Probably one of my favorite lines of all time. Well, the entire speech that it's contained within anyway. It all comes from this year's winner: a film that has long been one of my favorite movies. The rest of the year I could mostly do without, which is unfortunate because that doesn't really reflect my overall feelings toward the 70s. We'll see how the 60s go...there's a lot of great stuff I've already seen. There are also a ton of musicals that are like two and a half hours long. I love musicals, but overly cheery/overly long ones are a bit trying. So I guess we'll see. But we've got to finish this decade first, so away we go.
Look...up in the sky...it's not a bird...there is a plane involved...it's Airport. See now, if this was a visual blog I would have said that in an April from Parks and Recreation/Ben Stein voice. And why? Because this "disaster" movie is horrendously boring and also not suspenseful. I was first suspicious when I saw that this movie was rated G. How can a film about a bomb on a plane be suspenseful if the ratings board said it was just as appropriate for children as Cinderella? For the record, I think the film should have been PG since the bomb actually goes off and a I think a dude gets shot too. But that's not really the point. The point is that the "crisis" doesn't enter into the plot for about an hour and twenty minutes. That is absurd. What if the terrorists in Die Hard took that long to show up and everything before that was just awkward small talk between John McClane and his soon-to-be-ex-wife's co-workers? That would have sucked. Like this movie. It spends that time developing uninteresting characters with cliché storylines, and then those storylines go absolutely nowhere because as soon as the crisis is solved the movie just ends. Not only is the comedy classic Airplane! a more enjoyable film, it's quite actually a better movie. I am not even kidding. It's structured better and the characters are better. I wish I was hyperbolizing. Because this movie has plotlines that go nowhere and a crisis story that is neither suspenseful nor solved by the protagonists. That's right. The "plan" they came up with to stop the bomb failed, even after a particularly silly piece of deux ex machina for setup, and the bomb blew up. Then they land the plane. That was the crisis. So in other words: if you're unlucky enough to be on a plane when a bomb goes off, don't worry! Because as long as your plane does, in fact, have a pilot: you will be okay. Stupid. How they got Dean Martin and Burt Lancaster into this movie is a mystery. Actually it's not a mystery, it's called money. But how they scrounged up enough money with their crap script to be able to afford Dean and Burt is a mystery. And how the Academy watched this sub-par suspense film that is also a way sub-par drama film and felt the need to nominate it is the biggest mystery of all.
A movie I'm still watching is Five Easy Pieces. You know what that means: I'm bored enough during it that I would ordinarily be also doing a crossword puzzle or re-reading Stephen Colbert's "I am America (And So Can You!)" which is probably the greatest book of all time. But when a movie such as this is the final film for a decade I like to instead do a blog entry during it, so that my time is spent doing an almost worthwhile venture. Which is a good way to sum up this film: an almost worthwhile venture. There's the big famous "wheat toast" scene which was probably over-hyped for me, although I did like it. Then there's the rest of the movie, which has an interesting premise but isn't delivered particularly well. It has one of my favorite film tropes: a person who could have been really great in a particular field but who, for whatever reason, ended up being just some schmuck working on an oil rig. That oil rig part is just for this film, but the rest is a trope. And it's one I find interesting because it raises questions of destiny and purpose. Questions that for me were epitomized by the bad guy in the new Star Trek movie (of all things) when he says, "James T. Kirk was a great man...but that was another life." Can Kirk still be the man he was supposed to be even though his life was drastically changed from the original Kirk we know and love? It remains to be seen. So could Jack Nicholson's character have lived up to his full potential if things had gone slightly differently? Good question. Too bad it's not really explored or answered. Unlike Brando's famous "I coulda been a contender" scene from the excellent 1954 Best Picture Winner. That was a great scene because it summed up an entire lifetime's worth of dilemmas in one scene. And it did it without being too over-the-top or preachy. I would have preferred this film to be over-the-top or preachy to being what it is: not much. It hints at interesting things without fully exploring them. Nicholson's character is good and he plays him well, but I never really felt a connection to him or to anything else in the movie. He was a child prodigy who grew up to not do much. So why didn't he do much? This was not answered adequately. It spent too much time showing how boring his life actually was. All of that being said, it's not a bad movie. It's well-written and the supporting cast is pretty good. I guess it's just a little too mundane for me to fully like it.
Which is still preferable to the odious mess that is Love Story. Prepare yourselves for a rant ladies and gents. This is probably one of my most hated films that I've watched on the Oscar escapade. Not worst per se, although it's pretty bad, but most hated. It's basically the origin story of the modern chick flick. So its malice just keeps going and going. And just to be clear, there's a difference between a chick flick like Music & Lyrics (which is actually quite charming and has a catchy song) and chick flicks like this which are just tears and human sadness fused onto celluloid. Not for any particular reason. Just to provide an emotional hook for the audience so they can cry and wail and go see it again with each of their girlfriends. Here's the story: guy meets girl. Guy goes out with girl, not because of an intellectual attraction but because they're both attractive and she served him coffee. Guy marries girl. Girl dies. Movie ends. There's no other point to it than that. If this was cleverly written it would be somewhat forgiveable. It's not. If its famous line, "love means never having to say you're sorry" was true or applicable to real life then that would be forgiveable. It's not. In fact, it's dangerous when applied to real life. And that brings me to my somewhat-radical point. Movies like this are basically the female emotional equivalent of porn. I say that because males are usually physical-oriented, hence classic porn. It creates an unrealistic portrayal of women and male-female relationships, which isn't nearly as dangerous as Dr. Dobson would have you believe. I say this based on an interview he had with Ted Bundy, the point of which was "porn made me do it." It will not make you kill 60+ people. But it's still pretty bad. Especially since it creates a very frat-esque mentality for a lot of men (based on my college observations, not speaking abstractly). Movies like this one, on the other hand, create a more dangerous unrealistic portrayal of male-female relationships that women are more susceptible to. The reason being that you come away from it thinking that even if things in your relationship aren't going great, don't worry! Because love means never having to say you're sorry. So if he doesn't apologize for being an ass, no sweat. And of course you can change him. The guy in the movie was changed by the girl, so your douchebag of a boyfriend will change too right? Not so much. On the male side of things: it's pretty obvious that if you're a pizza boy you won't actually bang every woman that orders the "pizza with extra sausage." But there are a lot of women who stay with men they shouldn't be with because of a mentality that is largely encouraged by movies like this. And to be clear: I think extreme violent content is too extreme to influence anyone seriously, unless they have other serious mental problems. The dangerous influences are the ones that are representational of actual real-life situations. Not that Ryan O'Neal's character is too terrible because he's not and I don't want to imply otherwise. But every now and again I see an opportunity to talk about things in society that irk me, instead of just saying "the dialogue was bad." Oh, and the dialogue was bad (by the way). Near the end she says, "I feel like I'm falling constantly. Do you ever feel that way?" And I thought to myself: don't say when you met her...don't say when you met her. And he said, "every day since I met you." Barf. I might as well have just watched two episodes of Gossip Girl. I could literally go on for forever about how much I don't like this movie and movies like it, but I'll leave it at that.
