Hound of the Baskervilles (1939 and 2002)
November 22, 2020 § Leave a comment
As it has long been my favourite Sherlock Holmes story I recently revisited both the 1939 and 2002 films. The Basil Rathbone film (1939) is, of course, wonderfully atmospheric in black-and-white. I find it ranges from sublime performances like Rathbone, the superb Lionel Atwill as Dr Mortimer and John Carradine as “Barryman” (the name was apparently changed to avoid confusion with the Barrymore acting legacy) to the terribly bland chap playing Henry Baskerville and then throws in the caricature of the ranting Scotsman we see a handful of times.
The 39 film includes all the great material with the deductions based on the walking stick at the beginning but not the change in footprints (“He was running, running for his life!”) and the 2002 film decides to do it the other way around.
(continued)
I think the 02 film, though, manages to be atmospheric, and with a more solid range of performances, or at least no one who stands out as not very believable. It does a better job of drawing out the moment Holmes and Watson think Sir Henry is under attack (both the moment they think they can save him and the moment they think he’s dead before they realize it’s… someone else). It’s all a bit perfunctory in the 39 film with the convict falling off a cliff in the first few seconds and Holmes and Watson racing over. And the idea of the area as treacherous is much better portrayed in the newer film with truly troubling scenes of characters drawn into the sucking mud (“Grips like the devil, doesn’t it!”). In the 39 film we simply get Stapleton running off at the end.
And yet there are still niggling annoyances in the 2002 film. I revisit it from time to time and it never sits well with me that Holmes calls Watson “an idiot,” or that Watson is testy throughout. Holmes taking cocaine not once but twice on a case — apparently to introduce the idea it helps him think instead of him using it as a distraction when he has little to do — does not seem to work well for most fans. It may not annoy the casual viewer, but why not simply have him reaching for his violin? Going out of your way to be different from the earlier films just for the sake of it only works if you have a better idea (as they sometimes do here). The 39 film simply ends with “Watson, the needle!”
As for the two hounds, the 39 film is probably the winner. They did find a pretty frightening dog and it probably stands the test of time better than the dated CGI of the 2002 film. I think the recent film deserves a new release with updated FX and maybe a new doc. I wish Roxburgh had played the part again as he’s quite a striking Holmes. Ian Hart is a terrific Watson, and though we’ll almost certainly never see the two of them in these parts again (Hart would at least return for Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking a few years later) I’ve always thought the final short story (“His Last Bow”) deserved to be adapted into a film. Eighteen years later, it would be a story that suits the actors having aged fairly well. Hey, you’re allowed to dream, right?
The Magnificent Seven (2016)
August 6, 2017 Comments Off on The Magnificent Seven (2016)
The original The Magnificent Seven (1960) is a favourite Western of mine, and I’m a fan of Westerns, generally, for their ability to simplify the setting for a story and tell tales that almost feel like fables. It’s a great way to tell slimmed-down, sharply told stories. The 1960 film is a brilliant idea for a retelling of Seven Samurai (1954), another film that really should not be missed for its compelling story, briskly and expertly told, despite a long running-time.
The original 1960 film had an all-star cast at the time, including Yul Brynner, James Coburn, Charles Bronson and Steve McQueen. The seven gunfighters assembled to defend a small town didn’t have complex backstories in the 1960 film: they’re generally characters with something to prove or little to lose. Maybe on some level they believe the innocent should be defended, but they’re not particularly good at showing it. The 2016 film assembles another all-star cast, and it’s interesting to see the story retold in this way. Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke and Vincent D’Onofrio are all excellent, and the film also troubles itself to try and have a significant, capable female character from the town as played by Haley Bennett (also excellent) and Martin Sensmeier is convincing as a young, exiled Comanche warrior. It’s hard to take your eyes off him. Just seeing this cast assembled to give weight to the various roles is enjoyable enough — it’s surprising it took so many decades for the film to be remade when arguably every generation would do something interesting with the story of a last, desperate grab at meaning and glory.
