"Accomplishments"
In theaters: An amusing piece of fluff, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice's plot is all over the place, sometimes forgets the previous film's lore, and in trying to get rid of Jeffrey Jones' character (for good reason), somehow gives him even more space. Those are the key problems. But there's a lot of good too. Catherine O'Hara is the movie's VIP, extremely funny, with some amusing turns for Justin Theroux, Willem Dafoe, Torchwood's Buyrn Gorman, and the usual solid performance from Michael Keaton. Jenna Ortega really is the Winona Ryder of her generation, so they're a perfect mother-daughter combo (wait, is Ortega's Reality Bites a Scream movie?!), and 25+ years after the incidents of the first film, circumstances are just enough like and unlike Lydia's experience to give Ortega's Astrid a different arc. Monica Bellucci is really sexy as a villainous version of The Nightmare Before Christmas' Sally who ties into Beetlejuice's origin story, and it's unfortunate that she's only one of the three villains, and dispatched anti-climactically. Some fun death gags and musical numbers. Tm Burton hasn't made a great live action film in decades and despite the appreciated practical effects that help make this movie of a piece with the original, he hasn't reversed the trend with this jumble of callbacks and new ideas. It's still a lot more fun than anything he's made in that period.
At home: 1970s cinema really begins in 1969, and if you told me it began with Midnight Cowboy, that's as good a signpost as any. On the one hand, it's definitely part of the coming wave of American neo-realism. On the other, by editing in the characters' memories and vibrant imagination, it attains an art house, surreal quality. Oh, and let's give ourselves a third hand with which to wave at the sexual/queer content and nudity, which would have then been mostly associated with European films. Director John Schlesinger really blew things up here, and made a star out of Voight in the process (Dustin Hoffman had already crossed the threshold with The Graduate, but plays a very different character with the now iconic Ratso Rizzo). Joe Buck is a naive Texas bumpkin who hopes to make big money in the Big Apple selling sex to rich old ladies, his only friend Rizzo's sickly petty thief who himself is bound for Florida, and either way, it's the American Dream gone wrong, showing that in a country as big as the USA, you can be a citizen "immigrant" and be treated as such. This Times Square Steinbeck is a of course a downer of a story, but the way it's told retains its power today even if none of this would get the dreaded "X" rating. On a personal note, "I'm walkin' here!" being from this, but also widely used in the Lego Marvel games when you bump into a passerby is, in retrospect, quite something.
We all know the iconic "You're out of order" ending of ...And Justice For All, or in 1970s fashion, NON-ending, as whatever victory is eked out of the climax is a pointless moral one. But it's very hard to take this film recently when it pulls some truly weird stunts like a judge shooting a gun in the air in the courtroom, or bringing lawyers on calculated helicopter crash landings. Yes, it IS a black comedy that paints a chaotic portrait of the American legal system, often peering into random cases that are either nuts or highlight how bureaucracy fails to deliver justice. But that's absurd enough that we don't need the wackier stuff. The real heart of the film is how badly served Al Pacino's clients are even as his too-ethical lawyer is forced to defend a corrupt rapist judge. If he (and other lawyers) break, it's because of the absurdity mounting to tragic levels. Which again the comedy undermines. We also don't need the romance, nor even those visits to grandpa in the home. And Justice For All keeps burying the lede, or else can't sustain its comic strain because the dramatic elements are TOO dramatic for it. How can I laugh when people are committing suicide or getting sexually assaulted in the background? I'm afraid I can't give a positive verdict to this tonal mess no matter how good the performances are. And woof, that soundtrack.
Journalistic ethics is one of my core interests, but Sydney Pollack's Absence of Malice has structural issues that make its look at the issue more exciting. Paul Newman is the son of a late Miami gangster whose name gets smeared in the newspaper by overzealous law enforcement manipulating overzealous media (represented by Sally Field). It's easier to dirty a person's name with speculation than it is to rehabilitate it with facts (buried retractions and all that). And Newman will try to get the latter done with manipulations of its own. And I like all that, as well as the tragedies that ensue due to media's dehumanizing attitude towards "copy". But the movie tries to do too many things to jerk its audience around. Field and Newman have to have a romance (which is another ethical problem). We go from investigative journalism, to tragic drama, to a revenge story that's perhaps a little too abstract... And at the same time, the movie wants us to be paranoid about Newman's motives, and wonder whether Field's original article was accurate or not. But it's very well acted, and the climax is one of the best things I've seen Wilford Brimley do, even if he's a character we haven't seen before, stealing the leads' thunder.