Mercifully, I really enjoyed MASH. So much so that I ordered all 11 seasons of the TV show. Because I love humor that exists where humor has no business existing. Like in the Korean War. The reason I like this so much is that all humor comes from a dark place. Humor is making light of terrible situations. Or laughing at things that bother us. Satire is pointing out things that are wrong with the world by finding entertainment in it. This film takes an incredibly serious thing, the Korean War (although it's really a thinly veiled portrayal of the Vietnam War), and makes it downright ridiculous. The theme song "Suicide is Painless," which is sung in an almost upbeat way, sets the tone for the rest of the film. The movie isn't laugh-out-loud funny too often, but it's very entertaining and certainly amusing and ingenius with regards to its satire. It's kind of a next-gen Marx Brothers film when you really look at it. Because their humor was pure anarchy: non-sequiturs and random breakings of the fourth wall. That's what this movie is: very droll and very dark humor. Love it. It includes a scene where a man nicknamed "Painless" is contemplating suicide because of his latent homosexual tendencies and so they hold a dinner in his honor (framed like DaVinci's "Last Supper") while another soldier sings "Suicide is Painless." He then takes the suicide pill, which is actually a sleeping pill, and wakes up next to a woman who sleeps with him to "cure him of his ailment." That is simply too absurd and convoluted to not be awesome. I would talk more about why this movie is great but I kind of went off on that last movie so I'm as exhausted of writing this as you are of reading it. Suffice it to say that the film was way ahead of its time, as was the show I'm told. I will find out for sure soon.
Easily the year's best film, and indeed one of the decade's and century's too, is Patton. It would be enough if the movie was just a great war film. And it is a well-written and well-directed film. But it also contains a phenomenal tour-de-force of a performance from George C. Scott as General Patton. He truly became Patton, he didn't just play him. He played him so well that Karl Malden's performance in the film went almost entirely unnoticed (but it's also a good performance). Not surprisingly, the masterful screenplay (which won the Oscar too) was written by none other than Mr. Francis Ford Coppola. And it was when he won for this movie that Paramount allowed him to continue working on The Godfather. Which makes this film even more awesome. Another great aspect is that a lot of Patton's dialogue in the film is made up of things he said in real life. The famous opening speech in front of the large American flag is almost identical to the actual speech, with the language slightly cleaned up. Coppola knew that Patton was a controversial figure because a lot of people hate him and a lot of people love him. Not too many in-betweeners. I love him, for the record. But it's written in such a way that if you want to see him as a tyrannical military leader then you can. He wrote it to appease both schools of thought. It also does something I love: fictionalizing real life without taking it too far. Scenes such as Patton reflecting on his belief that he is the "everlasting spirit of battle" illustrate this. He believes that he is this reincarnated spirit of war that arises throughout history when it is needed most. Did he actually believe this in real life? I wouldn't put it past him, but probably not. But it doesn't matter because it doesn't stretch the truth too much. It just makes it more cinematic. There's nothing in the movie that misrepresents Patton or World War II, it just takes what's true and makes it interesting from a cinematic point of view. Totally hard to do but Coppola killed it. I should also point out that Franklin J. Schaffner does an excellent job directing that is perfectly complemented by Jerry Goldsmith's score. It is a fairly long film but it earns its length and has a good amount of well-filmed action too (for those tragically only interested in that).
Well that's it for the 1970s. Not a bad decade. In fact, a pretty great one overall. Definitely some timeless classics, including the best movie ever. So that's better than William Hurt being weepy right? I think so. But the 60s now loom ahead of me and I hope I enjoy them. It will begin with a man with six wives, two criminals and murderers, and male prostitutes. Who says content got worse over the years?
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
1971: The Year that Lex Luthor Picked his Feet in Poughkeepsie
There's an image. Especially since it's my least favorite version of Lex Luthor, Gene Hackman. Love Hackman in general. But his Lex Luthor is not good. Like, at all. But I'll be talking about him more later when I discuss one of the most overrated Best Picture winners ever. But it's still part of one of the better ensemble years of Nominees that I've been through thus far. And the winner is still a good movie, just not that good.
And certainly not better than A Clockwork Orange. Although its "ultraviolence" and heavily disturbed sexual themes and imagery were probably a bit much for 1971. It's surprising it was nominated at all really. The mother of a good friend of mine told me she saw this movie when she was like 8 or something crazy. How she wasn't scarred for life to the point of being institutionalized is beyond me. Because I only just saw it about a year ago and it disturbed me. Not much gets to me, mind you. Today I was eating my lunch whilst watching an episode of Bones where a person's head explodes on camera. I gave a startled chuckle and continued eating my sloppy joe. But this movie is crazy. It's also SO freaking good. I go back and forth over whether this is my favorite Kubrick film or his 1964 extraordinary dark comedy that I'll be discussing when I get to that year. Some say that this movie goes out of its way for the main character to engage in acts of exploitative violence. And to that I say: that was precisely the point. He is the absolute extreme of an unfeeling and violent individual. He and his friends rape a woman while "Singin' in the Rain" plays. Great scene, didn't recover until the Glee episode with the "Singin' in the Rain" Gwyneth Paltrow mashup. Somewhat less famous is a scene where Alex DeLarge (played to perfection by Malcolm McDowell) engages in a threesome with some random bimbos. The scene plays in superfast motion to a classical piece, completely dehumanizing the act. Here is a man who not only can't feel love, he can scarcely feel lust. And so what to do with this troublesome individual? Brainwash him. At least, that's what his dystopian society thinks to do. So they put him in that classic 70s brainwashing room (not sure if this movie originated it or if this was a "legit" psychological therapy method back then) and make him experience nausea whenever he experiences arousal. Either in a sexual way or in a violent way, although I'm sure Freud would say they're one and the same. I wouldn't, but whatever. The point is that this treatment raises the film's fundamental question: is it better to have a society of automatons? Or as the book explains: a society of "clockwork oranges," something that is organic on the outside and mechanical on the inside. There's no correct answer but the question is fascinating and no one could ask it better than Stanley Kubrick. This is quite possibly his masterpiece, and we remember it that way even if the Academy didn't see it that way at the time. I wouldn't recommend it to everybody, since it's pretty tough to watch, but if you're any kind of film historian or critic then it is required (and quite excellent) viewing.