What the newer film has going for it is a certain grimness and gritty quality to the action. Some critics disliked this, but I think it gives extra weight to the idea of sacrifice. These characters aren’t just going to defend a small town under threat of being shot and dropping dead, they might be facing a more gruesome death, and yet still they go. Peter Sarsgaard is particularly good as the oily villain who rules by fear and appears to see other people with little but contempt. Let’s face it, the earlier film just basically has good guys and bad guys in a stylish celebration of making a glorious exit. Even the music in the original is — while one of the great film scores — basically fanfare. So I thought the new film honoured the original while adding new gravity to the proceedings, based on film’s ability to be a little more extreme these days. The action is well-realized and involving, particularly when it comes to the attack on the town.
And then by the final ten or fifteen minutes, it all goes a bit off the rails. As though deciding a collection of desperate characters grabbing at glory isn’t enough (spoilers, ahoy), the film decides to suddenly more or less flip to another plot and introduce the idea the Washington character has a personal connection to the villain, in the most bland you-killed-my-wife-now-I’ll-kill-you sort of way. It’s disappointing, partly because it has been done so many times before, and partly because the original point of the film suddenly feels a bit jettisoned. In the smoking ruins of a town, with dead from both sides all around, the Washington character allows the Sarsgaard character a final showdown in the street (and, a chance to win) suddenly applying the brakes to all the frantic, hopeful, desperate fighting that was about putting a stop to his army and his sadistic, money-grubbing ways. I almost felt like crying out “What are you doing?” It’s at this point any added feeling of realism goes out the window. And the final line of the film by Haley Bennett, that it was a struggle that was, yes, “magnificent,” also irritate, though it may not have bothered some others.
A worthy reimagining of an earlier film borrows the plot and does something a little different, like buying a house and moving in your own furniture. The 2016 film was on its way there when it decided to apply the brakes and try something slightly different at the absolute last minute, as though to appeal to more viewers or in case the original plot didn’t suffice. I hope it isn’t something like fifty-six years before we see another group of talented actors try to be magnificent.
Man of Steel (2013)
June 4, 2015 § Leave a comment
Man of Steel is a pretty damn good film. Expectations were high, considering the film needed to reboot Superman, update the character, start a new “shared universe” DC series, and managed to be a great summer film all at the same time. 
Additionally, people wanted different things — including something in the spirit of the Christopher Reeve films — but the final result is remarkably successful. It’s a Superman for the 21st century, a very human, somewhat cautious character who grew up knowing he was different from everyone else, which wouldn’t always be a joy. Particularly for those expecting something in the spirit of a Christopher Reeve film, this would come as something of a surprise. But the studio had already made a film like that (called Superman Returns), and while a good film, it was time for an update.
Henry Cavill gives the role a certain nobility — lucky for them, since that quality isn’t always perfectly clear in the script. Add to that stunning special effects, a good supporting cast, a moving (for me, anyway) back history with his father (and his sudden loss), and you get an updated Superman, mildly cynical Superman film that still has heart. The film seems to have taken a lot of criticism for not being a laugh a minute, but I think his brief, joyous laugh (on discovering he can fly) is a small, human moment that’s more sincere and real than we get from any wise-cracking Marvel film (sorry, Marvel fans).
If I could change a couple of minor things: for goodness sakes, let Lois Lane say “Superman” instead of being too cool for that, and I think it was a mistake for Kevin Costner as Jonathan Kent to say “maybe” young Clark should’ve let the kids on the bus die. What, seriously? I think that one moment is the reason people attack the morality of the Superman character, and the point of the scene is that he couldn’t let the kids die, and couldn’t reveal himself either. The Kents need to be the moral centre of old Supes, so that his immense powers are never running rampant. Instead, father Kent is loving but a little wishy-washy.
I’d also have arranged for Superman give a better speech to Zod at the end, instead of simply, “You’re a monster, and I’m going to stop you.” Zod desperately needs to be told at this point that if he cared about Krypton, it could’ve had a different legacy: helping the human race learn from Krypton’s mistakes. If that wasn’t enough for him, he only has his own ego and inflexibility to thank. At the heart of the film is an interesting story about accepting the reality of the world, or being willing to destroy it in order to reshape it, which has horrendous consequences. And, a much snappier comeback from the Man of Steel at that point would’ve helped ensure he’s something more than a dumb hunk, but thankfully Cavill does a lot to help this just with presence. Michael Shannon also deserves mention as a terrific villain. Man of Steel isn’t a perfect superhero film, and it can’t be all things to all people, but I think it does an excellent job of updating the legend, and providing a hell of a ride.
