Movie List for April, 2010

Well, we are not gining that much ground when comparing real life to the blog.  That is partially my fault since I didn't blog as much this month as I should have.  Keeping the illusion going. however, the movies will watching in "April" are:

102. Dances with Wolves (1990)
101. Titanic (1997)
100. In the Heat of the Night (1967)
  99. Bringing Up Baby (1938)

John

Bonus Film: El Dorado (1967)

Stars:  John Wayne (Cole Thornton), Robert Mitchum (Sheriff J.P. Harrah), James Caan (Mississippi), Ed Asner (Bart Jason), Charlene Holt (Maudie), Paul Fix (Dr. Miller), Michele Carey (Josephine 'Joey' MacDonald), Arthur Hunnicutt (Bull Harris)

Director:  Howard Hawks

Awards / Honors

• None of any note

Genre:  Western

Running Time:  2 Hours, 6 minutes

Format:  DVD (not yet available on Blu-ray)

Odyssey Rating:  3 1/4 Stars (John - 3 Stars, Beth - 2 Stars, Jeff - 4 Stars, TJ - 4 Stars)

John's Take

From the movie Get Shorty:

[Bo Catlett is pointing a gun at Chili Palmer’s head]

Bo Catlett:  This time there ain’t any John Wayne and Dean Martin shootin' bad guys in El Dorado...

Chili Palmer:  That was Rio Bravo.  Robert Mitchum played the drunk in El Dorado; Dean Martin played the drunk in Rio Bravo.  Basically, it was the same part.  Now John Wayne played the same part in both movies, he played John Wayne...

Bo Catlett:  Man, I just can't wait for you to be dead!

And that ladies and gentlemen pretty much sums up everything you need to know about the movie El Dorado.  Just take the movie Rio Bravo, replace all of the cast members except for John Wayne, and you are finished:

          El Dorado (1967)                           Rio Bravo (1959)

Robert Mitchum (Harrah)  replaces  Dean Martin (Dude)

James Caan (Mississippi)  replaces  Ricky Nelson (Colorado)

Charlene Holt (Maudie)     replaces  Angie Dickinson (Feathers)

Arthur Hunnicutt (Bull)      replaces  Walter Brennan (Stumpy)

Ed Asner (Jason)              replaces  John Russell (Burdette)  

The plots are basically the same – a sheriff needs to defend his jailhouse from a well financed group of criminals.  Just certain elements of the story get mixed around.  For example, Mitchum is the drunken sheriff while Martin was the drunken deputy.  Ricky Nelson is high proficient gunfighter where James Caan is a horrible shot (but very good with a knife), etc.

By just looking at the actors involved in the films, you might assume that El Dorado is the superior movie.  I mean, Mitchum, Caan, Asner – those are pretty good actors, so it is probably the better of the two movies, right?  Nope, you would be wrong.  El Dorado isn’t nearly as good as Rio Bravo.  That is not to say that Rio Bravo is necessarily a cinematic masterpiece, but of the two, Rio Bravo is clearly the better film.  

Supposedly director Howard Hawks purposely planned a “trilogy” of movies all based around the same basic premise of a besieged sheriff (Rio Bravo, El Dorado, Rio Lobo).  While that may be partially true, I personally there is a little bit of film history retcon going on as well (i.e., it was basically just easier to keep remaking the same movie).  I mean, this is the same guy that directed films like Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, Sergeant York and The Big Sleep.  El Dorado and Rio Lobo were the best “re-makes” he could come up with?

Is El Dorado a terrible movie?  No, it has its moments, and it can be fairly funny at times.  Some of that comedy is unintentional, but hey, it works so why knock it.  It is just one of many examples of a movie that would have failed horribly without John Wayne’s involvement.  Granted, as Chili says, he just spends the whole movie being John Wayne, but as is often the case in his movies, that John Wayne mystique is usually sufficient to make the occasionally ridiculous dialog and plot elements just a tad bit more palatable.

