WHAT MAKES THIS A MOVIE GEM?

Groundhog Day, Harold Ramis, director, 1993

 HOOK: A trip into the romantic comedy Twilight Zone.

 LINE:  She: Do you ever have déjà vu? 

                 He: Didn’t you just ask me that?

SINKER: Seize the day!

SPANKY: Weird how the only guests on TV are plugging movies. Whatever happened to books, plays, magazines, even other TV programs? Then you go to the theater and the seats are empty. My take is that we want it to work. More than any other media movies can make us part of the process. The fact that most don’t or that we are so critical even of those that do, shows we want and need at least some of them to succeed. In a way they are like the story of Groundhog Day, recycling plots of movies that work. And once in a while, through this repetition we grasp something that changes our lives. Let’s face it, we start out not wanting the smarmy Bill Murray character to get the girl (Andie MacDowell, a symbol of some higher plane). We don’t like him because we don’t like ourselves. Given a life free of consequences we would also be reckless, depressed, suicidal, drunken, dishonest, etc., etc. But by the end of the movie we are cheering him on and looking at the missed opportunity of our own rather repetitive lives as well.

 BARK, BARK, BARK, BARK (4 BARKs out of four)

 JOHN: I agree, Spanky, we leave the movie changed. And this is a clever fable about movie-making as well. Actors endure endless retakes of the same scene, trying to keep it fresh. And our lives too, like the weatherman Phil’s are repetitious, with the tiniest variations of pleasures and annoyances. And yet, we can make something out of this. “Today is the first day of the rest of our lives” (Arrrggg, I never thought I would ever say that). Most movies are escapism, this one ends up being just the opposite, like Dickens’ Scrooge or A Wonderful Life. The fact that it does this without making a big deal of it, let’s us assume ownership of our own transformation. Brilliant, quirky, wildly original Groundhog Day says, “Make the most of your time on earth.” And by God, that is what we come away from it determined to do. 

GO GO GO GO (4 GOs out of four) 

A SERIOUS MAN

A Serious Man, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 2009

shrink-wrap for the soul

HOOK: Is the cat in the house, dead or alive?

 LINE:  “Even though you can’t ever figure anything out, you will be responsible for it on the midterm.”

 SINKER: How can someone ‘who hasn’t done anything’ be blamed for everything? A Book of Job treat with a razor hidden in it. 

JOHN: As our friend Bob (at Coffeespew) points out the new suburbs of the fifties and sixties are old territory for authors like John Updike. So why do the Coen brothers revisit them (other than the fact that this is where they grew up in one around Minneapolis)? I think there’s a broader question concerned with the difference between comedy and drama—a line they’ve crossed with mixed results in the past. In drama we in the audience want to identify with the protagonist, feel that what is happening to him is happening to us. We are curious and relieved (even if things turn out badly, “It is only a movie.”). Comedy requires more distance. We recognize the situations but want to laugh at the characters, not ourselves. Whether or not the Coens relate to the Larry Gopnik character (superbly played by newcomer Michael Stuhlbarg in a career launching performance), we don’t, even if the fact that this involves his Jewishness makes it a bit of an uncomfortable laugh. The genius of this film is that it doesn’t stay in the mid sixties. The last moments, like impending doom, roll out at us today. I found the movie funny, at times stereotyped and slow, but ultimately a masterpiece that leaves you gasping.

GO GO GO GO (4 GOs out of four) 

SPANKY: The fact that you have to do all this rationalizing, John, seems to me to indicate that the film isn’t making it on its own terms (like Fargo). We can debate great films, like those of Bergman and Fellini, all night, but whether or not we do they stand as great films. This one has some magical moments: the sequence with the young rabbi, the tale of the message on the teeth of the Jewish dentist’s client, Sly Abelman—beautifully played by Fred Melamed—even the dark, sub-titled prologue. And I agree, the shift of vantage point from the father to his son toward the end gives the conclusion knock-out power. But it also seems to me the movie has to work a little harder than it should have to. And we in the audience do too. Plus the two-dimensional, hair-washing daughter, the Jewish lawyers, the Nazi-like neighbors and the desperate housewife next door…com’on. This may be much better than their other recent movies, but the Coen boys are still a long way from home.

