Schindler's List

Schindler’s List (1993) dir. Steven Spielberg
Starring: Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes,

****

By Alan Bacchus

Somewhere between 1993 and now there seemed to grow a vocal group of Schindler-haters. This is not surprising, the more successful or acclaimed a movie gets the stronger the opinions of its detractors. Needless to say Steven Spielberg has never been fashionable within the cinema snob community (note: this is not an insult as I consider myself to have one foot in this circle), and it seemed as though the wet blanket collective quietly shut their mouths during the 1993-1994 Oscar campaign, only to raise their voices years later, when it ‘safe’ to deride the film.

Perhaps this moment occurred with Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist” came out in 2002 – the Palme D’Or and Best Director Oscar winner, opened many people’s eyes to another ‘Holocaust’ movie (well, to be more accurate another Polish ghetto movie) which in the eyes of many of these deriders was better than Spielberg’s film.

We don’t really talk about ‘Schindler’s List’ too much anymore.

And so, happening upon ‘Schindler’s List” years later in high definition on television allowed me to revisit the film with a more discriminating eye than ever before. And what a stunner the film has continued to be.

Is it ‘perfect’? No. I still don’t like the bookended present day scenes, the Jewish candle ceremony, nor the real life descendants visiting Schindler’s grave. Both scenes present an overly-sentimental tone inconsistent with most of the film. I say, ‘most’, because in those climactic moments Mr. Spielberg does let Liam Neeson go over the top in his regret for not saving enough Jews. But, save for these softer moments, it’s as tough and relentless a film as Spielberg has ever made.

This time around I took specific note of Michael Kahn’s editing, which is phenomenal. For a three hour plus film he never lets the spectacle overshadow the smaller moments. Take the introduction of Schindler for instance, a series of quick close-ups (framed with the absolute precise lens size and composition) to elements of his attire telling us he’s an elegant man, a businessman, a capitalist preparing for battle if you will. And the execution of the hobnobbing Nazi party where he will secure his support of the Nazi’s for his latest money-making endeavour is equally masterful. Kahn channels some of the same editing pace used in “Lawrence of Arabia” and ‘Doctor Zhivago’, his transitions are sharp and abrupt. The introduction to the Krakow ghetto, the placement of the reception desk with all the appropriate documentation tools placed on the desk, then a remarkable cut from the precision of the administrator’s set-up to the chaotic mayhem of the Polish Jews being evicted from their home.

At the time much was made of the disappearance of the Spielberg style within the reality of the story. I’d argue against that. Looking closely Spielberg’s familiar compositions are all over the film, though his may be handheld and less formal and locked down than his other serious films, Spielberg plays with all corners of the frame showing dynamic blocking and camera movement to manipulate the pace.

Naysayers, snobs, wet blankets be damned, ‘Schindler’s List’ is a great film, some supreme filmmaking skill at work throughout all three hours and seventeen minutes of Schindler’s List which is impossible to dismiss.

The Glass Wall

The Glass Wall (1953)
Director: Maxwell Shane
Starring: Vittorio Gassman and Gloria Grahame

***1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

Cinematographer Joseph Biroc's career spanned a rich period of American cinema. From the silent/part-talkie period in the late 20s through to the 1980s, his six decades of shooting movies include a diversity of titles - everything including the kitchen sink. From Frank Capra's classic "It's a Wonderful Life" to the Zucker Brothers "Zero Hour" parody, "Airplane!" and sandwiched between he developed a solid working relationship with such directors as Samuel Fuller (notably "Run of the Arrow" and "Forty Guns") and Robert Aldrich. The latter director used Biroc's eye to lens 16 of his pictures including "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte", "Ulzana's Raid", "Emperor of the North" and "The Longest Yard". No job was too big (his Oscar winning work on "The Towering Inferno") or too small (some of the coolest 50s sci-fi second features like "Donavan's Brain" and "The Red Planet Mars").

Biroc was a meat and potatoes cinematographer who was equally comfortable shooting the liberation of Paris in World War II as he was capturing the famous campfire-bean-farting sequence in Mel Brooks' "Blazing Saddles".

His work on "The Glass Wall" is especially exceptional. This low-budget Columbia second feature has some of the most extraordinary location footage ever shot in Manhattan during the 50s (and not just the dirty mean streets, but the starkly beautiful United Nations Building as well). Blending documentary realism in many of the exteriors and sharp proficiency in the interiors, Biroc's work contributes immensely to this thrilling, offbeat tale of a refugee on the run from police and immigration officials.

Directed and written by Maxwell Shane, an extremely prolific screenwriter who specialized in genre pieces, "The Glass Wall", while not a great film by any means, is still one of those gems that's been largely forgotten and now, thanks to the medium of DVD, can now be seen by many more people.

And it deserves to be seen.

Starring the great Italian actor Vittorio Gassman in his American debut, we're immediately sucked into the tale of the desperate, sad-eyed displaced person and Holocaust survivor Peter Kaban, who, after illegally stowing away on a freighter and evading customs officials, begins a desperate search for the American soldier whose life he saved in order to get a sponsorship to begin a new life in America. The officials are having none of Kaban's story and with various levels of law enforcement pursuing him, he is befriended and aided by the sultry Gloria Grahame (Violet Bick, the prostitute with a heart of gold in "It's a Wonderful Life" and the gangster moll in "The Big Heat" who becomes seriously deformed after Lee Marvin tosses a pot of scalding coffee in her face).

