Frank Capra #15: Meet John Doe (1940)

Gary Cooper is used and abused by those conniving upper-crust aristocrats again in Frank Capra's Meet John Doe (1940). As a homeless baseball player who is thrust into the limelight by a major news publication, Capra is out once again to prove to us that morals and common decency always win out in the face of rapacity and corruption.

A blatant variation on the formula well-established in earlier works like Mr. Deeds Goes to Town ('36) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ('39), Meet John Doe feels redundant and antiquated in comparison. Edward Arnold plays a slimy, prosperous, self-endowed politician (again) while Barbara Stanwyck plays the weepy female counterpart who falls for their saintly subject. (Apparently Jean Arthur was busy.)

Perhaps the most egregious blunder of the film is that it fails to tell its overly familiar story in under two hours, drawing out and expanding upon scenes that we've seen from the director before.

The ending (or rather the indecision) of Meet John Doe is well-documented. Supposedly Capra and Warner Bros. had five different endings attached to five different test screenings around the country. Needless to say, the most tidy and friendly of outcomes is what we're left with.

Classic Rewind: Fort Apache (1948)

Henry Fonda plays a General Custer starter-kit in John Ford's Fort Apache ('48), the first post-war western by the great American director to flip the script on Native Americans and the way they are portrayed in films. Like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance ('62) and The Searchers ('56), Fort Apache is an attempt to demythicize the west in the way that it reveals certain truths about our westward expansion throughout the 19th century.

Henry Fonda's Lt. Col. Owen Thursday is a strict, ignorant, stubborn fool. He's a symbol of the past, his naivety towards his enemy clouding his judgment, instead concerned with archaic matters like dress code and organized tactics, confusing the objection to either as cowardice and dishonor.

He is even ignorant to the wishes of his only daughter, Philadelphia (played by a teenage Shirley Temple), who is in love with a fellow Lieutenant (John Agar) and overtly pleads to become a woman - smiling and swooning at the soldiers as they pass by.

When Thursday isn't the center of attention, Ford takes us throughout the fort, expanding on quirky secondary new recruits and the wistful romanticism of Miss Thursday. It's here where Fort Apache feels quaint and frivolous, like outtakes from Wee Willie Winkie.

Nevertheless, the most objectionable officer to the ways of Lt. Col. Thursday is Capt. York, played by John Wayne. Unlike his role as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, Capt. York understands the Indians and opposes the foolhardy methods employed by Thursday both out in the battlefield (a series of beautiful wide-angle compositions of Utah's Monument Valley) and inside the confines of the fort.

In the climax, which sees a peace-seeking Capt. York adamantly objecting to the trigger-happy Thursday's attack on the Apaches, it becomes a fitting, ironic ending to the short-lived rule of the thick Lt. Colonel.

Back on the fort, with Capt. York in charge (and covering-up for the now erroneously immortalized Thursday), he delivers a reverent, inspired speech about valor and dignity in the honor of those who have died - and with them goes the truth. [A-]

Classic Rewind: Blood on the Moon (1948)

Robert Wise was admittedly not a fan of the western genre before signing on to direct Blood on the Moon ('48) for RKO, a star vehicle for the up and coming Robert Mitchum. Perhaps that's why this border-dispute feels so steeped in film noir and psychological horror, like one of those Val Lewton-produced films that Wise made in the early 40's.

An interesting filmmaker to say the least, Wise began his career as a prestigious editor - working on Orson Welles' Citizen Kane ('41) and The Magnificent Ambersons ('42) for starters - before working his way to the director's chair at RKO. He wouldn't make his mark until later (West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The Sand Pebbles), but his work for the studio throughout the 40's was hardly inconsequential.

Blood on the Moon is the story of a hired-gun, Jim Garry (Mitchum) who finds himself in the middle of a rancher dispute between an insurgent family led by John Luftus (Tom Tully) and the cruel, conniving Tate Riling (Robert Preston). Complicating matters for the initially ambiguous Garry is the tough, deceptively smart daughter of Mr. Luftus, Amy (Barbara Bel Geddes).