The Spoilers (1942), Albuquerque (1948), Comanche Territory (1950) and The Valley of Gwangi (1969)
April 6, 2015 § Leave a comment
I’ve been slowly working my way through the Universal collection of Westerns called simply Classic Westerns: 10-Movie Collection. These cheaply produced collections can sometimes be fairly grainy, low-quality affairs, but Universal has chosen some decent films here, at least in terms of the presentation, and I find Westerns endlessly fascinating as simplified morality plays. The trouble here is mainly that viewer expectations are so different all these decades later: these are fairly slow-moving, 
fairly sexist films, and even the occasional burst of action isn’t even wildly entertaining if it’s ultimately cartoonish scenes of men clutching their chests and falling. To be fair, there are sometimes more impressive stunts to be found in these films.
The Spoilers has an overbearing John Wayne character pressuring the Marlene Dietrich character in various ways (she somewhat inexplicably continues to think he’s absolutely dreamy) and he even puts on blackface at one point, supposedly because he needed it to sneak around but it really serves for a remarkably dated and racist attempt at humour. Randolph Scott is on hand to loan the film a somewhat calmer character and generally improve things, despite acting as the villain. Scott only smiles more than he otherwise would and acts confidently, so that he manages to be oily but not overbearing. It’s a wise choice, as another character as overbearing as the John Wayne character would’ve resulted in a nearly unwatchable film. Scott made dozens of Westerns, and is always a more likeable and trustworthy hero than most actors can manage.
It’s worse when we get to Comanche Territory (not to be confused with Comanche Station, because Budd Boetticher actually directed very well-written Westerns) because the only male lead with any real screen time is Macdonald Carey, and he somehow manages to be quite overbearing and smarmy throughout the film. He’s opposite Maureen O’Hara, playing a character that goes from fiercely independent to doting, which is annoying in itself. Again, a few moments of impressive action can’t redeem 90 minutes with an overbearing hero, standard plot and First Nations characters played by Italians, but it’s a distinctly average Western when it doesn’t even have a single performance — not even a supporting performance — worth writing home about.
Albuquerque fares better, mainly because Randolph Scott in the lead role projects something much more calm and mature. He does this in every film — he featured in a number of Budd Boetticher films — and while the romance is as typical as ever, and some of the supporting actors terribly wooden, the pace and plot are an improvement. Overall, it’s an interesting collection that demonstrates how many Westerns were cranked out, and for decades. Most of the films from the era have a few bright spots of one kind or another to be found somewhere in a formula production. I find them almost endlessly fascinating for the values they collectively try to reinforce, the stripped-down, small town nature of the drama, and the entertainment value. They also have double historical value: they’re films about the old west as imagined decades ago in Hollywood. Science-fiction films from the 1950s that imagine a future in which the women still don’t do anything but get the coffee are just as unintentionally amusing.
Not part of this collection, The Valley of Gwangi is like one of these films on drugs, or to be more accurate, one of these films married to another kind of film entirely: the monster film, and in particular the monster film that suggests we tampered in a domain we should’ve simply left alone. It would be called “Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs” if produced today, and it’s surprising no studio has troubled to remake it. James Franciscus in the leading role means we’re back to a smarmy, beaming, somewhat overbearing lead, even as his character is both a hustler and heroic, which makes little sense. It’s also a full 25 minutes before we’re treated to the first special effect by the late, great Ray Harryhausen. The lead characters are all written fairly blandly, but it’s a convincing portrayal of the discovery of a hidden valley, and in the second half of the film the effects are great fun, providing it isn’t going to bother you a few men can hold off an Allosaurus using sticks and lassos.
