Buys
As I pretty much decided to spend the next 2 years reviewing Battlestar Galactica, I went and bought some pertinent reading from my friends at SequArt, Somewhere Beyond the Heavens, Exploring Battlestar Galactica.
"Accomplishments"
In theaters: At the end of the first Lego Movie, the live action boy was told to let his sister play with him. In The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, we see the consequences, not just of the troublesome sharing of play space by a brother and sister with very different aesthetics, but of their interests evolving with age. Five years later, Lego Land is a Mad Max wasteland under threat from the Sistar System that includes girlier minifig lines. No matter how self-aware the humor is in this movie/franchise, there was a point where I thought we were seeing too much of the real world in this particular installment, but by the end, I think they justified its use. It's a story about learning to share. It's also a story about how the world's gone to pot in the last few years but that we shouldn't give up hope. And of course, it's wall-to-wall jokes and action, with a pertinent arc for Wildstyle, and the always dependable Chris Pratt in a dual role (one his Andy-like Emmett, the other based on all his action roles, Rex Danger... the raptors are perhaps the funniest side-characters) supported by a large cast of guest-stars and cameos. Oh, and shout-out to my countryman Jon Lajoie for writing several of the songs - definitely bear his stamp - plus bonus Lonely Island track in the credits.
At home: Velvet Buzzsaw toys with the same cynicism as Dan Gilroy's superlative Nightcrawler, but the inclusion of horror tropes doesn't quite work. If I take it as a satire of the high-price art world, reveling in the superficial and hammering at the wrong-headed concept of art as product, the haunted paintings element is just distracting and ultimately silly. If I take it as a horror flick, then the art world is an interesting and unusual setting, but we have to wait a long time for it to go Warehouse 13 as various obnoxious characters are introduced. We get some interesting images out of it eventually, but the supernatural is out of focus. There are haunted paintings, which may or may not recreate themselves in the real world, but most often act through other works of art, sometimes absorbing you, sometimes slashing you... It's all over the place. Bric-a-brac that seems to reach for something, but its premise is better than its execution. I was reminded of the original Flatliners most of the way through.
The Lair of the White Worm is an insane Ken Russell film (you are allowed to ask if there's any other kind) based on a Bram Stoker story (apparently there was more than one) though set in the modern day, about an immortal snake turning people into snake vampires. Even beyond that premise, it is bananas, with Russell going all out with video toaster effects and bizarre snake leitmotifs. A vacuum cleaner has rarely been this sinister. It all looks a bit cheap and the line readings aren't always on point, but it doesn't drain the film of its qualities. Peter Capaldi and Hugh Grant* more or less share the lead as the snake fighters of the piece, one a Scottish scientist who packs his own bagpipes, the other the descendant and heir or the knight who slew the local dragon centuries ago (but apparently didn't finish the job). Mad, psycho-sexual fun from one of the masters of What The F*** Did I Just Watch?! cinema. FAVORITE OF THE WEEK
From what I'd heard, I expected Rogue to be a lot closer to Razorback than Anaconda, but this particular Australian animal attack horror movie is more in the latter camp, and unfortunately not as fun. Lots of recognizable faces in the cast, and the order of deaths isn't what you'd expect, but ultimately, it's too serious to justify the plot holes in its last act, and the giant crocodile lacks personality. It could have been crazy like Hatchet (they have a very similar starting point) or kept up the survival movie verisimilitude like Jaws (if you're gonna do the cliched POV up at a swimmer anyway), but gets stuck somewhere in-between. But I might have enjoyed it more if its action were clearer. Early deaths left me wondering just who died and why it was all happening out of shot or in shadow, as if the production hadn't been able to make them look right and decided to cut away at the crucial moment. Watchable, but pretty ordinary.
For years I thought I'd seen In the Heat of the Night and that it starred Carroll O'Connor in the role of police chief Gillespie, and of course, I did. In the Heat of the Night, the TV series. But O'Connor IS a bit of a dead ringer for Rod Steiger in this, isn't he? He would go on to help tell the story of Sparta, Mississippi for 8 seasons (I probably only caught parts of the first). Anyway, the MOVIE provides us with one of Sidney Poitier's iconic performances, opposite Steiger as the Philadelphia police detective they call Mister Tibbs, forced to help a racist town find a killer while indignities are piled upon him. The murder mystery works well, and Tibbs isn't above letting his own biases lead him down the wrong path, but it's mostly an acting showcase for the two leads. The tension between them is often unspoken, which put me in mind of the more recent Green Book in that sense, though it was much more transgressive in 1967, and it doesn't end on a cheesy, feel-good note. It's more realistic than that.
Though ordered by the Algerian government, director Gillo Pontecorvo makes choices that prevent The Battle of Algiers from ever becoming a piece of propaganda. The story of the Algerian revolution trying to end the French colonial regime is told as a newsreel, and so gives you the sense that it's a documentary with invisible cameras, somehow finagling its way into intimate moments and secret meetings. Some of the footage looks like it came from the era, but it's all a grad reenactment. Make no mistake, it's mostly from the Algerian side, but ambivalence reigns as we empathize with people being radicalized and turning terrorist. For the most part, we're following one such radical, Ali, but we can lose sight of him for extended periods and still remain engaged in the story - the sequence with the lady bombers, for example, is a standout. Expert directorial juggling, this. The Battle of Algiers hasn't lost any of its power given the state of affairs in the world today.
