KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: The Black Bird

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy

The Black Bird

This week is a little different. This is a sequel of sorts to one of the greatest films ever made, but don't take that description seriously, because it is more spoof than follow up. Another thing that is different is that the video above is not the trailer for the film, I could not find that. Instead, you have a YouTube link to the whole movie, uploaded by a random person on the site. I'm OK with sharing this link because the movie is not available in any other way. It did have a VHS release, but as far as I can tell, there was never an official DVD/Laserdisc/Blu-ray edition of the movie. It is currently not streaming although it is listed as being on TUBI, it is not available there at this time. Before I found this link, I purchased a burned copy from a boutique site, and it was not very good. It looks like they had the captions on and I could never turn them off, and the captioning was terrible.  This is probably the best way you can experience the film, should you wish to do so in spite of the comments I am about to make.

The premise of the film is simple, Sam Spade's Son Junior, has inherited the family business, and suddenly, there are people looking for the Maltese Falcon again. George Segal is Spade Jr., and he has always had an easy time delivering smug comic lines in movies. He made a lot of comedies over the years, in fact, it was one of his comedies that introduced the world to Denzel Washington ("Carbon Copy", a movie that may have almost as much blowback on racial politics as this one). Spade Jr. is not particularly successful. His Dad's old offices, which he now occupies, are located in a rundown section of San Francisco, and his clientele are inclined to pay him with Food Stamps. This caustic approach to humor will continue throughout the movie. Characters are mocked because of their ethnicity, size, social standing and a variety of other casually cruel things. This is quintessentially a 70s film. It would never be made in today's environment. Like "Blazing Saddles ", it often steps on the third rail of culture. Unfortunately, it is not as clever as "Blazing Saddles" and it is not a satire which would justify those moments, it is a farce, that simply uses them as punchlines not as commentary.

I will start with a couple of positive things. To begin with, two of the actors from the original film make appearances in this movie. Lee Patrick, who was Bogart's secretary Effie, in the original, is back as the same character, doing the same job for Junior. Her character has undergone an unfortunate transformation in an attempt to create some humor, but it was more off putting than funny and she was ill served by the script.  Elisha Cook Jr. fares a little better, getting a chance to remain trapped in time, spouting lingo from 1940 in the 1975 of the film. The anachronistic patter is one of the jokes that actually works in the film. Segal also has the same sort of insolence that Bogart had but the tone is not "tough guy talk" but "smart ass banter". He looks pretty good in the hat as well. 

Stéphane Audran is the femme fatale of the story, and she amusingly strings Spade along with implied sexual dalliances that never took place. Old hand Lionel Stander is playing a role, the equivalent of Joel Cairo, but with less subtlety or implied homosexuality.  Neither of these characters is needed for the story, they are baubles that are being hung on the framework to make the film more like the original, of course they do no such thing. Little Person actor Felix Silla, who played Cousin It in the Addams Family TV show, is the villain of the story, playing a Nazi who wants possession of the Maltese falcon, and who employs Giant Hawaiian Thugs to carry out his orders. 

There are fight scenes that are staged as slapstick, and others that are just not that interesting. As a former Angeleno, I enjoyed the joke about parking on the streets of San Francisco. Any jab at the supposed more sophisticated town to the North was always appreciated. There are cops in this movie, somewhat like the two in the original, but don't hope for anything interesting in that regard, it all goes nowhere. This is a movie that makes a racial joke out of the lead character's last name, not once but multiple times. That reflects the times but also the lack of creativity in the script. 

I remembered the movie as being more amusing than it turns out to be. I did only see it the one time in 1975, It was a Christmas time release, so I can't say for sure if I saw it at the end of the year or the start of the new year, but it was a film I saw on a date with my future wife, so at least I have that good memory about the movie. Oh, they did do an excellent job on the titles for the film, so you can watch that for ninety seconds and then skip the rest of the film. 

 

Jaws (2023 Entry #2)

 

Regular visitors to this site will not be surprised at the fact that we had a return visit to "Jaws" on the big screen, just a month after our recent screening. Yes the 47 year old film is widely available for home viewing, yes there is an expense and inconvenience of  traveling to a theater thirty miles from home, but those things don't matter. Seeing "Jaws" in a theater is a chance to share the experience with an audience, it is an opportunity to treat the moment as special, and it is one more instance where we can sit in awe of the accomplishment of the film. 

