The Grouchy Editor

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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“Every American should see this movie to understand the horrors of slavery.” – comment on the Internet Movie Database.

“The most disgusting, contemptuous insult to decency ever to masquerade as a documentary.” – film critic Roger Ebert, in his 1972 review of Goodbye Uncle Tom.

So is Goodbye Uncle Tom a must-see film, as the IMDB commenter insists, or was Ebert right to vilify the “shockumentary”?  I tend to side with the IMDB commenter – although Ebert might have a point.  Uncle Tom is an uncompromising look at slavery, and by that I mean it’s graphic, painful, and extremely unpleasant.  But did it have to be so incendiary, if only to make its point?  And what about the methods used by Italian filmmakers Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco  Prosperi, who might have callously exploited impoverished Haitians to depict 19th-century American slaves?

Jacopetti and Prosperi made their notorious movie utilizing news footage of racial unrest in the 1960s and combining it with dramatizations of actual people and events from early America.  To play the slaves, real Haitians (many of them underage) were recruited, and they are filmed in degrading and humiliating scenarios, often completely naked.   Exactly how Jacopetti and Prosperi convinced hundreds of Haitians to go along with this is debatable, but most of them were poor, uneducated, and living under the harsh regime of “Papa Doc” Duvalier.  In other words, they were living under conditions not dissimilar to slavery itself.

You can accuse Jacopetti and Prosperi of exploitation, but certainly not of sugar-coating history.  Southern whites generally come off as monsters in the film, but Europeans, Northerners, and even some blacks are also portrayed in a negative light.  You probably won’t “like” Goodbye Uncle Tom, but you will be impressed by it.  A haunting musical score by Riz Ortolani – bizarrely upbeat during otherwise horrific scenes – adds to the movie’s impact.

The problem for Jacopetti and Prosperi is that a lot of this stuff comes off as pure titillation.  Young black men are stripped, poked, prodded and whipped.  Young black women are stripped, poked, prodded and raped.  The camera frequently lingers on their nudity in close-up detail.

Goodbye Uncle Tom’s sexual politics, graphic violence, and pessimistic outlook caused it to be banned or censored in some countries.  But just as the Jews make certain that the Holocaust is not forgotten, that IMDB user is also correct:  Every American should see this.        Grade:  A-

Directors:  Gualtiero Jacopetti, Franco Prosperi   Release:  1971

Note:  There are at least two versions of the film on DVD, one of them with 13 minutes of footage excised.

     Watch the Trailer  (click here)

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Is it movie-lore sacrilege to suggest that Cary Grant was miscast in one of his most beloved roles?  I recently re-watched Arsenic and Old Lace, director Frank Capra’s 1944 version of the popular stage play, and later I learned that comedian Bob Hope was originally sought for the lead:  Mortimer Brewster, the set-upon nephew of two spinsters who just happen to be poisoning their gentleman callers.

Grant, of course, immortalized the part of Mortimer with a frantic, bug-eyed rendition of the nephew as he tries to make sense of his aunts’ bizarre behavior – and also save their skins.  But when I again watched this delightful (albeit a bit dated) farce, I was struck by two things:  1) the brilliant, subtle portrayal of sociopath Jonathan by actor Raymond Massey, and 2) Grant’s over-the-top, anything-but-subtle frenzy as Mortimer.  To me, Grant overacts something fierce.

When the stage directions call for Mortimer to do a double-take, Grant delivers whiplash.  When he is supposed to be surprised, his eyes burst from their sockets.  When he’s asked to dash across the stage, Grant does acrobatics, leaping and spilling over furniture.  It’s all very amusing, but also distracting.  I have to wonder, would Mortimer have been better played by Hope, an actor more suited to roles that emphasize self-preservation?  Would a sweating, paranoid Hope have been better than a mugging, exasperated Grant?