BARK, BARK (2 BARKs out of four)

 

Michael Stuhlbarg, Fred Melamed, Richard Kind, Aaron Wolf, Sari Wagner, Jessica McManus, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen,  Sari Lennick , A Serious Man, Fargo, Comedy, Drama, Coen Brothers, No Country For Old Men, Man Who Wasn’t There, Woody Allen

THE DRAUGHTSMAN’S CONTRACT

The Draughtsman’s Contract, Peter Greenaway, Director, 1982

"Hold Still!"

 HOOK: Sex, Drama & Rococo Droll

LINE:  “Draw what you see, not what you know.”

SINKER: Fastidious meets facetious. An impish sneer that later hardens into a death- mask grimace. 

JOHN: In a static 17^th Century world where men and women wear brocade robes and white-wigs tall as wedding cakes, a “cocky” artist is contracted by the woman of an estate and her daughter to do a series of drawings while the husband/father is out of town in exchange for money and sexual favors. The husband ends up dead and the pictures contain clues for the audience to figure out who did it. So far so good, but I couldn’t. One critic suggests viewing the film many times, but I’m afraid that’s too much for me also. Let’s just leave it at this: The Draughtsman’s Contract is a masterpiece beyond most people’s grasp.

GO GO GO (3 GOs out of four) 

SPANKY: My favorite part is the nude guy painted silver who poses as statues in different scenes. What the hell! And the jaunty Michael Nyman’s score based on motifs lifted from Purcell makes you feel at any moment this will turn into Tom Jones. But it doesn’t. Nor does it make any more or less sense than anything humans ever do. The film’s visual composition is plush and the script dizzyingly crammed with wit, conceit, insult, allusion, innuendo and equivocation. There’s sex, snotty people and flamboyant costumes. What more could you want.

“TWO PAWS Up” (4 BARKs out of four)

 

The Informant!

The Informant! Steven Soderbergh, Director, 2009

 

HOOK: Tired of special effects movies and Jenifer Aniston, bet you’d enjoy a comedy about corporate price fixing. 

"Can you hear me now!"

 LINE:  “I’m Agent 0014 because I’m twice as smart as James Bond.” 

SINKER: The tip-off is the exclamation point at the end of the title.  

JOHN: There’s something appealing about the nervous, awkward, optimistic, delusional, rambling-voice-over kind of guy Damon plays (even about the Decatur, Illinois setting) that makes you not only like him, but fearful for the mess we think he’s getting into. He’s in charge of a lysine-manufacturing operation bleeding money. He tells his bosses that a mole is sabotaging the operation and that a confidential source will reveal all for ten million dollars. They call in the FBI. Soon the Damon character, Whitacre, is wowing them with allegations that ADM is involved with massive price-fixing. Hardly your regular Saturday night plot. Then something strange happens. If you saw the previews, as I have on a couple of occasions, you come prepared to believe Whitacre, but, as it turns out, that’s a mistake. And in making it you will not be alone in. As Whitacre plays the others, Soderbergh plays us. And I have to admit, I bought it hook, line and sinker.  

GO GO GO GO (4 GOs out of four) 

SPANKY: Damon is terrific and the rest of the cast is too. No one looks Hollywood. There’s an expression we have here in Wisconsin that I think might be apt for Whitacre. He’s a “country slicker.” Yet as endearing as he ends up being, there are some interesting points made along the way about price-fixing, the legal morass many investigations must find themselves in and, finally, about what kind of a person making millions would turn whistle-blower. Soderbergh casts comedians in many of the film’s key roles—especially attorneys, both for and against Whitacre; which exerts a reductive effect on the seriousness and substance of Whitacre’s legal battles. Damon’s non-sequitur voice over observations are priceless, and provide semi-conscious clues when looking back on the film that give us those, ”Why didn’t I see that?” moments. Maybe a little too much so. After all this is an indictment of a system—economic, legal and political—that endorses or rewards deception. We can laugh, but shouldn’t we also be worried? Who is being self-delusional now?   

“TWO PAWS Up” (3 BARKs out of four)

Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds – WHAT WENT WRONG?

The Inglourious Basterd

Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino – Director, 2009

HOOK: What if the Jews were the Nazis and the Nazis were the Jews, then how would we feel?

LINE:  “I want my scalps!” 

SINKER: We caught the friend who drove us there, Bob Wake, in the men’s room after the show trying to burn down the theater.

