NO
WYSIWYG: The Man Without a
Face is Mel Gibson's
d�but as director and, I think, it's much better helmed than his
Oscar-winning Bravefart. Granted, it doesn't have Gibson cavorting
his bare ass in front of the camera or have heads and innards splattered
across the screen, so therefore it isn't the kind of movie those who love
his Three Stooges juvenility would line up to see. (And they didn't.)
The Man Without a
Face
is about the ill-effects of falsifying
otherwise innocent or delicate situations: if it has the depressing moralistic
posturing of Diane Keaton's The Good Mother뾲hat sometimes
truth isn't enough to open the minds of Philistines뾦t's nevertheless
a reminder that children are used to shield adults from the fear of exposing
their own willful ignorance. (In America we're more afraid of not joining
the comfort of pack mentality than the fear of the Judeo-Christian belief
of condemnation for breaking the 9th Commandment.) The way Gibson handles
the subject matter is evidence of his sensitivity to society's punishing
hypocrisies; it confirms that when he wishes he can overlook his own lack
of finesse and his convenient intolerance about what the real world is made
of. And not surprising, considering his own brood, is the expert handling
of the kids뾥e knows their wandering adventures, use of forbidden language,
their insensitivities and instant querulous eruptions뾞nd
he's especially adept at what he gets out of his co-star Nick Stahl.
Gibson himself wasn't his first choice to star in the role and therein may
be a slight discomfort: he hadn't yet lost his celebrated good looks (clearly
absent by The Patriot), so when the audience gets its first
lengthy views of his Pizzahead, the makeup despite intentions is depreciated.
But not for long: Gibson is acting for a change and that's always worth seeing;
The Man Without A
Face is the last film before
Payback that isn't his tiresome WYSIWYG.
Mickey One is all about Warren Beatty and director Arthur Penn farting
out an 밶rt� flick as gesture to Fellini and Godard, with a decidedly depressing Willard Motley atmospheric mix of Chicago뭩 Maxwell Street, DPs, a bit of Nelson Algren and the infamous Marina Towers. Four things going for it, at least for a while뾄eatty뭩 boyish handsomeness that hadn뭪 tipped over yet into sterile plastic, Ghislain Pieree Cloquet뭩 black and white photography, a friendly jazz score by Eddie Sauter highlighted by some nifty improvisations by the great Stan Getz, and faces. A lot of faces, with
character oozing out of them ala Studs Turkel or a Mike Royko column, blessedly without names. For the first half hour, the gritty imagery flies by and we뭨e working just as fast to collate it into something coherent, when to expect that it make sense belies its arty fartiness. Beatty뭩 Mickey is on the run from Detroit mobsters he doesn뭪 know for a crime he뭩 not sure he committed. He seeks refuge in Chicago, taking a crack at standup comedy at local dives until he뭩 offered a gig on Rush Street by Hurd
Hatfield (doing his usual cryptogenics). Warren뭩 got little if any protection뾲here are no famous co-stars supporting him, no glam shots in glam outfits propping up ironic airs; what뭩 coming out of him is a mystifying trust only in himself and distrust in Penn. If there뭩 an intelligence hidden in the gassy script, we뭨e not recognizing much beyond the whiffs of urban paranoia but
we see the smarts working in Warren as he뭩 trying to find something, just as we can see how he found a way to bring a bit of whatever to the rot of The Only Game in Town. (One of Beatty뭩 unacknowledged gifts early-on was his ability to make himself watchable as a loser or in mundane or confusing scripts, later to become unwatchable in similar follow-ups.) Mickey One has a Let No Man Write My Epitaph
grunginess that saves
it as a curiosity. With Alexandra Stewart, Franchot Tone, Jeff Corey and Kamatari Fujiwara as the junk artist, the kind of flora absurda that sprouted in too many of Fellini뭩 movies and would blossom to Academy Award glory, with limp and bummer teeth, in Ryan뭩 Daughter. One of the production designer Sylbert twins thumbnails it: Mickey One �.
HOOSEGOW DE LUXE:
Woman friends of mine love Mrs.
