Originally posted 1 April 2009 on The Screengrab for the 2009 White Elephant Blogathon. Reprinted by permission.
It’s been said that the two cinematic qualities that one can’t be objective about are comedy and eroticism. Every person has different things that make him laugh or turn him on, and if that doesn’t happen for someone, you can’t explain it and make it work. And combining funny with sexy is an even riskier proposition, since the filmmakers have to work out the proper balance of humor and sex to elicit the natural responses to both without one overwhelming the other. Michael Benveniste and Howard Ziehm’s Flesh Gordon doesn’t come close to achieving this balance. It’s not funny, it certainly isn’t sexy, and it’s just kind of a waste of time. It’s hard to imagine what motivated the directors to make it.
Well, maybe it’s not that hard (heh-heh, I just said "hard"). I imagine Benveniste and Ziehm, struggling for a movie idea, sitting around one day looking at old Flash Gordon comics- perhaps while high, this being the early seventies. Suddenly, one of them starts chuckling even more than one normally would while stoned, and calls the other over. “Ever notice how much a space ship looks like a penis?” he asks. And the other one would respond, “yeah, and check out Dr. Zarkov! That sounds kinda like jerk-off!” The pot-addled ideas keep coming, and soon they’ve got their new project. Now, I’m not saying that good movies can’t spring from unlikely circumstances- after all, To Have and Have Not was made on a bet between Hemingway and Howard Hawks, and that led to one of Hawks’ best movies, as well as the romance between Bogey and Bacall. But in this case, the key difference between Hawks’ classic and Flesh Gordon is that the Hawks film was fully thought out, while Flesh is nothing more than a series of lame jokes and halfhearted softcore scenes in search of a coherent movie.
I’m actually sort of reluctant to use the word “jokes” to describe the comedy in Flesh Gordon, since that word implies a setup and a punchline. Not a single would-be laugh in the movie transcends basic gag status- the filmmakers seem to believe that naughty imagery is a joke in itself, so they don’t do anything to make it actually funny. Consider the ship, which as I’ve already mentioned looks like a penis. But why stop there? Why not make the dick-ship pass through a nebula in the shape of a birth canal on the way to its destination? Why not have make its final destination a vagina-shaped port, only it has trouble clearing the doors so that it has to thrust a few times in order to enter? Sure, these ideas aren’t exactly sophisticated, but at least they use the already-established sight gags in order to form honest-to-goodness (albeit tasteless) jokes. Flesh Gordon can’t be bothered to do this. It’s the kind of movie that assumes that phallic objects alone are hilarious. And if you’re in agreement with that, you’re probably late for your shift at Burger World, Beavis.
What’s more, the movie isn’t remotely sexy. There are acres of (mostly female) skin on display in Flesh Gordon, but as with the comedy, nothing interesting is done with it, so it fades into the background. In researching this review, I discovered that the film originally contained hardcore scenes, but the filmmakers were ordered to cut them and shoot less explicit footage. However, eroticism doesn’t necessarily mean pornography. It does, however, imply more than perfunctory shots of nudity and fleeting glimpses of couples making love. In my experience, the most erotic moments in movies require some patience on the part of the filmmakers in order to let the scenes unfold at an unhurried pace, without letting the plot or the filmmaking get in the way. But the makers of Flesh Gordon don’t care about this- not when they’ve got more dick jokes up their sleeves!
The result is a movie with a strangely juvenile attitude toward sex. With such elements as a monster called Penisaurus, the nefarious villain Wang the Perverted, and his much-feared SeX-Ray, the humor of Flesh Gordon appeals only to those who think naughty words are funny in and of themselves. When it comes to actual sexuality, the movie becomes skittish, turning on the wacky music and turning it into a joke, which takes away the eroticism in the service of a cheap gag. I believe it was Roger Ebert who once reviewed a movie by writing, “if you’re old enough to see this, you’ve already outgrown it.” I can’t think of a better response to Flesh Gordon.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Fiddler on the Roof (1971, Norman Jewison)
Originally written 28 April 2009 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission.
In some ways, it isn’t hard to determine why Norman Jewison’s big-screen adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof was a hit. From the time sound was introduced to the cinema, musicals were one of Hollywood’s most popular and enduring genres. But while most musicals of the 1930s and 1940s were frothy entertainments, the fifties saw an increase in musicals that tackled more serious material. And the record-breaking initial Broadway run of Fiddler on the Roof made a film version inevitable, and its status as the top-grossing movie of 1971 was practically pre-ordained.
While the reasons for the long-run popularity of Fiddler on the Roof seem obvious, its initial success is somewhat trickier to pin down. For one thing, the story’s subject matter doesn’t appear to lend itself to the musical treatment. What’s more, a community of Russian Jews around the turn of the century wasn’t the sort of setting to which most sixties-era audiences were normally expected to relate. And quite frankly, even in the post West Side Story-era, the storyline of Fiddler on the Roof was something of a downer. After all, Fiddler was about a man who loses most of what he holds dear- his three eldest daughters and finally his home- before the end of the story, and its treated these losses not as a tragedy (which might’ve allowed for some cathartic tears at the end), but with a sense of resignation.
Yet Fiddler on the Roof made a real connection with audiences of the day for numerous reasons. There was the music of course- Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s catchy, Jewish-inflected song score produced half a dozen songs that quickly became musical theatre standards. Likewise, the movie’s deeper themes- particularly the conflict between forward-thinking youth and their tradition-minded elders- had a great deal of resonance in uneasy sixties. And while Fiddler doesn’t soft-pedal its Jewishness by any means, the characters’ concerns were common enough to many difficult cultures that it came across less as a Jewish story than a universal one.
But most of all, audience members fell in love with Tevye, who quickly became one of musical theatre’s most enduring characters. Tevye is not a larger-than-life hero, but a poor milkman who has been “cursed” with five daughters and no sons, and despairs of finding them husbands. Tevye believes above all in the need to uphold tradition, and it’s the clash between this need and his daughters’ need to forge their own paths in life (especially when it comes to finding husbands) that drives the story. Throughout the story, Tevye struggles with how flexible his love for his daughters will allow him to be, until he finally reaches a point where he must throw up his hands and say, “if I bend any more, I will break.” And all the while, Tevye carries on a conversation with God- so much, indeed, that he must speak to God more than he does to any flesh-and-blood character.
Before MGM brought Fiddler to the big screen, the role of Tevye was most commonly associated with the great Zero Mostel, who originated the character on Broadway. Because of this, there was some controversy when Jewison decided to fill the role not with Mostel, but the lesser-known Topol, who starred in the West End production. In the end, however, Jewison made the right choice for the film. With his outsized style of acting, Mostel was the perfect stage Tevye, able to pitch his performance to the rafters. But for the more naturalistic big-screen production, Topol’s more human-sized turn proved to be ideal. Whereas Mostel’s over-the-top bluster would have overwhelmed everything else, Topol’s never does, and he’s a sensitive enough performer to pull off the smaller character moments, as in the quiet musical number in which he asks his wife of twenty-five years, “Do You Love Me?”
One of director Norman Jewison’s key filmmaking decisions at the outset was to go for a more realistic feel which would make the musical transcend its stage origins. However, this gambit doesn’t always pay off, and occasionally this commitment to realism makes it feel almost like Jewison was uneasy about making a big-budget musical. In some ways, it’s probably good that Jewison limited the dancing to social scenes such as the barroom and Tzeitel and Motel’s wedding. But on the other hand (as Tevye is so prone to saying), Jewison undermines several potentially powerful scenes by having the songs sung in voiceover rather than actually voiced by the characters onscreen.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the “Chavaleh (Little Bird)” number, in which Tevye ponders the loss of his third daughter, who has eloped with a non-Jew. Had Jewison allowed Topol to perform the song onscreen, it might have made for one of the most emotional moments in the film, with Tevye realizing how his need to uphold tradition has lost him a beloved daughter. But instead, Jewison has Topol sing the song in voiceover, shooting him gazing into the distance while imagining his daughters dancing away from him. The number turns into what Roger Ebert calls a “Semi-Obligatory Lyrical Interlude”, and like most scenes of this type, it’s pretty laughable- a far cry from the powerful moment it should rightly have been.
But overall, Fiddler on the Roof does right by its original inspiration, and the elements that people loved in the stage production translated quite nicely to the silver screen. It’s not one of the greatest movie musicals by a long shot, but it’s a worthy adaptation, certainly better than most of the post-Golden Age adaptations of long-running musicals, which all too often get shoddy treatments a la The Phantom of the Opera and A Chorus Line. Perhaps the most definitive testament to the worth of the Fiddler movie is that, nearly four decades after the film’s release, Topol is currently starring in what has been called his “Farewell Tour.” That just goes to show you that while Zero might have originated the role of Tevye, he hardly owns it anymore.
In some ways, it isn’t hard to determine why Norman Jewison’s big-screen adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof was a hit. From the time sound was introduced to the cinema, musicals were one of Hollywood’s most popular and enduring genres. But while most musicals of the 1930s and 1940s were frothy entertainments, the fifties saw an increase in musicals that tackled more serious material. And the record-breaking initial Broadway run of Fiddler on the Roof made a film version inevitable, and its status as the top-grossing movie of 1971 was practically pre-ordained.
While the reasons for the long-run popularity of Fiddler on the Roof seem obvious, its initial success is somewhat trickier to pin down. For one thing, the story’s subject matter doesn’t appear to lend itself to the musical treatment. What’s more, a community of Russian Jews around the turn of the century wasn’t the sort of setting to which most sixties-era audiences were normally expected to relate. And quite frankly, even in the post West Side Story-era, the storyline of Fiddler on the Roof was something of a downer. After all, Fiddler was about a man who loses most of what he holds dear- his three eldest daughters and finally his home- before the end of the story, and its treated these losses not as a tragedy (which might’ve allowed for some cathartic tears at the end), but with a sense of resignation.
Yet Fiddler on the Roof made a real connection with audiences of the day for numerous reasons. There was the music of course- Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s catchy, Jewish-inflected song score produced half a dozen songs that quickly became musical theatre standards. Likewise, the movie’s deeper themes- particularly the conflict between forward-thinking youth and their tradition-minded elders- had a great deal of resonance in uneasy sixties. And while Fiddler doesn’t soft-pedal its Jewishness by any means, the characters’ concerns were common enough to many difficult cultures that it came across less as a Jewish story than a universal one.
But most of all, audience members fell in love with Tevye, who quickly became one of musical theatre’s most enduring characters. Tevye is not a larger-than-life hero, but a poor milkman who has been “cursed” with five daughters and no sons, and despairs of finding them husbands. Tevye believes above all in the need to uphold tradition, and it’s the clash between this need and his daughters’ need to forge their own paths in life (especially when it comes to finding husbands) that drives the story. Throughout the story, Tevye struggles with how flexible his love for his daughters will allow him to be, until he finally reaches a point where he must throw up his hands and say, “if I bend any more, I will break.” And all the while, Tevye carries on a conversation with God- so much, indeed, that he must speak to God more than he does to any flesh-and-blood character.
Before MGM brought Fiddler to the big screen, the role of Tevye was most commonly associated with the great Zero Mostel, who originated the character on Broadway. Because of this, there was some controversy when Jewison decided to fill the role not with Mostel, but the lesser-known Topol, who starred in the West End production. In the end, however, Jewison made the right choice for the film. With his outsized style of acting, Mostel was the perfect stage Tevye, able to pitch his performance to the rafters. But for the more naturalistic big-screen production, Topol’s more human-sized turn proved to be ideal. Whereas Mostel’s over-the-top bluster would have overwhelmed everything else, Topol’s never does, and he’s a sensitive enough performer to pull off the smaller character moments, as in the quiet musical number in which he asks his wife of twenty-five years, “Do You Love Me?”
One of director Norman Jewison’s key filmmaking decisions at the outset was to go for a more realistic feel which would make the musical transcend its stage origins. However, this gambit doesn’t always pay off, and occasionally this commitment to realism makes it feel almost like Jewison was uneasy about making a big-budget musical. In some ways, it’s probably good that Jewison limited the dancing to social scenes such as the barroom and Tzeitel and Motel’s wedding. But on the other hand (as Tevye is so prone to saying), Jewison undermines several potentially powerful scenes by having the songs sung in voiceover rather than actually voiced by the characters onscreen.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the “Chavaleh (Little Bird)” number, in which Tevye ponders the loss of his third daughter, who has eloped with a non-Jew. Had Jewison allowed Topol to perform the song onscreen, it might have made for one of the most emotional moments in the film, with Tevye realizing how his need to uphold tradition has lost him a beloved daughter. But instead, Jewison has Topol sing the song in voiceover, shooting him gazing into the distance while imagining his daughters dancing away from him. The number turns into what Roger Ebert calls a “Semi-Obligatory Lyrical Interlude”, and like most scenes of this type, it’s pretty laughable- a far cry from the powerful moment it should rightly have been.
But overall, Fiddler on the Roof does right by its original inspiration, and the elements that people loved in the stage production translated quite nicely to the silver screen. It’s not one of the greatest movie musicals by a long shot, but it’s a worthy adaptation, certainly better than most of the post-Golden Age adaptations of long-running musicals, which all too often get shoddy treatments a la The Phantom of the Opera and A Chorus Line. Perhaps the most definitive testament to the worth of the Fiddler movie is that, nearly four decades after the film’s release, Topol is currently starring in what has been called his “Farewell Tour.” That just goes to show you that while Zero might have originated the role of Tevye, he hardly owns it anymore.
Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977, George Barry)
Originally written 26 March 2009 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission.
Like many people, my introduction to George Barry’s Death Bed: The Bed That Eats came through the stand-up comedy of Patton Oswalt. In this routine, Oswalt complains about the difficult process of bringing a big-screen project to fruition- writing a script, selling it to a studio, enduring the clueless questions and comments from studio functionaries, and so on. In Oswalt’s mind, Death Bed is forever mocking him- a movie that, despite its lame-brained premise and Z-grade production values, actually got made. Oswalt’s Death Bed bit- like nearly everything he’s done- is hilarious, but it’s also the best advertising Barry could’ve hoped for, turning a long-buried exploitation movie into something of a cult favorite.
