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Bullets Over Broadway

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1994)

“The world will open to you like an oyster. No, not like an oyster. The world will open to you like a magnificent vagina.”

—Helen Sinclair

Apparently, I’m not the only one who holds 1994 in very high regard as a landmark year for film: http://wtop.com/movies/2016/01/best-years-ever-movies/;
http://www.killcure.com/2009/12/05/the-5-best-years-for-movies/;
http://ew.com/article/2009/08/05/which-was-the-best-year-for-movies-1977-1994-or-1999/; http://www.maxim.com/entertainment/10-movies-prove-1994-was-best-year-film-history; http://twoguysonemovie.com/editorial-1994-the-best-year-for-movies-ever/; https://www.quora.com/Was-1994-the-best-year-in-the-history-of-film-making-in-Hollywood; http://luminarydaily.com/no-huffington-post-1993-wasnt-the-best-year-for-movies-1994-was/. Seriously, here’s what I saw that year: Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, Heavenly Creatures, Ed Wood, Shawshank Redemption, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Killing Zöe, and of couse Bullets Over Broadway. I think I saw Schindler’s List that year, too—at least, by the time it opened where I lived. Fuck yeah, what a year! If this were a report card, I’d have straight A’s.

Now for Bullets Over Broadway: I suspect that once we as a culture got to the ’80s, complete artistic control became a pipe dream. This is because by that point, entertainment already was a bona fide industry with backers, lawyers, trademarks, and a human resources department—a mix of commerce that sometimes can but most of the time just doesn’t mix with art. Let’s be honest: how could it?

This is what makes Bullets Over Broadway so much fun! Set in 1920s Manhattan, Woody Allen—himself an artist by this point in his career—is making fun of, well, artists. And commerce. And you know what? The whole thing is fucking brilliant! I mean, if anyone knows how that works…

John Cusack is David Shayne, the Broadway playwright du jour. His agent (Jack Warden) gets his play produced—but it requires a series of concessions, some of which literally are do or die. You see, a mafia kingpin (Joe Viterelli) agrees to finance the play as long as his girlfriend, Olive Neal (Jennifer Tilly), is cast as the lead. OK, but…Olive has no talent. And remember: this is Prohibition. Who’s going to say anything—especially when Olive arrives to rehearsals with a bodyguard (Chazz Palminteri)? Bueller?

You’d be surprised—like an asshole, everyone has an opinion. Some, particularly those with artistic credibility (but not necessarily looking out for the best interests of the play), get David’s attention more than others—lead actress Helen Sinclair (Dianne Wiest), for one. Never mind that she pretends she wants to sleep with David—she’s got his ear. Too bad David writes off the ones with the best ideas—and the best intentions. Who’s the artist now?

With excellent appearances by Jim Broadbent, Rob Reiner, Mary-Louise Parker, Harvey Fierstein, and Tracey Ullman, Bullets Over Broadway is one of Allen’s best films. For some strange reason, it’s damned near impossible to find on home video—DVD maybe, if you get lucky; but definitely not a download. I don’t understand why.

98 minutes
Rated R

(Home via DVD) A-

http://www.woodyallen.com/filmography/directed-by/

Truth or Dare [In Bed with Madonna]

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1991)

“I do not endorse a way of life but describe one, and the audience is left to make its own decisions and judgments.”

“Even when I feel like shit, they still love me.”

“Yeah. It ain’t all fucking hunky-dory.”

“I know I’m not the best singer and I know I’m not the best dancer, but I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in pushing people’s buttons, in being provocative and in being political.”

—Madonna

In Richard Linklater’s Slacker—released the same year—an Austin, Texas, townie (Teresa Taylor) hocks a jar she claims is a “Madonna pap smear,” talking it up as an item “closer to the rock god than just a poster.” Up close and personal, that’s essentially what Truth or Dare is: a Madonna pap smear, figuratively speaking.

Truth or Dare is Madonna showing us all how cool she is. It encapsulates an exceptionally interesting time—the best time for her to do something like this, as proven by her later tour documentary, the painfully dull I’m Going to Tell You a Secret, in 2006. Certainly no run of the mill performer, it’s only fitting that Truth or Dare is no run of the mill concert film. Shot at the zenith of her career during the Blond Ambition Tour in 1990—a banner year for an artist with a long track record of controversy and success—Madonna allows director Alek Keshishian unprecedented (though not complete) access behind the scenes, and he in turn gives viewers a lot of juicy nuggets to feast on. For fans, Keshishian shows that Madonna really is—or was—all that, and more: she’s snappy, saucy, snide, mischievous, rebellious, witty, tough, and through it all ridiculosly entertaining (and I imagine a lot of fun if you’re on her good side).