JOHN: In this over-the-top revenge fantasy Tarantino continues his ability to build scenes through dialogue that at first catch you off guard and then take on issues below the surface that inevitably end in violent bloodshed. This whole movie is made of scenes like that which lead to what? Collosal violent, bloodshed. There is no sense of character development nor any surprising revelation. In a sense he takes the genre (period war film) for face value and plays it for all it’s worth. Perhaps in doing that this bad boy of cinema gives audiences and himself exactly what they want (killing Nazis). I realized a few minutes into the film that any discussion of rewriting history or the question of portraying Jews as avengers, was beside the point. In some ways this is better than his gangster movies (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs) because it seems like it will play on our preconceived values and gives us a fresh take on the context of our lives. But that only carries us so far — about two-thirds of the movie. But then we want more, not simply more of the same, but more.

GO, GO, GO (3 GOs out of four)

SPANKY: It’s not just self-indulgence (though that’s a downside of director as writer), Tarantino misses a wonderful opportunity. This film is as much about movies as it is about WWII, maybe more. How they reflect reality /or let us escape from it. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) is an entertaining, insightful villain, but it’s the Melanie Laurent character, Shoshanna, who is the soul of the movie. She is out for vengeance but beneath her cold resolve beats the heart of a terrified child. As she lies dying and her theater is burning, she should be imagining the ending we see (of dying Nazi leaders), instead of the fictionalizing romp T-Man (as ballsy as he is) presents. Think Fellini, Bergman and Truffaut. It could have been a symbolic comment on the creative process that allows us, not only to survive, but to be great. True, the Brad Pitt finale would have had to be curtailed, but by this time we’re sick of his over-acted character anyway. What could have been profound, is simply noisy, and only to do with us at the movies. We leave the theater, the same people we were when we came in. As Nick Caraway says at the end of the Great Gatsby: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”  Maybe Bob Wake had the right idea after all.  

“ONE PAW Up” (1 BARK out of four)

 

CHINATOWN – GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME

Chinatown  - Roman Polanski, Director, 1974

 

All you can eat buffet

HOOK: John Huston, who’s first film was the iconic Maltese Falcon plays a pivotal role in the last American film of  Roman Polanski (whose wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered in 1969) to create the ultimate film on LA, corruption and the underbelly of the American Dream. Polanski later fled the US after being convicted of statutory rape that stemmed from a party at Nicholson’s house.

LINE: “I like my nose. I like breathing through it.”  “She’s my sister. She’s my daughter. My sister. My daughter. She’s my sister and my daughter.” “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

SINKER: Robert Towne’s script is incredibly rich, more than movie audiences today might be able to handle. He beautifully incorporates Jack Nicholson’s speech patterns and the choices of an alien-like Faye Dunaway and bullying John Huston are inspired. But it was Polanski who gave then ending an immortal spin few movies have ever achieved (one that did might be with Bogart’s last line in Maltese Falcon). 

JOHN: There’s a term in mystery-story writing called “after-shadowing.” It’s the opposite of foreshadowing in that when the piece is over, looking back, all the disparate parts of the puzzle are seen to fit. That well defines this stylish classic. The script is complex, yet coherent. The acting, top of the game. Like the music, this one haunts you. An attempted sequel twenty years later (The Two Jakes) was lame. 

GO, GO, GO, GO (4 GOs out of four) 

SPANKY: Unfortunately this film came out the same year as The Godfather, Part 2, which grabbed most of the Oscars away it (“Forget it, Roman, it’s Hollywood!”). But it does raise some questions. First, why the hell can’t we go to new movies like either of these two today? Second, in a media that is devoted to escapism why do we honor what seems realistic rather than one that directly addresses, while embracing, the escapist genre? It might seem that what we want is the illusion of truth rather than truth (for truth we just need to look out the window, not hole up in a dark theater). So a movie that questions that, Chinatown, no matter how great, will be penalized. Though later, I wonder which remains embedded most firmly within us. And isn’t that the real prize? At one point the actress impersonating Evelyn Mulwray asks Nicholson’s J.J. Gittes on the phone if he’s alone (he isn’t). Jake responds, “Isn’t everyone?” Like that viewer in a darkened theater, Jake is an alienated man searching for some connection in a cruel world. 

“TWO PAWs Up” (4 BARKs out of four) 

INSIDE TRACK: Jack Nicholson was known to his high school friends as “Nick”, and was voted “class clown” by the Class of 1954 at Manasquan High School. In 2004, Nicholson attended his 50 year high school reunion, much to the surprise of his fellow classmates. When he first came to Hollywood, Nicholson worked as a go-fer for animation legends, Hanna-Barbera. Seeing his talent as an artist, they offered Nicholson a starting level position as an animation artist. However, citing his desire to become an actor, he declined.