I suppose you could say the same about Fiddler on the Roof, but for completely different reasons. This is why I love doing things alphabetically: because it's the only way you can go from a movie where a woman gets killed with a statue of a penis to a movie where a song lyric is "if I were a biddy-biddy rich, daidle deedle daidle daidle man." Fantastic. I actually had the pleasure of seeing this on Broadway when Doc Ock himself, Mr. Alfred Molina, was Tevye. Loved it then. Love the movie too. Although I do think that having plot points revolving around all three of his daughters marrying was a bit much. Especially since the suitors get more and more non-kosher as they go along. If he had a fourth daughter she'd have been trying to hook up with Lenin. Other than that though, the film wonderfully balances nostalgia by having it be funny at some times and sad at others. It's about hanging onto the old while embracing the new. All while singing and dancing! On that note, some of the musical numbers are a bit rougher than others. Specifically, I always felt that "Matchmaker" and "Do You Love Me?" were a tad forced. That being said, I love all of the other numbers. Especially "Sunrise, Sunset" which perfectly segues the tone of the first half of the film into the tone of the rest of the film. Still in all, I think the movie also has a lot more substance to it than a lot of musicals where you're simply waiting for the next song and not really caring about the rest of it. Tevye's words of wisdom are thoughtful and charming and the rest of his family manages to be quirky without being too annoying. It also manages to balance the fairly large number of characters. This is tougher than you'd think. It needs to make each character distinct so you don't get any of them mixed up, so you have to switch between them in such a way that you care about each of their stories without getting confused or bored. Many many many films fail at doing this and they lose the audience halfway through (especially when they're 3 hours long like this movie). So I give everyone in the film credit for making what is probably one of the best Broadway adaptations ever. And I should also give a special mention to my main man John Williams who orchestrated and adapted the music along with TOS Star Trek composer Alexander Courage. That's an awesome team-up if ever I heard one.
And then comes the inevitable bad film to ruin all of my rare positive vibes: The Last Picture Show. How many coming-of-age stories does one need? Every filmmaker in existence did, in fact, age at some point and they more than likely graduated high school too. Did they all have to make a movie about it? And did the Academy have to recognize them every time they did? Ironically, I'm pretty sure Tarantino didn't actually complete high school and yet he's probably one of the only people alive today that could make coming-of-age interesting from a film perspective. Maybe the only other person, Chris Nolan, should direct a coming-of-age British World War II movie with a main character that has a disability. Then he can net himself a Directing nomination for once (do you feel my rant coming on that subject? I know you do). But that's enough of that for now, I'm sure you'll be sick of hearing about it by the time my 2010 entry comes along. So what can be said about this particular take on angst and aging in Middle America? Well, it's in black and white. And Jeff Bridges is in it. And it's directed by Dr. Elliot Kupferberg. So all of that is well and good. But it's the same old story. According to Wikipedia, it was one of the first films to use a contemporary music soundtrack. Well, Waterworld might have been the first movie to do something notable but who'd care? So you know what? I'm not even going to bother. Hopefully this will end up being the last picture show that I have to sit through that involves these themes. It won't be.
But I'd love to see more movies like Nicholas and Alexandra: epics that are backed up by legit stories and production values. Thankfully I'm entering the era of such films. As you know, I'll gladly sit through a 3 hour movie if it's any good and earns its length. This film certainly doesn't rank up there with the all time great epics, but it's way better than Reds which dealt with a lot of the same historical issues and themes. But whereas Reds basically said, "let's take a story about Russia and somehow make it about America" this movie instead chose to radically say "let's take a story about Russia and make it about...Russia..." I mean, how would you like it if a foreigner made a movie about the Vietnam War and turned it into a "how did this screw-up positively affect our country?" Not that the Vietnam War and the overthrowing of the Russian government are particularly comparable as isolated incidents but hopefully you see what I mean. I don't want a movie that spews historical facts with no feeling behind them, because I could get that from any history book. I want to know the people involved. I want to feel their pain and their joy. I want to experience monumental historical events in a very personal way. And that's what this film does. Although I'm sure that they went out of their way to make Czar Nicholas look better than he was since we were steeped in the Cold War at the time, but still. It has a great musical score, a really good cast (most of whom I haven't heard of), and the pacing is really well done. Similar to what I was discussing earlier, it's difficult to do historical drama because you have to balance educating the audience with entertaining them. You have to assume that the audience knows certain things but you also can't assume that they know everything. And I think they do a really good job of peppering major historical events throughout a personal storyline. The characterization of Rasputin is especially interesting. He is shown as an eccentric man who legitimately cares for the Czar's hemophiliac son and whose public image is far worse than the reality. Is this true? No one can really know for certain. History is shaky on guys like him. And he gets killed just under 2 hours into the film, which was fairly shocking considering the prominent role he played and the remaining running time of the film. So it worked really well, although it's not quite as interesting after he leaves. So even though it's not the best of the "epics" it deals with a story that you don't see all that often and it does it well.