So how did this movie end up on this blog?  Well, Official Friends of Beth and John’s Movie Odyssey, Jeff and TJ, are big fans of this movie (or more accurately put, fans of some of the ridiculous dialog in this movie – “He was limping when he left…” “He was limping when he got here!!”), and they were coming over to watch Pulp Fiction with Beth and I.  They had no interest in watching All the Presidents Men, however, and TJ wanted to take the opportunity to see El Dorado on my 65 inch HD television.  So we delayed our viewing of All the of President’s Men until the next day, and watched El Dorado instead.  Was it a good trade off?  Not really, but hey at least it was funny…

And it gets a ranking of 3 (weak) Stars from me.

John

103. Pulp Fiction (1994)

Stars:  John Travolta (Vincent Vega), Samuel L. Jackson (Jules Winnfield), Uma Thurman (Mia Wallace), Ving Rhames (Marsellus Wallace), Bruce Willis (Butch Coolidge), Harvey Keitel (Winston Wolf), Christopher Walken (Captain Koons)

Director:  Quentin Tarantino 

Awards / Honors

• 1 Oscar win - Best Writing (Original Screenplay)
• 6 Additional Oscar Nominations - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (John Travolta), Best Supporting Actor (Samuel L. Jackson), Best Supporting Actress (Uma Thurman), Best Film Editing
• #95 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (1998)
• #53 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills list (2001)
• #94 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (2007)
• #  6 on AFI's 10 Top 10 list - Gangster movies (2008) 

Genre:  Drama

Running Time:  2 Hours, 34 Minutes

Format:  DVD (not yet available on Blu-ray)

Odyssey Rating:  5 Stars (John - 5 Stars, Beth - 5 Stars, Jeff - 5 Stars, TJ - 5 Stars)

  

John's Take

Back when I first started this blog, I sort of imagined that upon reaching Pulp Fiction I would write a post that didn’t run in chronological order in an attempt to be cute.  After writing a couple of different drafts I decided to bail on that approach and just write a normal post.  Expressing coherent thoughts out of sequence and having it not seem lame is a great deal harder than one might expect which makes Quentin Tarantino and Rodger Avary’s work on this film all the more impressive.

While I had seen parts of this film many times on cable, I had never actually watched it from beginning to end before now.  In addition, Beth and I were joined by Official Friends of Beth and John’s Movie Odyssey, Jeff and TJ in this viewing and it is always nice to watch these movies with friends.

There are many, many, many good things to say about this movie.  I love this movie.  It is a great movie.  However, all of the nice things, I could think of saying had all been said somewhere else before.  I guess you could say that most of my posts, but for some reason, I everything wrote felt REALLY like I was just cutting and pasting someone else’s comments.  I had already used the “is this a noir film or not” angle on Fargo post and had already discussed my belief that Bruce Willis is an under-appreciated national treasure in The Sixth Sense post – and it felt way too soon to revisit those subjects – so it was turning out to be surprisingly difficult to write about a movie that I enjoyed so much.  Thus, I finally decided to stop trying to write about the things I loved about Pulp Fiction, and instead write about the stuff I didn’t like about the movie.  Or more to the point, the things that die-hard fans of this movie do that bug me because the rantings of Tarantino fanboys played a part in me not wanting to make the effort to see its movie in its entirety.

First, why oh why, must die-hard fans of this movie feel the need to tell you what they think is in the briefcase?  It doesn’t matter.  It is a just a Macguffin.  It has no relevance to anything that happens in the movie.  Whatever significance you think it has – is just your imagination.  It isn’t Marsellus’ soul or any other meta-physical nonsense.  It is just a plot device!!!  It is no different than the statue in The Maltese Falcon or the secret government papers in North by Northwest.  Even Tarantino says that it has no meaning!  So please fanboys, get over the stupid briefcase already.

Second, while I like non-linear way the story is presented in this film, it doesn’t seem to be just a stylistic choice, as in say Kill Bill.  It is almost as if Tarantino uses the non-linear approach to help hide the fact that there is no clear narrative in this film.  I am perfectly OK that the movie is really just a bunch very entertaining stretches of dialogue all tied together with a vague story arch, but please lets just all acknowledge it for what it is.  Fanboys – there is no deep meaning or message to this movie! It is simply just a couple days in the life of some interesting characters that are just as likely to spout long series of monologues at each other as they are of actually conversing.  Is it all very cool?  Yes, it is very cool, but the non-linear nature of the film isn’t being used express any particular theme.  It is being in used, at least in part, to hide the fact that it would be a pretty weak, front-loaded story if you told it linearly.  Aside from the fact that doing too many drugs may require you be stabbed with an adrenaline needle, there is no wisdom to be gained from this movie – no matter how badly you want there to be.

