Over/Under-rated movies: the redux

Culture
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It’s ok, but I prefer every other Jodorowsky film I’ve seen. He just tries to cram too much in it I think, not in a film geeky way which could work, but as many mystical/philosophical symbols he can. It just comes off as overly pretentious with absolutely no intellectual heft behind it at all. And no traditional genre excitement either.

I much preferred his next film The Holy Mountain which has enough great spectacle to overcome any qualms I had about the pretensions, but my favorite is Santa Sangre, where Claudio Argento, Dario’s brother, helped with the screenplay.

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Speaking of weird westerns, I just watched “Johnny Guitar” again.

Both Joan Crawford and Sterling Haydon play their parts in a way that can only be described as “interesting,” but they have zero chemistry with each other. There are some moments were there is a sudden bust of quick editing that just seems random and meaningless. And then there’s a scene where Vienna and Johnny are riding in a buggy, and the back-projected scenery is clearly filmed from a train. The time of day completely changes from moment to moment. Mercedes McCambridge’s unending shouting could cut through rock without a weirding module.

I feel like there must be a two hour director’s cut of this film that actually makes sense.

But I must say the cinematography is beautiful.

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Harumph.

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I’d rather have a cup of coffee and a good smoke.

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15-year-old Jennifer Connelly as the sleepwalking, insect loving daughter of an international film star, just recently sent to a Swiss boarding school. Donald Pleasence as a wheelchair-bound Scottish entomologist. A chimpanzee with a straight razor. The bastard son of one maniac. A pool full of rotting corpses and maggots. Gratuitous defenestration. Gratuitous Iron Maiden. The director working out his issues with his soon-to-be-ex. 33 more minutes than the original US release. And Patrick Nicolas Jean Sixte Ghislain Bauchau.

Good times.

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I remember this one vaguely. Probably on video at some high school age party/sleep over/event sort of-thing.

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I think I may pull this out of my DVD library. Because it’s great. I think it’s underrated. Great leads, great supporting actors, good characterizations…

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I saw it, under the title Creepers, back in the late ‘80s. I didn’t think much of it at all back then. It may be changes in me, but it could easily be those missing 33 minutes. The film is more than somewhat incoherent either way, but I think the flow may be better in the long version. Slow patches have been retained which gives one a breather before the next dose of insanity.

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I just watched “Samurai I: Miyamoto Musashi.” This is the first movie of Toho’s so-called Samurai Trilogy, set during the early days of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Like “The Lord of the Rings,” the Samurai Trilogy was three epic movies released a year apart — in this case in 1953, 1954, and 1955. The movies are about the historical figure Miyamoto Musashi and his personal journey from peasant to kensei — a sword-saint.

Miyamoto is played by Mifune Toshirō, because why not? The guy looks good with a bokken. Miyamoto’s peasant origins and ambitious nature are very similar to Mifune’s role in “The Seven Samurai,” but in this movie he’s much smarter and has a lot more self-loathing. He’s a ronin without a cause. Mifune gives a typically good performance, and for some curious reason he looks shorter that usual.

Yachigusa Kaoru plays the fictional character Otzu. Otzu is the girl left behind on more than one occasion: First she agrees to wait for the return of Matahachi, then she waits for Miyamoto, and at the end of he movie she waits for Musashi a second time. The part is well-acted, and has some interesting and courageous moments, but at the same time it doesn’t add up to much.

Kuroemon Onoe plays the historical figure Takuan Sōhō, a renowned Zen Buddhist monk. He decides to direct the training of the uncontrollable Miyamoto. He plays the role of Yoda. In reality, these two men probably never met. I’m no expert in Zen Buddhism, but this character is more abusive and manipulative than I would have expected.

To add to the production’s prestige, Toho Studios decided to make this their first color movie. They handled the medium so effortlessly you can’t tell. The scenes are as well lit and composed as you would expect from one of Toho’s black and white films.

The main problem with the movie is that it feels rushed — it’s only an hour-and-a-half long. There are two important moments in Musashi’s life that are completely glossed-over. What occurred between Musashi running away from his hometown to join the army and the Battle of Sekigahara? We don’t even know how much time passed. How much training did he receive? Later in the film, he spends three years studying Buddhism after being tricked by Takuan Sōhō and locked in a room. Did he spend all three years in the room? How was he fed? Once again, how much training did he receive? He walks into the sunset at the end of the film, but we have no idea what he knows. At least “Rocky” gives us training montages. These points could have been covered in the film and it would still have been under two hours.