I wish I could say the same about this year's winner: The French Connection. It's by no means a bad movie. But here's my main beef with it: it came out a mere two months before Dirty Harry which is a superior film in every way. So they were clearly filmed at about the same time and neither can be seen as a ripoff of the other. But they both deal with the idea that not all cops are virtuous (shocker!). This was groundbreaking at the time, even though now there is probably not a single stright-laced cop who plays by the rules on television or in film. I know you might be thinking that since it heralded four sub-par sequels that the original Dirty Harry was just some 70s action flick. On the contrary: it depicts a fairly disturbed individual who just happens to be chasing a more disturbed individual. The violence is very real and not over-the-top or heavily choreographed. The same can be said of The French Connection...it's just not as good! I really can't get over how crazy this is. The movies are so similar and they picked the wrong one! And plus, neither is particularly good when compared to most Best Picture winners anyway. Gene Hackman does deliver a good performance as Popeye Doyle, but Best Actor? That's a bit much. I will say that it does have a truly enthralling car chase that ends with a moment of cold-blooded menace on the part of Hackman's character. But the rest of the film is quite honestly kind of dull. It's pretty realistic as far as a police investigation goes and it also depicts the police officers very realistically because it shows them bending the rules in such a way where they could legitimately avoid being caught. But they could have done that within a more interesting narrative. I like that the big bad guy ends up getting away, but we also didn't see him developed enough to the point where we really care that he gets away. Kind of like how Starscream gets away at the end of Transformers but no one cares because he's an ansillary bad guy (Michael Bay Sucks). So all of that ends up boiling down to one of my least favorite film tropes: "let's do it this way because nobody has done it this way before." That really bothers me. Don't film a movie using a purple hue simply because "it's nifty and we haven't seen it." On that note, Nolan should do that and net himself some awards. Just saying.
Well even though I was a bit harsher on the winner than I actually would be if I was describing it to someone (that'd be not as much fun), this was a pretty great year. In other news, I did successfully find a watchable copy of Utvandrarna about 2 hours after I broke the rules and printed my blog about how I'd never find it. Isn't that always the way? So I'll try to watch that before I finish 1970 and then insert the review into the 1972 write-up, to have the illusion of continuity. Either way, 1970 will be closing out an overall pretty great decade of films and it will include a film that's sillier than its own spoof, a film that's not as good as its own spinoff, and a film that's less realistic than the real life clichés it bases itself on. Excited?
And certainly not better than A Clockwork Orange. Although its "ultraviolence" and heavily disturbed sexual themes and imagery were probably a bit much for 1971. It's surprising it was nominated at all really. The mother of a good friend of mine told me she saw this movie when she was like 8 or something crazy. How she wasn't scarred for life to the point of being institutionalized is beyond me. Because I only just saw it about a year ago and it disturbed me. Not much gets to me, mind you. Today I was eating my lunch whilst watching an episode of Bones where a person's head explodes on camera. I gave a startled chuckle and continued eating my sloppy joe. But this movie is crazy. It's also SO freaking good. I go back and forth over whether this is my favorite Kubrick film or his 1964 extraordinary dark comedy that I'll be discussing when I get to that year. Some say that this movie goes out of its way for the main character to engage in acts of exploitative violence. And to that I say: that was precisely the point. He is the absolute extreme of an unfeeling and violent individual. He and his friends rape a woman while "Singin' in the Rain" plays. Great scene, didn't recover until the Glee episode with the "Singin' in the Rain" Gwyneth Paltrow mashup. Somewhat less famous is a scene where Alex DeLarge (played to perfection by Malcolm McDowell) engages in a threesome with some random bimbos. The scene plays in superfast motion to a classical piece, completely dehumanizing the act. Here is a man who not only can't feel love, he can scarcely feel lust. And so what to do with this troublesome individual? Brainwash him. At least, that's what his dystopian society thinks to do. So they put him in that classic 70s brainwashing room (not sure if this movie originated it or if this was a "legit" psychological therapy method back then) and make him experience nausea whenever he experiences arousal. Either in a sexual way or in a violent way, although I'm sure Freud would say they're one and the same. I wouldn't, but whatever. The point is that this treatment raises the film's fundamental question: is it better to have a society of automatons? Or as the book explains: a society of "clockwork oranges," something that is organic on the outside and mechanical on the inside. There's no correct answer but the question is fascinating and no one could ask it better than Stanley Kubrick. This is quite possibly his masterpiece, and we remember it that way even if the Academy didn't see it that way at the time. I wouldn't recommend it to everybody, since it's pretty tough to watch, but if you're any kind of film historian or critic then it is required (and quite excellent) viewing.
I suppose you could say the same about Fiddler on the Roof, but for completely different reasons. This is why I love doing things alphabetically: because it's the only way you can go from a movie where a woman gets killed with a statue of a penis to a movie where a song lyric is "if I were a biddy-biddy rich, daidle deedle daidle daidle man." Fantastic. I actually had the pleasure of seeing this on Broadway when Doc Ock himself, Mr. Alfred Molina, was Tevye. Loved it then. Love the movie too. Although I do think that having plot points revolving around all three of his daughters marrying was a bit much. Especially since the suitors get more and more non-kosher as they go along. If he had a fourth daughter she'd have been trying to hook up with Lenin. Other than that though, the film wonderfully balances nostalgia by having it be funny at some times and sad at others. It's about hanging onto the old while embracing the new. All while singing and dancing! On that note, some of the musical numbers are a bit rougher than others. Specifically, I always felt that "Matchmaker" and "Do You Love Me?" were a tad forced. That being said, I love all of the other numbers. Especially "Sunrise, Sunset" which perfectly segues the tone of the first half of the film into the tone of the rest of the film. Still in all, I think the movie also has a lot more substance to it than a lot of musicals where you're simply waiting for the next song and not really caring about the rest of it. Tevye's words of wisdom are thoughtful and charming and the rest of his family manages to be quirky without being too annoying. It also manages to balance the fairly large number of characters. This is tougher than you'd think. It needs to make each character distinct so you don't get any of them mixed up, so you have to switch between them in such a way that you care about each of their stories without getting confused or bored. Many many many films fail at doing this and they lose the audience halfway through (especially when they're 3 hours long like this movie). So I give everyone in the film credit for making what is probably one of the best Broadway adaptations ever. And I should also give a special mention to my main man John Williams who orchestrated and adapted the music along with TOS Star Trek composer Alexander Courage. That's an awesome team-up if ever I heard one.