Soffel, Gilliam Armstrong's bittersweet,
based-on-fact romancer starring Mel Gibson and Diane Keaton. Partly, they
tell me, it's the boy-toyism of Gibson's youthfulness, making them want to
do what Diane does뾵rap their protective arms around
his dangerous petulance. They also admire Diane's character's courage to move on,
facing the harsh proscriptions for her adultery, for her abandonment of her
children. Chiaroscuristic in style, provocative in its tone, the movie's
not a 뱖oman's picture� in the way we regard certain 40s and 50s
melodramas, when the obligatory suffering is faked to be noble and righteous.
Calling it feminist, though, wouldn't at all be a put-down. In fact, its
early 20th century setting swoons with suffragettism. For no apparent reasoning,
I'm ambivalent towards the movie; I respect it, recognize that both stars
are very good뾫either has ever been this
controlled뾞nd admire the trappings. Maybe I admire one
of the trappings more than anything else because it seems to overwhelm the
movie: Pittsburgh's Allegheny County Jail. Designed by Henry Hobson Richardson
in 1885, and completed in 1888 (and, when last checked, still in use for family and juvenile incarceration), it's a monument to the Piranesian style
of architecture, and by this I mean the jail conforms to the artistic schemes
of the Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi, set forth in his renowned
collection of imaginary prisons entitled Carceri d'Invenzione.
Piranesi saw Roman ruins (sub prisons) as 밼antastic, immeasurable dungeons
dominated by immense, gloom arcades, staircases rising to incredible heights,
and bizarre galleries leading nowhere.� His engravings became an important
influence on 19th century romanticism and also played a role in the development
of early 20th century surrealism. The Allegheny County Jail is
stylistically romantic, and there's definitely something hugely
incongruous and absurd about it. Not only a great place in which to make
a movie뾦t's the real star of
Mrs.
Soffel�it would
also make a great disco or mall, or the prison of Mel's choice when he finally
ends up in one.
Rarely ever got into Doris Day. She was pleasant enough most of the time, though at some point she always turned into an automat. In her comedies and musicals, she was the virginal Jane Lynch you cracked jokes about. It뭩 of course true that she was miscast as
Ruth Etting in Love Me or Leave Me and when she sang 밫en Cents a Dance,� you weren뭪 sure for whom she was so mesomorphically shimming in her flashy dress. But the asexual overtones were compelling, like an Amazon on an urbanizing drip. In the popular Pillow Talk, she and Rock Hudson had a good time in what looked to be a party for two but don뭪 we all wish they hadn뭪 made those two follow ups? The only time I뭭e really countenanced her is in Please Don뭪 Eat the Daisies, a comedy based on Jean Kerr뭩 best seller about the escapades associated with being married to the famous theatre critic Walter Kerr. With names changed and the idiocy rather mild, it뭩 an unnecessary family picture that doesn뭪 cloy too much because the critic David Niven and wife Doris have kids as pranksters who get laughs in the background. It뭩 Doris뭩 nonchalant responses to the kids that surprise; she뭩 not frantic,
she뭩 nearly natural in ignoring the fact that one of the brats is locked up in a cage or sitting on a barred up window sill of the cramped high rise apartment dropping water bombs. If not a likely choice to be a Niven costar, she matches up with him far better than she does with stiffmeister Cary Grant. The dilemma of critics interacting with the stars they review is given minimal wit, similar to Bob Hope in Critic뭩 Choice, the juicier possibilities sacrificed for a broader audience. In her last
movie role, Spring Byington lobs off a few good ones and the zingiest is aimed at derri�re diva Janis Paige. Customary for Hollywood back then to give Doris a few songs to sing and the two full numbers provided are bummers. With Doris뭩 clout, couldn뭪 she have put her foot down and refuse to sing those few bars of 밯hatever Will Be�?
Portrait in Black is another of producer Ross Hunter뭩 inglorious vanities showcasing the only remaining exploitable asset Lana Turner had left뾱leazing her way through histrionic sexcapades.
