Friday, August 03, 2012
Edward Copeland's Top 100 of 2012 (100-81)
By Edward Copeland
With the release of the latest Sight & Sound poll, conducted every 10 years to determine the all-time best films, The House Next Door blog of Slant Magazine invited some of us not lucky enough to contribute to the S&S list to submit our own Top 10s to The House, which posted mine today. Sight & Sound magazine, a publication of the British Film Institute, began its survey in 1952, using only critics. Its 2002 list boasted its largest sample yet, receiving ballots from 145 film critics, writers and scholars as well as 108 directors. The results can be found here, though a note claims the page isn't actively maintained, though it appears complete to me. Since I planned to revise my personal Top 10, posted as part of my Top 100 in 2007, I figured I owed it to my entire Top 100 to redo my entire list. As before, my rule is simple: A film must be at least 10 years old to appear on my list. Therefore, movies released between 1998 and 2002 might appear on this list whereas they couldn't on the 2007 version. The most difficult part of assembling these lists always involves determining rankings. It's an arbitrary process and once you get past the Top 10 or 20, not only do the placements seem rather meaningless but inclusion and exclusions of films begin to weigh on you. In fact, selecting No. 1 remains easy but if I could, I'd have tied Numbers 2 through 20 or so at No. 2. A lot of great films didn't make this 100 through no fault of their own, falling victim to my whim at the moment I made the decision of what made the cut and where it went. In parentheses after a director's name, you'll find a film's 2007 rank or, if it's new to the list, you'll see NR for not ranked or NE for not eligible. I also should note that this does not mean the return of this blog. I had committed to taking part in The House's feature prior to pulling the plug and completed most of this before signing off.
100 NOSFERATU: PHANTOM DER NACHT directed by Werner Herzog (NR)
Part of the arbitrary nature of this list (and from the very first all-time 10-best list I compiled in high school) was to try to make sure I represented my favorite directors while still allowing for those films that might be a more singular achievement. (For example, my first high school list had to be sure to include a Woody Allen, a Huston, a Hitchcock, a Wilder, a Truffaut, an Altman.) The more great cinema you see, the harder it becomes to justify that since lots of directors deserve recognition and many films might be a filmmaker's strongest work. As I've caught up with a lot of Werner Herzog's work over the years, I felt he'd earned inclusion. I was torn between choosing Nosferatu or Aguirre: The Wrath of God to represent him, but opted for the vampire tale because Herzog's "reversioning" of Murnau's silent classic manages to be both a masterpiece of atmospherics and the best version of the Dracula tale put on screen.
99 TALK TO HER directed by Pedro Almodóvar (NE)
Pedro Almodóvar’s career evolution has taken an arc that I imagine few could have anticipated. I know I certainly didn’t back in the 1980s, when his films mainly consisted of camp, color and sexual obsession. Around the time of 1997’s Live Flesh, the Spanish filmmaker’s style took an abrupt change, filtering genres through his unique perspective to exhilarating results that continue through last year’s The Skin I Live In. The greatest of this run of seven features happens to be the most recent film to make this new Top 100 list. Telling the story of two men caring for women they love, both of whom happen to be comatose, Almodóvar’s Oscar-winning screenplay manages to balance humor, pathos and even outlandish touches you’d never expect to make one helluva movie and the writer-director’s best film so far.
98 NIGHT AND THE CITY directed by Jules Dassin (NR)
Littered along the highways of film history lie multiple tales of adversity breeding triumphs of cinema. As director Jules Dassin faced a possible subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee, presumably followed by blacklisting, at the end of the 1940s, producer Darryl Zanuck gave him an exit strategy. Dassin flew to London to hurriedly begin filming an adaptation of the novel Night and the City, which he’d never read, and as a result produced one of the greatest noirs of all time. Not only did he make the movie on the fly, Zanuck even stuck him with creating a role for Gene Tierney, nearly suicidal after a bad love affair. The novel’s author, Gerald Kersh, hated the movie about hustler Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) scheming to bring Greco-Roman wrestling to London while ducking all sorts of colorful characters played by wonderful actors such as Francis L. Sullivan, Googie Withers, Herbert Lom, Hugh Marlowe and Mike Mazurki. Of course, Kersh’s gripe was understandable — the film bore no resemblance whatsoever to his novel other than the title. However, that didn’t prevent it from being a damn fine film.
97 LONE STAR directed by John Sayles (92)
It takes a lot to fool me and, in retrospect, I should have seen the final twist coming, but I didn't because Sayles crafted in his best film a compelling story in which the plot turn was unexpected and the movie’s story didn't hinge on it. Even if the secret never had been revealed, this portrait of skeletons from the past and their influence on the lives of people in the present still would resonate. Sayles assembles a helluva ensemble including Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Peña, Matthew McConaughey, Kris Kristofferson, Joe Morton and, in one great single scene, Frances McDormand, to name but a few. Sayles has made some good films since Lone Star, but none come close to equaling the artistry, vitality and humanity of this one. I await another great one from him.
96 NORTH BY NORTHWEST directed by Alfred Hitchcock (81)
Set piece after set piece, Hitchcock puts Cary Grant through the paces and pulls the viewer along to his most purely entertaining offering. Grant never loses his cool as he's hunted by everyone, James Mason makes a suave bad guy and Martin Landau a perfectly sinister hired thug. With cameos by four former U.S. presidents. There's not much else to say about it: It's not an exercise in style or filled with layers and depth, it's just damn fun. In fact, it’s as much a comedy as a thriller.
95 THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER directed by Charles Laughton (87)
There's something to be said for quitting while you're ahead and Charles Laughton, one of the finest screen actors ever, certainly did with the only film he ever directed. The film's influences seem more prevalent than people who have actually seen this disturbing thriller with the great Robert Mitchum as the creepy preacher with love on one hand and hate on the other and the legendary Lillian Gish as the equivalent of the old woman who lived in a shoe, assuming the old woman was well armed.
94 RASHOMON directed by Akira Kurosawa (NR)
In describing the film that put Kurosawa on the world’s radar as a major filmmaker, I’m going to let Robert Altman speak for me. This quote comes from his introduction to the Criterion Collection edition of the movie. "Rashomon is the most interesting, for me, of Kurosawa's films.…The main thing here is that when one sees a film you see the characters on screen.…You see very specific things — you see a tree, you see a sword — so one takes that as truth, but in this film, you take it as truth and then you find out it's not necessarily true and you see these various versions of the episode that has taken place that these people are talking about. You're never told which is true and which isn't true which leads you to the proper conclusion that it's all true and none of it's true. It becomes a poem and it cracks this visual thing that we have in our minds that if we see it, it must be a fact. In reading, in radio — where you don't have these specific visuals — your mind is making them up. What my mind makes up and what your mind makes up…is never the same."
93 RAGING BULL directed by Martin Scorsese (NR)
For years, my standard response when asked about Raging Bull was that it was a film easier to admire than love. Each time that I’d see the movie again though, that point-of-view became less satisfactory because, as any great film should, the film kept rising higher in my esteem. In the film's opening moments, when Robert De Niro plays the older, fat Jake preparing for his lounge act in 1964 before it cuts to the ripped fighter in 1941, even though I consciously know both versions of La Motta were played by the same actor and that De Niro was that actor, the performance so entrances that I actually ask, "Who is this guy and why hasn't he made more movies?" To gaze at the way he sculpted his body into the shape of a believable middleweight boxer, sweat glistening in Michael Chapman's gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, truly makes an impressive achievement. Acting isn't the proper word for what De Niro does here. He doesn't portray Jake La Motta, he becomes Jake La Motta, or at least the screen version, and leaves all vestiges of Robert De Niro somewhere else. Even when De Niro turns in good or great work in other roles, they never come as close to complete immersion as his La Motta does.
92 RIFIFI directed by Jules Dassin (NR)
"Out of the worst crime novels I have ever read, Jules Dassin has made the best crime film I've ever seen," François Truffaut wrote about Rififi in his book The Films in My Life. I haven't read the Auguste Le Breton novel, but I don't doubt Truffaut's word. Dassin structures the film like a solid three-act play. Act I: Planning the heist. Act II: Carrying it out. Act III: The aftermath. Dassin fine-tunes each of the film's element to the point that Rififi practically runs as a machine all its own. The various characters behave more as chess pieces to be moved around as the story's game requires than as representatives of people. One single sequence though makes Rififi a landmark both in films and particularly heist movies: the robbery itself. Dassin films this in a 32-minute long silent sequence. No one speaks. Keeping everything as quiet as possible becomes the thieves' No. 1 priority. It's absolutely riveting. You'll be holding your breath as if you were involved in the crime yourself.
91 RIO BRAVO directed by Howard Hawks (79)
Howard Hawks appears for the first time on the list with a Western starring John Wayne that turned out to be so much fun they remade it (more or less) seven years later as El Dorado. I’ll stick with the original where the Duke’s allies include a great Dean Martin as a soused deputy sheriff, young Ricky Nelson and the always wily Walter Brennan. Wayne even gets to romance Angie Dickinson. No deep themes hidden here, though it's more layered than your typical Western. Still, that doesn't mean you can't kick up your spurs and enjoy.
