The Grouchy Editor

I don’t often get nostalgic, but if pushed I might get a bit sentimental about, oh … let’s say the year 1991.  That was the last time my favorite baseball team won a World Series (or even played in one).  I was on the verge of getting married back then, and buying my first house, and it was a year in which my future wife and I often went to the movies.  One of the films we saw in 1991 was made by a young married couple making a big splash in Hollywood.  They were considered the most glamorous film combo since Dick and Liz.

“Our modern equivalent of Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh,” gushed the New York Daily News, referring to Irish actor Kenneth Branagh and his English wife, actress Emma Thompson.  (For you youngsters, Branagh and Thompson would go on to play Gilderoy Lockhart and Sybil Trelawney in the Harry Potter films.)

The Branagh-Thompson collaboration that we saw, Dead Again, is a silly film with a preposterous plot involving hypnosis, reincarnation, and an evil boy with a nasty stutter.  But if you buy into its premise – some mumbo jumbo about a 1940s murder and its resulting bad karma – the movie is a lot of fun.  Classically trained actor Branagh, who also directed, took a clever script by Scott Frank and delivered something special:  an entertaining puzzler with lots of thunder and lightning – even though it was filmed in sunny Los Angeles.  Watch the film twice if you can:  There is an excellent twist, and not until The Sixth Sense came along ten years later had a movie so rewarded second viewings.

But try not to weep (or laugh) at the ironic dialogue.  Says young Branagh to young Thompson:  “[We’ve] become two parts of the same person.  Nothing can separate [us], not even death.”

“So we’re stuck with each other?” she replies.

Alas, apparently not.  Branagh and Thompson divorced in 1995, and so did my wife and I.  My baseball team has not returned to the World Series.  There is, however, one thing unchanged since 1991.  Actor Derek Jacobi, who in Dead Again plays a scoundrel with a speech impediment, is still acting in films about stutterers.*       Grade:  B+

Note:  Smokers, beware of this film.  I am a smoker and I’m not likely to quit anytime soon.  Having said that, there is an infamous scene in Dead Again featuring actor Andy Garcia that is so nauseating that it almost makes me want to chuck my smokes.

* Jacobi plays Archbishop Lang in The King’s Speech.

Director:  Kenneth Branagh   Cast:  Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Andy Garcia, Derek Jacobi, Wayne Knight, Hanna Schygulla, Robin Williams, Campbell Scott, Jo Anderson, Christine Ebersole  Release:  1991

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“Quirky” is a style that can be tough to pull off.  When a filmmaker sets the right tone, the result can be delightful.  Ghost World got it right.  So did Wonder Boys – it had a story to tell, but what lingers are its off-the-wall attitude and images:  Michael Douglas in a ratty bathrobe, stoned out of his skull; a dead dog in a trunk; a police car rolling down a hill.

The Royal Tenenbaums aims for quirky, and it’s certainly packed with offbeat characters, but with one notable exception, it falls flat.  That exception will come as no surprise.  The venerable Gene Hackman, as family patriarch Royal Tenenbaum, is as usual a joy to behold.  Hackman’s aging father, befuddled and estranged from his brilliant-but-odd New York family, might (or might not) have cancer and a short time to live.  Having squandered his fortune and happy home life, Royal decides to attempt a family reconciliation.

This is where Tenenbaums misses the mark.  Although the Tenenbaum children are certainly eccentric, there is nothing remotely sympathetic about them.  Gwyneth Paltrow, as adopted “rebel” and erstwhile dramatist Margot, and Luke Wilson, as her ex-jock brother Richie, are presented as star-crossed lovers.  But the two of them sleepwalk through the movie in a morose condition straight out of Night of the Living Dead.  It would seem more of a kindness to drive a stake through their aching hearts than to place rings on their fingers.

Ben Stiller plays what – unfortunately for him – Ben Stiller plays extremely well: annoying.  His Chas Tenenbaum is a widower with two young boys and a gigantic chip on his shoulder.  If I were his estranged father, I would take one look at this obnoxious offspring and bolt for warmer climes.  Chas’s transformation at the end of the movie is utterly unconvincing – in fact, Tenenbaums’s entire happy ending is absurd.

