It took me like 20 minutes to come up with that title. It'll seem less perverted/odd in the next paragraph. Or maybe more so. Like many years, this one was kind of halfsies. BUT the winner is the first/last of the 3 films ever to win 11 Academy Awards. It also happens to be one of my favorite movies of all time. So the other films might as well just go home. They should consider it an honor to be mentioned in the same blog entry. But it's not the worst batch of movies I've come across. Even the bad ones are simply lacking in delivery, not inherently flawed. That always makes a big difference, because then there is always room for nice little moments amidst things that don't work.
Thankfully we begin with a movie that does work the whole way through: Anatomy of a Murder. I can see why this caused a stir when it came out, as compared to other films of the time it's pretty explicit with its dialogue. It'd be a fairly tame episode of Law and Order today in terms of content. But here's a perfect example of something that may have been controversial at the time, but not because that's all it wanted to accomplish. It's actually a good story that is well-delivered and well-acted that just happens to deal with the subject of rape. I found the title to be quite clever in this way, because it refers not only to what makes up and constitutes a murder, but also to the anatomical aspect to the rape trial. Such as the bruises on her face, proof of intercourse, etc. Not to mention the torn panties that Jimmy Stewart produces in the courtroom, which is where that bit in my title came from. One thing this film does right, that I think Judgment at Nuremberg should have also done, is have scenes outside of the courtroom. We see Jimmy Stewart (in a thankfully toned down form for this role) approached to try the case, as well as various other preliminary scenes before we get to the courtroom. And once we get there we have scenes outside of it as well. Jimmy reverse-reminded me of Matt Murdock (AKA Daredevil) with his fridge full of fish that a poor client had used as payment. This immediately establishes the type of lawyer that he is, without someone giving a ten minute speech about the quality of his character. The thing that really made this movie work though wasn't just the character, it was the suspense of the storytelling. I really didn't care who committed the crime (I rarely do) but the courtroom theatrics and clever doublespeak/lawyerspeak made it more about how to win an argument than justice. And that's what a lot of trials are about in real life. Because when you've tried hundreds of murder trials, I'd imagine you stopped feeling the impact of the situation around trial number 20 or so. Just like how Dr. House cares more about solving mysteries than saving people. And in this movie we have Jimmy Stewart pitted against George C. Scott for some really top notch acting. Lee Remick is also well-cast as the victim. She's pretty and she knows it, and the harpy-esque nature with which she conducts herself immediately draws her quality of character into question. So you begin to wonder: is she making it up? And this is a question you have from the beginning, simply because of how she conducts herself. Therefore, when the characters themselves call it into question it's not this big "GASP!" moment. Those fall flat upon repeat viewings and change the tone of a picture. It instead feels like a natural development with realistically building suspense. The film does come in a little long but I think it's segmented well enough that the length is appropriate. They give you different settings and conflicts often enough to keep it fresh, even though the story revolves around a relatively simple trial. Finally, it features some awesome upbeat noir-ish (if there is such a thing) music by Duke Ellington with a pre-Bond Bond-ian opening titles. Pretty great stuff, definitely worth a nod by the Academy.
On the other hand, I had very mixed feelings about The Diary of Anne Frank. I quite possibly had more opinions about this than most other films I watch. Because I think the source material is inherently powerful, and I believe we read it in 7th grade but I obviously don't remember a lot of it, but the delivery is off somehow. It feels Hollywood-ized and if there's anything that shouldn't receive that treatment...it's probably the Holocaust. For instance, the role of 13-year-old Anne is played by 21-year-old model Millie Perkins. But only because 30-year-old sex symbol/most adorable person of all time Audrey Hepburn turned it down. Because she felt she was too old. Which she was! And so was Millie. There's a scene where her sister is trying to point out her attractive qualities, and she's obviously reaching. If this is something they got from the actual diary, it would suggest that Anne was fairly plain-looking. Which would account for a lot of her character traits. So they cast a 21-year-old model? It is my personal opinion that they were trying to sexualize Anne Frank, which is pretty messed up. Let's look at a few examples: in her first scene we see her removing her underwear. From beneath her dress and she has on like six pairs, but still. They could have established the point that the family smuggled in a lot of clothes however they wanted and they chose a fairly sexual way of doing so. Then there's the forced love story. Was there an actual boy with her from another family in the attic? Yep. I'd have to read the source material myself though to see how much she actually talks about him, and what evidence there is of an actual romance. Even if there is, they play it up a bit much. It's supposed to be about maintaining one's lifestyle even during hardship, and it became a bit of a melodrama where the romance was concerned. But enough of that, I also had an issue with some of the small touches. Things like people shouting at each other or slamming doors. If I was a Jew hiding in an attic from the Nazis, I would probably avoid slamming a door and shouting. At times they mention the things they did to hide, such as never speaking during business hours and never moving the curtain back from the window. So I'd say that in real life they didn't actually shout or slam. If the Diary says, "so-and-so and blah-blah had an argument" that doesn't inherently mean they shouted. They probably didn't. So it removes you from the situation and makes the Holocaust more of a backdrop a la Hogan's Heroes than something that truly drives the story. There are definitely things that the film does really well and aside from Perkins' annoying whine of a voice, the acting is good. Especially the man who played Anne's father, he was the soul of the film. But seriously, if a big part of a film is dependent on narration then I wouldn't make the narrator have the vocal tone of a greedy eight-year-old on Santa's lap. Are lots of 13-year-old girls annoying in vocal tone? Certainly. Lots of them also sound normal. On one final note, its aspect ratio is a full-on 2.35:1 (think the really wide widescreen of action movies) but since the film is intimate in nature I think it would've looked better with 1.85:1. And so did the director, which I read afterwards. See? I don't completely make up all of this stuff. Just most of it. But anyway, despite what I've said I think this is actually a pretty good movie. I was only bothered by its flaws more than usual because I think it's a very powerful story and deserves only the best treatment. When I was in 7th or 8th grade my school did a production of it, with an age-appropriate Anne I might add, and it was quite good as I remember. So the story can be done really well, I just think they missed the mark by a little bit.