It basically amounts to a lean, moderate abbreviation of William Wyler's grandiose The Big Country ('58), differing in its clear interpretation of good and evil. With its radically sparse use of lighting, noirish black & white photography and lone-gun mentality, Blood on the Moon certainly doesn't supply goofy, colorful westward diversion, but in the end, its monochromatic delivery is far more commendable than its adherent formulism. [B]

Classic Rewind: Escape From Fort Bravo (1953)

William Holden plays a detached Union captain guarding a slew of Confederate prisoners in the Arizona desert in this John Sturges directed Civil War western. Cold and extremely efficient at tracking down escapees through Mescalero Indian territory, Captain Roper (Holden) becomes distracted when the beautiful Carla Forester (Eleanor Parker) stops in for stay.

But when Carla eventually reveals herself to be in collusion with a small group of Confederate prisoners led by Capt. John Marsh (John Forsythe), he sets off to track them down and confront the woman he loves.

Escape From Fort Bravo ('53) is very similar to Sam Wood's Ambush ('50) in that both films follow the conflicts and relationships between men and women both inside and outside enemy territory (in both cases, the enemy is the misrepresented and often vilified Indians).

As it progresses, it becomes clearer that Escape From Fort Bravo is a film building towards symbolic unification and pre-Reconstruction era patriotism as our characters (both Union and Confederate civilians alike, are forced to work together to overcome the climactic Indian attack). In this respect, it most resembles a film like Michael Curtiz's Virginia City ('40).

With one last desperate maneuver, Holden's Capt. Roper attempts to break out of his selfish solitude and save the day until he's beaten to the punch by one of his previously escaped Confederate prisoners. On this day, out in the beating sun of the Arizona desert, redemption and absolution are already taking shape. [A-]

Giant Lizards

The only thing really keeping Irwin Allen's The Lost World ('60) from being an enjoyably schlocky dino-adventure film is the implementation of a special effects technique dubbed "slurpasaur".

The term (apparently coined by fans of classic creature features like The Lost World) refers to the use of lizards and small crocodiles optically enlarged into the film to pass off as giant, exotic creatures, usually dinosaurs. This process is obviously much cheaper than using models or stop-motion animation, but the effect is generally highly unconvincing and unimaginative.

It's a shame, because for the most part, The Lost World is a fun, stupid, neatly-shot and designed jungle expedition-and-escape B-movie. Claude Rains plays the lead scientist while Michael Rennie (The Day the Earth Stood Still) struts around mysteriously and stoically as Jill St. John stands in as the token hot chick.

The centerpiece action scene taking advantage of the "slurpasaur" technique is a fight between what appears to be a small crocodile and a comparatively-sized iguana, their pinned-on horns and scales flapping around as they go at it.

Among the unintentionally funny moments is the final scene in which Claude Rains' Professor Challenger drops a dinosaur egg (which is initially revealed to be empty) and pulls out a pint-sized lizard, proclaiming, "It's a Tyrannosaurus Rex!" A perfectly inane way to end this gleefully inane film.

Review: Clash of the Titans (2010)

Louis Leterrier's stiff and snappy Clash of the Titans remake certainly picks up on some of the unabashed cornball mythology of the 1981 original, but what it brings to the table in terms of digital enhancement and Kraken-sized spectacle, it concurrently flounders in the same excess, its characters reduced to vapid machismo brutes.

Our hero is Perseus (played by a grumpy Sam Worthington) who is one ticked-off demigod (the best of both worlds) and the son of Zeus (Liam Neeson) who himself is a god-in-crisis, mortally panic-stricken over the lack of faith in his human pawns who seek to declare war on their heavenly creators.