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I’ve tried writing about Jacques Tati’s 1967 movie “Playtime" before. It’s a hard thing to do, because the movie shouldn’t exist: It’s a nearly-silent comedy filmed on a scale normally reserved for epic blockbusters.

Playtime is Tati’s third film to feature Monsieur Hulot and his unending battle with being human. The film is used by Tati primarily as a way to satirize the sameness of modern architecture, the growing reliance on electronic devices and the growing intrusion of the English language.

Tati intention to depict the middling superficiality of contemporary Paris is undermined by the movie’s appearance. This movie looks beautiful. The design and photography of the movie is superb. By day, the movie is a symphony of bright sunlight beaming through glass walls, and gleaming off of beige and grey surfaces. By night, the interiors now shine out into the dark city through those same windows. Everything is arranged in austere, tasteful modernism.

The movie portrays 24 hours in modern Paris. To make this movie Tati had a vast modern city constructed and filmed it all on 70mm film. It’s hard to judge how big the set is because he augments it with models and actual locations in Paris, which he blends together seamlessly. Using this vast resource as a stage, the movie’s humor comes from minute observations of human behavior and absurd sound effects. It feels like a Preston Sturges movie with the dialogue removed.

The movie opens inside a large, modern building. It is early in the morning. Various people walk in and out of the scene performing mundane tasks. A couple is in the foreground is having an unimportant conversation. We have no idea what’s going on because we have no idea where we are. And that’s the point. We’re lost in a sea of the International Style. Gradually the story emerges.

At first there are two stories. Plot A is about a group of American women on a packaged tour. They arrive, go to their hotel and various venues, while having one unending conversation. One woman in the group stands out to us because she is actually interested in what is happening around her. Plot B is about M. Hulot going to a business meeting of some sort. That’s the entire first half of the movie.

These two stories meet at the grand opening of a luxurious new nightclub, the Royal Garden. This makes up the second half of the movie. I used to think the most impressive thing shot on 70mm film was the chariot race from Ben-Hur. I was wrong. It is this nightclub scene. It’s a precisely choreographed, slowly unfolding disaster. It just goes on and on getting bigger and bigger. And just as the evening goes completely off the rails, it becomes perfect.

The one American woman I mentioned above reveals she can play the piano. M. Hulot is rather taken with her. The party lasts all night. In the morning, the American women return to the airport and M. Hulot remains M. Hulot.

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I finally managed to sit through “It’s a Wonderful World.”

On paper I should really enjoy the film: Starring Claudette Colbert and James Stewart, script by Ben Hecht, directed by W. S. Van Dyke, made in 1939. All of these are points in its favor.

When I first tried to watch this movie, I stopped after about 20 minutes. But that was a couple of years ago. All that has remained is a vague memory of a headache. I decided I finally had to see the film. I knew at some point James Stewart would be disguised as a scout master, and I at least had to see that much.

After breaking through the 20-minute mark the plot started looking very familiar. The story is basically an American adaptation of Hitchcock’s adaptation of “The 39 Steps.” The hero, in order to clear his name and escape police, jumps from a train that’s crossing a bridge. He is then thrown together with a woman. At first she assumes he is a dangerous criminal. He plays along. They spend some time together in handcuffs. She gets away while he is asleep and finds out who he really is. Now she wants to help him solve the mystery. This all leads to the movie’s climax in a theater, sort of.

It sounds like it should be a fun, romantic adventure. “The 39 Steps” is, but this isn’t. It somehow manages to be slow-paced and frantic at the same time.

The most unforgivable aspect of the story-telling comes at the end — Stewart solves the central mystery off-camera. It apparently happens between the third and fourth acts. We never see him do any detective work. This makes the rest of the movie nothing but tedious padding.

Claudette Colbert

Claudette Colbert’s primary direction for his film appears to have been “over-act and shout a lot.” Her character is a poetess. I’m just mentioning this because it’s pointed-out a number of times throughout the film. It doesn’t contribute to the plot in any way.

She is supposed to be a bookish person who enthusiastically wants to help James Stewart because it’s something new and adventurous. The trouble is, she’s glamorous from beginning to end. Her charater has no personal growth. They could at least have given her a little pair of glasses to wear at the start. Glasses she takes off at some point to symbolize the change that has been made in her life. That’s just basic script writing. See “Four Frightened People” for an example of this done right.

