Documentaries have become increasingly viable theatrically, probably since Michael Moore’s Roger and Me (1989) shook things up and pumped new life into non-fiction films. Recent years have seen documentaries playing for weeks, even months, in commercial theaters. 2012 was another good year for documentaries.
Of the ten films on my list of favorites for the year, my two “most favorites” are Beauty Is Embarrassing and Searching for Sugar Man. I’ll go further and say that Sugar Man is one of the best films I saw last year, documentary or otherwise. I put off seeing it for weeks, despite hearing nothing but good things about it from friends and in press coverage. When I finally did see Searching for Sugar Man, I loved it, and was surprised by how emotional it made me feel, and how much I cared for Sixto Rodriguez, aka Sugar Man. This is similar to my response to last year’s Buck and Bill Cunningham, New York. AndBeauty Is Embarrassing just made me smile from beginning to end (and after).I was in awe of the playful genius and expansive spirit of its subject, Wayne White. All four are films with engaging, charismatic persons as the subjects, seen in artfully made films. – Ted Hicks
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry – Alison Klayman (Available via Netflix & Amazon)
Beauty Is Embarrassing – Neil Berkeley (Available via Netflix & Amazon)
The Central Park Five – Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon
The Flat – Arnon Goldfinger (Israel/Germany)
Gerhard Richter Painting – Corinna Belz (Germany) (Available via Netflix & Amazon)
How to Survive a Plague – David France (Available via Netflix and Amazon)
Jiro Dreams of Sushi – David Gelb (Available via Netlix & Amazon)
Searching for Sugar Man – Malik Bendjelloul (Sweden/U.K.) (Available via Netflix & Amazon)
This Is Not a Film – Jafar Panahi & Mojtaba Mirtahmasb (Iran)
When I moved to New York in 1977 there were quite a few revival movie theaters with great repertory programming, including the Bleeker Street Cinema, Carnegie Hall Cinema, the Regency, Theatre 80 St. Marks (with its odd projection from behind the screen), and the Thalia in my neighborhood on the Upper West Side (and a few years later the grandly refurbished Metro at 99th and Broadway). These theaters are all gone now, but revivals are still alive in the city, thanks mainly to Film Forum, the Walter Reade Theater, the Museum of Modern Art, and also the Museum of the Moving Image and Anthology Film Archives. And there’s an ever expanding availability of old films via DVD, Blu-ray, Netflix and Amazon streaming, Turner Classic Movies, and more.
I probably spend as much time seeing old films as I do new ones. Here are my favorites from last year.
About Elly – Asghar Fahradi, 2009 (Iran). Last April the Walter Reade Theater showed Asghar Fahradi’s first four features, none of which are currently available on DVD, unfortunately. Fahradi is the director of A Separation (2011), which definitely deserved the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film it received last year. A Separation is a film that reveals more and more every time you see it. About Elly is nearly as strong, which is saying something. The set-up is fairly simple: a group of old college friends has gone to the seashore for a vacation. The only new member, Elly, was invited by another woman who wants to set Elly up with one of the men who is recently divorced. Tensions develop with an outsider on the scene, but then she disappears, vanishes completely. In the frantic efforts to find out what happened, things get increasingly out of control. About Elly is a real thriller, a mystery, and absolutely fascinating to watch. It’s a knock out.
All Quiet on the Western Front – Lewis Milestone, 1930. This is one of the great anti-war films, on par with Grand Illusion and Paths of Glory. I hadn’t seen it before, and it was quite a revelation. A key scene in the film is when Paul Baumer (Lew Ayres) returns home on leave from the front. Paul was an eager, gung-ho recruit when he enlisted, but is now totally disillusioned by what he has seen and experienced. He visits the classroom where we saw him at the beginning, and the professor who preaches the glories of war and dying for the fatherland to his young students. Paul lays it out for the students and the teacher, who practically hoot him out of the room. It’s a sobering scene, because not much has changed in the intervening eighty-two years. Everything Paul says is just as vital today as it was then.
Barry Lyndon – Stanley Kubrick, 1975. As close as he would get to realizing his Napoleon film project, Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, which he wrote and produced as well as directed,is an amazing piece of work. His films tend to last, to grow in stature, and this one is no exception. Though I’ve seen Barry Lyndon many times over the years, the opportunity of seeing a digital restoration on the big screen at Walter Reade was too good to pass up. The following scene, a recital that devolves into a knock-down fight between Barry and his stepson, Lord Bullingdon, is a good example of Kubrick’s total control.
Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du paradis)– Marcel Carné (director); Jacques Prévert (writer), 1945 (France). If I had to come up with a list of the greatest films of all time, this would be on it. A monumental piece of work, even more impressive when you realize it was made during the German occupation of France. Over a period of ten years, Carné and Prévert made seven films together, including Port of Shadows (1938) and Le Jour se lève (1939). This film, set in the Parisian theatrical world of the 1820s and 30s, telling the story of a beautiful actress and the four men who love her, is their masterpiece.
Christmas Holiday– Robert Siodmak, 1944. This deceptively titled film is about as bleak an example of film noir as you can imagine. Not only that, it casts the great dancer Gene Kelly as a sociopathic liar and murderer. The director, Robert Siodmak, made films in his native Germany before the rise of Nazism drove him to Paris and then Hollywood. There he made twenty-three films starting in 1941 before returning to Europe in 1952, among them some of the greatest film noirs of the period, including The Killers (1946) and Criss Cross (1948), as well as this little gem, which I hadn’t seen before Film Forum’s expansive 100th anniversary Universal Pictures series last summer. Here’s the complete feature.
Grand Illusion – Jean Renoir, 1937. Along with Children of Paradise, this is one of the greatest films ever made. It was released last year in a stunning new restoration. Renoir was one of the great humanist filmmakers, and he really put it all into Grand Illusion. I get an incredible rush of feeling at the ending every time, on par with the door closing on John Wayne at the end of The Searchers or the Rosebud sled burning up at the end of Citizen Kane.
The Lady Vanishes – Alfred Hitchcock, 1938. Unbelievably, I hadn’t seen this before. Over a period of several months last year, the IFC Center downtown showed a wide range of Hitchcock films on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings. This was one of them. The Lady Vanishes is an incredibly entertaining film, from the long opening where a multitude of characters is introduced while waiting overnight for a snowbound train, through the complicated working out of the mystery, to the look of joy on Dame May Whitty’s face (Miss Froy, the lady of the title) as the camera rushes in on her to put an exclamation point to the ending. Here’s the complete feature.
Nothing But a Man – Michael Roemer, 1964. This is a film I’d heard of for years, but had not seen. Set in Alabama in the 1960s, Nothing But a Man tells the story of Duff Anderson (Ivan Dixon), a black railroad worker, and his relationship with Josie Dawson, a preacher’s daughter (singer Abbey Lincoln in her film debut). It’s really quite extraordinary, a universal study of the life and love of characters who just happen to be black.
On the Town – Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1949. This is one of my favorite movie musicals, probably second only to Singin’ in the Rain (1952). If you’ve never seen it, it’s the story of three sailors on a 24-hour pass in New York City and their tireless efforts to find girls and have fun. It’s great. It was also unusual at the time for shooting a number of sequences on location in the city, instead of the studio settings most often used in musicals. The exhilarating opening number illustrates this to great effect.
Port of Shadows (Le Quai des brumes) – Marcel Carné and Jacques Prévert, 1938 (France). This is the second film on this list directed by Carné and written by Prévert. I saw it when it was shown as part of a Jean Gabin series at the Walter Reade Theater in 2002, but had forgotten much of it. Gabin was the Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable of French cinema. He’s in his prime in this film. Port of Shadows is poetic and fatalistic, a fine example of early noir.