Set over one night, the film becomes a desperate race against time for the couple to find Kaban's ex-G.I. friend and climaxes as Kaban storms the United Nations, seeking justice and sanctuary.

It's an almost-perfect little post-war thriller with all the right dark and tragic elements. It's also one of the few American films of the period to deal with both the Holocaust and the plight of displaced Europeans seeking asylum in the U.S. What keeps it from achieving some kind of classic status is Shane's competent, but unexciting direction. One can only wonder how much better Shane's fine script might have been in the hands of either a Fuller or Aldrich. It needs more than competence, it needs a nasty, pulp sensibility.

That said, Biroc's stunning photography, especially all the hidden camera nightime stuff keeps the picture buoyant. As well, Gassman and Grahame have fabulous chemistry and their performances bring incredible power and humanity to the proceedings.

One major bonus is that the picture features a very cool cameo with Jack Teagarden and his Orchestra. The ex-G.I., it turns out, is a struggling musician who gets a shot auditioning for the legendary bandleader. The other major bonus is that Kaban must prowl numerous Manhattan nightclubs in search of his old friend.

Manhattan at night. Gloria Grahame. Jack Teagarden.

Things don't get much better than this.

"The Glass Wall" appears on Volume One of Sony Home Entertainment's two-volume DVD set entitled "The Bad Girls of Film Noir". Incidentally, Biroc's work is on view in "The Killer That Stalked New York" which also appears in this series. Biroc's work there is fine, but it's hard to say if the unflattering shooting of leading lady Evelyn Keyes is intentional. If it was, then the picture might actually deserve more credit than I've given it. Like many of the titles in this series, the leading lady of "The Glass Wall" is not a "bad girl" at all and while it shares some of the post-war disillusionment of film noir, it's finally not really noir. But that's a minor quibble. If this type of branding is what the studio needs to get a back catalogue of interesting titles out and into the hands of movie geeks, who am I to complain?

Welcome

Welcome (2009) dir. Philippe Lioret
Starring: Vincent Lindon, Firat Ayverdi, Derya Ayverdi, Audrey Dana

***

By Alan Bacchus

The ironically titled Welcome explores further the popular theme of the immigrant refugee experience in Western Europe from the point of view of an Iraqi refugee in the French port of Calais, a city rife with xenophobic, bigoted elitism. Fortunately, director Philippe Lioret's statement making doesn't overshadow the authentic and genuine characters inhabited by the film's two impressive lead actors. Though largely unknown on this side of the pond, Welcome makes for an unpretentious art house discovery.

Bilal is an Iraqi Kurd whom we meet after an arduous journey from Iraq to Calais. After 4,000 km, he's a mere 20 km away from his final destination ― England ― to be reunited with his girlfriend. But when his attempt to cross the channel hidden in a truck is stymied, Bilal finds himself stranded in purgatory without options.

Enter Simon, another lost soul: a white swim teacher who finds himself recently divorced from his wife and experiencing the same feeling of emptiness in transition as Bilal. Against his personal judgment and his latent bigoted perceptions, as well as the strict policy by the Calais government against sheltering illegal aliens, Simon takes in Bilal and trains him to swim the English Channel to be reunited with his forlorn lover.

Due to this real world implausibility, Welcome sits somewhere between social and magic realism. A feeling of Hollywood sentimentality permeates the sharply drawn, gritty urban aesthetic. The narrative subtly hits all the familiar structural beats, and even manages to find a satisfactory ending, which is both reverential to its characters and leaves us with a cloud of cynical melancholy.

Lioret is aided by a pristine, classically composed visual design complementing the distinct sense of loneliness and isolation. For Simon, it's his separation from his wife and for Bilal, it's the feeling of being an unwanted stranger in a strange land. The likelihood that Bilal would be able to survive the choppy waters of the English Channel never inhibits our ability to believe in the journey.

At its core, the immersive and convincing performances of Vincent Lindon and Firat Ayverdi as Simon and Bilal make the picture work, the magic of this humanist story coming from their characters' steadfast belief and determination to make the impossible happen.

Crazy Heart

Crazy Heart (2009) dir. Scott Cooper
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Robert Duvall, Colin Farrell

***

By Alan Bacchus

So I’m a little late in viewing this film, but I did manage to see it before the Oscars and thus be comforted by the fact that the Academy made the right choice of Jeff Bridges as Best Actor.

The film feels as much a film about Jeff Bridges, as it does the character he plays. Sure Bridges may not be an alcoholic, or a has-been music star, but much like the casting of Mickey Rourke in ‘The Wrestler’, it’s a film where character and actor seem so precisely tied together it’s difficult to associate character from actor it dominates our viewing experience.

Cooper concertedly eschews plot to concentrate on the character of Bad Blake, and thus the actor Jeff Bridges,for better or worse avoiding the structural trappings of the rise and fall of musicians or the comeback plotting of The Wrestler.

Jeff Bridges’ Bad Blake is a charming old country music veteran, an aging has been on a tour of bowling alleys and other pathetic low paying venues. At his first gig we see him stumble out of his truck, pour out a canister of piss which he obviously had been urinating in while on the road, and making ass out of himself with the locals. He dismisses his polite backing band who’s been hired for the night and delivers a drunken sloppy performance. But peaking through the slapdasherie is an infectious country charm, delightfully warm enough to satisfy the dedicated crowd. And he even caps of the night by sleeping with a old groupie. This is the life of Bad Blake.