90 KING KONG directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack (76)
The first time was the charm. One of the few insightful comments I heard on the 2007 AFI special was when Martin Scorsese said that in many ways he finds the primitive stop-motion effects of the original King Kong more impressive than later CGI versions. He's absolutely right. The 1933 version also offers more thrills and emotions (and in half the time) than Peter Jackson's technically superior but dramatically inferior and unnecessary remake. Let’s not even discuss the 1976 version.
89 L.A. CONFIDENTIAL directed by Curtis Hanson (90)
When L.A. Confidential debuted on this list in its first year of eligibility in 2007, I wrote, “Of the films of fairly recent vintage, this is one that grows stronger each time I see it, earning comparisons to the great Chinatown…Well acted (even if Kim Basinger's Oscar was beyond generous), well written and well directed, I believe L.A. Confidential’s reputation will only grow greater as the years go on — yet it lost the Oscar (and a spot on the AFI list) to the insipid Titanic.” When I re-watched the film recently, my prediction proved to be spot-on as it only deepens as an experience and an entertainment as time passes. It still boggles my mind that with Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey and James Cromwell (just to name four) delivering impeccable work that only Basinger landed a nomination, but losing best picture and director to James Cameron and Titanic remains the bigger crime.
88 AFTER HOURS directed by Martin Scorsese (88)
Simply put: The tensest comedy ever made and perhaps Scorsese's most underrated film. Griffin Dunne plays the perfect beleaguered straight man enveloped by a universe of misfits and oddballs in lower Manhattan when all he wanted to do was get laid. It’s hard to imagine that this movie nearly became a Tim Burton project, but thanks to the many setbacks Scorsese endured attempting to make The Last Temptation of Christ, the film ended up being his — and recharged his batteries as well. While Scorsese has made great films since, I’d love to see him step back sometime and make another indie feature like After Hours on the fly just to see what happens. Joseph Minion wrote an excellent script and this represents one case where I think the changed ending actually proves superior to the originally intended one. By the way, whatever happened to Joseph Minion?
87 BACK TO THE FUTURE directed by Robert Zemeckis (86)
Watchability often gets undervalued when rating a film's worth, but I never tire of sitting through this thrill ride. One aspect that has impressed me since I first saw it as a teen back in 1985 (and I went two nights in a row, dragging my parents to it on the second) was its attention to detail such as Marty arriving in 1955 and mowing down a pine tree on the farm of the deranged man trying to “breed pines.” Then, when he returns to 1985, Twin Pines Mall now bears the sign Lone Pine Mall. It’s just a quiet sight gag in the background without any overt attempt to call attention to the joke. You either catch it or you don’t. I always admire films that respect audiences like that, especially when they happen to be this much fun. With equal touches of satire, suspense and genuine emotion, Back to the Future elicits pure joy. No matter how many times I see it, the final sequence where they prepare to send Marty back to 1985 holds me in rapt attention as I wonder if this time might be the time he doesn't actually make it.
86 MASH directed by Robert Altman (77)
A comedy about the Vietnam War that's full of blood and set in Korea, just as a matter of subterfuge. The film that put Altman on the map and inspired one of TV's best comedies (until it got too full of itself), MASH still holds up with its brilliant ensemble and wicked wit. I still wish the TV show had kept that theme song with its lyrics. Through early morning fog I see/visions of the things to be/the pains that are withheld for me/I realize and I can see.../That suicide is painless/It brings on many changes/and I can take or leave it if I please.
85 PRIZZI'S HONOR directed by John Huston (85)
Back in 1985, before Goodfellas and The Sopranos really mixed mob stories with jet black comedy, the great director John Huston, in his second-to-last film, brought to the screen an adaptation of Richard Condon's Mafia satire Prizzi's Honor, complete with great performances and some of the most memorable lines ever collected in a single film. Huston may have been in the twilight of his days, but his filmmaking prowess was as strong as ever. Jack Nicholson disappeared into the role of Charley Partanna more than he had any role in recent memory. Kathleen Turner matched well with Nicholson as Charley's love whose work outside the house causes problems. William Hickey gave an eccentric and indelible portrait of the aging don. Finally, John's daughter Anjelica made up for a misfire of an acting debut decades earlier with her brilliant performance as the scheming Maerose and took home one of the most deserved supporting actress Oscars ever given.
84 RAISE THE RED LANTERN directed by Zhang Yimou (84)
Before Zhang Yimou started being obsessed with spectacle and martial arts, film after film, he produced some of the greatest personal stories in the history of movies, especially when his muse was the great and beautiful Gong Li. This film was their first truly flawless effort as Gong plays the young bride of a powerful lord who already has multiple wives and who encourages the sometimes brutal competition between the women.
83 THE PLAYER directed by Robert Altman (82)
"The film actually is like a snail — it kind of turns in on itself and becomes itself," Altman describes his film in an interview on its DVD. One of the many "comebacks" of Robert Altman's career, this brilliant Hollywood satire holds up viewing after viewing because it's so much more than merely a satire. Thanks to Tim Robbins' superb performance as the sympathetic heel of a Hollywood executive and the cynical yet deeper emotional punch of Michael Tolkin's script, Altman wows from the opening eight-minute take to one of the greatest final punchlines in movie history. However, the more times you see it, the more you discover to see. While some specific references have aged, the movie's relevance remains — now more than ever.
82 SCHINDLER'S LIST directed by Steven Spielberg (78)
Schindler’s List marked an important moment in Spielberg’s development as a filmmaker: Peter Pan finally grew up. It’s a harrowing, well-made movie that everyone should see. At the same time, I can foresee a time when it slips off this list entirely. It isn’t the fault of the film — I find it nearly flawless. However, if someone placed a gun to my head and ordered me to choose to watch either Schindler’s or one of Spielberg’s best post-1993 films such as Catch Me If You Can or Minority Report, I’d opt for one of the latter two. Are they better films than Schindler’s List? I can’t say that. However, the epic holocaust tale isn’t a film you find yourself wanting to pop a bowl of popcorn and watching on a whim. As I said earlier, for me at least, rewatchability remains an important factor. I’ve seen Schindler’s List three times but I haven’t reached the point where I want to go through that wrenching experience again.
81 WILD STRAWBERRIES directed by Ingmar Bergman (NR)
Bergman once said that by the time he was done making Wild Strawberries, the film really belonged more to Victor Sjöström, who played Borg, the renowned professor and lauded physician about to receive an honorary degree. The film marked Sjöström 's return from semi-retirement, but he already was a legend as the first true Swedish acting-directing star. Borg decides to drive his old Packard to the event instead of flying to meet his son. The journey becomes more than just a road trip for the professor, but a metaphysical trek through his past as he questions what led him to this moment. As the car winds closer to the ceremony, Borg's inner journey does as well as he comes to realize that for all his scientific training, the only thing he can't analyze is himself. "The day's clear reality dissolves into even clearer remnants of memory," he says. Wild Strawberries represents Bergman growing into his powers as a filmmaker and while it may concern a 78-year-old man examining his life, the subject proves as timeless for people of any age as the film itself.
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With the release of the latest Sight & Sound poll, conducted every 10 years to determine the all-time best films, The House Next Door blog of Slant Magazine invited some of us not lucky enough to contribute to the S&S list to submit our own Top 10s to The House, which posted mine today. Sight & Sound magazine, a publication of the British Film Institute, began its survey in 1952, using only critics. Its 2002 list boasted its largest sample yet, receiving ballots from 145 film critics, writers and scholars as well as 108 directors. The results can be found here, though a note claims the page isn't actively maintained, though it appears complete to me. Since I planned to revise my personal Top 10, posted as part of my Top 100 in 2007, I figured I owed it to my entire Top 100 to redo my entire list. As before, my rule is simple: A film must be at least 10 years old to appear on my list. Therefore, movies released between 1998 and 2002 might appear on this list whereas they couldn't on the 2007 version. The most difficult part of assembling these lists always involves determining rankings. It's an arbitrary process and once you get past the Top 10 or 20, not only do the placements seem rather meaningless but inclusion and exclusions of films begin to weigh on you. In fact, selecting No. 1 remains easy but if I could, I'd have tied Numbers 2 through 20 or so at No. 2. A lot of great films didn't make this 100 through no fault of their own, falling victim to my whim at the moment I made the decision of what made the cut and where it went. In parentheses after a director's name, you'll find a film's 2007 rank or, if it's new to the list, you'll see NR for not ranked or NE for not eligible. I also should note that this does not mean the return of this blog. I had committed to taking part in The House's feature prior to pulling the plug and completed most of this before signing off.