Repulsion – Roman Polanski, 1965. A deeply unsettling film, and rather an act of bravery for Catherine Deneuve. At age 22, she had just appeared in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg the year before, and now was playing a sexually-repressed French woman named Carol living with her sister in a cramped apartment in London. Over the course of the film she has an escalating mental breakdown, seriously unraveling, and killing a few people in the process. This was Polanski’s first English-language film and he really went all the way with it. Polanski has a way of showing the ordinary and mundane in a very sinister light, much like David Cronenberg after him. He also portrays Carol’s breakdown in very concrete terms; when she imagines men’s arms emerging from the walls to grope at her as she walks down the apartment hallway, we see this as though it were actually happening, not an hallucination. Then there’s the skinned rabbit on a plate that sets out for days decomposing and attracting flies.
Rio Bravo – Howard Hawks, 1959. I’d seen this in ’59 while a freshman in high school and thought it was great. When I saw it some years ago there was a lot I didn’t like, such as static dialogue scenes and studio-bound settings. But I know it has a lot of champions, including Quentin Tarantino, so when the Museum of the Moving Image programmed it to play on their big screen, I decided to take another look. What I found was that almost none of the stuff that had bothered me before did this time around, or at least wasn’t important enough to matter. Sure, Walter Brennan’s character Stumpy is still pretty irritating, but the movie works. John Wayne plays the definitive John Wayne character, and Dean Martin’s performance as the town drunk given a chance to resurrect himself is quite something.
The Suspect – Robert Siodmak, 1944. This is the second of three films Siodmak made at Universal in 1944, the third being the dreadful, unwatchable Cobra Woman (though it seems I have watched it). I’d not seen The Suspect, and don’t think I’d even heard of it, which surprised me, since I love film noir. In this film, set in London in 1902, Charles Laughton plays Philip Marshall, a henpecked accountant who falls in love with a young stenographer and may or may not have caused the death of his wife Cora, who dies after falling down the stairs in their home. Laughton gives a really amazing performance in this role. The film is a tight 85 minutes, and very satisfying. (The poster at left seems to be the result of the marketing department trying to sell the film as something more lurid and modern than it actually is.)
The 39 Steps – Alfred Hitchcock, 1935. I’d seen this before, but seeing it again during the IFC Center Hitchcock series last year made me realize how great Hitchcock’s earlier films could be. Robert Donat’s character, Richard Hannay, is an innocent man on the run, forced to find out what’s behind what’s happening to him. This is a theme Hitchcock would return to over and over. The 39 Steps is immensely enjoyable and covers a lot of ground in only 86 minutes. Here are two beautiful posters for the film which have an almost painterly quality. The one on the left gives the film a romantic feel, while the one on the right emphasizes the thriller aspects.
The Wild Bunch – Sam Peckinpah, 1969. The Museum of the Moving Image was showing this film the same day I saw Rio Bravo. I hadn’t intended to stay, but then thought, my God, how could I not. The Wild Bunch was released in 1969 while I was with the Air Force at a base in northeast Thailand, the same year as the first moon landing, Woodstock and its evil twin, Altamont. I heard a lot about the film and was dying to see it, having really loved Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country (still my favorite Peckinpah film). But it was a couple of years before I had the chance, which was at a 16mm screening on campus at the University of Iowa. Over the years I’ve seen it multiple times. The Wild Bunch may not as great as I once thought it was, but it still ranks very high in my book. It’s been hugely influential, and a lot of revisionist Westerns followed in its wake, for better or worse. Plus it has one of William Holden’s two greatest performance, the other being in Network (1976).
All of these films are available from Netflix and Amazon, with the exception of About Elly, Christmas Holiday, and The Suspect. –Ted Hicks
The year just ended turned out to be an unusually strong one for films, both big budget studio pictures, such as Lincoln, Argo, Skyfall, and Flight, as well as smaller productions, such as Liberal Arts, Middle of Nowhere, Moonrise Kingdom and Take This Waltz. Following is a rather lengthy list of my favorite films of the year. It’s in alphabetical order, rather than preference. I have not yet seen Les Misérables, Rust and Bone, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, or Promised Land, but I suspect that one or more of those would be on this list as well.
Argo (Ben Affleck, director). Ben Affleck is emerging as a very strong director (though I much prefer his first film, Gone Baby Gone [2007], to his second, The Town [2010]). Argo may not be a great film, but it’s a very good one, solid, well made, and tells a fascinating story. Alan Arkin and John Goodman are standouts.
Amour (Michael Haneke, director & writer – Austria/France/Germany). This carefully crafted study of love and death after a long marriage is dry-eyed, totally unsentimental, and quite beautiful. Haneke’s approach has always been very clinical and controlled. His films can be like watching a dissection in a cold room, but he’s a great filmmaker. The White Ribbon (2009) is my favorite film of his that I’ve seen, but Amour, with extraordinary, totally honest performances by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva, is a close second for me.
Barbara (Christian Petzold, director & writer – Germany). Barbara, a doctor in East Germany in 1980, desperately wants to get out. This quietly powerful film downplays the action. Nina Hoss is wonderful in the title role.
Breathing (Karl Markovics, director & writer – Austria). Like Barbara, this film is also quite restrained and quite powerful. It concerns an incarcerated young man who takes a work-release job in a city morgue. It really got to me with scenes such as a recently deceased elderly woman’s body being gently cleaned and dressed by morgue attendants when they come to pick up her up, or the protagonist being helped to tie his tie by an older worker previously antagonistic to him. Breathing got a very brief release, but is definitely worth seeking out. It affected me as strongly as anything I saw last year.
Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg, director & writer). See my earlier post on this film (8/28/12).
Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, director & writer). My God, what can I say about Quentin Tarantino and this film in particular? For something that starts out as a Spaghetti Western from the 60s & 70s, Django Unchained gets into stuff about race relations that’s about as far from Gone With the Wind as you can get. We expect great writing and unpredictably inventive plotting from Tarantino, and he doesn’t disappoint. He also gets the right actors for the parts, and in this film Christoph Waltz, Jamie Foxx, and Leonardo DiCaprio are just about perfect.
Flight (Robert Zemeckis, director). See my earlier post on this film (11/8/12).
I Wish (Hirozaku Kore-eda, director & writer – Japan). See my earlier post on this film (5/6/12).
The Intouchables (Olivier Nakache & Eric Toledano, directors & writers – France). For some reason I resisted seeing this film earlier in the year, and couldn’t understand why when I finally saw it last month. François Cluzet plays a wealthy paraplegic man who hires Omar Sy to care for him. Both are great in their roles, especially Omar Sy. A scene where Sy breaks into dance is transporting.
Liberal Arts (Josh Radner, director/writer/producer/actor). What a great surprise this movie was! Josh Radner’s character is spinning his wheels working in the admissions office of a New York City college when he’s asked back to his alma mater in Ohio to attend a retirement party for his favorite professor (Richard F. Jenkins). While there he has a relationship of sorts with 19-year-old Elizabeth Olsen, and has to deal with growing older (and growing up), nostalgia for college life, and second chances. The movie has a couple of false steps, but it’s too close to perfect for that to matter much.
Lincoln (Stephen Spielberg, director). I never thought a film about political process could be so absorbing and exciting, as well as timely. Lincoln’s maneuverings to get the 13th Amendment legalizing the abolition of slavery passed before it can be derailed by the end of the Civil War is riveting, and quite relevant to our current political climate (and maybe all political climates). Daniel Day Lewis is beyond extraordinary as Abraham Lincoln. Liam Neeson was originally cast in the role, and as much as I like him, his Lincoln would have been a performance. What Day Lewis does is something else again. He becomes Lincoln in a way that’s almost supernatural, and feels totally authentic. All the performances are terrific, with Tommy Lee Jones and James Spader being standouts among many.
