GONE WITH THE WIND

GONE WITH THE WIND

This was on TMC last night and it's coincidentally Tricia's favorite movie so we watched it until Trish keeled over from fatigue. I stuck around and watched the whole thing again forgetting that it's a surprisingly effective movie despite the length. It has a modern feel that few classic movies have and it's not just the color photography. Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) is color and feels as old as any other Errol Flynn film. I credit production values. The burning and escape from Atlanta, the crane scene showing all the wounded men, the largeness of the sets set it apart from it's time. It also helps that Vivian Leigh had a natural acting style and Clark Gable was one of the great rogues of the day. What a travesty he lost Best Actor to Robert Donat. Donat got the award for playing a teacher that ages through the years. It's not bad acting, but seems like acting. Gable shows strength, humor, determination and they all feel natural. The wrong actor in that role could have sabotaged the movie. How many people have seen GOODBYE MR CHIPS?

I've only seen a few Leslie Howard movies, but his character here seems the same as the other Leslie Howard movie that I know well, THE PETRIFIED FORREST. In both movies he seems like a man of speeches rather than a man of action. Howard is the weakest link in the movie. How much better it would have been had Errol Flynn or Gary Cooper or even Robert Taylor played Ashley. Olivier could have been an interesting choice.

Olivia DeHavilland, on the other hand, is great as Melanie. She looks nothing like the DeHavilannd in Errol Flynn movies and she probably would have won the Oscar had Hattie McDaniel not been in the same movie. McDaniel is gone for long stretches, but you don't forget her and when she's on screen she can be commanding.

My favorite scene in the movie is not one often mentioned. The night that Ashley and some others go off to clean up the shanty town where Scarlett was attacked and Rhett Butler comes to the rescue. The traditional approach to such a scene would be the action at the shanty town, but Fleming (or which ever one of the directors did the scene) focuses on the ladies tense and waiting for an outcome. It helps that the Yankee captain coming to arrest them is Ward Bond, one of my favorite character actors. And using Belle Watley's bordello as their alibi is a nice dramatic choice that makes the Yankee captain blush in front of the ladies present. BOND: Rhett, do I have your word as a gentleman?
GABLE: As a gentleman, Tom, of course.

Rhett's language in the last scene crossed a barrier in movies, but almost as surprising is how the love story resolves itself. Movies trying to be big box office have rarely made the same choice.

Neither the movie nor book were created to be historically accurate, but they succeed because they are great examples of romantic literature. What Rhett and Scarlett get away with due to their brains and beauty allows the audience a guilty thrill of living it through them.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

I saw this in the theatre so many years ago, I believe Kevin Seeger was along. We must have been some of the few who saw it then because it didn't make much money. I have seen it 3 or 4 times since, the most recent being Sunday. One thing that strikes me is how young everyone looks. I think that reaction comes from how current the movie still feels. The only loud giveaways are the style of the cars and how none of the salesman are using computers. I have the movie on before just to watch the Alec Baldwin speech and then couldn't help myself and watched it through to the end. I'm particularly impressed with what Jack Lemmon does because in my head he is still the guy in drag next to Marylin Monroe or he's loaning his apartment to Fred MacMurray or clearing his sinuses and embarrassing Walter Mathau. He's always this young comic actor in my head, naive and good-hearted. In the film he is con man with pathos and more believable than in anything that came before. Pacino was nominated for Best Supporting actor for this and Pacino is better here than in SCENT OF A WOMAN, the movie he won Best Actor for this same year. There are shades here of Pacino's overacting but they are forgivable compared to his cartoon performance in SCENT. 20 years hence I have to feel that Lemmon deserved it more and even Baldwin could be considered more worthy for his short yet iconic appearance.

I decided to watch it again after my praise for Mamet's THE VERDICT script and I really love how within all the profane language Mamet has Alec Baldwin wish them luck at the end and calls them gents. It's like a little wink that acting and selling are the same thing. The MacGuffin mystery within the film is less interesting and the solution to it seems a contrivance, but it's easy to forgive after watching Jack Lemmon standing in a phone booth on a rainy night pretending to talk to a secretary that doesn't exist all for the sake of a sale.