There is lovably eccentric, and then there is irritatingly eccentric.  Offbeat is not always funny, and the road not taken does not always lead to wisdom.  Tenenbaums is a near miss in the realm of quirky, but a miss it certainly is.          Grade:  C-

Director:  Wes Anderson  Cast:  Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Danny Glover, Seymour Cassel, Kumar Pallana  Release:  2001

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I don’t know a thing about director David Lynch’s personal history.  I haven’t read any Lynch biographies, and am not even sure where he hails from (although I have a vague recollection that it might be Montana).  But after watching his films, I get the impression that young Mr. Lynch was raised prim and proper, a good little Protestant boy who on one fateful day wandered across to the wrong side of the railroad tracks – and was subjected to one massive dose of weird.

I speculate about that because filmmaker Lynch is famously obsessed with the macabre, the odd, and the surreal, and Blue Velvet is a prime example.  Essentially a Hitchcockian spin on a Hardy Boys story, Blue Velvet follows young Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), a college student who on one sunny afternoon discovers a severed human ear in a vacant field and decides to conduct his own investigation.  As the story progresses, Jeffrey learns that it is a strange world, indeed.  But whereas Hitchcock used humor to break tension, Lynch opts for bizarre interludes.  There is one scene near the midpoint in which – completely out of the blue – a gay man croons Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” to a rapt, crazed Dennis Hopper.  The scene still has me shaking my head.  What on earth has it to do with the plot — or anything whatsoever?

But it wouldn’t be a Lynch film without such scenes.  Sociopathic Frank Booth (Hopper) and pals are unfathomable to Jeffrey and to us, and yet Lynch makes them feel very real.  Isn’t that a great recipe for what’s truly frightening in life?

Jeffrey learns that there are two sides to everything.  “I’m seeing something that was always hidden,” he tells his girlfriend Sandy.  The small town he calls home is a bucolic Mayberry in daytime – and a dangerous haven for joyriding thugs at night.  Jeffrey has a virginal, sweet-faced blonde (Laura Dern) to woo at a Norman Rockwell soda shop – and a rough-sex-loving lounge singer (Isabella Rossellini) to corrupt him in bed.  There are red robins, blue velvet, and a “Yellow Man.”  There is weirdness galore, or, as Sandy and Jeffrey repeatedly tell each other, “a strange world.”

All of which makes me wonder again:  What in the world did young David Lynch stumble into when he crossed those railroad tracks?        Grade:  B+

Director:  David Lynch  Cast:  Isabella Rossellini, Kyle MacLachlan, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern, Hope Lange, Dean Stockwell, George Dickerson, Priscilla Pointer, Frances Bay, Jack Harvey  Release:  1986

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Bob Dole, that cantankerous old coot from Kansas, made news during the 1996 presidential campaign when he attacked a relatively obscure British movie called Trainspotting.  According to Wikipedia, “U.S. Senator Bob Dole accused it of moral depravity and glorifying drug use … although he later admitted that he had not actually seen the film.”

Dole lost the 1996 election, but he made a good point.  I give Trainspotting an above-average grade because the movie is inventive, rollicking entertainment – but it does glorify heroin users.  My complaint (and Dole’s) is nothing new; critics carped in the 1960s about Butch and Sundance, and Bonnie and Clyde, for their alleged bad influence on youthful moviegoers. 

But whining about “sinful” cinema is a lost cause.  The truth of the matter is that if you put a clump of putrid dog vomit on the big screen, someone, somewhere, will spearhead a cult following for said dog vomit.  There is an audience for just about anything.  (Incidentally, I am not comparing Trainspotting to dog vomit.)

Danny Boyle’s gritty depiction of Scottish drug addicts does have tragic moments, but they are glossed over as Boyle moves on to other concerns:  a frantic pace, clever dialogue and – above all – a desire to amuse his audience.  As druggie Renton says in the film, “People think it’s [drug abuse] all about misery and desperation and death … but what they forget is the pleasure of it.  Otherwise we wouldn’t do it.”