(The boys of Bad Movies We Love are a bit kinder뾵inking that she뭩 been processed like 밶 four-course Velveeta banquet.�) In her previous Hunter sm�rg�sbord, Imitation of Life, Lana pretended to be both a virtuous mother to Sandra Dee and an acclaimed theatre star hoping to nab the leading role in a faux Fellini picture. Her fraudulence, the expensive jewels and furs, the patented sticky blond globs and
slutty titlessness were thankfully overshadowed once Susan Kohner started to pass herself off as white, was beaten up by Troy Donahue and then suffered the most extravagantly humiliating sobbing ever by a daughter at her own mother뭩 funeral. Nothing comparably rank in Portrait but there are some pluses: despite its awfulness뾲he escalating badness of Anthony Quinn뾎ana on occasion looks healthy in a
Claire Trevor sort of way, gets amusingly slammed by her soon-to-air-bubbled-in-the-heart husband Lloyd Nolan who tells her that she needs 밶 vitamin shot for love deficiency,� fends off Richard Basehart뭩 advances and fireplace iron assault, drives for the very first time (after getting her driver뭩 permit) a finned-up chromed-to-the-max Chrysler at night in a downpour on California뭩 Highway 1 without knowing which button to push to use the windshield wipers and earns a mighty slap for her confederate efforts
by lover Quinn. Portrait is a flimsy redo of The Postman Always Rings Twice, allowing Lana to survive the original crash to duplicate all those sins of imbecility뾢ven to receive two letters that have suspiciously timed arrivals. Hardly a moment when we didn뭪 fight the gag reflexes of her mother love to Dee in Imitation, but as extra plus here she뭩 Dee뭩 stepmother and it뭩 minor fun watching
Dee size her up. (When she comes into Quinn뭩 sights as the next victim, we뭨e not too sure if she should be saved.) The miscasting of Quinn as a husband murderer is too conspicuous; inference rules that his tall greasy darkishness is Johnny Stompanato camouflaged as a doctor smitten by the insanity Lana뭩 mysterious bewitchment causes in men. If her 1940s ripeness might pardon Garfield뭩 lunacy, it뭩 those original oil paintings on the walls of Quinn뭩 pad that are much more likely the culprit of his homicidal
tendencies. Though the abominations are provided a screen credit for the Martin Lowitz Gallery, the artists are not; the anonymity is the smartest move made in this enjoyably rattlebrained trash.
When Alexander Dumas wrote
La Reine
Margot
(Queen
Margot), a 1845 novel first
serialized as two-page installments in French periodicals, readers were reported
to have fainted as well as salivated at the super nasty deeds of Margot's
mommie Catherine de M�dici who orchestrated the infamous 1572 St.
Bartholomew's Day Massacre against the hated Huguenots just five days after
Margot married Henri of Narvarre. The ensuing bloodbath so revolted the world
that even Ivan the Terrible was said to have condemned it. But Dumas (and
the editors) knew the drawing power of murderous bitches, and so do moviemakers.
While the 1994 French movie version stars Isabelle Adjani as Margot (looking
distractingly like Jennifer Jones), it's Virni Lisi as Catherine who, in
personal triumph, appropriately holds the bloody mess together. Originally
160 minutes, Patrice Ch�reau's
Queen
Margot
underwent a major re-edit when
it didn't perform at the French box office as predicted; despite receiving
praise from Paris critics and winning 5 C�sars, the public and many
international critics found it an overload of violence and too often
incomprehensible. Cutting it down to 144 minutes, and adding some historically
clarifying comments, the DVD version (at least the one released in America)
still creates problems because the rush of events early on뾏argot's
wedding, her loins burning for fresh flesh (and not her new husband's), the
secretive plots with allies and conspirators뾡on't congeal to make very
clear the slaughter that's about to commence. I don't think there's a light
or a restful moment throughout, and this hurts Adjani enormously: she alternates
between fornicating and pleading for her lover's life and she gets damned
tiresome very quickly. However, she's in several provocative scenes that,
because of their pruiency or their sheer horror (like her brother's accidental
book poisoning, or her visitation after a duel beheading), give viewers
reprieves. Ch�reau's depiction of the massacre is frenetic, perhaps
too much so for us to grasp its historic meaning and consequence, especially
if we don't feel we're prepared for it, yet it's a bold enactment, unlike
anything we're seen from French moviemakers before. Lisi, who won the Cannes
Best Actress prize for her work, has never in her career been this commanding
of our attention. Daniel Auteuil as Henri; with Jean-Hugues Anglade, Vincent
Perez, Thomas Kretschmann and Miguel Bos�, who looks far healthier
here than he does in his more recent bloated bulkiness.