Part of the arbitrary nature of this list (and from the very first all-time 10-best list I compiled in high school) was to try to make sure I represented my favorite directors while still allowing for those films that might be a more singular achievement. (For example, my first high school list had to be sure to include a Woody Allen, a Huston, a Hitchcock, a Wilder, a Truffaut, an Altman.) The more great cinema you see, the harder it becomes to justify that since lots of directors deserve recognition and many films might be a filmmaker's strongest work. As I've caught up with a lot of Werner Herzog's work over the years, I felt he'd earned inclusion. I was torn between choosing Nosferatu or Aguirre: The Wrath of God to represent him, but opted for the vampire tale because Herzog's "reversioning" of Murnau's silent classic manages to be both a masterpiece of atmospherics and the best version of the Dracula tale put on screen.
Pedro Almodóvar’s career evolution has taken an arc that I imagine few could have anticipated. I know I certainly didn’t back in the 1980s, when his films mainly consisted of camp, color and sexual obsession. Around the time of 1997’s Live Flesh, the Spanish filmmaker’s style took an abrupt change, filtering genres through his unique perspective to exhilarating results that continue through last year’s The Skin I Live In. The greatest of this run of seven features happens to be the most recent film to make this new Top 100 list. Telling the story of two men caring for women they love, both of whom happen to be comatose, Almodóvar’s Oscar-winning screenplay manages to balance humor, pathos and even outlandish touches you’d never expect to make one helluva movie and the writer-director’s best film so far.
Littered along the highways of film history lie multiple tales of adversity breeding triumphs of cinema. As director Jules Dassin faced a possible subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee, presumably followed by blacklisting, at the end of the 1940s, producer Darryl Zanuck gave him an exit strategy. Dassin flew to London to hurriedly begin filming an adaptation of the novel Night and the City, which he’d never read, and as a result produced one of the greatest noirs of all time. Not only did he make the movie on the fly, Zanuck even stuck him with creating a role for Gene Tierney, nearly suicidal after a bad love affair. The novel’s author, Gerald Kersh, hated the movie about hustler Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) scheming to bring Greco-Roman wrestling to London while ducking all sorts of colorful characters played by wonderful actors such as Francis L. Sullivan, Googie Withers, Herbert Lom, Hugh Marlowe and Mike Mazurki. Of course, Kersh’s gripe was understandable — the film bore no resemblance whatsoever to his novel other than the title. However, that didn’t prevent it from being a damn fine film.
It takes a lot to fool me and, in retrospect, I should have seen the final twist coming, but I didn't because Sayles crafted in his best film a compelling story in which the plot turn was unexpected and the movie’s story didn't hinge on it. Even if the secret never had been revealed, this portrait of skeletons from the past and their influence on the lives of people in the present still would resonate. Sayles assembles a helluva ensemble including Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Peña, Matthew McConaughey, Kris Kristofferson, Joe Morton and, in one great single scene, Frances McDormand, to name but a few. Sayles has made some good films since Lone Star, but none come close to equaling the artistry, vitality and humanity of this one. I await another great one from him.
Set piece after set piece, Hitchcock puts Cary Grant through the paces and pulls the viewer along to his most purely entertaining offering. Grant never loses his cool as he's hunted by everyone, James Mason makes a suave bad guy and Martin Landau a perfectly sinister hired thug. With cameos by four former U.S. presidents. There's not much else to say about it: It's not an exercise in style or filled with layers and depth, it's just damn fun. In fact, it’s as much a comedy as a thriller.
There's something to be said for quitting while you're ahead and Charles Laughton, one of the finest screen actors ever, certainly did with the only film he ever directed. The film's influences seem more prevalent than people who have actually seen this disturbing thriller with the great Robert Mitchum as the creepy preacher with love on one hand and hate on the other and the legendary Lillian Gish as the equivalent of the old woman who lived in a shoe, assuming the old woman was well armed.
In describing the film that put Kurosawa on the world’s radar as a major filmmaker, I’m going to let Robert Altman speak for me. This quote comes from his introduction to the Criterion Collection edition of the movie. "Rashomon is the most interesting, for me, of Kurosawa's films.…The main thing here is that when one sees a film you see the characters on screen.…You see very specific things — you see a tree, you see a sword — so one takes that as truth, but in this film, you take it as truth and then you find out it's not necessarily true and you see these various versions of the episode that has taken place that these people are talking about. You're never told which is true and which isn't true which leads you to the proper conclusion that it's all true and none of it's true. It becomes a poem and it cracks this visual thing that we have in our minds that if we see it, it must be a fact. In reading, in radio — where you don't have these specific visuals — your mind is making them up. What my mind makes up and what your mind makes up…is never the same."
For years, my standard response when asked about Raging Bull was that it was a film easier to admire than love. Each time that I’d see the movie again though, that point-of-view became less satisfactory because, as any great film should, the film kept rising higher in my esteem. In the film's opening moments, when Robert De Niro plays the older, fat Jake preparing for his lounge act in 1964 before it cuts to the ripped fighter in 1941, even though I consciously know both versions of La Motta were played by the same actor and that De Niro was that actor, the performance so entrances that I actually ask, "Who is this guy and why hasn't he made more movies?" To gaze at the way he sculpted his body into the shape of a believable middleweight boxer, sweat glistening in Michael Chapman's gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, truly makes an impressive achievement. Acting isn't the proper word for what De Niro does here. He doesn't portray Jake La Motta, he becomes Jake La Motta, or at least the screen version, and leaves all vestiges of Robert De Niro somewhere else. Even when De Niro turns in good or great work in other roles, they never come as close to complete immersion as his La Motta does.
"Out of the worst crime novels I have ever read, Jules Dassin has made the best crime film I've ever seen," François Truffaut wrote about Rififi in his book The Films in My Life. I haven't read the Auguste Le Breton novel, but I don't doubt Truffaut's word. Dassin structures the film like a solid three-act play. Act I: Planning the heist. Act II: Carrying it out. Act III: The aftermath. Dassin fine-tunes each of the film's element to the point that Rififi practically runs as a machine all its own. The various characters behave more as chess pieces to be moved around as the story's game requires than as representatives of people. One single sequence though makes Rififi a landmark both in films and particularly heist movies: the robbery itself. Dassin films this in a 32-minute long silent sequence. No one speaks. Keeping everything as quiet as possible becomes the thieves' No. 1 priority. It's absolutely riveting. You'll be holding your breath as if you were involved in the crime yourself.
Howard Hawks appears for the first time on the list with a Western starring John Wayne that turned out to be so much fun they remade it (more or less) seven years later as El Dorado. I’ll stick with the original where the Duke’s allies include a great Dean Martin as a soused deputy sheriff, young Ricky Nelson and the always wily Walter Brennan. Wayne even gets to romance Angie Dickinson. No deep themes hidden here, though it's more layered than your typical Western. Still, that doesn't mean you can't kick up your spurs and enjoy.
The first time was the charm. One of the few insightful comments I heard on the 2007 AFI special was when Martin Scorsese said that in many ways he finds the primitive stop-motion effects of the original King Kong more impressive than later CGI versions. He's absolutely right. The 1933 version also offers more thrills and emotions (and in half the time) than Peter Jackson's technically superior but dramatically inferior and unnecessary remake. Let’s not even discuss the 1976 version.
When L.A. Confidential debuted on this list in its first year of eligibility in 2007, I wrote, “Of the films of fairly recent vintage, this is one that grows stronger each time I see it, earning comparisons to the great Chinatown…Well acted (even if Kim Basinger's Oscar was beyond generous), well written and well directed, I believe L.A. Confidential’s reputation will only grow greater as the years go on — yet it lost the Oscar (and a spot on the AFI list) to the insipid Titanic.” When I re-watched the film recently, my prediction proved to be spot-on as it only deepens as an experience and an entertainment as time passes. It still boggles my mind that with Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey and James Cromwell (just to name four) delivering impeccable work that only Basinger landed a nomination, but losing best picture and director to James Cameron and Titanic remains the bigger crime.
Simply put: The tensest comedy ever made and perhaps Scorsese's most underrated film. Griffin Dunne plays the perfect beleaguered straight man enveloped by a universe of misfits and oddballs in lower Manhattan when all he wanted to do was get laid. It’s hard to imagine that this movie nearly became a Tim Burton project, but thanks to the many setbacks Scorsese endured attempting to make The Last Temptation of Christ, the film ended up being his — and recharged his batteries as well. While Scorsese has made great films since, I’d love to see him step back sometime and make another indie feature like After Hours on the fly just to see what happens. Joseph Minion wrote an excellent script and this represents one case where I think the changed ending actually proves superior to the originally intended one. By the way, whatever happened to Joseph Minion?
Watchability often gets undervalued when rating a film's worth, but I never tire of sitting through this thrill ride. One aspect that has impressed me since I first saw it as a teen back in 1985 (and I went two nights in a row, dragging my parents to it on the second) was its attention to detail such as Marty arriving in 1955 and mowing down a pine tree on the farm of the deranged man trying to “breed pines.” Then, when he returns to 1985, Twin Pines Mall now bears the sign Lone Pine Mall. It’s just a quiet sight gag in the background without any overt attempt to call attention to the joke. You either catch it or you don’t. I always admire films that respect audiences like that, especially when they happen to be this much fun. With equal touches of satire, suspense and genuine emotion, Back to the Future elicits pure joy. No matter how many times I see it, the final sequence where they prepare to send Marty back to 1985 holds me in rapt attention as I wonder if this time might be the time he doesn't actually make it.