And then comes the inevitable bad film to ruin all of my rare positive vibes: The Last Picture Show. How many coming-of-age stories does one need? Every filmmaker in existence did, in fact, age at some point and they more than likely graduated high school too. Did they all have to make a movie about it? And did the Academy have to recognize them every time they did? Ironically, I'm pretty sure Tarantino didn't actually complete high school and yet he's probably one of the only people alive today that could make coming-of-age interesting from a film perspective. Maybe the only other person, Chris Nolan, should direct a coming-of-age British World War II movie with a main character that has a disability. Then he can net himself a Directing nomination for once (do you feel my rant coming on that subject? I know you do). But that's enough of that for now, I'm sure you'll be sick of hearing about it by the time my 2010 entry comes along. So what can be said about this particular take on angst and aging in Middle America? Well, it's in black and white. And Jeff Bridges is in it. And it's directed by Dr. Elliot Kupferberg. So all of that is well and good. But it's the same old story. According to Wikipedia, it was one of the first films to use a contemporary music soundtrack. Well, Waterworld might have been the first movie to do something notable but who'd care? So you know what? I'm not even going to bother. Hopefully this will end up being the last picture show that I have to sit through that involves these themes. It won't be.
But I'd love to see more movies like Nicholas and Alexandra: epics that are backed up by legit stories and production values. Thankfully I'm entering the era of such films. As you know, I'll gladly sit through a 3 hour movie if it's any good and earns its length. This film certainly doesn't rank up there with the all time great epics, but it's way better than Reds which dealt with a lot of the same historical issues and themes. But whereas Reds basically said, "let's take a story about Russia and somehow make it about America" this movie instead chose to radically say "let's take a story about Russia and make it about...Russia..." I mean, how would you like it if a foreigner made a movie about the Vietnam War and turned it into a "how did this screw-up positively affect our country?" Not that the Vietnam War and the overthrowing of the Russian government are particularly comparable as isolated incidents but hopefully you see what I mean. I don't want a movie that spews historical facts with no feeling behind them, because I could get that from any history book. I want to know the people involved. I want to feel their pain and their joy. I want to experience monumental historical events in a very personal way. And that's what this film does. Although I'm sure that they went out of their way to make Czar Nicholas look better than he was since we were steeped in the Cold War at the time, but still. It has a great musical score, a really good cast (most of whom I haven't heard of), and the pacing is really well done. Similar to what I was discussing earlier, it's difficult to do historical drama because you have to balance educating the audience with entertaining them. You have to assume that the audience knows certain things but you also can't assume that they know everything. And I think they do a really good job of peppering major historical events throughout a personal storyline. The characterization of Rasputin is especially interesting. He is shown as an eccentric man who legitimately cares for the Czar's hemophiliac son and whose public image is far worse than the reality. Is this true? No one can really know for certain. History is shaky on guys like him. And he gets killed just under 2 hours into the film, which was fairly shocking considering the prominent role he played and the remaining running time of the film. So it worked really well, although it's not quite as interesting after he leaves. So even though it's not the best of the "epics" it deals with a story that you don't see all that often and it does it well.
I wish I could say the same about this year's winner: The French Connection. It's by no means a bad movie. But here's my main beef with it: it came out a mere two months before Dirty Harry which is a superior film in every way. So they were clearly filmed at about the same time and neither can be seen as a ripoff of the other. But they both deal with the idea that not all cops are virtuous (shocker!). This was groundbreaking at the time, even though now there is probably not a single stright-laced cop who plays by the rules on television or in film. I know you might be thinking that since it heralded four sub-par sequels that the original Dirty Harry was just some 70s action flick. On the contrary: it depicts a fairly disturbed individual who just happens to be chasing a more disturbed individual. The violence is very real and not over-the-top or heavily choreographed. The same can be said of The French Connection...it's just not as good! I really can't get over how crazy this is. The movies are so similar and they picked the wrong one! And plus, neither is particularly good when compared to most Best Picture winners anyway. Gene Hackman does deliver a good performance as Popeye Doyle, but Best Actor? That's a bit much. I will say that it does have a truly enthralling car chase that ends with a moment of cold-blooded menace on the part of Hackman's character. But the rest of the film is quite honestly kind of dull. It's pretty realistic as far as a police investigation goes and it also depicts the police officers very realistically because it shows them bending the rules in such a way where they could legitimately avoid being caught. But they could have done that within a more interesting narrative. I like that the big bad guy ends up getting away, but we also didn't see him developed enough to the point where we really care that he gets away. Kind of like how Starscream gets away at the end of Transformers but no one cares because he's an ansillary bad guy (Michael Bay Sucks). So all of that ends up boiling down to one of my least favorite film tropes: "let's do it this way because nobody has done it this way before." That really bothers me. Don't film a movie using a purple hue simply because "it's nifty and we haven't seen it." On that note, Nolan should do that and net himself some awards. Just saying.
Well even though I was a bit harsher on the winner than I actually would be if I was describing it to someone (that'd be not as much fun), this was a pretty great year. In other news, I did successfully find a watchable copy of Utvandrarna about 2 hours after I broke the rules and printed my blog about how I'd never find it. Isn't that always the way? So I'll try to watch that before I finish 1970 and then insert the review into the 1972 write-up, to have the illusion of continuity. Either way, 1970 will be closing out an overall pretty great decade of films and it will include a film that's sillier than its own spoof, a film that's not as good as its own spinoff, and a film that's less realistic than the real life clichés it bases itself on. Excited?
Saturday, January 15, 2011
1972: The Year that Was Not Quite as Predictable as Most Seagal Movies but Should Have Been
The reason I say this is that one of the nominees this year won 8 Academy Awards, but it wasn't the winner! Kind of crazy. One wonders what the Academy was thinking, although I'm sure there were some behind-the-scenes political things going on too. I don't think they liked Coppola too much for various reasons, some of which I will describe later in this entry and some of which I will discuss in my 1970 entry. All of that aside, this was a rather interesting and varied year. There are some random choices and some obvious ones, and a 3+ hour Swedish movie that I was forced to watch on my computer because it's not available on DVD and my PS3 wouldn't play it. Not cool.