DIRTY WINDOWS: One
of the staples of British entertainment is the periodic bow to butlers and
housekeepers who help impose 밬pstairs/Downstairs� separations
between the classes. Part of our attraction to these kind of stories is that,
if we're lucky, the head butler or housekeeper is endowed with a magnanimity
that overwhelms and thus shames the stiff upper class snobs who in the process
are taught lessons about the 뱑eal� world from the Leona Helmsley
뱇ittle people.� There's suppose to be deep satisfaction that servants
are always smarter and more humane than their masters but, knowing their
place in society, never let on that they are. The Ismail Merchant-James Ivory movie
The Remains of the
Day
deals with another kind of servant뾲he
drip-dried butler who hasn't a purpose beyond the menial, a servant who offers
his life as a sacrifice on the alter of subservience, even in the face of
moral abjection. This movie spending an inordinate amount of time telling us
how emotionally stunted its central character is has a severe handicap right
from the start: Anthony Hopkins' held-in, meticulously mannered
performance뾞 tour de force of repression, a monument to emptiness.
(A hangover from the never-used script by Harold Pinter?) Japanese-English
novelist Kauo Ishiguro's caution about the trap of servitude is lost here
in what is the least satisfying Merchant-Ivory production since The
Bostonians. How could the moviemakers possibly think that two and
a half hours of sullen monotony, without ever bringing a single smile to the audience, serve any useful purpose? Certainly not as
entertainment, and while one can't argue the artful stringency of the
performances, all the labor is a substitute for Sominex. (Only Michel Lonsdale
as the French diplomat with aching feet sparks a minor interest뾪ainly
because he's looking more like Martin Scorsese than ever.) Most glaring of
omissions: it's never explained to us what qualities Emma Thompson's character
sees in Hopkins' fearful mess. In her final scene, aboard a bus and crying,
I didn't believe a minute of her pain. (Who would have ever thought that
after his mesmerizing villainy in 밫he Jewel in the Crown� Tom
Pigott Smith would be the right choice as a husband?) Once more Merchant
and Ivory hope that the exquisite irony built into the classic stories they
film will magically appear to give us a wallop of a climax but, as in
The Bostonians and with Howards End, they somehow
manage to de-emphasize ironies and thus we're robbed of the satisfaction of
fulfillment. This was most apparent in Howards End, when
the audience is waiting for the payoff to detonate뾵hen Emma Thompson
realizes that the residence had been willed to her almost from the start.
There was a chance at the neat ironic
twist here in
Remains had not the screenplay, holding too much faithfulness to the novel, opened with Christopher Reeves
already in possession of the residence wherein Hopkins and
Thompson worked. (Reeves' character Lewis needed to be the surprising new owner, since he's conceivably Jewish.) When a movie loses its staying power and allows the audience
too much time on its hands, observations are made that might have been ignored
if something was actually going on. For all the household staff employed
to keep the old mansion in shape, didn't anyone ever think to have the doors
and their moldings whitewashed or, more urgently, clean the windows? (The
peons뾢ven Glenda Jackson's뾵ash them in Alan Bridges' The
Return of the Soldier.) Such laxity grounds for dismissal. Tony and
Emma, you're fired!
BEAUTIFUL
PLAIN JANE: Gilbert's
Shirley
Valentine purposely reminds moviegoers
of his 60s hit Alfie. The central characters뾦n the former, a
housewife bored with the if-this-is-Thursday-it's-steak-day routine; in the
latter, a womanizing cad뾣ace the camera to more or less wink their
smarts at the audience in far more satisfying ways than Sarah Palin managed
to. The difference between the two characters is what makes them companion
as well as comparison pieces: Shirley is unrelentingly good and decent in
her ordinariness, whereas Alfie's relentlessly amoral뾞 remarkably hypnotic
lecher. But you love them equally, because you probably know people just
like them. Maybe even from the inside. Pauline Collins' Shirley is a peculiarly
smashing success because as you're watching, you keep thinking how it can
be that a character who isn't particularly interesting can be this beautifully
interesting to watch. Perhaps it's Collins' scrubbed features뾱he's
healthy-looking in her pleasing plumpness, and if she's isn't what you 'd
call a hot turn-on, she's safe; there's something reassuring and refreshing
about her no-nonsense attitude. And this Shirley isn't above being an equal
opportunity exasperater: she bugs teacher, husband and tourist alike. Tom
Conti's amorous Greek is rather like a Sam Elliott gambling that he can do
an accent. Joanna Lumley, one of the blasted broads of 밃bsolutelyFabulous,� plays a high class hooker.