A comedy about the Vietnam War that's full of blood and set in Korea, just as a matter of subterfuge. The film that put Altman on the map and inspired one of TV's best comedies (until it got too full of itself), MASH still holds up with its brilliant ensemble and wicked wit. I still wish the TV show had kept that theme song with its lyrics. Through early morning fog I see/visions of the things to be/the pains that are withheld for me/I realize and I can see.../That suicide is painless/It brings on many changes/and I can take or leave it if I please.
Back in 1985, before Goodfellas and The Sopranos really mixed mob stories with jet black comedy, the great director John Huston, in his second-to-last film, brought to the screen an adaptation of Richard Condon's Mafia satire Prizzi's Honor, complete with great performances and some of the most memorable lines ever collected in a single film. Huston may have been in the twilight of his days, but his filmmaking prowess was as strong as ever. Jack Nicholson disappeared into the role of Charley Partanna more than he had any role in recent memory. Kathleen Turner matched well with Nicholson as Charley's love whose work outside the house causes problems. William Hickey gave an eccentric and indelible portrait of the aging don. Finally, John's daughter Anjelica made up for a misfire of an acting debut decades earlier with her brilliant performance as the scheming Maerose and took home one of the most deserved supporting actress Oscars ever given.
Before Zhang Yimou started being obsessed with spectacle and martial arts, film after film, he produced some of the greatest personal stories in the history of movies, especially when his muse was the great and beautiful Gong Li. This film was their first truly flawless effort as Gong plays the young bride of a powerful lord who already has multiple wives and who encourages the sometimes brutal competition between the women.
"The film actually is like a snail — it kind of turns in on itself and becomes itself," Altman describes his film in an interview on its DVD. One of the many "comebacks" of Robert Altman's career, this brilliant Hollywood satire holds up viewing after viewing because it's so much more than merely a satire. Thanks to Tim Robbins' superb performance as the sympathetic heel of a Hollywood executive and the cynical yet deeper emotional punch of Michael Tolkin's script, Altman wows from the opening eight-minute take to one of the greatest final punchlines in movie history. However, the more times you see it, the more you discover to see. While some specific references have aged, the movie's relevance remains — now more than ever.
Schindler’s List marked an important moment in Spielberg’s development as a filmmaker: Peter Pan finally grew up. It’s a harrowing, well-made movie that everyone should see. At the same time, I can foresee a time when it slips off this list entirely. It isn’t the fault of the film — I find it nearly flawless. However, if someone placed a gun to my head and ordered me to choose to watch either Schindler’s or one of Spielberg’s best post-1993 films such as Catch Me If You Can or Minority Report, I’d opt for one of the latter two. Are they better films than Schindler’s List? I can’t say that. However, the epic holocaust tale isn’t a film you find yourself wanting to pop a bowl of popcorn and watching on a whim. As I said earlier, for me at least, rewatchability remains an important factor. I’ve seen Schindler’s List three times but I haven’t reached the point where I want to go through that wrenching experience again.
Bergman once said that by the time he was done making Wild Strawberries, the film really belonged more to Victor Sjöström, who played Borg, the renowned professor and lauded physician about to receive an honorary degree. The film marked Sjöström 's return from semi-retirement, but he already was a legend as the first true Swedish acting-directing star. Borg decides to drive his old Packard to the event instead of flying to meet his son. The journey becomes more than just a road trip for the professor, but a metaphysical trek through his past as he questions what led him to this moment. As the car winds closer to the ceremony, Borg's inner journey does as well as he comes to realize that for all his scientific training, the only thing he can't analyze is himself. "The day's clear reality dissolves into even clearer remnants of memory," he says. Wild Strawberries represents Bergman growing into his powers as a filmmaker and while it may concern a 78-year-old man examining his life, the subject proves as timeless for people of any age as the film itself.
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Labels: Almodóvar, Altman, D. Zanuck, Dassin, Hawks, Herzog, Hitchcock, Huston, Ingmar Bergman, Kurosawa, Laughton, Lists, Murnau, Sayles, Scorsese, Spielberg, Tim Burton, Truffaut, Zemeckis, Zhang Yimou
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Monday, November 07, 2011
A fabulous disaster
By Edward Copeland
For people around my age, one of the biggest laughs in (500) Days of Summer comes when Zooey Deschanel's Summer tells Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Tom that lately they've been acting like Sid and Nancy. Tom takes offense, thinking she's comparing him to the late Sex Pistols bass guitarist who stabbed girlfriend Nancy Spungen to death, but Summer corrects him, "No, I'm Sid Vicious." For anyone such as myself for whom Alex Cox's Sid & Nancy served as a seminal film during high school years, it is a hysterical moment. Today marks the 25th anniversary of the U.S. release of Cox's film. There's always a danger when revisiting treasured films of your youth, that the experience won't be the same decades down the road but I'm pleased to report that a quarter-century later, Sid & Nancy works better as a movie than I remember it doing when I originally saw it.
When the movie begins, we gaze upon a young Gary Oldman's version of Sid Vicious staring blankly, without expression, at a TV in a dark hotel room as detectives ask if he is the one who called 911. He says nothing, but we glimpse his bloody hand for a moment. What struck me isn't the context of the scene — no matter how long it's been since you've seen Sid & Nancy, you know that she's dead — no, what struck me is how amazingly young Gary Oldman looks. The actor in this 1986 film bears so little resemblance to the actor working under that name today. Can this possibly be the same man? This remarkably talented actor, still a couple of years shy of his 30th birthday then, who transformed himself so memorably into the drugged-out punk rock legend couldn't possibly be the same man now is in his early 50s and seen most often as Commissioner Gordon in Christopher Nolan's Batman movies or Sirius Black in Harry Potter films? It just seems impossible, doesn't it? It's great to hear the buzz that Oldman is receiving for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy because embarrassments dominate his credits more than winners since at least 1995. Some examples: Lots of voice work for video games, The Scarlet Letter, Lost in Space, Hannibal, the TV show Friends and voices in Disney's 3-D Christmas Carol and Kung Fu Panda 2. Thankfully, we still have his Sid Vicious to be amazed by.
An even larger, more existential query loomed over me while I watched Sid & Nancy again, for the first time in I don't know how many years and began to think about what I would write in this tribute. First, came relief that I didn't find myself disappointed as has happened before when returning to a sacred relic from an earlier archaeological phase of my life. Then, I was struck by a question that had never occurred to me before about the movie — what appeal did it hold for me and many of my friends back in high school? We weren't punk rock enthusiasts — that day had largely passed though many of us owned the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols (and I mean album — on wax), but we tended to be eclectic musically. We weren't lurking around shooting heroin in our veins (though I can't make that statement with 100% certainty concerning one of our informal group). Why did Sid & Nancy speak to us in such a profound way that we not only fell for the film but went multiple times? The theater which showed this movie (and we often went to midnight showings — it wasn't always The Rocky Horror Picture Show or Pink Floyd — The Wall) would be the site for both the beginnings and ends of teen hookups. I guess watching a love story about two drug-addicted people, one of whom stabs the other to death, just brings out the romance
in people. As I pondered the possibilities of why this cinematic portrait of punk had such pull over us, I looked over my notes and discovered one word that seemed to recur from different characters in the movie: Bored. There lies the link between the punk rockers in the movie and the suburban teens in a Bible Belt multiplex watching them: Both groups felt stifled to the point of losing their minds. Sid Vicious found his escape in drugs and his music; we had to make do with watching movies about him until we were old enough to get the hell out of town. In one scene in the movie, someone says, (you can't really tell who because there's a jumble of bodies crowded in sleeping bags and blankets on an apartment floor) "You know I was so bored once I fucked a dog passionately." Thankfully, it never got that bad here (that I know about). Sid & Nancy shows that even the punk fans grew tired of punk, as in a scene at a club where several sit behind a wall, not even paying attention to the Pistols. One has even brought her baby adorned with a green Mohawk haircut. One of the group, Clive (Mark Monero) announces, "Ain't gonna be a punk no more. Gonna be a rude boy just like my dad." When you consume so many drugs that you can't tell what day or country you're in, a state of ennui comes easy as later when Nancy (Chloe Webb, who's as great as Oldman) lies in bed with Sid and complains that she's so bored that she hates her life. "This is just a rough patch. Things'll be much better when we get to America, I promise," Sid reassures her. "We're in America. We've been here a week. New York is in America, you fuck," she yells at him, prompting him to look out the balcony at the Hotel Chelsea sign.
