Sunday, January 30, 2022 The Man with No Name trilogy at January 30, 2022

 

Since I started this particular blog, I've tried my best to watch films that challenge me.  And nothing challenges me quite like Westerns.  It's one genre of film that I've never been particularly drawn to, and I always have to fight my natural tendency to tune out what I'm watching and pay attention.  Having said this, the 1964 Sergio Leone classic A Fistful of Dollars was one of the real gems of 30 Flicks (the review of which can be read rightchere).  If you've ever seen Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (and I have), you've seen this movie, where an unnamed stranger arrives in town and promptly plays two warring factions within said town against each other while lining his pockets with money from both camps.  It was a very simple concept, but the execution was almost perfect, with a kickass score and a kickass ending to boot.  Afterward, I was actually looking forward to watching the other two movies in this unofficial trilogy, with both ensuing films again directed by Leone and both starring Eastwood as the antihero whose dialogue is very sparse.

 

Released to Italian cinemas a scant year after A Fistful of Dollars, 1965's For a Few Dollars More opens just like predecessor - with an amazing credits sequence accompanied by Ennio Morricone's awesome music.  While he was known as "Joe" in the previous film, this time around Eastwood is addressed by the other characters as "Manco," and has graduated from being a rogue criminal to a bounty hunter.  The film tells the story of Manco's competition and eventual partnership with Colonel Mortimer, a fellow hunter played by Lee Van Cleef in an appropriately scenery-chewing performance.  The relationship between them is adversarial at first, eventually leading up to an admittedly goofy shooting contest that results in a grudging respect.  I can't quite make up my mind about whether I loved or hated a scene involving a character shooting a hat multiple times in the air before it hits the ground.  I lean toward the former.

The plot thread of the film is the two characters' search for Indio (Gian Maria Volente), brutal bank robber who has been broken out of prison by his posse.  The story leads Indio toward the cinematic "one big score" that a good deal of heist movies revolve around, with Manco infiltrating his gang and Mortimer in hot pursuit.  Director Leone throws in some excellent unconventional storytelling touches in the way he treats the character of Indio, including a running flashback that slowly explains the musical pocket watch that Indio carries with him.  He also mines the chemistry that Eastwood and Van Cleef share for all its worth; the film is a "buddy cop" movie before such a thing existed.

I did not find For a Few Dollars More quite as enjoyable as the original film.  The movie's theme of revenge that is gradually revealed to the audience is a powerful one, and the performances are appropriate to the material.  Leone's cinematography is again masterful, with his use of long takes standing out in this movie a bit more this time around.  The main problem that I had with this movie was its length.  At 132 minutes, it felt far too long for a movie of this nature.  A Fistful of Dollars felt lean and mean.  This film has execution that feels a bit sloppier, due to a story that occasionally meanders and takes perhaps one twist too many.  It's a minor complaint, but this film definitely has more faults than the original.  Fortunately, Leone would immediately get to work on the follow-up, and in 1966 we would get...

 

...The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  The execution is always sharp with this film - Quentin Tarantino's all-time favorite movie, no less.  After watching this movie, I can see the influence that it had the vast majority of his works.  The storytelling that constantly shifts gears, the group of principal characters who all have severe flaws, and the plot involving a major crime being committed are all things that seem right out of a '90s Tarantino film.  The setting, though, is wildly different.  The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly takes place during the American Civil War and begins its opening chapters introducing its three leads who fit each of those monikers.  The Good is Eastwood, this time around known only as "Blondie."  The Bad is the awesomely-named Angel Eyes, with Van Cleef in a different role from the revenge-driven bounty hunter he played in For a Few Dollars More.  The Ugly is Tuco (Eli Wallace), an occasionally bumbling but very resourceful and cunning bandit.

 

The movie never looks back after the bursts of violence that establish the main characters.   The crux of the story here is $200,000 in Confederate gold that all three characters find themselves on the trail of.  The story flows with a very nice logic, as Angel Eyes is the first to learn of the gold's existence via a professional hit that makes him turn on his employer.  Blondie and Tuco, meanwhile, happen across the search by chance - the kind of chance that feels right at home in Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill.  The script has elements of escalation, with each act of violence and set piece topping the previous and the characters coming up with more ingenious ways to outfox the others.