In the final twenty minutes the films shifts focus to become a shortened version of King Kong, with the characters dragging the creature out to become part of a show. Freda Jackson has the fairly thankless roll of a Gypsy woman who repeatedly warns them of a curse, and the pending destruction, the final minutes of the film involve an impressive climax in the town cathedral. I’ll leave you to take what you want from that about greed and breaking faith. And while I do find John Wayne overbearing in most films, I’ll take time out to say he’s excellent in a great Howard Hawks film called Red River, where he co-stars with Montgomery Clift. Look to this collection for some average, entertaining films, and look elsewhere for the best the genre has to offer. 7 Men From Now (Randolph Scott, directed by Budd Boetticher) can be found on Netflix.
Gojira (1954) and Godzilla (2014)
July 14, 2014 § Leave a comment
Produced around ten years after the atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and introducing a monster dislodged and empowered by nuclear testing, it isn’t hard to guess at the subtext in the original Japanese film Gojira (1954). What’s surprising is that the original isn’t just about a guy in a suit stepping on models of tanks, it attempts a message, and emotional impact. As the monster destroys the city, a woman huddles in flames and rubble, trying to shelter her children, saying “Not long now, soon we’ll be reunited with father… not long now.” Surprised? I was too. And while the monster is clearly a guy in a suit, the black-and-white is fairly forgiving, and it’s also an e
xample of a era of filmmaking that’s simply gone, as they clearly used models even for simple shots of ships or planes (Night Train to Munich is a great little film, and uses a lot of this kind of model work). Finally, a little-known ultimate weapon is used to defeat Godzilla, even as the inventor attempts to ensure it can never be used again, lending even more potency to the idea the film is attempting a statement.
North Americans have mostly known Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1956) which is the same film recut with less emphasis on a tragic scientist, inserting scenes with Raymond Burr as a reporter who always seems to be in the right place, chomping on a pipe, shot so that it appears he was at the back of the room saying things like “My Japanese is a little rusty!” so that someone translates. On occasion, he also talks to the back of a head, meant to be one of the Japanese actors. In short, the English cut of the film is far inferior. The 1950s also saw a sequel, hastily produced in Japan after the tremendous success of the first film: Godzilla Raids Again (1955). While an entertaining film, it already begins to dilute the statement about the dangers of ultimate weapons, as Godzilla proves fairly useful taking out some other prehistoric beast, and the performances are already less anxious and sincere: the characters at one point crack a few jokes standing around in the aftermath of Godzilla’s destruction.
I haven’t seen them, but the rest of the century produced dozens of colour monster mash-ups (around thirty films, mostly produced in Japan) as Godzilla fights everyone from King Kong to creatures from space, and I think it’s safe to say it was all done for the entertainment value. Godzilla as a tremendous, painfully obvious metaphor eventually became nothing of the sort, which is why the original film is a pleasant surprise for those who like their monster movies somewhat meaningful and artful.
It takes nearly a lifetime to get to the 2014 film, but sixty years after the original it’s another pleasant surprise. It’s too much to expect serious statements in a summer blockbuster these days, but a good cast (including Bryan Cranston and Ken Watanabe) lend the film some dignity, and it’s certainly tremendous fun to see impressive, modern-day effects for the monster. Miraculously, the film also takes it’s time, allowing the viewers to get to know the characters a little before putting them in danger, an apparently long-forgotten secret that adds some dramatic strength. The film jumps straight to the idea Godzilla has his uses, though I suppose if you squint and try with all the strength of an English major, the current film could at least be seen as observing our toxic and wasteful way of life. Now that the film has been successful and has apparently restarted the franchise, what’s next for the big fella, long past his youthful artistic days and now roughly the age of a senior citizen? My vote would be for some kind of Godzilla-like take on Moby Dick, with the monster only trying to swim out of sea and someone out for vengeance. Surely it’s one of the few approaches that hasn’t been taken over the decades, though doubtless it wouldn’t be exciting enough.