Side Note:  I can’t watch the adrenaline needle scene.  I just can’t.  In fact, while watching the film with Jeff, TJ and Beth I had to get up and leave the room once that scene approached.  I have no reason as to why I find Uma Thurman flopping around so disturbing, but I do.  Not sure if that has any relevance to anything or not, but there you go.

Lastly, I get really tired of hearing how “original” this movie is.  Listen, fanboys, there is in fact very little that is actually original in this film.  Quentin Tarantino films are all just big homages to other films. Is this a bad thing?  No, not at all. Tarantino is a master at homage. It seems like he makes movies just so that he can share with the audience his favorite scenes from other movies – but does it in such a way that it doesn’t feel like he is simply cutting and pasting.  He certainly puts his own unique spin on things, so in that sense he is original, but that isn’t really what it seems like the fanboys are talking about.  They seem to think that things like the aforementioned briefcase are original – it isn’t. It is homage to the movie Kiss Me Deadly.  Maynard and Zed are straight out of Deliverance.  Ving Raimes seeing Bruce Willis on the street could have been lifted right out of Psycho.  Christopher Walken plays a traumatized Vietnam vet just like in The Deer Hunter.  And of course Travolta dances ala Saturday Night Fever.  Again, all of this is done with care and skill and makes for a wonderful film.  Just please get what is original and what isn’t straight – all the better, let us all just shut up about it and enjoy the movie.

There, I have gotten that all out of my system. I feel better now.  I think I have picked on Tarantino fanboys enough.  Pulp Fiction gets a ranking of 5 Stars from me and joins Toy Story and A Night at the Opera as the only movies to have gotten a perfect ranking of 5 Stars.

John

104. All the President's Men (1976)

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105. Spartacus (1960)

Stars:  Kirk Douglas (Spartacus), Laurence Olivier (Crassus), Jean Simmons (Varinia), Peter Ustinov (Lentulus Batiatus), Charles Laughton (Gracchus), Tony Curtis (Antoninus), John Gavin (Julius Caesar)

Director:  Stanley Kubrick

Awards / Honors

• 4 Oscar Wins - Best Supporting Actor (Peter Ustinov), Best Cinematography (Color), Best Art Direction (Set Decoration, Color), Best Costume Design (Color)
• 2 Additional Nominations - Best Film Editing, Best Music (Score)
• #62 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills list (2001)
• #22 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains list (2003)
• #44 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers list (2006)
• #81 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (2007)
• #  5 on AFI's 10 Top 10 lists (Epic films, 2008)

Genre:  Historical Drama

Running Time:  3 Hours, 4 minutes

Format:  DVD, Blu-ray

Odyssey Rating:  4 Stars (John - 4 Stars, Beth - 4 Stars)

John's Take

I have seen Spartacus a number of times, and I never get tired of it.  But then again, I am a sucker for big “sand and sandal” epics.  Spartacus, Ben-Hur, El Cid, The Ten Commandments, Troy, 300, etc. – I love them all.  All of those British and American actors running around portraying people that were most certainly not British or American, and trying to hide that fact by reciting their lines as if they were performing Shakespeare.  Apparently everyone in the ancient world spoke some sort of very formal English.  There is just something wonderfully cheesy, and over-done about that.  Add in the ridiculously dramatic staging of the battle scenes and you can easily see why nothing produced in Hollywood should ever be taken as historically accurate.  Doesn’t matter though, I still love them, and Spartacus is one of the quintessential examples of this style of film.  For example, eight thousand Spanish soldiers were used as the Roman army in the final battle scene which was filmed outside of Madrid, Spain.  That is the kind of over-the-top excess you usually don’t see in films outside this genre.  Do they even attempt that kind of location shooting anymore? 

