NOVEMBER/DECEMBER MOVIES

I had little time for movie watching in November and December. I can usually watch this many films in a single month. I did get to watch 18 episodes of YOU BET YOUR LIFE on DVD. I never tire of Gorucho.

FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1975) – Robert Mitchum plays Philip Marlow in Raymond Chandler’s third novel. Unlike Robert Altman’s THE LONG GOODBYE made two years earlier, FAREWELL sets Marlowe back in the 1940s where he belongs. The shame is that the producers felt compelled to inject the material with 1970s sensibilities. Whereas Chandler always treated his fictional cops as a nuisance, the filmmakers decide to make them corrupt. And unlike the books, Marlow is using his share of swearwords to toughen up his character. They also play up the racial element a bit too much. Mitchum himself is good despite the distractions, but the same material was filmed much better as MURDER MY SWEET (1944) with Dick Powell playing a surprisingly effective Marlowe. Powell may have been the best screen Marlowe in film history, being that Bogart was great in THE BIG SLEEP (1946), but his iconic image tended to overpower the character. You can’t imagine anything bad really happening to Bogart while Powell always seemed to be in the middle of danger. Like Bogart, Mitchum doesn’t ever really seem to be in much danger, but that is mostly due to the studio’s reluctance to stick to the actual storyline from the book. John Huston knew that he couldn’t write better dialogue than Hammett and he instead just filmed the book when he made THE MALTESE FALCON. If someone ever wants to try to make a really good Marlowe movie they should consider doing the same.

MONA LISA’S SMILE (2003) – I remember being given a lecture in 1989 about how little boys need to find their inner poet rather than take to heart the rat race of commerce and career. Like DEAD POETS SOCIETY, MONA LISA’S SMILE is set in the same confines of anal 1950s America. But this movie has a different take on the same system. Instead of praising the society that allowed women the leisure to remain in the home reading Keats and Whitman while their husbands play cutthroat on Manhattan Island, this movie wants women to experience all the negatives things that come with the dog eat dog reality of career. Don’t these film makers know that the option of a career outside of the home will become an expectation of society and sooner or later women will be forced to jump off the roof of their dorm room because their parents scorn their decision to pursue the soft arts instead of Wall Street? PLEASANTVILLE did an excellent job of taking the 1950s cliché setting and finding humor to go along with it. Too many other movies present this time as dire instead of hokey. Hopefully someday there will be a slew of movies about our uptight politically correct society of today masquerading as enlightenment. MONA LISA seems like it was written in a screenwriter’s workshop with the characters of DEAD POETS put into female form. Remember that crazy before-his-time bastard from POETS named Nuwanda? Here we have Maggie Gyllenhall playing that character running around with older men and in possession of, get this. . . a diaphragm and I don’t mean the kind you speak from. Remember the character that wanted to date the cute blonde girl, but couldn’t get past the boyfriend? Here you have the chubby girl who pursues the geeky guy all sweetly before she realizes that he’s engaged to someone else. You also have Kirsten Dunst who blindly follows her mother’s demands to the point of misery which I suppose is Robert Sean Leonard from POETS. The climax of POETS was Ethan Hawke’s Beau Gest at the end of film showing his independence from the authorities. Here we have Julia Stiles and she gives up her chance to attend Yale Law School despite the wishes of Julia Roberts. She’ll no doubt spend her time reading Whitman and Keats instead. DEAD POETS worked chiefly because it made you feel the confines of that school and it assumed the greater confines of society as a whole. There was no room for the individual in that universe and it touched our deepest human desire to be free. Knowing that the characters had to conform to make a living in that world was enough to give us pain. Everyone has to eat. Maybe just a little bit of poetry would help the medicine go down. Here the rat race is painted much more realistically as an opportunity rather than a burden and it’s great fun to see Hollywood have to acknowledge that before shaming that culture for its insensitivity.

RUNAWAY JURY (2003) I understand the book was about a tobacco suit, but the storyline was dropped after THE INSIDER vilified that industry to death. So screaming right out of the headlines is litigation about gun manufacturers responsible for the people who shoot innocents. The movie lets the advocates for the 2nd amendment say their peace in the most practiced and lukewarm manner so that the real heroes can speak their opposition to guns with passion and conviction. We’re supposed to believe Dustin Hoffman as the New Orleans lawyer bringing the case to trial. I know I couldn’t keep a straight face. The plot is basically John Cusack and his girlfriend Rachel Weiss conspiring to get him onto a gun jury in order to extort money from the lawyers. It wasn’t a bad idea for a book and maybe it worked alright in the book, but the movie resolution is such that everything that came before it made little sense. The only real positive is getting to see Gene Hackman play his umpteenth Grisham villain.