When Hades (Ralph Fiennes) rises from the underworld, he convinces his brother Zeus to unleash him upon the ungrateful humans and get them grovelling on their knees once more. Knowing that Hades has awoken - his pet Kraken waiting under the ocean floor - the humans of Argos, now in possession of their demigod, set off on a whirlwind quest to seek the knowledge they need to beat the unbeatable.

Interspersed amongst the goofily diverting scuffles against giant scorpions and an irascible Medusa are tired, huffy line readings about the queasy distinctions between man and god, destiny and faith. Perseus feels conflicted about using his naturally celestial powers, instead wanting to rely on his mortal behalf to get the job done. ("If I do this, I do it as a man," he blurts.)

Among the Argos-led traveling party are Draco (played by a squinting, fun Mads Mikkelsen), Ixas (Hans Matheson), Eusebios (Nicolous Hoult) and a robed, eternal and quite silly Io, who is played by a pretty face, Gemma Arterton. Io is a nymph, dedicated to watching over the abandoned demigod for life and on the journey, she serves as the Navi to Perseus' Link. Like a big, pretty bug that just won't go away, she flutters about the screen (her hair becoming more ideal and shiny as it progresses) like a nuisance.

The stable of screenwriters attempt to make an everlasting love story out of Io and Perseus, but the result is executed just as feebly and uncomfortably as when our Praetorian fellowship try to uncouthly crack a couple of jokes.

The saving grace of Clash of the Titans is the revolving door of mildly rendered and increasingly scaled creatures - for if nothing else, it shuts up those sullen, crabby humans and their flirty, part-divine companions. [C]

Review: Repo Men (2010)

This latest middling blood-splotched action film is based on the novel "Repossession Mambo," which was written concurrently by Eric Garcia as he and Garrett Lerner worked on the script. I don't know who came up with the idea first, these guys or the creators of Repo! The Genetic Opera, but what I do know is that those responsible for Repo Men have seen a lot of movies.

Set in the not too distant future (where the city looks like Blade Runner but the suburbs have twenty-year old gas grills for their red oak patios), a mega corporation known smarmily as "The Union," specializes in outrageously overpriced artificial organ transplants, and when you can't pay the bills, they send in the Repo Men to take em back.

Armed with stun guns, neck tattoos and lots of imported aluminum-canned beer, the best of the Repos are Remy (Jude Law, overqualified) and his best friend from childhood, Jake (Forest Whitaker). They've brought in thousands of unpaid organs, laying them at the feet of their typical bottom-line corporate chief (Liev Schreiber), who you know is phlegmatically evil by the way he stares out of his widescreen office window.

Through Remy's queasily metaphorical narration, we know that he's a man approaching a tipping point. His wife wants him to transfer to The Union's sales department, while internally he questions his methods with Jake (Whitaker), who attempts to justify matters whenever the conversation gets too weighty - "a job's a job," he says.

But, when a defibrillator goes haywire and Remy is unknowingly supplied an ugly, chromic heart of his own, he's no longer adept at his profession - in fact, he's useless. Unable to pay for it himself (and rudely denied an employee discount), he goes rogue with a local dive singer (Alice Braga) who has more artificial organs than Roy Batty.

Helmed by first-time director Miguel Sapochnik, Repo Men is a blatantly imitative vehicle, shot and arranged with blue-filtered flair, but ultimately proven to be a timeworn, hyper-violent drag. It almost lulls you to sleep with its certainty before the final act explodes and erupts like an unchecked artery - throwing in a side-scrolling hallway fight scene straight out of Park Chan-wook's Oldboy - before finally climaxing in an absurdly composed scene of erotic self-incision.

The inanity and blood-streak belligerence of the final thirty minutes could be attributed to the admittedly sneaky and sly final twist - its pessimistic quality almost hard to resist in a film that seemed resolute - but its enjoyment is entirely predicated on the viewer having never seen Terry Gilliam's Brazil, for Repo Men, with this final act of thievery, assures itself as nothing but trifling mimicry. [C-]