With a title like Platinum Blonde, it's clear this early Frank Capra was meant as a Jean Harlow vehicle, but I don't really buy her as a socialite - her voice and body language are too working class for that. This was a role for Myrna Loy, except if she were in it, we would have a harder time rooting for Loretta Young as the potential relationship spoiler. Capra's interest in ethics (or values, he would probably say) is present in this more obscure and less proficient film (though there are highlights like the water fountain scene), and if it works at all, it's thanks to Robert Williams who gives a terrific comic performance as an ethical journalist who falls for an heiress and soon finds himself a man "kept" by her millions, which he cares nothing about. If there's a third wheel in this marriage, it's that money. Everyone knows Harlow died at a terrible young age (26, six years after this picture), but Williams is also a tragic figure. This was his first starring role, and he died from a sudden illness before Platinum Blonde could even go into wide distribution (age 37). He physically comes across as a 1930s Jeremy Renner and based on this performance, would have easily been a star in the coming decades. This is an amusing enough film in the era's most crowded genre - he's the reason to see it anyway.
I wouldn't have pegged John Ford or Edward G. Robinson for a screwball comedy, even one with a strong gangster element, but The Whole Town's Talking is exactly that, with Robinson in a dual role as an office wallflower and the violent gang leader he so closely resembles, it causes a comedy of errors of sorts. More at ease as Killer Mannion, Robinson mostly plays Jones as shell-shocked, helped along by Jean Arthur, who was born for this genre and is, to my mind, underused. There's just not a lot a room for her anti-authority co-worker/love interest once things get really going and Mannion seeks his doppelganger out. For 1935, the effects to create the doubles are really amazing. The screenplay takes its premise to organic conclusions, with the double becoming a media sensation, which changes the dynamic at work, but also puts his life in peril. Some of the gangland stuff is a little harsh, perhaps, considering this is a comedy, but the story takes you where it should naturally take you. If you ask me, the real villain is that dude who keeps SWATing Jones.
George Cukor's It Should Happen to You is a rather mild romcom entertainment that has potential - Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon have great chemistry - but feels a little too clunky and ultimately predictable with its "I want to be a star" narrative. After two years in the Big Apple without fame finding her, Holliday rents a billboard and puts her name on it, and this speaks to the artifice of instant celebrity - something our era knows all too well - but our heroine must of course learn that fame isn't all it's cracked up to be. Certainly, Lemmon's character doesn't trust it. Standing in his way and, honestly, in ours, is Peter Lawford's executive whose motivations are hard to ascertain. He's obviously trying to manipulate and exploit her, but the movie perhaps wants us to believe he's actually taken with her, if too aggressive in his courting. But that's as maybe, and it's hard to care one way or the other about Lemmon getting jealous, etc. when we can plainly see that Holliday isn't actually into it. Even if there were a way to make this work, it would still tap into too-familiar formulae.
My Companion Film project hits continues with a movie starring Arthur "Rory" Darvill (with bonus Noel "Mickey" Clarke)... I am not keen on musical biopics, because it seems they all have the same rise and fall type plot, but honestly, I thought Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll was initially a fiction. I had no idea who Ian Dury or the Blockheads were (not my era, not my country?) though as incidents piled up, I came to realize this was indeed a biopic. But told with the same anarchic spirit as its central figure, partly as a stage show, it eschews the usual narrative in favor of what's almost a pastiche (justifying my confusion). Especially at first, when Dury's act is objectively terrible - how could I take this seriously? Dury, the punk/new wave musician who popularized the expression "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll" (ah! I've heard of THAT!), was a polio survivor, am uncompromising artist, and probably impossible to get along with. Two women tried and failed. Much of the story is filtered through the lives of two boys - Dury, in flashbacks, and his meek but rebellious son - which tries to get at heart of the punk movement, its attitudinal origins and impact. An all-star cast headed by Andy Serkis and pretty cool music, actually, make S&D&R&R stand out from the crowd beyond the fun direction.
Books: Simon Messingham's The Face-Eater (The Eighth Doctor Adventures #18) is a typical Doc8/Sam adventure on a human colony besieged by a monster (their being inevitably split up and getting hurt more badly than Who leads in any TV story, etc.), but I think more intriguingly told than most. The author puts us in his characters' heads, from chapter/section to chapter/section, sometimes playing coy with whose inner monologue it is to sustain the mystery. It also allows the usual unreasonable bureaucrat to have more life and motivation than usual, though it also means you'll be sorry to see some characters get killed after getting a dose of their back story. The setting - Earth's first colony outside the Solar System, essentially a giant construction site - is well drawn and gives off some cyberpunk vibes, but with a monster that's hard to describe or imagine, the main inspiration is Lovecraft (with a reference to that canon in one of the chapter headings). Your tolerance for wild descriptions and hallucinations may decided if you like the back half of the book - I definitely thought it was weaker and more confusing than the front - but I still enjoyed the roller coaster, and Messingham's amusing movie references.
Comments