THE ISLAND (2005) – The problem with science fiction movies is that they need to start with an interesting premise and sometimes create an entire alternate universe. Both of these can be done successfully and yet the filmmakers can still fail at putting a good human drama into that setting. That’s the struggle here. THE ISLAND begins as a decent mystery, but as you try to unwind the universe you come across the derivative elements from movies like LOGAN’S RUN and THE MATRIX. Casting Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson was a good idea because they are both talented enough to bring the right kind of audience empathy, but once the movie evolves from psychological drama to action film, they cease being human as they trade up for super hero capes. I did enjoy the movie all the way through, but I don’t think it’s as watchable a second time. Being one step ahead of characters is a movie like this spoils the fun.

BAD NEWS BEARS (2005) Walter Mathau has never been acknowledged for the true greatness he brought to these kinds of roles. Put him into the part of amiable schmuck who is a little smarter than he initially seems and you have screen magic. Billy Bob Thorton is an actor with decent range if you compare SLING BLADE, THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE, THE ALAMO and INTOLERABLE CRUELTY. But Thorton doesn’t have the magic in his eye that Mathau had and he suffers by comparison. Mathau’s character in the original was simply a lazy bum not too far from his Oscar Madison while Billy Bob’s Buttermaker is decidedly sleazy. But the real problem with the movie is opportunity for realism is squandered for cheap laughs. I laughed at this film several times, but no more than I did the original. The difference is that the 1976 version took time to create real human moments with seemingly real children. The fat Englebert and the feisty Tanner were funny and yet real in the first film. You could laugh and yet feel for them at the same time. Here, they are just cartoon characters. And it’s not the actor’s fault, because they seem to pull off their scenes just fine. The usually reliable Richard Linklater just doesn’t bother to show us the quiet moments. He also makes these kids seem too self-aware, confident and cool. In the first film they would put on acts with guts and tough talk, but they were still scared kids underneath who needed re-assurance from their coach. It made scenes like the opposing coach’s tirade real and you felt real empathy for them. I read a review that said that Vic Morrow portrayal of the Vince Lomardi coach was intended as parody, but I played little league in the 1970s and though it may have been stronger than anything I personally witnessed, it wasn’t a terrible stretch. Greg Kinnear’s character doesn’t retain any of the inner menace. I think the main problem is that the original wasn’t trying to be a blockbuster. It was happy to take its time with the struggle of the team and the personal growth of the individual players. By the end you felt that you knew them in a real way. From the trailer it was evident that this movie was made for a big opening weekend and little more. I implore anyone who has seen the remake or wants to see it to go back and watch the original and see the difference. What I most noticed was the way both movies ramped up the final game with the coaches getting a little too serious. The difference is that when you see the kids react to the Morrow incident, it’s also when you see Mathau realize that he too has gone too far. It’s a very simple thing to show us and yet Linklater skipped right over it. The original film also shows you how movies were made in the pre-politically correct era. The original kids were foul-mouthed even sputtering occasional racial epitaphs and Buttermaker let them drink real beer. Billy Bob has to settle for O’Douls which like the movie offers some flavor at first, but little long term effect.

SKY HIGH (2005) – I groaned when I saw this as the next choice on the plane coming back from Rome. I wanted to see THE ISLAND and I was happy enough to watch BAD NEWS BEARS for free, but I felt that this was just too kiddy to bother with. Thankfully, I decided to give it ten minutes rather then be bored with more reading. Here is a movie aimed at kids that is clever enough to entertain adults too. I think one of the chief strengths is the affability of Kurt Russell as the superhero dad wanting his son to follow in his footsteps. The movie is about the son attending the special high school for superheroes and how the coach breaks the kids down into heroes and sidekicks. The movie has fun with political correctness by having the sidekick’s teacher refer to them as “Hero Support.” The plot is nothing special, but the laughs are decent and that made it surprisingly better than you might expect.