 

Leone again tells an admittedly simple story through the eyes of multiple characters, but everything just feels grander and bigger this time around.  Tuco is really the glue that holds the movie together, as we get to meet his brother and find out why he became a criminal.  There are also elements of social commentary at play here as we are shown not only the prison camps on the Confederate side, but the Union side as well, and the futility of war is a theme that runs throughout the film's 180 minutes.  That is really my only complaint with The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  It is simply too long - of those 180 minutes, I feel that the movie could have been trimmed by at least 30 minutes, likely even more.  A slightly leaner and faster-paced film would have likely made this movie very close to perfection.  As it stands, it is a very good piece of action cinema.

I suppose I should close this post with a few ruminations about the series as a whole.  While they are definitely not my favorite movies of all time by any stretch, there are many things to admire about this particular series of films.  First and foremost are the jobs done by its director and leading man - Leone is an amazingly skilled artist, endlessly innovative with this at times very narrow genre and guiding it through directions it had never gone before.  You can also see him become a better director with each film, with The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly being a showcase for his talents via some very noticeable bird's-eye-view camera shots.  Eastwood is perfect in his role as the almost-silent protagonist, far from an angel but still possessing of a certain moral code that pours through his icy gaze.  These two men were what gave us the career of Clint Eastwood, which would kick off in a big way in 1967 when all three of these films were released in the States to rabid audiences.  The rest is history.

Review over.  Time to hand out the ratings:

A Fistful of Dollars - ***

For a Few Dollars More - ***

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - *** 1/2

These films definitely paint your wagon with things other than paint.

Sunday, January 16, 2022 The Antoine Doinel series at January 16, 2022

 

I've watched a lot of foreign films over the past six months of my life.  Doing so has afforded me the opportunity to gleam a very important observation.  You know, the cultures of the world all have their own things in the entertainment sphere.  America is a TV culture.  Italy has opera.  The British are all about the stage.  France has cinema.  Not movies, not film, cinema - the use of the moving picture as an art form.  French films can be pretentious as all get-out, but they're honest and have aims that go beyond cashing in on your nostalgia.  For that reason alone, I'm all about me some French cinema.

Of all the films in the 30 Flicks project, Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows was definitely the one that surprised me the most with how much I enjoyed it.  I already did a full-length review that can be read here, but I'll do a brief refresher.  The film is the story of 13-year-old Antoine Doinel, a problem child before John Ritter had ever heard of such a thing who is constantly bucking his authoritarian teachers and his tyrannical mother.  The film ends with Doinel being sent away to a military academy in an ending that is both bleak and hopeful.  The movie, considered one of the best in cinema history, is perfectly self-contained.  I was shocked, however, to learn that the character of Antoine Doinel would appear FOUR more times, all in projects directed by Truffaut and all starring Jean-Pierre Leaud as the main character.  When it was all said and done, we would pay witness to some 20 years in the life of Antoine, beginning three years after The 400 Blows with a short film that was part of an anthology called Love at Twenty.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At a lean and mean 32 minutes, Antoine & Colette is the story of the first love and infatuation that the now 17-year-old Antoine has in life.  As the story begins, Antoine has managed to free himself of both the military academy and his parents, supporting himself by working as an LP manufacturer.  The object of his affection is music student Colette (Marie-France Pisier).  The story contained here is essentially the eternal struggle of the male stuck in the friend zone, as Antoine writes love letters to Colette and dotes on her hand and foot in an attempt to get her to fall in love with him.  Alas, she never does.  This isn't a story that you can watch and feel all warm and fuzzy about afterward, but it is no doubt effective at the message that it tries to convey.  Sometimes, life can kick you in the gut, and how you deal with that determines your strength as a person.  