1940's The Thief of Bagdad, though a remake of a 1924 silent film, stands out as the main source material for Disney's Aladdin, if only on account of the villain being a sorcerer called Jaffar. The movie nevertheless splits the Aladdin role in two, with John Justin playing the fallen prince who must save the kingdom and the princess, and Sabu as the thief who finds a genie in a bottle (a genie more green than blue, but same difference). As special effects spectaculars go, The Thief of Bagdad surprises with its cutting-edge use of chromakey, a technique that wouldn't be put into wide use for decades (and is far from perfected here), and provides a lot of neat fantastical images, at least eventually. The magic doesn't really kick in until the second act. Evoking later movies like the Sinbad film Harryhausen worked on, it stands as a fun enough fantasy family film, a storybook come to life in vivid Technicolor. The plot is all over the place, but in the best fairy tale way.
Not among Ernst Lubitsch's best, That Uncertain Feeling's topic is too serious to laugh at, and features characters that are most often unhappy or essentially joyless. So while some of its wit is amusing, and the principals certainly give their all, it doesn't really work as a comedy. Merle Oberon leaving boring Melvyn Douglas for zany misanthropic Burgess Meredith happens in an odd cut that feels like we're looking at a fantasy sequence, but aren't, and from there it's hard to get onboard with the romcom. Douglas' character essentially plays a long con on his wife so he can keep her, and old-fashioned gender politics sort of rear their ugly heads. Women as things you can trade by gentlemen's agreements, and to be ignored or manipulated when you do "have" them, well... We can look at older movies and decide to overlook such sins as products of their time when they are otherwise clever and funny. This one leaves you with the eponymous feeling.
Nine to Five is at its best when it's dealing with office politics and showing how secretaries (we might rather call them administrative assistants) are an invaluable and underappreciated resource. In large businesses/institutions, they're really the only ones who know what's going on, trust me. Dabney Coleman's credit-stealing, go do my shopping honey, sexually-harrassing, lazy-ass and incompetent boss man isn't even a comic caricature. My mom used to work for a guy just like that. Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are good, but get totally smoked by the irrepressible Dolly Parton, an instant screen star in this, her first feature. But for me, the movie slows down to a crawl when we get to the women's fantasy sequences and I'm less interested in the criminal shenanigans that ensue. At least while they're happening. As it turns out, all the fantasies sort of come true (including Coleman's), and everything fits, so what am I complaining about? Well, I guess I still find it jarring that we switch from a grounded office comedy (grounded enough that the bad boss still gets "rewarded" no matter how he feels about it) to a crazy kidnapping plot in the second act. And those final "where are they now?" jokes fall completely flat for me.
In The Children's Hour, a villainous little girl spreads rumors that her two teachers, Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine (how could I not?), are gay lovers, a rumor that destroys their livelihood and their lives. The year was 1961, but it was based on a 1934 play if you're trying to imagine scandalized audiences in your head. The film seems, in fact, extremely skittish about the subject, with unheard whispers at least initially replacing any kind of overt mention. At the same time, the women's relationship remains ambiguous. One of them is evidently queer, but I think the other is also. The attitudes of the day (whether that's 1961 or 1934) just don't allow her to fully process it, until possibly the liberating final shot. That ambiguity was undoubtedly supported by the actresses never even discussing their characters' sexuality during the process. Everyone in the production is trying to ease the audience in and working double time to make this a film about spreading rumors and lies. And yet, William Wyler, though timid, really wanted to get the original play's lesbian theme in there, because he had also directed the straight-washed 1936 version "These Three". You don't do your own remake unless you want to get it right. And so I think this is a film that, at the time, would have been understood by few, but today, resonates more clearly. What destroys these women's lives isn't gossip, it's that society considers who they are reason enough to destroy them. They cannot be themselves in the world of the film, so they repress it, turn it into something else, but once they are "outed", there's also no going back, and yet, no place for them, which is the real tragedy. It does get a bit melodramatic for me in the staging of it, but that's as powerful a statement today as it was 60 years ago. Plus, tiny Veronica Cartwright!
Movie events: We get a Family Day weekend every year now, and we've decided to make it a movie-watching event. Last year, it was a Middle Earth marathon. This year, Back to the Future. So here are the basics. First, primed the group the night before with Peggy Sue Got Married, which surely, is the female version of BttF. On the day, all three BttF films, of course, plus the first episode of the animated series that followed it. And warmed up and cooled down with some BttF Lego Dimensions play. Light cosplay was welcome. You could choose to sport looks from the '50s, '80s, 2010s, dystopian 1980s, or 1880s (or secretly, Calvin Kleins). Our friend Marty was there - his first time seeing the films, he'd shied away from them because he'd been teased with "haha Marty McFly" his entire childhood - and you had to say "Precisely Marty!" if he made any comment that proved to be correct. The snacks had a '50s malt shop vibe; the dinner take-out chicken (food that comes up a lot in Part 2). We might have left evidence on Twitter and Instagram at #BacktoBacktotheFuture.
As I pretty much decided to spend the next 2 years reviewing Battlestar Galactica, I went and bought some pertinent reading from my friends at SequArt, Somewhere Beyond the Heavens, Exploring Battlestar Galactica.
"Accomplishments"
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