But not as much as The Nun's Story missed the mark. Well, I think Catholicism missed the mark actually, and this movie is just emulating. Oh boy, here we go with one of these entries! This is what Audrey Hepburn worked on instead of Diary I believe, and she's as good as ever. But the movie itself left me kind of baffled as to its meaning. Is it ridiculing certain aspects of religion or is it just showing how one person dealt with the moral questions on a personal level? A bit of both I suppose. But A) the movie is too long at two-and-a-half hours (it takes too long to get to the main story and the viewer is left detached from either main plot setting) and B) they once again did some irrelevant sexualizing. I tell you, 1959 is the year it went downhill folks. You've got explicit rape dialogue, making Holocaust victims sexy, and now making nuns sexy. I read that the sexual tension between Audrey and Peter Finch who plays the doctor in Africa isn't present in the book and that they added it for the movie. See? Not making this stuff up. That aspect of the story dilutes her character change. Because by the end of the movie (shhhh...spoilers) she's not a nun anymore. Anyone who has a crisis of faith during WWII and especially when over in Africa seeing the plight of some of the native people is simply a sane person. But adding the love aspect (which doesn't play out thankfully but is still present) makes you wonder if she left the sisterhood in part because she wanted a little Dr. McSteamy on the side. Around 50 entries here folks, I'm now referencing shows I hate. Now, if the main point of the film was that she fell and love and left the sisterhood that would be okay. If the main point was that she had a crisis of conscience and left, that would be okay. But you can't do both. This is what happens when studios make movies instead of people. Aspects of the film are also unintentionally (or intentionally? Once again, I couldn't tell) funny. You've got the nuns wearing wedding rings because they're married to Jesus (absurd, also a real thing) and you've got them planking amongst the pews as they beg forgiveness for slamming a door (more absurd, also a real thing). I had to ask my dad, who was once an altar boy, about these things. So were they criticizing or just showing the lifestyle realistically? It's an important question, because what Audrey's character thinks of these things is tied in to what the audience thinks, and thus become important things to know when she decides to leave. So I would have had her character show some more doubt throughout to help sell it. Maybe they did and I didn't notice because I was too busy laughing at an almost-sinless woman apologizing for talking back in a mildly rude manner. It is entirely possible that this was the case.
But I'm pretty sure I caught all of the bad parts of Room at the Top. This was another one that I found on the internet because it's not on DVD. Which is a pretty big clue that no one cares about the movie. Which is a pretty big clue that no one should care about the movie. Before I get to the film itself, the love theme (or main theme perhaps) sounded a lot like Michael's Theme from The Godfather. Not saying Nino Rota ripped it off, these things just happen at times. After all, there are only so many notes and combinations therein. But it threw me off because I kept expecting something cool to happen and all I got was some lousy philandering. 1959 people, look on its works ye mighty and despair. There was a whole lot of womanizing and making out in bras for a 1959 picture. Although it was British I suppose. And when your Empire is falling apart, who has time to care about breasts in movies? The two short paragraphs of plot description on Wikipedia really do describe the whole film without missing anything important. Basically it's about a guy who's trying to sleep his way to the top of the business ladder and he ends up ruining lots of people's lives getting there. Much like....Darling? Am I referencing that again? Except this is the precursor male version. Because obviously at the end he doesn't really have any measure of happiness. But this only works as a tragedy if you care about the guy. He's a total douche though so whatever happens to him doesn't mean anything to you in the slightest. The film is actually well-structured and well-paced for what it is, even if it's done with people you don't care about. The actors are good and the music is good. So I would imagine that if the same group of people came together to make a different movie, it would've been really good. And maybe there were some overtones of current political goings-on in the British Empire which obviously went over my head. No idea. Don't care. So if you're interested in watching a guy be slimy and have women interested in him anyway, this is the film for you.
Which brings us to the very not-explicit winner for this year, the incredibly well-deserving Ben-Hur. It's funny that there were so many movies in this year with overt sexual overtones because this is an overtly religious movie. BUT it's not all "repent!" or "praise Jesus!" It's a historically religious film. Jesus is a character but they never have him speak and you never see his face. It's very effective (seriously, not being sarcastic). The main story though concerns Judah Ben-Hur and his quest for vengeance. The big bad guy in the movie, Messala, was his boyhood friend even though Judah is Jewish and Messala is a Roman. So right there you already have one of my favorite themes in movies: people coming from similar backgrounds choosing different paths in life. When Judah is wrongfully accused of attacking some Romans, he becomes a slave. What follows is a long path to vengeance that re-enforces to the audience that vengeance helps no one, without doing so in a cheesy way. Which means that the movies with similar themes back then had no excuse for being too obvious. There were a lot of religious movies back then and a lot of them dealt with Jesus directly. And seeing him as a human being is always interesting, but at the end of the day that's not really how anyone remembers him (obviously). By having Jesus remain mostly as a point of conversation and never seeing him full-on, he remains a mythic and superhuman figure. And by not overdoing the scenes that revolve around him, it makes what is there mean something. Instead we get a story about one man's inner turmoil, and how that relates to larger religious ideas and moral quandries. The fight between good and evil is internal, as seen through external conflict. And the effects hold up remarkably well to this day. Because a model of a ship looks as good today as it did back then. This is why LOTR is the only film series from the early 2000s that doesn't look dated today. Plus, one cannot mention the film without mentioning the incredible chariot race near the end. My mom pointed out that that's the type of scene that goes on too long. And I could see how people might feel that way, but I'd say that any scene can go on for a while if it deserves it. In this case, it's the big confrontation after almost 3 1/2 hours of buildup (the whole film is over 220 minutes but it earns this crazy length) and it's very suspenseful. If it was over in two minutes then that would've been anti-climactic. And just to be fair, let's take the scene at the end of The Sopranos fourth season entitled "White Caps" as another example. I'm not sure how long it goes on, but it's at least a good 15-20 minutes. And it's just a married couple having a spat amidst their forthcoming divorce. But it's so well-done that you don't notice the time going by. I've seen similar conversations in movies that go on for 3 minutes and seem too long. So it's all dependent on the buildup to that scene, and if you care how it turns out. Well, this is another film I could go on forever about so I'll just add that Charlton Heston won for his role, and so did the music by Miklos Rozsa and they were both well-deserved. It's a good movie to take an afternoon to watch, on a nice big screen for the crazy wide widescreen that it utilizes (I think it's 2.70:1 or something crazy, it's basically a sliver). I can't imagine anyone disliking this movie, but then again I can't imagine anyone liking Jersey Shore. The name of which I refuse to italicize.
Well I think I liked that year more than I realized. Nothing lives up to the winner but only one thing was glaringly bad. Speaking of glaringly bad, I just re-watched both Transformers movies and I'm about to see part 3 tonight so there'll probably be even more Bay-bashing than usual pretty soon. That's all I know of the upcoming year though, as I have seen exactly none of the five nominees. All I know is it'll involve douchey French plot descriptions, presumably metaphorical felines, and a buddy cop movie without cops.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
1960: The Year that Davy Crockett's NYC Flat was Overrun with Sheep
If my blog was a movie, this would be the 48th official sequel. Not counting 2 reboots and a few spinoffs. As such, we're really starting to reach with these titles. But I feel like this one is Family Guy cutaway-worthy. This was a pretty good year I suppose. Although I will say that I thought the movies would start getting shorter pretty soon...I feel like most movies that came out in this era were like an hour and twenty minutes long and the five that went beyond that were your Best Picture nominees. On that note: the Academy has just mentioned that for their upcoming year of nominees they'll have anywhere from 5 to 10 nominees, depending on how they vote. So they're nominating as many deserve it instead of an arbitrary number. I'm not sure which entry it was, but I made that EXACT recommendation a while ago. Oh, they're listening.