Trainspotting is all about pleasing oneself.  For every dead baby scene, there is a hilarious bit about “the worst toilet in Scotland,” or the perils of pummeling a dog’s posterior with a pellet gun.  Bob Dole was correct:  the movie does glorify drug use. But it is also glorious fun.      Grade:  B

Director:  Danny Boyle  Cast:  Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle, Kelly Macdonald, Peter Mullan, James Cosmo, Pauline Lynch, Shirley Henderson  Release:  1996

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Random scrawls on the wall (with a can of spray paint) about an American classic:

• Ron Howard made the best decision ever by an actor when he moved from in front of the camera to the back.  Howard was, frankly, a dreadful actor.  Young Ronnie Howard got by on TV’s The Andy Griffith Show because he was such a cute little kid.  Older Ron got by, again, on Happy Days because Richie Cunningham was a stiff, awkward young character played by a stiff, awkward young actor.  American Graffiti, in many ways a delightful showcase for actors, grinds to a screeching halt every time Howard’s character, Steve, is the focus.  Worst scene:  Near the end of the film, Steve glances at his wristwatch and says to Curt (Richard Dreyfuss), “Where are you going?  It’s awfully early in the morning.”  If that reads bad, wait until you hear Howard say it.

• Other than Howard, the actors shine in this film.  This is odd, because this is a George Lucas film, and the soft-spoken filmmaker is not considered an “actor’s director.”  Said Harrison Ford, who got his big break in Graffiti:  “George is not overly fond of the actual shooting part of filmmaking.”  Lucas was more at home in the editing room or creating special effects.  But in 1973 he paid attention to the characters in his movie and the result was magical.  I think American Graffiti is his best film, and yes, that includes the overblown Star Wars flicks.

• I have mixed feelings about the use of nonstop period music in the film.  Lucas’s decision to do this was so successful that it influenced scores of movies to come — especially those set in the ’50s or ’60s.  Thanks to this rock-and-roll overkill, there was a time when I never again wanted to hear Buddy Holly.  Or The Platters.  Or The Flamingos, et al.

• This excerpt is from a 2001 review of American Graffiti on a Web site called thedigitalfix:  “Maybe it’s because we’re British, or maybe it’s because the film has lost most of its charm over the years, but either way, American Graffiti isn’t as good as the praise that has been heaped on it.”

Well, maybe it’s because I’m American, and maybe it’s because I was once an anxiety-riddled, naïve teenager cruising the streets of a small American town, but the film has lost none of its charm for me.  Lucas has called his first hit movie “uniquely American,” and I suppose that’s true — but only to an extent.  It’s a universal story because all of us were teenagers, but it’s American because it does such a wonderful job depicting a specific place and a specific time.      Grade:  A

Director:  George Lucas  Cast:  Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark, Mackenzie Phillips, Wolfman Jack, Bo Hopkins, Harrison Ford  Release:  1973

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Why am I not in love with this film?

Whenever critics compile their lists of great movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age, John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is among the honored.  Yet to me, the film seems to be … missing something.  This, well, “deficiency” prevents Huston’s adventure tale from being as emotionally satisfying as other classics from the 1930s-1940s.

The movie certainly has an impressive pedigree.  Some people think it’s Huston’s best work, and this is the same writer-director who gave us The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo, and The African Queen.  You can find critics who believe the late, great Humphrey Bogart delivered his best performance in this film.  When I asked my own father to name his favorite movie, he cited this one.  So why don’t I like it more?  Again, something … isn’t there.

For the uninitiated, Treasure tells the story of three down-on-their-luck American expatriates in 1920s Mexico. They team up to prospect for gold, and during their pursuit must battle bandits, the elements, and their own self-interests.  There is lots of action, and everyone who sees the film agrees that Bogart and especially Walter Huston (John’s Oscar-rewarded father) are superb.

Huston’s script has the universal themes of greed, loyalty, and honor that one might expect from a classic.  The movie was mostly shot on location in Mexico, a rarity in 1947, which adds immeasurably to its authenticity.