The live stuff is superb. Keshishian picks all the showstoppers from Madonna’s most iconic tour: “Express Yourself,” “Holiday,” “Vogue,” a what-the-fuck version of “Like a Virgin” inspired by an ancient Egyptian orgy, and my favorite despite its unfortunate truncation, a Bob Fosse meets A Clockwork Orange take on “Keep it Together.” Views from both the floor and onstage present the show in all its over-the-top glory. Using color in an otherwise black and white film makes the live pieces all the more special.

The backstage shots on tour—the nightly prayers, the stress and snafus, the post show parties—are even better. The shade Madonna thows at other celebrities—Oprah Winfrey, Belinda Carlisle, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and of course Kevin Costner—is uncalled for but hilarious, sometimes uncomfortably so. Personal events like her spat with Warren Beatty before the Dick Tracy opening in Orlando (she calls him an “asshole”), a phone call with her father to arrange tickets for a show in Detroit, meeting a childhood friend, even attending Pedro Almodóvar’s party in Madrid all uncover multiple sides of Madonna.

But Keshishian goes deeper (and deeper): for every cringeworthy contrived scene that rings hollow—like visiting the cemetery to see her mother’s grave—is an honest one revealing the flawed and complicated person Madonna is. My favorite moments in Truth or Dare are the small events that show her human side. She’s generous with her dancers and her family—the scene where she sings “Happy Birthday” to her father onstage is precious. Her conversation with Sandra Bernhard where she admits she’s bored is illuminating and oddly relatable. I still find her comment that “everyone talks about how fame changes a person, but they never talk about how fame changes the people around them” her most poignant statement—and Keshishian demonstrates what she means. Often, Madonna doesn’t have it all under control: it rains on the Asian leg of her outdoor tour, her headset keeps shorting out during a concert, the police pop up to arrest her at her show in Toronto, her brother Martin doesn’t show up at her hotel suite when he’s supposed to, her throat gives out, a member of her entourage is drugged and assaulted, a dancer (Oliver Crumes) goes AWOL. These scenes stand out because they reveal a lot about how Madonna handles tough situations—and she’s not always good at it. Moreover, she doesn’t have everything she wants: phone messages, Antonio Banderas, Slam and Gabriel, to name a few.

Madonna has admitted she was shady and a horribe brat in Truth or Dare (http://www.ew.com/article/2015/08/07/madonna-truth-or-dare). What makes it richer and more thorough, though, is that the focus is not solely on her. Madonna’s dancers are given ample space to show who they are and let some of their stories come out. Bringing out their homosexuality, especially during the age of AIDS, is a bold move that points to the topics and issues that clearly color(ed) her work. Truth or Dare got me to see Madonna more as a performance artist than a pop star.

There are loads of truly fun moments here. Plus, we get to see a flash of her boobs. In the end, Madonna shows us a good time but still leaves us asking, who’s that girl? It’s a strategy that’s served her well throughout her career.

120 minutes
Rated R

(Home via iTunes) A-

http://www.miramax.com/movie/madonna-truth-or-dare/

Private Property

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1960)

Private Property, a weird and fascinating psychological thriller written and directed by Leslie Stevens and shot over the course of five days in 1959, is the best film I never heard of. Believed “lost” for decades, a print was recently discovered in the UCLA film archives, restored, and shown for the first time in more than half a century just this past May at the TCM Classic Film Festival (https://hqofk.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/2016-tcm-classic-film-festival-private-property-1960/)(http://filmfestival.tcm.com/programs/films/private-property/). It is, in a word, a treat.

Duke (Corey Allen) and Boots (Warren Oates) are two shady Southern California vagabonds who subsist by stealing, usually intimidating their victims into giving them what they want—orange soda, cigarettes, a lift to Beverly Hills. All it takes is Duke’s thinly veiled threats delivered in his cold, menacing manner and a flash of their knives. The boys are sitting on the sidewalk outside the gas station on the Pacific Coast Highway where they just scored some loot when Ann Carlyle (Kate Manx), a beautiful kept housewife in a Corvette, pulls in to ask the attendant for directions. Duke is clearly intrigued by Ann, and he immediately hatches a demented plan to follow her and get Boots, a virgin, laid for the first time.