The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, director & writer). The release of The Master was preceded by a lot of buzz, much of it initially focused on whether or the not the film was based on L. Ron Hubbard and the founding of Scientology. This aspect was of little interest to me, a distraction at most, though the Scientology angle undoubtedly helped fuel interest in the film. The Master seems to have divided critics and audiences. I still haven’t made up my mind if this is a grand failure or a great film, but I’m leaning toward the latter. It will be interesting to see how The Master is regarded in ten year’s time. After all, Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975) was poorly received upon its initial release, but is rightly considered a masterpiece today. You never know until the dust has settled. Whatever the verdict on The Master, you certainly know you’ve seen something by the time it’s over. Set in a perfectly rendered 1950, Joaquin Phoenix is simply amazing as Freddie Quell, a discharged Navy seaman at the end of World War II; unpredictable, self-destructive, maybe crazy, either a little or a lot. His performance is really out there, almost beyond acting at times, dangerous and disturbing. Philip Seymour Hoffman is great (as usual) as Lancaster Dodd, the “master” of the title, but it’s Joaquin Phoenix’s show. Though it’s Hoffman singing an a cappella rendition of “Slow Boat to China” near the film’s end that really got to me. The second time I saw The Master, that was the moment I waited for.
Middle of Nowhere (Ava Duvernay, director & writer). Lead actress Emayatzy Corinealdi is great as Ruby, a young medical student who puts her life on hold while she waits for her husband to get out of prison. She was named best actress for her performance at the recent IFP Gotham Film Awards, and the film has received six Independent Spirit nominations. It’s a small gem of a film, unpredictable and important.
Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, director & writer). I love this film, one of my favorites of the year. The two young leads, Jared Gilman and Kara Haywood, in their feature film debuts, pretty much steal the movie from a strong cast that includes Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Bruce Willis, and Tilda Swinton, to name a few. Anderson’s films can sometime skew arch and precious, but not this one.
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylon, director & co-writer – Turkey). Surely one of the most unusual, mesmerizing police procedurals you will ever see. It’s slow and deliberate, but never boring. Ceylon is a great director, as his earlier Distant (2002) and Climates (2006) will attest.
Polisse (Maïwen, director & co-writer – France). See my earlier post on this film (5/13/12).
Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell, director & writer). See my earlier post on this film (12/4/12).
Skyfall (Sam Mendes, director). One of the best Bonds films ever, second only to From Russia with Love (1963). At least, that’s how it seems to me at the moment.
Tabu (Miguel Gomes, director & co-writer – Portugal). Saw this last weekend and can’t get it out of my mind. Filmed in luminous black & white, it’s an intoxicating, hypnotic, mysterious, and sensuous tale of doomed love, like something out of Gabriel García Márquez, or maybe James M. Cain. Plus it has a rapturously beautiful, heartbreaking cover of the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” sung in Portuguese (Scorsese would love it!). And then there’s that crocodile. Tabu won’t have a big release, but if it plays anywhere near you, see it! The following trailer really gets the spirit of the film.
Take This Waltz (Sarah Polley, director & writer). If anyone needs further proof that Michelle Williams is a great actress (as though Wendy and Lucy [2008] and Blue Valentine [2010] weren’t enough), this movie is it.
Teddy Bear(Mads Matthieson, director & co-writer – Denmark). See my earlier post on this film (5/10/12).
Zero Dark Thirty(Kathryn Bigelow, director). I’m conflicted about this film. Kathryn Bigelow really got my attention with her pedal-to-the-metal vampire film Near Dark in 1987. Coming after The Hurt Locker (2008), which I loved, I fully expected to be blown away by Zero Dark Thirty, but that didn’t happen. I was definitely impressed by the film, by the methodical, procedural, almost documentary style, but I didn’t connect with it in a visceral way. But maybe I wasn’t supposed to. That’s another kind of movie. The film is one long, slow burn to the climactic raid on Bin Laden’s hiding place. You’d think the raid would provide a sense of release, but it doesn’t. Like the rest of the film, there’s nothing remotely heightened or sensationalized about the raid. I think what I wanted at this point was something more dramatic, more POW! This is probably more my problem than the film’s. Zero Dark Thirty is an important film, and I need to see it again.
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Here’s my list of “secondary” titles, films I just really enjoyed for a variety of reasons, and all worth seeing. Any year that has room for a boozing, pot-smoking, foul-mouthed, girl-chasing stuffed bear (as in Ted) going toe to toe with Mark Walhberg is alright with me. Anarchic spirit like this can only be good for the nation.
The Avengers (Josh Whedon, director & co-writer)
The Cabin in the Woods (Drew Goddard, director & co-writer; Josh Whedon, co-writer)
Haywire (Steven Soderbergh, director)
Headhunters (Morten Tyldum, director – Norway)
Looper (Rian Johnson, director & writer)
Magic Mike (Steven Soderbergh, director)
Premium Rush (David Koepp, director & co-writer)
Ted (Seth MacFarlane, director & co-writer)
Wreck-It Ralph (Rich Moore)
The following titles on my lists are already available via Netflix and Amazon: The Cabin in the Woods, Cosmopolis, Haywire, Headhunters, I Wish, Liberal Arts, Looper, Magic Mike, Moonrise Kingdom, Premium Rush, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Polisse, Take This Waltz, and Ted. – Ted Hicks
Didn’t happen! But it is the end of the year, so Happy New Year everybody! This was a strong year for films and television. I’ll be posting my picks for 2012 in a day or so. In the meantime, to help ring out the old year (and ring in the new), here’s a clip of Bill Haley & His Comets performing “Rock Around the Clock” on American Bandstand. I remember how much this song rocked my world when I first heard it under the opening credits of Blackboard Jungle in 1955. This was the first feature film to use rock music, and to use it this loud and in your face at the start of a movie about juvenile delinquency really freaked out a lot of people, but not us kids. This felt like a real seismic shift, and it turned out to be just that.
Let’s let Bette Davis take us out (from Cabin in the Cotton – 1932).
No, wait, let’s finish with the great Buster Keaton and the climax from Seven Chances (1925) where he’s chased by rocks and boulders and aspiring brides. It’s such a joy watching Buster run.
As I wrote in my first “Famous Monsters” post last May, “…from an early age, as early as I can remember, I was totally in love with science fiction and horror (monsters!) via all their delivery systems; i.e. books, magazines, comics, TV, and movies. Mainly movies, probably because films are so immediate.” This is true, but I can’t overestimate the importance of books to me at that time, either. Books fed my imagination and kept me going between films. I was in love with the library and the newsstand.
I remember my sixth grade teacher, a pretty young woman I had a crush on, tentatively handing me her own copy of Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” one day after class. She said I might not understand all of it (that’s putting it mildly), but given my interests, she thought I’d find it interesting. Years later I realized there were other layers to the story, but what I understood then was that it was about a guy who changed into a giant bug over night. A monster story! But not the kind I was used to, so it was awhile before I returned to Kafka.
The Winston Science Fiction series, 35 science fiction novels for young readers published by the John C. Winston Company between 1952 and 1961 and written by established names in the field, had a great collective impact on me. I burned through every copy in our home room library during junior high school, around 1957-58. The dust jacket illustrations were especially exciting, 18 of which were created by the superb Alex Schomburg, who also did the endpaper illustration that appeared in every book (seen at the top of this post). I still find it thrilling to see this. Schomberg did cover illustrations for hundreds if science fiction magazines and book jackets during his long career. Here are two examples of his work; at left a detail from the endpapers, and a vivid re-working of that image at right.
Several years ago I satisfied my nostalgia for these books by acquiring a copy of one of my favorite titles in the series, Danger: Dinosaurs!, a story of time travel to the Jurassic period written by Evan Hunter under the pen name Richard Marsten in 1953. I ended up paying $125 for a book that originally cost $2. It was worth it.