We start this year off with a family favorite: The Alamo. My dad is super into the story of the Alamo. Every Christmas he gets books about that, mom gets Titanic books, and I get stuff about serial killers. Oh and my Aunt reads about the Holocaust and my Uncle loves the Darwin Awards. My other Uncle is really into bicycling...so he's kind of the black sheep (or white sheep perhaps). Anyway, even my dad was surprised to learn today that this movie was nominated. It's not the best portrayal of the story, although to this day there really isn't a defining film about it. Which is why I intend to make one someday. It'll have Lost-ian flashbacks that provide insight into Crockett, Bowie, and others, as well as allusions to Norse mythology and a crazy bloody battle (just like the real one). Apparently John Wayne didn't even want to play Davy, and he also didn't want John Ford anywhere near it. And then he was involved in every part of making the film and directed it like a Ford picture...so that's weird. It was butchered by the studio and according to my dad (I haven't seen the director's cut) some of the best scenes were left out. I suppose it's refreshing to learn that even in 1960 all of the great little character moments were the first to go. So maybe we've always been tasteless as a society. Anyway, I'm sure you're familiar with the story and if you're not then Wikipedia can explain it better and much less interestingly than I could. But probably in a more accurate manner. The problem with the movie is that it's really all just buildup to the battle. That's why if I was doing it, I would launch into the battle like an Abrams pilot. Most of it would still take place at the end but I'd give you a little taste before going into flashbacks and whatnot. Instead, what you've got is a lot of fluff and then a pretty great battle scene. Literally fluff though. Wooing of Spanish women, drinking, goofy dialogue, etc. It's very well-filmed and the music is fantastic enough to also serve as the main title music for Inglourious Basterds. But there's an awful lot of unnecessary dialogue, so it's an even bigger shame that they cut out some of the better scenes. The 2004 adaptation of the story was even worse of course, but at least that attempted to be serious. This movie felt like it had two very different screenwriters. Which it probably did. It's still better to watch than a whole lot of the crap that I've had to take in over the years, but considering how truly fascinating the story is...I don't think it was given the justice it deserved. And my dad seconds that, as an official "Alamo Society" member. That's seriously a real thing. They have articles four times a year about how everybody still died.
A movie I didn't expect to like very much but ended up really enjoying is Elmer Gantry. For some reason, when I read the Netflix description it sounded like a feel-good movie about a con man who goes straight. It's lit-trally the opposite of that. It reverse-reminded me a lot of There Will Be Blood actually. In the sense that it captures the time period in America when people became very cynical towards religion. Is that supposed to be "toward" religion? What's the grammar on that? If I was podcasting, I'd mumble that word just in case. The story centers on a con man who falls for a religious woman that runs traveling religious roadshows. Because apparently those were a thing at one time. Does he legitimately want to change or does he just want to get into a nun's pants? She's not really a nun but who could resist that imagery? I think there are moments where you see that he wants to change, but he mostly just wants to comfort her with his rod and his staff. BOOM! Nawwwww but, there's a moment when he realizes that the man collecting the offering believed his lie about why he couldn't pay and you can tell that he felt bad about it. His facial expression tells you everything you need to know without dialogue, and that's the mark of a great actor. Speaking of which, Burt Lancaster earned every bit of his Best Actor award for this film. He's over-the-top at times when it makes sense for his fast-talking swindler of a character to be that way, and he's also subtle when he needs to be. Rather than having everything work out in the end and become boring and terrible, this film actually takes a pretty dark turn and becomes awesome. And much like many of my favorite characters have done, in the end Elmer just forgets all about the moral quandary he has just faced. He simply forgets that any of it ever happened and goes right back to being the same rotten guy he was. The only way this would have played out better is if Lancaster had been allowed to use the line he originally wanted to use: "see you in Hell, brother." As opposed to "see you around, brother." I presume the line delivery would have been similar, and it wouldn't have been a Schwarzenegger-esque delivery that one might hear before shooting somebody in the face. It would have been a "I'll be seeing you in Hell, and I don't really care about that fact and what it means for either of us." It also implies that he thinks everyone ends up about the same anyway, regardless of their moral actions in life. Which pretty much sums up his whole worldview. So it would have been a fantastic way to end the film, but it was 1960 and you don't want the kiddies saying words that you can't say in church. Words like Hell. Still a great movie though, and probably the year's best.
You can probably predict what I'm going to say about Sons and Lovers. I mean, look at the title. A title like this is too broad to imply anything interesting about the movie. It's basically saying: this movie is about everyone in the human race except virgin girls. But I'm pretty positive that there were some of them in there too. So not only is the title broad and meaningless, it's a liar! I went through all the trouble of finding and downloading this, because it's unavailable on DVD, and when I'm finally ready to watch it what do I find? That it's now on Instant Watch. Charming. But we'll count that as positive karma since it's better quality. But there is no Wikipedia or IMDB description of this movie. That's negative karma. Because that means I had to hang onto every melodramatic word and if I missed something, I couldn't just check the internet. I know what you're thinking: "Domenic cheats when he watches these movies!" Not true. I sit through every single excruciating second, through the credits. But my mind wanders through a lot of these things because they're boring, and if I were to rewind all of them I'd be in a constant state of watching The Remains of the Day. So I use the internet to fill in the gaps. Anyway, Dean Stockwell is in this movie and so I kept hoping Sam Beckett was going to show up to change the movie into something interesting. And...oh man! Between that sentence and this one I found that TCM has some really good recaps. So I was hanging onto every word for nothing...this is clearly not my finest hour. Yeah, it's about a kid who wants to leave the boonies and be an artist and all of the douchey things about his personality you would assume it to be about. He says things like: "I think you can feel religion when a crow flies." And: surprise! Adolescent angst alert! His parents don't support this, and are further enraged when he starts an affair with an older woman and blah blah. This is of course after the first big chunk of the movie is spent showing him essentially talking this sweet and innocent farm girl into sleeping with him. And then at the end he's all: "I have to be free to truly experience what it means to be alive!" Are we supposed to feel for these people? Or admire them? Hannibal Lecter displayed more humanity than this kid. At least he only killed people that he found rude. This kid messes up all of these people's lives for no reason. But this was a different time and I suppose back then it might've meant something different to the average viewer/soon-to-be-hippie. I always imagine people like this dying in a shack somewhere of syphilis or alcohol poisoning, a paintbrush in their hand, curled up on the floor in front of a half-painted canvas of their most mediocre work. That, kids, is where the sidewalk ends for dudes who want to "know what it means to truly live."