The screening was promoted as a "Movie Party" and the audience was provided with some tools to participate, including a shark fin hat that I tried on but took off while watching the movie. The bloody inflatable drink cozy was not needed in the theater but might come in useful in a hot tub. We were encouraged to respond to lines in the movie but the audience was relatively subdued. I did sing along with Quint about those fair Spanish Ladies and with all three of our hunters when they were tired and wanted to go to bed, but I did not hear others doing so. There was one audience member enamoured of the response line when Hooper Identifies the kind of shark the skiff load of fisherman hauled in, he repeated the line "A What? " with a great deal of impressionistic accuracy. 

Another example of the advantages of seeing a film with an audience is being able to see the reactions of others to the moments you are reacting to as well. The man sitting next to me jerked involuntarily when Ben Gardner's head appeared in the hole in the hull of his own boat. The audience laughed together at several points and you could also feel the pall that fell over everyone, on -screen and in the audience, when Mrs. Kitner confronts the Chief. At that moment it doesn't just feel like a story, it feels like a tragedy. 

I think we also felt a collective sense of community joy when Mayor Vaughn tells Brody and Hooper, "For Christ' sake tomorrow is the 4th of July and we will be open for business". Since we were all sitting in a theater together, the day before the Fourth of July, it just seemed especially relevant to us. Whenever someone asks what a great movie to watch for the Independence Day holiday, this is always the first answer. 

 

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

 

So there there is no doubt by the time you reach the end of this post, I loved the film. It was a terrific visual experience with a real human set of stories to care about. There was sufficient humor to keep it fairly light, but there are dangerous and dark moments in the film. There was a huge amount of creativity expended to make this movie into the "WOW" experience they want you to have. That said, there are issues that I had with the film that keep me from declaring it perfect as an animated movie.

Let me start with the run time of the film. Two hours and twenty minutes is pushing the endurance level for a movie so filled with visual texture, easter eggs, and action. I found myself looking at my watch and wondering if I could take a break. This will be no problem when the film hits streaming and video platforms, but as a continuous experience in a movie theater it sometimes felt like I was being assaulted over a long period of time. There is a lot to see and the screen is rarely static, so when you spend a longer amount of time watching, it can be a bit of a strain. 

There are two or three distinct stories in the film, and as such, it felt like a lot of things were being stuffed into the movie. It is true that some of the stories have parallels in them, so showing them in the same film allows us to make comparisons, but each of those stories felt like they could have been a movie unto themselves. Maybe a little trimming on each of them would allow the film to move along more efficiently. One of the problems with these multiverse stories is that there is always another villain/hero conflict to explore, so it never feels like you are getting anywhere. Like a swimmer fighting a riptide, there is so much weight that keeps pulling you away from your desired destination. 

I suspect that everybody's favorite sequence in the film will be  Mumbattan on Earth-50101, with the local Spider-Man Pavitr Prabhakar. He is a hoot and the visualization of him in the densely populated and high traffic version of India is a blast. The character has skills that are great but a personality that is self mocking and appealing at the same time.  Hobie Brown as the puck rock version of Spider-Man also appears in this sequence, and without much context, we understand him but maybe can't quite relate to him. I'm sure fans of the comics will have a different outlook because they will know his story more and so his attitude may be less off-putting. 

Keeping track of all the Spider-Man variations, and all the Universes they inhabit, is something that should be left to the fans who want to keep flow charts and infographics. The idea that there are canon events in the Spider-Verse makes sense, but we are left to guess what they are. Obviously, some are self apparent, but the one that turns out to be the driving force of the movie is not. It is difficult to reconcile heroes who protect their worlds with the self interested individuals willing to allow deaths that are preventable for "The Greater Good". Miles Morales may only be a kid, but he has a pretty good sense of right and wrong in contrast to the members of the Spider-Society who have decided to play God. 

One more word of warning/slight hesitation. The movie is long, but not because it takes a while to get to a resolution. It does not arrive there. This is an "Empire Strikes Back" middle chapter in a trilogy, and the story stops on a cliffhanger. The final segment is supposed to come next year, it was supposedly written and worked on simultaneously with this film. So unlike the Star Wars film, we will not have to wait three years to find out what happens. But you will need to see this one again before then, and that should not be a problem. 

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

 

Fifteen years after the last Indiana Jones movie set some fans on fire and lead to a mass hypnosis that it never happened, we once again pack our hats and whips and head off on an adventure with our favorite archeologist. Some fans expect to hate this as much as the "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", some are hoping it will wash out the bad taste they have in their mouths after experiencing "Crystal Skull" but no one seems to think this movie will in any way live up to the first "Raiders".  You can't capture magic in the bottle over and over without running dry at some point. Pixar proves that and most other franchises confirm that premise. If however you hold your animosity about the last film aside, recognize that time marches on, and accept that human frailty will be a part of even the most staunch heroes life, you can enjoy "The Dial of Destiny" for what it is, a final Indiana Jones Adventure featuring star Harrison Ford.