But when a young single mother and semi-professional journalist Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal) enters his life, Blake looks like he just might change for the better. But writer/director Cooper subverts the expectations and allows the Blake’s story to play out against the prevailing wind of these expectations, yet fulfilling meaningful closure. When we first meet Jean, she’s clean-cut, responsible, young, ambitious and smart. And so, despite his shameless pick-up attempts he actually manages to sleep with her. But instead of becoming just another groupie Blake develops a real relationship with her and her four year old son.

Even as Blake continues to drink and drink and drink Jean stays with him and barely even attempts to correct his lifestyle. Cooper engineers a comeback attempt for Blake when his old partner Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell) who has become a superstar in the business asks Blake to tour with him and write songs in an effort to recapture the real heart of country which he has lost. Blake’s drunkenness eventually catches up to him in the third act when an incident with Jean’s son causes an irreparable rift in their relationship.

From a distance, Blake barely has a character arc, he begins and ends in virtually the same place, with only some added life experience along the way. We see him go to AA, and get himself clean to appease Jean, but in the end we don’t ever believe he’ll fall back off the wagon again and go back to his self-destructive ways. This is why ‘Crazy Heart’ works and why Bridges’ performance is a triumph because Bridges makes us love Blake despite all these contradictions.

The gaping black hole of the picture is the ease with which Blake achieves his goals. Specifically Jean who accepts Blake’s hospitality too quickly when she, as a single mother, should be suspect of a drunk driving her kid around. But then again this is the world of rural America, the country music culture, where people drive drunk and without seatbelts. So maybe Jean’s acceptance of Blake is not completely out of the realm of possibility. But even Blake's revitalization of his career is handed to him requiring little sacrifice.

Bridges alone manages to surmount these failings. And for once the Best Song Oscar, which has historically been the worst excuse of the Academy to pander to television audiences, actually is a deserved winner of the award. The song “The Weary Kind” is not only a magnificent country anthem, it’s represents a key beat in the film and the closure of Blake’s character arc.

The Neverending Story

The Neverending Story (1984) dir. Wolfgang Petersen
Starring: Barrett Oliver, Noah Hathaway, Thomas Hill, Tami Stronach, Gerald McRaney

**1/2

By Alan Bacchus

With the DVD/Blu-Ray release of ‘Where The Wild Things Are’, which took direct influence from the 80’s era of creature fantasy films, Warner Bros has reissued Wolfgang Petersen’s semi-classic creature feature ‘The Neverending Story’ - an entirely German production, though shot in English, headed by Wolfgang Petersen, his first film since his breakthrough ‘Das Boot’.

Though based on a German novel relatively unknown in North America, it’s still a familiar set-up in the realm of fantasy. A young boy Bastian, whose mother recently died, lives a sad life with his father, ill-equipped to raise a boy on his own. Add to that the constant harassment by a trio of childhood bullies, means the only thing left for Bastian to fall upon is his imagination and love for stories. After being chased away by the bullies Bastian finds himself in a book store where he meets a kindly old curmudgeon who gives him a magical book to read entitled ‘The Neverending Story’.

As Bastian reads the story to himself we get to see the actions of the book’s heroes and villains play out in his imaginative brain. But as the story unfolds and intensifies Bastian gradually discovers he, himself, is part of the story and can affect the lives of the characters he’s reading about.

Bastian reads about the troubles afoot in the fantastical world of Fantasia, the force of evil called ‘the Nothing’ is growing like a plague on the land. Its saviour comes in the form of warrior boy Atreyu who is sent off on a mythical, Lord of the Rings-like journey to save the world from the Nothing.

If this summary sounds so very non-specific and fuzzy, so it is when watching the film. The film suffers most from its non-antagonist and imprecise needs and desires. Other than a black wolf which appears in two brief scenes the baddie in this story is a vague entity described as the ‘absence’ of good, that can only be described an entity as opposed to a person of flesh and blood. And so we’re never quite sure what the rules of this world are and what exactly Atreyu needs to do in order to save the world.

But even in 'Lord of the Rings', the machinations of the ring journey was tenuous at best, and really just an underdeveloped maguffin, yet the search for a ring manages to sustain a couple thousand book pages, and 9 hours on film. In this case, Petersen substitutes narrative comprehensiveness with a strong cinematic epic quality.

Conceptually the story within a story as dreamt up and realized by Petersen, is a magnificent fantasy world. Petersen uses the top notch effects of the day - physical make-up effects, scale miniatures, elaborate puppetry, matte photography, blue screen technology and optical effects – to create creatures and landscapes as magical as anything produced in the 80’s. While the effects are not completely seamless at all times (that flying dog looks a little wonky at times), the organic methodology is refreshing and can result in imagery just as realistic as today’s best CG. And under the Blu-Ray treatment, these visuals are stunning, and one of the best 80’s Blu-Ray upgrades I’ve seen.

And then there’s the famous theme song written by the film’s composer Giorgio Moroder which book ends the film. Not having heard the song for 25-odd years, with today’s ears, its a wunderbar synth-pop anthem, and elevates the film – at least for us children of the 80’s – to high levels of nostalgia bliss.

‘The Neverending Story’ is available on Blu-Ray from Warner Home Video.