I have, however, traditionally found it difficult to reconcile that all of this wonderful Hollywood cheesiness (did all the woman of ancient Rome all have such well manicured finger nails?) was directed by Stanley Kubrick.  Spartacus never really “felt” like a Kubrick film to me.  I had always just assumed that this was due simply to some combination of:

1.  His lack of control of the project, which he traditionally had in the films that he worked on.  Spartacus was more Kirk Douglas’ baby.  Kirk was mad that he was didn’t get the lead in Ben-Hur, so decided to make his own epic.

2.  The fact that he was still coming into his own as a director.  While he directed three full-length movies previously (including Paths of Glory which also starred Kirk Douglas), this was Kubrick’s first big-budget motion picture.

So, I always just sort of dismissed Kubrick’s participation in the film and basked in the pomp and grandeur of it all.  However, having now watched it for the maybe the seventh or eighth time now, I finally start to see his influence on the film.  These “Kubrick-esque” touches, as light as they might be, are what in fact set this film apart from the other films in this same vein.

Kubrick always seemed to gravitate to stories where the main characters were flawed – A Clockwork Orange (# 54 on our list), Dr. Strangelove (#30 on our list), 2001: A Space Odyssey (#18 on our list), and Full Metal Jacket are just some examples.  I get the feeling that Kubrick found the classic “white-hat” hero fairly boring and he had a certain way that he liked to protray his characters.  Spartacus is most definitely not the traditional Kubrick protagonist and he is presented in a more tradional Hollywood manner than one would normally expect in a Kubrick film.  Throughout the entire movie, Spartacus is noble, brave, and intelligent.  He doesn’t betray anyone.  He doesn’t struggle with self-doubt.  He is a natural leader that turns a small gladiator revolt into a full-scale slave rebellion.  His charisma is such that even after all is lost, his fellow slaves are more than willing to lay down their lives for him (“I am Spartacus!”).  Does this sound like any character from any other Kubrick film?  Nope, not to me either.  Is there anything wrong with that?  Certainly not, in fact, it is the heroics of Spartacus that help to make this movie great.  But this is, no doubt, an example of Douglas’ influence more than an example of something that Kubrick would have come up with.  To get that "Kubrick feel", one has to turn to the ancillary characters and villains.  While Spartacus and the rest of the “heroes” were all above reproach, everyone else seemed perfectly happy to wallow in corruption.

For example, there is most definitely a sophisticated, if understated, sexual motivation to may of the characters.  Olivier's character, the villain of the story, is surprisingly complex in this sense.  In the scene in which he and Tony Curtis share a bath together, and he confesses, "I like both oysters and snails," he leaves little doubt that he is bi-sexual and that he considers his choice of sex partners to be of no more consequence than what he will choose to eat for dinner.  Knowing that brings additional meaning to his desire to win the love of Varinia, the wife of Spartacus.  He doesn’t want her merely to possess her, or because that is the thing that stereotypical Hollywood villains do.  He wants her because having her – especially if she does so willingly – represents the ultimate form of victory over Spartacus.  Now that is the kind of motivation you expect from a character in a Stanley Kubrick film. 

It is through the backdrop of Roman decadence that we can see the faint fingerprints of Kubrick.  Laurence Olivier’s character Crassus, hopes to become the emperor of Rome at the expense of the elder senator Gracchus (Charles Laughton).  But Laughton’s character isn’t just some wise elder statesmen, but is an unapologetic corrupt womanizer that ends up committing suicide, but not before he aids the heroes – not because he agrees with their cause, but just to spite Crassus.  Perhaps, the most entertaining performance in the movie is by Peter Ustinov.  He is consistently funny, and ends up upstaging everybody when he is onscreen.  His character, Batiatus, is just an opportunist that wants to live as comfortably as he can – caring nothing about the motivations of others.  Again, these are the kinds of behavior that one expects from a Kubrick film character.