I was also reading a lot of science-fiction comic books during the 50s, but remember very few of them. The comics I really wanted to read were those put out by EC: horror, science fiction, crime and war comics, as well as the original Mad. EC’s horror and crime titles especially had a lot of people up in arms, parents and other uptight watchdogs. Here are two examples of what was bending authority figures out of shape.
My dad didn’t want me reading these comics. I can’t imagine why. My mother let me read most anything I wanted. I don’t think she was really paying attention. Remember, this is the woman who let me see The Thing from Another World when I was 6 years old. Pretty cool. My dad usually stayed out of it, but he put his foot down when it came to horror comics. I knew about the EC titles and would see them at news stands, but it wasn’t until years later, when boxed sets of oversize black and white reprints with color covers started appearing in the 1980s, that I was able to fully indulge myself. I ended up buying sets of every title EC had put out through the mid-50s. An example of these slip-cased volumes is at left.
All of this material was filling up my head with crazy, wonderful stuff. I wasn’t aware of film directors then, but I knew the book authors, especially Richard Matheson. He has had a huge impact in the fields of science fiction, horror, and fantasy. Matheson has written novels, short stories, film and television scripts. His work in television alone is astounding. He wrote 16 episoes of The Twilight Zone, including the classic “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” with William Shatner going bonkers when he sees a demon on the wing. I doubt I’ve ever been on a flight and not thought of that episode, especially if I was seated over a wing. Matheson wrote the short story and script of Duel, the TV movie that helped put Stephen Spielberg on the map. He wrote The Night Stalker for TV, which gave us a hardcore vampire in the modern world, followed by The Night Strangler, which led to the series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. These are just a few examples of his work. Matheson is a giant. His fingerprints are everywhere. I can’t imagine the landscape without him.
His first short story, “Born of Man and Woman,” was published in 1950 when he was just 23. An auspicious beginning, to say the least, “Born of Man and Woman” is the account of a monster child kept chained in its parent’s cellar, told in the first person in mangled diary entries. It’s a profoundly disturbing story, which I don’t think has dated in the least. I’ve included it at the end of this post, so you can see for yourself.
But it was Matheson’s novel I Am Legend (1954) that really got my attention. I bought a copy in 1957, the edition seen at left, and proceeded to read and re-read it many times. I still have this copy, though it’s falling apart, held together by rubber bands. It wouldn’t survive another reading, but I can’t bring myself to throw it away. The book conveys a genuine sense of dread in its apocalyptic account of a plague of vampires and Robert Neville’s existential efforts to remain alive from one day to the next. Neville narrates the story and we never know more than he does. I Am Legend is matter of fact and quite serious. I recently re-read the book for the first time in years, and despite an over-reliance on exclamation marks, it still works. Matheson also has sex in his writing, especially in his next novel, The Shrinking Man (1956). To a 13-year-old boy in 1957, this was something else again, and definitely new in the horror stories I’d been reading. This, too, got my attention.
I’ve given up any hope that a decent film will ever be made from this novel. The Last Man on Earth (1964), made in Italy with Vincent Price as Robert Neville is the most faithful adaptation to date, despite its deficiencies. This is probably because Matheson, using the pen name Logan Swanson, was a writer on the script. The Omega Man (1971) with Charlton Heston has little to do with the novel, and I Am Legend (2007), the Will Smith version, even less.
Matheson had far better luck with the movie version of The Shrinking Man, which in the fashion of the time was retitled The Incredible Shrinking Man. As if a shrinking man wasn’t incredible enough to begin with. One of a series of very fine science fiction films directed by Jack Arnold, The Incredible Shrinking Man is genuinely tragic, and ends on a spiritual, metaphysical note, rather unusual for a Hollywood film of the 50s. This is emphasized by the music score, which features a haunting trumpet solo by Ray Anthony, also unusual for the genre. The theme music can be heard in the clip below.
Finally, here is Richard Matheson’s first published story, “Born of Man and Woman.” It appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1950. It became the title of his first short story collection in 1954. – Ted Hicks
“Born of Man and Woman”
X— This day when it had light mother called me a retch. You retch she said. I saw in her eyes the anger. I wonder what it is a retch.
This day it had water falling from upstairs. It fell all around. I saw that. The ground of the back I watched from the little window. The ground it sucked up the water like thirsty lips. It drank too much and it got sick and runny brown. I didn’t like it.
Mother is a pretty thing I know. In my bed place with cold walls around I have a paper things that was behind the furnace. It says on it Screen Stars. I see in the pictures faces like of mother and father. Father says they are pretty. Once he said it.
And also mother he said. Mother so pretty and me decent enough. Look at you he said and didn’t have the nice face. I touched his arm and said it is alright father. He shook and pulled away where I couldn’t reach.
Today mother let me off the chain a little so I could look out the little window. That’s how I saw the water falling from upstairs.
XX — This day it had goldness in the upstairs. As I know when I looked at it my eyes hurt. After I looked at it the cellar is red.
I think this was church. They leave the upstairs. The big machine swallow them and rolls out past and is gone. In the back part is the little mother. She is much small than me. I am big. It is a secret but I have pulled the chain out of the wall. I can see out the little window all I like.
In this day when it got dark I had eat my food and some bugs. I hear laughs upstairs. I like to know why there are laughs for. I took the chain from the wall and wrapped it around me. I walked squish to the stairs. They creak when I walk on them. My legs slip on them because I don’t want on stairs. My feet stick to the wood.
I went up and opened a door. It was a white place. White as white jewels that come from upstairs sometime. I went in and stood quiet. I hear laughing some more. I walk to the sound and look through to the people. More people than I thought was. I thought I should laugh with them.
Mother came out and pushed the door in. It hit me and hurt. I fell back on the smooth floor and the chain made noise. I cried. She made a hissing noise into her and put her hand on her mouth. Her eyes got big.
She looked at me. I heard father call. What fell he called. She said a iron board. Come help pick it up she said. He came and said now is that so heavy you need me. He saw me and grew big. The anger came in his eyes. He hit me. I spilled some of the drip on the floor from one arm. It was not nice. It made ugly green on the floor.
Father told me to go to the cellar. I had to go. The light it hurt now in my eyes. It is not like that in the cellar.
Father tied my legs and arms up. He put me on my bed. Upstairs I heard laughing while I was quiet there looking on a black spider that was swinging down to me. I thought what father said. Oh god he said. And only eight.
XXX – This day father hit in the chain again before it had light. I have to try to pull it out again. He said I was bad to come upstairs. He said never do that again or he would beat me hard. That hurts.
I hurt. I slept the day and rested my head against the cold wall. I thought of the white place upstairs.
XXXX — I got the chain from the wall out. Mother was upstairs. I heard little laughs very high. I looked out the window. I saw all little people like the little mother and little fathers too. They are pretty.
They were making nice noise and jumping around the ground. Their legs was moving hard. They are like mother and father. Mother says all right people look like they do.
One of the little fathers saw me. He pointed at the window. I let go and slid down the wall in the dark. I curled up as they would not see. I heard their talks by the window and foots running. Upstairs there was a door hitting. I heard the little mother call upstairs. I heard heavy steps and I rushed to my bed place. I hit the chain in the wall and lay down on my front.
I heard mother come down. Have you been at the window she said. I heard the anger. Stay away from the window. You have pulled the chain out again.
She took the stick and hit me with it. I didn’t cry. I can’t do that. But the drip ran all over the bed. She saw it and twisted away and made a noise. Oh my god my god she said why have you done this to me? I heard the stick go bounce on the stone floor. She ran upstairs. I slept the day.
XXXXX — This day it had water again. When mother was upstairs I heard the little one come slow down the steps. I hidded myself in the coal bin for mother would have anger if the little mother saw me.
She had a little live thing with her. It walked on the arms and had pointy ears. She said things to it.
It was all right except the live thing smelled me. It ran up the coal and looked down at me. The hairs stood up. In the throat it made an angry noise. I hissed but it jumped on me.