The Killer That Stalked New York

The Killer That Stalked New York (1950) dir. Earl McEvoy
Starring Evelyn Keyes, Dorothy Malone, Lola Albright, Charles Korvin, William Bishop and Barry Kelley

**1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

Within the course of day-to-day existence, crime itself can be perceived as an epidemic, but when it comes to the movies, there's nothing quite like mixing illegal anti-social behaviour with the emergence of a deadly plague.
In 1950, two pictures managed to blend these elements in very interesting and entertaining ways. The most prominent of this odd sub-genre was Elia Kazan's "Panic in the Streets" a 20th Century Fox release which featured Richard Widmark as a Public Health officer in pursuit of a pair of criminals (Jack Palance and Zero Mostel) afflicted with the deadly pneunomic plague. Complimenting Kazan's high-profile item is an almost-forgotten entry in the post-war noir blend of threats to health and public safety in a low-budget, independently produced picture called "The Killer That Stalked New York". The former title is clearly the better film of the two, but the latter is not without merit, and seeing as it's been so rare, the picture is especially worth looking at.

One of the weirder aspects of this lesser-known crime melodrama is the central figure - a female character who is, by no means a traditional bottle-blonde bad girl. She's desperate, love-stricken, decidedly older and, I might add, vaguely pathetic - not a traditional hardboiled female heroine in the least. While cinema has had its share of suffering women, they always suffered gorgeously, and often, triumphantly, but here, we are shoved face-to-face with the 34-year-old-and-rather-long-in-tooth Evelyn Keyes (Scarlett O'Hara's sister Sue Ellen in "Gone With The Wind"). She's not especially well-costumed, nor made-up and lit in a manner befitting a leading lady. (In fairness to Keyes, though, she's definitely in the realm of MILF-dom, just not in a traditionally glamourous Garbo-Crawford-Dietrich manner.) This is something that makes her performance a lot more interesting, but there is also the nagging reality that Keyes was cast in such a low budget picture PRECISELY because she was affordable and that the poverty-row of the production didn't allow for the grooming and lighting NORMALLY afforded to a leading lady.

Playing the title role, we first discover Keyes stepping off a Cuban boat and onto the harbour platforms of New York. Having smuggled $50k worth of diamonds into the country for her smarmy, no-good, foreign accented boyfriend (Charles Korvin) - we know he's rotten to the core because this is America in the 50s and he sure doesn't sound American at all. He's also oily. In American cinema - especially during this period - oily men are always evil. Visiting a doctor, Keyes meets and briefly befriends a little girl who, as it turns out, is afflicted with smallpox. And before you can say "epidemic", Keyes desperately wanders the city, spreading plague and out-running law enforcement and public health investigators.

Anonymously, though often proficiently directed by Earl McEvoy (he worked primarily as an assistant and second unit director), it's a picture that, even for it's relatively short running time, feels about 20 minutes too long. In spite of this, it's still an entertaining and intriguing dark melodrama - mostly in its use of actual New York locations for much of the film. And, most of all, there's a rather talented and delectable trio of leading ladies. In fairness to the once-radiant Keyes, part of her frumpy, haggish appearance could be chalked up to the filmmakers (and Keyes) trying to be realistic about portraying a desperate, over-the-hill moll with smallpox. That said, Keyes is buoyed by the appearance and performances of Dorothy Malone (hubba-hubba) as a nurse and the yummy Lola Albright as Keyes's little sister who is having a torrid, shameful, guilt-ridden affair with the handsome slimebag Korvin.

Another oddball aspect of the picture is how our leading lady Keyes is so dour. She suffers through the picture to a point where she begins to look and feel almost cretinous. Whereas Palance and Mostel in the similar roles in "Panic in the Streets" are so manic and over-the-top that they elicit a lot of (intentional) laughs in addition to their malevolence. There is, ultimately, nothing malevolent about Keyes and she's humourless to boot.

We're basically forced to watch a pathetic frump flailing about.

That said, there IS a bit of sadomasochistic pleasure in witnessing her performance, and that's nothing to sneeze at.

"The Killer That Stalked New York" is available on DVD via Sony Pictures Home Entertainment in Volume 1 of the two volume series "The Bad Girls of Film Noir".

Broken Embraces

Broken Embraces (2009) dir. Pedro Almodovar
Starring: Penelope Cruz, Lluis Homar, Blanca Portillo and Jose Luis Gomez

**1/2

By Blair Stewart

After taking a drubbing at Cannes I expected Pedro Almodovar's latest to be a weak offering when in fact "Broken Embraces" only suffers in part from coming after the acclaimed "Volver".

Featuring many of his regular players and hang-ups with illness, filmmaking and carnal desires, Almodovar spins the yarn of Harry Caine/Mateo Blanco (Lluis Homar), a blind writer-director in exile. Having found out the wealthy industrialist Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis Gomez) has died, Harry/Mateo and his godson Diego untangle Harry's past in flashback involving the deceased millionaire, the millionaire's mistress Lena (Penelope Cruz) and their flameout movie project together.

The movie within the movie "Girls and Suitcases" is a fun throwback to Almodovar's "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" past in the foreground while Harry/Mateo and Lena (who's been cast in the lead role with Ernesto footing the bill) go off-script in the background. Adding another layer, Ernesto dispatches his creepily fey son Ernesto Jr. to make a documentary of the filming while he keeps tabs on the affair. Although the star-crossed lovers can find a brief respite from the world its tough to outlast a powerful man ruling it. The results are pitched into Almodovar's melancholic wringer of bawdy laughs and tears, but the slack payoff isn't on par with the likes of "Talk to Her" or "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!"

Penelope Cruz, as the star, is still very much Almodovar's ideal muse, he films her sexual vitality better than anyone else and she acquiesces in his fetishes for wigs and cinematic-mythology (Audrey Hepburn, Hitchcock's ice-queens, Almodovar's work). Lluis Homar as Harry/Mateo centres the film as it jumps between 1992 Madrid and 2008, and he has the right amount of dramatic weight to carry the plot while looking like an older Catalan matinee idol.