Launch forward six years to 1968.  Antoine Doinel is back, no longer in black and white and now in living color, for Stolen Kisses.  As the film opens, Antoine is being dishonorably discharged from the Army due to frequently being AWOL (not a shock considering just how much skipping school he did as a kid).  Boiled down to its bare essentials, this movie is a screwball workplace comedy, as the suddenly unemployed Antoine goes from job to job to make ends meet.  He gets fired on no less than three separate occasions throughout the deft 90-something minute running time, finally finding some semblance of stability working as - of all things - a private detective.

It is with this film that the series focusing on Antoine as an adult finds it focus - the character's winding and very prolific love life.  As the film begins, he has a love interest of sorts in Christine Darbon (the gorgeous Claude Jade, who resembles a more innocent version of Catherine Deneuve), violinist who seems simultaneously very hot and very cold toward Antoine.  While romancing Christine, he becomes very enamored with his boss's older wife, who is flattered by the attention and readily seduces the younger man.  Taking in the film, I couldn't help but compare it to The Graduate, which has a similar story on paper but left me very cold - mostly because I found Dustin Hoffman's character to be insufferable.  Antoine Doinel is very similar to Benjamin Braddock in theory, but he is infinitely more likable, more humorous and at times downright goofy.  As the film comes to a close, with Antoine and Christine engaged and ready to face the future together, I was eager to watch more of this quirky character. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just two years later, Bed and Board would be released and expand on the themes explored in Stolen Kisses.  With a much shorter gap between stories, this one has much more direct continuity with its predecessor, with both Leaud and Jade lending their considerable chemistry to the characters as they face the rigors of a new marriage.  As the title implies, the couple are now married, living a charmed life in a tiny apartment.  Antoine runs a flower stand and works on his still-unfinished novel, while Christine gives violin lessons to children.  Truffaut does his best to convey the routine of married life in the once-again amazing 90-odd minutes that the film unspools in.  This is presented with perfect clarity in the repeated scenes of Antoine and Christine in bed, with both characters usually engrossed in reading material and occasional bits of humorous dialogue peppered in.  

Those scenes, with their funny level of sameness, also clue the audience in that there is trouble in paradise lurking just under the surface.  After the couple welcome a baby into the world, Antoine becomes enchanted by a mysterious Japanese girl (Hiroko Berghauer) who he eventually begins an affair with.  There is a bit of dialogue where Antoine describes the affair to the heartbroken Christine that his new lover is like a whole new world, bringing home the central theme of Bed and Board for the audience.  There is also commentary here about how a married couple having children only magnifies what lurks under the surface for the parents, both good and bad.

Nine years would pass between Bed and Board and the follow-up (and final) film, 1979's Love on the Run.  20 years after first playing the character, the age is starting to show on Jean-Pierre Leaud's face, a physical truth that makes him even more endearing.  As the film begins, he is waking up with his new lover Sabine (French singer Dorothee).  Antoine (who is now a published novelist) and Christine are in the process of finalizing their divorce, as their reconciliation at the conclusion of Bed and Board turned out to be only temporary.  The dissolution of this union is oddly amicable and almost heartwarming in a way, with Jade's singular smile serving as her stoic facade against the roller-coaster ride that Antoine taken her on.

I was admittedly a bit worried after the first 20 minutes of the film that Truffaut did not have a fresh direction for the character of Doinel to go.  The script salvages itself with the sudden reappearance of Colette, still played by Pisier and more gorgeous than ever.  Through a series of flashbacks to the earlier films and some very Citizen Kane-esque nonlinear storytelling, we see the complicated series of events that led to the divorce and the relationship between Antoine and Sabine.  As told to Colette by Antoine, of course.  There is much more than we initially thought going on here, both internally and externally.  The story of Love on the Run is one of fate and the wisdom that comes with advanced age, with a finale that feels absolutely perfect precisely because it is so low-key and understated.