Watching Sid & Nancy now makes it easier to appreciate what Alex Cox accomplishes on a filmmaking level. He tosses out the idea of a conventional narrative (and shouldn't that be required when telling the story of punk pioneers?) while at the same time employing many standard cinematic techniques to great effect. When they get to the infamous concert on the ship on the Thames and the London police make them pull ashore, Cox throws in a short but effective tracking shot of Sid and Nancy, arm in arm and in love, oblivious to the chaos around them, as they simply walk away from the ship and the melee on the docks just to be with one another. Cox also frequently likes suddenly to distance us from characters, usually
the title ones, but not always, so they appear as specks against a background that gives the scene a different connotation such as a message about abortion. He's not above some wacky film use either. When Sid, Nancy and her friend Gretchen (played by none other than Courtney Love) cross a vacant lot and see some kids picking on another one, Sid tells them to stop. The bullies ask him who he thinks he is. "I'm Sid Vicious," he answers and then the kids run away in fast-motion speed like something out of an Our Gang short. A moment such as that reminds me of what really goes unappreciated about Sid & Nancy — its nearly continuous strain of humor, albeit mostly dark humor. Truth be told, that aspect led to my friends and I returning to the film as much as any empathy for the bored. If you just lay out the basic plot of the film — The true story of heroin-addicted musician and his heroin-addicted girlfriend who he stabs to death but doesn't face justice for his crime because he overdoses first — well, it doesn't exactly sound like a rollicking night out. The first response to that description probably would be something like, "Sounds bleak." The word that begins the IMDb plot summary is "morbid." I'm not trying to convince you that Sid & Nancy produces a laugh riot, but I've sat through many bleak films in my time (Wendy and Lucy leaps to mind) and Sid & Nancy isn't one of them because Cox and his collaborators approached the subject matter with such verve, creativity and vitality.Speaking of the painful Wendy and Lucy, two scenes in Sid & Nancy reminded me of that pretentious piece of misery (but in a good way). One emphasizes the careful balancing act Alex Cox and Abbe Wool's screenplay took with scenes that show these characters' desperation (and that one gets hit out of the park by Chloe Webb's superb work. She and Oldman both were robbed in not receiving Oscar
recognition). The second one plays as sort of a twisted homage to another filmmakers' work. Both keep humor behind the anger and tears. In the first, the infamous telephone booth scene, anxious for drugs and out of cash, Nancy calls her mom in America in the middle of the night London time telling her that she and Sid just got married. She assures her mother that Vicious isn't at all as they describe him in the newspapers and no, she's not pregnant either. Not known for her subtlety, Nancy suggests that her mom would want to send them a wedding gift for their honeymoon. Nancy explains that they don't have a place yet, so money would be better and since it's a different time there, why doesn't she head over to Western Union and wire some to them and they can pick it up in the morning. We never hear the mother's side, but it's very reminiscent of that call Wendy (Michelle Williams) makes to her sister) who has heard all her crap before and doesn't want to deal with it. (Lucky her — I immediately wanted to watch a movie called Wendy's Sister and Lucy.) Nancy loses it. "I am so married!" Nancy yells into the phone. "YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT ME! IF YOU DON'T SEND US MONEY, WE'RE BOTH GONNA DIE! FUCK YOU!" Nancy screams before she hangs up and throws such a fit she breaks the glass in the phone booth. Sid gets her to rest down on the curb. "I fucking hate them! I fucking hate them! Fucking motherfuckers! They wouldn't send us any money! They said we'd spend it on DRUGS!" she tells Sid. Then Oldman gets the scene's deadpan punchline: "We would."
The other sequence proves truly hysterical (unless you were living it I imagine). While in America, Nancy takes Sid to visit her grandparents in a dinner scene that plays as if it's a twisted homage to Alvy's visit to Annie's parents in Woody Allen's Annie Hall. There are other scenes
that obviously influenced later films or seem to predict other filmmakers' recurring trademarks. Recognizable character actors Gloria LeRoy (who still works today, which is her 80th birthday) and Milton Seltzer (who passed in 2006) play Granma and Granpa whose table gets filled out by many other men and women, mostly younger, whose relationship never is explained. What's so funny about the scene is that Nancy doesn't change herself in the presence of her grandparents and the young people, sprinkling her speech with F-bombs as always even though her demeanor is generally friendly. Sid comes off as downright polite — except for not wearing a shirt to the dinner table. The highlight comes when Granpa starts questioning Sid as he would any suitor. "So are you gonna make an honest woman of our Nancy, Sid?" he asks Vicious, who obviously misses the gist of the
question. "She's always been an honest woman to me, grandpa, sir. She never lied to me," Sid tells him. Granpa tries again, "What are your intentions?" Nancy steps in to outline the couple's plans for this: Monday they'd go to the methadone clinic, then she'd get Sid a few gigs (this takes place after The Pistols have broken up, but I'll get back to that), then they'd move to Paris "and go out in a blaze of glory," Nancy says. "Don't worry, you'll be proud of us," Sid reassures the grandparents who look anything but reassured. As the family retires to the living room, Sid promptly passing out in a chair from a bit too much
vodka, Nancy in his lap. Nancy assumes that they'll be staying there but Granma comes in and, being as polite as she can, tells her she thought it would be better if they stayed at a motel so they booked them a room there. Nancy admits she was hoping they'd drive them to the methadone clinic, but Granma says it's impossible because they are going on a trip the next day. One of the never-define teenage boys blurts, "Since when?" Granpa also gives Nancy money for transportation. She's wise enough to know what's up and storms out, but Vicious remains in the chair like a statue. The grandparents argue about how they can get him out. Eventually they do, and we see Sid and Nancy in the hotel lying in the dark watching TV. While much of the sequence has been played for laughs, it might be the film's most touching moment. "These people. Really lovely. Best fuckin' food I ever ate," Sid tells Nancy about her grandparents with a wisp of sadness in his voice. "Why'd they throw us out?" Just as he didn't understand what the meaning of Granpa's questions were, Vicious can't fathom how these people that seemed to be friendly and treating him like a human being would suddenly throw him out for some unknown reason. Nancy knows, and she gives the scene its clincher. "Because they know me." Oldman and Webb created such a magnificent acting partnership in Sid & Nancy that I wonder why no one has devised a project in 25 years that paired these two again.
Granted, the movie focuses on the couple, but it also looks at The Sex Pistols and the music industry in England at the time as well and that's where we find a lot of the humor as well. Though Sid & Nancy really only takes time to develop John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon (well played by Andrew Schofield unless you are John Lydon or are friends with John Lydon) with the other band members being more or less ciphers. While the movie portrays him as a prick at times, it also shows him as someone who aspires to some degree of professionalism, something difficult to reach when your bass guitarist tends to be wasted or not there at all. They'll be on stage at a club, ready to go and Sid will be roughhousing elsewhere in the crowd. "Sid, we'll go on when you're ready," John ("He hates being called Johnny") will shout. The movie also has much fun
with its take on the band's manipulative manager Malcolm McLaren (acted with a perpetually bemused grin by David Hayman), who at times seems less concerned that Sid might be destroying himself as long as he gets press out of it. The first time we see Malcolm, he's standing outside a club trying to lure people into a performance. "Is it fucking worth it? Yes it is," he tells anyone who passes by. When Lydon and the other members come to him to complain, explaining that sometimes they have to turn off Vicious' amp because he isn't even playing the same song that the rest of the band is and they need a new bass guitarist, Malcolm doesn't seem upset. Instead, he replies, "Sidney's more than a mere bass player. He's a fabulous disaster. He's a symbol, a metaphor. He embodies the dementia of a
nihilistic generation." Eventually, even McLaren sees the need for intervention. At first, he tries to talk his assistant Phoebe (Debby Bishop) to be Sid's handler for a couple of months, but she wants no part of it. He asks why. "Infectious hepatitis, loony girlfriend, drugs?" she lists off. "Boys will be boys," Malcolm counters. Everyone agrees when the discussion of an American tour comes up, that it's a good chance to separate Sid from Nancy for awhile, since both band and management see her as the bad influence. At a meeting at a small restaurant, they make it clear: no wives or girlfriends can go. When Nancy puts up a fit — Sid appears catatonic the whole time — Phoebe makes it clear that if they can't separate for a few weeks, Sid will be replaced. So Sid goes alone and that tour ends up being the band's end as they get booked in inappropriate venues by people not even clear who they are. (As in Atlanta, as you can see in the sign below.) The final straw comes when Sid heads to a party and walks through a hotel's glass door. When he reunites with Nancy and she decides to manage him, things go from bad to worse and everyone pretty much knows where this story ends.
As I mentioned before, the influences — intentional and otherwise — on other films and filmmakers become more apparent 25 years later. For example, it's even more obvious why Martin Scorsese thought of using Sid Vicious' take on "My Way" as the ending song for Goodfellas when you see the re-creation of the video for it in Sid & Nancy (and that is Gary Oldman doing the singing by the way), especially following the quick take of Joe Pesci as Tommy aping the famous shot from Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery. (Pardon the Portuguese subtitles.) Embedding is disabled for the Goodfellas ending, but click here.