The premise of Death Bed: The Bed That Eats is so simple that the title scarcely needs the phrase after the colon to sum it up. Simply put, there’s this bed, and it eats damn near anything that’s unlucky enough to sit, or lie down, or be set down, upon it. Of course, there’s more to the movie than a series of bed-related murders. There’s a backstory involving the bed’s origins- the demon who tried to seduce a young woman years ago, and the somewhat ill-defined curse that befell the bed when she rebuffed the demon’s advances. There’s also the spirit of an artist who was consumed by the bed who is now trapped behind one of his paintings, and who observes the killings and takes care of all the exposition in voiceover.
But really, this is basically a movie about a bed that eats people, which should be enough to tell you whether you’ll like it or not. In my experience, people are either down with cheeseball exploitation movies or they’re not, and never the twain shall meet. My pal Steve C., who originally recommended this to me, is something of a connoisseur of the cinema du fromage, and he found Death Bed to be just his cup of tea. On the other hand, my girlfriend, bless her heart, found it pretty insufferable. A few hearty laughs aside, she pretty much hated it, and when it was over, she sarcastically remarked about how much watching the movie had enriched her life. Thanks for trying anyway, honey.
As for me, I’m in the middle. I’m no aficionado of the form, but I’ve seen and enjoyed more than enough to know that Death Bed is no better or worse than most no-budget exploitation fare of the day. There are a handful of classic moments, but writer/director/producer George Barry just doesn’t have the filmmaking chops to make the movie work for more than a minute or so at a time. The editing is choppy, the camerawork barely functional, the storytelling fragmented, the ending completely arbitrary. What’s more, the movie also lacks the kind of fully committed insanity of which exploitation classics are made. Barry lacks the courage of his convictions, and he fails to fully exploit the wacked-out possibilities that his premise presents.
That’s not to say that there aren’t inspired bits in the film. I had high hopes during the film’s first few minutes, beginning with Barry opening the film with a pitch black screen under which we hear only the chomping of the titular bed. He then progresses to the first killing scene (following a title card that reads “Breakfast”), in which we see the bed eat an apple and a bucket of chicken and drink a bottle of wine, leaving the core, picked-over bones, and empty bottle behind. Pretty impressive trick, especially when you consider that the bed has feet but no hands. How the bed consumes its victims is never explained in detail- it seems to have a solid mattress, but it absorbs its prey with a sort of foam, and once it begins eating Barry cuts to shots of the food/victims submerged in a pool of bubbling liquid, as though they’re drowning in corrosive Alka-Seltzer. But then, one doesn’t watch a movie called Death Bed expecting exhaustive detail on the physiology of man-eating sleep implements (hoping perhaps, but hardly expecting). Also, the bed tends to wait for its prey to come to it, although it’s prone to manipulating the house that surrounds it to trap its victims, and at one point it even uses a sheet to lasso a victim who tries to escape.
Watching this scene, I couldn’t help but notice that while the Death Bed generally quick work of its previous (white) victims, it took its time with this African-American woman, eating away at the skin on her legs before she escaped, then allowing her to crawl slowly across the floor to help the bed draw in more victims before roping her in for the kill. But while this initially seemed like dodgy racial politics, subsequent scenes revealed a different reality- that she was the only one in the cast who could convincingly act like she was actually suffering. The rest of the cast consists of the kind of blank-faced nobodies who populated most exploitation movies, like the guy who reacts to the skin on his hands being eaten away with an expression that suggests that someone nearby has recently passed gas. Death Bed isn’t as bad as its premise would suggest, but in a way that makes it all the more disappointing, because Barry includes enough entertaining moments (the Pepto-Bismol!) that it makes one wish the whole movie was on that same level.
Like many people, my introduction to George Barry’s Death Bed: The Bed That Eats came through the stand-up comedy of Patton Oswalt. In this routine, Oswalt complains about the difficult process of bringing a big-screen project to fruition- writing a script, selling it to a studio, enduring the clueless questions and comments from studio functionaries, and so on. In Oswalt’s mind, Death Bed is forever mocking him- a movie that, despite its lame-brained premise and Z-grade production values, actually got made. Oswalt’s Death Bed bit- like nearly everything he’s done- is hilarious, but it’s also the best advertising Barry could’ve hoped for, turning a long-buried exploitation movie into something of a cult favorite.
The premise of Death Bed: The Bed That Eats is so simple that the title scarcely needs the phrase after the colon to sum it up. Simply put, there’s this bed, and it eats damn near anything that’s unlucky enough to sit, or lie down, or be set down, upon it. Of course, there’s more to the movie than a series of bed-related murders. There’s a backstory involving the bed’s origins- the demon who tried to seduce a young woman years ago, and the somewhat ill-defined curse that befell the bed when she rebuffed the demon’s advances. There’s also the spirit of an artist who was consumed by the bed who is now trapped behind one of his paintings, and who observes the killings and takes care of all the exposition in voiceover.
But really, this is basically a movie about a bed that eats people, which should be enough to tell you whether you’ll like it or not. In my experience, people are either down with cheeseball exploitation movies or they’re not, and never the twain shall meet. My pal Steve C., who originally recommended this to me, is something of a connoisseur of the cinema du fromage, and he found Death Bed to be just his cup of tea. On the other hand, my girlfriend, bless her heart, found it pretty insufferable. A few hearty laughs aside, she pretty much hated it, and when it was over, she sarcastically remarked about how much watching the movie had enriched her life. Thanks for trying anyway, honey.
As for me, I’m in the middle. I’m no aficionado of the form, but I’ve seen and enjoyed more than enough to know that Death Bed is no better or worse than most no-budget exploitation fare of the day. There are a handful of classic moments, but writer/director/producer George Barry just doesn’t have the filmmaking chops to make the movie work for more than a minute or so at a time. The editing is choppy, the camerawork barely functional, the storytelling fragmented, the ending completely arbitrary. What’s more, the movie also lacks the kind of fully committed insanity of which exploitation classics are made. Barry lacks the courage of his convictions, and he fails to fully exploit the wacked-out possibilities that his premise presents.
That’s not to say that there aren’t inspired bits in the film. I had high hopes during the film’s first few minutes, beginning with Barry opening the film with a pitch black screen under which we hear only the chomping of the titular bed. He then progresses to the first killing scene (following a title card that reads “Breakfast”), in which we see the bed eat an apple and a bucket of chicken and drink a bottle of wine, leaving the core, picked-over bones, and empty bottle behind. Pretty impressive trick, especially when you consider that the bed has feet but no hands. How the bed consumes its victims is never explained in detail- it seems to have a solid mattress, but it absorbs its prey with a sort of foam, and once it begins eating Barry cuts to shots of the food/victims submerged in a pool of bubbling liquid, as though they’re drowning in corrosive Alka-Seltzer. But then, one doesn’t watch a movie called Death Bed expecting exhaustive detail on the physiology of man-eating sleep implements (hoping perhaps, but hardly expecting). Also, the bed tends to wait for its prey to come to it, although it’s prone to manipulating the house that surrounds it to trap its victims, and at one point it even uses a sheet to lasso a victim who tries to escape.
Watching this scene, I couldn’t help but notice that while the Death Bed generally quick work of its previous (white) victims, it took its time with this African-American woman, eating away at the skin on her legs before she escaped, then allowing her to crawl slowly across the floor to help the bed draw in more victims before roping her in for the kill. But while this initially seemed like dodgy racial politics, subsequent scenes revealed a different reality- that she was the only one in the cast who could convincingly act like she was actually suffering. The rest of the cast consists of the kind of blank-faced nobodies who populated most exploitation movies, like the guy who reacts to the skin on his hands being eaten away with an expression that suggests that someone nearby has recently passed gas. Death Bed isn’t as bad as its premise would suggest, but in a way that makes it all the more disappointing, because Barry includes enough entertaining moments (the Pepto-Bismol!) that it makes one wish the whole movie was on that same level.
Chelsea Girls (1966, Andy Warhol)
Originally written 9 November 2008 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission.
If one reads enough movie reviews and articles, eventually the expression “critic-proof” will emerge. Normally, this is used to describe big-budget, lunkheaded Hollywood blockbusters that are virtually guaranteed to be massive hits no matter how much the critics dump on them. However, I think the phrase could just as appropriately be applied to Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls, which I recently saw for the first time as part of the Wexner Center’s exhibition
Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms. Like many movies that are labeled “underground films,” Chelsea Girls stands outside the accepted rules of mainstream narrative cinema. The film, loosely structured as a series of vignettes featuring a number of Warhol Factory “superstars,” is a rebuke to traditional notions of “good” and “bad.”
Adding to the confusion is the film’s nontraditional method of exhibition. Warhol intended the film to be projected on two screens, with two different scenes playing next to each other. He also gave projectionists permission to choose which scene’s soundtracks they wished to turn on. Consequently, no two viewings of the film were the same, and because of this, there is no definitive integral version of Chelsea Girls, although I can imagine it being a prime candidate for a special “interactive” DVD cut that allows viewers to choose their preferred soundtracks or the synchronization of the images.
Because of its unconventional nature, I found the questions I normally ask when evaluating a film to be mostly useless. Instead, I approached Chelsea Girls like I would a modernist painting, asking myself, “how do I respond to this?” As it turns out, I dug it, as audience members might have said during the film’s original release. Parts of Chelsea Girls are confounding and almost tedious, like promising bits that go on far too long in order to fill the predetermined 33-minute scene duration mandated by Warhol’s 16mm camera equipment. But most of the time, the film is fascinating to behold, with Warhol’s experimentation sometimes yielding magical results.
As befits Warhol’s background as a visual artist, Chelsea Girls is often beautiful to watch, full of striking imagery both black and white and in color. Nowhere is this more evident than in two scenes involving Nico that bookend the film, the first a black-and-white domestic scene involving the singer/actress doing her hair while her son plays nearby, the other a closeup of her crying while brightly-colored lights play over her face. In addition, Warhol deploys a vast arsenal of camera tricks, including insistent unmotivated zooms, fiddling with the focus and depth of field, and even employing what I like to call “typewriter pans”- basically, sweeping the camera slowly over a scene from left to right before whipping it back to the left and starting again.
The two-screen effect also pays off, resulting (during my viewing, anyway) in some interesting pairings and juxtapositions. The most obvious example for me was the pairing of Eric Emerson’s extended monologue and a crowd scene involving many of Warhol’s “superstars”. Emerson’s monologue is of an intimate nature, as he discusses details of his life and his sexuality before doing a slow strip tease. Yet the lighting Warhol uses for him- mostly red and blue- is almost the same as the lighting on the other screen, giving the impression that Emerson is delivering his speech for an audience. Which, I suppose he is. Other pairings are more mundane, like Mary Woronov in one frame looking like she’s listening to herself in the other.
But while some scenes in the film come close to working as drama- especially one in which “mother” Marie Menken berates “son” Gerard Malanga- more often the scenes don’t so much build as simply exist, giving off a loose, hanging-out vibe. And while this has proven frustrating to those in search of the thrills associated with narrative cinema, it’s an essential and endlessly compelling bit of cultural anthropology, a portrait of the Factory era as seen by some of its most important figures. Many Factory favorites are represented here- Ondine presiding as a foul-mouthed pope hopped up on amphetamines, Brigid Berlin as a surly drug dealer, Mario Montez turning up briefly for a song, Nico of course, and most memorably Mary Woronov, berating Ingrid Superstar and International Velvet before going into her extended, uproarious version of a Hanoi Hannah radio broadcast (one of only two segments of the film that wasn’t completely improvised).
Warhol called them his Superstars, but in their “natural” habitat of the Chelsea (with its bohemian mien and Spartan décor) they feel much more like a pack of strays that Warhol took in off the streets. Perhaps that’s why they were so widely embraced by so many young people of the time, including John Waters, who has spoken fondly of the times he drove up to New York from Baltimore to catch the latest Warhol film. These weren’t big-screen gods and goddesses living in mansions in California, but people they could relate to, people who were trying to make their way in New York City before Warhol turned them into his own kind of movie stars. As Eric Emerson says in the film, “I can see me. Looks pretty good.”
If one reads enough movie reviews and articles, eventually the expression “critic-proof” will emerge. Normally, this is used to describe big-budget, lunkheaded Hollywood blockbusters that are virtually guaranteed to be massive hits no matter how much the critics dump on them. However, I think the phrase could just as appropriately be applied to Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls, which I recently saw for the first time as part of the Wexner Center’s exhibition
Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms. Like many movies that are labeled “underground films,” Chelsea Girls stands outside the accepted rules of mainstream narrative cinema. The film, loosely structured as a series of vignettes featuring a number of Warhol Factory “superstars,” is a rebuke to traditional notions of “good” and “bad.”
Adding to the confusion is the film’s nontraditional method of exhibition. Warhol intended the film to be projected on two screens, with two different scenes playing next to each other. He also gave projectionists permission to choose which scene’s soundtracks they wished to turn on. Consequently, no two viewings of the film were the same, and because of this, there is no definitive integral version of Chelsea Girls, although I can imagine it being a prime candidate for a special “interactive” DVD cut that allows viewers to choose their preferred soundtracks or the synchronization of the images.
Because of its unconventional nature, I found the questions I normally ask when evaluating a film to be mostly useless. Instead, I approached Chelsea Girls like I would a modernist painting, asking myself, “how do I respond to this?” As it turns out, I dug it, as audience members might have said during the film’s original release. Parts of Chelsea Girls are confounding and almost tedious, like promising bits that go on far too long in order to fill the predetermined 33-minute scene duration mandated by Warhol’s 16mm camera equipment. But most of the time, the film is fascinating to behold, with Warhol’s experimentation sometimes yielding magical results.
As befits Warhol’s background as a visual artist, Chelsea Girls is often beautiful to watch, full of striking imagery both black and white and in color. Nowhere is this more evident than in two scenes involving Nico that bookend the film, the first a black-and-white domestic scene involving the singer/actress doing her hair while her son plays nearby, the other a closeup of her crying while brightly-colored lights play over her face. In addition, Warhol deploys a vast arsenal of camera tricks, including insistent unmotivated zooms, fiddling with the focus and depth of field, and even employing what I like to call “typewriter pans”- basically, sweeping the camera slowly over a scene from left to right before whipping it back to the left and starting again.