PS Click here, August 08, to see our first review of Chinatown.

 

THE GODFATHER, PART 2 – GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME

The Godfather, Part 2, Francis Ford Coppola – Director, 1974 

 

Where’s Brando? Does anyone care?    

 

HOOK: Trying to understand what happened to America (not just the Mafia). 

LINE: “Michael, we’re bigger than U.S. Steel.” 

SINKER: Not only do we get to see Michael’s consolidation of strength as new, very corporate head of the Mob family moving West to open casinos in Las Vegas and the personal price he pays, we get to see how it all started in flashbacks to a righteous, young Vito’s rise from poverty to power during the early part of the twentieth century. What scope! 

JOHN: Remember Al Pacino. I mean do you really remember him. When the music begins it goes straight to your heart. Like good poetry, a good movie alters your perspective on a subject forever. Like great poetry, this film offers something new each time you watch it. The seamless balance between the past and present creates a drama of opposites with layers of nuance. The rockpile of Scisily becomes a gala in Nevada where hypocrisy continues to play out. It’s dark inside (the film is in color but all night and silhouettes). What do we, the audience, come to Michael (the Godfather) for. We have to see through this darkness but can’t. Let’s face it, we’re not Michael or even Diane Keaton. We are Fredo. 

GO, GO, GO, GO (4 GOs out of four) 

SPANKY: Just when you think an actor couldn’t be any better than Pacino, along comes DeNiro—jumping roof tops of NYC’s Little Italy as the dirge of a religious parade snakes through streets below. He is the avenging angel, and that is who we the audience are too, John. But that’s what makes the ending so incredibly strong. After a cascade of violence we get a close-up of Michael Corleone’s sitting in the near dark of his boat house. There is silence following the gunshot killing his brother. Silence, and then after a moment the theme music kicks in again. We know it’s not the end, even if part three were never added. This is James Agee and Walker Evans made new. This should be required viewing every ten years. This is an American masterpiece. 

“TWO PAWs Up” (4 BARKs out of four) 

GOSSIP: Interestingly, in order for Coppola to make the first “Godfather” film in New York, he had to agree not to use the words “Mafia” or “Cosa Nostra” anywhere in it (the film refers to the Mob as the “family business” and the “syndicate,” instead). Otherwise, the New York Mob might have caused trouble with the production. The gangsters, though, liked what they eventually saw. Also that Coppola initially wanted Sir Laurence Olivier to play Don Vito Corleone, but novelist Mario Puzo wanted Brando, and Brando won out, thanks to his own eager desire to play the role and despite Paramount’s less-than-enthusiastic appraisal of the idea. In fact, the studio showed its displeasure with most of Coppola’s choices for the major roles, including using relative unknown Al Pacino as young Michael which almost pushed things to the point of the studio firing the director. Brando later said he tried to imitate gangster Frank Costello’s voice in the movie, but he had to redub some of his dialogue because it was so hard to understand. Everyone assumed Brando would come back to star in the sequel, but he said he had done the first film as a social comment on American corporate power and had no interest in doing another one. The fact that Paramount still didn’t want much to do with the tempestuous Brando probably added to the actor turning down the role. So, Coppola worked around him, filming a few scenes with the older Don present but out of the room. By the way, if the Corleone estate at Lake Tahoe looks impressive, it should be; it was the property of former industrialist Henry J. Kaiser.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIER – WHAT WENT WRONG?

Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle – Director, 2008  

Can we change the channel?

HOOK: Looking at a miserable life from the possibility of a new one that comes out of nowhere. 

LINE:  “Can you believe this use to be our slum?” 

SINKER: This movie is: a) a classic  b) overrated  c) better than watching the game show on TV  d) worth discussing with the tech-support guy on your next call to India 

SPANKY: kids and photography are spectacular. The framework: heavy handed, exploitive and audience demeaning. What bothers me most is that we have to see this reality through gimmicks and promises of wealth. The fantasy of Bollywood seems more genuinely intended. This is a “knock ‘em down, pick ‘em up” Capra film, viewers have moved beyond. In the end it is a racist melodrama that uses real misery and human degradation as the backdrop for a fairytale of how everything works out in the end by winning a goddamned Western game show. 