While they stay at the Hotel Chelsea, Sid and Nancy manage to start a fire in their room and they just stare at it, fire fighters eventually coming in around them to extinguish the flames. The hotel manager (Sandy Baron), always bragging to potential tenants about the high-class clientele that have lived there, does berate them slightly but moves them to a room on the first floor accompanied by a slow-moving man who appears to be a decrepit bellhop, but doesn't appear to be that old. The only item he carries is Sid's guitar, which he hands back to him as he says something slow and cryptic along the lines of "Bob Dylan was born here" and
then extends his hand for a trip. It's the type of character we'd see frequent many a work by David Lynch, but I don't recall one making an appearance yet. They didn't really kick in until Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart a few years later. It could be pure coincidence, but when I saw him again, Lynch came to my mind immediately. Musicians and fires aren't that unusual, but it did in a way remind me of Oliver Stone's awful movie The Doors, which also only bothered to define two members of the band. As for the fire, I'm still waiting to find out how the hell Meg Ryan got out of that closet. Imagery may be what I took away most from this return visit because I'd forgotten, if I'd ever known, that the director of photography for Sid & Nancy was the ultra-talented and, of late, Coen brothers' favorite Roger Deakins. For those of you keeping score at home, Deakins has received nine Oscar nominations for cinematography and won zero. His nominations have come for The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, Kundun, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn't There, The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, No Country for Old Men, The Reader (shared with Chris Menges) and True Grit. Look at it this way: Deakins has received more nominations for best cinematography without winning than Peter O'Toole went winless for best actor — and they at least gave O'Toole an honorary Oscar.What boggled my mind then and still does now are people who think that somehow Sid & Nancy comes off as an endorsement for heroin use. Being broke, unaware of your surroundings, killing a loved one and accidentally yourself — tell me where I sign up. As the methadone case worker (Sy Richardson) tells the duo, who dismiss it as "political bullshit" when he paints it as a government conspiracy he claims to have seen first-hand in Vietnam, "(S)mack is the great controller. Keeps people stupid when they could be smart." Yes, the fantastical ending paints the idea that perhaps Sid and Nancy reunite on another plane, but that doesn't mean it's endorsing smack addiction as the path. Still, those closing sequences seem more spellbinding today than before, Of course, no knew in 1986, the symbolic power of including this image of Sid Vicious' path to a pizza joint after making bail in Nancy's slaying.
I almost could have created a 25th anniversary tribute to Sid & Nancy composed entirely of photos. As it is, I've left out many line and anecdotes that I wanted to write about, but I keep cutting them to squeeze in more art — and I'm not even getting all the art in that I wanted. I didn't begin to get into discussing what the hell has happened to Alex Cox or Chloe Webb. Still, there are so many shots I didn't get in — Sid and Nancy having a mock shoot-out on the roof of a hotel, Nancy hanging upside down from a hotel window, Malcolm scaring off men beating up Sid simply by pointing his finger like a gun, Sid spontaneously dancing with some kids after the pizza, Nancy's friend Brenda and her S&M business — but I do want to use one shot from the closing reunion sequence because I think it's the most beautiful.
Finally, just in case anyone might still believe that the movie serves as an ad for heroin, the final card that appears on the screen.
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Labels: 80s, Animation, Christopher Nolan, Coens, Disney, Dylan, Gordon-Levitt, Lynch, Michelle Williams, Movie Tributes, Music, O'Toole, Oldman, Oliver Stone, Oscars, Pesci, Scorsese, Twin Peaks, Woody, Zemeckis
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Tuesday, August 09, 2011
Animation adults will appreciate more than kids
By Edward Copeland
Back in the days when Dennis Miller was funny, before he turned into Howard Beale after Arthur Jensen gives him the corporate cosmology speech in Network, part of what appealed to me about his comedy was that I felt as if I was one of the few who understood most of the cultural and historical references that Miller tossed in his standup as if they were adjectives. Rango plays as if it were an animated film made exclusively for an audience appreciative of that sort of referential humor. As a result, I found the movie very enjoyable at the same time that I questioned if it weren't weighed down by so many allusions and homages that it would fly over the heads of younger viewers. More importantly, would Rango be strong enough to stand on its own if all those clever references were removed and it had to get by solely on what remains?
When I was thinking of how to begin my review of Rango and I'd settled on using my Dennis Miller line about how a once sharp comedian turned into a right-wing mouthpiece and compared his evolution to how the malevolent chairman of CCA, the conglomerate that owned UBS in Network, transformed Howard Beale from a latter-day prophet denouncing the hypocrisies of our times into a preacher of corporate evangelism, I didn't even think of the irony that Ned Beatty played Arthur Jensen in Network and also voices the villainous Mayor in Rango. This follows Beatty's great vocal work last year as the bad teddy bear Lotso in Pixar's marvelous Toy Story 3. Beatty could corner the market on voicing the antagonists in animated films. He's always great when he appears on screen, but it's amazing to hear how he can create distinctive characters with only his voice.
That aside, on to Rango itself. In a way, besides the plethora of references, I wonder if the filmmakers intended Rango for an older age range. It received a PG rating (though I'm not sure why) but the MPAA details
claim it is for "rude humor, language, action and smoking." I bet the smoking pushed it over. So, should Disney ever revive their great old practice of re-releasing their classic animated films to theaters every few years for new generations, I suppose that 1961's One Hundred and One Dalmatians would have to have the G it received in its 1991 re-release changed to a PG because of Cruella's smoking habit. (The MPAA won't issue any warnings to parents that their children might be influenced to turn dogs into fur coats but SMOKING!) How much further will rating movies for behavior go? There's a big anti-junk food and concerns about childhood obesity going on. If someone eats a candy bar, will that eventually earn a PG? How about the presence of overweight actors? If Jack Black made a completely family friendly film, will he eventually be penalized by the MPAA for being out of shape? I bet they'll never issue warnings for pencil-thin actresses who might subliminally push young girls into having eating disorders.
Pardon my digression. As much as I enjoyed Rango, I find myself less interested in writing about the film itself than issues around its periphery. Though my reason for thinking Rango had an older audience in mind is the behind-the-scenes creative team who assembled for it. Its director is Gore Verbinski who helmed the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films (which I only got through an hour of the first one when I realized I had nearly another 90 minutes to endure so I gave up); the god-awful film The Mexican starring Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts, a film whose sole redeeming quality was James Gandolfini as a gay hit man; the American remake of the Japanese thriller The Ring and a couple other less notable films, but nothing animated or truly family oriented among them.
Verbinski also gets a third of the story credit on Rango alongside James Ward Byrkit, whose writing credits are puzzlers but longest section on IMDb lists his work in movie art departments, and John Logan, who actually wrote the screenplay. Logan has an extensive resume of screenplay work including Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, The Aviator, The Last Samurai and Gladiator, none of which you see as material aiming for the younger crowd. All though have worked with Johnny Depp, who voices Rango, so I can't help but feel that the film is a bit of a lark for those involved that turned out to be very entertaining, at least for film buffs.
However, I can't speak for the young out there, I can only speak for myself and I quite enjoyed Rango. Depp's title character is a chameleon living a solitary life with imaginary friends and dreams of being an actor and a hero. Rango isn't his real name: He'll adopt that later. A series of accidents ends up flipping him into the middle of the desert on the other side of the road from his usual haunts. Parched, desperate for water, he encounters a female lizard named Beans (Isla Fisher) who, against her better judgment, helps him to the closest town with the hopeful name of Dirt.
We've had a few allusions already (we've definitely landed in Sergio Leone territory), but once in town, he's not treated kindly by the townsfolk who distrust strangers. We hear obvious echoes of Pat Buttram-esque and Gabby Hayes-like voices among the crowds. When he goes to the bar and someone asks his name, he spots Durango on the bottom of a bottle of cactus juice and just takes the Rango part. Feeling more confident, Rango starts spinning tales of how he is a gunfighter and he once killed the notorious Jenkins Brothers (all six of them) with one bullet. Everyone is impressed, but they also are hurting. Dirt is in the midst of a serious water problem, as in they don't have much if any. They also are terrorized by a real desperado, a large rattlesnake named Jake (voiced by Bill Nighy). What keeps Jake at bay is a hawk who seems to circle looking for him, but the same scavenger chased Rango when he was struggling in the desert and when Rango sees him in town, he runs for it and kills the hawk by knocking the water tower over on it.
The town fears for its future: Water already is scarce and now that the hawk is dead, what's to stop Jake, but Rango tells them to have no fear, Jake happens to be his half-brother. They're stealing from everywhere else, why not toss a little Shakespearean element into the mix? At one point, Rango actually tells some of the
younger townfolk, "Stay in school, eat your veggies, and burn all the books that ain't Shakespeare." The townspeople take Rango to meet the Mayor, who seems a friendly enough chap, saying Rango is giving the town hope and appoints him sheriff. The Mayor, an old turtle scooting around in a wheelchair he certainly must have obtained from Mr. Potter in It's a Wonderful Life says at one point that he "who controls the water controls everything" and Beatty even puts a slight bit of John Huston in his voice. In fact, Rango appropriates the plot of Chinatown more than any other film, so much so that I wonder if Robert Towne should sue. On the plus side, the Mayor doesn't have a daughter that he fathered a child with that Rango falls for and the movie doesn't end with "Forget it Rango, it's Dirt." It's interesting that Rango is at least the second film involving animation that adopts a Chinatown-like plot to its tale, the first being Robert Zemeckis' great Who Framed Roger Rabbit with its plan to destroy Toon Town for the L.A. streetcar.