Starting things off right for this year is Cabaret. This film was the one that took home the 8 Academy Awards this year, including for director, but it didn't win Best Picture. So this is already kind of a strange year. The film is a musical...sort of. I mean, it's a musical in the sense that there's a lot of choreographed singing and dancing in it. But all of the singing and/or dancing takes place within a context that makes sense. To me, a movie can only be a real musical if the singing and dancing make no sense whatsoever within a real world context. That's what makes them awesome. Not to say that this movie isn't good, because it's fantastic. It is about an American woman in Germany just before Nazism really took hold. The titular cabaret is a place where you can go to escape the world outside and forget about the terrible things happening. This is perfect because all of Germany was pretty much sitting around whilst the Nazis took over. Or rather, they didn't take the movement as seriously as they should have. This also makes Liza Minnelli's character as the ignorant American truly brilliant. Because America dropped the ball on that one (if you can call "being isolationist to the point that millions of people die" dropping the ball). She just wants to enjoy her life one day at a time, with no thought toward the future. Her entire romance and everything that she sings can be seen as having double meaning, which has now forever changed the meaning of the song "Maybe this Time" for me. It was on the first Glee soundtrack, so I have thus listened to it an obscene amount of times. On one hand it could be seen as being about a fresh start with a new romance, but think about the lines "Everybody loves a winner, so nobody loved me...maybe this time I'll win" in the context of Germany when the Third Reich was coming into being. That's pretty eerie when you think about it that way. But my favorite scene in the film comes when a group of Nazi youth sing (quite beautifully, which makes it more creepy) "Tomorrow Belongs to Me." The kid is so bright-eyed and hopeful, thinking that he's fighting for a worthy cause. And tomorrow almost did belong to him, which boggles the mind to think about but it's true. Keeping all of this in mind, as a movie it doesn't always come through (when it's not focusing on the allegorical aspects of the plot it's a bit dull) and Liza Minnelli is only tolerable when A) singing or B) when you remember that she's supposed to be kind of irritating. Joel Grey is pretty great, and he won for Supporting Actor that year. But his whole role is singing on stage and he only does that for about 20 total minutes in the film. Comparing that to another Supporting Actor nominee in this same year who largely carries 2 hours and 55 minutes of movie and it's a bit absurd that Joel won...but no matter (that certain someone ended up doing okay for himself). This was easily the year's second best, and in most years it would be the best. I look forward to watching it again at some point to pick up on some more intricacies, and that's something I wouldn't say about most of the Oscar films I've viewed since I started.
A movie I fully intend to never watch again is Deliverance. I'm glad I saw it, because it's one of "those movies" that has fueled a good number of South Park and Simpsons jokes. But as it turns out, people really only reference the one scene so I have gained nothing comedically by viewing the entire picture. The famous "dueling banjos" scene is right at the beginning and it goes on for too long. That was the first sign that the movie wouldn't be too enjoyable. I'll try to just briefly touch on each of the things that bothered me, because there were a lot of them. First off, the film couldn't seem to decide whether the venturing men were competent or not. Burt Reynolds killed the rapist dude with an arrow from behind (appropriately, one of the few nice touches in the film) and fairly far away so he clearly knows what he's doing. But then they just bury the dude instead of attaching rocks to him and letting him sink into the river. I forgave this, until their friend died later in the movie and that's what they did with his body. So they were, in fact, aware of this method of body disposal. So...the rapist got a "proper burial" and their friend's body is lost in the bottom of the river for all time? That's not cool. The other major thing that bothered me is that I always figured it was about city boys trying to have an adventure in the wilderness and are then assaulted by "hill people." You know, inbred monsters like the ones in the X-Files episode that was pulled from syndication (my obscure references know no bounds). Well they might have been inbred, and they were definitely crazy, but they lived in a legit small town by the river and they happened to be in the woods "hunting" (not sure if that deserved air quotes or not). So they didn't have the interesting theme in the plot where the audience and the characters are reminded that nature is dangerous and that country club rich folks shouldn't screw around with it, no matter their skills with a bow. Instead they had a far less applicable "rich folks shouldn't underestimate nature at the same time that some crazy people from a nearby town happen to be in the same vicinity." So there you have it. I'm sure it made much more of an impact when it first came out, and I do respect the filmmakers for making what is essentially a horror film in a way that a horror film hadn't been done before. But I still dislike horror films and think they're stupid, even if they're pretending to be something else.
What I'd really love to do is segue that into something snarky to say about The Emigrants. Unfortunately, it's not available here in the states as it is a Swedish movie that is actually called Utvandrarna. I found a version of it on the internet but the subtitles are 5 minutes and 40 seconds behind. That'd be pretty bad for a movie that was 2 hours long, but especially bad for one that's 3 hours and 10 minutes. And so I'm going to break my own rule and publish this blog entry anyway, having not seen it. My search online will continue, and if need be I will make my own subtitles, petition TCM to show it, or wait for the highly unlikely DVD release. I will find a way to view this movie. And then I will ret-con myself (look it up) to make it look like it was written here the whole time.
Luckily, I am fully able to rip on Sounder. You have to love when the sub-par nominees are still in print. I'm not trying to sound insensitive or anything, but I'm pretty sure this movie was only nominated because it's a positive family picture that stars African-Americans in positive roles that aren't quite as stereotypical as the crows in Dumbo. I realize how big that was back then, and the Academy certainly hasn't changed its stripes with regards to nominating socially conscious films. But whereas you can look at Million Dollar Baby and say "this was especially relevant because of the Terri Schiavo case," you can also say "this is an extraordinary movie." But this movie is pretty much just a schmaltzy family story, and not even a very good one. It's one of those "movies for kids" that is actually too boring for children and probably too traumatizing. The dog gets shot! This is pretty much Old Yeller with black people. Although I guess that's a positive step forward. Because as Dr. King said, "I have a dream that little white boys and little black boys will be in therapy together after being equally traumatized in their youth." Aside from the social aspect, I'm not a fan of melodramas and I'm also not a fan of banjo music. And the whole score is pretty much banjo music. That brings 1972's total banjo movies to 2 (and possibly 3, never know what Utvandrarna might hold). That is 2 too many. The film stock evokes a 50s feeling, which is odd since it takes place during the depression. Although perhaps it evokes the types of movies made about the depression in the fifties (like the aforementioned depressing kids movie for white people). I probably mentioned this before, but I don't like when something is a carbon copy of something else with one thing changed just to be more relevant. And I know this is based on a book and everything, but it feels tailor-made to make a statement. That's not how you make a statement. The XXX movie franchise (with Vin Diesel, not with "actors" such as Trixie Carlisle and Mugsy Cypress, although the acting abilities are similar) was tailor-made to be an American take on James Bond. It failed miserably. The Bourne movie franchise set out to be good movies, and ended up becoming the American equivalent of James Bond. Although only in some ways, since 22 movies is more impressive than 3. So there's my incredibly cynical take on the film. I would have liked it more if A) the titular dog was in it more and B) if the characters weren't still mostly stereotypical and not interesting.