Josh Logan's deplorable movie version of
South
Pacific prompts detractors
to wonder if the unusually high acclaim for the Bartlett Sher Broadway
revival might suggest there's more to the musical than a wussy fondness for
antiquity. In breathtaking HD, the PBS airing of Sher's production validates
some of the raving. Right off the bat, Kelli O'Hara, looking and acting an
awful like Reba McEntire, is inestimably more tolerable as Nellie Forbush
than that zit on the ass of movies Mitzi Gaynor. O'Hara's the right vision
to persuade us that she's a Little Rock hick and she brings some refreshment
to the lyrics of the lumpy songs and an unwavering if sometimes sharply piercing
range of voice to pull them off. Having missed her work in Sher's equally
celebrated Light in the Piazza, there is an innocence
about her Nellie that makes her ideal casting as a quite fetching Clara뾞n
aureole-like charm circling around retard emotions. Playing Emile de
Becque, Brazilian Paulo Szot has the expanding diaphragm of a matinee profundo
and those who love the curdles of 밪ome Enchanted Evening� will
not be disappointed how he churns the cheese, but for my tastes he's a bit
too sinisterly hulky-looking, recalling Joe Spinell's Willi Cicci in
The Godfather and The Godfather II. Throughout
Szot's performance I kept thinking how much better Antonio Banderas would
be as needed star and actor. Because neither Szot nor O'Hara achieve stellar
luminance as stage personalities in the production, the unintended star
becomes Andrew Samonsky, whose enviable thinness as Lt. Joseph Cable
is more attractive than John Kerr's. Some of what makes him riveting
is a rather disconcerting drawback뾥is resemblance to James Woods. The
calculated butch gait and posturing don't escape notice, either, yet the
lures come together almost erotically when engaged for his seduction
of Liat. Our investment in Andrew reminds us that the musical has a lousy
second act: it's not and never has been acceptable that the character Cable
dies off stage. Couldn't he have expired in Liat's arms? The rushed conclusion
joining Nellie and Emile also lacks the kind of emotional welling that we're
set up for. Much appreciated
is that this is not an overly frenetic danced-to-perfection entertainment
that leaves you lurching for a 5 Hour Energy shot. And, finally, after all
these years, the insipid 밐appy Talk� moves beyond nails scratching
against a blackboard. Director Sher re-energizes a classic show while at
the same time reconfirming that, hemmed in by restrictions in order to get
the rights, his praise worthy skills can't do much to deepen its theme
of racial harmony. The daughters of Rogers and Hammerstein continue the legacy
of their fathers' lightheadedness.
DON'T MAKE 'EM LIKE THIS
ANYMORE: Fred
Zinnemann's 1960 The
Sundowners wasn't well received at the
box office. No one that year wanted to see a movie about Australian sheepherders
with not much more than a pot to piss in. Not when Ben-Hur
was still playing to packed houses, and Psycho was giving
moviegoers a new pop icon in Norman Bates who helped change shower habits,
and Cary Grant and Tony Curtis were hanging bras and panties on a pink sub
in Operation Petticoat, and certainly not when Liz was waking
up ravishingly slugged after a hard night with Laurence Harvey in
Butterfield 8. After all these years, though,
The Sundowners
remains the higher model of built-to-last
craftsmanship뾞 period piece that survives our Pentium-speed decay.