The very end of the film is also very Kubrick-esque. In the final scene, Varinia stands beneath Spartacus, who has just been crucified, and holds up their child, saying "He will live as a free man, Spartacus."  But it isn’t though the brave and noble acts of the hero that makes the child’s freedom possible.  The baby's freedom is due to the scheming of Gracchus and Batiatus.  The two of them care nothing for Spartacus’ dreams of freedom.  They just want to spite Crassus.  If that isn’t a Kubrick film ending I don’t know what is – sort of happy, but not quite.

Ultimately, it is probably safer to say that Kubrick did a better job of bringing Kirk Douglas’ and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo’s vision to screen than making the type of film that he is usually known for. However, after seeing the film a few times now, I think that it would have been a slightly different film had Kubrick not directed it.  There is just this slight sophistication in how the film ebbs and flows that you just wouldn't see with a different director, and I am quite certain that the character portrayals would be quite different.  Oddly enough, many of those Kubrick touches wouldn’t have been seen by the original 1960’s audience.  Approximately 14 minutes of the film was edited out prior to release – most notably the Olivier / Curtis bathing scene and some of the more violent battle scenes – they were just consider too much for the time.  Those 14 minutes would be reinstated in 1991 due to the film being re-released and the popularity of home video market.  Thus, the film we see today is a bit different than the original release.  That may have something to do with the fact that film is reviewed better today than it was in the past (in addition to our sensibilities having improved as well).

A side note, however, is that some other four minutes of film was supposedly lost due to Universal mishandling the film prints in the 1970’s.  This sort of occurrence isn’t unusual.  How is that movie studios are willing to invest millions and millions of dollars into making a film and yet repeatedly treat the end results so poorly?  It seems stupid to me, but that is a subject for another post. 

Spartacus is an epic film and it seems to have gotten better with age.  I may not be Spartacus, but I give the film a ranking of 4 Stars none the less.

John

106. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

Stars:  George O'Brien (The Man), Janet Gaynor (The Wife), Margaret Livingston (The Woman from the City)

Director:  F. W. Murnau

Awards / Honors

• 3 Oscar wins - Oustanding Picture (Unique and Artistic Production), Best Actress (Janet Gaynor), Best Cinematography
• 1 Additional Oscar Nomination - Best Art Direction
• #63 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions list (2002)
• #82 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (2007)
• In 1989, Sunrise:  A Song of Two Humans was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry.

Genre:  Romantic Drama (Silent)

Running Time:  1 Hour, 35 Minutes

Format:  DVD, Blu-ray (see below)

Odyssey Rating:  4 1/2 Stars (John - 5 Stars, Beth - 4 Stars)

John's Take

It wouldn’t surprise me if a large number of you have never heard of this movie.  I didn’t recognize it at first when I started compiling this list.  Once I finally did recognize it, the only thing I would have been able to tell you about it was it is the film that Brad Pitt watches near the end of An Interview with a Vampire.  Considering that the movie is 83 years old, wasn’t a huge box office hit, and despite being one of the first movies with synchronized sound effects and musical soundtrack, was overshadowed historically by the dialog and singing of The Jazz Singer, perhaps it is a bit understandable that it isn’t the most recognizable movie on this list.  That is unfortunate since Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is not only a really excellent movie, but it is historically very important as well.  The following quote is first portion of Robert Ebert’s review of this film:

The camera's freedom to move is taken for granted in these days of the Steadicam, the lightweight digital camera, and even special effects that reproduce camera movement.  A single unbroken shot can seem to begin with an entire city and end with a detail inside a window – consider the opening of "Moulin Rouge!" (2001).  But the camera did not move so easily in the early days.

The cameras employed in the first silent films were lightweight enough to be picked up and carried, but moving them was problematic because they were attached to the cameraman, who was cranking them by hand.  Camera movement was rare; the camera would pan from a fixed position.  Then came tracking shots – the camera literally mounted on rails, so that it could be moved along parallel to the action.  But a camera that was apparently weightless, that could fly, that could move through physical barriers – that kind of dreamlike freedom had to wait until almost the last days of silent films.  And then, when the talkies came and noisy sound cameras had to be sealed in soundproof booths, it was lost again for several years.