Ann unwittingly leads them to the Hollywood Hills, where she lives a seemingly idyllic life in a gorgeous home with her husband, Roger (Robert Ward), an insurance executive. Duke and Boots scope out the area and find an empty house for sale right next door to Ann. They squat there and spy on her from an upstairs window as she sunbathes, swims, gardens, eats, and comes and goes throughout the day.

In the privacy of their home, it becomes plain that Roger is more interested in work than in Ann, who not so subtly throws herself at him—splayed out on the living floor with her legs spread in one scene, and all dolled up in a negligee (no doubt from Frederick’s) in another—but can’t seem to get him to take a bite of her apple, so to speak. She stands in front of their bed and cries when she emerges from her dressing room ready for love one night, only to find him sound asleep.

Duke, who deduces that she’s unfulfilled, devises an introduction with Ann: he knocks on her door after Roger leaves for work and poses as a day worker looking for someone else’s house—the Hitchcock residence, of all places. He makes small talk about landscaping and offers to do some gardening work. The exchange sets off an unsettling connection that culminates in a bizarre lunch date in the back yard when Roger flies to San Francisco for the day.

Even with its flaws, I absolutely loved this film—it completely lured me with all it’s got going on. Simmering with sexual tension, ambiguity, and mystery, Stevens lets the plot unfold slowly, step by eerie step—very much like Hitchcock or, much later, David Lynch. It works: Duke is a psychopath, and watching him plot his next move made my skin crawl as much as it kept me glued to the screen. Boots is gay. His relationship with Duke is strange and undefined: it’s not clear whether they’re lovers, but Boots is definitely the submissive one. Roger is asexual. Manx, who has a sweet Barbara Eden thing about her and who was married to Stevens when Private Property was shot (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-leslie-stevens-1159807.html), brilliantly depicts the gamut of feelings Ann goes through: frustration, confusion, longing, hope, and loneliness. She’s a vulnerable character, and it hurts to watch her at times. Side note: knowing that Manx committed suicide a few years later makes her performance here all the more tragic (http://mobile.nytimes.com/1964/11/17/kate-manxactress-is-suicide.html). Ted McCord’s shimmering black and white cinematography and camera work add a ton of character to an already stylish and unusual film.

Promoted as “the boldest story of a planned seduction ever to scald the screen,” Private Property had to be scandalous in its day. It promises the kind of smut in a pulp paperback. It’s simultaneously groundbreaking—for its time, anyway—with its subject matter, yet surprisingly inoffensive. Sex is not shown—it’s all implied. Ann never says she’s horny—she shows it, for example, by rubbing along her neck the big phallic stopper of a huge perfume bottle and lying in bed with Duke’s belt under a towel next to her (oddly, she also puts his belt around her neck at one point). Profanity is whitewashed—in one of the film’s most ludicrous moments, an exasperated Duke utters, “What the flop?” He doesn’t call Boots “gay” or even “homosexual”—the closest he gets is something about finding a daddy.

The ending is disappointingly predictable, but it’s not so bad that it ruins the wonderfully suspenseful ride that brought us to it. From a historical perspective, Private Property stands as a seething criticism of post-War American values. It’s also got great exteriors of a long gone Los Angeles. I won’t forget this one.

79 minutes
Not rated

(Facets) A-

Private Property

https://youtu.be/dISWFu6wBKk

Boyz N the Hood

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1991)

I’ve seen Boyz N the Hood a few times, but the last time had to be at least 15 years ago. I was curious to see it again when I noticed it playing on cable recently. It definitely shows its age, but it’s retained its impact and remains required viewing.

The boyz are three teens, Trey “Tre” Styles (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) and twin brothers Ricky (Morris Chestnut) and Darrin “Doughboy” Baker (Ice Cube). The hood is the Crenshaw neighborhood of South Central L.A. The boyz met when they were 10 and Tre moved in with his father, Furious (Laurence Fishburne), after his mother (Angela Bassett) decided it was time for a man to raise him. Now, Tre is getting ready to go to college, football recruiters are courting Ricky, and Doughboy is in a gang and making a half-assed attempt not to end up in jail again. It’s apparent that their choices have put them on different paths that already are removing them from each other. Furious is okay with that—especially when a senseless shooting rocks Tre’s world.