Yeah...I dislike hippies, and I find their plotlines only slightly less interesting than that of the sheep hearders of The Sundowners. When you see a badass-sounding title like that and a Netflix description that includes the phrase "Western-style," you expect certain things. Like excitement. Or an interesting plot. Instead, the titular phrase refers to people who set up camp wherever and whenever the sun goes down. They're always on the move. The father, played by Robert Mitchum, is just this type of person. But his wife, played by Deborah Kerr, isn't at all. She wants to settle down somewhere and just live. He wants to stay on the move. Question: if he doesn't like settling down then why did he get married? Another question: why is herding sheep in one part of Australia any different from anywhere else? Don't know, don't care. The exciting scene in this movie was a sheep-shaving contest. Boy, that's interesting. Spoiler alert: they never settle down but it leaves you with the implication that they might someday. Just like at the beginning of the movie. So nothing really happened that was important. That's about it, so I'll use this as an excuse to mention something about genre descriptions that bothers me. Using this as an example, just because something takes place on the open plains and has people wearing cowboy hats and riding horses, doesn't mean it's a Western. Westerns have certain themes and certain types of characters. If Napoleon Dynamite was the exact same movie but took place in the Old West, would it be a Western? Hell no. You may recall that I referred to Taxi Driver as "a Western in the East" and I stand by that. Same themes, different setting. Will the upcoming Captain America movie be classified as a "period piece" because it takes place in World War II? It shouldn't be. Genre is more than just the setting and the costumes and the time period. The characters and the themes are what's important. The Star Wars saga is more of a Western in Space/Space Opera hybrid than Sci-Fi. It bears almost no resemblance to most Science Fiction in terms of themes. So while this particular film featured a "Western-esque" and had some great actors, it makes its point in the first ten minutes and thus doesn't need to continue for a superfluous two hours more.
An overall fun movie and still odd choice for this year's winner is The Apartment. It's directed by one of the all-time greatest directors: Billy Wilder. What I find interesting about him is that he directed some very hard-hitting and fantastic dramas, which I'll be discussing in upcoming entries, and he also directed what's considered to be one of the finest comedies of all time: Some Like It Hot. That particular film will sadly not get an entry on my blog, but you should watch it if you haven't. It's really funny, really darkly funny I should add, and Marilyn Monroe is in it. So there's really no reason not to watch it. But with all of that in mind, I wasn't sure what to expect from this film (interesting tidbit: the last film that is entirely in black and white to ever win Best Picture). The first half of it, which I quite liked, is pretty much a screwball comedy. The rest of it is kind of melodramatic. Maybe it was supposed to be funny in an "oh man, look how complicated this has become!" kind of way, but I just found it over-the-top. The first half though, is truly great. The plot centers on a guy who is looking to advance his career by letting his higher-ups use his apartment for extra-marital purposes. And who doesn't love a goomar in the penthouse? Amirite? Needless to say, hijinks ensue. I find that many comedies change their tone at some point in the movie because they want you to care about the characters and then give you a happy ending. I don't like that. Some Like It Hot has an absurd and absurdly funny ending. Just like the whole movie. But this just had screwy things go on for a while, which were funny, and then a lot of melodrama. I'd have rather seen Jack Lemmon's character ditch the entire rest of the cast, rather than everyone besides the secretary. She's crazy! But if that's what he's into then I guess that's fine, because crazy girls need loving too. Much like the film..........Darling? Maybe? I found that the storyline was more funny because the main girl wasn't that attractive. And I think in this case it was intentional. I'm not sure how one is supposed to feel about Shirley MacLaine's looks, but most guys aren't into women with short hair. And her hair in this is WAY short. I imagine that back in 1960, this predilection was even more prevalent. So it makes it kind of funny that a desk jockey is silently feuding with his boss for the affections of a woman who they've made up to look kind of unusual. She's still pretty, but I think the short hair was a deliberate choice. Or maybe it wasn't at all. Maybe her hairdresser got over-zealous before filming. But I saw it as a funny aspect to the movie, whether intentional or not. But I do think that if Billy Wilder wasn't attached to it, it would've been largely the same movie and probably wouldn't have been as recognized.
And with that, we're done with 1960. Overall this was a good decade in terms of winners. Even though it did contain the worst Best Picture winner of all time (probably). It also had some of the best, so that's what we'll remember it for. The 50s should be even better if my perusing of the nominees is any indication. I've already seen a lot of the winners because they're classics that everyone should see, so that's a good sign. All I can say about 1959 for now though is that it'll have Jews, nuns, and Romans. Not all in the same movie, but almost!
We start this year off with a family favorite: The Alamo. My dad is super into the story of the Alamo. Every Christmas he gets books about that, mom gets Titanic books, and I get stuff about serial killers. Oh and my Aunt reads about the Holocaust and my Uncle loves the Darwin Awards. My other Uncle is really into bicycling...so he's kind of the black sheep (or white sheep perhaps). Anyway, even my dad was surprised to learn today that this movie was nominated. It's not the best portrayal of the story, although to this day there really isn't a defining film about it. Which is why I intend to make one someday. It'll have Lost-ian flashbacks that provide insight into Crockett, Bowie, and others, as well as allusions to Norse mythology and a crazy bloody battle (just like the real one). Apparently John Wayne didn't even want to play Davy, and he also didn't want John Ford anywhere near it. And then he was involved in every part of making the film and directed it like a Ford picture...so that's weird. It was butchered by the studio and according to my dad (I haven't seen the director's cut) some of the best scenes were left out. I suppose it's refreshing to learn that even in 1960 all of the great little character moments were the first to go. So maybe we've always been tasteless as a society. Anyway, I'm sure you're familiar with the story and if you're not then Wikipedia can explain it better and much less interestingly than I could. But probably in a more accurate manner. The problem with the movie is that it's really all just buildup to the battle. That's why if I was doing it, I would launch into the battle like an Abrams pilot. Most of it would still take place at the end but I'd give you a little taste before going into flashbacks and whatnot. Instead, what you've got is a lot of fluff and then a pretty great battle scene. Literally fluff though. Wooing of Spanish women, drinking, goofy dialogue, etc. It's very well-filmed and the music is fantastic enough to also serve as the main title music for Inglourious Basterds. But there's an awful lot of unnecessary dialogue, so it's an even bigger shame that they cut out some of the better scenes. The 2004 adaptation of the story was even worse of course, but at least that attempted to be serious. This movie felt like it had two very different screenwriters. Which it probably did. It's still better to watch than a whole lot of the crap that I've had to take in over the years, but considering how truly fascinating the story is...I don't think it was given the justice it deserved. And my dad seconds that, as an official "Alamo Society" member. That's seriously a real thing. They have articles four times a year about how everybody still died.
A movie I didn't expect to like very much but ended up really enjoying is Elmer Gantry. For some reason, when I read the Netflix description it sounded like a feel-good movie about a con man who goes straight. It's lit-trally the opposite of that. It reverse-reminded me a lot of There Will Be Blood actually. In the sense that it captures the time period in America when people became very cynical towards religion. Is that supposed to be "toward" religion? What's the grammar on that? If I was podcasting, I'd mumble that word just in case. The story centers on a con man who falls for a religious woman that runs traveling religious roadshows. Because apparently those were a thing at one time. Does he legitimately want to change or does he just want to get into a nun's pants? She's not really a nun but who could resist that imagery? I think there are moments where you see that he wants to change, but he mostly just wants to comfort her with his rod and his staff. BOOM! Nawwwww but, there's a moment when he realizes that the man collecting the offering believed his lie about why he couldn't pay and you can tell that he felt bad about it. His facial expression tells you everything you need to know without dialogue, and that's the mark of a great actor. Speaking of which, Burt Lancaster earned every bit of his Best Actor award for this film. He's over-the-top at times when it makes sense for his fast-talking swindler of a character to be that way, and he's also subtle when he needs to be. Rather than having everything work out in the end and become boring and terrible, this film actually takes a pretty dark turn and becomes awesome. And much like many of my favorite characters have done, in the end Elmer just forgets all about the moral quandary he has just faced. He simply forgets that any of it ever happened and goes right back to being the same rotten guy he was. The only way this would have played out better is if Lancaster had been allowed to use the line he originally wanted to use: "see you in Hell, brother." As opposed to "see you around, brother." I presume the line delivery would have been similar, and it wouldn't have been a Schwarzenegger-esque delivery that one might hear before shooting somebody in the face. It would have been a "I'll be seeing you in Hell, and I don't really care about that fact and what it means for either of us." It also implies that he thinks everyone ends up about the same anyway, regardless of their moral actions in life. Which pretty much sums up his whole worldview. So it would have been a fantastic way to end the film, but it was 1960 and you don't want the kiddies saying words that you can't say in church. Words like Hell. Still a great movie though, and probably the year's best.