“TWO PAWs Down” (1 BARK out of four) 

JOHN: I agree. This is a love song for the tone deaf told in 90% flashback. Why not assume an audience is smart and give them something that is worth their time (if not their emotions)? Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot it’s a movie for people who watch TV (“The Bachelor,” “America’s Got Talent,” “Deal or No Deal”). And let’s be really PC and give the film an armload full of Oscars. That certainly takes care of any problems of poverty, crime, child molestation and racism. The final musical number is worth the price of admission, but not our souls. Not our souls. 

GO, GO (2 GOs out of four)

JAMES BOND – What Went Wrong?

Quantum of Solace, Marc Forster – Director, 2008  

Ian Fleming's grave at Sevenhampton--where he is now turning over.

 

 

HOOK: Now Bond is killing fans. 

LINE:  “Who do you trust?” 

SINKER: Do we really deserve this!

 SPANKY: This film starts out with some of the most dazzling personal-chase footage ever seen, then quickly follows it with a plot, characters and settings that are so bad they completely negate the entire Bond franchise. For almost fifty years this has been “over the top” entertainment, with fantasy villains, sexy women, stirring music and preposterous payoffs. Now we get one-note Daniel Craig and some mishmash about global warming even Al Gore wouldn’t buy. You take on the Borne movies by dumping every imaginative thing we’ve been lapping up all these years? If we wanted the Borne films we’d go to the Borne films! All the sex, glamour and fantasy of the movies feels kicked in the groin. All this film does is remind us of all we are missing. I’d rather drink out of the toilet bowl. 

“TWO PAWs Down” (0 BARKs out of four) 

JOHN: As a kid sitting in the theater I was OO7 for two hours. Two hours of sex, tuxedos, ironic asides, my own theme and most important…a license to kill. So here’s a film that supposedly takes all those perks away from our hero. Who’s he suppose to be? Me? For that I don’t need buy a ticket and sit in the dark! I say get the old Sean Connery back. Give him his gun and let him shoot Daniel Craig, Remington Steel, Timothy Dalton and even Roger Moore. That would get us out of our seats cheering more than kickboxing, people falling through glass, and settings in Bolivia. What the hell is Hollywood thinking?   

No GOs (out of four)

 

PUBLIC ENEMIES

Public Enemies, Michael Mann, Director, 2009   

Have hat will travel!

HOOK: The film for the new depression.

LINE:  “My name is John Dillinger. I rob banks.” 

SINKER: “Where are you going?” “Anywhere I want.”

SPANKY: I know John grew up in Chicago and as a kid went to movies at the Biograph where Dillinger was shot (and even traced the filled bullet holes in the cement), but this film doesn’t add anything to the genre as far as I’m concerned—in fact it skirts over opportunities to do this that Bonnie and Clyde and the Godfather, Part 2, didn’t. On the positive side, it is very tactile: men’s wool pants, the glint of old cars on city streets in the rain at night, fur collars on women’s cloth coats. And the surreal detail of the HD camerawork with the severe close ups create an intensity we don’t get in real life, much less in history. I didn’t buy Dillinger falling for the girl, nor feel I got any new insight into his character. I loved the opening (prison break) sequence and the final collage seen by a brazen Dillinger on the bulletin board of the Chicago Police’s special John Dillinger squad room, is brilliant. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the film is not.

“ONE PAW Up” (2 BARKs out of four)

JOHN: I think this is a terrific film, though I admit a lot depends upon what you bring to it. If you feel, as I do, somewhat disenfranchised and overwhelmed (by trillion dollar health reform, for example) shooting a Tommy gun off in the woods is appealing. (PS I don’t like guns, and never have, but was raised listening to “Gangbusters” on the radio in bed at night with the lights out.) Psychological depth was never at the heart of gangster movies— that’s a later addition from the sixties and seventies—but that glint in Depp’s eye as he watches Clark Gable in Manhattan Melodrama on the screen is the same one we share watching Depp as Dillinger today. Who gives a fuck, we just want to be in the movies. The politicking of J. Edgar Hoover, the ambivalence of straight-guy Christian Bale are enough of a hint why we’re in such a mess today. When the fetching Marion Cotillard tears over the departed gangster at the end, we do to. Not only for him but for ourselves. No, this movie is perfect as it is. If you don’t like it, you’re not bringing your true self to the experience.  

GO GO GO GO (4 GOs out of four)