In his debut, writer/director John Singleton takes a powerful and realistic look at the problems that still plague American cities: racism (internalized racism, too), segregation, economics, education, parenting, violence, addiction. To his credit, he doesn’t glorify any of it. His characters are multidimensional, into the same things that all teenage boys are: sharp clothes (and, yes, they’re awful), chasing girls, playing games, driving cool cars. Even the not-so-good kids have dignity. When shit happens, Singleton pulls us into it along with his characters. For example, we feel the sting when the Baker boys’ mother (Tyra Ferrell) unleashes her attitude on Doughboy. We also experience a shot of adrenaline when an ominous car chases Tre and Ricky up and down back alleys. It helps that the cast is fantastic.

Nominated for an Academy Award for both Best Director and Best Original Screenplay in 1992 (https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1992), Boyz N the Hood still resonates despite its tendency to lapse into short spells of preachiness. Perhaps it’s because things haven’t changed as much in 25 years as we’d like to believe.

In 2002, the United States Library of Congress deemed Boyz N the Hood “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry (https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/).

112 minutes
Rated R

(MoviePlex) A-

http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/boyznthehood/

The Lobster

Video posted on by moviebloke

(Ireland/UK/Greece 2015)

“Now the fact that you will turn into an animal if you fail to fall in love with someone during your stay here is not something that should upset you or get you down. Just think, as an animal you’ll have a second chance to find a companion. But, even then, you must be careful; you need to choose a companion that is a similar type of animal to you. A wolf and a penguin could never live together, nor could a camel and a hippopotamus. That would be absurd.”

—Hotel Manager

Every now and then, a film so wonderfully unique comes along that you just don’t know what exactly to make of it until you take some time to digest it (I took all summer to write and post this entry). The Lobster is such a film. It’s not going to appeal to everyone—it’s a dark, subtle, absurd, uncomfortable, irreverent, and totally open-ended satire of the desire to be “in a relationship.” None of this is the stuff of a summer movie, but I loved it precisely because of these qualities. So far, The Lobster is easily my favorite film I’ve seen this year—released in Europe last fall, it crossed the Atlantic just this past spring.

In the not-so-distant future in a not-so-distant society, being single is against the law. Regardless of the reason for their singularity (death of a spouse, divorce, being dumped), unattached adults must check into a certain hotel designated for singles and find a suitable match, verified and approved by the hotel manager (Olivia Colman), within 45 days. Everything is regimented with meal times, active learning exercises, forced social events, and a strict prohibition on masturbation (though one form of sex with the housekeeping staff is required). “Guests” can buy additional time by shooting “loners”—rogue outlaw singles who escaped to the woods—on daily hunting excursions that resemble Hunger Games. Those who fail to find someone before their time runs out are transformed into the animal of their choice, selected during their initial processing, and banished to the woods.

The Lobster’s protagonist, mild-mannered David (Colin Farrell), finds himself at the hotel, his brother, Bob—now a dog—in tow, after the end of his marriage. He chooses a lobster as his animal because “lobsters live for over one hundred years, are blue-blooded like aristocrats, and stay fertile all their lives.” He also likes the sea.

WARNING: Potential spoilers ahead!

The Lobster is essentially divided into two acts: the first in the hotel and the second in the woods. David connects with fellow guests the Lisping Man (John C. Reilly) and the Limping Man (Ben Wishaw). David notices that the guests there tend seek others like themselves—except for Heartless Woman (Angeliki Papoulia), an emotionless femmebot who seeks out no one but has a seemingly infinite amount of time left thanks to her ruthless archery skills. David decides to go for her, which leads him to the woods. There, he meets the Short Sighted Woman (Rachel Weisz), who is near-sighted like he is. They connect, but the militaristic Loner Leader (Léa Seydoux) forbids all romance—punishable by mutilation. “We dance alone,” she tells David as she hands him an iPod. “That’s why we only play electronic music.”

Written by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou, the screenplay feels like a Chuck Palahniuk novel. The story is so bizarre and far fetched that it seems silly on paper, but proves incredibly powerful once in motion—in the same way that Being John Malkovich, another film I love that requires the same suspension of disbelief, didn’t sound like much to me before I saw it. Lanthimos has a taste for sadness and the macabre, and he liberally infuses The Lobster with both. He doesn’t take a dim view of relationships, but he notices the dim things people do to have one. The cinematography by Thimios Bakatakis is fabulously drab, with a cool, monotonous, faded color palette that creates a sense of distance and evokes a sense of resignation. Classical music plays throughout to add a kind of Clockwork Orange weirdness to the whole thing.