The two-screen effect also pays off, resulting (during my viewing, anyway) in some interesting pairings and juxtapositions. The most obvious example for me was the pairing of Eric Emerson’s extended monologue and a crowd scene involving many of Warhol’s “superstars”. Emerson’s monologue is of an intimate nature, as he discusses details of his life and his sexuality before doing a slow strip tease. Yet the lighting Warhol uses for him- mostly red and blue- is almost the same as the lighting on the other screen, giving the impression that Emerson is delivering his speech for an audience. Which, I suppose he is. Other pairings are more mundane, like Mary Woronov in one frame looking like she’s listening to herself in the other.
But while some scenes in the film come close to working as drama- especially one in which “mother” Marie Menken berates “son” Gerard Malanga- more often the scenes don’t so much build as simply exist, giving off a loose, hanging-out vibe. And while this has proven frustrating to those in search of the thrills associated with narrative cinema, it’s an essential and endlessly compelling bit of cultural anthropology, a portrait of the Factory era as seen by some of its most important figures. Many Factory favorites are represented here- Ondine presiding as a foul-mouthed pope hopped up on amphetamines, Brigid Berlin as a surly drug dealer, Mario Montez turning up briefly for a song, Nico of course, and most memorably Mary Woronov, berating Ingrid Superstar and International Velvet before going into her extended, uproarious version of a Hanoi Hannah radio broadcast (one of only two segments of the film that wasn’t completely improvised).
Warhol called them his Superstars, but in their “natural” habitat of the Chelsea (with its bohemian mien and Spartan décor) they feel much more like a pack of strays that Warhol took in off the streets. Perhaps that’s why they were so widely embraced by so many young people of the time, including John Waters, who has spoken fondly of the times he drove up to New York from Baltimore to catch the latest Warhol film. These weren’t big-screen gods and goddesses living in mansions in California, but people they could relate to, people who were trying to make their way in New York City before Warhol turned them into his own kind of movie stars. As Eric Emerson says in the film, “I can see me. Looks pretty good.”
The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990, Brian DePalma)
Originally written 11 November 2008 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission.
Of all the prestige projects of the 1990 awards season, few had more potential than The Bonfire of the Vanities. To begin with, it was based on Tom Wolfe’s first fiction book, which had been widely read in serialized form in Rolling Stone before becoming a bestseller upon its publication as a novel. The director was Brian DePalma, who made his reputation with a series of kinky, Hitchcock-inspired thrillers during the seventies before branching out into more mainstream fare such as Scarface, The Untouchables and Casualties of War. With a wildly popular novel and an A-list director, Warner Bros. had visions of Oscars dancing in their heads, and they consequently filled the cast with big names, from recent Oscar nominees Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith, and Morgan Freeman to newly anointed action superstar Bruce Willis, and backed them with plenty of first-rate character actors.
Ideally, The Bonfire of the Vanities should have been one of the biggest movie events of 1990. But then, if it had been, I would be writing about it in my Yesterday’s Hits column instead of When Good Directors Go Bad. As it stands, the big-screen adaptation remains one of the most notorious fiascos in Hollywood history, earning back a mere $15 million of its then-extravagant $50 million budget, and receiving mostly savage reviews. And while, as a DePalma fan of long standing- I’m the guy who liked The Black Dahlia, after all- I’d like to say that the film was merely misunderstood, I have to admit that it’s a failure.
Part of the problem is the casting of the principal roles, from the top on down. If you were casting the role of an ambitious commodities trader and self-anointed “Master of the Universe”, whose name would come to mind? Michael Douglas? Tom Cruise, perhaps? But after Warner Bros. deemed the character too unsympathetic on the page, they decided to cast Tom Hanks in the role, which is sort of like casting Jimmy Stewart as Gordon Gekko. Also problematic was the casting of Willis. The character of journalist Peter Fallow was written as a dissolute Brit (the role was originally offered to John Cleese), but Willis ended up being cast for marquee value, and gave one of his laziest performances, smirking his way through the role and pissing off most of the people involved with the production with his ego.
Worst of all is Griffith. During the eighties, Griffith’s dumb-blonde persona proved to be surprisingly adaptable to a number of filmmakers’ visions, from the tart-with-a-heart of Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild to the streetwise porn star of DePalma’s own Body Double. However, the role of Maria Ruskin was far beyond her limited talent. On the page, Maria may be the trickiest character in the novel, a wily manipulator whose ditzy façade hides a pitch-black heart. But Griffith can only manage the ditzy part, so when the character begins to reveal her shameless nature after Sherman’s life begins to go down the tubes we never believe it. The two halves of her personality- sexy and cunning- never mesh convincingly, so rather than lacing her manipulations with an erotic charge, her dark side makes the sexy stuff creepy, which surely wasn’t what the film was aiming for.
But while the casting issues might have been out of DePalma’s hands, he’s far from blameless. Admittedly, Wolfe’s novel is something of a tough nut to crack, simultaneously a cross-section of New York City life, a morality tale, and a savage takedown of the craven greed and ambition that fueled the eighties. However, it fails on all three counts. Much of its power as a snapshot of the Big Apple’s social strata is lost because its characters are sketchy and one-dimensional, a problem that might have been partially alleviated by spot-on casting, but not entirely. Likewise, the film places its morality tale aspects on the back burner for most of its running time, only to have judge/voice of reason Morgan Freeman bust out an extended monologue about decency in the film’s final five minutes, at which point it comes off as a tacked-on moral rather than a natural outgrowth of the story.
This leaves only the exposé aspect of the story. In nearly 700 pages, Wolfe was able to lay bare the motivations of nearly all of the major players in the story, from Sherman, Maria and Peter, to the lawyers, politicians and community leaders who opportunistically seized upon his case for their own personal gain. Without the time to do this onscreen, DePalma instead focuses on the circus (political and media-driven) that ensues. But while a more assured comic filmmaker might have been able to spin even an abbreviated Bonfire into a bitter little pill (imagine what an Ace in the Hole-era Billy Wilder might have done with this material), DePalma brings almost nothing to the material aside from the liberal use of unflattering wide-angle close-ups to underline the grotesqueness of the characters. Sure, there are a handful of cool camera tricks, but they don’t really work in the context of the story, and mostly just call attention to themselves. I hate to use a criticism that DePalma’s detractors are wont to levy at him, but in this case, they’re right.
In the end, the biggest failing of The Bonfire of the Vanities is one of tone. The scathing satire of the original novel was replaced by a more hamfisted style that was both broad and shrill. A few of the jabs hit (I love how Andre Gregory’s poet is introduced: “he’s on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize. He has AIDS.”), but most of the time they whiff. Scenes like the one where Maria’s cuckold husband (Alan King) suddenly dies in mid-conversation or the famous “crumbs” monologue by Sherman’s wife might have worked on the page, but they flounder and die onscreen, the former because it’s not inherently funny to see a minor character kick the bucket, the latter because Kim Cattrall plays the character as such a high-strung harpy that it’s hard to focus on anything she says.
Now, it’s entirely possible that Ebert was right when he wrote that The Bonfire of the Vanities might be enjoyable to those who are unfamiliar with the book. But I wouldn’t bet on it. DePalma and the studio took a powerful and lacerating story and adapted it in the most pedestrian way possible, and replaced the prickly citizens of Wolfe’s New York City with characters who are both cartoonish and, worse, uninteresting. If anything good came out of my watching Bonfire again, it’s that I’ve been inspired to re-read the book, to immerse myself in Wolfe’s language and marvel at the world he created. By now, it’s become a cliché that people are generally better off reading the book, but in this case that’s the only way to go.
Of all the prestige projects of the 1990 awards season, few had more potential than The Bonfire of the Vanities. To begin with, it was based on Tom Wolfe’s first fiction book, which had been widely read in serialized form in Rolling Stone before becoming a bestseller upon its publication as a novel. The director was Brian DePalma, who made his reputation with a series of kinky, Hitchcock-inspired thrillers during the seventies before branching out into more mainstream fare such as Scarface, The Untouchables and Casualties of War. With a wildly popular novel and an A-list director, Warner Bros. had visions of Oscars dancing in their heads, and they consequently filled the cast with big names, from recent Oscar nominees Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith, and Morgan Freeman to newly anointed action superstar Bruce Willis, and backed them with plenty of first-rate character actors.
Ideally, The Bonfire of the Vanities should have been one of the biggest movie events of 1990. But then, if it had been, I would be writing about it in my Yesterday’s Hits column instead of When Good Directors Go Bad. As it stands, the big-screen adaptation remains one of the most notorious fiascos in Hollywood history, earning back a mere $15 million of its then-extravagant $50 million budget, and receiving mostly savage reviews. And while, as a DePalma fan of long standing- I’m the guy who liked The Black Dahlia, after all- I’d like to say that the film was merely misunderstood, I have to admit that it’s a failure.
Part of the problem is the casting of the principal roles, from the top on down. If you were casting the role of an ambitious commodities trader and self-anointed “Master of the Universe”, whose name would come to mind? Michael Douglas? Tom Cruise, perhaps? But after Warner Bros. deemed the character too unsympathetic on the page, they decided to cast Tom Hanks in the role, which is sort of like casting Jimmy Stewart as Gordon Gekko. Also problematic was the casting of Willis. The character of journalist Peter Fallow was written as a dissolute Brit (the role was originally offered to John Cleese), but Willis ended up being cast for marquee value, and gave one of his laziest performances, smirking his way through the role and pissing off most of the people involved with the production with his ego.
Worst of all is Griffith. During the eighties, Griffith’s dumb-blonde persona proved to be surprisingly adaptable to a number of filmmakers’ visions, from the tart-with-a-heart of Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild to the streetwise porn star of DePalma’s own Body Double. However, the role of Maria Ruskin was far beyond her limited talent. On the page, Maria may be the trickiest character in the novel, a wily manipulator whose ditzy façade hides a pitch-black heart. But Griffith can only manage the ditzy part, so when the character begins to reveal her shameless nature after Sherman’s life begins to go down the tubes we never believe it. The two halves of her personality- sexy and cunning- never mesh convincingly, so rather than lacing her manipulations with an erotic charge, her dark side makes the sexy stuff creepy, which surely wasn’t what the film was aiming for.
But while the casting issues might have been out of DePalma’s hands, he’s far from blameless. Admittedly, Wolfe’s novel is something of a tough nut to crack, simultaneously a cross-section of New York City life, a morality tale, and a savage takedown of the craven greed and ambition that fueled the eighties. However, it fails on all three counts. Much of its power as a snapshot of the Big Apple’s social strata is lost because its characters are sketchy and one-dimensional, a problem that might have been partially alleviated by spot-on casting, but not entirely. Likewise, the film places its morality tale aspects on the back burner for most of its running time, only to have judge/voice of reason Morgan Freeman bust out an extended monologue about decency in the film’s final five minutes, at which point it comes off as a tacked-on moral rather than a natural outgrowth of the story.
This leaves only the exposé aspect of the story. In nearly 700 pages, Wolfe was able to lay bare the motivations of nearly all of the major players in the story, from Sherman, Maria and Peter, to the lawyers, politicians and community leaders who opportunistically seized upon his case for their own personal gain. Without the time to do this onscreen, DePalma instead focuses on the circus (political and media-driven) that ensues. But while a more assured comic filmmaker might have been able to spin even an abbreviated Bonfire into a bitter little pill (imagine what an Ace in the Hole-era Billy Wilder might have done with this material), DePalma brings almost nothing to the material aside from the liberal use of unflattering wide-angle close-ups to underline the grotesqueness of the characters. Sure, there are a handful of cool camera tricks, but they don’t really work in the context of the story, and mostly just call attention to themselves. I hate to use a criticism that DePalma’s detractors are wont to levy at him, but in this case, they’re right.
In the end, the biggest failing of The Bonfire of the Vanities is one of tone. The scathing satire of the original novel was replaced by a more hamfisted style that was both broad and shrill. A few of the jabs hit (I love how Andre Gregory’s poet is introduced: “he’s on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize. He has AIDS.”), but most of the time they whiff. Scenes like the one where Maria’s cuckold husband (Alan King) suddenly dies in mid-conversation or the famous “crumbs” monologue by Sherman’s wife might have worked on the page, but they flounder and die onscreen, the former because it’s not inherently funny to see a minor character kick the bucket, the latter because Kim Cattrall plays the character as such a high-strung harpy that it’s hard to focus on anything she says.
Now, it’s entirely possible that Ebert was right when he wrote that The Bonfire of the Vanities might be enjoyable to those who are unfamiliar with the book. But I wouldn’t bet on it. DePalma and the studio took a powerful and lacerating story and adapted it in the most pedestrian way possible, and replaced the prickly citizens of Wolfe’s New York City with characters who are both cartoonish and, worse, uninteresting. If anything good came out of my watching Bonfire again, it’s that I’ve been inspired to re-read the book, to immerse myself in Wolfe’s language and marvel at the world he created. By now, it’s become a cliché that people are generally better off reading the book, but in this case that’s the only way to go.
Birth of a Nation (1915, D.W. Griffith)
Originally written on 20 May 2009 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission.
When I first hit upon the idea for Yesterday’s Hits about a year and a half ago, the idea was to look at movies that were extremely popular when they were first released, but which might not have maintained this popularity to the present day. In looking at movies that haven’t necessarily stood the test of time, I hoped to gain some anthropological insight into what audiences of the past responded to, both stylistically and ideologically. And while some of the movies I’ve selected have held up pretty well (and some even better than that), some of the more interesting cases have been the ones that haven’t, for various reasons. In some cases, the popularity of these films have been due to their employing some then-impressive technical breakthrough, while others were very much of their time, featherweight entertainments that simply weren’t built to last.
But ever since I first conceived of this column, one movie has remained at the back of my mind- D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. Generally acknowledged as the first blockbuster in movie history, Birth of a Nation was the film that cemented the commercial viability of the feature-length release, grossing more than $10 million in 1915 dollars, which translates to roughly $200 million today. In addition, the techniques employed by Griffith and his crew were groundbreaking in their day, and exerted a profound influence on cinema that continues even today. Yet despite its influence in film history, Birth is usually condemned for its borderline hateful views on African-Americans and its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan. It’s this combination of the film’s runaway popularity and its troubling, dated ideology that makes it an ideal subject for a Yesterday’s Hits column.