You can probably predict what I'm going to say about Sons and Lovers. I mean, look at the title. A title like this is too broad to imply anything interesting about the movie. It's basically saying: this movie is about everyone in the human race except virgin girls. But I'm pretty positive that there were some of them in there too. So not only is the title broad and meaningless, it's a liar! I went through all the trouble of finding and downloading this, because it's unavailable on DVD, and when I'm finally ready to watch it what do I find? That it's now on Instant Watch. Charming. But we'll count that as positive karma since it's better quality. But there is no Wikipedia or IMDB description of this movie. That's negative karma. Because that means I had to hang onto every melodramatic word and if I missed something, I couldn't just check the internet. I know what you're thinking: "Domenic cheats when he watches these movies!" Not true. I sit through every single excruciating second, through the credits. But my mind wanders through a lot of these things because they're boring, and if I were to rewind all of them I'd be in a constant state of watching The Remains of the Day. So I use the internet to fill in the gaps. Anyway, Dean Stockwell is in this movie and so I kept hoping Sam Beckett was going to show up to change the movie into something interesting. And...oh man! Between that sentence and this one I found that TCM has some really good recaps. So I was hanging onto every word for nothing...this is clearly not my finest hour. Yeah, it's about a kid who wants to leave the boonies and be an artist and all of the douchey things about his personality you would assume it to be about. He says things like: "I think you can feel religion when a crow flies." And: surprise! Adolescent angst alert! His parents don't support this, and are further enraged when he starts an affair with an older woman and blah blah. This is of course after the first big chunk of the movie is spent showing him essentially talking this sweet and innocent farm girl into sleeping with him. And then at the end he's all: "I have to be free to truly experience what it means to be alive!" Are we supposed to feel for these people? Or admire them? Hannibal Lecter displayed more humanity than this kid. At least he only killed people that he found rude. This kid messes up all of these people's lives for no reason. But this was a different time and I suppose back then it might've meant something different to the average viewer/soon-to-be-hippie. I always imagine people like this dying in a shack somewhere of syphilis or alcohol poisoning, a paintbrush in their hand, curled up on the floor in front of a half-painted canvas of their most mediocre work. That, kids, is where the sidewalk ends for dudes who want to "know what it means to truly live."
Yeah...I dislike hippies, and I find their plotlines only slightly less interesting than that of the sheep hearders of The Sundowners. When you see a badass-sounding title like that and a Netflix description that includes the phrase "Western-style," you expect certain things. Like excitement. Or an interesting plot. Instead, the titular phrase refers to people who set up camp wherever and whenever the sun goes down. They're always on the move. The father, played by Robert Mitchum, is just this type of person. But his wife, played by Deborah Kerr, isn't at all. She wants to settle down somewhere and just live. He wants to stay on the move. Question: if he doesn't like settling down then why did he get married? Another question: why is herding sheep in one part of Australia any different from anywhere else? Don't know, don't care. The exciting scene in this movie was a sheep-shaving contest. Boy, that's interesting. Spoiler alert: they never settle down but it leaves you with the implication that they might someday. Just like at the beginning of the movie. So nothing really happened that was important. That's about it, so I'll use this as an excuse to mention something about genre descriptions that bothers me. Using this as an example, just because something takes place on the open plains and has people wearing cowboy hats and riding horses, doesn't mean it's a Western. Westerns have certain themes and certain types of characters. If Napoleon Dynamite was the exact same movie but took place in the Old West, would it be a Western? Hell no. You may recall that I referred to Taxi Driver as "a Western in the East" and I stand by that. Same themes, different setting. Will the upcoming Captain America movie be classified as a "period piece" because it takes place in World War II? It shouldn't be. Genre is more than just the setting and the costumes and the time period. The characters and the themes are what's important. The Star Wars saga is more of a Western in Space/Space Opera hybrid than Sci-Fi. It bears almost no resemblance to most Science Fiction in terms of themes. So while this particular film featured a "Western-esque" and had some great actors, it makes its point in the first ten minutes and thus doesn't need to continue for a superfluous two hours more.
An overall fun movie and still odd choice for this year's winner is The Apartment. It's directed by one of the all-time greatest directors: Billy Wilder. What I find interesting about him is that he directed some very hard-hitting and fantastic dramas, which I'll be discussing in upcoming entries, and he also directed what's considered to be one of the finest comedies of all time: Some Like It Hot. That particular film will sadly not get an entry on my blog, but you should watch it if you haven't. It's really funny, really darkly funny I should add, and Marilyn Monroe is in it. So there's really no reason not to watch it. But with all of that in mind, I wasn't sure what to expect from this film (interesting tidbit: the last film that is entirely in black and white to ever win Best Picture). The first half of it, which I quite liked, is pretty much a screwball comedy. The rest of it is kind of melodramatic. Maybe it was supposed to be funny in an "oh man, look how complicated this has become!" kind of way, but I just found it over-the-top. The first half though, is truly great. The plot centers on a guy who is looking to advance his career by letting his higher-ups use his apartment for extra-marital purposes. And who doesn't love a goomar in the penthouse? Amirite? Needless to say, hijinks ensue. I find that many comedies change their tone at some point in the movie because they want you to care about the characters and then give you a happy ending. I don't like that. Some Like It Hot has an absurd and absurdly funny ending. Just like the whole movie. But this just had screwy things go on for a while, which were funny, and then a lot of melodrama. I'd have rather seen Jack Lemmon's character ditch the entire rest of the cast, rather than everyone besides the secretary. She's crazy! But if that's what he's into then I guess that's fine, because crazy girls need loving too. Much like the film..........Darling? Maybe? I found that the storyline was more funny because the main girl wasn't that attractive. And I think in this case it was intentional. I'm not sure how one is supposed to feel about Shirley MacLaine's looks, but most guys aren't into women with short hair. And her hair in this is WAY short. I imagine that back in 1960, this predilection was even more prevalent. So it makes it kind of funny that a desk jockey is silently feuding with his boss for the affections of a woman who they've made up to look kind of unusual. She's still pretty, but I think the short hair was a deliberate choice. Or maybe it wasn't at all. Maybe her hairdresser got over-zealous before filming. But I saw it as a funny aspect to the movie, whether intentional or not. But I do think that if Billy Wilder wasn't attached to it, it would've been largely the same movie and probably wouldn't have been as recognized.