Amour (2012)

AMOUR is what you do with all that youthful love after the youthful part is no more. Brought to you by Michael Haneke, a director that seems to court controversy as much as pursue art, as if in his mind they were both one in the same. His most violent expression thus far was in the enigmatic FUNNY GAMES (1997, remade by Haneke in English in 2007) a movie designed almost so that you would hate something about it. I say that because I enjoyed his CODE UNKNOWN (2000) and I think his film CACHE (2005) is one of the top ten films on the first decade of this century. CACHE is a straightforward film with intrigue, subtlety and even a little shock value, but all doled out in proportions that are digestible mind food. Haneke’s excuse for FUNNY GAMES was that his violence in the movie was a harsh commentary on violence, as if Jerry Falwell began making skin flicks to point out the immorality of skin flicks.

Haneke’s 2001 film, THE PIANO TEACHER got a lot of ink either because his subject matter of unhealthy sexual relationships was daring or that it struck a nerve with movie critics. I’m not one to think that every perverse human practice needs to be documented in art films, but for those that do Michael Haneke is here to oblige. His last two films have been a change of pace. 2009s THE WHITE RIBBON is an early 20th century period piece shot in black and white that would have been a comment on fascism had I finished it. I gave up on it after an hour because of fatigue, meaning to return but never finding the motivation.

And here is Amour (2012) nominated for Best Picture about an elderly couple trying to cope with aging. Realistic to the point that you get to read your own meaning into it. It can be a commentary on how money won’t buy immortality if you want it to be. It can also be a comment on how no one is prepared for the reality of human frailty or a comment about how adult children and adult parents grow apart. All of these themes have been mined to death in cinema, but as a change of pace for Haneke I can see why the Academy reacted as they did. Haneke’s not trying to shock them is a shock unto itself. Emmanuelle Riva is also nominated for Best Actress without any argument from me, but ignored is the actor that plays her husband, Jean-Louis Trintignant. Hers is a portrayal of a degenerative illness while his burden is the more difficult one, having to show the quiet angst of picking up the pieces. I’ve seen enough French films through the years to wonder why this one stands out in the minds of voters. It probably has more to do with 10 open slots than anything else, not a knock on it as much as a curiosity. If you are a person with the tolerance for foreign films you will most likely appreciate the execution, but I doubt you will want to hit the replay button.

The Girl On The Bridge (1999)

Of all the great injustices done by Johnny Depp in his lifetime none may ever match the treachery of plucking Vanessa Paradis out of films for five years after the completion of this quirky 1999 gem. Miss Paradis’s combination of vulnerability and pixie style charm is why we go to the movies and it’s seldom seen in popular American actresses anymore to the point that I just can’t see how this movie would work in our native tongue. Maybe it doesn’t work in French either if you speak French, but it works for me and I bet it will work for you too. You have to sort of buy that French men are such that they will throw out young ladies like Paradis as they would the trash and even older knife throwers are more interested in turning them into assistants than girlfriends. All the better because it gives that knife thrower 90 minutes of reflection time to think better of it by the denouement. Our knife thrower is Daniel Auteuil, an actor so French looking that that you can almost imagine his face on their national flag. He has that Gabriel Byrne demeanor that makes him perfect for roles that call for emotional indifference. I saw him first in the 1992s “Heart in Winter.” If you ever had the kind of girlfriend that was always asking you what you were thinking or feeling then Auteuil’s character in HEART IN WINTER would have just drove them nuts. The late career Cary Grant understood that it would be unseemly for him to chase young girls across the silver screen, but it was acceptable and even fun to watch the girls chase him. GIRL ON THE BRIDGE is that formula with a modern sensibility. If I have piqued your interest you can stream it on Netflix or Amazon Prime.

The Verdict (1982)

This movie is mostly known for Paul Newman's great performance. But equally important is the excellent script by David Mamet. Mamet is great at dialogue, but what makes this a cut above is how he takes genre material and finds the right structure to get optimal mileage out of the plot. Although I have seen it several times I still enjoy the little plot twists and the non-conventional conclusion.