The film thankfully begins with an erotic seduction of a good Samaritan by Harry/Mateo, a Tarantino-like introduction with sex in place of violence. In supporting roles, Almodovar sometime-players Lola Duenas, Blanca Portillo and Angela Molina make good with the melodrama of the script. But because of the meandering it takes to reach its end even when the results are obvious "Broken Embraces" strikes me as minor Almodovar.

Regardless of the pace, minor Almodovar is still worth seeing if you're a fan.

The Damned United

The Damned United (2009)
Directed by Tom Hooper
Starring: Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall, Colm Meaney, Jim Broadbent

***

Guest review by Blair Stewart

"Rome wasn't built in a day, but I wasn't on that paticular job"

Brian Clough was known in England as Old Big 'Ead, which helps explain the above quote attributed to him. Called 'the greatest football manager the English team never had', the well-quiffed and loquatious Clough became a folk-hero for his ability to take smaller teams to the heights of success in the European leagues. In between his hard-fought victories of the Premiership with little Derby County FC in 1972 and taking tiny Nottingham Forrest's squad to two European cup championships in the late 70's, Clough would tackle an impossible role, coaching his arch-rivals Leeds for a volatile 44 days. "The Damned United" is the story of those volatile days and its fallout after Clough got the boot.

Starting with his modest beginnings as manager for Derby, "The Damned United" shows the hubrus and pride involved when Brian (Michael Steen) eventually agrees to run his old enemy Don Revie's (Colm Meaney) Leeds squad after Clough burns bridges with his old employers in a contract dispute. For the first time, Brian must venture into unknown water without his canny assistant Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall), who's scouting has played a major part in their previous wins. On top of those odds, Leeds' reputation for dirty play goes against Clough's very being, and the Leeds players, fans and chairmen also happen to despise him. Years earlier, we see the reason for Clough's suicide mission, when a rude visit from Revie's Leeds to Clough's Derby leaves a wound that festers.

Using a uptempo storytelling style reminiscent of Danny Boyle, director Tom Hooper and writer Peter Morgan of "The Queen" and "Frost/Nixon" acclaim bobs and weaves through Clough's history, gracefully zipping over his alcoholism and final bitter fallout with Taylor. To overcome budget restraints, most of the football action is archival footage of Derby games, and thrillingly so at that, with occasional stiff re-enactments while Sheen paces the sidelines.

After his uncanny Tony Blair and David Frost, Michael Sheen once again successfully embodies an iconic Brit in a time of conflict, with Colm Meaney his foil as a glowering Levie. Timothy Spall is an excellent actor from his work with Mike Leigh, but here he just seems an ill fit as a lifelong football man, I could never shake the impression I was just watching an actor and not the character.

Clough and Taylor's working relationship is presented as a platonic 'bromance' akin to recent Apatow comedies and as paramount to Clough overcoming his shortcomings in the last act towards future glory.

As far as sportsmovies go, "The Damned United" despite a few minor quibbles is worth a look for Sheen's funny and near tragic character and the rare thrill of a well-made football story. Enjoy.

Unfortunately "The Damned United" is available on Blu-Ray from Sony Picture Home Entertainment.

Clash of the Titans

Clash of the Titans (1981) dir. Desmond Davis
Starring: Harry Hamlin, Lawrence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Ursula Andress, Judi Bowker, Burgess Meredith

***

By Alan Bacchus

First of all, let me give you some context. I saw ‘Clash of the Titans’ at the age of 6 in theatre, and being a youngster of such an impressionable age the film has stuck with me as a seminal part of my childhood.

Though my memories of the viewing experience are sketchy, I do remember, even at a young age, noticing the sloppiness of its special effects. After all, I had already seen ‘Star Wars’, ‘Empire Strikes Back’, ‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture’ and ‘Superman’ in the theatre and so even back then I could discern that those hand cranked special effects weren’t up to snuff compare to those other films. But I also recall that not distracting me from the enjoyment of the film.

Though made in 1981, Ray Harryhausen managed to make a film which looked and felt like one of his adventure classics from the 50’s and 60’s – Jason & the Argonauts as the more directly comparable.

Well timed properly with the new Louis Leterrier version of the film, comes a Blu-Ray edition from Warner Home Video. Watching it after all these years confirms my impressions as a child. Harryhausen’s use of stop motion combined with matte and model photograph results in many of the same familiar compositions to used in ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ or the ‘Seven Voyage of Sinbad’ – sectioning off the frame into two halves, one for the live action and the other for the stop motion.

While these moments aren’t neatly sewn into the fabric of the live action as CG graphics can do in today’s films, or even how Dennis Muren did back in the late 70’s early 80’s with the more expensive effects films, there’s an unmistakable pleasure in watching Harryhausen’s work. The movement of stop motion has always marvelled me because it’s a hybrid of traditional animation, and live action. Unlike CG the creatures created in stop motion are tangible three-dimensional objects with texture and grain and our eyes recognize this no matter how jerky it may be.

The film also features some admittedly awful worst blue screening. The scenes of Poseidon unleashing the Kraken for instance features a no frills superimposition of Jack Gwillim laid over an underwater shot of a gate opening. Bad matting lines can be seen surrounding the actor, who is shrunken into a tiny corner of the frame, In hindsight, these moments we have no problem forgiving as b-movie pastiche and nostalgia.