And with that, we're done with 1960. Overall this was a good decade in terms of winners. Even though it did contain the worst Best Picture winner of all time (probably). It also had some of the best, so that's what we'll remember it for. The 50s should be even better if my perusing of the nominees is any indication. I've already seen a lot of the winners because they're classics that everyone should see, so that's a good sign. All I can say about 1959 for now though is that it'll have Jews, nuns, and Romans. Not all in the same movie, but almost!
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
1961: The Year that I Met a Girl Named Maria in Nuremberg
Natalie Wood would have made Nazi movies a lot cheerier. Just saying. It's a bit strange writing this entry because I'm currently in the process of converting my blog into podcast form. And obviously some things are funny when you see them on the page, but you can't express them in quite the same way when you say it aloud. So I'll try to get the best of both worlds, which means I'll try too hard and it'll probably suck (forewarning). But it's okay because there are a lot of good movies in this year, so I wasn't going to get too rant-y anyway. Well, comparatively.
We start with the most rant-worthy of them all: Fanny. And no I won't be making a bunch of fanny jokes. Too easy. Just like her. BOOM! Nawwww but seriously that was the only one. And for the record, that "just like her" would have been Connery-esque in a podcast. This movie is another one of those where it's supposed to be angst-y and dramatic but it spends most of its time being un-funny instead. Apparently it was originally a musical, but they took that out for the movie. Would've been way better as a musical. Then I could at least tap my toe to the melodrama. The dude in this movie is the kind of dude that dudes like me want to annihilate. We want to usher them all together on one planet and call that planet Alderaan. Because the hot girl comes in and is so overtly flirty that onlookers would assume that some type of softcore porn was about to take place. But does he care about her? Nope! Because he wants to be a sailor. As though being a sailor is like being the frigging Green Lantern and you can't associate with anyone because you're fighting monsters in space. You're a sailor! Don't reject the girl because you're at sea sometimes. And get a better hobby anyway. "Sorry Fanny, I can't go out with you because I'd really like to contract scurvy." There were probably hordes of guys frothing at the mouth to be with her, and this schmuck is too busy dreaming about living off of stale bread and getting eaten by the kraken. Of course, he still gets pissed when anyone else tries to go out with her. Needless to say, much melodrama ensues and many lives are made more complicated than they needed to be. And all because Whiny McWhine had to carry the heavy burden of having a hot French girl be in love with him. What a tragic figure. See now, this is the part where I'd say "but at least there were some catchy songs." But there aren't, because they cut all the music. So the musical score is really good but all that remains other than that is over-the-top acting and terrible dialogue. A reviewer said that "anyone with a sense of humor or a heart will love this movie." Well then call me Darth Tin Man because I thought it was terrible. It maybe could've worked as a straight melodrama or a straight comedy but not both. They just tried to fit too much into Fanny. BOOM!
A slightly more enjoyable film is The Guns of Navarone. I kind of regret the circumstances under which I watched the film, because I thought it was a true story. It wasn't until halfway through when I was perusing the IMDB Trivia that not only were there no guns in Navarone, there's no anything in Navarone because it's not real. How was I supposed to know this? It's boring enough to be a true story. I've never been out of this time zone, let alone to obscure beaches in Greece. And I watch true stories VERY differently from pieces of fiction. Because fictional characters should have more depth than real ones. You can't make too many things up about real people, so if you only know X amount of info about them for your movie then that's what you'll have to work with. But if it's fiction then you can have total freedom in terms of backstory and whatnot. Well the only significant backstory here is that Gregory Peck was sort of responsible for the death of Anthony Quinn's family. Which adds lit-trally nothing to the story. Except that at one point Quinn refuses to be rescued by Peck due to said backstory. That's some canned drama right there. What really surprises me is that the film is labeled an "action movie." Well it's no wonder James Bond was such a huge hit if this was what passed for an action movie. I'm not saying it should've had non-stop explosions a la Michael Bay because I hate that. But any excitement at all before the last 30 minutes (which were actually pretty good) would have been nice. It utilizes this very 60s style of action that I detest where there's lots of fighting but no actual violence. So you'll see people shooting guns and see explosions but you won't see anyone get shot or blown up. It's like the TBS version of itself. Thankfully, there are some darker moments later in the film. Most of what follows the scene where a double agent is discovered is good stuff. Maybe the reason the violence earlier in the film was so tepid is so they could get away with some of the more personal scenes of violence later. I would probably say that it redeemed itself in the last half an hour, but it's still way too long. No action movie needs to be 2 1/2 hours long (unless it's only pretending to be an action movie, like Casino Royale). War movies can get away with it, but only if they fill it up with interesting things. Maybe with less drama and re-writes behind the scenes this could have been a lot better, but it's not like Gregory Peck and David Niven never did anything again so it's fine.
Taking a serious left turn from what we've been discussing is a truly fantastic film, The Hustler. I had seen this years ago because it's one of my dad's favorites. And rightfully so as it's a truly intense character drama. I've mentioned on occasion that you don't need big stakes to have real drama in a film, and this is the proof. Which just shows you how much other movies fail. Filmed in glorious black and white (which makes it very noir-esque), this is the story of a pool hustler who flew too close to the sun. Jackie Gleason takes a dark turn in this as Minnesota Fats, the main "villain" (a far cry from Ralph Kramden) and he was nominated for his performance. Minnesota Fats was an actual pool shark, but facing him in the film is the fictitious "Fast" Eddie Felson, played magnificently by Paul Newman. The pool sequences actually manage to be suspenseful and exhilirating. Of course, I have an appreciation for pool (or billiards I should say) but aside from that I think the film is well-shot enough where the underlying drama ratchets up the suspense. You can actually feel the moment when Eddie should stop playing. He won a ton of money off of Fats near the beginning of the film but he just had to keep pushing it. So he loses everything, and the rest of the movie is about getting it back. But not in a Rocky Balboa kind of way. Instead in a dark, "yeah I won but at what cost?" noir kind of way. I will say that I had to check and see if he actually wins at the end because the victory is never as interesting as the defeat. What you really remember is the first 45 minutes or so where we're introduced to Eddie's con game as we watch him prepare for the ultimate match. That, along with the first confrontation itself, is about as good as the first 45 minutes of a movie gets. If you can't take dark movies then I wouldn't recommend it. But if you're into that sort of thing (which I am) then it's a really excellent character piece that's actually compelling, unlike that Zorba crap.