Skyfall (2012) and Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
September 29, 2013 § Leave a comment
Skyfall is the most confident, polished and elegant Bond film since the 1960s. In that sense (and mainly in that sense, as the nods to the past are only occasionally obvious here) it’s a perfect film for the fiftieth anniversary of the franchise, certainly demonstrating its ability to reinvent itself. If you go back and watch an earlier film like my personal favourite You Only Live Twice it has a measured pace, confidently switching from a more romantic scene to an action scene that’s not frantic, but is quite engaging and memorable, as when Bond puts together Little Nellie to fly out over a volcano that may be a hidden base, or when he fights a desperate fight with a very large man, and only wins by clonking him over the head with an odd statue. You could accuse this of being a series of set-pieces, but let’s be honest, any critic hauling out this accusation forgets that there was never a Bond film that stood around anywhere for very long. Before I go any further, there are mild and significant details spoiled for both films here.
Skyfall begins with an engaging spy story, but soon takes the time 
to include more character detail, certain relevant questions about the possibility of outliving your usefulness, even as the action is refreshing, extremely watchable and polished. Finally, the film pays tribute to the past with certain nods to the ejector seat (Goldfinger). And while the first few Daniel Craig films wisely declined to repeat the Bond formula for a while, this one comfortably reintroduces Moneypenny (who is finally a character who can prove her worth in the field, even as Bond jokes she doesn’t) and Q, the technical expert and gadget man, also nicely reimagined. As viewers, we seem to be refreshed and ready for all this. Daniel Craig and Judi Dench, both quite confident in their roles, are both superb. Finally, after fifty years, people who followed the franchise both casually and more seriously can learn more about where Bond came from, and even luxuriate in a whole sequence set there that helps the whole film feel more grounded and in a way, almost anchored.
Star Trek Into Darkness is undoubtedly entertaining and has equally polished action, but suffers, by comparison, with more obvious and almost blandly irritating cultural recycling. I reviewed the first film in the Star Trek reboot series, which confidently both acknowledged and shoved aside any earlier Star Trek as a way to begin a new Trek universe. Not a bad idea, but they rushed things, and I fretted the characters have little backstory as a result. Kirk was now an undisciplined punk who rode a motorbike until he suddenly had a starship. Let’s ignore that he would’ve needed to first be a junior officer here, or posted there.
This time around, there’s a possible attempt to address that and say Kirk is still undisciplined and needs to learn something, but it feels like repeating an idea from only the last film, and at the end of the film it isn’t quite clear what he learned. He recites an oath for captains at the end of the film, but in a misguided moment they used “Space, the final frontier: these are the voyages… ” which has always been a shorthand explanation of the show in the opening credits. It doesn’t work as an oath, as it contains no code of behaviour or loyalty to anything in particular, except to “boldly go,” and all that. This is right after the characters literally stand around saying dialogue along the lines of “Well, what are we going to do now?” The most graceful part of the ending (and a theme the film briefly touches on a few times) is a brief moment it’s acknowledged that in fighting terrorism, we risk awakening demons within ourselves.
As for the story itself, many fans already know it recycles the second-ever Star Trek film from back in the 1980s, The Wrath of Khan. Trek films have borrowed from this one from time to time ever since, and never beaten it. Directed by Nicholas Meyer, it was fashioned into more or less Moby Dick in space, with an extremely vengeful Khan returning from the TV series to defeat and humiliate Kirk at all costs. Wrath of Khan was a gripping tale that left you with absolutely no questions about motivation, how something was accomplished, or anything else. This time around, the action is great, but the story has been retold in ways that don’t work as well, leaving the viewer with assorted questions (provided they think about it, some certainly won’t). Why does Khan hate Starfleet even when he appears to be getting everything he wants? He has a backstory, but Kirk wasn’t there, and neither were we, leaving the character to stand around and explain it. He’s physically impressive and played well by Benedict Cumberbatch, but his backstory is mainly that he’s an enhanced human from another era, fiercely loyal to his people, and determined to destroy Starfleet. In other words, closer to nutbar than proud with a deeply poisoned soul. We get more of Kirk zipping around in a space suit, and more of Kirk and Spock trying to beat the living daylights out of someone, which feels, for a fan, a bit like meatloaf two nights in a row. A scene that was supposed to quite moving, involving the death of a central character, is an interesting reversal from what we saw before, but I wasn’t moved. Perhaps others were, but I somehow didn’t feel these new versions of the characters had earned passionate farewells just yet. Regardless, the rug is almost immediately pulled out from under the idea anyway, as he’s brought back to life.
