With two-to-three inches of snow on the ground today, I decided to make a movie day of it - what else? - and underwent four movies in succession. - Now my OCD prohibits me from potluck viewing, so I almost always have a plan going in, frequently categorizing my viewing habits either by year, genre, director, actor or what have you. So today, I tackled some late 80's/early 90's brooding thrillers, thanks to Netflix's handy streaming/Watch Instantly service. - First up was Phil Joanou's Final Analysis ('92), starring Richard Gere, Kim Basinger and Uma Thurman. Now I'm a sucker for Richard Pierce's No Mercy ('86) if for nothing else than the steamy sexuality of the leads, which is why Final Analysis was so messily disappointing. - It's essentially regurgitated, chewed up-and-spit-out Hitchcock tropes, served up over a bed of psycho-babble and by-the-law subterfuge. The twists pile up so high and so furiously over the last hour, each one as inept as the last, all the way up too the embarrassing finale atop a creaky lighthouse. DePalma is appalled. [D+] - Next is Ridley Scott's Someone to Watch Over Me ('87), a competent cop-thriller that nonetheless is ultimately muted by its middling aspirations and formula climax. There's an intriguing through-line as Tom Berenger, a happily married man, slowly falls under the spell of his beautiful, socialite witness - played by Mimi Rogers - but this tale is ultimately a little too bare. [C+] - Roman Polanski's Frantic ('88) was next up and found a lot of admire here (the director's trademark tension and slow-burning paranoia are in full effect in the first half), but the central mystery is solved a bit too tidily and too soon, leaving the audience weary instead of hanging by the end. Still, this is a well above-average thriller, makes a nice companion piece to The Ghost Writer. [B] - Last but not least, Jim McBride's The Big Easy ('87) is a Southern cookin' mystery with a luminous Ellen Barkin and a spicy Dennis Quaid. The moralizing and emphasis on cop corruption spoil the mood a little, but for the most part, this is a winning formula of witty and charming. [B]
While I'm hopelessly waiting out the remaining films for my Top Ten list, I thought it would be fun to post my sister's just recently completed list, which she then sent to me this morning. - Obviously, she has a soft spot for Robert Pattinson...and musicals...and....Facebook(?), but it's an interesting list nonetheless: - 10. "THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE" 9. "COUNTRY STRONG" 8. "THE BOOK OF ELI" 7. "BLUE VALENTINE" 6. "SHUTTER ISLAND" 5. "INCEPTION" 4. "REMEMBER ME" 3. "BURLESQUE" 2. "CATFISH" 1. "THE SOCIAL NETWORK"
Unapologetically chimerical and about as authentic as a Gary Cooper air-punch, The Plainsman ('37), beginning with a shot of the pinned-on beard of Abraham Lincoln, is the kind of all-encompassing, shamelessly romanticized vision that could only be cooked up by Cecil B. DeMille, the master showman himself. -
- Combining history, myth, and good old jingoistic western sentiment, The Plainsman is a contradiction in motivations - an epic, sweeping dime novel, hastily pitting historical figures like Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane against the savage, embarrassingly stereotypical Native Americans, who squawk and howl and become distracted by pretty hats. - DeMille, who was at this point highly susceptible and everlastingly concerned about his commercial status, (once a highly artistic silent-film director booted to the streets) brings a charming, nonthreatening quality to all of his work and has never met a story he couldn't project onto the largest canvas possible. (Both of his "epic westerns" begin with a dutiful delegation in Washington.) - Two years later, with Union Pacific ('39), a similar story of post-war westward expansion, DeMille would slightly hone in his childish, idealized vision of the open plains, although both are ultimately too nationalistic and too enchanting to compare with the tougher, morally ambiguous and revisionist westerns that would come soon after. [C]
I watch movies for moments like this train cabin fight scene in Reuben Fleischer's The Narrow Margin ('52). That moment were innovation and inspiration meet to deliver a kick-ass, perfectly executed scene. Seriously, isn't this two minutes better than any of the hand-to-hand beatdowns from The Bourne trilogy?
During a Netflix-induced Western lapse (it's tough to have new movies to watch when there's no mail on Saturday and Sunday), I decided to have a film noir cram session yesterday - six movies, one day. - The highlights were Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night ('47), Robert Wise's Born to Kill ('47) and definitely Richard Fleischer's masterfully economic The Narrow Margin ('52) - seriously, if you haven't seen it, it's 71 minutes long, it's readily available, make it happen, it's really quite an amazing little B-movie. They Live By Night [A-], Born to Kill [A-], The Narrow Margin [A] -
On the downside, Max Nosseck's Dillinger ('45) is such an abrupt, slapdash biopic that it's a blur and Anatole Litvak's Out of the Fog ('41) has a wickedly cruel performance from John Garfield, an interesting concept about having to reach back into your darkest intuitions when all else fails, but a wildly ludicrous climax. It's certainly one of those films that feels more like 30's Warner Bros. morality than mid-20th century RKO cynicism. Dillinger [C-], Out of the Fog [C+] - And Robert Wise's The Set-Up ('49) is just an okay film noir but a terrific boxing movie. Seriously, no wonder Martin Scorsese cites it as an influence on Raging Bull - it probably has one of the best shot fight scenes ever committed to film. Robert Ryan is wonderful. [B+]
So I watched Ben Affleck's extended, 153-minute cut of The Town last night and I was immediately reminded that there's a reason that this stuff gets left out. I think we, myself especially, are victim to treating extra footage like it's found Orson Welles reels from The Magnificent Ambersons or something - it's just not the case. - Basically the new cut of The Town (about 28 minutes longer) adds a lot of dispensable police procedural stuff, more strip clubs and a few more scenes between Ben Affleck's Doug McCray and Rebecca Hall's Claire Keesey, especially in the first half, which feels fractured and sluggish here opposed to the theatrical version. (All of the key action sequences seemed untouched, and there certainly wasn't anything added of any significance in the last 45 minutes or so.) - So despite my disappointment in the new material, watching this extended cut is fascinating stuff from the perspective of really learning how to edit, compose and sequence a finished film, sometimes less is more and too much bare, inconsequential information and material can do more harm than good. - (I'm hearing that Affleck's commentary on the extended cut is pretty interesting, so I definitely need to check that out.)
King Vidor's Duel in the Sun ('46) is as wildly hysterical as its reputation suggests, overheated and under-nourished and frequently threatening to bring new meaning to the word "melodrama", but surprisingly, it's also shapeless, irritating and fatiguing - a mixing pot of sexual tension, big family politics and steamy, wayward tetchiness. - Whereas David O. Selznick's Gone With the Wind was a focused, gripping, tempered and selectively boisterous epic, Duel in the Sun, besides being inherently inferior on paper, is a complete misfire for the simple reason that it lacks coherence - it's all sexual fussiness and big melting emotions without cause or concern. [D+]
It's essentially regurgitated, chewed up-and-spit-out Hitchcock tropes, served up over a bed of psycho-babble and by-the-law subterfuge. The twists pile up so high and so furiously over the last hour, each one as inept as the last, all the way up too the embarrassing finale atop a creaky lighthouse. DePalma is appalled. [D+]
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