I didn’t want to hurt it. I got fear because it bit harder than the rat does. I hurt and the little mother screamed. I grabbed the live thing tight. It made sounds I never heard. I pushed it all together. It was lumpy and red on the black coal.
I hid there when mother called. I was afraid of the stick. She left. I crept over the coal with the thing. I hid it under my pillow and rested on it. I put the chain in the wall again.
X — This is another times. Father chained me tight. I hurt because he beat me. This time I hit the stick out of his hands and made noise. He went away and his face was white. He ran out of my bed place and locked the door.
I am not so glad. All day it is cold in here. The chain comes slow out of the wall. And I have a bad anger with mother and father. I will show them. I will do what I did that once.
I will screech and laugh loud. I will run on the walls. Last I will hang head down by all my legs and laugh and drip green all over until they are sorry they didn’t be nice to me.
If they try to beat me again I’ll hurt them. I will.
Silver Linings Playbook– Saturday, December 1 at the Crosby Street Hotel screening room. Director/Writer: David O. Russell. Loved it! I was with this film from start to finish. At the risk of overstatement, it felt like there was never a wrong move, never a false step. Silver Linings Playbook is odd and quirky in ways that feel fresh. It’s not your typical romantic comedy, far from it, but it is comic and there is romance. The way it plays out is what makes it special. By the time the end credits started to roll, I felt that it was all of a piece, that everything, the direction, writing, performances, the use of music, all of it, fit together seamlessly.
Bradley Cooper plays Pat Solitano, a teacher in Philadelphia with a bi-polar condition who has spent eight months in a mental health facility. He was sent there as a condition of his plea bargain for a violent incident we learn more about later. As the film begins, Pat is being sprung from treatment by his mother Dolores (Jacki Weaver), who takes him back to the family home. Pat has lost his own home, his job, and his wife Nikki (Brea Bee), who has a restraining order out against him. His father Pat, Sr. (Robert De Niro in a particularly strong performance) is also out of work and running a bookmaking operation in order to earn enough money to start a restaurant.
Invited to dinner by his friend Ronnie (John Ortiz), Pat meets Ronnie’s sister-in-law Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), who has problems of her own. A high point of the dinner scene is when Pat and Tiffany start comparing anti-depressant meds they’ve both taken. Cooper and Lawrence have great chemistry together. Their scenes are a real pleasure to watch, largely because of the way they play their characters’ unpredictable behaviors, which threaten to derail things at any given moment. Despite Pat’s constant delusional talk of how he plans to win Nikki back, his developing relationship with Tiffany is at the core of the film.
Pat’s father is a major Philadelphia Eagles fan. His bookmaking operation rises and falls on the team’s wins and losses. Pat, Sr. was banned from the Eagles’ stadium for getting into fist fights with opposing fans. He’s extremely superstitious, more than a little obsessive-compulsive, and convinced that he can’t lose if his son will watch the televised games with him, that this will bring good luck. But by now Pat has reluctantly agreed to train as Tiffany’s partner in an upcoming dance competition, in exchange for Tiffany getting a letter to Nikki. This comes to a head when his father asks Pat to attend an Eagles game he has placed a huge bet on, but which conflicts with Pat’s dance practice. (I won’t go further into the storyline; it’s best to see how it plays out yourself.)
Bradley Cooper is an actor who impresses me more every time I see him. Silver Linings Playbook is his third film released this year, after The Words and the underrated Hit and Run. He was excellent in last year’s Limitless, his first time working with Robert De Niro. In the two Hangover films (2009 & 2011), Cooper was a solid, straight-faced presence, grounding the films in something like reality, in spite of their absurd, outlandish (and quite funny) events. An actor with his looks, which remind me somewhat of Paul Newman, has to be careful not to end up in one clichéd rom-com after another. This seemed to be happening to Matthew McConaughey until he broke the pattern with The Lincoln Lawyer last year, followed in short order by Bernie, Killer Joe, Magic Mike, and The Paperboy. Hopefully Bradley Cooper will continue to make smart choices as well. His performance in Silver Linings Playbook is bringing him a lot of well-deserved attention.
Jennifer Lawrence landed on the map two years ago with her performance in Winter’s Bone, which resulted in an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. With the lead role in The Hunger Games this year she’s shown that she can carry a big-budget film as well as “smaller” films. She’s more than a match for Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook. It’s hard to imagine anyone else in either of their roles.
All of the performances feel totally right to me. The characters come off as real people. It’s especially gratifying to see De Niro in a more nuanced role than the character he’s played in the Meet the Fokkers films, for example. There are some amazing ensemble scenes in Silver Linings Playbook with half a dozen or more characters all active at once. It’s a tribute to David O. Russell’s talents as a director, as well as the actors, that these scenes work so well. He scored heavily with his previous film, The Fighter (2010), which received Best Supporting Actor & Actress Oscars for Christian Bale and Melissa Leo, as well as nominations for Best Picture, Director, Writing, and Editing. His other films include I Heart Huckabees (2004), Three Kings (1999), and Flirting with Disaster (1996).
Music is also a crucial element in Silver Linings Playbook. David O. Russell wrote in the liner notes to the soundtrack album that the music “is essential to the heart and soul of this film.” When music is well used, as it is here, it doesn’t tell you what to think or feel, but it does make the scenes stronger. The music makes the film better, and the film makes the music better. From Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour,” the song played at Pat and Nikki’s wedding that sends him into a frenzy whenever he hears it (or imagines he hears it), to the Bob Dylan/Johnny Cash duet on “Girl From the North Country” from Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline” album, to an incredible song, “Always Alright,” by a group I’d not heard of before, Alabama Shakes, which kicked in as the end credits began, and sealed the deal on the feeling that I’d just seen something special.
The Independent Spirit Awards nominations were announced last week. Silver Linings Playbook is up for Best Feature, Director, Screenplay, Female Lead, Male Lead, and Supporting Female. I know we’re about to be buried in an onslaught of nominations by a seemingly endless number of different awards groups, but these Spirit Awards nominations for Silver Linings Playbook make me feel that I’m not delusional for liking this film as much as I do.
The films I’ve referenced here, with the exception of Hit and Run, are currently available from Netflix and/or Amazon. – Ted Hicks
In 1982 Tim Burton had been working as a conceptual artist at Walt Disney Animation Studios for about two years. Samples of his work at the time already reflected a uniqueness, a fairy-tale strangeness. This was recognized by Tom Wilhite, Disney Head of Development, who gave him $60,000 to make Vincent, a 5-minute stop-motion short based on a poem Burton had written in the style of Dr. Seuss, his favorite children’s book author. In fact, he’d originally intended Vincent to be a children’s book.
Burton says he was given the money to make the film under the studio radar as a stop-motion “test.” He worked on Vincent for two months with Disney animator Rich Heinrichs and stop-motion animator Steven Chiodo. Vincent is narrated by Vincent Price, one of Burton’s childhood idols. This was the beginning of a friendship lasting until Price died in 1993. Burton: “We sent Vincent Price the storyboards and asked him to do the narration, and he was incredible… It’s a scary proposition meeting someone who helped you through childhood, who had that effect on you, especially when you’re sending them something that’s showing that impact in a kind of cheesy, children’s book kind of way. But he was so great.”
Shot in black & white in a style reminiscent of German Expressionist films, Vincent concern a boy, Vincent Malloy, who emulates Vincent Price and is obsessed with the works of Edgar Allan Poe. The film alternates between Vincent’s reality as a little boy and his imagined life inside Poe’s tales.
Burton: “They (Disney) wanted it to have a more upbeat ending, but I never saw it as being downbeat in any way. It’s funny, I think it’s more uplifting if things are left to your imagination. I always saw those tacked-on happy endings as psychotic in a way.”