This is a very entertaining, very unique series of films.  It starts with The 400 Blows, a not-quite deadly serious but still drab and dour exploration of a disaffected youth rebelling against his admittedly very poor parental figures.  The ensuing films could not possibly be any more different, but they are all very much a logical extension of the Antoine character from the time we first met him.  Francois Truffaut gives us three romantic comedy films that took the bold step of presenting them from the male perspective, which is very much rooted in infatuation and sexuality.  He amazingly did not take a side in this, merely showing us the very troubled love life of a once-troubled child and letting the audience make up their own mind.  A level of impartiality that modern film-makers could definitely learn a thing or two from.

I think the execution and the little character moments that each film gives Antoine is the key here.  In the hands of a lesser story-teller, Antoine could be an almost unbearable character.  He isn't unbearable; he isn't a whiner like Benjamin Braddock or Woody Allen's self-insert character in all of his films.  Instead, he is smart, articulate and boasting of a robust sense of humor.  Despite seeing the worst that this character has to offer, he is nonetheless endearing.  Watching the films in sequence, I REALLY wanted Antoine to have a happy ending and would have left severely disappointed if he did not get one.  Spoiler alert, I didn't walk away from the final film disappointed.  Should you seek these movies out as I did (and don't mind reading subtitles), I don't think you will either.

Rating time (out of ****):

The 400 Blows - **** (which was upgraded from *** 1/2 after rewatch) 

Antoine & Colette - positive

Stolen Kisses - *** 1/2

Bed and Board - ***

Love on the Run - *** 

Thursday, January 6, 2022 The Entertainment Buffet at January 06, 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I haven't watched pro wrestling with any regularity for years now, but I still keep up with the business news aspect of it.  A photo circulated lately of an episode of RAW that was...rather sparsely attended.  Like, maybe 500 people in a 15,000-seat arena.  You can't blame it on the 'rona, either, because those NFL stadiums certainly look full on a weekly basis.  Something very interesting happens, however, when you take a look at this crowd and compare that image to WWE's quarterly business reports.  They're absolutely killing it, raking in more revenue and net income than they ever have.  Vince McMahon is truly a genius, first and foremost for the simple fact that he has managed to take a fake sport and sell it to so many people - myself included.  But the most genius thing this guy has ever pulled off in his long life of achievement has been figuring out how to be a profitable professional wrestling company...without fans.  

This led me to another epiphany:  this achievement can essentially be said for the entertainment world as a whole in 2022. 

Once upon a time, entertainment companies needed fans to be invested in their product in order to be profitable.  Attending movies, buying merchandise, contributing to a Nielsen rating so that the network could charge confiscatory advertising rates, all ways that a passionate fan could send money the way of the people responsible for making their entertainment.  Those metrics are all a thing of the past.  Despite box office numbers and TV ratings being historically low, what isn't low is the amount of content that these people produce.  Content is the name of the game in 2022, and the mammoth check NBC cuts to WWE every year for that holy content is the proof.  The advent of streaming has meant that they don't compete for hearts anymore.  They don't worry about convincing people that this movie is worth ten dollars of your money, or that this television show is worth sitting through 17 minutes of commercials.  All they need now is your click, and in the end, it doesn't even matter if they get that because they already have your $13.99 a month.

I'm a movie person, not a TV person.  As such, I'm definitely in the minority when it comes to the landscape these days.  Streaming services cater largely to fans of more episodic storytelling and binge-watching.  But the following analogy, culled shamelessly from the Red Letter Media crew, holds true for the streaming world.  The films and shows that you consume are like food.  There might be a film-maker with a pedigree of success that you've been a fan of for years with a new movie being released.  Going to see this film is like going to a five-star restaurant and ordering a $50 entree with a wine pairing.  Streaming is like the buffet.  A lot of it won't be touched, some of it might even be thrown out, but it's always stocked.  It's very convenient and difficult to resist, and I'm just as guilty as everyone else.  I currently subscribe to nine services.  I may not consume 95% of my watchlists, but it's certainly there if I ever decide to risk that B rating from the health inspector and take a bite. 