Plus, no film can measure up when nominated alongside this year's winner: The Godfather. Although its legacy is not as strong as I hoped. Coppola didn't win for director (a crime) and as I alluded to before, Pacino didn't win for Supporting Actor. Many would say that it's not really a stretch for Pacino to be playing an angry Italian guy. This is true. But he doesn't play an angry Italian guy. He plays an alienated son who loves his father, and slowly becomes an evil man for all the right reasons. The subtlety of his performance is the key. All of his emotions are boiling beneath the surface. So even if the delivery of his lines don't reflect his transformation throughout the movie, you can see it on his face. And it's not until his brief explosion toward his wife Kay near the end of the film that you realize how far he has come. Luckily, Brando was rewarded with a Best Actor win for his outstanding and unforgettable performance as Don Vito Corleone. Here again is a subdued performance. He could have gone completely over the top with it, but a man as powerful as the Don doesn't need to get angry to have his ruthlessness shine through. That way, when it does shine through you know exactly what kind of dangerous man you're dealing with. I could go on about those two, and about the whole movie at length, but I'll instead touch on some side facts that I find interesting. For one thing, I think Hollywood didn't like Coppola too much and this movie almost didn't come together. Coppola was almost fired, until he won for Best Screenplay in 1970. The music in the film almost wasn't included, until he forced the producers to listen to Nino Rota's immortal music and they realized that the movie couldn't work without it. Everything about the film shouldn't have come together but miraculously did. The only other stories I've heard like that with regards to film are the stories of how Lord of the Rings came together. Whenever a film survives through the troubles that these films survived, you know that the passion of the filmmakers is strong. And it shows. Coppola's magnum opus is masterfully paced, beautifully filmed, superbly acted, and directed in a way that would change movies forever. Spielberg left his first screening of the film somewhat depressed because he said that he knew he could never make a better film than that and his career hadn't even started yet. I've been sitting here for 15 minutes trying to think of which scene I'd like to highlight, but I can't. There's too much to pick from. And everyone needs to view it for themselves anyway, it's one of my personal favorites and from a purely stylistic and "scholarly" point of view it is quite possibly the greatest film ever made. That is one of the few things that many critics agree on, even including myself and my sworn enemy the Academy.
So this blog entry is just like filmdom in general in that it had, "The Godfather...and everything else." At least there was one other great movie this year. And even if it didn't comparatively deserve the 8 Oscars it won, it was certainly a great movie. This year is also the most frustrating because I'll have to go to a lot of trouble to truly finish it. With my luck the escapade won't end where it began in 1927, as I intended, but instead back here in 1972 when I finally track down a copy of what is probably 3 hours of my life I'll want back anyway. Next year probably won't be that dramatic. But it will include ultraviolent Beethoven lovers, snarky lovers of fiddle music, and a whole royal family of Tchaikovsky-philes.
Starting things off right for this year is Cabaret. This film was the one that took home the 8 Academy Awards this year, including for director, but it didn't win Best Picture. So this is already kind of a strange year. The film is a musical...sort of. I mean, it's a musical in the sense that there's a lot of choreographed singing and dancing in it. But all of the singing and/or dancing takes place within a context that makes sense. To me, a movie can only be a real musical if the singing and dancing make no sense whatsoever within a real world context. That's what makes them awesome. Not to say that this movie isn't good, because it's fantastic. It is about an American woman in Germany just before Nazism really took hold. The titular cabaret is a place where you can go to escape the world outside and forget about the terrible things happening. This is perfect because all of Germany was pretty much sitting around whilst the Nazis took over. Or rather, they didn't take the movement as seriously as they should have. This also makes Liza Minnelli's character as the ignorant American truly brilliant. Because America dropped the ball on that one (if you can call "being isolationist to the point that millions of people die" dropping the ball). She just wants to enjoy her life one day at a time, with no thought toward the future. Her entire romance and everything that she sings can be seen as having double meaning, which has now forever changed the meaning of the song "Maybe this Time" for me. It was on the first Glee soundtrack, so I have thus listened to it an obscene amount of times. On one hand it could be seen as being about a fresh start with a new romance, but think about the lines "Everybody loves a winner, so nobody loved me...maybe this time I'll win" in the context of Germany when the Third Reich was coming into being. That's pretty eerie when you think about it that way. But my favorite scene in the film comes when a group of Nazi youth sing (quite beautifully, which makes it more creepy) "Tomorrow Belongs to Me." The kid is so bright-eyed and hopeful, thinking that he's fighting for a worthy cause. And tomorrow almost did belong to him, which boggles the mind to think about but it's true. Keeping all of this in mind, as a movie it doesn't always come through (when it's not focusing on the allegorical aspects of the plot it's a bit dull) and Liza Minnelli is only tolerable when A) singing or B) when you remember that she's supposed to be kind of irritating. Joel Grey is pretty great, and he won for Supporting Actor that year. But his whole role is singing on stage and he only does that for about 20 total minutes in the film. Comparing that to another Supporting Actor nominee in this same year who largely carries 2 hours and 55 minutes of movie and it's a bit absurd that Joel won...but no matter (that certain someone ended up doing okay for himself). This was easily the year's second best, and in most years it would be the best. I look forward to watching it again at some point to pick up on some more intricacies, and that's something I wouldn't say about most of the Oscar films I've viewed since I started.
A movie I fully intend to never watch again is Deliverance. I'm glad I saw it, because it's one of "those movies" that has fueled a good number of South Park and Simpsons jokes. But as it turns out, people really only reference the one scene so I have gained nothing comedically by viewing the entire picture. The famous "dueling banjos" scene is right at the beginning and it goes on for too long. That was the first sign that the movie wouldn't be too enjoyable. I'll try to just briefly touch on each of the things that bothered me, because there were a lot of them. First off, the film couldn't seem to decide whether the venturing men were competent or not. Burt Reynolds killed the rapist dude with an arrow from behind (appropriately, one of the few nice touches in the film) and fairly far away so he clearly knows what he's doing. But then they just bury the dude instead of attaching rocks to him and letting him sink into the river. I forgave this, until their friend died later in the movie and that's what they did with his body. So they were, in fact, aware of this method of body disposal. So...the rapist got a "proper burial" and their friend's body is lost in the bottom of the river for all time? That's not cool. The other major thing that bothered me is that I always figured it was about city boys trying to have an adventure in the wilderness and are then assaulted by "hill people." You know, inbred monsters like the ones in the X-Files episode that was pulled from syndication (my obscure references know no bounds). Well they might have been inbred, and they were definitely crazy, but they lived in a legit small town by the river and they happened to be in the woods "hunting" (not sure if that deserved air quotes or not). So they didn't have the interesting theme in the plot where the audience and the characters are reminded that nature is dangerous and that country club rich folks shouldn't screw around with it, no matter their skills with a bow. Instead they had a far less applicable "rich folks shouldn't underestimate nature at the same time that some crazy people from a nearby town happen to be in the same vicinity." So there you have it. I'm sure it made much more of an impact when it first came out, and I do respect the filmmakers for making what is essentially a horror film in a way that a horror film hadn't been done before. But I still dislike horror films and think they're stupid, even if they're pretending to be something else.
