nice touches that provided more of an emotional hook than I expected. My favorite one of these was during a fishing scene between Henry Fonda and his in-movie grandson wherein they catch a fish and Henry decides to throw it back. It's a small little scene but the way that he says to throw it back and the sorrowful manner in which we see him toss the fish back come together to tell us that he was contemplating his own mortality. Oddly enough, and this is one of my stranger comparisons, it reminded me of a similar scene in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. That's a fairly overlooked movie that had the misfortune of coming out opposite the first Pirates of the Caribbean. It's not a terrific film but it's pretty cool and Sean Connery is in it. And Sean's character is the classic "aging adventurer" who compares himself early in the movie to an old tiger. Then later in the movie he is standing guard at a cave entrance while the others are sleeping and a tiger approaches, and he can't bring himself to shoot it for the same reason that drove Henry to throw the fish back. It's the little scenes such as this that are often the highlights of films for me, and it brought me into On Golden Pond enough that I felt a connection to the characters. I realize I spent about as much time talking about LXG as the movie I was supposed to be talking about, but it's tough to think of things to say about a movie that features a cast of about 10 (including extras) and spends most of its time showing old people bickering. For what it was, I enjoyed it. And I look forward to seeing more of Henry Fonda, because though this movie was the end for him it is the beginning for me.
That would have been a nice end to this blog entry, but there's plenty more to go. And now is the paragraph I've been waiting to write for months: Raiders of the Lost Ark. This might have been the last time that an awesome summer movie with a nerd following and actually impressive filmmaking was nominated. Which might imply that summer action movies with bad filmmaking get nominated sometimes. They don't. Thankfully. Because they give movies like this a bad name. Speaking of the name, the title doesn't begin with "Indiana Jones and the" and I refuse to write it as such. Because the film itself remains with the original title. This is not the case with another HUGE nerd movie from 1977, but I'll discuss that when I get to it. Now then, as I said before I do like the third movie a bit better but that's largely because I like the trials at the end and Sean Connery is in it. He's gotten two shout-outs this entry, that's pretty good. I wish I could reference him more because that would be an indication of better films in the queue. This first film paved the way though, and in a lot of ways it set the standard for the modern summer film. It has action, a great story, amazing and iconic music, but also an interesting character at the forefront. In this way it was far ahead of its time because only recently have we seen a lot more summer action films that can be similarly described. Most of them are more along the lines of Die Hard (which came out after Raiders but is the best example I can think of) which is a pretty great action movie but not an achievement as a film. But Indiana Jones is a great character with a great director at the helm: Steven Spielberg. The film isn't without its flaws, or perhaps I should say "flaw" because Karen Allen's character is really the only annoying aspect of the movie. When they reunite for their adventure we see Indy's shadow on the wall, larger than life, and with her reaction we are told everything we need to know about the character. He is perceived by others as this monumental and flawless hero and adventurer, but that's really just a projection of the real man. We see this real man in his true colors near the end of the film, in easily my favorite scene in the movie and one of my favorites ever. Before I describe it, here's a little background on the story: (in case you are deprived and haven't seen it) Indiana Jones is an archaeology professor who also hunts down ancient artifacts in exotic and dangerous places. In this particular movie, he's been hired to find the Ark of the Covenant so that the Nazis can't get their hands on it. Right then: onto the scene. Near the end, Indy has a rocket launcher pointed at the Ark and the main villain steps aside to allow him to fire and blow it up. But he can't do it. Because the villain knew that Indy wanted to see what was inside just as much as anybody. See now, your classic action hero would never do that. He would always do what was best for the world or for morality or whatever. But Indy isn't really a hero, he's more like an adventurer. He does what he does for his own personal satisfaction and he'll probably save some people along the way but that's not his primary objective. So even though the day ends up being saved (by none other than God Himself as it turns out) the fact remains that things could very easily have gone the other way because of Indy's own personal gratification. The fact that they made a movie that could be enjoyed by the casual theater-goer while still employing creative filmmaking and writing a conflicted main character is astounding. So I think it fully deserved the nomination it received and though we don't live in a world where it would ever win, I'm glad we live in one where it exists anyway.