With a little patience, you become engrossed by what's clearly a labor of
love. Zinnemann worked in defiance of the odds, making his most endearing
story with perhaps only his foreknowledge as comfort that it would take years
before the movie would be recognized as a classic. In their covered wagon,
Robert Mitchum and wife Deborah Kerr, their dutiful son and sheep dog, and
Peter Ustinov trek to where the seasonal jobs are. Mitchum's a weekend boozer
who wants to 뱆eep on the move뵕he can't stand that things
get stuck in park; Kerr dreams of her own place, nervously guarding the money
jar in which there's a hard-earned down payment. Frictional opposites, yet
these two really have it for each other: they do in this picture what Mitchum
fantasized about in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison. Working to sustain
an Aussie accent but still retaining his humorously American gigolo gait,
he's as marvelous to watch against type as Kerr, who sheds the great lady
affectations; together they're positively hale. And with her down-under tan,
Kerr's never looked more so. Ustinov furnishes more evidence as to why he
won 1960's best supporting actor Oscar (for Spartacus); Glynis
Johns a tad bit too spunky; and the lovely Dina Merrill the ever-ready real
thing as a high strung society type. Playing Merrill's husband is Ewen Solon,
who'd pass for Zinnemann's twin. Nominated for 5 Oscars: best film, director,
actress, supporting actress (Johns) and adapted screenplay (Isobel Lennart).
Kerr won the N.Y. Critics Award; Mitchum the National Board of Review
honor.
Not
long into Thunderbolt and
Lightfoot
we start wondering where in hell Michael Cimino
in his d�but as director is headed: a straight's secret homoerotic
fantasy? A Midnight Cowboy turned into a Butch Preacher
and the Transvestite Kid? We're amused and intrigued by the
sexually-tinged camaraderie between Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges who bait
each other with come-ons but never unzip to consummate. To get the 70s pulse,
I looked up old reviews by some New York critics and the words
뱈isogynistic,� 뱇atent homosexual� and
밶nti-heterosexual� frequently popped up and very derisively: seems
a lot of them, including user comments over at IMDb, got angry that
Cimino hadn't the guts to travel the route towards consummation so they slammed
him for allegedly hiding in the closet. But their disappointment doesn't
make the movie any more or less a reflection of anti-woman attitudes American
males usually have, nor anti-hetero, though without argument there's anti-gay
sentiment cracking about. The real scorn is aimed specifically at braggarts
like George Kennedy, who could easily turn anyone anti-male. (Can't think
of another actor I get sick of so fast, except Samuel L. Jackson.) Minus
the invert overtones, the movie's not about much, really뾦t's like a
20 year old's daydream of libertine bandits who have to pay a half-price
for their wrongdoing, a contemporary updating of Bridges' Bad
Company. Unlike the fake mod derelict buddies stuff of Ratso and
Buck in Midnight Cowboy, or the glam boys-gunned-into-pop myth
of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Eastwood and Bridges
offer up a bit of white trash romanticism; sizing up Clint when first running
into him, Jeff says, 밯e'd be good together.� Because they
don't seize on their compatibilities,
Thunderbolt and
Lightfoot attains cult status.
For
Yankee baby boomers in high school during the early
60s, when the civil rights movement was about to explode, Harper Lee's
To Kill a
Mockingbird wasn't only required
reading, it was a communal experience�socially unifying as
well as instructive. Lee's memory book�about the South's
rabid racism of the 30s as seen through the eyes of moral giant Atticus Finch's
tomboy daughter�derives its emotional welling by the simplistic
device of shattering childhood innocence. (And it swept countless boomers
into their lasting love of novels.) It's indisputable that Lee packs in the
moral pointers, and thus earns the Pulitzer Prize, but Robert Mulligan's
movie is so sincere an adaptation by Horte Foote that it's close to being
deadly; it decrees in advance every feeling we're suppose to feel during
every scene, it plants the ethics and lack of them too
manipulatively�after a while we're numbed by the rigging.
Perhaps something dangerous happens to many quiet liberal viewers now: watching
the trial, we get angry at Gregory Peck's Oscar-winning Atticus for not going
after the alleged victim's blatant lies because she leaves herself open for
brutal cross-examination, and railroaded Tom is such a victimized setup that
the cavernous nostrils of Brock Peters, who plays him, become scene-stealing
respite. During the movie, we're apt to be reminded of another rigged
melodrama�Peck's The Man in the Gray Flannel
Suit. Not only because the star is once again the Mount Rushmore
of decency, but also because both movies are overly manufactured that they
look counterfeit. Remember the perfectly peeling washing machine in the kitchen
of TMITGFS? During the beginning of
Mockingbird, a grown Scout narrates how hot it was that year in
Alabama yet when the camera scans the houses, with screens covering the windows,
those windows aren't opened�not even
cracked!�and an aged bundled-up Ruth White looks like a candidate
for heat stroke and making the dismissal of details worse, Peck remarks how
warm it is while wearing a sweater, vest, shirt and tie. Petty? Maybe, if
the movies weren't stacked with endless caricatures and preachy lessons.