So once again, why on earth am I so unmoved by this beloved movie?  Two reasons, I think:  Despite the bravura performances by Bogart and Huston, their characters aren’t particularly likable.  I didn’t care if any of them got rich.

And I finally figured out what was missing from the film:  women.      Grade:  B

Director:  John Huston  Cast:  Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt, Bruce Bennett, Barton MacLane, Alfonso Bedoya, Robert Blake  Release:  1948

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Several years ago, I decided it was high time that I read Adolf Hitler’s manifesto, Mein Kampf.  This is what I wrote in my review of the book:  “You can call him [Hitler] a megalomaniacal monster, but he was nothing if not shrewd and determined.  In Mein Kampf, he exhibits a keen understanding of propaganda, psychology, mass manipulation, class warfare … and the basest human instincts.”  Much of Hitler’s prose, I recall thinking, seemed rather reasonable.  Of course, that was his special talent:  If you want millions to follow you, you can’t come off as a raving lunatic; you have to appeal to people’s sense of injustice in rational terms.

Hitler also knew how to select a good biographer.  Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous documentary featuring the Fuhrer at a 1934 political rally in Nuremberg, captures the mood and fervor of a nation falling under Hitler’s spell.  This movie doesn’t excuse the Nazi movement – but it goes a long way toward explaining it.

Riefenstahl’s challenge as a filmmaker was daunting:  how to take footage of endless crowd scenes (parades, rallies, speeches) – all of it glorifying Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party – and make it compelling for nearly two hours.  Despite her documentary’s stellar reputation as groundbreaking cinema, I think Riefenstahl was only partly successful.  The camera angles (very high, very low, often dramatic), the editing (juxtaposing Hitler with smiling children – there are lots of smiling children in this film), and other filmic devices are indeed impressive.  But a speech is a speech, and a parade is a parade.  The political rants grow tedious, and the parades become repetitive.

But for the most part, Riefenstahl was as talented behind a camera as Hitler was in front of one.  As the film progresses, the crowds grow larger, Hitler grows more prominent, and the sense that something big is coming is palpable.

Just as in Mein Kampf, the Fuhrer appears calm and reasonable throughout much of the documentary.  Until, that is, the last ten minutes of the film and his final speech.  It is only then, when Hitler begins to rant about race and “best blood,” that his eyes take on a crazed glint, and his voice begins to quake.           Grade:  A-

Director:  Leni Riefenstahl  Release:  1935

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In 1973, some of the folks at Hammer Films, a British film factory best known for schlocky horror product, decided to get more ambitious.  Christopher Lee, of Frankenstein and Dracula renown, wanted to stretch his acting talents, and so he teamed with screenwriter Anthony Shaffer (Frenzy) and director Robin Hardy to create an original, low-budget chiller they dubbed The Wicker Man.

The result is a true 1970s oddity:  a mystery movie revolving around an epic clash of religions – and a film that feels both dated and timeless.  What’s peculiar is that the “datedness” of The Wicker Man actually works in its favor.  The setting is a Scottish village inhabited by free-loving, guitar-strumming pagans.  With their strange apparel, uninhibited sex lives, and affinity for folksy ballads, these people would seem equally at home in medieval Britain or in Haight-Ashbury during the “summer of love.”

The conflict of the plot is twofold.  Edward Woodward plays a policeman who is staunchly Christian, virginal, and closed-minded.  Sgt. Howie is summoned to an isolated village named Summerisle to investigate the apparent disappearance of a young girl.  Once sequestered on this island, Howie is doubly challenged.  He receives little cooperation from the odd villagers he interrogates, and his very core goes to war with the way these mysterious people choose to live.

The ending of The Wicker Man is justifiably famous, not only for its twist, but also for a truly memorable final shot.  I’d place that image on par with the exalted Statue of Liberty visuals in Planet of the Apes.

A word of warning:  There are multiple versions of The Wicker Man on the market; beware the 88-minute, truncated version, which is choppy and ruinous of the film’s opening scenes.         Grade:  B+

Director:  Robin Hardy  Cast:  Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento, Britt Ekland, Ingrid Pitt, Lindsay Kemp, Russell Waters, Aubrey Morris  Release: 1973

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Imagine, if you will, a good-hearted fellow you meet at a bar.  He’s a 47-year-old man who offers to buy your drinks, and is assuredly not hitting on you.  He inquires about your health and family, and then invites you to dinner at his nice home in the suburbs.  Now let’s say that you are not so nice.  You are a con artist, or a troubled soul fresh out of prison.  What likely happens to your newfound pal?