For decades, consumers were forced to be discerning with where they spent their money and time.  The world has changed, and if I give the current entertainment barons nothing else, they are smart.  They have figured out how to be profitable regardless of how people watch what they produce.  But if we can't be discerning with our money and time, we can be discerning with our clicks.  Do your research about that show that looks like it might be too woke for you.  You don't have to watch it!  Read up on that film that you're thinking about watching on a boring Sunday, and see if it sounds like it fits with your palate before pushing that button.  It's not the same as a ratings point, but those clicks do matter.  It's the reason that Cobra Kai, the lone TV series that I still invest my time and money in, hasn't taken a nose-dive in quality.  If Netflix started foistering their genius ideas on them, they have the click numbers to say, "screw you, we're taking this to Amazon Prime."  The same can be true for other series, or even films.  And films are my bread and butter.

We live in an era where icons on a screen have replaced movie theaters and cable boxes.  I know there's no going back to the way things used to be.  But I worry sometimes that we're never going to get another Citizen Kane, or another Apocalypse Now, or another The Shining, or another Pulp Fiction.  We might not even get another WrestleMania X-Seven.  Right now, the status quo is all we get everywhere when it comes to feature films, with the Marvel theme park rides being the only thing that people deem worthy of going to see in theaters and homogenized, PC claptrap being the norm when it comes to the internet originals.  I've already told people who are tired of superhero cinema and want something else to do what I've done since 2015 and stop going to them (and no, folks, you didn't accomplish anything by making Spider-Man: No Way Home a megahit; the only thing you did was tell them that nostalgia bait was what they have in their arsenal when they hit a wall and need to finance their next eight films).  When it comes to movies, pick and choose with extreme prejudice.  Dig deep and find the stuff that fits your personal definition of what is "good."  Make them WORK for your click - and if there aren't enough click-worthy items on *insert streaming service of the month*, cancel it.

Pass up on that lukewarm piece of chicken and go for the Wagyu steak.

Sunday, January 2, 2022 In the Heat of the Night (1967) and Brazil (1985) at January 02, 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1967

Directed by Norman Jewison

Starring Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates and Lee Grant

All three of you who read my 30 Flicks reviews might remember that I repeatedly stated my love for the murder mystery genre.  There's nothing better when it hits.  So go figure that I was severely underwhelmed by the movies of this type that I watched for 30 Flicks.  The Third Man, Chinatown, Blow Out...I didn't HATE the movies, but they left me cold for wildly different reasons.  In the Heat of the Night is a murder mystery on paper, yes, but it has a well-earned reputation for being much more than that.  Based on that reputation, I decided to take the plunge and make the blind buy.  Was it a wise decision?  Let's dive in and find out.

 
After the awesome Ray Charles theme song that opens the film, the story begins with Sparta, Mississippi police officer Sam Wood (Warren Oates in an early scenery-chewing role) discovering the dead body of industrialist Phillip Colbert.  The murder coincides with the chance arrival of Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier), Philadelphia police officer passing through Sparta while visiting his mother.  After being arrested as a suspect by Wood, the script gives us the textbook 10-page meeting complication in the form of Sparta police chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger), who immediately makes it clear to the outsider that his presence is not welcome.  Too bad Tibbs' superiors in Philadelphia think that it's a good idea that the homicide expert should assist the locals in solving the crime.

That's the setup of In the Heat of the Night, and it's a premise that is definitely four stars on paper.  In execution, I think that the movie loses a little steam at points when it comes to the leaps that the much more accomplished homicide detective Tibbs makes.  I don't feel the screenplay is as succinct as it should be in regards to explaining the flow of logic that lead Tibbs and Gillespie to their next destination, and the movie sometimes feels like a series of vignettes rather than a story that logically leads from one breadcrumb to the next.  In the end, it doesn't matter, because the content of those scenes is often electric stuff.  Like most residents of this 1960s small southern town, Gillespie is highly prejudiced, tossing around racial epithets casually and berating the educated black man as an uppity interloper.  The film combines its police procedural with plenty of social comentary, as Gillespie slowly sees how effective his unwilling partner is at pursuing the killer while facing pressure from the locals to run the interloper out of town.