FINDING NEVERLAND (2004) – Johnny Depp is maybe the best actor of his generation and yet I never seem to want to see any Johnny Depp films. Looking through his list of roles I find quirky characters and oddball stories. Ed Wood is probably my favorite Depp film because for as kooky as Ed Wood was, he’s a real person by comparison to many of the others. I don’t know much about JM Barry, but Depp comes off quite naturally in this role, although I struggled to find anything interesting in how Depp’s character develops Peter Pan through his personal experiences. I suppose this movie is an descendant
to SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, but it lacks the humor and theatre in-jokes that made SHAKESPEARE fun entertainment. Peter Pan probably wouldn’t even be iconic had Disney not made the animated film years after Barry died. So the whole thing comes off as an attempt at importance without anything interesting enough to sustain attention.

INDIAN RUNNER (1991) – Sean Penn’s first directorial effort has some very interesting qualities though it already seems a bit dated. David Morse (underrated) and Viggo Mortensen play brothers, Morse a Sheriff and Viggo the hellion just back from Vietnam. Viggo wants nothing of this small town life and has to see both of his parents, Sandy Dennis and Charles Bronson die before he decides to return. The question is whether Morse can convince Viggo to give in to Middle American values. Penn’s politics answer the question before you see the movie. The Indian Runner symbolism is a bit much and some of the rambling dialogue in the latter half reminds me of Penn’s incoherent interview on Larry King following his Iraq trip. Still, it’s interesting in the way all of Penn’s films are interesting although you probably wouldn’t want to see any of them a multiple times.

CLINT EASTWOOD: OUT OF THE SHADOWS (2000) – Morgan Freeman narrates this Eastwood Documentary that spans just the right amount of time without shirking his days on Rawhide or some of his lesser films. But I still think it’s difficult for any documentary to capture Clint Eastwood fully, because Hollywood doesn’t really understand him. They know he’s an artist and therefore his work is up for serious consideration, but what to make of films like Dirty Harry where getting the bad guy means violating his Miranda rights. I think the filmmakers would appreciate if Clint just apologized for the whole film, but since he hasn’t, they let the half-ass sequel Magnum Force be the apology. That’s the movie where Hal Holbrook runs a secret vigilante cop squad and Eastwood brings the operation down. MAGNUM FORCE is preposterous and if it’s really a repudiation of DIRTY HARRY then how do you explain SUDDEN IMPACT, where Harry lets Sandra Locke get away with shooting those who raped her sister? Hollywood loved UNFORGIVEN too and they made a point of rewarding Clint not for the art alone but some sort of perceived growth in his overall character. But Eastwood’s heroes were always more ambivalent than John Wayne’s. William Munny shoots down Little Bill at the end much like Callahan kills Andy Robinson or Josey Wales got the men that did that to his family. What’s different except that Eastwood reflects on the realness of the killing with poetry like “It’s a hell of a thing killing a man, taking all he has and all he ever will have”? I think Hollywood either doesn’t understand Eastwood or just refuses to accept him on his own terms. Just the same, you can enjoy this documentary if you don’t mind their bumbling.

TIN STAR (1957) Anthony Mann Western with Henry Fonda stepping into the James Stewart role as a bounty hunter bringing in a fugitive for money. The town hates Fonda and the anarchy he represents, but the young sheriff, Anthony Perkins seeks Fonda's mentorship because the job has a lot of nuances that that no maual can teach. We learn that Fonda too was once a lawman and he left the profession after becoming disenchanted with the way things really are. Therefore, Perkins gets to mentor Fonda in the importance of social order while he's learning what it takes to wear a badge. It's an entertaining enough film, but slight seeming in the context of other psychological westerns of the time.

SIN CITY (2005) – You have to admire Robert Rodriguez who seems to be the hardest working director in film. And when you read about how he gave up his DGA card so that he could work quickly in his own way without union trouble and in the comforts of his own home, he’s revolutionary. Here he somehow seems to capture the graphic novel nature by making the film both cartoon and live action. Despite the first-rate cast and great look, it takes a lot out of you. The heroes don’t always meet the ends you’d wish and it makes the end result a little less satisfying. Still, days later I remember more scenes than I thought I would.

NOBODY KNOWS (2005) Japanese film about neglectful mama more interested in running around with men than taking care of her four kids. It begins with small lapses and then becomes long absences. The oldest son that can’t be more than ten becomes the man of the family scrounging food and trying to keep the kids together. In some ways, it’s an adventure for the kids, and they deal with it in different ways at different times. You expect everything to work out in a conventional way, but it doesn’t. It’s not quite Lord of the Flies, but it isn’t Culkin fighting Pesci either.