Vincent was shown at film festivals in London, Chicago, and Seattle, winning two awards in Chicago and the Critic’s Prize at the Annecy Film Festival in France. It was released theatrically for two weeks in a single Los Angeles theater with the feature Tex, a teen drama with Matt Dillon, directed by Tim Hunter. Burton says Disney was pleased with the film, but didn’t really know what to do with it.
In 1984, with a much larger budget of nearly $1 million dollars, Burton made Frankenweenie, a 25-minute life-action film inspired by James Whale’s classic Frankenstein (1931), written by Lenny Ripp from a story by Burton (a new Frankenweenie was released earlier this year in an expanded, feature-length stop-motion version in 3D). The “weenie” of Frankenweenie is a snappy bull terrier named Sparky, who gets run over by a car while chasing a ball thrown by his master, young Victor Frankenstein. This breaks Victor’s heart, who manages to bring Sparky back to life, albeit with much stitching and bolts in Sparky’s neck.
The film takes place in Southern California suburbia, much like the setting of one of Burton’s strongest films, Edward Scissorhands (1990). Per Burton, “Growing up watching those horror movies, for some reason, I was able to make direct links, emotionally, between that whole Gothic/Frankenstein/Edgar Allan Poe thing and growing up in suburbia. Frankenweenie was just another outgrowth of that.”
Frankenweenie was initially intended to play with the re-release of Pinocchio, but was shelved by Disney, apparently freaked out that it had received a PG rating instead of a G rating. It received a limited release in England, and was made available on video prior to the release of Burton’s Batman Returns in 1992.
I was aware of Frankenweenie, had probably read about it in a film magazine, but don’t recall when or where I first saw it, though I remember liking it a lot. I was looking forward to the longer feature version this year, but was disappointed when I finally saw it. The new film is incredibly well made, filled with very clever detail, and fun to look at, but there’s something lacking for me. I’m not sure why I didn’t like it more, but it just didn’t capture my imagination the way my favorite Burton films have, such as Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and Ed Wood.
Here are Vincent and the original live-action Frankenweenie together.
To give you some contrast, here’s a trailer for the new feature-length, stop-motion Frankenweenie.
I feel a strong connection to Tim Burton’s way of seeing the world. His love of horror and science-fiction films when he was growing up matches my own from the earliest age I can remember. His films reflect a childlike spirit, wonderfully twisted at times and refreshingly morbid (Corpse Bride, anyone?). Even the films that don’t work have moments of unique strangeness and originality that make them worth seeing. He definitely got my attention with his first feature, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985), which seemed quite magical to me. Burton’s sensibility was perfectly matched with that of Paul Reubens, aka Pee Wee Herman. It’s hard to imagine two people more attuned to each other.
From November 2009 to April 2010, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City held a retrospective of Tim Burton’s work, including early illustrations, paintings, artifacts, bizarre props, as well as screenings of his films. This show was incredibly popular, drawing the third-highest attendence of any exhibition in MoMA’s history. Nonetheless, I managed to miss it, despite repeated plans to go. Here’s an interview done with Burton at the time, which includes examples of his amazing drawings.
Finally, in the spirit of name dropping, here’s my Tim Burton story. In 1999 I was working for a subtitling company here in the city. The wife of a co-worker was reviewing films for a radio show in Pennsylvania. She asked me to attend a pre-release screening of Burton’s new film, Sleepy Hollow, and cover for her at a press junket that Sunday morning at a hotel on Park Avenue, recording the Q&A with Burton and the cast. I was thrilled to do this, though fearful I’d somehow screw up the recording (I didn’t). The way these things work is that there are different rooms set up for the various media; i.e. television, print, radio, and whatever else. Burton and the cast would go from room to room one at a time to sit at the head of a table and be asked basically the same questions they’d just been asked in the previous room. It was quite exciting to be seated two chairs away from Christina Ricci (porcelain skin!), Johnny Depp, Michel Gambon, and finally Tim Burton. I hadn’t intended to say anything, but couldn’t keep my mouth shut and asked a few questions. I remember asking Burton what it was like for him having the Hammer Films star, Christopher Lee (Dracula himself) in the film. Unfortunately, I remember my question, but not his answer. Okay, maybe not that great a story, but it was a thrill to be part of a different world for even a couple of hours. – Ted Hicks
The quotes I’ve used are from a very informative book of Tim Burton interviews, Burton on Burton, edited by Mark Salisbury, with a foreward by frequent Burton collaborator, Johnny Depp. The 2nd revised edition, published in 2006 by Faber & Faber, covers Burton’s films through Corpse Bride. His films are available via Netflix and Amazon.
One of the great pleasures of this year’s New York Film Festival was a special showing of The Princess Bride (1987). The film has developed a strong following in the 25 years since its initial release, though I didn’t realize just how strong until seeing it in a sold-out auditorium filled with fans who clearly love the film, anticipating all the great scenes and dialogue. The Wizard of Oz (1939) was invoked several times during the introduction and discussion that followed. My first reaction was that Oz is an established classic, but is The Princess Bride on the same level? It continues to connect in a very real way with successive generations of filmgoers since its release, so maybe it is. There’s even a special edition of Monopoly keyed to the film. What more proof do we need?
The NYFF screening was especially exciting because director Rob Reiner, writer William Goldman (author of both novel and screenplay), and most of the cast, including Billy Crystal, Carol Kane, Robin Wright, Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, and Chris Sarandon were introduced onstage before the film and returned for a lengthy discussion after.
I was surprised by the rush I felt in seeing all these people together onstage, after just seeing The Princess Bride for only the second time since 1987. Part of that was seeing all this star power breathing the same air as I was. But it was also because I realized I really loved the movie, and here were the people who had made it. Plus they were incredibly entertaining as they reminisced, especially Billy Crystal, no surprise there.
I’d forgotten much of the film, but the scene that had stayed with me all these years was of Mandy Patinkin’s character, Inigo Montoya, finally avenging the murder of his father by the six-fingered man (Christopher Guest). It’s simply thrilling, and quite emotional.
You could really feel the anticipation and enthusiasm in the air before, during, and after this showing. It got me thinking about the shared experience of seeing movies with an audience in a movie theater, and how that is markedly different from watching films at home on DVD or a computer. I had a dramatic example of this a few years ago when I first saw Little Miss Sunshine (2006) in a small screening room with only three or four other people. When the film was over I remember thinking that it was okay, but nothing special. A month or so later I saw it with my wife in a crowded theater at a local multiplex. This time I thought it was great! Same movie, so what had changed? I’d been swept along with the reaction of an audience that was totally tuned into this quirky comedy, and laughed a lot. Laughter is contagious, almost impossible to resist. But now I was seeing Little Miss Sunshine in a different way than I had before. Comedies especially benefit from being seen with an audience.
In 2010 we attended a 30th anniversary screening at the Walter Reade Theater of Airplane! (1980), one of the most gloriously demented films ever made. No one is likely to compare Airplane! to The Wizard of Oz, except for the loyalty they both inspire in their audiences. It’s the same with Young Frankenstein. My wife and I frequently toss quotes back and forth from that film. (“Put. The. Candle. Back!”) Airplane! had a packed house, an audience totally familiar with the film from start to finish. I was quite happy and rather amazed to find that the film totally worked 30 years later. It was just as funny now as it had been when I first saw it. The audience reaction convinced me of that. Airplane comes from the school of throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. A surprising amount of it does.