Although CGI de-aging threatens to keep certain characters on the screen after the passing of the stars that created those roles, it has not yet come to pass. It is true that for a few segments in this film, computer trickery is relied on to restore Indy to the robust figure we remember from our childhood. The real story however takes place late in Dr. Jones life, and he is a figure that is a little time worn and dispirited. Someone I know said the most unbelievable part of the movie is that an aging Professor is retiring. So many undergraduates have experienced a faculty member who is not as sharp as they must once have been, because tenure and comfort make it easy to hang on past the most productive teaching years. Indiana is not exactly enthusiastic in the classroom, and neither are his students. That does not make him a failure, it just reminds us that time marches on. I saw one on-line discussion where one of the participants was ticked because Indiana was turned into a broken old man, and the critic in that point of view thought it was a betrayal of a character and a reliance on an overused plot point for similar films. Let me simply say that as one gets older, it is easier to fall asleep in the armchair, that does not mean we have expired. The fact that someone is bored with a part of their job that has become unrewarding is also not just a trope, it is a reality for some people in certain occupations. Artists can change their technique and try something new, that is harder if you are a contractor, physician, lawyer or college professor. Fortunately for Indy, he has other options, he just needs to be pushed towards them. Near the end of the film, there is an exposition reveal which also explains his demeanor. Too many parents will know what a burden some things in life can be. The fact that Indiana is still fighting through it is not an indication that his character is a loser. If you try to put this movie in the same corral as "The Last Jedi", I think you are making a mistake.

On the plus side, the opening sequence with the younger Indiana in a WWII adventure is solid. The train effects at time may be a little wonky, but the characters are great, I thought Toby Jones was just right, and we get a set up of the later villain played by Mads Mikkelsen that works for the later part of the story. In essence, Indy gets to keep fighting Nazis thirty years after the war is over. The McGuffin in this adventure is an interesting concept, that gets a little confusing along the way, but it does lend itself to the phantasmagorical climax of the picture. I don't know if the people who hated interdimensional aliens will care for this any better, but the sequence is not overwhelmed by visual CGI that is all about creating an impossibility, but rather special effects that are designed to show us somethings that are possibilities. Along the way there were a mixture of practical and CGI moments that kept me involved. Maybe there were a few too many car chases, and maybe the transitions seemed a little too repetitive, but that is typically the fault of the quest structure, not necessarily the screenwriters. 

If there is something to be concerned about, it is that sometimes the movie turns into Indiana Joan. Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Helena, Indiana's goddaughter, is frustrating as a main character because we barely understand her motivations. Indy is as befuddled as we are as to why she has simply become a not very pleasant adventuress, rather than someone who has a better appreciation of the antiquities that she trades in. I suppose her story arc  can't take up too much time, but by the end her position on things has changed and it is not particularly clear why. She has her own less appealing version of Short Round as a side kick, and she does a lot of the heavy lifting in the adventure department in the last third of the film. I can see some people legitimately complaining that Indy has been turned into the damsel in distress by this turn of events. 

John Rhys-Davies comes back into Indiana's life as Sallah, but he is really there for fan service rather than the plot. Still it was nice to have him in the story. Antonio Banderas is in this movie, but if you blink, you will miss him. There is no character for him to play, he is simply a plot device to get to the next action moment. At one point, Indiana wants to have a chance to breathe after the loss of this character, but we have little idea about why this is supposed to be a meaningful moment. I suspect some footage has been excised to move the story along. The same can be said for Shaunette Renée Wilson, who seems to be developing a character story, but then it goes nowhere. 

It is an example of the nostalgic pull the character has for me, and the failure to always take advantage of that, when we do not get a visual joke at the start of the credits, based on the Paramount Mountain. It's a small thing, but it is one of those moments that is noticeable for shifting the humor tone down a bit. The best example of continuing the right sort of humor is the use of the whip to freeze deadly opponents into place, and their response to it. Just like that moment in "Temple of Doom" when Indy reaches for his empty holster, we get the joke. Phoebe Waller-Bridge should be contributing more humor in the story, but her character is too off putting at first to get much warmth from humor centered around her activities or lines. 