Despite the humour camp, there’s actually some solid fantasy storytelling at work. By following closely the Perseus myth, it's difficult to go wrong.

In the opening Perseus (Harry Hamlin) who was the favoured half-human, half-God son of Zeus (Lawrence Olivier), is saved from ritual slaughter at young age by Zeus and brought up under protection of himself and the other Gods of Olympus. But when Thetis (Maggie Smith) requests that her own earth-bound son Calibos be forgiven for his crimes and spared punishment, Zeus denies her and deforms the once handsome hero into a grotesque beast. This sets off a conflict between Zeus and Thetis with Perseus caught in the middle. Perseus finds himself armed with heavenly weaponry from the gods which he uses to fight off Cerebus, giant scorpions, Medusa, The Kraken and his arch enemy Calibos in order to save the girl.

Calibos for instance makes for a wonderful villain. We never see him as a handsome man, just the beast form, but considering the fact that he used to be engaged to Perseus’ new love Andromeda, Calibos’ goals and desires are deepened further than being a mere beastly villain.

The Greek violence is especially brutal – again, Calibos takes much of damage specifically when Perseus chops off his hand as an offering to Andromeda – now THAT’S cruel! The truly magnificent Medusa scene generates some spine-tingling suspense, ends with a nasty head chopping and some fun blood oozing from her dead corpse.

The acting collective all appear to be having fun with their roles. Lawrence Olivier as Zeus is both paternal and egotistical. Same with Thetis as played by Maggie Smith. The fate of her son is tragic from her point of view we understand her desire punish Zeus through Perseus and Andromeda.

Under direction of Desmond Davis and producer Charles Schneer "Clash of the Titans' showcases best Harryhausen’s innate skills in cinematic spectacle, in what turns out to be one of the better 80's fantasy movies.

"Clash of the Titans" is available on Blu-Ray from Warner Home Video

Richard Donner: Lethal Weapon 3

RICHARD DONNER RETROSPECTIVE #1:
Lethal Weapon 3 (1992) dir. Richard Donner
Starring: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Rene Russo

***

By Reece Crothers

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a continuing series reflecting on the films of Richard Donner

LW3 opens on a high note with Gibson's Riggs volunteering himself, and his way-too-old-for-this-shit partner, Glover's Murtaugh, to stand in for the bomb squad at a downtown skyscraper where explosives have been discovered in the parking garage. Chaos swirls all around them as cops and firemen evacuate the building and the two stars bicker like the old married couple they have become in the five years since the first film, clearly having fun returning to their now signature roles. It's a funny scene and the explosion that follows is a real gem compared to the CG fare we are mostly weaned on these days. This is the kind of scene an ordinary action picture needs an hour and a half to build to, but with the previous Weapon pictures filling in for backstory, director Richard Donner and screenwriters Jeffrey Boam and Robert Mark Kamen, wisely cut to the chase, or the bomb as the case may be, knowing that this is everyday stuff for these two guys. And therein, also lies the problem. There isn't much we haven't already seen.

Like any marriage, Riggs and Murtaugh have settled into routine. Moments like Riggs’ assault of a disrespectful citizen by way of Three Stooges "bits" is no longer fresh, as it was in the first one, or cute, as it was in the second, it's expected, played-out. The character, like the actor, has started to lose his edge.

This period in Gibson's career produced the mediocrity of "Forever Young" (the cryogenics-themed romantic snoozer with Jamie Lee Curtis) and Gibson's mostly ignored directorial debut "The Man Without A Face". The movie-star good looks of "Year of Living Dangerously" faded into a kind of bland handsomeness. Murtaugh's lack of development is less detrimental. It's amazing the mileage the filmmakers have gotten out of the Walter Matthau approach to his grumpy detective character (look no further than the ironically titled "The Laughing Policeman" for Mathau's definitive take). We don't want more from Murtaugh. He's perfect as is. But Riggs' crazy, suicidal cop, the evolution of the Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry model, the Riggs of Part One, who hand-cuffed himself to a would-be jumper and took both of them literally over the edge, who brushed his teeth with the barrel of gun, the crazy "lethal weapon" of the series' title (Remember the old poster? "Glover carries a lethal weapon. Gibson is one") is crazy no more. In fact he's ready to settle down, with series newcomer Rene Russo. The adrenaline junkie is in recovery. And reform is boring in movies. Russo and Gibson do have plenty of chemistry, though not exactly Hepburn and Tracy, they would co-star again in Ron Howard's "Ransom" (from a crackling Richard Price script) and in the fourth Weapon.

The real problem in the third outing is the total non-involvement of the original film's writer, Shane Black, one of those rare genre writers who manages a unique style and voice with stories that are often told and characters that we have seen many times before, somehow making them fresh and vital again, much in the way of Tarantino, who came later, but without the formal abstractions. Where Tarantino's ‘Pulp Fiction’ is heavily influenced by the structural experimentation of Godard, Black's anti-heroes are film-noir protagonists right out of the best of Chandler or Hammet. Only R-Rated. Imagine Humphrey Bogart's Phillip Marlowe with a dirty mouth and you might get something close to Bruce Willis' Detective Joe Hallenbeck in Black's "The Last Boy Scout", released the year previous to LW3. With the critical success of Black's 2005 directing debut "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", hopefully he will be back to tell more of his own stories.