So what was it about Birth of a Nation that so excited audiences back in the teens? Based on a recent viewing of the film, I’m tempted to say that many audience members simply hadn’t seen a movie this big before. In the first few decades of cinema, the dominant mode of filmmaking was in short subjects, which dramatized small-scale stories over the course of twenty minutes or so. By contrast, Birth of a Nation ran upwards of three hours long. In addition, the scale of its story was big enough to encompass the Civil War (both the Union and Confederate sides), the assassination of President Lincoln, and difficult process of Reconstruction. In 1915, this was a story that was still fresh in the minds of many Americans, and they were no doubt eager to see it “brought to life” on the screen.
Today, after nearly a century of advances in filmmaking technology, the expansiveness of Birth of a Nation is no longer impressive. Yet it’s interesting to observe many of the conventions of contemporary Hollywood cinema in their embryonic form here. The most obvious example of this is Griffith’s use of cross-cutting between different storylines that run concurrently. Today, cross-cutting can be found in the vast majority of films both big and small, but at the time it was practically revolutionary, and it’s sort of amazing to see how closely Griffith’s version of the technique resembles its current form. Birth of a Nation should be taught in every film program as a textbook example of how to use cross-cutting to not only keep several plotlines going simultaneously but also to play them off each other to increase the audience’s level of excitement.
And I have no doubt that it would be if not for the film’s much-ballyhooed reputation of racism, which I must report is completely justified. For much of the film’s first half, this isn’t an issue, as Griffith concentrates primarily on the Civil War, and of the two families- the northern Stonemans and the southern Camerons- whose fates are inextricably linked throughout the story. But once the North wins the war all hell breaks loose, as the newly re-United States is very nearly reduced to a shambles by the Reconstruction process. In the film’s view (and presumably, that of Thomas Dixon’s novel as well), Reconstruction was a period in which opportunistic northern politicians who wanted to punish the south for seceding, and the newly-freed slaves who wanted to stick it to their former masters, nearly ruined this country. And the only thing that prevented them from doing so were the righteous members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Now, there’s a forgiving part of me that wants to believe that the audiences of the day were so bowled over by Griffith’s filmmaking that they could scarcely be expected to pay attention to the odious racism that runs through the story. But the hard truth is that racism didn’t magically disappear with the passage of amendments thirteen through fifteen, and was still prevalent at the time of Birth of a Nation’s release. What makes the film’s imagery especially alarming is the way it fans the flames of hatred towards African-Americans. Throughout the film, Griffith shows us African-Americans who are stupid, lazy, gluttonous, underhanded, sneaky, and violent- in short, “sub-human”. One of the many glaring examples of this is in the scene depicting the South Carolina Senate, full of freed slaves who prop their bare feet up on the desks, gobble down food in the middle of giving speeches, and use their newly-acquired to enact a law permitting interracial marriage. The most hateful ones of all in Griffith’s eyes are the “mulattos,” who combine the intelligence and cunning of whites with the craziness of “blacks.”
The first half of the film is riveting (it could play as a great Civil War melodrama on its own), while the bald-faced racism of the film’s second half is jaw-dropping But what the two halves have in common is Griffith’s filmmaking sense, even in the wrongheaded later sequences. This makes these scenes all the more disturbing, as the ideas are so mind-boggling yet sold so well, that it’s little wonder that Birth was banned in a number of areas for fear of inciting race-related violence- or that KKK membership increased dramatically in the years following the film’s release.
There’s a famous, possibly apocryphal story that after seeing Birth of a Nation, President Woodrow Wilson declared that, “it’s like writing history with lightning.” This is something of a two-pronged statement, simultaneously praising the power of Griffith’s images and expressing fear at the influence that these particularly images might have over audiences. Today, the majority of Americans no longer hold the same kind of racism that informs Birth of a Nation, but it’s illustrative to remember that nearly a century has passed since its release, and to consider how few of today’s blockbusters will be able to withstand this same level of scrutiny a century from now. If nothing else, to consider Birth of a Nation today is to reflect on, in the words of Haven Hamilton, “how far we’ve come along ‘til now/ how far we’ve got to go.”
When I first hit upon the idea for Yesterday’s Hits about a year and a half ago, the idea was to look at movies that were extremely popular when they were first released, but which might not have maintained this popularity to the present day. In looking at movies that haven’t necessarily stood the test of time, I hoped to gain some anthropological insight into what audiences of the past responded to, both stylistically and ideologically. And while some of the movies I’ve selected have held up pretty well (and some even better than that), some of the more interesting cases have been the ones that haven’t, for various reasons. In some cases, the popularity of these films have been due to their employing some then-impressive technical breakthrough, while others were very much of their time, featherweight entertainments that simply weren’t built to last.
But ever since I first conceived of this column, one movie has remained at the back of my mind- D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. Generally acknowledged as the first blockbuster in movie history, Birth of a Nation was the film that cemented the commercial viability of the feature-length release, grossing more than $10 million in 1915 dollars, which translates to roughly $200 million today. In addition, the techniques employed by Griffith and his crew were groundbreaking in their day, and exerted a profound influence on cinema that continues even today. Yet despite its influence in film history, Birth is usually condemned for its borderline hateful views on African-Americans and its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan. It’s this combination of the film’s runaway popularity and its troubling, dated ideology that makes it an ideal subject for a Yesterday’s Hits column.
So what was it about Birth of a Nation that so excited audiences back in the teens? Based on a recent viewing of the film, I’m tempted to say that many audience members simply hadn’t seen a movie this big before. In the first few decades of cinema, the dominant mode of filmmaking was in short subjects, which dramatized small-scale stories over the course of twenty minutes or so. By contrast, Birth of a Nation ran upwards of three hours long. In addition, the scale of its story was big enough to encompass the Civil War (both the Union and Confederate sides), the assassination of President Lincoln, and difficult process of Reconstruction. In 1915, this was a story that was still fresh in the minds of many Americans, and they were no doubt eager to see it “brought to life” on the screen.
Today, after nearly a century of advances in filmmaking technology, the expansiveness of Birth of a Nation is no longer impressive. Yet it’s interesting to observe many of the conventions of contemporary Hollywood cinema in their embryonic form here. The most obvious example of this is Griffith’s use of cross-cutting between different storylines that run concurrently. Today, cross-cutting can be found in the vast majority of films both big and small, but at the time it was practically revolutionary, and it’s sort of amazing to see how closely Griffith’s version of the technique resembles its current form. Birth of a Nation should be taught in every film program as a textbook example of how to use cross-cutting to not only keep several plotlines going simultaneously but also to play them off each other to increase the audience’s level of excitement.
And I have no doubt that it would be if not for the film’s much-ballyhooed reputation of racism, which I must report is completely justified. For much of the film’s first half, this isn’t an issue, as Griffith concentrates primarily on the Civil War, and of the two families- the northern Stonemans and the southern Camerons- whose fates are inextricably linked throughout the story. But once the North wins the war all hell breaks loose, as the newly re-United States is very nearly reduced to a shambles by the Reconstruction process. In the film’s view (and presumably, that of Thomas Dixon’s novel as well), Reconstruction was a period in which opportunistic northern politicians who wanted to punish the south for seceding, and the newly-freed slaves who wanted to stick it to their former masters, nearly ruined this country. And the only thing that prevented them from doing so were the righteous members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Now, there’s a forgiving part of me that wants to believe that the audiences of the day were so bowled over by Griffith’s filmmaking that they could scarcely be expected to pay attention to the odious racism that runs through the story. But the hard truth is that racism didn’t magically disappear with the passage of amendments thirteen through fifteen, and was still prevalent at the time of Birth of a Nation’s release. What makes the film’s imagery especially alarming is the way it fans the flames of hatred towards African-Americans. Throughout the film, Griffith shows us African-Americans who are stupid, lazy, gluttonous, underhanded, sneaky, and violent- in short, “sub-human”. One of the many glaring examples of this is in the scene depicting the South Carolina Senate, full of freed slaves who prop their bare feet up on the desks, gobble down food in the middle of giving speeches, and use their newly-acquired to enact a law permitting interracial marriage. The most hateful ones of all in Griffith’s eyes are the “mulattos,” who combine the intelligence and cunning of whites with the craziness of “blacks.”
The first half of the film is riveting (it could play as a great Civil War melodrama on its own), while the bald-faced racism of the film’s second half is jaw-dropping But what the two halves have in common is Griffith’s filmmaking sense, even in the wrongheaded later sequences. This makes these scenes all the more disturbing, as the ideas are so mind-boggling yet sold so well, that it’s little wonder that Birth was banned in a number of areas for fear of inciting race-related violence- or that KKK membership increased dramatically in the years following the film’s release.
There’s a famous, possibly apocryphal story that after seeing Birth of a Nation, President Woodrow Wilson declared that, “it’s like writing history with lightning.” This is something of a two-pronged statement, simultaneously praising the power of Griffith’s images and expressing fear at the influence that these particularly images might have over audiences. Today, the majority of Americans no longer hold the same kind of racism that informs Birth of a Nation, but it’s illustrative to remember that nearly a century has passed since its release, and to consider how few of today’s blockbusters will be able to withstand this same level of scrutiny a century from now. If nothing else, to consider Birth of a Nation today is to reflect on, in the words of Haven Hamilton, “how far we’ve come along ‘til now/ how far we’ve got to go.”
Bigger Stronger Faster (2008, Chris Bell)
Originally written 17 December 2008 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission.
Watching Chris Bell’s Bigger, Stronger, Faster* (*The Side Effects of Being American), the first thing that I noticed was that Bell didn’t look like the typical documentarian. Of course, there really isn’t a mold for what a nonfiction filmmaker ought to look like, but normally documentary filmmakers tend to look either like intellectuals (Errol Morris, Fred Wiseman) or self-styled man-of-the-people types (Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock). By contrast, Bell is a good-looking thirtysomething, broad-shouldered and well-muscled, in keeping with his life as a former bodybuilder. But in making this, his first feature, Bell obeyed the first rule of writing- when in doubt, write what you know. Or in Bell’s case, film it.
On one level, Bigger, Stronger, Faster is about steroids. However, considering Bell’s experiences in the world of competitive lifting and bodybuilding, the movie is hardly an anti-steroid screed. Bell knows this world too well to come out against chemical enhancement. For one thing, while he’s against taking steroids himself, his brothers Mike (aka “Mad Dog”) and Mark (“Smelly”) have no such qualms. Mad Dog still harbors his childhood dreams of pro wrestling stardom, while Smelly continues to compete in power-lifting competitions, at one point bench pressing more than 700 pounds. Meanwhile, Chris is working at Gold’s Gym selling gym memberships, and is smaller than both his older and younger brother. Did the drugs make the difference?
For years, health experts have warned athletes about the dangers that steroids can wreak on one’s body. But Bigger, Stronger, Faster presents a dissenting opinion, calmly and surprisingly convincingly. According to the scientists and doctors Bell interviews for the film, the health risks that come from taking steroids are relatively minor, and are generally temporary. But while another director might have taken these findings as evidence in favor of steroid use, Bell is up to something altogether different. He’s dispelling the overblown health-related myths of steroids in order to approach the issue on ethical and sociological grounds.
In Bell’s mind, the use of steroids among athletes is symptomatic of a deep-seated desire not only to succeed, but to come out on top. From a young age, Bell remembers idolizing men (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hulk Hogan) whose success came, according to them, as the result both of their muscular physiques and their hard work. Children are taught that if they dream big and follow their dreams, they can be anything they want to be and escape their humdrum lives. And if it takes chemical enhancement to get the edge one needs to prevail, so be it. Besides, asks the film, if fighter pilots are required to take amphetamines, and teenagers are prescribed Adderall to get the edge at school, why shouldn’t athletes be allowed to use steroids?
Bigger, Stronger, Faster isn’t an especially distinguished documentary- it’s fairly nuts and bolts from a directing standpoint, and Bell is occasionally prone to digressions that don’t really go anywhere. He occasionally includes a surprising scene such as the one where he interviews Donald Hooten, who famously spoke out against steroids after his steroid-using son killed himself. But he also includes such unnecessary sequences as the one where he decides to make his own energy supplement, hiring a couple of migrant workers to help him prepare the supplement and even staging an ad campaign. More often than not, however, Bell’s points hit home.
One of the key points he addresses is the paradox of modern professional sports- that on one hand we demand our athletes win, while on the other we need them to play fair. During the film, Bell remembers the incident when the hated wrestler The Iron Sheik was arrested for doing drugs with fellow wrestler Hacksaw Jim Duggan, and Bell recalls being shocked less by their actions as he was by the idea that the two were supposed to be mortal enemies. Perhaps this explains much of the outrage stirred up by the Congressional hearings on steroid use in Major League Baseball- that deep down, we still want our sports heroes to be to us what they were when we were young. In a world that’s complicated and difficult to figure out, we need a place where success is easily measured, everything is governed by rules, and there are clear-cut winners and losers. Above all, we need to believe that our dreams are attainable. In one of the last scenes of Bigger, Stronger, Faster, we see Mad Dog, now thirty-six years old and married, putting on a unitard and making an audition video for the WWE. Of course, his chances of making it in professional wrestling are long gone, but he forges on. After all, it’s easier and more comforting than reality.
Watching Chris Bell’s Bigger, Stronger, Faster* (*The Side Effects of Being American), the first thing that I noticed was that Bell didn’t look like the typical documentarian. Of course, there really isn’t a mold for what a nonfiction filmmaker ought to look like, but normally documentary filmmakers tend to look either like intellectuals (Errol Morris, Fred Wiseman) or self-styled man-of-the-people types (Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock). By contrast, Bell is a good-looking thirtysomething, broad-shouldered and well-muscled, in keeping with his life as a former bodybuilder. But in making this, his first feature, Bell obeyed the first rule of writing- when in doubt, write what you know. Or in Bell’s case, film it.