Conversely, it’s interesting to see a really bad movie with an audience that seems to feel the same way as you do about it. A prime example of this is when I saw Brian De Palma’s Mission to Mars (2000). It’s hard to convey how stunningly bad this film is. De Palma is a director I usually don’t care for. But I’ve loved science fiction in all forms since I was a young boy, so I was interested in this. Mission to Mars had a big budget and a good cast (Tim Robbins, Don Cheadle, Gary Sinise). I don’t remember much about it, except the certainty, perhaps delusional, that the entire audience was seeing it as I was. Mission to Mars was dying before our eyes, sucking the air out of the theater, leaving a bad smell. You could feel the audience discomfort. I imagined we were all embarrassed for having had to witness this. Except, of course, that we chose to. If it was that bad, why did I stay? It’s hard for me to leave a movie before it’s over, no matter how bad. It feels like I’ve somehow failed if I don’t go all the way with it. And if I didn’t leave Mission to Mars or something like EatPray Love, I’ll obviously stay for anything.
Sometimes you can be with the wrong audience. Earlier this year I saw a violent action film, The Raid: Redemption (2011) at the Museum of Modern Art as part of the annual New Directors/New Films series. The Raid concerns an elite police squad trapped in a rundown apartment building controlled by a local mob boss in Jakarta. They have to fight their way out against overwhelming odds by any means necessary. This involves extreme violence, each encounter more inventive and outlandish than the last. I like films like this when they’re well done, and The Raid definitely had my attention at the outset. But then the audience reaction to the violence began to get in the way. They were laughing hysterically in a way that made me very uncomfortable, as though every bit of violence was a punchline. I also felt a disconnect because of the venue, MoMA, where you expect to find “serious” filmgoers. This has happened to me once or twice before, where the audience reaction makes me examine my relationship to what’s up there on the screen. I usually stop before I reach any conclusions, because I really don’t want to give up seeing these kinds of films. I didn’t want to see myself as part of that crowd in any way, yet there I was. This was a case where I would have been much better off seeing The Raid by myself. Being with this audience worked against me.
The viewing experience is changing, and has been for some time. Computers and iPhones are now viable delivery systems. I never thought I’d be willing to watch a movie or TV show on a computer screen, but I can do it, and quite easily, as it turns out. Though my preferred way to see a movie will probably always be in a theater with other people (as long as they don’t talk, or text, or otherwise get between me and the screen).
There will always be movies (I hope). There will just be different ways of experiencing them. Are we missing something by watching a movie on a tiny screen rather than seeing it in a theater? I think so, but since there are so many more venues now, maybe films will be seen that might otherwise would not get distribution. That said, I hope that no one’s first experience of Lawrence of Arabia or 2001 or Apocalypse Now is on an iPhone screen. In any event, movie theaters aren’t going away anytime soon, and people are still attending. Last weekend I saw Skyfall on Friday and Lincoln the next day at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square, a 13-screen multiplex on Broadway near Lincoln Center. The theater was jammed with people. And this was for matinee showings. There’s just something about being with an audience in a theater when the lights go down and the movie starts. At this point, I sometimes say to my wife, “See you later.” I’m by myself with the film, but also with the audience. Nothing can replace it (until it does).
Here’s a great clip from Sullivan’s Travels (1942). I think it illustrates everything I’ve been talking about here. – Ted Hicks
Wreck-It Ralph– Friday, November 2 at AMC Loews Lincoln Square. Director: Rich Moore. Writers: Jennifer Lee & Phil Johnston. This terrific feature from Walt Disney Animation Studios is easily my favorite animated film so far this year. I saw it at a mid-morning showing on opening day that was packed, mostly with kids. This many kids in an audience usually makes me apprehensive. It reminds me of Saturday matinees when I was growing up, which were usually pretty chaotic, lots of chatter and running around. Even then I mainly just wanted to watch the movie (nerd alert!). But soon after Wreck-It Ralph began there was barely a peep. Everyone seemed transfixed, young and old alike. A sure sign that a film is really working is when it completely captures the attention of the audience.
I was disappointed to varying degrees earlier this year with Paranorman, Frankenweenie, Hotel Transylvania, and Brave. Wreck-It Ralph is a much stronger film. All of its pieces fit together in a thoroughly enjoyable way. Like most of the best animated films, there’s a sense of wonder, of discovery, inventiveness, and emotional content that feels real. Animated films that do this for me include The Iron Giant (1999 – greatly underrated), Spirited Away (2001), The Incredibles (2004), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009), How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Toy Story 3 (2010), and almost anything from Aardman Animations, going back to Creature Comforts and the thoroughly bonkers Wallace & Gromit shorts.
Here’s a trailer for Wreck-It Ralph. It’s an international version, which is a bit different from others I’ve seen. It conveys a good sense of the film.
Ralph is the antagonist in a video game called “Fixit-Felix, Jr.”, one of many games in an arcade. The premise is that, as with the characters in the Toy Story films who come to life when humans aren’t around, the characters in these games all have lives in a cyberspace reality inside the games. Ralph is a classic outsider, tired of his “bad guy” status and the isolation he feels because of that. Wreck-It Ralph tells the story of his struggle to become a “hero” in his world, to find acceptance. Along the way he meets his counterpart, another outsider named Venelope von Schweetz, who lives in a game called “Sugar Rush.” Here’s a clip of their first meeting.
Ralph is voiced by John C. Reilly and Vanelope by Sarah Silverman. They both bring a lot to the party, creating an emotional reality that goes a long way in helping us become invested in their characters. Here’s a clip of Sarah Silverman talking about her character.
Fixit-Felix, Jr., the hero of his game, is voiced by Jack McBrayer, best known for his role as Kenneth on the Tina Fey TV seriee 30 Rock. Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun, the lead character in a high-tech military/sci-fi game called “Hero’s Duty,” who reluctantly joins Ralph in his quest, is voiced by Jane Lynch. I was a bit put off by her the few times I’ve watched Glee, but she’s perfect here.
The bottom line is that Wreck-It Ralph is an incredibly engaging, clever and inventive film from start to finish. It made me feel really good. You won’t be bored.
As a bonus, there’s a really great 7-minute black & white animated short called Paper Man that plays before Wreck-It Ralph. A young man, an office worker buried in paperwork, chances to meet a pretty young woman on a subway platform, who boards a train and leaves before he can say anything. The rest of the short concerns his efforts to get her attention with paper airplanes after he sees her through an open window in a office across the street from where he works. I tried to find a clip, but had no luck. Here’s a still I found which conveys the look of this wonderful, touching little film.
The Bay– Friday, November 2 at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center. Director: Barry Levinson. Writer: Michael Wallach. This is a very effective little horror film, or eco-horror, to be more precise, as it concerns parasitic isopods mutated by various toxic spills in Chesapeake Bay that terrorize a small, ocean-front community by eating their way of their victims after they’ve infected them. This takes place over the course of a Fourth of July celebration filled with tourists, more fresh meat for these ghastly crustaceans sporting seven pairs of leg. Pretty grim, and they actually exist. The Bay has antecedents in sci-films of the 50s such as Them! (giant ants!), Tarantula (giant spider!), and many others. Atom bomb testing was frequently the culprit in those films. The Bay updates the scenario with environmental issues and the fear of viral contagion. It’s also yet another film presented as a patched-together documentary in the currently trendy “found footage” style. I guess we have the success of The Blair Witch Project to thank (or blame) for this trend. This can be a lazy way to tell a story, and it usually turns me off before I even see the film. But I have to say, it works very well here, just as it did in Chronicle earlier this year. Like any tool, it all depends how you use it.
One of the most interesting aspects of The Bay is that it was made by Barry Levinson, an Academy Award winning director. He kicked off his career most famously with Diner in 1982, followed by The Natural (1984), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Rain Man (1988), and recently You Don’t Know Jack (2010), an HBO movie with Al Pacino as Jack Kervorkian. These are just a few of his films. The point is, he’s a very good director and these are very good films, but most of them mainstream studio productions. That he would make a film like The Bay seems almost an anomaly (or maybe a mid-life crisis). Whatever the reason, it’s rather exciting that old-school directors are willing to tackle edgy material in new ways. William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection) certainly did this with Bug in 2006, a corrosive, truly disturbing psychological horror film with Ashley Judd and the always fascinating Michael Shannon, tightly wound and freaked out as only he can be. Friedkin was less successful with Killer Joe earlier this year, adapted from a play by Tracy Letts (as was Bug), but you certainly can’t say he’s taking the easy out at this stage of his career. It’s like Levinson and Friedkin are reinventing themselves for a new marketplace, and producing some very interesting stuff in the process.