Here the writers are Jeffrey Boam, whose credits include ‘Lost Boys’, ‘Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade’, and the second Weapon picture, and Robert Mark Kamen, who wrote all four of the original "Karate Kid" pictures and is now Luc Besson's in-house American, responsible for the "Transporter" series, the hit "Taken", and, as the story goes, the man we can thank for rewriting Besson's "Leon/The Professional" (which originally had the 13 year old in a sexual relationship with her hit man "guardian"). Boam and Kamen are solid genre craftsmen but they can't touch Black for dialogue, or edge.

On the plus side, Joe Pesci is back as Leo Getz and Donner keeps everything moving at a lightning quick pace. The stunts are great, the villain passable (Stuart Wilson is not the most exciting actor but his dirty cop character is sufficiently nasty, though the role was apparently offered to De Niro which would have been more fun). It doesn't break any new ground but the formula works, and for fans of the series, part three delivers on almost all expectations.

In Praise of Richard Donner

By Reece Crothers

Why Richard Donner?

Donner is a director, much like his contemporary, Walter Hill, whose work in genre storytelling has denied him the rank of master director among his peers, despite the fact that many of his works are benchmarks for their respective genres, none more so than the buddy cop prototype of "Lethal Weapon" (1987) and the modern comic book adaptation of "Superman" (1978), which is as much an art film as it is an action film. Listen to Donner discuss the circumstances around his Superman sequel being taken away and given to another director, and tell me this is not the wounded soul of an artist. In the support materials for the "Superman II" DVD, Donner can't even say the offending director's name out loud (for our purposes I can tell you it was that other Dick, Lester).

Time and reflection allows us to appreciate Donner's contributions to genre cinema and to see the uniqueness of his style. Compared to the geographically challenged, ADD-afflicted photography and editing of a post Bourne universe, Donner's films have striking formalism, a classic approach, a sort of John Ford model for the 80s, his warm photography is polished without looking slick or affected. Time has allowed us to see John Huston, Sam Fuller, Sam Peckinpah, and Clint Eastwood, among others, for more than just genre hacks. They have transcended their genre. Walter Hill is gaining status. Craving a classic, old school action picture I picked up Donner's original "Lethal Weapon" and decided I wanted to go through all of his pictures, separate the mistakes from the accomplishments and hold him up against his contemporaries to see if it isn't time for Donner's status to be reconsidered.

The first picture in the ongoing series In Praise of Richard Donner" is "Lethal Weapon 3" (1992), which, being born in 1979, was the first Weapon picture I was able to see theatrically. As a 13 year old boy with no prior exposure to the first two pictures this was one of my favourite movies that summer. This viewing of Donner's director's cut on DVD, 18 years later, immediately follows revisits of both Lethal Weapon 1, and 2, and nearly two decades of familiarity with the series.

As we go through highlights of Donner's extensive filmography I hope to bring more new cinephiles into this circle of appreciation. You might be surprised what you encounter along the way.

Click HERE for entry #1: LETHAL WEAPON 3

Network

Network (1976) dir. Sidney Lumet
Starring: William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Beatrice Straight, Ned Beatty

****

By Alan Bacchus

While I wouldn’t go as far to say that television today as turned into what Paddy Chayefsky was satirizing back in 1976, 'Network' still seems as relevant and topical today as it was yesteryear, which goes to mean that very little has changed in television then as opposed to now.

Sure the landscape of television is near indistinguishable across this 30 year time span, but distilling Chayefsky’s critique of television to its core - the idea of news as ‘entertainment’, driven as much by the dollar and cents as any disposable reality television show - Chayesky is still right on the money.

William Holden plays Max Schumacher, a member of the old guard of journalism, the Edward R. Murrow days, when the value system was based on integrity rather than popularity. That was the 50’s. Now, in the 70’s, Max finds himself near obsolete. His old buddy and news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch), on the other hand, expresses his fears of obsolescence by suffering a mental breakdown and goes on an unruly improvised rant on national television – you know the line, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore’.

Ironically instead of firing Beale, the popularity of his speech prompts the fictional UBS network, last in the ratings, to put Beale on the air to host his own political talk show. Under the guidance of ladder-climbing female producer Diane Christensen (Faye Dunaway) the show is a hit, thus pleasing her cutthroat network executive Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall). Complicating matters is the fact that Schumacher, who resents the network for exploiting Beale’s mental deficiencies, has actually fallen in love with Diane and left his wife and children for one last shot at foolhardy passionate romance. But when Beale’s antics turn against the network not only is Max’s new relationship threatened but even the physical well-being of his best friend Beale.

“Network” was like a swan song for Paddy Chayefsky, one of the great writers from the Golden Era of Television, tapping into all his insider knowledge of the inner workings of network television with the deeply cynical edge of 70’s cinema. Under the direction of Lumet the executed style and tone fits in well with the so-called paranoia films of the 70’s. ‘Network’, like ‘All the President’s Men’ and’ The Conversation’ is born from a deep distrust of the establishment.

While Finch’s show-offy performance won him an Oscar (posthumously) Lumet’s assembly of supportering actors lend even more gravitas to the drama. Robert Duvall as Hackett brings steely-eyed male aggression, exemplifying, like a guillotine poised to strike at the first sign of weakness, the constant fear which hangs over everyone in the film/tv industry. Even Max’s wife Louise gets only a couple of scenes, but two powerful moments of cathartic anger which won actress Beatrice Straight an Oscar.

The 33-year age difference between Dunaway and Holden would seem mismatched as a romantic pairing, but of course, their difference works perfectly for the story, playing off Holden’s reputation in Hollywood as an aged movie star, a former sex symbol passed his prime and thus susceptible to the advances of the career-minded sexual predator Diane.