On one level, Bigger, Stronger, Faster is about steroids. However, considering Bell’s experiences in the world of competitive lifting and bodybuilding, the movie is hardly an anti-steroid screed. Bell knows this world too well to come out against chemical enhancement. For one thing, while he’s against taking steroids himself, his brothers Mike (aka “Mad Dog”) and Mark (“Smelly”) have no such qualms. Mad Dog still harbors his childhood dreams of pro wrestling stardom, while Smelly continues to compete in power-lifting competitions, at one point bench pressing more than 700 pounds. Meanwhile, Chris is working at Gold’s Gym selling gym memberships, and is smaller than both his older and younger brother. Did the drugs make the difference?
For years, health experts have warned athletes about the dangers that steroids can wreak on one’s body. But Bigger, Stronger, Faster presents a dissenting opinion, calmly and surprisingly convincingly. According to the scientists and doctors Bell interviews for the film, the health risks that come from taking steroids are relatively minor, and are generally temporary. But while another director might have taken these findings as evidence in favor of steroid use, Bell is up to something altogether different. He’s dispelling the overblown health-related myths of steroids in order to approach the issue on ethical and sociological grounds.
In Bell’s mind, the use of steroids among athletes is symptomatic of a deep-seated desire not only to succeed, but to come out on top. From a young age, Bell remembers idolizing men (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hulk Hogan) whose success came, according to them, as the result both of their muscular physiques and their hard work. Children are taught that if they dream big and follow their dreams, they can be anything they want to be and escape their humdrum lives. And if it takes chemical enhancement to get the edge one needs to prevail, so be it. Besides, asks the film, if fighter pilots are required to take amphetamines, and teenagers are prescribed Adderall to get the edge at school, why shouldn’t athletes be allowed to use steroids?
Bigger, Stronger, Faster isn’t an especially distinguished documentary- it’s fairly nuts and bolts from a directing standpoint, and Bell is occasionally prone to digressions that don’t really go anywhere. He occasionally includes a surprising scene such as the one where he interviews Donald Hooten, who famously spoke out against steroids after his steroid-using son killed himself. But he also includes such unnecessary sequences as the one where he decides to make his own energy supplement, hiring a couple of migrant workers to help him prepare the supplement and even staging an ad campaign. More often than not, however, Bell’s points hit home.
One of the key points he addresses is the paradox of modern professional sports- that on one hand we demand our athletes win, while on the other we need them to play fair. During the film, Bell remembers the incident when the hated wrestler The Iron Sheik was arrested for doing drugs with fellow wrestler Hacksaw Jim Duggan, and Bell recalls being shocked less by their actions as he was by the idea that the two were supposed to be mortal enemies. Perhaps this explains much of the outrage stirred up by the Congressional hearings on steroid use in Major League Baseball- that deep down, we still want our sports heroes to be to us what they were when we were young. In a world that’s complicated and difficult to figure out, we need a place where success is easily measured, everything is governed by rules, and there are clear-cut winners and losers. Above all, we need to believe that our dreams are attainable. In one of the last scenes of Bigger, Stronger, Faster, we see Mad Dog, now thirty-six years old and married, putting on a unitard and making an audition video for the WWE. Of course, his chances of making it in professional wrestling are long gone, but he forges on. After all, it’s easier and more comforting than reality.
Angel Heart (1987, Alan Parker)
Originally written 11 May 2009 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission.
The conventional wisdom regarding cinematic plot twists is that they be unexpected. This means that either the audience shouldn’t see that a twist is coming, or that they shouldn’t anticipate the particular twist that the movie has in store. So what to make of a movie like Angel Heart? Here is a movie that more or less announces from the beginning that nothing is what it seems, and the film is filled with clues that are somewhat less than subtle. Yet at the same time, it’s entertaining and stylish enough that it entertained me even as I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I more or less guessed where it was headed, but I had a good time getting there.
Consider an early scene in the film, in which the detective protagonist Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) meets his mysterious retainer Louis Cyphre (Robert DeNiro) to discuss the case Harry has been investigating. In most detective movies, Cyphre would be portrayed in a way that makes him seem slightly off, but wouldn’t hint at his dark secrets. But rather than trying to hide Cyphre’s true nature, director Alan Parker almost dares us to guess, as he tempts Harry by offering him $5,000 to take the case (a pretty good sum for a fifties-era gumshoe), then uses his elegant long nails to peel one of the hard-boiled eggs on his plate. Angel knows something is afoot, but he’s so anxious (both by Cyphre and the eggs, since he’s “got a thing about chickens”), and in thrall to the money being offered that he doesn’t even try to guess what. But it becomes pretty clear to the audience who Cyphre really is by the time he mentions that eggs are seen by some cultures as symbols of the soul then takes a big bite from one of his eggs, a sinister glare in his eye. It’s almost like… Parker wants us to guess.
Really, the whole movie is like this. And while as a mystery Angel Heart leaves something to be desired, it’s much more successful as an exercise in lurid style. Parker, who first worked as a commercial director, has always been more comfortable with visuals than with substantial narratives, which torpedoed serious efforts like Angela’s Ashes and The Life of David Gale, but was well-suited to more stylized and less plot-driven fare like Pink Floyd: The Wall (Evita straddled the line, making mincemeat of plot and character development but providing thrilling, almost Riefenstahl-esque lighting and choreography for the production numbers). Angel Heart fits into the second category, which goes a long way toward explaining why this is one of the director’s more interesting films.
If Parker doesn’t seem especially interested in making a whodunit, that’s because they’re largely a setup for the story’s seamier trappings- the dingy home of a morphine-addicted doctor, the shadowy back alleys of old New Orleans, the ornate choreography of a late-night pagan ritual. Likewise, Parker’s use of blood makes the movie feel almost like an old-school giallo in parts, complete with leering closeups of freshly disembodied corpses and the various organs that were removed in the process. And the notorious sex scene between Rourke and Lisa Bonet is one of the more memorable of Parker’s career, so frenzied and over the top that it must be seen to be believed. That the scene in its current form was actually edited down so that the film was get an R rating just goes to show how far Parker was willing to go to get his effects.
However, the movie would be nothing more than empty style without the assured lead performance by Rourke. Even prior to his nineties career meltdown, Rourke excelled at playing down-and-out guys who thought they were smarter and more charming than they actually were, and the role of Harry Angel was a perfect fit. While many actors would have turned Harry into a retro-cool archetype, Rourke’s performance is eccentric (look at the way he reacts whenever he spies a chicken) and emphasizes his deep-seated anxieties and preoccupations. Rourke isn’t afraid to highlight Harry’s less capable side- for a detective he can sometimes be pretty slow to pick up on things, and he occasionally makes some pretty big mistakes out of carelessness. Yet he’s so engaging in his rumpled, careworn way that it’s hard not to like the guy, and to feel sorry for him once the story has painted him into a corner.
In the climactic scene of Angel Heart, Rourke faces off against DeNiro for the final time, as Harry finds out not only Louis Cyphre’s secret but also his own. DeNiro was still in the full flower of his talent at the time, not yet having become a bloated parody of himself. But it’s Rourke who shines in this scene, as he cries out “I know who I am!” again and again. As the scene continues, Rourke wrings one emotion after another from this line- first defiant, then pathetic, then resigned- and it’s a reminder of what a fine actor he was back before we nearly lost him to his own self-destructive impulses. When I saw The Wrestler this past winter, I knew that it was designed to be Rourke’s comeback vehicle, but I had only a limited exposure to the early years of his career. Now that I’ve seen Angel Heart, I’m eager to see more.
The conventional wisdom regarding cinematic plot twists is that they be unexpected. This means that either the audience shouldn’t see that a twist is coming, or that they shouldn’t anticipate the particular twist that the movie has in store. So what to make of a movie like Angel Heart? Here is a movie that more or less announces from the beginning that nothing is what it seems, and the film is filled with clues that are somewhat less than subtle. Yet at the same time, it’s entertaining and stylish enough that it entertained me even as I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I more or less guessed where it was headed, but I had a good time getting there.
Consider an early scene in the film, in which the detective protagonist Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) meets his mysterious retainer Louis Cyphre (Robert DeNiro) to discuss the case Harry has been investigating. In most detective movies, Cyphre would be portrayed in a way that makes him seem slightly off, but wouldn’t hint at his dark secrets. But rather than trying to hide Cyphre’s true nature, director Alan Parker almost dares us to guess, as he tempts Harry by offering him $5,000 to take the case (a pretty good sum for a fifties-era gumshoe), then uses his elegant long nails to peel one of the hard-boiled eggs on his plate. Angel knows something is afoot, but he’s so anxious (both by Cyphre and the eggs, since he’s “got a thing about chickens”), and in thrall to the money being offered that he doesn’t even try to guess what. But it becomes pretty clear to the audience who Cyphre really is by the time he mentions that eggs are seen by some cultures as symbols of the soul then takes a big bite from one of his eggs, a sinister glare in his eye. It’s almost like… Parker wants us to guess.
Really, the whole movie is like this. And while as a mystery Angel Heart leaves something to be desired, it’s much more successful as an exercise in lurid style. Parker, who first worked as a commercial director, has always been more comfortable with visuals than with substantial narratives, which torpedoed serious efforts like Angela’s Ashes and The Life of David Gale, but was well-suited to more stylized and less plot-driven fare like Pink Floyd: The Wall (Evita straddled the line, making mincemeat of plot and character development but providing thrilling, almost Riefenstahl-esque lighting and choreography for the production numbers). Angel Heart fits into the second category, which goes a long way toward explaining why this is one of the director’s more interesting films.
If Parker doesn’t seem especially interested in making a whodunit, that’s because they’re largely a setup for the story’s seamier trappings- the dingy home of a morphine-addicted doctor, the shadowy back alleys of old New Orleans, the ornate choreography of a late-night pagan ritual. Likewise, Parker’s use of blood makes the movie feel almost like an old-school giallo in parts, complete with leering closeups of freshly disembodied corpses and the various organs that were removed in the process. And the notorious sex scene between Rourke and Lisa Bonet is one of the more memorable of Parker’s career, so frenzied and over the top that it must be seen to be believed. That the scene in its current form was actually edited down so that the film was get an R rating just goes to show how far Parker was willing to go to get his effects.
However, the movie would be nothing more than empty style without the assured lead performance by Rourke. Even prior to his nineties career meltdown, Rourke excelled at playing down-and-out guys who thought they were smarter and more charming than they actually were, and the role of Harry Angel was a perfect fit. While many actors would have turned Harry into a retro-cool archetype, Rourke’s performance is eccentric (look at the way he reacts whenever he spies a chicken) and emphasizes his deep-seated anxieties and preoccupations. Rourke isn’t afraid to highlight Harry’s less capable side- for a detective he can sometimes be pretty slow to pick up on things, and he occasionally makes some pretty big mistakes out of carelessness. Yet he’s so engaging in his rumpled, careworn way that it’s hard not to like the guy, and to feel sorry for him once the story has painted him into a corner.
In the climactic scene of Angel Heart, Rourke faces off against DeNiro for the final time, as Harry finds out not only Louis Cyphre’s secret but also his own. DeNiro was still in the full flower of his talent at the time, not yet having become a bloated parody of himself. But it’s Rourke who shines in this scene, as he cries out “I know who I am!” again and again. As the scene continues, Rourke wrings one emotion after another from this line- first defiant, then pathetic, then resigned- and it’s a reminder of what a fine actor he was back before we nearly lost him to his own self-destructive impulses. When I saw The Wrestler this past winter, I knew that it was designed to be Rourke’s comeback vehicle, but I had only a limited exposure to the early years of his career. Now that I’ve seen Angel Heart, I’m eager to see more.
A Life Less Ordinary (1997, Danny Boyle)
Originally written 12 December 2008 for The Screengrab. Reposted by permission.
Since its premiere on the fall festival circuit, Danny Boyle’s new film Slumdog Millionaire has ridden a wave of ecstatic buzz, one which many believe the film will ride to numerous Oscar nominations. With his crowd-pleasing arthouse hit, it seems that Boyle has finally arrived for real in Hollywood, a full dozen years after his breakthrough films, Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. However, it wasn’t supposed to take this long. In the wake of Trainspotting’s international success, Boyle was tapped by Fox to bring his directorial sensibility to America with his subsequent project A Life Less Ordinary, which paired Boyle’s favored leading man Ewan McGregor with hot Hollywood starlet Cameron Diaz. Life was the director’s take on the romantic comedy, and Boyle’s goal was to infuse the warm fuzzy genre with a liberal amount of mid-nineties indie edge while also indulging the audience’s romantic sides.
Under the right circumstances, A Life Less Ordinary might have been a zeitgeist-ready hit, particularly at the twentysomethings at whom it was aimed. However, it wasn’t to be. What’s more, the disappointing box office returns for the film were, for once, a reflection of its quality. It’s not uncommon for a filmmaker to blame his intended audience for not “getting” the movie when it flops, but if the movie in question isn’t very good, the filmmaker doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on.
Part of the problem was that the convoluted storyline, in which so much business is happening at once that very little actually makes an impact. The setup: God, disturbed by the lack of love in the world, begins dispatching angels to Earth to bring people together. Two of the angels, O’Reilly (Holly Hunter) and Jackson (Delroy Lindo) are assigned to the case of Robert (McGregor), a down-and-out wannabe writer, and Celine (Diaz), a bitchy heiress. And how do they meet, you ask? Why, when Robert storms into Celine’s father’s (Ian Holm) office and somehow ends up kidnapping her. How else were they supposed to meet? From there, it’s off to the races, as Robert finds himself an inept kidnapper, Celine decides to help him in order to get a cut of the ransom for herself, and the heavenly duo (masquerading as bounty hunters) relentlessly pursue the mismatched couple. With all this going on, it’s a wonder they ever find time to fall in love, then out of love, then finally back in love again, precisely on cue.
But then, most romantic comedies depend on contrivances, just as long as we’re rooting for the romantic leads to turn out OK. However, in order for this to happen we’d actually have to care about them, and these two hardly seem to be worth the effort it takes to bring them together. McGregor is fairly likable as Robert, a pretty nice guy who is easily overwhelmed and somewhat over-eager to apologize for himself. However, Diaz is another matter entirely. On the page, Celine is a tricky character- a rich girl who lets herself be kidnapped in order to escape her life. But while the role might have worked if Diaz had made her a slightly daffy thrill seeker, instead she plays Celine as a harpy and a nag for most of the movie, until the plot suddenly demands that she fall in love with Robert. As the movie progresses, we’re rooting for Robert all right- rooting for him to get as far away from her as possible.