This film may not be everyone’s taste (and would be pretty uninteresting if it was), but if you like this kind of thing, which I definitely do, it’s pretty good. The Bay can be streamed from Amazon Instant Video for $3.99. Bug, which I strongly recommend, is also available via Amazon Instant Video for $1.99 and Netflix streaming or DVD.
Flight – Saturday, November 3 at AMC Loews Lincoln Square. Director: Robert Zemeckis. Writer: John Gatins. This is a very strong film about addiction and powerlessness. Lest that put you off, it’s also a gripping story, a kind of thriller, with a great performance by Denzel Washingtonand a return to live-action filmmaking by Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Cast Away). Flight had my complete attention from beginning to end.
Washington plays Whip Whitaker, an alcoholic commercial airline pilot who successfully crash lands a damaged aircraft with only 6 fatalities (4 passengers and 2 crew members) out of 104 passengers (or “souls,” as they’re referred to by a flight attendant when she reports “104 souls on board” at the beginning of the flight). This sequence, which we return to several times over the course of the film, is extremely harrowing, at least as frightening as the plane crashes in Zemeckis’ Cast Away (2000) and Peter Weir’s Fearless (1993). Whip is initially hailed as a hero for managing the seemingly impossible feat of bringing this plane down without killing everyone on board. But the audience already knows that he was boozing the night before with one of the flight attendants and snorted coke just to get on his feet in time for his 9:00am flight. His hero status suddenly changes, and Whip finds out with a jolt that he’s now the subject of an investigation to determine if he was drunk during the flight, which could send him to prison. Whip’s adamant denial of his alcoholism, to himself and others, and how this plays out, forms the crux of the film.
Denzel Washington’s performance is the backbone of the film, but all the performances are strong. These include Bruce Greenwood as the airline union rep who has been friends with Whip for years; Don Cheadle as his lawyer; Kelly Reilly (a new face to me) as a recovering addict Whip becomes involved with; Melissa Leo as the lead NTSB investigator; and John Goodman as Whip’s drug supplier. Goodman’s performance may be a little over the top, blustery and out-sized, but it fits the character. He’s very effective and entertaining in his two scenes.
A performance that deserves special mention is that of James Badge Dale in a single scene as a cancer patient Whip encounters during his stay in the hospital after the crash. It’s night, and Whip has gone to a stairwell to smoke a cigarette. This is where he first meets Kelly Reilly’s character, Nicole, who’s also there for a smoke. They’re joined by Dale’s character (“Gaunt Young Man” in the credits), a very outgoing and engaging guy who apparently hasn’t got long to live. This struck me as a key scene in the film, though I don’t quite know how to say why that is. It just felt like it. In a very funny spiel, Dale talks about death and the preciousness of life. You sense it’s bravado, but there’s something so appealing and life-affirming about this kid who’s going to die that it’s rather heartbreaking. James Badge Dale has been good in everything I’ve seen him in (24, The Pacific, and the grossly underrated Rubicon, all on TV), but he really scores in this one scene.
The music track also deserves mention. Some might think the song choices (which include “Feelin’ Alright”/Joe Cocker, “With a Little Help from My Friends”/Beatles, “Ain’t No Sunshine”/Bill Withers, and “Gimme Shelter”/Rolling Stones) are a bit too obvious for the scenes they accompany, but for the most part I think they work. And besides, they’re all really great songs. I especially liked the use of “Gimme Shelter” and the Cowboy Junkies’ cover of “Sweet Jane”. The instance that rather calls attention to itself is having the Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” introduce John Goodman not once, but twice. It’s like, okay, we get it. But I wasn’t bothered all that much.
Everything pays off, is delivered in full, during the climactic NTSB hearing near the end of Flight. Sometimes there’s a scene, a moment in a film, that’s almost overwhelming, that makes me feel like the distance between myself and the screen has collapsed. In that moment I’m completely vulnerable to what the film is giving out. This scene, and the next two that close the film, really laid me out, which felt great. This might be a great film. Time will tell on that score, but for now Flight is one of the best films I’ve seen this year, and that’s good enough for me. – Ted Hicks
Beauty IsEmbarrassing – Saturday, September 8 at the IFC Center. Directed by Neil Berkeley. This is great! Do I mean it’s “great” like Citizen Kane or Children of Paradise? No, of course not, but I know I loved it. It made me feel good. I was moved and surprised, and I had a smile on my face almost from the start. I think that’s pretty great. Beauty Is Embarrassing is a new documentary about the life and career (which are basically one and the same) of Wayne White – artist, puppeteer, sculptor, performer, painter, and a very funny guy. I’d not heard of him before, but he was a three-time Emmy winner for his work on Pee Wee’s Playhouse, which I’d watched religiously in the 80s. His cartoons and illustrations also appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, and Raw. I’ve still got nearly all the issues of Raw, so I’d been exposed to his work without knowing who he was.
I’m so enthusiastic about this film that I want to get word out now. I’m going to bang this post out as fast as possible, more of a newsflash than a review. Here’s the trailer, which I think gives a good sense of the film:
Wayne White grew up in Chattanooga, Tenn., where, according to his mother, he began drawing at a very, very young age. He moved to New York City in 1981 to try his hand at cartooning and puppetry. He eventually became heavily involved in Pee Wee’s Playhouse, and when Paul Reubens moved the show to Los Angeles, White went with it.
He eventually got involved in painting, but with a somewhat different approach. Wayne White buys generic landscape paintings from thrift shops, then works 3D-style words and phrases into the picture. Here’s one of them. In the film you see a lot more of this, how he does it, and in the process overcame the established art world’s stuffy resistance to art that could be fun and make people laugh.
Wayne’s wife, Mimi Pond, is a successful graphic artist (as well as writing the very first Simpsons episode in 1981, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire”). They have a son and daughter who have artistic aspirations of their own. One of the greatest things in the film is watching White and his son construct a large (about a yard in height) Lyndon Baines Johnson puppet head, and then seeing White wearing the head and dancing on a hill overlooking downtown Los Angeles in the distance. There’s something so free, joyous, and ridiculous about this, that at this point I absolutely fell in love with Wayne and the film itself.
Here’s something more about Wayne and his work. Some of these shots are in the trailer, but this goes a little further.
Finally, here’s a photo of a really big head of George Jones that Wayne installed in a gallery at Rice University in Houston, Texas in 2009. Like so much of the incredible stuff Wayne White comes up with, seeing this makes me feel like a little kid confronted with something magical and wonderful.
Wayne White comes across as thoughtful, self-deprecating, very self-aware, and extremely entertaining to listen to. Here are some things he said that really got my attention:
“Humor is the most important thing we have.”
“Art can be fun. It can be a big part of your life that never ends.”
“Do what you love. It’s gonna lead to where you want to go.”
By now you probably get the idea that I like this film. This is a very well-made documentary. It reminds me of others I’ve especially liked that are almost invisibly constructed around strong, charismatic people. Beauty Is Embarrassing is scheduled to run at the IFC Center here in New York City only through September 13th. I don’t know what kind of distribution is planned for the film elsewhere, though it’s not likely to be in multiplexes. Just try to see it if you can, even if you have to wait for DVD. I guarantee you’ll like it. – Ted Hicks
Documentaries have become increasingly viable theatrically, probably since Michael Moore’s Roger and Me (1989) shook things up and pumped new life into non-fiction films. Recent years have seen documentaries playing for weeks, even months, in commercial theaters. 2012 was another good year for documentaries.
Films etc. 