I like Indy riding the horse to escape the motorcycles in NYC. The Tuk-tuk chase has some good moments but it goes on a little long. The airplane action feels the least realistic of the action spots in the film, but whenever Indy is lighting a torch and crossing a bridge, I was glad to be back in his company. So "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" is only the fourth best Indiana Jones film, that still puts it miles ahead of most action/adventure films. Director James Mangold has made some films before that I really admire, "Walk the Line", "Ford vs. Ferrari" and "Logan" all worked for me. His stepping into Steven Spielberg's shoes is perfectly fine, I did not feel neglected when it came to the action bits. What complaints I have are mostly about secondary characters and how they were used. Those things won't matter if you will just surrender to the idea, which is what I did. 

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: The Stepford Wives

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy

The Stepford Wives

I did some on-line reading about the reception of this movie at the time of it's release, and amazingly enough, it was objected to by some feminist groups who saw it as anti-woman. My immediate thought was that there is a large continent of the population that does not understand satire. This movie is for all intents and purposes a depiction of a feminist nightmare. It visualizes a world where women are erased as individuals and replaced by stereotypes of femininity. In other words it is mocking the men who want to have women be subservient sex machines with no purpose other than satisfying their mates needs. They are the villains of the piece but somehow in 1975, there were people who did not see this, amazing how ideological blinders can prevent you from recognizing an ally. 

Author and playwright Ira Levin had a big hit when his novel "Rosemary's Baby"   was adapted and filmed by Roman Polanski. No doubt the makers of this film had a similar goal of making a modern gothic horror story into a money making machine. The returns however were modest at best and it is the cultural impact that makes the movie memorable. the phrase "Stepford Wife" immediately produces an image of a docile, attractive, robotic perfectionist and the connotative meaning is all too well known, even by people who have never read the book or seen the movie (including the execrable 2004 remake/reinvention).  Regardless of the controversy or the lack of box office muscle, the film has managed to worm it's way into the culture and influence our thinking about gender roles ever since.

As a movie, this would definitely be a slow burn which is typical of the 1970s and one of the reasons that those movies can be appealing. We get introduced to characters before we get thrown into the plot. We see how Katherine Ross as the protagonist Joanna, slowly realizes that something is amiss. We understand because of her career ambitions and uncertainty about having relocated to Stepford, that the threat is to her being not just to her physical manifestation. As I watched the friendship she develops with Bobbie, played deliciously by Paula Prentiss, I cared about the women, even when I thought there were times that they were being annoying and self centered. The most arcane moment of the film comes when Joanna, Bobbie and their friend Charmaine (Tina Louise) make a deal to get the other local wives to participate in a consciousness raising meeting. Feminist ideas and relationship talk get sidetracked by the programming of the local women. 

The movement to a more horror driven "Body Snatchers" feel, comes in a couple of ways that were nicely set up. Charmaine's surrender of the tennis court that meant personal freedom for her, was a scary moment even though the only horrifying image is a Caterpillar Tractor pulling up some concrete. The Men's Association is visualized as an old dark house, and it is taboo to go there, even though the warning is the politest brush off a cop can give. We know that bad things are coming when Joanna's dog goes missing, and we simply see it in a cage in the bed of a truck driving down the road. These are the creepy moments that make the movie worth sitting through, even if you don't buy into all the social signaling that is going on. 

Screenwriter William Goldman was unhappy with changes made to his work. The well known story in Hollywood is that the Screenwriter has the least amount of power of the major players on a project. Somehow Goldman, had managed to block Brian DePalma as the director of the film and ironically, his replacement, Bryan Forbes, was the source of all of Goldman's subsequent unhappiness. Regardless of the power issues, Goldman's screenplay is a well paced reveal of the plot, with interesting characterizations along the way. Bobbie has the funniest lines, Joanna parry's with her husband and Diz, the head of the Men's Association who is played by Patrick O'Neal. You would expect a lot of gaslighting but Goldman let's the characters with bad intent, play things normally for the most part. The artist who is drawing details of Joanna's face doesn't try to hide them from her, he shares them with her. The stammering vocal designer has a logical reason for her to record his list of words. Her husband concedes that an ambulance did seem to go off in the wrong direction, instead of insisting she is nuts. He also suggests she get help, not at an inappropriate moment but at exactly the right time, he does not insist on a therapist of his choice but defers to her. It's during her first meeting with the therapist that the true horror gets stated, "If I am wrong, I'm insane... but if I'm right, it's even worse than if I was wrong."

The climax of the picture mixes some great moments with some unfortunately trite tropes. Joanna's confrontation with the changed Bobbie is a perfect moment, her running around in the rain and running from Diz in the Men's Association is just woman in jeopardy boiler plate writing. The visualization of the new Joanna is a great creepy moments that reveals the twist and it works without having to go into a lot of detail. Little shots of the town, the industry in the area and the jobs of the local men, were all we needed. An exposition dump is wisely avoided. 

