Short Rewinds: Junior Bonner (1972), Green Mansions (1959)

"JUNIOR BONNER" (Sam Peckinpah, 1972)

A contemporary rodeo western meets dysfunctional family comedy, Junior Bonner, although bearing the signature slow-motion and rapid-intercutting techniques, is a far more lax and gentler Sam Peckinpah film.

The first collaboration between he and Steve McQueen (they would team up immediately afterwards on The Getaway) Junior Bonner was not a financial success, but watching it today, although a bit tame, reveals itself to be a well-rounded and deftly arranged film - not so much about facing your past and moving forward, but about hanging on, eight seconds at a time. [B+]

"GREEN MANSIONS" (Mel Ferrer, 1959)

A soggy love-mess, this adaptation of the 1904 William Henry Hudson novel about a revenge-minded adventurer (Anthony Perkins) who falls in love with a forest girl (Audrey Hepburn) is a Pocahontas-like saga of the power of love and redemption, blah, blah.

Trying to take advantage of its wide-canvas CinemaScope form, Green Mansions shot some footage on location in the jungles of South America, but anything involving the cartoon-like Audrey Hepburn and the crooning Anthony Perkins is clearly being performed on the Hollywood backlot. There's even a baby deer that nips at the heels of Mrs. Hepburn wherever she goes. [C]

Review: Harry Brown (2010)

The skinheaded stepchild to Gran Torino, Daniel Barber's Harry Brown is a sickeningly violent retirement home Death Wish, a vigilante thriller encumbered by brooding social issues and repulsive bouts of bloodshed that drown this turd in an air of misplaced catharthis and self-importance.

Attempting to send its legendary star back into the genre that defined his career (the always good Michael Caine), this effort ultimately proves itself unworthy of providing a satisfactory conclusion to the actor who embodied London underworld retribution in Get Carter ('71).

Here, as the titular subject, an aging veteran with a violent past (of course), we watch Harry awake in his apartment as he struggles to get out of bed, glancing dolefully at the vacancy to his left. As he leaves his antiquated yet decorous apartment, the pallid gray walls are revealed to be marred by graffiti and apathy, the streets looming with predators and badmouthed blokes looking for trouble. (At least he doesn't have a lawn for trespassers to disturb.)

When Harry's chess buddy and best friend is brutally murdered (don't worry, you get to see it!) he decides to take justice into his own hands when a well-meaning and savvy policewoman (Emily Mortimer) can't pin anything on the suspected neighborhood thugs in a hilariously rote string of interrogations. ("We dun't no nuffin'!)

Harry's renegade tour through South London's most vicious and abusive gangland may sound like a good time, but in fact, with director Daniel Barber's repulsive meat-hook pulverizings and writer Gary Young's broad incriminations on police inefficiency and youth culture, Harry Brown is a nasty and egregiously portentous genre exercise. [D+]

Guess That Screenshot #2

Hopefully a bit harder this time.

Standings:
TheAnswerMVP2001 - [1]

Classic Rewind: M (1931)

It's too late in the night to riffle through all of the ins and outs of Fritz Lang's M ('31), which I watched for the first time tonight (I know, sue me), but my initial reaction after just finishing it was that it's a stunning procedural chase film-cum-social drama that hits home in the same way as Akira Kurosawa's High and Low ('63).

Fused with a masterful technical fluency - the reliance on sound for continuity, the whirling, beautifully composed camera movements and high-angle expressionistic compositions - M certainly has to register as the finest and earliest example of what could be accomplished artistically with sound. The fact that it was Fritz Lang's first foray just adds to the mystique and to the craft.

Written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou, the film chronicles the pursuit of child serial killer (Peter Lorre) through Berlin and the social unrest and anxiety of such a chase. (It is a rare bird in that both policemen and criminals find themselves sharing a common enemy.)

I love how Lorre's character can't stop humming "In the Hall of the Mountain King," which is the root of every killer-song association in the history of cinema. (The Night of the Hunter clearly owes a lot to M.) And I also love how, for a film made in the 1930's, it delves into the psyche of a murderer in the final scenes, even going so far as to create sympathy.

The second-to-last line, which is spoken just before the judge can make his ruling ("This won't bring back our children") is deliciously cynical, as we, the audience, are denied even the knowledge of our psychopathic subject's fate. [A]

Classic Rewind: Singin' in the Rain (1952)

(Review in accordance with Encore's World of Film & TV Musical Blog-a-thon)

It's not a radical opinion to hail Singin' in the Rain ('52) as the greatest musical of all-time or even to simply profess it as a personal favorite. Certainly not for a film that routinely finds its way to the top of any self-respecting "greatest of" list and its title song (first heard in Hollywood decades prior) can be hummed by almost anybody, regardless of whether or not they've actually seen it.

Preceded by An American in Paris ('51) and followed by The Band Wagon ('53), the film was released at the height of Arthur Freed's prowess, producing both critically-acclaimed and financially profitable musicals at MGM. But in terms of crafting a high-energy Technicolor spectacle, he and director Stanley Donen never equaled the charm, the affluence, or the vitality of Singin' in the Rain.