A film I overall liked but had mixed feelings about was Judgment at Nuremberg. My only real problem is that it's entirely too long (3 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). Oh sorry, I had a spasm on the button there. Nawwww but it's too long. It's a courtroom drama, so almost all of it takes place in the courtroom. And you can't sustain one storyline of suspense for 3 hours in one location. You just can't. Even when it's about putting Nazis on trial. Here's something I will say though: we've all been kind of de-sensitized to the Holocaust. We all know it was terrible but knowledge of it is so widespread that we use it more as a standby example for hyperbolic arguments than anything else (the government makes us have pictures on our license? Next thing you know, it'll be the Holocaust!). But back then it was all still very new and I'd wager to say that when actual photos are shown in the film of the concentration camps, people in the theater had never seen them before. Not everyone, but lots of people. I've been to the Holocaust museum, I've seen Schindler's List, and I've studied it extensively in both high school and college so I'm no stranger to the horrors of the situation. But it's still so sobering every time you see it. So I can't imagine the impact when seeing it for the first time at the theater. Not a great movie to see on a date if Breakfast at Tiffany's is sold out. Still, the big reveal of Holocaust photos comes 2/3 of the way into the movie. When that's by far the most shocking part of the film, it should be saved for the end or near the end. That was the big emotional payoff after all the suspense. So I liked most of the movie but it's too slow after that scene. Lots of people are in this movie, including a young William Shatner and an old Judy Garland. Dorothy and Kirk in a Nazi movie? Craziness! Spencer Tracy is the real star of course, as he plays the judge. And it raises some interesting legal questions. They point out at the beginning of the movie that the actions perpetrated during the war were not illegal when they were committed. Horrifying, but not illegal. That's an interesting thought that hadn't occurred to me before. Because it's a bit of an ex post facto, and therefore there might not have been legal basis for their incarceration. Although if there's a time for an exception to the rule, that would've been it. At the end of the film it basically says "they're all free now" so it made the whole thing feel almost pointless. I wasn't sure if it was meant to make you feel dread over that or if it was just a point of interest. Either way, it's still a good movie but I'd have ended it with the Holocaust photos.
This year's winner is completely different from anything I've said so far and it's really deserving: West Side Story. Here's an example of when the remake is better than the original. Because the original was written by Shakespeare and it was called "Romeo and Juliet" and it's bad. This version is way better. Great music, a not-spoiled-at-the-beginning storyline, and a great example of how to balance dark story turns with humor and pure enjoyment. Plus, fictionalized Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm loves it and the real Larry David probably does too. This is another one of my mom's favorite movies (if you look at which ones I mention are my mom's favorites and which are my dad's and understand that I am the overlap, then you'll see why my brain is so messed up). This is an example of one of our conversations, Me: "you can't have anything serious in a dance like this," Mom: "you liked it in West Side Story," Me: "grumble grumble..." That wasn't onomatopoeia, I actually say grumble. And let me add that onomatopeia is the least onomatopoetic word that there is. Anyway, there are any number of great scenes to highlight here but I'll just mention a few. One is, yes, the fighting. It's perfectly reasonable to have a fight be implied with a dance sequence, as long as all of the other singing and dancing sequences are in the same hyper-real tone. Let me explain: when Tony is belting out "Maria" it's understood that it's a representation of what his internal feelings are and that he didn't actually come up with all of those lyrics himself on the spot. This is consistent throughout the film. They're not actually singing to Officer Krupke, singing and dancing is simply the medium through which the scene is being displayed. Which makes the implied fighting during singing and dance sequences acceptable. When they start mixing and matching is what bothers me. Although it's okay on comedies like Glee where some of the singing is actually taking place and some is merely meant to be an implication. Anyway, you probably know a ton of these songs even if you don't know that this is where they're from. My personal favorite is "Somewhere," which I am going to use in a season 5 episode of my show in a disturbing way (spoilers!). It'll ruin it for some, but make it cooler for me. It'll be sung by a children's choir and will be diegetic, but those are my only clues. Anyway, the overtones of the story work a lot better within feuding teenage gangs if you ask me. Feuding families like the Montagues and Capulets work as a parody, but then you shouldn't have a parody within a tragedy. This is all straight tragedy, even if it makes you smile and laugh along the way.
Mostly great stuff this year. And we find ourselves almost at the end/beginning of the 60s. I have high hopes for the 50s, as some of my favorite movies ever are contained within it. So I hope they're the rule and not the exception. But before we find out about that we have to do 1960. I still have quite a bit to watch in that year...but I shall do my best to watch them in a timely manner. All I know for now is that it'll have the representative from Tennessee's 12th District, the King of the Wild Frontier, and Davy Crockett.
We start with the most rant-worthy of them all: Fanny. And no I won't be making a bunch of fanny jokes. Too easy. Just like her. BOOM! Nawwww but seriously that was the only one. And for the record, that "just like her" would have been Connery-esque in a podcast. This movie is another one of those where it's supposed to be angst-y and dramatic but it spends most of its time being un-funny instead. Apparently it was originally a musical, but they took that out for the movie. Would've been way better as a musical. Then I could at least tap my toe to the melodrama. The dude in this movie is the kind of dude that dudes like me want to annihilate. We want to usher them all together on one planet and call that planet Alderaan. Because the hot girl comes in and is so overtly flirty that onlookers would assume that some type of softcore porn was about to take place. But does he care about her? Nope! Because he wants to be a sailor. As though being a sailor is like being the frigging Green Lantern and you can't associate with anyone because you're fighting monsters in space. You're a sailor! Don't reject the girl because you're at sea sometimes. And get a better hobby anyway. "Sorry Fanny, I can't go out with you because I'd really like to contract scurvy." There were probably hordes of guys frothing at the mouth to be with her, and this schmuck is too busy dreaming about living off of stale bread and getting eaten by the kraken. Of course, he still gets pissed when anyone else tries to go out with her. Needless to say, much melodrama ensues and many lives are made more complicated than they needed to be. And all because Whiny McWhine had to carry the heavy burden of having a hot French girl be in love with him. What a tragic figure. See now, this is the part where I'd say "but at least there were some catchy songs." But there aren't, because they cut all the music. So the musical score is really good but all that remains other than that is over-the-top acting and terrible dialogue. A reviewer said that "anyone with a sense of humor or a heart will love this movie." Well then call me Darth Tin Man because I thought it was terrible. It maybe could've worked as a straight melodrama or a straight comedy but not both. They just tried to fit too much into Fanny. BOOM!
A slightly more enjoyable film is The Guns of Navarone. I kind of regret the circumstances under which I watched the film, because I thought it was a true story. It wasn't until halfway through when I was perusing the IMDB Trivia that not only were there no guns in Navarone, there's no anything in Navarone because it's not real. How was I supposed to know this? It's boring enough to be a true story. I've never been out of this time zone, let alone to obscure beaches in Greece. And I watch true stories VERY differently from pieces of fiction. Because fictional characters should have more depth than real ones. You can't make too many things up about real people, so if you only know X amount of info about them for your movie then that's what you'll have to work with. But if it's fiction then you can have total freedom in terms of backstory and whatnot. Well the only significant backstory here is that Gregory Peck was sort of responsible for the death of Anthony Quinn's family. Which adds lit-trally nothing to the story. Except that at one point Quinn refuses to be rescued by Peck due to said backstory. That's some canned drama right there. What really surprises me is that the film is labeled an "action movie." Well it's no wonder James Bond was such a huge hit if this was what passed for an action movie. I'm not saying it should've had non-stop explosions a la Michael Bay because I hate that. But any excitement at all before the last 30 minutes (which were actually pretty good) would have been nice. It utilizes this very 60s style of action that I detest where there's lots of fighting but no actual violence. So you'll see people shooting guns and see explosions but you won't see anyone get shot or blown up. It's like the TBS version of itself. Thankfully, there are some darker moments later in the film. Most of what follows the scene where a double agent is discovered is good stuff. Maybe the reason the violence earlier in the film was so tepid is so they could get away with some of the more personal scenes of violence later. I would probably say that it redeemed itself in the last half an hour, but it's still way too long. No action movie needs to be 2 1/2 hours long (unless it's only pretending to be an action movie, like Casino Royale). War movies can get away with it, but only if they fill it up with interesting things. Maybe with less drama and re-writes behind the scenes this could have been a lot better, but it's not like Gregory Peck and David Niven never did anything again so it's fine.