With a romantic vacuum at its center, the story becomes little more than a parade of quirky characters and situations, flailing about onscreen in search of a reason to exist. Where to begin? There’s a dentist (Stanley Tucci) who Celine shoots in the frontal lobe while playing William Tell, only to return to work mere days later. There’s also the crazy backwoodsman (Maury Chaykin) who encounters Robert and Celine shortly after the kidnapping, and his even crazier friend who barks instead of speaking. And then there’s the ever-dogged O’Reilly and Jackson forever in pursuit, with O’Reilly brandishing a machine gun and hanging off the hood of Robert and Celine’s car- not at the same time, of course. How is all this supposed to make the central duo fall in love? Your guess is as good as mine.
Late in the film, after their funds have been depleted, Robert and Celine decide to rob a bank. When Celine holds up a teller, she asks to make a withdrawal, to which Robert responds, “I thought we agreed there’d be no clichés.” Boyle and writer John Hodge seemed to have used this line as their philosophy when making A Life Less Ordinary. However, it’s not enough to avoid clichés- one must replace them with other, more interesting ideas, and this is the failure of the film. A Life Less Ordinary is a film that tries to liven up its genre, but it never manages to do so, primarily because it fails to be romantic or funny. When Robert and Celine end up together, it feels not so much like a logical conclusion to this story as a cue for the lights to go up and the credits to roll. I suppose A Life Less Ordinary isn’t exactly ordinary, but it’s pretty lifeless.
Since its premiere on the fall festival circuit, Danny Boyle’s new film Slumdog Millionaire has ridden a wave of ecstatic buzz, one which many believe the film will ride to numerous Oscar nominations. With his crowd-pleasing arthouse hit, it seems that Boyle has finally arrived for real in Hollywood, a full dozen years after his breakthrough films, Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. However, it wasn’t supposed to take this long. In the wake of Trainspotting’s international success, Boyle was tapped by Fox to bring his directorial sensibility to America with his subsequent project A Life Less Ordinary, which paired Boyle’s favored leading man Ewan McGregor with hot Hollywood starlet Cameron Diaz. Life was the director’s take on the romantic comedy, and Boyle’s goal was to infuse the warm fuzzy genre with a liberal amount of mid-nineties indie edge while also indulging the audience’s romantic sides.
Under the right circumstances, A Life Less Ordinary might have been a zeitgeist-ready hit, particularly at the twentysomethings at whom it was aimed. However, it wasn’t to be. What’s more, the disappointing box office returns for the film were, for once, a reflection of its quality. It’s not uncommon for a filmmaker to blame his intended audience for not “getting” the movie when it flops, but if the movie in question isn’t very good, the filmmaker doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on.
Part of the problem was that the convoluted storyline, in which so much business is happening at once that very little actually makes an impact. The setup: God, disturbed by the lack of love in the world, begins dispatching angels to Earth to bring people together. Two of the angels, O’Reilly (Holly Hunter) and Jackson (Delroy Lindo) are assigned to the case of Robert (McGregor), a down-and-out wannabe writer, and Celine (Diaz), a bitchy heiress. And how do they meet, you ask? Why, when Robert storms into Celine’s father’s (Ian Holm) office and somehow ends up kidnapping her. How else were they supposed to meet? From there, it’s off to the races, as Robert finds himself an inept kidnapper, Celine decides to help him in order to get a cut of the ransom for herself, and the heavenly duo (masquerading as bounty hunters) relentlessly pursue the mismatched couple. With all this going on, it’s a wonder they ever find time to fall in love, then out of love, then finally back in love again, precisely on cue.
But then, most romantic comedies depend on contrivances, just as long as we’re rooting for the romantic leads to turn out OK. However, in order for this to happen we’d actually have to care about them, and these two hardly seem to be worth the effort it takes to bring them together. McGregor is fairly likable as Robert, a pretty nice guy who is easily overwhelmed and somewhat over-eager to apologize for himself. However, Diaz is another matter entirely. On the page, Celine is a tricky character- a rich girl who lets herself be kidnapped in order to escape her life. But while the role might have worked if Diaz had made her a slightly daffy thrill seeker, instead she plays Celine as a harpy and a nag for most of the movie, until the plot suddenly demands that she fall in love with Robert. As the movie progresses, we’re rooting for Robert all right- rooting for him to get as far away from her as possible.
With a romantic vacuum at its center, the story becomes little more than a parade of quirky characters and situations, flailing about onscreen in search of a reason to exist. Where to begin? There’s a dentist (Stanley Tucci) who Celine shoots in the frontal lobe while playing William Tell, only to return to work mere days later. There’s also the crazy backwoodsman (Maury Chaykin) who encounters Robert and Celine shortly after the kidnapping, and his even crazier friend who barks instead of speaking. And then there’s the ever-dogged O’Reilly and Jackson forever in pursuit, with O’Reilly brandishing a machine gun and hanging off the hood of Robert and Celine’s car- not at the same time, of course. How is all this supposed to make the central duo fall in love? Your guess is as good as mine.
Late in the film, after their funds have been depleted, Robert and Celine decide to rob a bank. When Celine holds up a teller, she asks to make a withdrawal, to which Robert responds, “I thought we agreed there’d be no clichés.” Boyle and writer John Hodge seemed to have used this line as their philosophy when making A Life Less Ordinary. However, it’s not enough to avoid clichés- one must replace them with other, more interesting ideas, and this is the failure of the film. A Life Less Ordinary is a film that tries to liven up its genre, but it never manages to do so, primarily because it fails to be romantic or funny. When Robert and Celine end up together, it feels not so much like a logical conclusion to this story as a cue for the lights to go up and the credits to roll. I suppose A Life Less Ordinary isn’t exactly ordinary, but it’s pretty lifeless.
Double Review: Thunderball (1965) and Moonraker (1979)
Originally written 20 November 2008 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission.
Quantum of Solace may have opened already, but I’m still jonesing for that old Bond feeling. Perhaps it was the decidedly un-007-like style of the latest movie in the series, but I for one found myself missing some of the reliable, even cheesy, touches of the old installments. So for this week’s column, I decided to look back at two of the biggest hits of the series to date, one starring Sean Connery (Thunderball), and one starring Roger Moore (Moonraker), thereby making this my first Yesterday’s Hits double feature to date.
At first glance, the two movies wouldn’t seem to go that well together, but a closer look finds a number of similarities beyond the usual Bond clichés. For one thing, both films were the top-grossing Bond titles for their respective stars. In addition, each was the fourth film in which they appeared. Both movies were a great deal more expensive than the films that preceded them. And by some strange coincidence, both movies build to action scenes in which dozens of characters are seen floating- in Thunderball’s case, the scene is underwater, whereas in Moonraker, they’re in space. But perhaps most importantly, neither film is especially well-regarded by devotees of the series. In last week’s list of the best and worst Bond movies of all time, Moonraker was voted the second-worst of the series, while Thunderball was the only “official” Connery title that didn’t get mentioned as one of the best.
Following the smash international success of Goldfinger, it was clear that moviegoing audiences couldn’t get enough of Ian Fleming’s super-spy. So production was quickly begun on the biggest Bond adventure yet, a $9 million spectacular called Thunderball that would once again star the suave, wry Scot Sean Connery. With the Bond formula more or less established from the previous three adventures, it was more or less guaranteed that Thunderball would be an even bigger hit than its predecessor. However, it ended up doing so well at the box-office that it remained the highest-grossing Bond adventure for nearly fifteen years.
The movie that would eventually dethrone it was, of course, Moonraker. Released only two years after Star Wars changed the face of blockbusters, the film was EON Productions’ attempt to cash in on the space opera craze- after all, what locale is more exotic than space? Moore was no Connery, but by 1979 he’d been accepted as Connery’s successor, and placing him against the backdrop of the so-called final frontier was a winning proposition. Despite mostly negative reviews, Moonraker raked in the money, the already tempting deal sweetened by the return of fan-favorite Jaws, played by the one and only Richard Kiel. Moonraker had the highest gross of any Bond movie until Pierce Brosnan assumed the role.
So, do they still work? As it turns out, Thunderball holds up pretty darn well, Moonraker… eh, not so much.
Coming so soon after two nearly perfect examples of the Bond formula done right, Thunderball’s flaws must have seemed especially glaring to fans of the series. Much of the supporting cast is bland and forgettable, with the most egregious offender being Claudine Auger as the principal Bond girl, Domino. In addition, a good deal of the wit that distinguished the previous entries in the series was cast aside here in favor of expensive action sequences. But with action sequences as good as the ones in Thunderball, it seems churlish to complain. Especially great is the extended underwater fight/shootout that comes at the end of the film, in which Bond and dozens of agents take on Largo (Adolfo Celi) and his henchmen for minutes on end, without a shred of dialogue. This scene remains a high-water mark of the series- no pun intended, of course.
And then, there was Connery, still the overwhelming favorite of 007 fans everywhere. By now firmly established in the role, Connery was able to inhabit the character with an easy authority, so much that his successors have all been measured against him. What’s surprising here is that he was actually able to find some new wrinkles to the character even after three previous performances in the role. By this point in the series, Bond has begun to show a little more self-awareness about the demands of his job. There’s an early scene in which Bond has to leave on his mission, and one of his conquests runs after him and asks him to write to her, and all he does is give a stiff little smile and say to himself, “another time, another place.” He also had room for ambiguous gestures, as in the scene where Largo’s agent Fiona (Luciana Paluzzi) gets shot. Does Bond intentionally use her as a shield to save himself, or does it just happen that way? Connery never lets on one way or the other, and the character is more fascinating as a result.
By contrast, there was no room for ambiguity in Roger Moore’s conception of Bond. Moore’s version of 007 was less a hard-nosed secret agent who got his hands dirty than the archetypal “gentleman spy” as a straight-up hero. As a result, his performances were entertaining enough, but didn’t make the character particularly interesting. Also uninteresting here is Lois Chiles as Dr. Holly Goodhead (yeah, I know), another in a line of interchangeable pretty faces who were uneasily shoehorned into doctor roles in Bond movies. With two uncompelling leads, my attention quickly shifted to the villainous Drax, played by the great Michael Lonsdale with the perpetually annoyed bearing of a man who’d prefer not to trifle in the affairs of lesser intellects. With better material, Lonsdale could have made for one of the series’ best baddies, but he’s still pretty darn good.
And then there’s Jaws. I’ve always been a fan of the Jaws character, both in concept and execution. After all, here’s someone who has a limited number of job prospects- for an indestructible giant with metallic teeth, I’m guessing “hired killer” pays quite a bit better than “nightclub bouncer,” and the travel benefits are better. But in spite of this, he seems to legitimately enjoy his work, and it’s hard to hate the guy even when he’s beating the hell from Bond. Plus Kiel, with hardly a line of spoken dialogue, gives Jaws personality to spare, and it’s nice to see him finally get his own little romantic subplot in the story, even if it’s marred by a cheeseball music cue.
But all in all, Moonraker is pretty shoddy goods. James Bond travels from one exotic locale to another trying to save the world, but there’s no urgency to it, and the formula had become so comfortable that the filmmakers didn’t dare diverge from it (Quantum of Solace has exactly the opposite issue- it breaks out of the formula so much it barely feels like Bond). Consequently, it comes off less as a thriller than an inconsequential romp, with such silly scenes as Bond’s Venetian gondola turning into a hovercraft, complete with a bird doing a double-take. Even the once-ballyhooed outer-space scenes look dated and cheesy nowadays. Moonraker might have gone over well with the audiences of the time, but it just doesn’t work today. Thunderball, on the other hand, is still pretty great.
Quantum of Solace may have opened already, but I’m still jonesing for that old Bond feeling. Perhaps it was the decidedly un-007-like style of the latest movie in the series, but I for one found myself missing some of the reliable, even cheesy, touches of the old installments. So for this week’s column, I decided to look back at two of the biggest hits of the series to date, one starring Sean Connery (Thunderball), and one starring Roger Moore (Moonraker), thereby making this my first Yesterday’s Hits double feature to date.
At first glance, the two movies wouldn’t seem to go that well together, but a closer look finds a number of similarities beyond the usual Bond clichés. For one thing, both films were the top-grossing Bond titles for their respective stars. In addition, each was the fourth film in which they appeared. Both movies were a great deal more expensive than the films that preceded them. And by some strange coincidence, both movies build to action scenes in which dozens of characters are seen floating- in Thunderball’s case, the scene is underwater, whereas in Moonraker, they’re in space. But perhaps most importantly, neither film is especially well-regarded by devotees of the series. In last week’s list of the best and worst Bond movies of all time, Moonraker was voted the second-worst of the series, while Thunderball was the only “official” Connery title that didn’t get mentioned as one of the best.
Following the smash international success of Goldfinger, it was clear that moviegoing audiences couldn’t get enough of Ian Fleming’s super-spy. So production was quickly begun on the biggest Bond adventure yet, a $9 million spectacular called Thunderball that would once again star the suave, wry Scot Sean Connery. With the Bond formula more or less established from the previous three adventures, it was more or less guaranteed that Thunderball would be an even bigger hit than its predecessor. However, it ended up doing so well at the box-office that it remained the highest-grossing Bond adventure for nearly fifteen years.
The movie that would eventually dethrone it was, of course, Moonraker. Released only two years after Star Wars changed the face of blockbusters, the film was EON Productions’ attempt to cash in on the space opera craze- after all, what locale is more exotic than space? Moore was no Connery, but by 1979 he’d been accepted as Connery’s successor, and placing him against the backdrop of the so-called final frontier was a winning proposition. Despite mostly negative reviews, Moonraker raked in the money, the already tempting deal sweetened by the return of fan-favorite Jaws, played by the one and only Richard Kiel. Moonraker had the highest gross of any Bond movie until Pierce Brosnan assumed the role.
So, do they still work? As it turns out, Thunderball holds up pretty darn well, Moonraker… eh, not so much.