Despite the mood here, the story turns out to be oddly beautiful. Farrell gives one of his best performances—he drops all his rakish charm to become a colorless, big-bellied middle-aged schlub I found myself rooting for with each predicament he gets into. The inability of David and the Short Sighted Girl to express their feelings for each other is damn near heartbreaking. The entire cast is outstanding, and not a single character is superfluous. The second act is noticeably slower than the first, and perhaps could have been shorter than it is. Regardless, the momentum continues to build to a brilliantly ironic ending that comes about through David’s nearsightedness.

The Lobster doesn’t resolve in the end, which is my favorite thing about it. The viewer is left to decide what happens—and I’ve already discussed different opinions others have about whether David did, or didn’t. It’s the kind of film that lingers on in your memory and forces you think about it even though you’ll never know for sure.

Side note: the film’s website has a quiz that determines your suitable animal. Mine were an elephant, a horse (which finds pleasure in carrots, music, and oral sex), and a water bear. I chose a horse, of course.

119 minutes
Rated R

(ArcLight) A-

http://thelobster-movie.com

 

horse_poster

Ordinary People

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1980)

Ordinary People is exactly the kind of film I love: moody and dark with dysfunctional, even unlikeable characters and an unresolved, downright unhappy ending. Throw in a Chicago North Shore setting, two major sitcom stars, and Robert Redford as director and I’m all over it.

The plot is pretty simple: the Jarrett family is dealing with the death of Buck (Scott Doebler), the older of two teenaged boys. Younger brother Conrad (Timothy Hutton), who lived in Buck’s shadow and survived him in a boating accident, has just returned from a stint at a mental hospital. He can’t quite get back into the normal swing of things. His parents, Calvin (Donald Sutherland) and Beth (Mary Tyler Moore), are also having a tough time. Conrad sees a psychiatrist, Dr. Berger (Judd Hirsch)—whose office is somewhere on Sheridan Road—and the two work on getting him through his survivor’s guilt.

Unlike the plot, the family dynamic is complicated. Difficult. Calvin reaches out to his son and his wife, but he’s painfully awkward. His unsuccessful attempts to find common ground where they can all meet made me wince at times. Beth is in complete denial; absorbed by social events and golfing, she doesn’t seem to notice Conrad. She is incapable of understanding him or helping him heal. It’s causing the family unit to unravel. Maybe it was never strong to begin with.

Ordinary People is a quiet film that sneaks up you—you don’t see how intense it is until the credits roll. It’s chilling and haunting, something that stays with you. The writing is excellent, and the cast couldn’t be better. The drama here is not so much in what happens, but in how the characters face each other. Hutton won an Oscar for his performance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinary_People), and he evokes a boatload of sympathy. However, he succeeds because of his mother: unlike her television persona, Tyler Moore is stone cold. We get a hint that her facade cracks soon after the final scene, but it’s left to our imagination. She does an amazingly powerful job here.

124 minutes
Rated R

(Home via iTunes) A-

Mean Girls

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2004)

“What’s so great about Caesar? Hmm? Brutus is just as cute as Caesar. Brutus is just as smart as Caesar. People totally like Brutus just as much as they like Caesar. And when did it become okay for one person to be the boss of everybody, huh? Because that’s not what Rome is about. We should totally just stab CAESAR!”

—Gretchen Wieners

 

“How many of you have ever felt personally victimized by Regina George?”

—Ms. Norbury

I have no idea why Mean Girls played at a theater near me at this particular point in time, but I jumped at the chance to see it on the big screen. I’m a sucker for a good teen movie—the snarkier and more wicked, the better. Very much in the spirit of Heathers, Clueless, and Election—but with a little John Hughes heart thrown in—Mean Girls is snarky and wicked, but so much more: it’s got a knockout cast, exceptional characters, an entertaining story, smart plot twists, unforgettable quotes galore, and a message that any grownup can get behind. It’s fetch, it’s grool, and it’s loaded with awesomeness to sit around and soak up.