I’d say chances are good that the patsy would be discovered sometime later, bloody, crumpled and unconscious in some alley.  At the very least, he would no longer possess his ATM card.  Or would that necessarily be the case?

Meet Elwood P. Dowd, centerpiece of Harvey, the 1950 film adaptation of Mary Chase’s delightful stage play.  Dowd, of course, is forever associated with actor James Stewart, who portrayed the eccentric tippler on Broadway and in the movie.  Dowd is a drinker who might be alcoholic, or mentally unstable – or perhaps a man who simply chose to follow the road less traveled.   As Dowd explains to a young psychiatrist:   “I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years, doctor, and I’m happy to state I finally won out over it.”

The mystery is how on earth Chase, Stewart, and everyone else involved pulled this stuff off so well.  Is Harvey a product of more innocent times, or is it the result of a talented writer making magic?  Last year, it was announced that Steven Spielberg planned to direct a remake, possibly with Tom Hanks in the role of Dowd.  Even though Spielberg is Spielberg, and Hanks trod similar terrain in Big, I have my doubts that an update would work, and Spielberg (wisely, I think) later dropped out of the production, reportedly after “a dispute over his vision for the project.”

There’s no doubt that Elwood P. Dowd had visions – and not just of his imaginary friend, the towering “pooka,” Harvey.  “Years ago,” Dowd explains, “my mother used to say to me, she’d say, ‘In this world Elwood … you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant.’  Well, for years I was smart.  I recommend pleasant.  You may quote me.”      Grade:  A

Director:  Henry Koster  Cast:  James Stewart, Josephine Hull, Peggy Dow, Charles Drake, Cecil Kellaway, Victoria Horne, Jesse White, William H. Lynn, Wallace Ford, Nana Bryant  Release:  1950

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You know me.  I’m a tough guy – right?  I’m the kind of macho jerk who cracks a smile when Leonardo DiCaprio sinks down to Davy Jones’s Locker at the end of Titanic.  If someone mentions to me that Meryl Streep dies in a film, I’m thinking, “Good.  Let’s go see it.  I’m in the mood for a comedy.”  And yet here is this 1988 drama called Running on Empty – about a piano-playing kid who prefers Beethoven to baseball, for crying out loud – and the damned thing gets to me.  I mean, it really gets to me.

It’s hard to pinpoint what makes this movie so emotionally powerful.  No major character dies.  No one gets cancer.  The dog doesn’t expire (although it does get abandoned) and, in one sense, the film has a happy ending.

Director Sidney Lumet’s film is about a family of four on the run from the FBI.  Back in the ‘60s, mother and father (Christine Lahti and Judd Hirsch) were radical anti-war protestors, and in one foolish escapade, they planted a bomb that went off and accidentally blinded a janitor.  Since then, they have been on the lam, moving with their two sons (River Phoenix and Jonas Abry) from one small town to another, aided by an underground network of sympathizers.  The story is reportedly inspired by recent newsmaker William Ayers and the Weather Underground, but politics is not at the heart of this film; family is. 

Lumet is no ordinary director, and the Oscar-nominated script by Naomi Foner keeps it simple, with plenty of “small” moments.  There aren’t many swelling-violin scenes, there are no car chases, just a series of touching vignettes.  But damn, some of those scenes are wrenching.  And the acting?  Forget about it.  There is one exchange between Lahti and Steven Hill, who plays her father, that had me … oh, never mind.  I’m a tough guy, dammit.        Grade:  A

Director:  Sidney Lumet  Cast:  Christine Lahti, River Phoenix, Judd Hirsch, Jonas Abry, Martha Plimpton, Ed Crowley, L.M. Kit Carson, Steven Hill, Augusta Dabney, David Margulies  Release:  1988

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