It was probably a difficult choice for the writers. Do we return to the most respected film the series ever knew, freshen it up somehow and give it to our newly imagined characters? As for the fans, they probably wanted to see it and didn’t want to see it. It’s a fun idea, but not likely to top the original, which is exactly what happened. I’m both glad I saw it and thought they fumbled the ball, overall.
Interestingly, Star Trek is another unstoppable franchise, and is now approaching fifty years old. If they make another film in time for the fiftieth anniversary of Trek, perhaps the filmmakers can take a lesson from Skyfall and confidently strike out on their own with a new story for these characters that pays tribute to the past mainly by reproducing the tone and spirit of the show at its best. Someone in this latest Star Trek film says something along the lines of “We’re supposed to be explorers.” Yes, I think that’s the idea. Unfortunately, they’ve also painted themselves into something of a corner with the shortened backstories they’ve created for the characters. Perhaps Kirk can miss his motorcycle.
The Phantom (1943)
March 17, 2013 § Leave a comment
Film serials are old enough that some people may not even know what they are, but if they frequently have one thing in common, it’s a fairly low budget. This presents a problem for serials, as they often don’t have a final episode that feels like much of a climax. Never mind the exploding base, it’s just that somebody finally captures the villain, which could have been done six Saturday afternoons ago, halfway through the series. In other words, it’s critical a film serial — if it’s going to be memorable at all — have lead actors able to carry it through twelve or fifteen episodes. It means a great deal if the actors are remarkably watchable.
Fortunately, The Phantom has Tom Tyler. I’d suggest he’s somewhat underrated as an actor, but he isn’t actually a terrific actor. It’s more that he’s underrated as a presence. He gives The Phantom an extremely watchable quality, taking a part that could be absurd and making it work. Tyler is better known for another serial, The Adventures of Captain Marvel, but he’s excellent here too. Given his short, fairly tragic life (he’d die fairly young of heart failure about ten years after making this, his last starring role) I’m surprised his personal story has never actually been made into a drama.
The series also benefits from Kenneth MacDonald as the villain, who can according to Wiki, sound “gentle and ominous” at the same time, much like Boris Karloff. This is a fair statement. He’s the only other actor lending anything memorable to the serial, which is ultimately one of the better superhero ones I’ve seen (one sequence on a rope bridge appears to have inspired the end of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom). The fact that MacDonald is defeated off-camera after fifteen episodes nearly derails the ending, except that I’ve come to expect endings that decline to pull out all the stops, or simply can’t afford to do it. MacDonald apparently had a career lasting forty years, but is now largely forgotten, which is nearly as depressing as the Tom Tyler story.
The VCI Entertainment release has a commentary on episode one by Max Allan Collins, who points out Batman owes a certain amount to The Phantom, as a hero with no powers who uses assorted devices — including using fear as a weapon — and swore an oath to his family. The Phantom, however, is one man in a line of descendants, sworn to fight evil based on distant ancestors killed by pirates, and he lives in a fictional African country. And while this may have gone without notice decades ago, today we’re more conscious of stereotypes, and a white man ruling assorted tribes with stories and tricks of smoke is a fairly awkward premise. I’m not suggesting Batman was trying to be politically correct, but it happens to trade this for a straightforward urban setting, and the more direct idea that his parents were killed, not distant ancestors.
The result of all this is that The Phantom will likely always be a relatively obscure hero, or will exist in updated, altered form, and this Tom Tyler serial can hopefully be accepted by most as a product of its time, stereotypes and all. I wonder what Tom Tyler would’ve done with Batman, a serial produced the same year that provides an extremely poor, low budget (even for a serial) start for the caped crusader. Lewis Wilson was a perfectly acceptable Bruce Wayne, but made for a fairly awful Batman. It’s interesting to note that while Batman may be the hero granted a permanent pass to our pop-culture consciousness, there was a time other heroes looked much more impressive.