The perfect confluence of song, dance, sugar-spiked romance and Hollywood satire, the film is one of those rare Hollywood musicals without a flaccid note, number or scene in sight, utilizing its well-rounded cast and catchy verses to win us over time and time again.

Gene Kelly has always been my favorite male dancer for his acrobatic foot-stomping and self-choreographed synchronizations with his dance partners, be it male or female. His genius isn't more readily apparent than on the tongue-tied musical number, "Moses Supposes," in which he and the classic clown Donald O'Connor defiantly stomp around the office of the new diction coach.

Of course, diction (or more directly, voice and sound) play a key role in the film, as our story takes place during the late 1920's, just after the release of Alan Crosland's The Jazz Singer ('27), the first sound film ever made.

Kelly, playing Don Lockwood, a Fairbanks-like silent star who faces the threat of becoming obsolete due to the high-pitch squeal of his on-screen lover (and off-screen for the press), the platinum blond, Lina Lamont. (Lina is played by Jean Hagen in an Oscar-nominated role absurdly rich in comedic gems.)

When their new picture, "The Dueling Cavalier," makes the switch to sound, the film spares no attempts at laughter in depicting the violent shrill of Ms. Lamont and the upheaval of Hollywood's sudden transition to the "talking era."

As their film quickly takes the form of something worse than a disaster, the rosy-cheeked dancer Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds), in between love waltzes with Don on the Hollywood backlot, suggests a musical transformation (which gives us the house-tour joyousness of "Good Morning"). The problem is, Lina can't even talk, much less sing.

The beautiful irony of Singin' in the Rain is that it was released just a year before the implementation of the widescreen CinemaScope process in 1953 in addition to how it eerily resembles the Hollywood we know today as an industry so desperately tied to the trends of the moment. (Just replace The Jazz Singer with Avatar.)

In a film that relies on the plot of a sweet yet undiscovered singer-dancer dishonestly dubbing over the big star's musical harmonies, another touch of irony is the behind-the-scenes reveal that Debbie Reynolds doesn't sing in the film. Among its more immediate qualities and irresistible rhythms, perhaps Singin' in the Rain's greatest achievement is that its sensationalized vision of Hollywood may, in fact, be closer to the reality. [A]

WWII Marathon

The great TCM is running a two-day war movie marathon beginning on the 28th in honor of Memorial Day. Partly with their help, I'd like to do one myself. I don't always, but I usually try to watch movies in a categorized fashion (i.e. by director, actor, genre, etc.).

I have chosen a small list of WWII films (choosing to focus only on the Great War), which consists mostly of films I haven't seen, but also some of my favorites, allowing me to re-watch and write about them. They are:

"TWELVE O'CLOCK HIGH" (Henry King, 1949)
"THE GUNS OF NAVARONE" (J. Lee Thompson, 1961)
"STALAG 17" (Billy Wilder, 1950)
"THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI" (David Lean, 1957)
"DESTINATION TOKYO" (Delmer Daves, 1943)
"FLYING LEATHERNECKS" (Nicholas Ray, 1951)
"SAHARA" (Zoltan Korda; 1943)
"AIR FORCE" (Howard Hawks, 1943)
"BATTLEGROUND" (William A. Wellman, 1949)
"THE GREAT ESCAPE" (John Sturges, 1963)
"BATTLE OF THE BULGE" (Ken Annakin, 1965)

The WWII Marathon should start later this week.

Classic Rewind: Colorado Territory (1949)

A rare breed of redemptive film noir transplanted from the bustling cityscapes to the old West, any resemblance to the crime films of the 30's and early 40's would be justified, seeing as how Raoul Walsh's Colorado Territory ('49), is in fact a remake of his own High Sierra ('41).

Known as and widely regarded for the star-making performance of Humphrey Bogart, High Sierra is very much the same film as Colorado Territory. Both deal with a run-down outlaw tired of a criminal life and looking to settle down as one final - and inevitably fatal - holdup stands in their way.

Joel McCrea plays Wes McQueen, the bandit in question who is busted out of prison by his longtime boss. Weighed by loyalty, he's pushed into one last job with a couple of goons and their feisty, glamorous half-Indian counterpart, Colorado (Virginia Mayo, in the Ida Lupino role).

But McQueen has his sights on a lonely farm girl, Julie Ann (Dorothy Malone), who resembles his deceased wife and gains her admirer's sympathy in the same way that Joan Leslie and her deformed foot softened Mr. Bogart.

The point in both films that has twice struck me as a bit clumsy is our criminal-on-the-loose and his hovering admiration shifting from the wholesome, gentle object of desire to the tougher, similarly trapped broad who will follow him up into the mountains to his death.

Perhaps its meant as an illustrative example that money and well-standing can't buy the life you want and that a criminal is a criminal, but I will say that the revelation is much smoother here than in High Sierra. At least Colorado Territory spares us the shame of placing the fate of our hardened gunman in the bark of dog named Farb. [B+]