My 1/2-Ass Movie Blog

 Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains. Dir. Irving Rapper, Warner Bros., 1942 I knew one thing about Now, Voyager before today, the infamous scene in which Paul Henreid lights two cigarettes at one before passing one to Bette Davis, a moment paid homage and parodied hundreds of times since 1942. I did not know the scene plays out three times, and that in two of them Davis and Henreid share a look so carnal it's as if their eyes make love. That's why the scene's so famous. Lighting both cigarettes is smooth, turning the first puff into a sex scene the Hays Code censors couldn't touch is moviemaking genius. I also didn't know that Now, Voyager is sort of a road movie, progressing along the route Davis's Charlotte Vale's, unmarried spinster of an ancient Boston family, life following her treatment for a nervous breakdown brought on by her cruel, domineering mother, passing through the stages of her transition to full, functional adulthood. These include ...

 Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, Benedict Cumberbatch. Dir. JJ Abrams, Paramount, 2013 I do not write up everything I see. Based on the contents of a previous post, I sometimes don't write up ANYthing I see. Some movies don't need another review and inspire no more comment than that. Most of those tend to be bad movies which are simply forgettable, not interestingly bad in some way worthy of a few grafs. Not offensive, not problematical, not colossal flops, just Hollywood product with no apparent reason for existing. Sometimes, though, the opposite is true. Look at Star Trek Into Darkness. I have no idea what to say about it. I saw it years ago and liked it and snapped it up the other day and enjoyed it just as much. The cast is good, Cumberbatch is a great villain, the action comes at the viewer almost nonstop, there's plenty of laughs, and a tearjerking moment most Trek fans will love. As I said, I liked it a lot. But so what? Star T...

 Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien, Mary Astor, Tom Drake. Dir. Vincente Minelli, MGM, 1944 A couple of years ago I came upon a paperback anthology of stories written by William Saroyan for the New Yorker, a fictionalized series of adventures based on his own childhood in Central California. At first, I found the stories' sweet nature and fondness for childhood charming. By the end of the volume, however, I had grown bored. What I took for sweetness was nostalgic sentimentality, a heavy gloss slopped across each tale, preventing any independent movement by characters toward meaningful conflict or darkness of thought. No danger, no mystery, no ambiguity existed in any of Saroyan's stories, just an eternally gentile, bucolic charm - the literary equivalent of Randy Newman's faux-ragtime songs like "Dayton, Ohio 1903." If Vincente Minelli's legendary 1944 musical, Meet Me in St. Louis, suffers from anything, it's the same surfeit of sentimentality. A gor...

 Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, Raymond Massey, Robert Douglas. Dir. King Vidor, Warner Bros., 1949 Not to make too much of myself, but my reaction to King Vidor's 1949 screen version of Ayn Rand's novel, The Fountainhead, could almost sum up the Democratic Party's reaction to Movement Conservatism. I started chuckling within a couple minutes. That proceeded quickly to giggles, then sniggering of an almost continual quality, followed by outright guffaws. As some react to Plan 9 from Outer Space or Robot Monster, so I reacted to The Fountainhead, as one of the most unintentionally preposterous, ludicrous, and silly things I've ever seen. No one, I thought, as I laughed, could ever take this nonsense seriously. The movie's portrayal of society and public opinion as this hydra strangling the individual man, the great visionary, is so distorted, so propagandistic in its deployment, I had to laugh. Again, who could ever take this seriously? Then Howard Roark sums up why...

 Michael Douglas, Annette Bening, Martin Sheen, Michael J. Fox, Eichard Dreyfuss. Dir. Rob Reiner, Warner Bros., 1995 Once in a while, I find myself silenced by a film I've seen, if not in a long while, and it takes me by surprise. I've seen The American President at least twice before. I know it's what inspired screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to develop The West Wing and cast Sheen as President. I'm an unapologetic Sorkin fan, and I used to revere Reiner as a can't-miss filmmaker. I knew what I was getting when I plunked my buck down Tuesday. So I'm at least a little surprised to discover The American President is a film that quiets me for a moment, that it affects me as much as it did this morning. Sorkin's White House and Washington, DC are a fairytale, a civics-fanboy's fantasyland of How Things Oughta Be, Dammit. Some on the left take issue with his political entertainments, but they are entertainments. They're not white papers. They won't be ...

 Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Carol Kane, Paul Simon. Dir. Woody Allen, United Artists, 1977 In spring of 1978, Annie Hall won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1977. I was ten years old. Among Annie Hall's competitors in '78 was a little movie called Star Wars which was, as I knew perfectly well, the best movie of 1977 and every other year ever. When Annie Hall won Best Picture, I knew Satan owned the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. I cast a supremely disapproving and suspicious eye upon Annie Hall. Which, for a movie fan of the late '70s and early '80s, when Woody Allen did his most consistent work, soon became a problem. How did I avoid a movie everyone I met said was one of the funniest films they'd ever seen? I got lucky, I guess. I managed to avoid Annie Hall until the late '80s. When I did see it, I had to agree - it's the best movie of 1977. It's ok, though. Star Wars is the best movie in all of recorded history...

 Charles, Bronson, Jill Ireland, James Coburn, Robert Tessier. Dir. Walter Hill, Columbia, 1975 Could you make Hard Times today? Sure, easily. You wouldn't, though. A fighter/grifter picture like this has to be, like Scorsese's The Irishman, about important gangsters, or about famous gangsters, like Michael Mann's Public Enemies. It has to feature an all-star cast and a known-quantity director and a colossal budget and the critics should see it as a deliberate exercise in genre conventions. It has to be big, expensive, and important. Hard Times is none of these.  Part of what makes Hard Times so enjoyable is how rare its type movie has grown without being offensive or racist or hateful in some way. It's a straight genre piece, a character study of two guys driven by economic necessity, smalltimers, not famous, or infamous, dead people, not historical movers and shakers, not celebrities. It's something of a morality play, as well, but again, in a small way. The onl...

 Liza Minelli, Michael York, Joel Grey, Fritz Weppert. Dir. Bob Fosse, Warner Bros., 1972 Once upon a time in the '80s, I wrote a paper for a college English class deconstructing the fable of the ant and the grasshopper, coming down on the side of the grasshopper with both feet. The grasshopper, I argued, is humankind's wanderlust, its irrepressible need to go new places and meet people and have adventures with them (or at least drinks), to be in and of moments, to laugh and feel good and not worry, and that, I argued, is the best of us. We need the grasshoppers to remind us life is beautiful when it is lived.  Back then, I hung around with grasshoppers, though I'm not sure I was one. The real grasshoppers I knew took to the air and seldom, if ever, returned. Their adventures took them everywhere but back to Short Vine Street, Cincinnati, anytime between 1987 & 1993. I loved to hear their wild tales when they did alight there again for a few days, but I had to make su...

 Holding Hands, my favorite thrift shop in Oxford, home of the $1 dvd, was overdue for a visit. For $19, I walked out with: THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED LAURA GILDA NOW, VOYAGER THE BIG SLEEP MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS THE PINK PANTHER CABARET HARD TIMES ANNIE HALL THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT A MIGHTY WIND THE ANIMATRIX THE KING'S SPEECH THE CLONE WARS:A GALAXY DIVIDED STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS I started into this stack by satisfying my curiosity and my geek need with viewings of The Adventures of Prince Achmed, The Clone Wars: A Galaxy Divided, and The Animatrix. A late one for me, but well worth a groggy Wednesday morning. The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the world's first-ever animated feature film, released 13 years prior to Disney's Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs, ought to be something I'd heard of, yet today marks my first encounter with a truly remarkable, groundbreaking film. German director Lotte Reiniger spent three years creating and shooting Pri...

 Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortenson, Cate Blanchett, Ian McKellan. Dir. Peter Jackson, New Line, 2002 7 lbs of movies - 2-pound edition Talking to a friend tonight, I mentioned that, while the three boxed extended editions of the LoTR fims are really sweet, kind of must-haves for a movie collector, I burned out on them and on Tolkien, in general, the last few years, and so planned to not watch them in the immediate future. "Or," she said, "you could choose to consider them films you're done with. They were special, and that time is gone, and they're good memories you never have to try recreating. It's ok to move on from movies you love." I think that's right, and the LoTR movies might fit in that slot. I loved them. I watched them until I saw all Jackson's story alterations as understandable for commercial reasons but basically unforgivable. I watched it more. Until I hated it, apart from giving it props for its vision and influence...

 Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Madelaine Kahn, Rip Torn, Richard Roundtree. Dir. Richard Benjamin, Warner Bros., 1984 7 lbs of movies, #6 What might have been. When the preproduction lore is the best thing about your movie, you're in trouble. City Heat started as a screenplay Blake Edwards wrote but never sold, entitled Kansas City Jazz. His wife, Julie Andrews, thought it had something and encouraged him to develop it as his next project. He did, and Warner Brothers hit on the bright idea of teaming the two top box office stars, Clint & Burt, who wanted to do a picture together. Warners execs must have been counting the money. Blake Edwards writing and directing his dream project, starring the two biggest movie stars in the US. What could go wrong? Blake Edwards could decide Clint Eastwood was an idiot for disagreeing with his vision of how Eastwood's character should be played. Eastwood, a director, himself, and a fan of Edwards, could be so disappointed by his mee...

 Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates, Michael Sheen, Adrien Brody. Dir. Woody Allen, Sony Pictures Classics, 2011 7 lbs of movies #5 I'm always perplexed when I try to write about a great movie soon after seeing it. I'm still in the refractory period, enjoying the post-coital cigarette, and also starting foreplay for round 2. That's a crude analogy, I suppose, but accurate. I'm still in thrall, still negotiating my return to reality, and trying to describe what I just experienced and rate it and put it in a box. I can do that, at times, with product. Art requires a different protocol.  That reads so precious to me, but it's my truth. I can finish Boondock Saints and shred it ten minutes after I turn off the TV. I can write about Clint Eastwood's Blood Work pretty soon after seeing it. When I finished Midnight Cowboy last night, I felt like being quiet for awhile. It moved me, made me want to sit in silence and smoke and just exist for awhile. That's a...

 Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, Brenda Vaccaro. Dir. John Schlesinger, UA, 1969 Jon Voight, Dustin Hoffman, Brenda Vaccaro. Dir. John Schlesinger, United Artists, 1969 7 lbs of Movies, #4 Like Towering Inferno, Midnight Cowboy holds a special place in my life as a legendary, paradigm-shattering film released in my lifetime but before I could appreciate it. As a film fan, I certainly grew up hearing and reading about it. The only X-rated feature to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The movie that made Jon Voight a star, and kept Hoffman, hot from The Graduate, on the map. The theme music outlived the movie, a staple of easy-listening playlists almost from the film's release. Unlike Towering Inferno, Midnight Cowboy's not an Old Hollywood-style blockbuster, swathed in glamor and big stars. It's a more personal film, a character piece looking at an unlikely street friendship between a naive male prostitute and a sick con man. It's a famous film, yes,...

Willem Dafoe, Sean Patrick Flannery, Norman Reedus. Dir. Troy Duffy, Franchise, 1999 7 lbs of movies #3 I messaged Our Man in the Valley, Marc Edward Heuck, before watching Boondock Saints. I said I recalled it as idiotic, but perhaps ought to aporoach it like Crank or Taken, where ridiculous and over-the-top is the point. I thought I'd start my writeup with his reply, watch the picture, and add my comments afterward.  "I've never actively hated the movie, but I do feel it's irredeemably awful and derivative, and it has neither the tech skill of TAKEN or the fun of CRANK. It's just what happens when a mediocre talent gets cocaine; they get mediocre and LOUDER! I will say that I am a little charmed that since it didn't get a real theatrical release, it still managed to find a following through home video without his help, so at least the fandom is real and not astroturfed." Two hours later.  My friend Marc has always been a far kinder man than I. Find his m...

 Clint Eastwood, Anjelica Huston, Jeff Daniels, Paul Rodriguez. Dir. Clint Eastwood, Warner Bros., 2002 7 lbs of Movies #2 Blood Work is the great lost Clint Eastwood picture you're looking for. Did you know you're looking for a great lost Eastwood movie? Well, you are, & Blood Work is it.  Starting with Unforgiven in 1992, and picking up in earnest with '99's Space Cowboys, Eastwood, who made his career playing archetypal macho heroes but using his films to examine that macho-ness, began issuing essays on what happens to macho heroes as they age. Aging and faith became repeated themes for Eastwood in the Aughts, as did family. His movies of the decade touch on a father of daughters' worst nightmares, losing a daughter, and being the one who has to kill her, and on God's role, if any in such matters, with how warriors face death, with psychics and past-life phenomenon, and with karmic debt. Blood Work, a murder mystery about a former cop with a murder victi...

 Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Fred Astaire, OJ Simpson. Dir. John Guillerman, 1974, Fox/WB 7 lbs. of Movies #1 I love The Towering Inferno. Close to uncritically. That ought to be said upfront. It is an artifact from my childhood, an object of fascination for me, a blockbuster hit movie, #1 US box office in '74, at the dawn of my movie mania. A year later, Jaws, a movie of which I was very much aware, as was every American in the summer of '75, it seemed, would be #1 for the year. Towering Inferno was everywhere as I moved from first to second grade. Mad Magazine did a parody, we talked about it on the playground, and I think it just fascinated me. Disaster movies, which are basically wrath-of-God pictures in a less obviously biblical context, have always exerted a hold on me. Always young for my age, I held onto some basic idea of God as the Punisher-Judger well into adulthood, and I can't say I've entirely escaped that kind of thinking ev...