Cady Heron (Lindsey Lohan) relocates from Africa to Evanston, Illinois, where her academic parents (Ana Gasteyer and Neil Flynn) have taken teaching jobs at Northwestern University. They enroll her at North Shore High School. Having been home schooled for her whole life, Cady’s transition to public school in the States proves confusing and awkward to say the least—particularly the rules of “girl world.” Fringy classmates Janis Ian (Lizzy Caplan) and Damian (Daniel Franzese) take her on as something of a project and help her navigate high school society: “freshmen, ROTC guys, preps, J.V. jocks, Asian nerds, cool Asians, varsity jocks, unfriendly black hotties, girls who eat their feelings, girls who don’t eat anything, desperate wannabes, burnouts, sexually active band geeks, the greatest people you will ever meet, and the worst.” The worst, of course, are the Plastics, a pink posse headed by alpha female Regina George (Rachel McAdams) and her backup girls, insecure Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert) and rattlebrained Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried).

Cady intrigues Regina, who invites her to sit with them at lunch. She’s a surprise hit. The Plastics let her into their world. They gripe about their physical flaws to each other in the mirror. They use the phone to set each other up. They have what they call “the burn book,” a journal where they scribble bitchy, mean comments about other girls. Janis sees an opportunity for revenge and convinces Cady to act as a double agent, exposing the secrets of the Plastics to bring them down. This is where things get interesting—and trouble starts.

Loosely based on Rosalind Wiseman’s lengthy-titled self-help book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence, Tina Fey’s brilliant screenplay is sharp, insightful, and full of accurate, detailed, universal observations. We’ve all known people like these characters. Gretchen’s meltdown is flawless. Regina’s passive-aggressiveness is impeccable, and her descent is actually kind of sad. Ms. Norbury (Fey) is the perfect voice of reason. The acting is great all-around—this is Lohan’s finest hour. Even minor characters like Kevin G. (Rajiv Surendra), Coach Carr (Dwayne Hill), Trang Pak (Ky Pham), Jason (Daniel Desanto), and the girl with the wide-set vagina (Stefanie Drummond).

Mean Girls transcends adolescence: I have seen it a number of times in my 30s and my 40s, and I totally relate to it. I probably will in my 50s and 60s, too. It doesn’t get old. The Donnas covering Billy Idol’s “Dancing with Myself” is the perfect ending.

97 minutes
Rated PG

(ArcLight) A-

 

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA/UK 1971)

What a great way to get into the Easter spirit: an afternoon screening of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory complete with Rocky Horror-esque audience participation (without the swearing) and a goodie bag filled with bubbles, taffy, a chocolate egg, an exploding popper, and a glow stick—sign me up!

One of the first movies I remember seeing, ever, is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I saw it with my sister and my cousins (Billy and Dottie), and I couldn’t have been more than three or four years old. We saw it at the Madison Theatre, which is long gone. Here’s a picture of it: http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/7383

I still remember what it looked like inside: it was a big open theater with a concession stand at the top of the seats divided by a half wall that allowed one to see the screen while purchasing popcorn. Today, it’s a lumberyard as it has been for decades. Sigh.

But I digress.

So how’s the movie? The screenplay isn’t totally true to Roald Dahl’s 1964 novel—he started it but didn’t finish it, and ultimately disowned the final version (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Wonka_%26_the_Chocolate_Factory)—but it makes no difference. Director Mel Stuart keeps the film, to borrow from one of the songs, pure imagination and good fun. The sets are simple and the “special effects” are really low tech, like that trippy boat scene and the graphics accompanying the Oompa Loompas as they sing. Regardless, a timelessly magic quality that doesn’t need much comes through. Clearly, this is not the United States even if Charlie (Peter Ostrum) and Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson) speak in an American dialect. One of my favorite scenes from any movie is the one in which Violet (Denise Nickerson) turns into a blueberry. And who doesn’t love watching all these shitheads meet their fate: Augustus (Michael Bollner) sucked into a tube, Veruca (Julie Dawn Cole) falling down a trash chute to be incinerated, and Mike Teevee (Paris Themmen) shrunk down to size? The color pallette is an awesome late 60s drab, and the clothes are amazingly gaudy. Everyone’s hair is stiff. The whole thing is wonderfully weird.

I love Wonka’s (Gene Wilder) deadpan disdain for, like, everything. The Oompa Loompas’ moralistic nursery rhymes against eating too much, chewing gum, being a brat, and watching too much TV are awesome. Some scenes are thin and quicker than I remember, but it’s a perfect movie for kids. It even has a happy ending. I never found it scary.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory still brings a smile to my face after all these years. Although I didn’t mind Tim Burton’s remake, I’ll take the original any day. Oh yeah—a trip to the candy store after the film (like I had) is obligatory.