F.W. Murnau's "Sunrise" conquered time and gravity with a freedom that was startling to its first audiences.  To see it today is to be astonished by the boldness of its visual experimentation.  Murnau was one of the greatest of the German expressionists; his "Nosferatu" (1922) invented the vampire movie, and his "The Last Laugh" (1924) became famous for doing away altogether with intertitles and telling the story entirely with images.

Summoned to the United States by William Fox to make a film for his new studio, Murnau worked with the cinematographers Charles Rosher and Karl Struss to achieve an extraordinary stylistic breakthrough.  The Murnau admirer Todd Ludy wrote: "The motion picture camera – for so long tethered by sheer bulk and naïveté – had with 'Sunrise' finally learned to fly."

(You can read the entire review here.)

So, how does such an important, award winning, and critically acclaimed movie end up becoming relatively obscure?  I partially blame The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for this.  Despite being, to quote their website, “dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures”, occasionally it does fall victim to its most common criticism:  that the Academy and the Awards exist to simply stroke Hollywood egos and that the results reflect how well each studio manipulated the voting more than a real effort to reward great artistic merit.  How the Academy has handled Sunrise bears that out a bit.

To illustrate this, we need a little history lesson concerning the Oscars. T he very first Academy Awards were presented 81 years ago, on May 16th, 1929.  It was not nearly the extravagant a production we are now accustomed to.  The very first event was actually just a private dinner.  The award ceremony itself was only about 15 minutes long and it wasn’t broadcast in any fashion.  In fact, the winners had been announced months before.  Since it was the very first award ceremony, films released during the two pervious years were eligible, unlike the modern awards which are only given to movies released the previous year.  Thus, despite being released in 1927, Sunrise was eligible for the very first Academy Awards.

There were a number of other differences as well, but the one that applies to this film was the fact that there were not one, but two “Best Picture” awards – Outstanding Picture (Production) and Outstanding Picture (Unique and Artistic Production).  Outstanding Picture (Production) was won by the film Wings and the Outstanding Picture (Unique and Artistic Production) award was given to Sunrise.  But if you go look at Wikipedia or any number of other sources you will find that only Wings is listed as the winner of Best Picture.  Why is that?  It seems that even the first Academy Awards were not immune to Hollywood hubris. 

You see, the producers and studio heads were far more interested in who won the Outstanding Picture (Production) award.  That was the award they would receive.  It was the award that said “Mr. Producer, you did the best job this year”.  The powers-that-be really didn’t care that much who won the award for the most “artistic” film.  In fact, MGM head Louis B. Mayer (who helped found the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences by the way), disliked his studio’s nominee for the Unique and Artistic Production award, King Vidor's The Crowd, and cared so little about the award itself that he pressured the judges not to honor his own studio's film, and to select Sunrise instead. 

Due in part to the extreme interest in the Production award and the lack of interest in the Unique and Artistic Production award by the movers-and-shakers of the day, the next year a single “Best Picture” award was instituted.  It was decided retroactively that the award won by Wings had been the equivalent of that award.  Thus, Wings almost always listed as the winner of a sole Best Picture award.  Even the Academy’s own website lists only Wings.  In other words, the organization that claims to promote the artistic merits of film doesn’t openly acknowledge the only time they gave a “Best Picture” award that was supposedly based only on artistic merit.  Something is wrong with this.

Sunrise just seems to forever be the perpetual runner-up.  It was runner-up historically to The Jazz Singer on technical merits. I t was runner-up to Wings as far as the Oscars are concerned.  It even tends to be runner-up to its director’s other films like Nosferatu.  Forever destined to languish in “art house film” purgatory – a fate it doesn’t deserve.

Its story is rather simple – fable-like would be a better description – and it is a definitely a “chick flic”.  That being said, it is one of those rare occurrences in Hollywood where entertainment and art combine to form something really outstanding.  The film is currently only available in the U.S. on DVD, however, if you want to check it out on Blu-ray, it was released in that format in the UK and you can buy it on Amazon.uk.  The British Blu-ray disc was produced unregionalized so it will work in most American Blu-ray players (check your player’s documentation to be sure).  I own it, and I am very happy with it.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is currently running neck and neck with A Night at the Opera for “surprise hit” of the list so far and it receives a ranking of 5 Stars from me.

John