JOHN: The first half made me sick to my stomach. Even though I lived during the period depicted in the film, I didn’t know that the help in Southern homes were required to use separate bathrooms (of course I did know public facilities were segregated). What were people thinking. And the women dressed like mannequins, what was that all about (what would Freud have made of them and their treatment of women of a different color). We must never forget, even if it is difficult to watch.

GO, GO, GO (3 GOs out of 4)

SPANKY: I agree about the beginning, but the second half of the movie turns this into a Lifetime Channel feature, with that soupy music and its pointing a finger at the especially contemptible women, which sort of lets the white audience off the hook. The “poop pie” is a nice ironic twist, but having the “Help” book be well received and the black maid going off at the end to be a writer like the white girl—all seem self-serving to make the early message more palatable for today’s viewers.

BARK (1 BARK out of 4)

"And the third place prize in our contest is, you're fired!"

SPANKY: I loved the Reservoir Dogs previews on this old VHS (John, are we down to this; not a movie, not even a DVD, but a VHS cassette, for gods sake! What’s next? Reviewing old-time radio programs?)  And this film/play is actors being actors in a competition for their lives: both in terms of the characters’ jobs and the perfumers vying with each other for the audience’s attention. It is pure yelling and screaming, in-your-face drama. Take that, Quentin Terrentino. 

BARK, BARK, BARK, BARK (4 Barks out of 4) 

JOHN: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris and Alec Baldwin are all at their peaks and the playwright, David Mamet, had not yet slipped into  that artificial Mamet-speak that became annoying. Love the setting of rain and the El train going over the viaduct at the end of the street. Ah Chicago! 

How many movies have there been about the pressures of work – and I can see why, “Hey for tonight’s date let’s go see a picture about the uncertainty and frustration of our jobs.” 

Is this movie too much? Yes. But we see it and we never have to see anything like it again.   

GO, GO, GO, GO (4 Go’s out of 4, and “Go” means get this on DVD or even, for old time sake, on VHS)

Manhattan, Woody Allen, 1979

SPANKY: You probably remember the stark panarama shots of the New York skyline against a lush George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”  But wait. Looking at this movie with John all these years later, things aren’t quite what is remembered. The movie voice-over is of the central character writing a novel and several times reworking the first chapter–each version expressing a different emotion.

When the movie first came out we were all wondering if Allen could still deliver. We were curious about Mariel Hemmingway (foreshadowing Sun Li?) and most important we were intrigued by an ending that flew in the face of romantic comedies until this time.

Check it out. Rembember who your were back when you first saw this.  The question is not, does the movie hold up. It is, do you?

BARK, BARK, BARK, BARK (4 Barks out of 4)

JOHN: And I am reminded of an one-person performance I saw on Broadway on Gershwin’s life years ago. Right before intermission, the pianist played a few bars of the classic “Rhapsody in Blue” and then stopped. Whetting our appetite. At the end of the two hours, the bio part complete, the lights dimmed and when they came up he played the familiar classic we had all been hummin to ourself since the intermission break.

That’s what Woody Allen does. The Diane Keaton entanglement, Mia Farrow (she has a bit part in the movie no one at the time would have noticed) and Allen being caught between the new (young) and the old, only to be rejected by both–all that is to get us humming, and we still are, with expectation thirty years later, watching the lights go on and come down, marveling how something simple can be so complex, and how a movie, a piece of music, our memory, can allow us to experience it all again and again.

GO, GO, GO, GO (Four “Go’s” out of four).

JOHN: Revisiting this classic, I was able to get beyond Pacino’s in-your-face theatrics and appreciate the movie’s plot structure and genuine, if not a bit corny, theme. At first it is hard to see what the blind, alcoholic, over-bearing retired army colonel and Chris O’Donnell, his weekend caretaker—a small town fish out of Eastern prep-school water—might have to offer each other, but eventually we do.

GO, GO, GO (3 GOs out of 4)

SPANKY: This is Pacino at his peak and what a surprise to see the young boy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, wincing through what must have been his first movie role. I wouldn’t want to see this  again, but, to be honest, its old-fashioned cavalcade of contrasting explosive and sentimental scenes does still work…barely. A Hollywood film about an irascible bully who proves to have a heart of gold seems particularly disheartening in a story that professes to take a stand on behalf of personal integrity.