Coming so soon after two nearly perfect examples of the Bond formula done right, Thunderball’s flaws must have seemed especially glaring to fans of the series. Much of the supporting cast is bland and forgettable, with the most egregious offender being Claudine Auger as the principal Bond girl, Domino. In addition, a good deal of the wit that distinguished the previous entries in the series was cast aside here in favor of expensive action sequences. But with action sequences as good as the ones in Thunderball, it seems churlish to complain. Especially great is the extended underwater fight/shootout that comes at the end of the film, in which Bond and dozens of agents take on Largo (Adolfo Celi) and his henchmen for minutes on end, without a shred of dialogue. This scene remains a high-water mark of the series- no pun intended, of course.
And then, there was Connery, still the overwhelming favorite of 007 fans everywhere. By now firmly established in the role, Connery was able to inhabit the character with an easy authority, so much that his successors have all been measured against him. What’s surprising here is that he was actually able to find some new wrinkles to the character even after three previous performances in the role. By this point in the series, Bond has begun to show a little more self-awareness about the demands of his job. There’s an early scene in which Bond has to leave on his mission, and one of his conquests runs after him and asks him to write to her, and all he does is give a stiff little smile and say to himself, “another time, another place.” He also had room for ambiguous gestures, as in the scene where Largo’s agent Fiona (Luciana Paluzzi) gets shot. Does Bond intentionally use her as a shield to save himself, or does it just happen that way? Connery never lets on one way or the other, and the character is more fascinating as a result.
By contrast, there was no room for ambiguity in Roger Moore’s conception of Bond. Moore’s version of 007 was less a hard-nosed secret agent who got his hands dirty than the archetypal “gentleman spy” as a straight-up hero. As a result, his performances were entertaining enough, but didn’t make the character particularly interesting. Also uninteresting here is Lois Chiles as Dr. Holly Goodhead (yeah, I know), another in a line of interchangeable pretty faces who were uneasily shoehorned into doctor roles in Bond movies. With two uncompelling leads, my attention quickly shifted to the villainous Drax, played by the great Michael Lonsdale with the perpetually annoyed bearing of a man who’d prefer not to trifle in the affairs of lesser intellects. With better material, Lonsdale could have made for one of the series’ best baddies, but he’s still pretty darn good.
And then there’s Jaws. I’ve always been a fan of the Jaws character, both in concept and execution. After all, here’s someone who has a limited number of job prospects- for an indestructible giant with metallic teeth, I’m guessing “hired killer” pays quite a bit better than “nightclub bouncer,” and the travel benefits are better. But in spite of this, he seems to legitimately enjoy his work, and it’s hard to hate the guy even when he’s beating the hell from Bond. Plus Kiel, with hardly a line of spoken dialogue, gives Jaws personality to spare, and it’s nice to see him finally get his own little romantic subplot in the story, even if it’s marred by a cheeseball music cue.
But all in all, Moonraker is pretty shoddy goods. James Bond travels from one exotic locale to another trying to save the world, but there’s no urgency to it, and the formula had become so comfortable that the filmmakers didn’t dare diverge from it (Quantum of Solace has exactly the opposite issue- it breaks out of the formula so much it barely feels like Bond). Consequently, it comes off less as a thriller than an inconsequential romp, with such silly scenes as Bond’s Venetian gondola turning into a hovercraft, complete with a bird doing a double-take. Even the once-ballyhooed outer-space scenes look dated and cheesy nowadays. Moonraker might have gone over well with the audiences of the time, but it just doesn’t work today. Thunderball, on the other hand, is still pretty great.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Yesterday's Hits
Titanic (James Cameron)
Love Story (Arthur Hiller)
The Blair Witch Project (Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick)
Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson)
Smokey and the Bandit (Hal Needham)
The Bells of St. Mary's (Leo McCarey)
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (Stanley Kramer)
Every Which Way But Loose (James Fargo)
9 to 5 (Colin Higgins)
Billy Jack (T.C. Frank)
The Towering Inferno (John Guillermin)
Fatal Attraction (Adrian Lyne)
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Steven Spielberg)
The Way We Were (Sydney Pollack)
The Robe (Henry Koster)
The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan)
Top Gun (Tony Scott)
Independence Day (Roland Emmerich)
Summer of '42 (Robert Mulligan)
Crocodile Dundee (Peter Faiman)
Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis)
Around the World in 80 Days (Michael Anderson)
Romeo and Juliet (Franco Zeffirelli)
The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland)
The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson)
The Longest Day (Ken Annakin/Andrew Marton/Bernard Wicki)
Kramer vs. Kramer (Robert Benton)
City Slickers (Ron Underwood)
The Carpetbaggers (Edward Dmytryk)
Exodus (Otto Preminger)
The Karate Kid (John G. Avildsen)
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (Kevin Reynolds)
Duel in the Sun (King Vidor)
The Exorcist (William Friedkin)
The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler)
Thunderball AND Moonraker (Terence Young/Lewis Gilbert)
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (Irving Reis)
The Santa Clause (John Pasquin)
Home Alone (Chris Columbus)
Love Story (Arthur Hiller)
The Blair Witch Project (Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick)
Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson)
Smokey and the Bandit (Hal Needham)
The Bells of St. Mary's (Leo McCarey)
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (Stanley Kramer)
Every Which Way But Loose (James Fargo)
9 to 5 (Colin Higgins)
Billy Jack (T.C. Frank)
The Towering Inferno (John Guillermin)
Fatal Attraction (Adrian Lyne)
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Steven Spielberg)
The Way We Were (Sydney Pollack)
The Robe (Henry Koster)
The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan)
Top Gun (Tony Scott)
Independence Day (Roland Emmerich)
Summer of '42 (Robert Mulligan)
Crocodile Dundee (Peter Faiman)
Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis)
Around the World in 80 Days (Michael Anderson)
Romeo and Juliet (Franco Zeffirelli)
The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland)
The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson)
The Longest Day (Ken Annakin/Andrew Marton/Bernard Wicki)
Kramer vs. Kramer (Robert Benton)
City Slickers (Ron Underwood)
The Carpetbaggers (Edward Dmytryk)
Exodus (Otto Preminger)
The Karate Kid (John G. Avildsen)
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (Kevin Reynolds)
Duel in the Sun (King Vidor)
The Exorcist (William Friedkin)
The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler)
Thunderball AND Moonraker (Terence Young/Lewis Gilbert)
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (Irving Reis)
The Santa Clause (John Pasquin)
Home Alone (Chris Columbus)
When Good Directors Go Bad
Ready to Wear (Robert Altman)
Exorcist II: The Heretic (John Boorman) [written by Faisal A. Qureshi]
1941 (Steven Spielberg)
The Serpent's Egg (Ingmar Bergman)
Art School Confidential (Terry Zwigoff)
New York, New York (Martin Scorsese)
The Cotton Club (Francis Ford Coppola)
The Doors (Oliver Stone)
Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni)
Exterminating Angels (Jean-Claude Brisseau)
Stardust Memories (Woody Allen) [not what you'd think]
I Confess (Alfred Hitchcock)
Dreamcatcher (Lawrence Kasdan)
The Wicker Man (Neil LaBute)
The Hudsucker Proxy (Joel Coen) [?]
1492: Conquest of Paradise (Ridley Scott)
Regarding Henry (Mike Nichols)
Ishtar (Elaine May)
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (Joe Berlinger)
The Brothers Grimm (Terry Gilliam)
She Hate Me (Spike Lee)
Texasville (Peter Bogdanovich)
The Dark Wind (Errol Morris)
Year of the Horse (Jim Jarmusch)
For Love of the Game (Sam Raimi)
The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson)
Rising Sun (Philip Kaufman)
Elizabethtown (Cameron Crowe) [?]
Hulk (Ang Lee)
The Frighteners (Peter Jackson) [?]
Goya's Ghosts (Milos Forman)
Ryan's Daughter (David Lean)
Planet of the Apes (Tim Burton)
Death Becomes Her (Robert Zemeckis)
Insomnia (Christopher Nolan) [?]
The Road Home (Zhang Yimou)
Cruising (William Friedkin)
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (Clint Eastwood)
Great Expectations (Alfonso Cuaron) [?]
The Bonfire of the Vanities (Brian DePalma)
Waterloo (Sergei Bondarchuk)
A Life Less Ordinary (Danny Boyle)
Exorcist II: The Heretic (John Boorman) [written by Faisal A. Qureshi]
1941 (Steven Spielberg)
The Serpent's Egg (Ingmar Bergman)
Art School Confidential (Terry Zwigoff)
New York, New York (Martin Scorsese)
The Cotton Club (Francis Ford Coppola)
The Doors (Oliver Stone)
Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni)
Exterminating Angels (Jean-Claude Brisseau)
Stardust Memories (Woody Allen) [not what you'd think]
I Confess (Alfred Hitchcock)
Dreamcatcher (Lawrence Kasdan)
The Wicker Man (Neil LaBute)
The Hudsucker Proxy (Joel Coen) [?]
1492: Conquest of Paradise (Ridley Scott)
Regarding Henry (Mike Nichols)
Ishtar (Elaine May)
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (Joe Berlinger)
The Brothers Grimm (Terry Gilliam)
She Hate Me (Spike Lee)
Texasville (Peter Bogdanovich)
The Dark Wind (Errol Morris)
Year of the Horse (Jim Jarmusch)
For Love of the Game (Sam Raimi)
The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson)
Rising Sun (Philip Kaufman)
Elizabethtown (Cameron Crowe) [?]
Hulk (Ang Lee)
The Frighteners (Peter Jackson) [?]
Goya's Ghosts (Milos Forman)
Ryan's Daughter (David Lean)
Planet of the Apes (Tim Burton)
Death Becomes Her (Robert Zemeckis)
Insomnia (Christopher Nolan) [?]
The Road Home (Zhang Yimou)
Cruising (William Friedkin)
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (Clint Eastwood)
Great Expectations (Alfonso Cuaron) [?]
The Bonfire of the Vanities (Brian DePalma)
Waterloo (Sergei Bondarchuk)
A Life Less Ordinary (Danny Boyle)
Reviews By Request
Baxter (Jerome Boivin)
Zulu (Cy Endfield)
Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (Kenji Misumi)
The New Kids (Sean S. Cunningham)
Faithless (Liv Ullmann)
3 on a Meathook (William Girdler)
The Atomic Cafe (Pierce Rafferty, Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty)
Camera Buff (Krzystzof Kieslowski)
The Hot Rock (Peter Yates)
Knightriders (George A. Romero)
The Wizard of Gore (Herschell Gordon Lewis)
War of the Gargantuas (Ishiro Honda)
Cockfighter (Monte Hellman)
Tenebrae (Dario Argento)
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (Jorge Grau)
Chelsea Girls (Andy Warhol)
The Times of Harvey Milk (Rob Epstein)
Mister Lonely (Harmony Korine)
Bigger Stronger Faster* (Chris Bell)
Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (Lloyd Kaufman)
Sukiyaki Western Django (Takashi Miike)
The Foot Fist Way (Jody Hill)
Double Feature Review: Reprise (Joachim Trier) and Son of Rambow (Garth Jennings)
Shotgun Stories (Jeff Nichols)
Yankee Doodle Dandy (Michael Curtiz)
How Green Was My Valley (John Ford)
Zulu (Cy Endfield)
Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (Kenji Misumi)
The New Kids (Sean S. Cunningham)
Faithless (Liv Ullmann)
3 on a Meathook (William Girdler)
The Atomic Cafe (Pierce Rafferty, Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty)
Camera Buff (Krzystzof Kieslowski)
The Hot Rock (Peter Yates)
Knightriders (George A. Romero)
The Wizard of Gore (Herschell Gordon Lewis)
War of the Gargantuas (Ishiro Honda)
Cockfighter (Monte Hellman)
Tenebrae (Dario Argento)
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (Jorge Grau)
Chelsea Girls (Andy Warhol)
The Times of Harvey Milk (Rob Epstein)
Mister Lonely (Harmony Korine)
Bigger Stronger Faster* (Chris Bell)
Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (Lloyd Kaufman)
Sukiyaki Western Django (Takashi Miike)
The Foot Fist Way (Jody Hill)
Double Feature Review: Reprise (Joachim Trier) and Son of Rambow (Garth Jennings)
Shotgun Stories (Jeff Nichols)
Yankee Doodle Dandy (Michael Curtiz)
How Green Was My Valley (John Ford)
Movie Moment Posts
The Girl Can't Help It (Frank Tashlin)
The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi)
8 Women (Francois Ozon)
A Fish Called Wanda (Charles Crichton)
Nashville (Robert Altman)
Belle de Jour (Luis Buñuel)
Bus 174 (Jose Padilha)
Lolita (Stanley Kubrick)
Phantom of the Paradise (Brian DePalma)
La Belle Noiseuse (Jacques Rivette)
Babe: Pig in the City (George Miller)
Gilles' Wife (Frederic Fonteyne)
The Elephant Man (David Lynch)
Freaks (Tod Browning)
To Live and Die in L.A. (William Friedkin)
Band of Outsiders (Jean-Luc Godard)
The Son (Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
Duck, You Sucker (Sergio Leone)
Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu)
Father and Son (Aleksandr Sokurov)
Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg)
Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky)
Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Shane Black)
Films by Buster Keaton- Neighbors, The Scarecrow, The High Sign, and Our Hospitality
La Jetée (Chris Marker)
Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas)
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent)
Audition (Takashi Miike)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy)
Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (Preston Sturges)
Notable Moments of 2007: Part 1 and Part 2 (various)
High School (Frederick Wiseman)
The Holy Mountain (Alejandro Jodorowsky)
Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)
Make Way For Tomorrow (Leo McCarey)