The plot plays out as you would expect, though Dirt seems to exist out of time. It's an Old West town free of technology, but Rango crossed a highway full of cars to get there and when he figures out where the water is being diverted to, over a dune he spots Las Vegas. Plot isn't what's charming about Rango though, it's all the extras that make it so much fun. In addition to the obvious references to Chinatown and Leone's spaghetti Westerns, they manage to sneak in allusions to The Court Jester, Easy Rider, The Lord of the Rings, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and, when they get to the big climactic assault/chase, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, even using Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries." Late in the film, when Rattlesnake Jake shows up and exposes Rango's stories about the Jenkins Brothers as lies, Rango dejectedly leaves and hallucinates a visit from The Man With No Name, riding around the desert in a golf cart. I actually thought at first that Clint Eastwood had done a vocal cameo for the film (which would have been really cool), but it turns out that it's only a pretty damn good impression of Eastwood by Timothy Olyphant.
Is Rango a great film? Not really. Is it a fun film? Yes, especially if you know a lot about movies. It's also exceedingly well made on the animation side. It wasn't made or converted to 3-D as all animated films seem required to be now, but even watching it at home, the depth of its images and its fine use of colors and shadings would be one of the greatest arguments as to why you don't need the money-grubbing gimmick in the first place. In addition to Depp and all the other great voicework I've already mentioned, Rango also includes nice vocal turns from Abigail Breslin, Alfred Molina, Stephen Root, Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone and Ian Abercrombie.
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Labels: 10s, Animation, Brad Pitt, Coppola, Depp, Disney, Eastwood, Gandolfini, Huston, Julia Roberts, Leone, N. Beatty, Pixar, Shakespeare, Towne, Zemeckis
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Sunday, December 19, 2010
The thing ain't the ring, it's the play So give him a stage/Where this bull can rage
By Edward Copeland
Whenever I'm involved in a discussion about Martin Scorsese's films and the subject turns to
Raging Bull, which marks its 30th anniversary today, my standard response tends to be that it's a film that's easier to admire than to love. Each time I re-visit the movie though, that point-of-view becomes a less satisfactory one because, as any great film should, the movie rises higher in my esteem. While it's not a double-barrelled treat like other Scorsese masterpieces such as Goodfellas, After Hours or Taxi Driver, where his filmmaking prowess dazzles and you never tire of watching the films, Raging Bull offers the serious film connoisseur other ample rewards, including Robert De Niro's greatest performance, even if it's now tinged with a sadness as you see a commercial for yet another Meet the Parents sequel and realize how long it's been since he has even tried to scale those acting heights — and the heights he reached as Jake La Motta remain astonishing. What struck me first when re-watching Raging Bull this time (I can't even recall the last time I saw it) was just how mesmerized I was by De Niro. In the film's opening moments, first when De Niro plays the older, fat
Jake preparing for his lounge act in 1964 before it cuts to the ripped fighter in 1941, even though I consciously knew both versions of La Motta were played by the same actor and that De Niro was that actor, the performance so entranced me that I actually thought to myself, "Who is this guy and why hasn't he made more movies?" It used to be sort of a joke about how De Niro was so committed to the role that they took time off so he could gain the weight for the older, fat scenes, but to gaze at the way he sculpted his body into the shape of a believable middleweight boxer, sweat glistening in Michael Chapman's gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, truly makes for the more impressive achievement. It really struck me when we get to the post-fight scenes and you watch this man act. No, scratch that. Act isn't the proper word for what De Niro does here. He doesn't act the role of Jake La Motta, he becomes Jake La Motta, or at least the screen version, and leaves all vestiges of Robert De Niro somewhere else. Even when De Niro is good or great in other roles, they never come as close to complete immersion as his La Motta does.
What always amazes me about films such as Raging Bull, other great boxing films or a movie such as Without Limits about track is the ability of talented filmmakers to take a subject with which I have no inherent interest in real life and produce compelling cinema out of it. I'd never watch a boxing match in real life or attend a track meet, but somehow these movie magicians can turn these topics into story gold. It can even happen with documentaries. When We Were Kings, the Oscar-winning account of the bout between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in 1974 in Zaire, remains one of the best documentaries I've ever seen despite the fact I have no interest in the sport. Of course, though Raging Bull may tell the story of a boxer, there actually are fewer fight scenes than it seems like when you are watching the film. In the DVD commentary, Scorsese says that the film actually contains less than nine minutes of total fight footage.
Then, Scorsese did approach most of his fight material as if they were part of a documentary. La Motta was an adviser on the film for the fights (he left the set when they got to the non-boxing scenes) and Scorsese went over archival footage of the actual bouts to try to make each one as realistic as possible. For the one fight that lacked footage, he used a phalanx of photographers' flashbulbs to re-create the still photos that they were
going by. This isn't to say that Scorsese and his great film editor Thelma Schoonmaker (who earned her first Oscar for this film) didn't take some artistic license in these scenes, but for the most part he tried to make them follow the fights as they occurred. Still, anyone who has watched Scorsese knows he loves to play and he did include some great tricks to get the effects he wanted. For one fight, to get the perspective he wanted, they actually elongated the boxing ring so that it was longer than a normal ring. The most infamous example, which you might not even notice he did unless you've heard him talk about it, comes in the final fight between La Motta and Sugar Ray Robinson (played by Johnny Barnes who, like all the opponents in the film, were fighters in real life). Scorsese storyboarded the moment when Robinson pummels La Motta against the ropes based on Hitchcock's shot sequence for the shower scene in
Psycho. At first, Scorsese wasn't sure how to pull it off, but fellow director, the legendary independent filmmaker Samuel Fuller gave him the idea of placing the camera within the boxing glove. Hitchcock chose to shoot Psycho in black and white because he didn't want the blood in the shower scene to be in color. The process that led to Scorsese deciding to film Raging Bull in black and white, against studio objections of course, also came courtesy of another legendary director. Scorsese had become friends with the great Michael Powell, who would wed Schoonmaker in 1984, who mentioned to him that the red boxing gloves could prove distracting. Originally, according to Scorsese's commentary, he considered just desaturating the color but then when he took into account several boxing films that were out around the same period of time such as Rocky II and The Main Event, he committed to black and white to make Raging Bull distinctive from the other films (as if it would be confused with a Ryan O'Neal-Barbra Streisand comedy anyway) and because it just seemed right given the archival tone of the fights.Since in essence I watched Raging Bull again twice before writing this (once as the movie itself and then once where I was just watching the images while listening to the commentary by Scorsese and Schoonmaker), I found myself examining the camera work even more closely than I had in awhile and what struck me was that
while Scorsese utilized the many techniques he loves to employ in his films, I never really found an example that could be accused of being there for showy effect. As much as I love Goodfellas, his greatest and most memorable touches do call attention to themselves at times. I can't really say that about Raging Bull. Every time he employs different speeds, reverse pans or even his requisite tracking shot in Raging Bull, Scorsese does it because it's the best way to serve the story at that time. When it came time for the tracking shot, following Jake from his dressing room through the tunnel and hallways, up the stairs, through the spectators and into the ring, I didn't even realize it had happened. After I had finished watching the film, I wondered if I somehow had missed the shot or had dreamt it and it took watching the film again with the commentary for me to notice it. I don't think this was a case of me being an inattentive viewer but that I was being held in the thrall of an exemplary visual storyteller.