In 2014, the United States Library of Congress deemed Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

(Music Box) A-

http://www.willywonkamovie.com

https://youtu.be/GNarV_3P4oM

Vertigo

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1958)

I’m probably in the minority when I say that I found Vertigo stupid. The story, complicated and intricate as it is, takes a long time to get going; once it does, it’s so fanciful that it’s not believable. The movie is longer than it needs to be. Plus, the ending—I can only assume it’s supposed to be dramatic and impactful—comes off as silly; in fact, Aaron and I turned to each other at the same time and rolled our eyes.

All of this said, it doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the film. I did, actually—very much. There’s a lot to like here.

James Stewart is Scottie Ferguson, a cop forced to sit on the sidelines after a bout with vertigo while chasing a criminal across a bunch of rooftops nearly kills him. A wealthy former classmate, Galvin Elster (Tom Helmore), seeks him out and convinces him to act as a personal investigator; it seems Galvin’s wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), is possessed by her dead Mexican grandmother. She’s hot (even if she’s not one bit Mexican), and Scottie falls for her. Hard. It’s not long before he’s personally involved, wandering through northern California in her car with her. She opens up to him, he takes the bait, and he loses her. Or so it appears.

Vertigo is certainly a beautiful looking film. The interior sets are gorgeous. The exterior shots of late 1950s San Francisco are stunning, and considering how the city would change a decade later makes them all the more precious. The wardrobe choices are classic yet snappy. The restored version I saw was crisp and vivd. An ominous yet mesmerizing score by Bernard Herrmann takes Vertigo to an even higher place—no pun intended.

Being an Alfred Hitchcock film, there’s more to Vertigo than meets the eye. Symbolism is all over: tunnels, flowers, birds, towers, stairs, heights, the color green. It’s not hard to find articles, scholarly and not, that analyze the many themes here: desire, death, reality, appearances, power, the past, the damsel in distress. All this aside, I can sum up the message I got out of Vertigo in five words: “don’t think with your dick.” The interactions between Scotty and both Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) and Madeleine are sexually charged and tinged with danger. Vertigo is hypnotic, mysterious, psychological, and suspenseful even if it’s not exactly what I would call a thriller.

It takes some work to get through, but Vertigo ultimately proves to be a treat despite its flaws. After almost 60 years, it’s still breathtaking and weird. It’s easy to see why at least one so-called authority named it “the greatest film of all time” (http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-19078948). Hitchcock influenced many, but Vertigo immediately called to my mind David Lynch; I see traces of it throughout his work, and its influence on him specifically is undeniable.

In 1989, the United States Library of Congress deemed Vertigo “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry (https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/).

(Music Box) A-

Music Box Theatre 70mm Festival

Son of Saul [Saul Fia]

Video posted on by moviebloke

(Hungary 2015)

Saul Auslander (Géza Röhrig) is a Jewish-Hungarian prisoner at Auschwitz. A worker with the Sonderkommando, he is part of a special group of prisoners charged with the grim job of disinfecting gas chambers after exterminations and burning the bodies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando). While moving corpses after a particular gassing, he finds a young boy (Gergö Farkas) struggling to breathe. Saul notifies a guard and watches a doctor kill the boy. The event sets off something in Saul, prompting his mission to find a rabbi at the camp and give the boy a proper burial in the midst of a brewing prison uprising.

The plot is touching, and some of the story developments are even gripping; but the plot is secondary. Son of Saul is not about the story; it’s about the feeling of being a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. Director and cowriter Laszlo Nemes is successful—to say the least—and the result is fucking intense: noise and confusion dominate. What exactly is happening at the moment and what’s real are seldom clear. The mood is tense and things are volatile. The camera work, choppy and blurry and focused almost entirely on Saul, creates a claustrophobic, suffocating effect. At some points, body parts of the dead—a foot, a breast, a crotch—come in and out of focus in the background like unsettling scenery.

Son of Saul is a mindfuck, and parts of it teeter on being unwatchable. It throws out a lot to process; I left the theater frazzled. I never want to see it again, but I don’t need to: it’s going to stay with me. Nemes does an excellent job; it’s so powerful that it’s hard to believe this is his directorial debut.

(Music Box) A-

http://sonyclassics.com/sonofsaul/