James Stewart

This movie stars pre-war James Stewart. This is as opposed to post-war James Stewart, who usually played the same character in every movie. In this film he plays a jaded, woman-hating private detective. This seems like a promising start, but he too undergoes no personal growth. He remains an unlikable jerk from beginning to end.

Grady Sutton

Grady Sutton is in this movie. He plays a normal person and only gets one line. That’s bad movie-making.

Guy Kibbee

Would you believe the only actor worth watching in this movie is Guy Kibbee? Somehow he manages to make his character the only interesting and occasionally funny aspect of it.

In conclusion

There is one interesting moment in this film. Blink and it’s gone. At one point Colbert needs to distract a group of police. Her character has been reported missing and it is assumed she has been kidnapped by Stewart. So she identifies herself to them, talking a-mile-a-minute. A press photographer accompanying the police vouches for her. He says he knows it’s her because he photographed her last week. “Yes,” she says to him, “at the Spain rally.” Then she turns back to the police and resumes distracting them.

So, we see her character is Antifa.

It’s a quick aside, but an odd thing to find in an MGM film from 1939. It’s more like something you would expect from Warner Brothers.

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It’s MGM trying to be Warner Brothers, sounds like.

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The Gangster (1943 I think)
semi-interesting noir. the title role’s actor hands in a great performance hamstrung by a script that made him repeat his justifications every twenty minutes. kinda like an Ayn Rand novel. it was a unique premise for a gangster noir, though.
a fledgling Harry Morgan aka Joe Friday’s sidekick aka Colonel Sherman Potter has a pretty good supporting role.
If I hadn’t pulled up wiki to confirm the young man was indeed Morgan by the cast list, I would have never recognized a late-teens-looking Shelly Winters in an uncredited bit part. not just extremely young, but thin. quite a looker.
script partially written by Trumbo, who I mostly just know by reputation. so either the other guy loused it up, or not one of his better efforts.

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mash-buffalochips

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Born in Flames (1983) Dir: Lizzie Borden

Ten years after the US’s peaceful socialist revolution, women still have second class status. The Women’s Army struggles to change things, while The Party monitors and then attempts to suppress them.

A great, great film, although not for everyone. Frequently (and accurately) labeled as SF, it lacks the production values and gadgetry most want from the genre, and the plot promises action which the film never really delivers. (Also, a la Godard’s Alphaville, it’s very clearly filmed in contemporary reality.) What we do get is some world and a lot of character building mostly conveyed through a lot of talk, but personally I was never bored. The film is snappily edited (especially the audio editing), has great footage of late 70s-early 80s NYC, and a very energetic soundtrack which keeps everything moving nicely. (Although the oft repeated theme song, Red Crayola’s “Born in Flames,” is also going to not be for everyone.) Lizzie Borden gets screenplay credit, but most of the spoken words were actually devised by the performers themselves, thus arguably making the film a sort of documentary of feminist attitudes of the filming period, 1978-1983.

Director Lizzie Borden went on to the acclaimed, but not widely seen, prostitution drama Working Girls and a handful of films which she disowns due to producer interference. In BiF, one can see Eric Bogosian in his first film appearance, and a rare acting performance from director Kathryn Bigelow.

The aforementioned theme in full:

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I recently rewatched “A Passage to India.” I was thoroughly enjoying it, until the ending: The scenery was beautiful, but nothing really happened.

I rarely watch this movie. Being let down by the ending is the final, lasting impression. Even after I haven’t seen the movie for a while I remember being disappointed by it, although I don’t remember why.

A little over a year ago I heard an adaptation of the novel on BBC Radio 4. It matched Lean’s adaptation almost scene by scene and line by line. But the ending was different. In this adaptation Dr. Aziz and Fielding were riding horses together in Mau. Fielding was relieved that they can be friends again. Dr. Aziz explains that they can never really be friends because they are not equals, and they can never be equals until India is it’s own country.

That ending made sense. I’ve admit I never read the book, but apparently that is the ending taken from the book. Everything that happened in the story is there to support that one exchange of dialogue.

Giving the movie an ending that is vague and indefinite must have been a deliberate choice on David Lean’s part. I am in no position to question Lean, but I can’t imagine why he did that. I guess he figured if a vague ending worked with “Lawrence of Arabia” it would work here too.