What I'd really love to do is segue that into something snarky to say about The Emigrants. Unfortunately, it's not available here in the states as it is a Swedish movie that is actually called Utvandrarna. I found a version of it on the internet but the subtitles are 5 minutes and 40 seconds behind. That'd be pretty bad for a movie that was 2 hours long, but especially bad for one that's 3 hours and 10 minutes. And so I'm going to break my own rule and publish this blog entry anyway, having not seen it. My search online will continue, and if need be I will make my own subtitles, petition TCM to show it, or wait for the highly unlikely DVD release. I will find a way to view this movie. And then I will ret-con myself (look it up) to make it look like it was written here the whole time.
Luckily, I am fully able to rip on Sounder. You have to love when the sub-par nominees are still in print. I'm not trying to sound insensitive or anything, but I'm pretty sure this movie was only nominated because it's a positive family picture that stars African-Americans in positive roles that aren't quite as stereotypical as the crows in Dumbo. I realize how big that was back then, and the Academy certainly hasn't changed its stripes with regards to nominating socially conscious films. But whereas you can look at Million Dollar Baby and say "this was especially relevant because of the Terri Schiavo case," you can also say "this is an extraordinary movie." But this movie is pretty much just a schmaltzy family story, and not even a very good one. It's one of those "movies for kids" that is actually too boring for children and probably too traumatizing. The dog gets shot! This is pretty much Old Yeller with black people. Although I guess that's a positive step forward. Because as Dr. King said, "I have a dream that little white boys and little black boys will be in therapy together after being equally traumatized in their youth." Aside from the social aspect, I'm not a fan of melodramas and I'm also not a fan of banjo music. And the whole score is pretty much banjo music. That brings 1972's total banjo movies to 2 (and possibly 3, never know what Utvandrarna might hold). That is 2 too many. The film stock evokes a 50s feeling, which is odd since it takes place during the depression. Although perhaps it evokes the types of movies made about the depression in the fifties (like the aforementioned depressing kids movie for white people). I probably mentioned this before, but I don't like when something is a carbon copy of something else with one thing changed just to be more relevant. And I know this is based on a book and everything, but it feels tailor-made to make a statement. That's not how you make a statement. The XXX movie franchise (with Vin Diesel, not with "actors" such as Trixie Carlisle and Mugsy Cypress, although the acting abilities are similar) was tailor-made to be an American take on James Bond. It failed miserably. The Bourne movie franchise set out to be good movies, and ended up becoming the American equivalent of James Bond. Although only in some ways, since 22 movies is more impressive than 3. So there's my incredibly cynical take on the film. I would have liked it more if A) the titular dog was in it more and B) if the characters weren't still mostly stereotypical and not interesting.
Plus, no film can measure up when nominated alongside this year's winner: The Godfather. Although its legacy is not as strong as I hoped. Coppola didn't win for director (a crime) and as I alluded to before, Pacino didn't win for Supporting Actor. Many would say that it's not really a stretch for Pacino to be playing an angry Italian guy. This is true. But he doesn't play an angry Italian guy. He plays an alienated son who loves his father, and slowly becomes an evil man for all the right reasons. The subtlety of his performance is the key. All of his emotions are boiling beneath the surface. So even if the delivery of his lines don't reflect his transformation throughout the movie, you can see it on his face. And it's not until his brief explosion toward his wife Kay near the end of the film that you realize how far he has come. Luckily, Brando was rewarded with a Best Actor win for his outstanding and unforgettable performance as Don Vito Corleone. Here again is a subdued performance. He could have gone completely over the top with it, but a man as powerful as the Don doesn't need to get angry to have his ruthlessness shine through. That way, when it does shine through you know exactly what kind of dangerous man you're dealing with. I could go on about those two, and about the whole movie at length, but I'll instead touch on some side facts that I find interesting. For one thing, I think Hollywood didn't like Coppola too much and this movie almost didn't come together. Coppola was almost fired, until he won for Best Screenplay in 1970. The music in the film almost wasn't included, until he forced the producers to listen to Nino Rota's immortal music and they realized that the movie couldn't work without it. Everything about the film shouldn't have come together but miraculously did. The only other stories I've heard like that with regards to film are the stories of how Lord of the Rings came together. Whenever a film survives through the troubles that these films survived, you know that the passion of the filmmakers is strong. And it shows. Coppola's magnum opus is masterfully paced, beautifully filmed, superbly acted, and directed in a way that would change movies forever. Spielberg left his first screening of the film somewhat depressed because he said that he knew he could never make a better film than that and his career hadn't even started yet. I've been sitting here for 15 minutes trying to think of which scene I'd like to highlight, but I can't. There's too much to pick from. And everyone needs to view it for themselves anyway, it's one of my personal favorites and from a purely stylistic and "scholarly" point of view it is quite possibly the greatest film ever made. That is one of the few things that many critics agree on, even including myself and my sworn enemy the Academy.
So this blog entry is just like filmdom in general in that it had, "The Godfather...and everything else." At least there was one other great movie this year. And even if it didn't comparatively deserve the 8 Oscars it won, it was certainly a great movie. This year is also the most frustrating because I'll have to go to a lot of trouble to truly finish it. With my luck the escapade won't end where it began in 1927, as I intended, but instead back here in 1972 when I finally track down a copy of what is probably 3 hours of my life I'll want back anyway. Next year probably won't be that dramatic. But it will include ultraviolent Beethoven lovers, snarky lovers of fiddle music, and a whole royal family of Tchaikovsky-philes.
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