In the role Rock Hudson (on the basis of his work in Something of
Value) was scheduled to play, Peck rises above his own self-parody
out of sheer solemnity, with help from Russell Harlan's halo-like black and
white photography, and together they pushed voters in recent American Film
Institute polls to name Atticus the screen's top hero and the movie the second
most inspiring of all time. Harlan's night compositions, all of which came
out of Universal's backlot, have those menacing, spectral fears from of our
childhood. The opening cigar box credits furnished by Stephen Frankfort.
Along with Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Steinbeck's
Of Mice and Men, and Vonnegut's
Slaughterhouse-Five,
To Kill a
Mockingbird, celebrating
its 50th anniversary (and selling about a million copies each year), continues
to be one of the most debated and censored books in schools. We boomers would
like to say, 밎o figure,� but that Shirley Sherrod episode and the Trayvon Martin case won't
let us.
Torn
Curtain is a movie nobody really wanted
to make, and you can feel that attitude almost immediately. Alfred Hitchcock
had screenplay problems from the very
beginning뾬riginally intended to be about the infamous
Guy Burgess case that sent England reeling (later done as a TV special by
John Schlesinger in 1983 entitled 밃n Englishman Abroad� starring
Alan Bates), ending up a leftover from North by Northwest and
The Prize뾞nd then Universal forced upon
him Paul Newman and Julie Andrews as box office draws. Both stars wanted
to make a movie with Hitch but realized too late he didn't give a damn. On
the first day of shooting, Andrews says, he told cast and crew that 뱓he
fun was over뾲he creative part was finished with the
script뾞nd the rest is a bore.� But there's no fun
in the script, not an ounce of creativity evident throughout, and, while
not a total bore (the ineptness and miscasting are too infuriating to put
you to sleep), it's a lazy rehash of Hitchcock tricks, visually ugly, and
quite nearly idiotic: by any measure Newman should have been pronounced dead
by the victim he helps kill. You see too unnecessarily the ridges on Andrews'
teeth and what you wouldn't give to waste Lila Kedrova when she keeps repeating
밃merdeecan sponsor, Amerdeecan sponsor.� Bernard Herrmann wrote
a score Hitchcock rejected; could it have been any worse that what John Addison
supplied?
Before The Hurt Locker
stole the thunder, the critics' darlings were George Clooney and
his painfully timely
Up in the
Air. It's clear early in why neither
won the top Oscars many thought in early December 2009 were
inevitable�who the hell wants to sit in a theatre or at home
as an unemployed and watch people get fired by a cold-hearted executioner?
Or by 밼ourth grader� Anna Kendrick? (The irony in the applause
is that some of those critics were pink-slipped by early 2010.) If Clooney
isn't at his neutral best as a hatchet man, he's at his
smoothest�a Cary Grant type appearing a bit like Alan Arkin's
son Adam. The pleasure square-jawed Clooney brings to audiences is icy charm,
a remoteness that allows us to give him the once-over and objectify, and
while there's something missing in his persona we continue, at least for
now, to be held. His appareled class and roguish
demeanor�exemplified by his shit-eating
grin�are calculation. These attributes, if they are such,
make him ideal casting for terminating people from their livelihood and for
dating starlets who don't speak English. Probable trouble ahead: Clooney
has been so high in the rarefied air of super celebrity that his stature
elicits minuscule emotional response. In the recent telethon for Haiti, he
didn't register a single moment as a mortal male, he seemed a drone. The gas in his engine of fakery is close to empty.