Though I've spent a lot of space heaping praise on what every movie buff already knows — that Martin Scorsese belongs on the list of film's greatest artists — the stunning look, electric editing and well-planned
visuals alone did not make Raging Bull a masterpiece. He also was blessed with a solid screenplay by Mardik Martin and Paul Schrader, which he and De Niro shaped structurally into the final product, and, more importantly, a cast composed of veterans, newcomers and some who'd abandoned acting who meshed together into a perfect blend of realism to tell the life story of Jake La Motta that existed when his gloves were off and he wasn't in the ring. Going mano-a-mano with a referee between him and his opponent and crowds watching were the times when La Motta was in his element. When he was removed from that and forced to live everyday life, that's really when everything would go awry and the cast assembled to tell this story was almost universally brilliant from the phenomenal De Niro down to the smallest role.It is hard to believe now that Joe Pesci, an Oscar winner so well known that a recurring skit on Saturday Night Live used to be the idea of him (or really his Tommy character from Goodfellas) hosting a talk show with De Niro serving as his Ed McMahon, had basically given up on acting and had to be repeatedly begged by
Scorsese and De Niro, who had seen him in a small film he'd made called The Death Collector, to play Jake's brother Joey in Raging Bull. Not only were their instincts wise to seek him out for the part, Pesci deservedly received his first Oscar nomination for the performance. Pesci has become so identified with Tommy, his psychotic mobster from Goodfellas that it's almost become a stereotype (not helped by playing a very similar character in Casino), that it always takes you by surprise when you see him as the relatively quiet Joey. He can be funny and he acts as the conduit between Jake and the mobsters involved in the fight game, but he's really nothing like Pesci's later characters (even if he does beat up Frank Vincent in one scene). He's playing against De Niro giving not only his career-best performance but one of the greatest feats of acting ever put on film and Pesci more than holds his own. Almost from the beginning, after
Jake unfairly loses the fight to Jimmy Reeves and complains about his "small, girlish hands" that prevent him from fighting the best like Joe Louis even though, as Joey reminds him, he and Louis are in different weight classes. It prompts the self-hating Jake to force his brother, using a dishrag as a substitute for a boxing glove, to repeatedly punch him in the face. Joey also serves as a Jake's truth-teller as his paranoid jealousy about his second wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty) literally drives him cuckoo. He tells his brother that he knows she's doing something, he just wants to catch her once. "Want to do yourself a favor?" Joey tells his brother. "Bust her fuckin' hole and throw her out. Either that or live with her and let her ruin your life because that's what's happening. How much can you take? How much shit can you take?" One interesting side note about Frank Vincent's character: He plays a mob-connected figure who frequents the Copacabana, as the gangsters did in Goodfellas, which took place in a later time. His Goodfellas' character was named Billy Batts; in Raging Bull, he's Salvy Batts. They changed a lot of names in Goodfellas and the book it was based on didn't exist when Raging Bull was being made, but could the two characters be related or is someone just winking at us in Goodfellas because Vincent is playing both characters on the receiving end of Pesci's blows?
Now, Vincent's character Salvy associates frequently in the film with a higher-ranked Mob figure, Tommy Como, based on the real-life Frankie Carbo who had his fingers in most New York bouts in '40s and '50s before eventually being convicted of various crimes and sent to prison by Bobby Kennedy. The actor playng Como must have had a thing for sports, though not all Mob-connected-figures. The late, great Nicholas Colasanto probably will always be best known as the sweet Coach who took too many balls to the head in his baseball career on TV's Cheers. He also appeared in another boxing film, John Huston's Fat City, playing the former manager of Stacy Keach's down-on-his-luck pugilist. Tommy Como doesn't reflect the kindness you see in either of those other two Colasanto roles. He's not frightening and he doesn't make threats because he doesn't have to. Joey is the one who has to deal with him. Jake steers clear. Tommy flat out tells him that Jake will never get a shot at the title unless he takes a dive in another fight first. Jake reluctantly agrees, but it's so obvious that it ends with La Motta's suspension from boxing for two years, the only fighter in history suspended for throwing a fight. You also get to see an emotion that isn't rage after the fight as Jake just sobs uncontrollably in his dressing room.
The third person to garner an acting Oscar nomination for the film was Moriarty as Vickie. It's often said that some kids are wise beyond their years and in truth, that was the case with Moriarty who begins playing Vickie at age 15 when Moriarty wasn't but a couple of years older than that herself. The black-and-white cinematography accentuates her sensuality, even though Vickie as well as Moriarty were both basically jailbait. You can see how the married Jake's libido goes into overdrive as he spots her at the community swimming pool that one day. However, that's not the impressive part of Moriarty's performance. It is feasible for someone to change their body to
look convincing as a fighter or an older, fatter version of the same man as De Niro did, but it takes some inner acting chops for a teenage girl to be that convincing playing a character from her 15-year-old schoolgirl days to a thirtysomething mother and housewife. She also gets to play all sides of the tempestuous relationship between Vickie and Jake. From their first official meeting separated by the barbed wire fence between the pool and the street that from the very first time I saw the film reminded me of the scene between Brando and Eva Marie Saint in On the Waterfront, an homage Scorsese confirms in the commentary, to the physical abuse she takes from his paranoid jealousy that convinces that since she's so alluring to him, she must be irresistible to everyone and isn't strong enough to say no. That's something else that's unique about Moriarty's performance: She brings out the sex in De Niro. Really, I can't cite another example where De Niro has played a role where he's involved with someone on a sensual, romantic level, but Moriarty pulls that off, even if La Motta has rules against sex for certain time periods before a fight and will stop in the middle to go the bathroom and pour ice water over his erection. It's funny because I remember that part first from the Mad magazine spoof, which I read years before I ever saw the movie.
Still, amid the turmoil, there were happy times for Jake and Vickie La Motta, which in another brilliant touch, Scorsese filmed as Super 8 color home movies, personally scratching the film himself to give it the old look he was seeking.
You can never be certain what will set off that rage that boils inside Jake. If he could have restricted it to the ring, he would have merely been a ferocious fighter, but it stayed wth him at all times. Whether it's when he thinks his first wife is going to overcook a steak (and reacts when she tosses it on his plate by overturning the table) or yelling at a neighbor complaning about his shouting that he's going to have the man's barking dog for dinner. It's that inner Jake La Motta that makes it hard for many (and for myself for a long time) to fully embrace Raging Bull. He's a troubled man, his own worst enemy if you will. Scorsese cites someone on the commentary who said that La Motta took more beatings than he had to because he acted as if he deserved it. As De Niro as Jake says at one point in the movie, he thinks he's done so many bad things, that they come back to haunt him, that he's a jinx. So at its essence,
Raging Bull isn't a simple biography of a boxer, it's a biopic of a man hellbent on destroying himself and all those around him. It's not because he's just a jerk or an asshole, it's because something deep in his psyche won't allow him to be happy or content for long and his inability to be satisfied infects all those around him like a virus until he's eventually alone. He will interrogate his brother because he gives Vickie a quick kiss on the lips instead of the cheek, somehow interpreting from that that his wife and Joey had oral sex. It's even worse when he learns of Joey beating Salvy in defense of Vickie months after the incident. The twisted logic of La Motta's mind makes the fact that he was never told mean there was something to hide, such as an affair between Joey and Vickie. After taking his actions out on Vickie, he heads over to Joey and beats the hell out of him with two wives trying to stop him and Joey's two young children staring in disbelief, still wearing their dinner bibs. It's a rupture between the brothers that causes Jake great pain, even though it's all his fault. At one point after a bout, he has Vickie dial Joey's number and Jake gets on the phone, but he's too ashamed to speak and Joey, thinking he's someone else, just cusses him out. In fact, La Motta's character proved so hard to take for some that Scorsese felt compelled to put the following Bible verse at the end of the film to explain why he was even telling his story."Speak the truth before God.
We know this fellow is a sinner."
"Whether or not he is a sinner, I do not know,"
The man replied.
"All I know is this:
Once I was blind and now I can see."
— John IX, 24-26 (the New English Bible)
The film raises the question that often comes up: Should disreputable people be the subjects of art, be it film, literature or theater. The answer is that of course they should. How boring art would be if everything was purified glorified goop. Richard Attenborough made a good passable film about Mahatma Gandhi, but imagine how much more interesting it would be if it had been a warts and all portrait and not just a step on the road to cinematic sainthood. If some of the more unseemly aspects of Gandhi's life, such as his taste for young girls, had been shown, it wouldn't diminish his greatness anymore than knowing that Martin Luther King played around lessens his monumental role in the civil rights movement and Gandhi's tradition. Should Shakespeare have not written Richard III? Granted, Jake La Motta was not a Gandhi or a King, not by a
long shot. It's been said that when Jake went to a screening of the film with his then ex-wife Vickie he turned to her and asked, "Was I really that bad?" and she replied, "You were worse." Still, Raging Bull certainly gave us enough of a taste that if he was worse, I'm not sure how explicity we needed to see that to get the point across. Bible quote aside, it's not out to make excuses for him, it's to tell a good story. It's a harsh story, but it's a good one. As much as you can't believe what Jake does, you still manage empathy for him at times, as when he is in a Dade County jail cell on a moral charge beating his head against a wall crying that he's "not an animal." When he needs bail money, having to pry the jewels off
his long-sought championship belt to get cash only to be told the whole belt might be worth something. Then of course there's that ending, the bookend of the opening, where he's back doing his lounge act in 1964, fat, out of shape, performing the works of Shakespeare, Schulberg, Chayefsky and others and we see him alone in his dressing room, coldly running through Brando's famous "I could'a been a contender" speech from On the Waterfront. You're watching Robert De Niro giving the greatest performance of his career, one of the best screen performances of all time, in character saying the lines of one of the other best screen performances of all time by the greatest screen actor of all time. That's entertainment.Tweet
Labels: 80s, Brando, Chayefsky, De Niro, Documentary, Hitchcock, Huston, Michael Powell, Movie Tributes, Pesci, Schrader, Scorsese, Shakespeare, Streisand, Zemeckis
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