On a side note, I find it particularly satisfying that Paula Prentis as Bobbie, is caught up in a world of artificial persons, since in real life she is married to Richard Benjamin, who two years before this movie, ran into the same problem in "Westworld".  

Lawrence of Arabia (2023 Visit)

 

Those of you who are regulars know the score here, If "Lawrence of Arabia" is on the big screen within throwing distance, I am going to go and see it. 

Yesterday was a return trip to the The Paramount Theater in Austin, where I will be spending most of my summer. They have a great film series and they have included an essential film for me. 

I have written about Lawrence many times before, you can find links to most of those posts on the Top Ten List I did a couple of years ago HERE. 

As usual it was a great experience, I was impressed by the turnout, the theater was packed. When the host asked who was seeing it for the first time, about 20% of the audience responded, so that was a surprise. 

Whenever I see the film, I try to pay attention to something new and this time it was the sky. Of course there is the famous edit where we go from a burning match to the sun rising on the horizon. There are some wonderful moments of the moon and stars as well. Seeing the flare streak across the sky to signal a stop to hostilities in one of the attacks looks pretty as well. The night swallowing Ali as Lawrence is being tortured is relieved by a brief glow of moonlight on his face as he awaits the outcome of the assault on Lawrence. 

By the way, the Sky here in Austin was beautiful and clear, and the temperature seemed to match the desert when Faisal's army is crossing the Sun's Anvil. "No Prisoners!"

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

 

In the last two weeks we made an effort to catch up on all the Transformer Movies, as a way of preparing to see this one. I would not recommend doing that to anyone who wants to enjoy the films. They work best in small doses and the fact that many of them are two and a half hours is really depressing. I liked the First in the series pretty well when we saw it way back in 2007, but by the time the third one came out, I'd lost interest and even though I saw the fourth one, I'd forgotten it completely. The fifth one is equally forgettable, the main exception to this trend however was "BumbleBee" which was in fact quite enjoyable. 

"Rise of the Beasts" has something in common with most of the films, a solid opening forty minutes. The problem with these films is that once we get to the giant robots fighting each other, for long periods of time, it becomes monotonous. Also, watching Los Angeles, Chicago, Hong Kong and multiple other cites get destroyed is sadly disturbing and repetitive. "Beasts" does us a solid by locating the main battle scenes to the jungles of Peru, sparring us the sight on thousands of people being wiped out for entertainment purposes. Another variation that "Rise of the Beasts" gives us is the absence of a young child in the middle of that final battle. When the little boy in the story, who has sickle cell, talks about going with his older brother on the fight in South America, I started to roll my eyes. Imagine how happy I was when the older brother leaves and the kid is not accidentally smuggled in the trunk of a car or a suitcase. 

Anthony Ramos is the star of the film, and having seen him in a couple of other films, I was glad to see he was still doing good work, although more subdued than you might expect in a film like this. The real stars of these movies are the giant robots, and this version gives us another race of robots called Maximals, which instead of being modeled after cars are modeled after animals. Their leader is an ape robot named Optimus Primal, get it?  The main villain is a planet consuming being called Unicron, but mostly it is the minions of Unicron that we see on screen battling the Autobots. The nice thing about the battles in this film is that we get to see one on one action, frequently isolated, so we can tell what the hell is happening. It still runs long and gets tiresome at the end, but it looks a lot better. The story is more streamlined than any of the other films, so you get a good sense of what the hell is happening most of the time. 

"BumbleBee" will probably continue to be everyone's favorite, but "Mirage" was a robot who I did not want to see destroyed after five minutes, and by the end of the film I sort of liked the relationship that they tried to build through the rest of the film. It is probably a good thing that Michael Bay is producing rather than directing. Steven Caple Jr. seems to know how a movie should look and he tries to keep the story interesting. Like I said, the fight sequences were clearer than in most of the other episodes, but they do go on too long. This would work better if it were a hundred minute movie and the action was selected for story rather than spectacle. At least the jungles offer us a different environment, although futuristic mechanical structures rise out of the ground like instant mashed potatoes, and then become the focus of the fights. 

If you are completist for these films, and want to rank them, I think this one would be the third best. I liked the Mark Wahlberg reference, it was funny, and since the movie is set in the early 90s, it makes a little sense.  The stinger at the end, promoting a different film franchise is not clear, but when your goal is to sell toys, maybe that doesn't matter. I'll bet there are plenty of kids playing with these toys who have told more compelling stories in their backyards. Maybe I should look on YouTube for some of those.