While the milieu of the television studio is dramatized with immersive reality there’s a distinct theatricalness to many of the scenes, which, for political and satirical purposes, lift it out of this reality. Faye Dunaway’s bickering with William Holden plays as much as political statement-making as it exposes their emotional conflicts. In these scenes, especially the climactic finale when the lovers break up, Chayevsky’s is at his least restrained putting his thematic metaphors front and centre in the conversation. Max’s comparisons of Diana’s rollercoaster of emotions to the structure of a screenplay shows Chayefsky at his most heavy-handed.

There’s no need to beat around the bush in the final moments though. In the traditional of great satire and also great political cinema Chayefsky leaves his audience with his point taken, however obvious. And its effects miraculously last well into this new millennium.

We Live in Public

We Live in Public (2009) dir. Ondi Timoner
Documentary

***

By Alan Bacchus

At the top, the subject of this documentary, Josh Harris, is billed as "the greatest Internet pioneer you've never heard of," a statement that struck me as odd, as it purports to tell us exactly the point of the film we're about to see. After this, director Ondi Timoner quickly throws us into the wild and chaotic life of this "pioneer," a nerdy bookworm raised on '60s television shows like Gilligan's Island, who then got in on the first floor of the murky concept called "the internet" in the early '80s. After some shrewd business dealings, Josh found himself a multi-millionaire at a young age.

Harris is portrayed as the king of these geeks, squandering his millions in an effort to create an Andy Worhol-like persona as a performance artist. His first high-profile concept — a month-long commune locking dozens of oddball conceptual artists in a building, capturing every movement and action on cameras, and streamed and broadcast over the internet — comes off as a sometimes fascinating but mostly pretentious art experiment. Eventually, when it threatened to become its own version of Das Experiment or Lord of the Flies, it was appropriately shut down by the police.

Harris's second venture further explored his obsession with privacy — his own personal Truman Show — putting himself and his girlfriend on camera 24-7, the effect of which destroyed his relationship and sent him into bankruptcy and self-imposed exile. Timoner expertly portrays Harris as a prototypical artist of the new millennium, a forward thinking nerd experimenting with the foetus of a medium.

At the same time, the film captures the fervour of the late '90s internet boom and the over-hyped feeling of euphoria exalted upon the dotcom kids. Harris's ventures, such as the Pseudo.com network, which he proclaimed would take over CBS one day, is typical of the high enthusiasm but low value ideas that floated around the internet in those days. So, in many ways Harris is a mixture of Andy Worhol and Howard Hughes, with as many anti-social eccentricities as those pioneers.

By the end, I couldn't get that opening statement out of my head, which is off-putting, disrespecting the audience's ability to make that determination themselves. In fact, the film works best as a counterpoint to the statement. Harris's fall from the high mountain of internet superstrata to the obscurity where he finds himself today is the greatest statement. So is Josh Harris really an "important" internet pioneer if no one's ever heard of him? Was Timoner being ironic about this statement?

The DVD features two audio commentaries, one with Timoner and one with Harris, both of which seem redundant. But in the context of Harris's lifelong obsessions with filming and watching himself, this could also be seen as part of his great artistic scheme.

Fish Tank

Fish Tank (2009) dir. Andrea Arnold
Starring: Kate Jarvis, Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Griffiths

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Mia (Kate Jarvis) is a typical British 15-year-old, full of anger for no apparent reason other than the constant feeling of working class squalor engulfing her wherever she goes. Her family life is a precarious pile of Jenga blocks, her single mother parties like she's her daughter's age and takes no responsibility for either her or Mia's eight-year-old sister, and the trio constantly bicker, dropping harsh English f-bombs as their primary form of greeting.

Mia, thus, has become her own rebel without a cause. Her only outlet is her desire to dance in a hip-hop dance crew, and though she'd dedicated to practice, she's just no good. When mother brings her new boyfriend, Connor, into the house, Mia develops a deep carnal schoolgirl crush on him. His masculine charm is infectious and gradually a coy game of flirtation snowballs into a something highly inappropriate.

Fish Tank plays like a British kitchen sink version of 'An Education': the intoxication of a young girl's puppy love for an older man, and the subsequent betrayal of that love and trust.

Director Andrea Arnold is absolutely clear that Mia's town is the armpit of British suburban life. Such material could easily have been the stuff of "slit your wrists" too if it were not for Arnold's ability to put us in the shoes of young Mia and into the fascinating rollercoaster ride of teenaged emotions.

Arnold lasers right in on Mia, the camera never ever leaving her sight. She follows her through the streets, stores, tenement buildings and Home Depots, much like how the Dardenne brothers track their characters. But since we're completely within Mia's point of view, Arnold only needs to hide from us what doesn't Mia know.

The first act, a series of confrontations between Mia and her mom, her sister, her enemies and her friends sets up a welcomed tonal shift to the pleasures of having a nearly complete family unit. When the hunky Michael Fassbender, playing Connor, enters the picture, suddenly the skies clear and we as the audience get caught up on Mia's love struck haze. But what's the catch?

Like 'An Education', Arnold admirably hides Connor's earth-shattering deception from both Mia and the audience. And after a thunderous one-two punch of dramatic beats, Mia gets a quick lesson in the untrustworthiness of man.

The emotion is not lost on us either. Where Carey Mulligan's character passively accepts her lover's infidelity, Mia fights back with an agonizingly suspenseful act of revenge.