Barcelona won뭪 confess any regret over giving Woody Allen a million and a half Euros to help make Vicky Cristina Barcelona but perhaps those responsible for extending public funds should be thrashed anyway. Not presented in a bad light, the city뭩 barely given the aphrodisiac function suggested by the title. Apparently Allen is at
low ebb, even at desperately low ebb, and as a side effect he turns the metropolis into something ordinary and the view from Muntanya de Montjuic into a haze of pollution; he뭩 using locales without any breath of scope, or ingratiation, without an adult visitor뭩 sense of liberation. Dredging up a screenplay written years ago, he 뱔pdates� its poop de droopiness from San Fran to the Gaudi fantasyland and molds it around Scarlett (Why is she a star?) Johansson as Cristina, Javier Bardem as Juan
Antonio and Pen�lope Cruz as Maria Elena. What isn뭪 clear is if Vicky (Rebecca Hall) was original to the story뾲hat she뭩 Woody, oozing his tired brand of neurosis, excessively on display when she drills Javier about his abrupt self-entitled proposition in a restaurant. (And it doesn't look too original that Hall towers over Chris Messina.) Putting Javier at the center of a m�nage � quatre is tantalizing but when Woody takes himself out of the bed and imports Vicky as his surrogate, the gig of cosmo sexuality turns redundant and sour, another bout of anhedonia. Woody wouldn뭪 permit himself carnal
knowledge with another man on screen, but he could get a good actor뾱omeone like Jon Hamm fashionably unshaven뾲o at least suggest a heating of the sheets with Javier. How metro delicious it might have been for Maria Elena to aim her gun at the crotches of Juan Antonio and Vick. VCB is a m�nage � pas moyen.
The Young
Victoria
is a decent bio romancer; with great set decoration by Maggie Gray and
Oscar-winning costumes by Sandy Powell, with a Schubert-inspired score by
Ilan Eschkeri, it's engaging, mostly factual, admirably performed, especially
by Emily Blunt in the title role. And slight�too slight,
I think, to be anything more than a reasonably budgeted Masterpiece Theater
tease, if $35,000,000 is a sensible expenditure on what amount to coming
attractions. Seems the director Jean-Marc Vall�e and writer Julian
Fellowes, in sticking to the love affair of Victoria and first cousin Albert
(Rupert Friend), decided to do away with the kids. We don't need to see them
popping out the womb, or throwing up during dinner at Windsor Castle or getting
cranky during a Winchester Abbey doings, but their omission prevents us from
seeing the couple, known as the grandparents of Europe's royality, as more
than figureheads of everlasting adoration. After all, they had nine children.
(Some of the births were the Royals' unintentional bestowing of consequential
curse�Victoria was an originating carrier of hemophilia,
passing the disease to son Leopold and as transporters to daughters Beatrice
and Alice, the latter the mother of Russia's Alexandra who bore perhaps
the most famous hemophiliac in history.) With the kids locked in the closets,
and that genetic time bomb conveniently dismissed, about all that's left
is Albert's premature death and that too gets the shaft: just as this blue
hair matinee special starts to get viewers get into its rhythm, suddenly
those black screens begin announcing pertinent info to alert the end is upon
us. Whammo! Albert 's gone and Victoria's laying out his clothes, which she
did ritualistically until she died many years later. Typhoid finished him
off but we're not let in on its deeper tragedy�he reportedly
picked it up at home, at Windsor Castle. As historians are quick to point
out, he also suffered from stomach problems (maybe cancer) for two years
and his weakened physical condition worsened when he tried to quell a growing
scandal one of the sons was involved in with a trampy actress, about which
Victoria believed was the catalyst cause of Albert's passing. Outwardly he
was prudish, the Young Victorian, more so than his wife, and fastidious,
such a stickler for efficiency that he was not only what we might refer to
as Mr. Mom, his administrative prowess was so valued that by popular demand
he was drafted into various government responsibilities. (He was for the
abolishment of slavery, had respect for the working class, sought reform
and broadening of education, and laid the foundation to keep the Royals above
the dangers of shifting politics.) Almost none of this is but scarcely suggested
in The Young
Victoria; instead, the melodramatic
concerns are the Queen's battles with her mother the Duchess of Kent
(Miranda Richardson) and her assumed lover Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong).
You're reminded a bit of Jean Simmons'
Young Bess, which also
had a twosome wanting to grab powers via regency. Friend sometimes flashes
a wussified Omar Sharif, and Blunt looks a bit silly when finally crowned,
in a ceremony that actually had its own silly moments that were filmed but
cut from the theatrical release and show up as extras on DVD. (I'd have restored
almost all the deleted scenes, and specifically the longer sequence of the
Duchess's lover getting tossed.) Two of the producers: the Duchess of Access
Sarah Ferguson and Martin Scorsese.
Text COPYRIGHT � 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 RALPH BENNER All Rights Reserved.