BARK (1 BARK out of 4)

Drive – Nicolas Winding Refn, director, 2011

JOHN: There were noir themes worth exploring: the hero’s search for a father, loyalty to an attractive wife’s husband, saving a woman from evil, a man of honor walking the mean streets of LA and—best of all, from the opening sequence—the movies versus reality. Why this film chooses to not explore them is its real mystery.  Acting (Ryan Gosling as Clint Eastwood and Carey Mulligan as Naiomi Watts), music, stylistic photography are all great, but Drive flies off the cliff into a blood-splattering abyss. Like Albert Brooks, it tries to reinvent itself (or reinvent noir), but ends up a shadow of what it should be.

GO (1 GO out of 4)

SPANKY: John, you’re showing your age. There are some terrific effects here: the superimposed images, overhead shots of Los Angles, the shadow on the parking lot when     The Driver attacks Books and we don’t know who has gotten the better of the other, haunting music, moments of unspoken feeling between the lovers in a run-down apartment, the glimmer of a smile on  Gosling’s deadpan face at sunrise after the bloody climax. The violence is over the top, but don’t blame this film for that; and I don’t think it is a substitute for plot, but an attempt to place the themes you mention in a contemporary context. Just because you live in Wisconsin, and not California, doesn’t mean you can’t move ahead. It ain’t the forties, my Sydney Greenstreet friend!

BARK, BARK, BARK (3 BARKS out of 4)

SPANKY: You hear people say, “Why don’t they make movies like they used to?” Then you see an old fashioned horror film like this one, and realize, you can’t get away with that for today’s audiences. Sure the acting is good, the special effects seamless, even the subtext (a young girl’s being bounced from her divorced mother to a father in a relationship with another woman) could prove interesting. The old mansion the father is restoring is rich in sinister mood, but instead of Turn of the Screw, we get screwed. The movie doesn’t allow the characters depth to probe the psychological underbelly of their dynamics. Instead it gives us the expected screams in the dark, scurrying  monkey-like creatures and a corny reunification of father and daughter that we all probably want, but are bored silly to get.

BARK (1 BARK out of 4)

JOHN: Good horror provokes the imagination. Makes us wonder what has occured and dread what will happen next. This film makes us wonder when it will be over, what better uses we could have made of the money for tickets and where the hell we parked the car. There’s one good scene where the daughter (excellently played by Bailee Madison) has been taking Polaroid pictures of the creatures she alone sees. She shows one to her father and it is not them, but her screaming. Good place to end the film.

GO (1 GO out of 4)

JOHN: This is one of those maybe, maybe not film experiences. We are assaulted by street art (graffiti), then sold on a story of a guy documenting it on film who later becomes a graffiti maker himself ending up with a big show in Los Angeles, except… This legitimizing of his art is all a fake. The gallery is a fake, the movie is a fake. Anyone who thought they knew what was going on in the film, is a fake. This is certainly a film to argue about on the way home, even if you are driving by yourself. I can’t think of anything remotely like this, maybe The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. 

 GO, GO, GO, GO (4 GOs out of four) 

SPANKY: I like plot and characters interacting, then trying to ferret out the sub plot, but I have to admit this captures that kind of Andy Warhol pop movement and then turns it on its head. I’m not sure what we’re suppose to do with that, but it does get me thinking about, not only graphic art, but film. Isn’t that a hoax. A fake. Yet we love to be taken in and once in awhile need to examine the process (even if this feels we are watching a home-made video). Go see Exit with that point of view and you will be pleasantly surprised. Go to it thinking there will be traditional characters in traditional scenes and you might want to spray paint the theater afterwards.

BARK, BARK, BARK (3 BARKs out of four)

Banksy Quotes: 

I don’t think Thierry played by the rules in some ways; but, then there are not suposed to be any rules. So, I don’t really know what mine is. I mean I always used to encourage everyone I met to make art, I used to think everyone should do it. I don’t do that so much anymore.

I don’t know what it means, Thierry is huge success and a rival in the art world. I mean, maybe, Thierry was a genius all along. Maybe, he got a bit lucky. Maybe, it means art is a bit of a joke.

Thierry (the supposed film-maker and eventual street artist)  is a kind of the rightful heir to Andy Warhol in a way. Andy Warhol made a statement by repeating famous icons until they became meaningless. But, he was extremely iconic in the way he did it. But, then Thierry really made them meaningless.