It would be like if Luke Skywalker blew up the Death Star but decided to not use the Force.

So, in short, I was enjoying the movie — but now I’m even more disappointed by it than before, because I know how it was supposed to end.

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“I balanced it up a bit”

Forster’s novel predates partition (of course), and this passage

“Who do you want instead of the English? The Japanese?” jeered Fielding, drawing rein.
“No, the Afghans. My own ancestors.”
“Oh, your Hindu friends will like that, won’t they?”
“It will be arranged—a conference of Oriental statesmen.”
“It will indeed be arranged.”
“Old story of ‘We will rob every man and rape every woman from Peshawar to Calcutta,’ I suppose, which you get some nobody to repeat and then quote every week in the Pioneer in order to frighten us into retaining you! We know!” Still he couldn’t quite fit in Afghans at Mau, and, finding he was in a corner, made his horse rear again until he remembered that he had, or ought to have, a mother-land. Then he shouted: “India shall be a nation! No foreigners of any sort! Hindu and Moslem and Sikh and all shall be one! Hurrah! Hurrah for India! Hurrah! Hurrah!”

might have struck Lean as naive. (Or perhaps he didn’t want to offend Indian bureaucrats)

There 's a certain amount of ambiguity in the novel which is ill suited for film as a medium. Attempting to “balance” this out can lead one to all sorts of ill-conceieved readings.

The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Passage to India, by E. M. Forster

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Note: This was delayed for a couple of weeks because my job has been sucking the life out of me.

So what holiday movie did I watch this year? The 1963 movie “Cleopatra,” of course.

This is the movie famous for nearly bankrupting 20th Century Fox and for ending one of Elizabeth Taylor’s various marriages. It is an historical epic that makes you consider important questions such as: am I supposed to like any of these people?

The first hour or so spent in Pharsalus and Alexandria is the most entertaining: It has multiple changes of scenery, a large cast of characters and political machinations. After that it settles down to Cleopatra trying to pick the right guy to help her acquire more territory and end democracy. Unfortunately for her she completely overlooks Augustus because he isn’t hot enough.

Elizabeth Taylor was miss-cast. She brings nothing to the role other than her body. I never believed I was watching a queen from a three-century-old dynasty. She comes across as more of a whiney Lady MacBeth, or maybe Yoko Ono.

Rex Harrison lives up to his name and is perfectly cast as a charmingly egotistical tyrant. He is Caius Julius Caesar, the man who would be king — according to the script writers anyway. Interestingly Harrison must have been self-conscious of his arms and legs. Throughout the movie he appears to be wearing his armor over luxurious pajamas.

Richard Burton, on the other hand, lets it all hang out in a performance that really steals the movie. He strides around the screen giving a perfect performance of himself — a man who seems poised for greatness but falters due to a weakness for drink and an affair with Elizabeth Taylor.

The most inspired casting choice was Roddy McDowall as Octavian, or Augustus, or whatever name they decide to give him from scene to scene. I had forgotten he was in the movie, but as soon as I saw him standing silently on the over-sized Curia stairs I knew who he was.

At over four hours, this is a long movie. The director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who knew a thing or two about movies wanted to release it as two separate films. That could have worked well. Unfortunately the producers had other ideas. It received the same treatment as “Greed” and “Batman vs Superman” — it was edited down to one long incoherent movie.

The version available now has been restored back to almost its original length. And in Todd-AO it is certainly good to look at. Leon Shamroy did a great job with the cinematography. The movie cost twice as much to make as Ben Hur, and you can see every cent of the budget on the screen. It looks like an overly-accessorized painting by Gérôme.

In short, it is a beautiful movie to see and it presents you with historical names and places. So it’s valuable for that.

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Wasn’t Carroll O’Connor in it as well, as one of the Senators?

I’ve only watched it once. And yeah, Liz was in it for the name value. Her behind-the-scene antics with Richard Burton are much fun to read about - even the Wikipedia article isn’t that dry when it comes to 'em, lol. But some of those lines…like how she wants to have a kid…EEuwwwww.

I think the best thing to come out of it was the fact that it got Liz and Dick together and eventually they made “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” which is by far their finest flick together, IMNSHO.

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Yes, and he does well in his toga. He has a curious accent, like Archie Bunker doing an impression of Charles Laughton.

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