THE SUN ALSO RISES a book review

THE SUN ALSO RISES a book review

Jakes Barnes is our narrator and main character and yet the book revolves around the machinations of Lady Brett Ashley, a beautiful young woman that has everything and yet only wants what she cannot have.  The result of Lady Ashley is that most every man in the book is thrilled and miserable for her existence.  There is a lot of drinking in THE SUN ALSO RISES, that mirrors Ernest Hemingway’s own adventures in France and Spain during the 1920s.   Although Hemingway just liked to drink you get the impression that Hemingway’s characters drink to rid themselves of the pain caused by the oblivious Lady. 

The conventional wisdom of the book seems to be that Jake and Lady Ashley are in love, but unable to consummate their relationship due to Jake’s unspecified war injury.  But it seems to me that Lady Ashley’s love for Jake is precisely because his injury allows her to see herself as some sort of tragic heroine.   For his macho reputation, Hemingway writes very sensitive and complicated men that hide their emotions in booze.   The most outwardly macho of them all, Robert Cohn, is treated as a bully and loathed by everyone by the conclusion. 

Although Hemingway’s personal adventures in Paris get much ink, I feel that the novel only offers a glimpse of that location.  The sequences in Spain are much more vivid.  You’ll learn how to fish for Spanish trout or how the bulls are herded through town rather than how to get from the Champ Elyse to Notre Dame.   The reader comes away understanding why Hemingway was so invested in the Spanish Civil War.  He really loved that country.  

I don't know whether I would recommend the book to just anyone.  I think you'd need to have some interest in the locales or activities, because the characters aren't exactly inspiring.  Hemingway's short stories from this period are more economical.

ARGO (2012) a movie review

I'm not sure if Argo benefits from the generally lousy movies that come out every year or if the critics and the Academy are just surprised that Ben Affleck is a decent director. This film, like his two prior efforts GONE BABY GONE, and THE TOWN, is above average in so many ways and yet still a bit overrated. While some of the film is brilliant docudrama chronicling the Iranians storming the U.S. Embassy, other parts use stock Hollywood characters for the sake of humor in ways that are entertaining although unsurprising. The biggest letdown is Affleck’s ending that uses the same formula that D.W. Griffith invented in 1915 and has been used a thousand times since. And the shame is that it didn’t really need that device to make the ending work.

Affleck himself proves again to be a decent leading man in the right material. Bryan Cranston has become the king of the solid two scene role, John Goodman seems to have a small role in 1/3 of all Hollywood movies released this year, and Alan Arkin gives a stock character enough charisma that you forgive the familiarity.

There was a better movie inside this entertaining movie had Affleck only had the confidence to surprise us a few more times. If this were to beat ZERO DARK THIRTY for Best Picture it would akin to SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE beating SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.

DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012) a movie review

After a few exploding heavies it occurred to me that Quentin Tarantino has borrowed the central device from Passion of the Christ for his last two movies. That premise being if you make the antagonists sadistic enough then no amount of violence is too much. In Gibson’s case the violence was heaved on our hero, making the heavies all the more so vile. In Tarantino’s case the violence is directed toward Nazis or slave holders and in such comic form that it is part shocking and part humorous. As the audience we must simply accept that human beings are put into this film to turn into a river of goo. If you think of it as a Tom and Jerry cartoon with guts then you will have a better shot at getting through it, because in Django Unchained human biology is 80% blood and a single gunshot empties the entire container. Further, guys will sometimes run into a room single file so that Django can turn them into empty containers, much like Beatrix putting away teenage samurais in Kill Bill. At one point it seems that every white man in Mississippi lay dead in a single plantation house after being summoned by Django’s shooting iron.

Tarantino has a real knack for milking the tension in a scene, but those scenes sometimes drag on for so long and/or fail to payoff that the tension doesn’t work on second viewings. He can also write great dialogue so that he often faces the danger of letting his characters talk too much at the expense of action or just talk too much after they have run out of interesting things to say. For both of those reasons I liked Kill Bill 2 quite a bit at the cinema, but couldn’t make it through 30 minutes later on Netflix. I haven’t tried Inglorious Basterds again fearing that I couldn’t make it again through that tavern scene.