JOHN: The movie begins with a ten minute picture montage (with vintage jazz) of city scenes—morning, noon, rain, by the river, streets, intersections lit by streetlights at night. This is not Manhattan, but Paris. Paris today and the Paris of Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, Dali, Gertrude Stein and Hemingway. And not only we, but Woody Allen has arrived. Oh, there were some unpleasant detours on the long journey—Stardust Memories, Interiors, Hollywood Ending. Self-conscious efforts to be serious, to be profound. But in the last few years there were also Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Match Point.

The audience where Bob Wake and I saw the film (The Sundance Theater in Madison) laughed at all the right places which were intelligent, literary references. I’m not sure the movie would move someone who wasn’t already hungry for the days when we were young and enjoyed these artists (especially the long nights we spent arguing about their work). As I walked out of the theater I said, “What? We’re in Madison, not Paris!” and despite the film’s theme about living in the present, I was disappointed not to be in the City of Light. Thanks to Allen, I will now always be able to return there.

GO, GO, GO, GO (4 GOs out of 4)

SPANKY: Owen Wilson is more than a Woody Allen stand-in, he is himself, and scenes of him sauntering through Paris are almost enough to watch in themselves. All the performances are fine, especially the Hemingway actor and Adrien Brody as Dali, but the film starts to drag a little once we understand its conceit, until the plot kicks in and Wilson’s character has to choose between his fiancé and Picasso’s mistress, between the present and the idealized past. The ending is very clever and satisfying. This is not an homage to any other film. It is Allen doing what he has always done best, but without hitting us over the head with it. Midnight in Paris is an experience to savor. There are still movies; there are still audiences. And at least one writer/director treats us the way we deserve.

BARK, BARK, BARK, BARK (4 BARKS out of 4)

JOHN: I have read a lot of Highsmith’s books (including her Ripley novels) and including this one from about ten years ago. Hollywood has loved her things ever since Hitchcock’s Strangers on the Train, but I see a problem—not with the particular characters or plots—but rather in the difference between a book and a movie. This well executed, terrible movie is a perfect example. When I read her, I am the central character making, at first, very excusable choices that ultimately lead to a certain amorality. We are backed into a corner and hardly knew it was happening. “Thank God,” you say, “this was only a book.” But in a movie or DVD we are an audience watching someone else go through this. There is distance right from the beginning and the result is we can easily dismiss these oddballs. Perhaps this is expecting too much, but other movies work on their own terms and her books are so intimate and convincing it is a shame they lose something in translation to the screen , but this is based on a difference in mediums not production values or acting skills. 

GO, (1 GO out of 4)

SPANKY: I agree with John (for once) but rather than waist time repeating what he has said, let me give you some guidelines Patricia Highsmith, herself, suggested to writers.

1. Have two major (possibly conflicting ) ideas within each peace
2. Begin toward the end.
3. Emotion is key.
4. Most books change ¾ of the way through.
5. First paragraph should be short.
6. First sentence—action, movement without the reasons for the movement.
7. The first chapter establishes lines of action.
8. Use dialogue sparingly to make it more dramatic.
9. Authors attract material they need when they are writing the novel.
10. See one chapter beyond the one you’re writing.
11. Does the reader care about the character? 

In the case of this movie, I think the viewer understands and empathizes with the character (#11) but I don’t think he or she cares in the same way as if that viewer were the character. And the ironic twist at the end is a poor cancelation prize. 

BARK (1 BARK out of 4)

Director Woody Allen

JOHN: Given the state of modern films Spanky and I thought it might be interesting to look back over the last fifty years of movies and find some that were breakthroughs for directors, actors and/or audiences.

Before Annie Hall, Allen seemed to be caught between being a nerd among Playboy bunnies and a stand-up comedian popular with college intellectuals. But here there is more. Some of his phobias about California,  prejudice against Jews and confusion concerning women are played out, not for the sake of the script but because he really wants to find answers. Later he was to visually try being Bergmanesque, but in this vital pursuit, he is, and we in the audience feel it on all levels.

GO, GO, GO, GO (4 GOs out of 4)

SPANKY: When Diane Keaton sings “Seems Like Old Times,” watching this Allen classic, you melt. And the collage at the end takes on a kind of retrospective too. But this isn’t just about Woody. It is our lives, that we re-create to fit our present. Movie as talisman. Rich, ever growing in significance, not because of what it says to us, but what we can find in it that we didn’t until we grew. And this one is as good today, no better today, than it ever was. The Woody Allen, the Diane Keaton, the New York, love, the role movies and plays and books play in our lives, could not be more satisfying. 34 years from now we will not be watching Hangover 2.

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

1977: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Diane Keaton), Best Original Screenplay.