Taking a serious left turn from what we've been discussing is a truly fantastic film, The Hustler. I had seen this years ago because it's one of my dad's favorites. And rightfully so as it's a truly intense character drama. I've mentioned on occasion that you don't need big stakes to have real drama in a film, and this is the proof. Which just shows you how much other movies fail. Filmed in glorious black and white (which makes it very noir-esque), this is the story of a pool hustler who flew too close to the sun. Jackie Gleason takes a dark turn in this as Minnesota Fats, the main "villain" (a far cry from Ralph Kramden) and he was nominated for his performance. Minnesota Fats was an actual pool shark, but facing him in the film is the fictitious "Fast" Eddie Felson, played magnificently by Paul Newman. The pool sequences actually manage to be suspenseful and exhilirating. Of course, I have an appreciation for pool (or billiards I should say) but aside from that I think the film is well-shot enough where the underlying drama ratchets up the suspense. You can actually feel the moment when Eddie should stop playing. He won a ton of money off of Fats near the beginning of the film but he just had to keep pushing it. So he loses everything, and the rest of the movie is about getting it back. But not in a Rocky Balboa kind of way. Instead in a dark, "yeah I won but at what cost?" noir kind of way. I will say that I had to check and see if he actually wins at the end because the victory is never as interesting as the defeat. What you really remember is the first 45 minutes or so where we're introduced to Eddie's con game as we watch him prepare for the ultimate match. That, along with the first confrontation itself, is about as good as the first 45 minutes of a movie gets. If you can't take dark movies then I wouldn't recommend it. But if you're into that sort of thing (which I am) then it's a really excellent character piece that's actually compelling, unlike that Zorba crap.
A film I overall liked but had mixed feelings about was Judgment at Nuremberg. My only real problem is that it's entirely too long (3 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). Oh sorry, I had a spasm on the button there. Nawwww but it's too long. It's a courtroom drama, so almost all of it takes place in the courtroom. And you can't sustain one storyline of suspense for 3 hours in one location. You just can't. Even when it's about putting Nazis on trial. Here's something I will say though: we've all been kind of de-sensitized to the Holocaust. We all know it was terrible but knowledge of it is so widespread that we use it more as a standby example for hyperbolic arguments than anything else (the government makes us have pictures on our license? Next thing you know, it'll be the Holocaust!). But back then it was all still very new and I'd wager to say that when actual photos are shown in the film of the concentration camps, people in the theater had never seen them before. Not everyone, but lots of people. I've been to the Holocaust museum, I've seen Schindler's List, and I've studied it extensively in both high school and college so I'm no stranger to the horrors of the situation. But it's still so sobering every time you see it. So I can't imagine the impact when seeing it for the first time at the theater. Not a great movie to see on a date if Breakfast at Tiffany's is sold out. Still, the big reveal of Holocaust photos comes 2/3 of the way into the movie. When that's by far the most shocking part of the film, it should be saved for the end or near the end. That was the big emotional payoff after all the suspense. So I liked most of the movie but it's too slow after that scene. Lots of people are in this movie, including a young William Shatner and an old Judy Garland. Dorothy and Kirk in a Nazi movie? Craziness! Spencer Tracy is the real star of course, as he plays the judge. And it raises some interesting legal questions. They point out at the beginning of the movie that the actions perpetrated during the war were not illegal when they were committed. Horrifying, but not illegal. That's an interesting thought that hadn't occurred to me before. Because it's a bit of an ex post facto, and therefore there might not have been legal basis for their incarceration. Although if there's a time for an exception to the rule, that would've been it. At the end of the film it basically says "they're all free now" so it made the whole thing feel almost pointless. I wasn't sure if it was meant to make you feel dread over that or if it was just a point of interest. Either way, it's still a good movie but I'd have ended it with the Holocaust photos.
This year's winner is completely different from anything I've said so far and it's really deserving: West Side Story. Here's an example of when the remake is better than the original. Because the original was written by Shakespeare and it was called "Romeo and Juliet" and it's bad. This version is way better. Great music, a not-spoiled-at-the-beginning storyline, and a great example of how to balance dark story turns with humor and pure enjoyment. Plus, fictionalized Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm loves it and the real Larry David probably does too. This is another one of my mom's favorite movies (if you look at which ones I mention are my mom's favorites and which are my dad's and understand that I am the overlap, then you'll see why my brain is so messed up). This is an example of one of our conversations, Me: "you can't have anything serious in a dance like this," Mom: "you liked it in West Side Story," Me: "grumble grumble..." That wasn't onomatopoeia, I actually say grumble. And let me add that onomatopeia is the least onomatopoetic word that there is. Anyway, there are any number of great scenes to highlight here but I'll just mention a few. One is, yes, the fighting. It's perfectly reasonable to have a fight be implied with a dance sequence, as long as all of the other singing and dancing sequences are in the same hyper-real tone. Let me explain: when Tony is belting out "Maria" it's understood that it's a representation of what his internal feelings are and that he didn't actually come up with all of those lyrics himself on the spot. This is consistent throughout the film. They're not actually singing to Officer Krupke, singing and dancing is simply the medium through which the scene is being displayed. Which makes the implied fighting during singing and dance sequences acceptable. When they start mixing and matching is what bothers me. Although it's okay on comedies like Glee where some of the singing is actually taking place and some is merely meant to be an implication. Anyway, you probably know a ton of these songs even if you don't know that this is where they're from. My personal favorite is "Somewhere," which I am going to use in a season 5 episode of my show in a disturbing way (spoilers!). It'll ruin it for some, but make it cooler for me. It'll be sung by a children's choir and will be diegetic, but those are my only clues. Anyway, the overtones of the story work a lot better within feuding teenage gangs if you ask me. Feuding families like the Montagues and Capulets work as a parody, but then you shouldn't have a parody within a tragedy. This is all straight tragedy, even if it makes you smile and laugh along the way.
Mostly great stuff this year. And we find ourselves almost at the end/beginning of the 60s. I have high hopes for the 50s, as some of my favorite movies ever are contained within it. So I hope they're the rule and not the exception. But before we find out about that we have to do 1960. I still have quite a bit to watch in that year...but I shall do my best to watch them in a timely manner. All I know for now is that it'll have the representative from Tennessee's 12th District, the King of the Wild Frontier, and Davy Crockett.
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