Watching this film, it was again apparent to me how vastly different the movies of the past were when it came to dealing with  social issues.  These days, the villains in movies that tackle subjects like race tend to be cartoonish and one-dimensional.  Gillespie, as masterfully played by Steiger in a role that won him an Oscar, begins as an unlikable character but is never an out-and-out villain.  This character is the one who takes a journey during the film, as the stoic Tibbs remains relatively static throughout the 110-minute running time.  As a result, In the Heat of the Night is a movie that has stood the test of time.  I'm no longer a fan of the term "more relevant than ever," so instead I will say that this film is equally relevant, with its message of overcoming preconceived notions being something that we desperately need in 2021.

Rating time: *** 1/2 out of ****.  For the performances (especially by Steiger and Lee Grant in an incendiary role as the murdered man's wife), the strong characterization and the setting, this flick is worth a watch.  The mystery is merely the backdrop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1985

Directed by Terry Gilliam

Starring Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Michael Palin, Ian Richardson, Peter Vaughan and Kim Greist

 

I have to preface this review by stating that I'm a HUGE fan of the Monty Python crew, the legendary British comedy troupe that director Terry Gilliam was a member of.  Well, at least the films that they made.  Seriously, is there a funnier movie in all of existence than Holy Grail?  If there are, there certainly aren't many of them.  It's a series of sketches all built around the central theme of medieval adventure films that all hit the mark with razor-sharp precision.  They would reach that same level of near perfection twice more in the ensuing Life of Brian and Meaning of Life films.  However, I've always found the Flying Circus TV show that preceded the movies to be hit-and-miss at best and damn near unwatchable at worst.  For every Parrot Sketch, there were ten sketches that started nowhere and just kept dragging on being painfully unfunny.

Brazil is structured almost like one of those Monty Python films, feeling more like a collection of skits than a coherent narrative.  Unfortunately, it's a movie that misses much more than it hits, and it does this for a very bloated 140+ minutes.  The story, as it were, concerns Sam Lowery (Jonathan Pryce), low-level bureaucrat in a world where bureaucracy is the end-all be-all of what society is trying to attain.  In this movie, the world that director Gilliam creates really is the most important character.  It's a system where a form must be completed to do absolutely everything, where private sector employees essentially don't exist and everyone works for the government in some capacity.  It's not exactly a dictatorship or oligarchy in the vein of 1984-style dystopian fables.  Instead, we get a world where government red tape is the tool used to control people.  

There are some great gags in the movie.  The best is undoubtedly the sequence where Sam accepts a promotion and enters his tiny new office, engaging in a tug-of-war with the worker next door over their respective chairs.  Another great bit occurs in the first five minutes of the film, where a government hit squad invades an apartment by cutting a hole in the ceiling and then promptly tries to fix the hole with a nice punchline.  As Gilliam was given $15 million to make this movie, it also looks like a million bucks.  There is SO MUCH attention to detail shown in the way that all of these sets and settings were designed, with countless whirring machines and contraptions occupying nearly every single shot.  Looking at Brazil really does make me weep for the days when set designers were required to make films visually interesting rather than nerds on laptops.

The problem with this movie?  The story, to me, was not interesting AT ALL.  Notice how I really haven't talked about it.  There is no central goal for the character of Sam Lowery in this film; early on, there is a bit of a mystery angle when a random citizen is randomly killed by the government during the hole-in-the-ceiling scene, but that quickly gets dropped.  There are recurring bits where Lowery has fantasies of saving a damsel-in-distress played by Kim Greist, and his search for a fugitive who looks like said fantasy woman.  That gets dropped just before the third act begins.  The narrative is completely aimless, messy with its handling of the social commentary and managed in a way that made me not care what happened to anyone on the screen.  It's a shame, because there is a theme here about technology run amok and government overreach that could have been mined for much more relevance than it was.  For that reason, Brazil is a very frustrating film, one with limitless potential that ultimately gets wasted with a script that veers off in 27 different directions.

Rating time: * 1/2 out of ****.  I think the film would have been much better served being a straight-up comedy, and with at least an hour trimmed from its running time.  As it stands, Brazil is a bloated, sloppy film with occasional brilliant bits.  Avoid this one.