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)
The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami)
My Favorite Movie Moments of 2008 (Various)
The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi)
8 Women (Francois Ozon)
A Fish Called Wanda (Charles Crichton)
Nashville (Robert Altman)
Belle de Jour (Luis Buñuel)
Bus 174 (Jose Padilha)
Lolita (Stanley Kubrick)
Phantom of the Paradise (Brian DePalma)
La Belle Noiseuse (Jacques Rivette)
Babe: Pig in the City (George Miller)
Gilles' Wife (Frederic Fonteyne)
The Elephant Man (David Lynch)
Freaks (Tod Browning)
To Live and Die in L.A. (William Friedkin)
Band of Outsiders (Jean-Luc Godard)
The Son (Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
Duck, You Sucker (Sergio Leone)
Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu)
Father and Son (Aleksandr Sokurov)
Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg)
Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky)
Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Shane Black)
Films by Buster Keaton- Neighbors, The Scarecrow, The High Sign, and Our Hospitality
La Jetée (Chris Marker)
Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas)
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent)
Audition (Takashi Miike)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy)
Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (Preston Sturges)
Notable Moments of 2007: Part 1 and Part 2 (various)
High School (Frederick Wiseman)
The Holy Mountain (Alejandro Jodorowsky)
Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)
Make Way For Tomorrow (Leo McCarey)
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)
The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami)
My Favorite Movie Moments of 2008 (Various)
Screengrab Lists
Top 10: The Best Nude Scenes of 2006
Top 10: The Most Dangerous Films of All Time
Top 14: The Kinkiest Films Ever Made
Top 10: The Worst Accents in Movie History
Top 10: The Most Important Nude Scenes of All Time
Top 10: Chicks With Guns
Top 10: Cinema's Great No-Sex Sex Scenes
Top 10: The Most Historically Inaccurate Films Ever Made
Top 10: Nude Scenes We Really Could Have Done Without
Top 10: The Greatest Remakes
Top 10: The Worst Mothers in Movie History
Top 10: Cinema's Greatest Offscreen Feuds
Top 20: The Greatest Death Scenes of All Time
Top 10: Great Fight Scenes
Top 10: The Greatest Twists of All Time
Top 10: The Most Unnecessary Sequels of All Time
Top 10: The Greatest Disses in Cinema History
Top 10: Songs That Were Redefined by Movies
Top 10: The Grossest Onscreen Kisses
Top 10: The Greatest Running Scenes in Movie History
Top 10: The Most Notable Product Placements in Movie History
Top 15: Great Cameos in Film History
Top 15: Worst Literary Adaptations
Top 20: Revisionist Westerns
Top 16: Cinema's Worst Musical Misfires
Top 15: The All Time Worst Athletes Turned Actors
Top 11: Worst Scenes in Great Movies
Top 22: The Most Evil Corporations in Movie History
Top 10: Instances of Religious Propaganda Where We Least Expected It
Top 13: Greatest Fictional Movie Presidents
Top 12: Bodily Transformations on Film
Top 10: Greatest Prosthetics in Movie History
Top 13: Greatest Long-Ass Movies of All Time
Top 10: Worst Cinematic Hairdos
Top 10: Worst Cinematic Medical Breakthroughs
Top 10: Greatest Cinematic Psychiatrists
Top 12: Great Opening Credits
Top 10: Best Murderous Duos
Top 10: Great Cinematic Mentors
Top 10: Baseball Movie All-Stars
Top 10: Sexiest Big-Screen Guy Geeks
Top 5: Hits of Summer 2008
Top 5: Bombs of Summer 2008
Top 12: Great Movies Based on TV Shows
Top 16: Films That Make Us Nervous
Top 10: Great Final Films
Top 10: Great Scenes From Not So Great Movies
Top 15: Films That (Almost) Could've Been Directed by Someone Else
The World’s Greatest Animated Shorts
A Screengrab Salute to Movie Trailers
Top 25: War Movies
Top 10: Paul Newman movies
Greatest Leading Men
Greatest Leading Ladies
Greatest Horror movies
Most Memorable Cinematic Utopias and Dystopias
Best and Worst Bond Movies
Top Biopics
Top 10: The Most Dangerous Films of All Time
Top 14: The Kinkiest Films Ever Made
Top 10: The Worst Accents in Movie History
Top 10: The Most Important Nude Scenes of All Time
Top 10: Chicks With Guns
Top 10: Cinema's Great No-Sex Sex Scenes
Top 10: The Most Historically Inaccurate Films Ever Made
Top 10: Nude Scenes We Really Could Have Done Without
Top 10: The Greatest Remakes
Top 10: The Worst Mothers in Movie History
Top 10: Cinema's Greatest Offscreen Feuds
Top 20: The Greatest Death Scenes of All Time
Top 10: Great Fight Scenes
Top 10: The Greatest Twists of All Time
Top 10: The Most Unnecessary Sequels of All Time
Top 10: The Greatest Disses in Cinema History
Top 10: Songs That Were Redefined by Movies
Top 10: The Grossest Onscreen Kisses
Top 10: The Greatest Running Scenes in Movie History
Top 10: The Most Notable Product Placements in Movie History
Top 15: Great Cameos in Film History
Top 15: Worst Literary Adaptations
Top 20: Revisionist Westerns
Top 16: Cinema's Worst Musical Misfires
Top 15: The All Time Worst Athletes Turned Actors
Top 11: Worst Scenes in Great Movies
Top 22: The Most Evil Corporations in Movie History
Top 10: Instances of Religious Propaganda Where We Least Expected It
Top 13: Greatest Fictional Movie Presidents
Top 12: Bodily Transformations on Film
Top 10: Greatest Prosthetics in Movie History
Top 13: Greatest Long-Ass Movies of All Time
Top 10: Worst Cinematic Hairdos
Top 10: Worst Cinematic Medical Breakthroughs
Top 10: Greatest Cinematic Psychiatrists
Top 12: Great Opening Credits
Top 10: Best Murderous Duos
Top 10: Great Cinematic Mentors
Top 10: Baseball Movie All-Stars
Top 10: Sexiest Big-Screen Guy Geeks
Top 5: Hits of Summer 2008
Top 5: Bombs of Summer 2008
Top 12: Great Movies Based on TV Shows
Top 16: Films That Make Us Nervous
Top 10: Great Final Films
Top 10: Great Scenes From Not So Great Movies
Top 15: Films That (Almost) Could've Been Directed by Someone Else
The World’s Greatest Animated Shorts
A Screengrab Salute to Movie Trailers
Top 25: War Movies
Top 10: Paul Newman movies
Greatest Leading Men
Greatest Leading Ladies
Greatest Horror movies
Most Memorable Cinematic Utopias and Dystopias
Best and Worst Bond Movies
Top Biopics
Friday, October 19, 2007
Other notable Screengrab posts
Oscar Predictions 2007- my very first post. Kindly keep the laughter to a minimum.
Live-Blogging (Sorta) the Oscars- OK, not really. But I took notes, so shouldn't that be enough for you?
Of Genre Pics and Oscar Winners- The French Connection and The Departed
Boycotting The Departed? Say It Ain't So, J.Ro- Who knows? Maybe he even read it!
Heaven's Gate: A Reassessment- Giving a much-maligned flop a second chance to suck
Angelina the Irritating?- Please stop adopting kids and acting respectable all the time so you can devote your energy to giving good performances in good movies. Thank you very much.
A Stroll Through Jim Henson's Legacy- Bilge vetoed my original title, "Good Grief! The Comedian's a Bear!"
Forgotten Films: Privilege (1967, Peter Watkins)- I'm still pretty proud of this one, if you don't mind me saying so
In Praise of the Mass Experience: The Ohio Science Fiction Marathon- yet another attempt on my part to make Columbus look like the hotbed of cinephilia it deserves to be
Ten More Great British Directors: An Alternate List- no published list is ever good enough for us not to try to improve upon it.
Half Measures '07- My favorite films of the first half of 2007
Laszlo Kovacs (1933-2007)- this guy rocked.
Marking Time: The Photography of Chris Marker- I wonder if my co-writer ever got paid for this...
Women in Film- awesome YouTube thingy
Toronto Roundups- a brief recounting of my first TIFF
Seagalogy: A Life in Badass Cinema- thanks, Vern!
Face/Off: Breaking the Waves- or, to be precise, the final shot.
Movies We Missed: Interkosmos (2006, Jim Finn)- this movie rules, plus it's short!
Not Just for Kids: The Columbus International Children's Film Festival- thanks, Chris!
Farewell, J.Ro... But Not Really- We'll always have Toronto...
Top 10 of 2007- Before I'd seen There Will Be Blood or Lake of Fire, that is.
Oscars 2008- The Nomination Predictions, The Nominees, The Predicted Winners, The Animated and Live Action Shorts, The Liveblogging, and Other Related Stories
Movies We Missed: Les Revenants (2004, Robin Campillo)- thanks, Jason!
Anthony Minghella (1954-2008)- in memoriam
Forgotten Films: Les Anges du Péché (1943, Robert Bresson)- thanks, Steve!
White Elephant Blogathon- My entry, plus an interview with blogathon guru Benjamin Lim
Charlton Heston (1924-2008)- Farewell to one of the great movie stars
Yes, I'm Serious: Paul Clark Defends Uwe Boll- honestly folks, he's no worse than Simon West!
Being For the Benefit of Mr. Holm- helping out a respected former colleague
Cannes Previews: The Competition Lineup, The Star-Studded Jury, The Last-Minute Additions (including the eventual Palme winner!)
Watching "The Watchman": An Interview With Kent M. Beeson- exactly what the title says
See Bardot's Ass, Bowie's Junk in Blu-Ray- Nothing special, I just dig the title
EW Makes Great Movies List; Screengrab Points, Laughs- my reaction to EW's "New Classics"
Half Measures '08- my favorites of the first half of 2008
Taking the Midnight Meat Train- Lionsgate buried the Barker/Kitamura thriller
My most- and least-anticipated movies of Fall 2008
In lieu of actually going to Toronto this year, here’s my TIFF ’08 Preview
“Other Voices, Other Rooms: Warhol at the Wex
I don’t usually link to Trailer Reviews here, but I was amused by what I came up with for Ed Zwick’s Defiance
Wow! A review of a new release! And Gus Van Sant’s Milk, no less!
Thanksgiving Special: Cinematic Stuff I’m Thankful For
My Favorites of 2008 (as of New Year's Eve): #1 through 5, 6 through 10, and the Honorable Mentions.
Screengrab 2009 Preview: My Most- and Least-Anticipated Movies of 2009.
A "Watch It For Free" column on the cult-ready indie animated epic Sita Sings the Blues. Once the hipsters and the YouTube set get their paws on this, it's gonna be huge. And you can mark it, Dude.
A special DVD Digest column on the great Treasures IV DVD set. Buy it, like, now.
Hey, cool! Another review of a new release! Here's my take on Watchmen.
Live-Blogging (Sorta) the Oscars- OK, not really. But I took notes, so shouldn't that be enough for you?
Of Genre Pics and Oscar Winners- The French Connection and The Departed
Boycotting The Departed? Say It Ain't So, J.Ro- Who knows? Maybe he even read it!
Heaven's Gate: A Reassessment- Giving a much-maligned flop a second chance to suck
Angelina the Irritating?- Please stop adopting kids and acting respectable all the time so you can devote your energy to giving good performances in good movies. Thank you very much.
A Stroll Through Jim Henson's Legacy- Bilge vetoed my original title, "Good Grief! The Comedian's a Bear!"
Forgotten Films: Privilege (1967, Peter Watkins)- I'm still pretty proud of this one, if you don't mind me saying so
In Praise of the Mass Experience: The Ohio Science Fiction Marathon- yet another attempt on my part to make Columbus look like the hotbed of cinephilia it deserves to be
Ten More Great British Directors: An Alternate List- no published list is ever good enough for us not to try to improve upon it.
Half Measures '07- My favorite films of the first half of 2007
Laszlo Kovacs (1933-2007)- this guy rocked.
Marking Time: The Photography of Chris Marker- I wonder if my co-writer ever got paid for this...
Women in Film- awesome YouTube thingy
Toronto Roundups- a brief recounting of my first TIFF
Seagalogy: A Life in Badass Cinema- thanks, Vern!
Face/Off: Breaking the Waves- or, to be precise, the final shot.
Movies We Missed: Interkosmos (2006, Jim Finn)- this movie rules, plus it's short!
Not Just for Kids: The Columbus International Children's Film Festival- thanks, Chris!
Farewell, J.Ro... But Not Really- We'll always have Toronto...
Top 10 of 2007- Before I'd seen There Will Be Blood or Lake of Fire, that is.
Oscars 2008- The Nomination Predictions, The Nominees, The Predicted Winners, The Animated and Live Action Shorts, The Liveblogging, and Other Related Stories
Movies We Missed: Les Revenants (2004, Robin Campillo)- thanks, Jason!
Anthony Minghella (1954-2008)- in memoriam
Forgotten Films: Les Anges du Péché (1943, Robert Bresson)- thanks, Steve!
White Elephant Blogathon- My entry, plus an interview with blogathon guru Benjamin Lim
Charlton Heston (1924-2008)- Farewell to one of the great movie stars
Yes, I'm Serious: Paul Clark Defends Uwe Boll- honestly folks, he's no worse than Simon West!
Being For the Benefit of Mr. Holm- helping out a respected former colleague
Cannes Previews: The Competition Lineup, The Star-Studded Jury, The Last-Minute Additions (including the eventual Palme winner!)
Watching "The Watchman": An Interview With Kent M. Beeson- exactly what the title says
See Bardot's Ass, Bowie's Junk in Blu-Ray- Nothing special, I just dig the title
EW Makes Great Movies List; Screengrab Points, Laughs- my reaction to EW's "New Classics"
Half Measures '08- my favorites of the first half of 2008
Taking the Midnight Meat Train- Lionsgate buried the Barker/Kitamura thriller
My most- and least-anticipated movies of Fall 2008
In lieu of actually going to Toronto this year, here’s my TIFF ’08 Preview
“Other Voices, Other Rooms: Warhol at the Wex
I don’t usually link to Trailer Reviews here, but I was amused by what I came up with for Ed Zwick’s Defiance
Wow! A review of a new release! And Gus Van Sant’s Milk, no less!
Thanksgiving Special: Cinematic Stuff I’m Thankful For
My Favorites of 2008 (as of New Year's Eve): #1 through 5, 6 through 10, and the Honorable Mentions.
Screengrab 2009 Preview: My Most- and Least-Anticipated Movies of 2009.
A "Watch It For Free" column on the cult-ready indie animated epic Sita Sings the Blues. Once the hipsters and the YouTube set get their paws on this, it's gonna be huge. And you can mark it, Dude.
A special DVD Digest column on the great Treasures IV DVD set. Buy it, like, now.
Hey, cool! Another review of a new release! Here's my take on Watchmen.
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