Tarantino is good at the homage and this movie is full of them beginning with the music from the original 1960s movie, Django. It’s also full of cameo appearances by people you might recognize from regular movie viewing and others that you would recognize from b-movies. Some of them surprised me. I didn’t recognize Tom Wopat until I saw his name in the credits. Don Johnson was recognizable despite the great Gaylord accent and a Mark Twain suit. He gives a fine short comic performance. Leo is quite good with his menacing southern charm. Sam Jackson is memorable as only he can be in Tarantino material. No complaints about Jamie Foxx either. I think Foxx was a better choice than Will Smith for Django because Smith has a hero’s charm, but he lacks the danger necessary for such a vengeful role. Mostly I was impressed with Christopher Waltz that went from Nazi heavy to sympathetic bounty hunter under Tarantino and was the most interesting character in both movies.

The movie isn’t for all tastes, but if you like his other material you shouldn’t walk away disappointed or surprised at the outcomes.

LINCOLN (2012) a movie review

I think Spielberg was smart to focus the movie on short time frame, but I question whether the passage of the 13th amendment should have been his pivotal moment. We already know it passes and anyone that has read the history knows it would have passed pretty easily later as the 14th and 15th amendments passed after the completion of the war. The legislative battle has some drama, but it's nothing that we haven't seen before. The film's small moments work best with Lincoln and Seward or Lincoln and his family. Spielberg seems true to the Lincoln as raconteur and the stories he shares are memorable. Daniel Day Lewis has that Lincoln twang that most actors have adopted throughout the years that makes it authentic, although we have no idea what he sounded like. It is somewhat curious that Spielberg chooses to join the action directly after the completion of two significant historical moments, Lee's surrender at Appomattox and Lincoln's assassination. Maybe the latter has been done enough times, but I have not yet seen good a depiction of the former. Spielberg has the right actors, tone, setting, and authenticity, but he chooses the formula battle instead of trusting the smaller moments to carry the action. It may not have been the strongest choice.

ZERO DARK THIRTY (2012) a movie review

What I like most about the movie is that the heroes are the boots on the ground CIA members and the painstaking work they do to keep the world safe. Our media is only interested in making heroes and villains out of our Presidents and other elected officials, but it’s the CIA people that are a constant as party politics shift back and forth at the national level. If you are not risking your personal skin in the fight then you really aren’t a hero. This movie is about heroes.
 
Most movies tend to be a cartoon version of life with everything having a clean answer and no loose ends left. Zero Dark Thirty is played in the reverse. It’s a complicated movie about the various tactics used through the years that led to the capture of Osama Bin Laden. While in real life we heard that waterboarding is torture and torture never works narrative from our media, in the movie those interrogation techniques yielded information that led to the capture of more terrorists that eventually led to paydirt. We can argue about the morality of those techniques but they work in a way that complicates easy answers. When national chatter includes prosecuting CIA operatives that used those techniques, it’s the people in this movie we would prosecute. What makes ZERO DARK THIRTY great is that it doesn’t stop the debate over the techniques but it makes weigh their success into your worldview. While The Hurt Locker shows you what it’s like to be a soldier during the war years, Zero Dark Thirty show you the intelligence struggles. The two movies together are best document yet of the challenges of a post 9-11 world.

JACK REACHER (2012) a movie review

Jack Reacher is a great throwback to the 1980s and 1990s before CGI dominated action films. Critics are unfairly harsh on Christopher McQuarrie expecting that every movie be another Usual Suspects when he seems more interested in perfecting the kind of action movie that is becoming extinct. I have read the first 5 Jack Reacher books and they all required more suspension of disbelief than this film. And McQuarrie also finds an economy of storytelling in the movie that author Lee Child lacks with some of his books totaling over 700 pages. Cruise may be a nutter outside of film acting, but performances like this remind you why he has been on top for so long.