It’s a moot point, but what is clear is the hilarious turn by Massey, who turns the “Karloff” killer into a prickly psycho whose predominant characteristic is not malice, but rather vanity.  Massey’s glaring reactions to anyone who comments on his physical appearance are hysterical.  Also on the plus side:  Director Capra, who can be mawkish, is restrained here by the limitations of playwright Joseph Kesselring’s plot.  And Josephine Hull, so wonderful six years later in a similar role in Harvey, gives us the ultimate fussy eccentric.     Grade:  B+

Director:  Frank Capra  Cast:  Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre, Jack Carson, Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, James Gleason, Grant Mitchell, John Alexander  Release:  1944

                                             Watch the Trailer  (click here)

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“You can see that the rapist doesn’t have a penis,” says Rodolphe Chabrier, “so Gaspar [Noe, the director] and I decided to add a virtual one, created with 3-D animation.”

So says Chabrier, visual effects supervisor of Irreversible, elaborating on the filming of a 10-minute rape scene that rankles many of the movie’s detractors.  But Chabrier’s revelation pretty much sums up what’s wrong with the entire film:  A genital isn’t the only thing missing from this revenge drama; the film itself is all style and very little substance.

Thanks I suppose to Memento, which came out two years earlier, Irreversible is told in reverse chronological order.  But that wasn’t disorienting enough for Noe.  The first third of the movie is a whirlwind of spinning and zooming camera angles, screamed obscenities, and a discordant soundtrack – all meant to convey a sensation of chaos as the rape victim’s two male friends seek to avenge the crime.  This sense of nightmarish anarchy works, but to what end?  The men are enraged, I get it.  The gay S&M bar they wind up in is a fevered den of unleashed passion, I get that, too.  Does that mean I want to wallow in this dizzying world of flash-and-dash cinematography for a full 30 minutes?  No.

I guess that by beginning his movie with violent retribution and then working backwards to more sedate times, Noe wants audiences to look at the concept of vengeance in a new way.  But I felt I was just watching a director and his CGI guys show off what they could do. 

As for the lengthy rape that actress Monica Bellucci endures in the infamous tunnel scene, it’s graphic without being explicit.  But you have to wonder if it was really necessary to make the scene ten minutes long.  And here’s a question that is probably superfluous, but what’s up with adding in that penis?        Grade:  C-

Director:  Gaspar Noe  Cast:  Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel, Albert Dupontel, Jo Prestia  Release:  2002

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“Lovable hit men.”  If you have a hard time wrapping your mind around that concept, imagine what studio heads must have felt when writer-director Martin McDonagh approached them with the idea of making two assassins the heroes of his black comedy, In Bruges.

Whatever the reaction, it was a great day for filmgoers when McDonagh’s movie got the green light.  In this wacky yet poignant (yes, poignant) film, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play Ray and Ken, two European hit men laying low in Bruges, Belgium.  Ray has accidentally killed a child, and the boss (Ralph Fiennes), for reasons known only to him, has ordered his two hapless killers into hibernation.  Bruges is an ideal layover for middle-aged Ken, who digs its medieval architecture and relative freedom from tourists.  For the younger, more impetuous Ray, however, the old city is anathema.  “Ray, you’re about the worst tourist in the whole world,” complains Ken.  “If I’d grown up on a farm,” rejoins Ray, “and was retarded, Bruges might impress me.  But I didn’t, so it doesn’t.”

The first ten minutes of In Bruges – even on a second viewing – had me laughing out loud.  This is something I rarely do when watching movies.  The film is gleefully politically incorrect, with targets ranging from American tourists to obese people to dwarves, but I wouldn’t call it mean-spirited.  And Farrell and Gleeson make an extraordinary movie team; this is Laurel and Hardy with silencers.

That “lovable hit men” concept could not have been easy to pull off.   A deft touch was required, and McDonagh strikes a perfect balance between light and dark.   In Bruges has bad guys galore, but these villains are all cursed with consciences and warped honor codes.  “You’ve got to stick to your principles,” says Fiennes, right before pulling his trigger.          Grade:  B+

Director:  Martin McDonagh  Cast:  Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Clemence Poesy, Jordan Prentice, Thekla Reuten, Eric Godon  Release:  2008

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