Boy what a pleasant blog entry this has been, too bad commies had to ruin it with Reds. Now let's all say this in unison: just because you made a 3-hour plus movie that is coherent doesn't mean you should have. I'm being more harsh on this movie than I should, stylistically speaking, but it's pretty much a movie that wants you to feel for communists. I can recognize with a lot of people, but they're not among them. I wept for Luthor. I wept for Vader. I won't weep for Marx (except Zeppo because he never got any good lines). Facetiousness aside, my main problem with this movie is that its pacing is all off. It intercuts interviews with people who experienced the events of the film in real life with the fictionalized portrayal. While I do like the interviews, I think that format worked a lot better on the miniseries Band of Brothers because they put the interviews at the beginning and then the rest of it was the fictional portrayal. This allows the viewer to become immersed in the story. When I was watching this movie I felt like I was watching a really, really, really well-produced History Channel documentary. I can appreciate the scope of the film and certainly the impressive cast it assembled, including: Diane Keaton, Gene Hackman, and Jack Nicholson (who is in freaking everything except for stuff that he turned down). And of course the main star is Warren Beatty, who also directed, wrote, produced, and likely catered it. It's probably a good thing he made this in 1981 when the fight against communism was in the form of the Cold War and didn't involve any McCarthyism. Otherwise the whole cast and crew would've probably been deported. Then Jack Nicholson never would have played the Joker, so that's why that would have sucked. Diane Keaton never reprising her Godfather role for Part III: would've been mildly disappointing but whatever. Okay, I'll stop ripping on the pinkos (promise). Any time that there's a person like real-life journalist John Reed, Beatty's role, who is passionate enough about something to put himself in harm's way to gather info about it and then put himself in the spotlight by writing about it: that's admirable. So I admire his personal story, and the movie is well-done at times and well-acted but I don't think it earns its running time (not even close) and with the added issue of the pacing it makes the film kind of boring. And I hate to say that because I love long movies and I hate when people are bored by them, but I was quite honestly not interested during a lot of the film. And I'm unemployed and have nothing to do. If I paid money to see this in theaters I'd have been pissed. So I give them credit for pulling together the resources necessary to make the film, but I also give the Academy some rare credit for not tossing the Oscar to the longest film nominated simply for its "epic" scale.
Not to say I exactly think the winner is one of the all-time greats, but it's a good movie: Chariots of Fire. This is one of those films I probably should have seen as a child, instead of an hour ago. Because when you've seen as many movies and TV shows as I have, it's tough not to look at it like a piece of meat. It makes me sad to say that since I used to really get caught up in movies as a true viewer and now I'm flirting with being a film snob. In fact, the only things stopping me from being a film snob are my frequent pop culture references to things film snobs would never watch. Also my obsession with Batman. And the fact that I own Prince of Persia because it's fun and the girl is hot. Okay, you've convinced me. I'm not a snob. Which is good because I'm about to sound pretty snobby, you ready? I think this movie was over-hyped for me because I previously thought it centered on Eric Liddell's refusal to run on a Sunday. Not only is that a small part of the movie (though crucial, to be sure) but I also thought that the film focused more on Eric's quasi-rival Harold Abrahams. I found him a lot more interesting in some ways, because he was running as a result of rampant anti-semitism. Whereas Eric was running for the glory of God, which is cool too but it's also a little cheesy. And even though things worked out, if I read a story in the paper about a guy who refused to run on a Sunday for religious reasons and then was disqualified, I'd be pissed. Not for reasons of religious persecution, but instead because my feeling is: if you've been given a talent and you believe it's from God (not saying I don't believe that, but this is a rant blog not a pamphlet one) then shouldn't you use it to glorify God? The way I see it, as long as you get your worship time in there at some point then you should be good to go. I never understood how me sitting around watching DVDs on Sundays after church would bring more glory than me going and doing something productive like working. But that's just me ranting about non-film stuff. The movie itself kind of reeks of the 80s, but it doesn't bother me too much. I'm glad the famous music isn't overused too, because I've heard it so much in parody that I now can't take it seriously. Some of the audio sounds like it's a badly dubbed foreign film, but maybe that's just representative of Britain's production qualities (zing!). It's an inspiring story, and I'm glad that popular movies that are uplifting get a win sometimes. Depressing movies are good every now and again to admire as movies, but when you watch a bunch at once (like I've been doing) it can get to you. So I must admit that even a quasi-snob like me who looks at films like meat managed to shed a few tears for Eric Liddell and his story.
See how I made it sound like I never cry during movies when I do that all the time? Usually it's during superhero movies though, or every episode of Lost. Well, aside from the commie lovefest (had to get one more shot in there) this was a pretty great year. Will the next one be as good? Probably not. It will be the last year in the 80s that I review though, which is uplifting. All I know now is that it will contain: normal people, the daughter of normal people, and DeNiro in black and white instead of sepia.
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