The Hunting Party (1971)
May 19, 2012 § Leave a comment
Comanche Station (1960) is among a number of low-budget, thematically charged Westerns directed by Budd Boetticher, sometimes with the capable help of writer Burt Kennedy. In a scene around a campfire, Kennedy has a character reminisce, in plain dialogue that nevertheless gets right to the heart of a particular feeling: “A good looking woman. Kind of made you go lonely just being around her. Hearing her say words. Seeing her move.”
It’s a small moment, but demonstrates that a Western can have graceful and even poetic touches. Sadly, The Hunting Party (1971) seems to have been influenced by a later film The Wild Bunch (1969), reproducing the harsh landscape without even the redeeming camaraderie in that film. In short, Gene Hackman plays a powerful rancher, busy raping his wife or visiting some kind of combination train-whorehouse 
to inflict pain on other women until he discovers his wife (Candice Bergen) has been kidnapped by a wanderer (Oliver Reed) and his gang. The fact that the Oliver Reed character only wants her to teach him to read does little to excuse the kidnapping or make his character likeable, and the idea that Bergen and Reed may or may not be starting to fall for each other is watered down by an impenetrably grim performance from Oliver Reed.
Meanwhile, Gene Hackman is believable and even frightening as the husband, but it’s another one-note character in the script. In case you don’t want them in advance, plot details follow. He grabs a high-powered rifle like very few others at the time, follows Reed and company and begins picking them off one at a time. You’d think something would change over the course of the rest of the film, that a character might reconsider one way or another, change or grow in some way. But the entire rest of the movie returns to slow-motion shots of men falling and dying at watering holes or some such thing. By the time Bergen is standing in a river, screaming at Hackman just to shoot them and make it all end, this particular viewer felt pretty much the same way. Certainly, it leaves the viewer wondering about the point of the film. I’ve seen reviews that suggested the film is Shakespearean, but in Shakespeare’s tragedies even the most stubborn characters (King Lear, for example) eventually reflect on the mistakes they’ve made. The Hackman character lets the new couple live on a few occasions, shows no sign of reconsidering, and finally kills them.
Is life occasionally this bleak? Perhaps, but I’d argue we don’t need that in a film when we have it in every newspaper headline. I watched the entire film — which begins, by the way, with the actual killing of a cow using a dull knife — in the hope of some redeeming or graceful moment, only to be disappointed. Perhaps the fault is in me, to some extent, as I do believe a film should have some kind of point, other than don’t enrage a guy with a high-powered rifle. For more thoughtful Westerns, track down Budd Botticher films, or the remake of True Grit (2010) recently. These are films willing to admit that even in almost impossibly-difficult landscapes there are moments of grace. And they seem to know that if you’re going to make your viewers crawl through the desert you can at least give them one or two drinks of water along the way.
Night Train to Munich (1940)
September 5, 2011 § Leave a comment
A British film produced during the Second World War, Night Train to Munich is nearly sublime entertainment, full of excellent dialogue and superbly entertaining scenes, and yet it does have certain contradictions, as though the film could have gone in two directions that were at odds with each other. Rex Harrison (probably best known as one of the stars of My Fair Lady) stars as a British spy determined to recover a Czech inventor the Nazi party is just as interested to possess, and Margaret Lockwood plays his love interest, the calm, intelligent daughter of the inventor.
A scene near the beginning portrays a beating in a concentration camp, and it’s somewhat surprisingly graphic for a 1940 film. I briefly wondered if the film would be innovative enough (at this early stage in the war) to portray the conflict as brutal, but the remainder of the film pretty much portrays spying as exchanging witty remarks with gentlemen enemies. Additionally, the end feels like an escape lifted from a Bond film, or a Hitchcock film. Without ruining the ending very much at all — at least, I sincerely hope not — a character who was clearly sacrificing himself manages to escape, for the sake of a completely happy ending. It’s maybe the only element that’s somewhat standard in the film, and prevents it from being an absolute classic.
But let’s put things in perspective a little, here: screenwriters Sidney Gilliat and Frank Lauder had worked with Hitchcock a few years earlier, on The Lady Vanishes. They even reproduce a couple of charming supporting characters from that film, though it would be a mistake to consider this film a sequel. Finally, it wasn’t known in 1940 just how brutal the war would become, and it would have been completely unacceptable — and bad for morale — to produce a film during wartime with a British hero that’s killed in the line of duty.
There’s a curious use of detailed models throughout — for shots of trains, landscapes, and even buildings — and while these work quite well, I’d be interested to learn more about why these establishing shots were produced this way. I can only assume it was more cost-effective at the time. It produces another slightly jarring contrast in the film, as it stands apart from some opening stock footage of Nazi soldiers marching confidently around. Perhaps these model shots, introduced later, serve to illustrate that we’re heading into storytelling now, not realism. And there are several brief exchanges in the film that suggest the limited, black-and-white thinking of the Nazi party. Night Train to Munich isn’t Hogan’s Heroes, but it’s closer to morale-boosting adventure film than gritty portrayal of war. It’s a spy thriller that takes a few brief stabs at commenting on the war. And seventy years after it was produced, it remains as entertaining as anything in theatres today.
TV Series: The Walking Dead
June 27, 2011 § Leave a comment
Let’s face it, zombies aren’t exactly full of sparking dialogue. Maybe someday there will be a show with zombie intellectuals breaking through windows to debate the value of literature, but for now they’re a neutral force: they remove some characters and leave others, the same way a regular series of floods would kill off various characters and leave survivors. There are a number of easily applied metaphors for
zombies: they represent our dull consumer-driven lives, or a lack of compassion in our society. They signal that we should really be vegetarians, or force us to confront our own mortality. Take your pick, because it all applies to a narrative device as broad and sweeping as this. Beyond that, they’re only interesting for feeling so fundamentally wrong and weird.
Frequently, the really interesting thing is what the survivors do — or don’t do — in the pockets of society that remain. Do you have enough compassion to keep the weakest person when they can slow you down and cost you your own life? Is there are artist in the bunch, and what happens to the level of discussion if there isn’t? As a new six episode TV series based on a series of graphic novels, The Walking Dead gets some of the various elements right and others very wrong. The special effects are certainly effective and well done, even as various grainy images and poor music make it look low-budget. The acting ranges from quite good to soap-opera poor, and some of the startling, unpredictable moments are balanced by obvious ones, or puzzling moments that don’t feel right — someone commits suicide by shotgun blast, but is also able to write “God forgive us” on the wall in their own blood with paint-brush neatness. Clearly, some things we wouldn’t question in a graphic novel don’t quite translate to television.
Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) is a wounded police deputy who wakes up in a hospital — in a quick transition that suddenly switches his bedside flowers to dead ones, capturing how quickly time passed for him — to find the world in chaos. He wanders through the hospital to find barred doors that are spray-painted with “Don’t Open, Dead Inside” (in a way that could just as easily be read as “Don’t Dead, Open Inside”) and finds his way to various other survivors in the search for his wife and son.
The show is good bad TV, in that it’s riddled with cliches, but manages to be really entertaining (George Orwell talks about good bad books, poorly written but entertaining). As unelected leader, Grimes ends up in charge of a particular microcosm of society that includes a few too many stereotypes: the handsome and noble cop, a tough and ugly racist, and so on. At the same time, I quite liked a character named Dale (played by veteran actor Jeffrey DeMunn), an older man who is more or less the artist of the group. Thankfully, it isn’t spelled out that he’s an artist, but he sits around the campfire describing words as “paltry, failing things,” and getting replies from the children along the lines of “You’re weird.” He stands on top of the RV keeping watch, quite literally seeing further than the others. He isn’t the strongest one in the bunch, but if anyone represents hope, it’s him. In the final episode, his moments are the only truly interesting ones.
It should also be said, The Walking Dead is seriously gross. I watched it with a kind of look-at-the-traffic-accident fascination. I think people are taking about it at least partly because it represents a new high (or new low) in what can be shown on TV, including zombie children getting shot in the head. If The Walking Dead takes the emphasis off slow-motion flying brains and works to perfect the characters, it stands of chance of becoming a show people are talking about for deeper reasons, not just shock-value, and thrill ride fun. Without having read the graphic novels, I don’t know the direction it will go, but the potential is certainly there.
digital popcorn 