The Ten Commandments TCM Fathom Event

It was just two years ago that I went to a screening of "The Ten Commandments" at this same theater. That showing was not a Fathom event but rather part of a series AMC Theaters did that year running a whole variety of older movies. It was not particularly well attended in part I'm sure because of a lack of promotion. Today, I returned to the Red Sea with Charlton Heston and because the screening was a Fathom Event in conjunction with TCM, the theater was quite full. It was not a sell out but it was impressive for a Sunday afternoon screening of a sixty year old film.

Once again the film was spectacular, and although the special effects are six decades behind today's digital technology, it still feels more than impressive. TCM Host Ben Mankiewicz pointed out that much of the exterior work was shot in Egypt and that there were enormous sets to complement the camera trickery that makes the city of Goshen appear so impressive and of course the parting of the Red Sea so notable. The photographic effect of the final plague on Egypt looked like God's green fingers were coming from the sky and that the fog which clung to the ground was his breath, turning Ramses edict on itself and slaying the first born of Egypt while passing over the Israelites who marked their thresholds with lambs blood.

The style of the dialogue sometimes provoked a bit of laughter from the audience. Let's face it, half of the time anyone says the name of Moses, they repeat it a second time in the script. The things that are most believable in the filming are the impressive use of the extras, especially in the Exodus scene itself. The geese, and goats and camels and cattle all interact in a very realistic way with the impressive cast of thousands.  Still none of it would matter if Mr. Heston and Mr. Bryner were not convincing in their parts. While much more theatrical in nature than most of us are used to in acting today, both the leads are effective with their faces, body movements and voices. Both of them make large public pronouncements that would sound silly coming from today's leaders but are sincere in the context of this film.

So many character actors are in the film that it is a wonder that they could keep them for as long as it took to shoot the film. I've heard it said that Edward G. Robinson was miscast in the movie but his slight NY accent did not seem to be a distraction to me. Vincent Price was suitably slimy and  hearing John Carradine's sonorous voice backing up Heston was a delight. The only performer who seemed slightly awkward at times was Anne Baxter, but her scenes near the end of the movie were far more effective than the love scenes in the first hour.

It's Easter season so this film is a perennial and it made sense for TCM to schedule it during the Holy Week. If you are looking for some easy way to commemorate the Holiday, the nearly four hour investment in this movie is probably worth your time. It is also playing again this Wednesday, so play hooky and go, you will be glad you did.  

The Bronze

Here is a movie that tries too hard to be quirky and hip and only succeeds in being mildly annoying most of the time. The idea of lampooning Olympic athletes is not really new, neither is the vulgar language in the mouth of an otherwise seemingly innocent young woman. So the film turns up the shock value of the language and tries like hell to overwhelm you with how awful a person the lead character has become. The fact that some of the things being said could have been quotes from Billy Bob Thornton in "Bad Santa" doesn't qualify it as comic genius.

The movie plays for the first half like a bad sketch on Saturday Night Live. You know, the one that had a funny premise for about a minute but actually ran seven to ten minutes. That's this movie for the first hour. There finally appears to be a more traditional plot line in the last half that concerns love and redemption but it does not feel earned since we got so abused in the first part of the movie. Mean spirited insults and dry delivery might work in small doses if timed correctly, here they just swallow the movie up and puke it all over us.

Melissa Rauch from "The Big Bang Theory" plays the part as it was written and directed, so the outcome is not entirely her fault, except that she wrote the picture with her husband. There is a gem of an idea here but it takes more skilled hands to make it work than were brought to bear. There is not a project that I can think of that Gary Cole has not made better by his presence and this film is now included in that assessment. As the father of the lead character, he is both funny, ineffectual and too sadly real. 

There are several laughs in the film but they are not as frequent as they should be and most of them depend on the vile things that are being done and said. If you are looking for a way to spend a really uncomfortable couple of hours, take your parents with you to see this. If you can get through the opening scene without them walking out, maybe the movie is for you. I sound like I hated it but that is far from the truth, I was just disappointed that it could not live up to it's potential. There is however one scene that stands out and might make a trek to a theater to see this worthwhile. Two gymnasts get it on in a over the top sex scene and it involves all of the moves, bending, head and ass placement you may have been fantasizing about since you first had a crush on that guy or gal on your high school gymnastics team.  It is really dirty and really funny. Supposedly, Sebastian Stan did his own stunts for the movie, if that includes this scene, he will be a big heartthrob for the rest of his career.

This is a little movie with big aspirations of being a surprise comedy, but the surprise is how boring so much of the film is. I'm not a big rap fan myself, but I think the end credit rap performance by the star, had everything the movie offered, but in five minutes or less.

10 Cloverfield Lane

Here is a movie trailer that manages to sell the story without giving away the farm. The juxtaposition of moods is perfectly emblematic of what happens in the film, and the less you know, the more enjoyable the movie will be. I see reviews all the time when I read on-line where more than half the review simply retells the plot of the film. Sometimes that is necessary, because otherwise people won't understand why the movie is worth seeing or why it should be avoided. I have always attempted to keep that type of material to an absolute minimum on my posts because I don't want to spoil a movie for someone else, and frankly, repeating the story just bugs me, go see the movie if you need to know. This film is going to be a little challenging to write about because I don't want to give away anything at all.

If you too are worried about spoilers, don't read the next paragraph. It does not go into the plot but it does discuss something that most people seeing the film will have some knowledge of.

"10 Cloverfield Lane" is in fact a sequel of sorts to the found footage movie from 2008. That is eight long years ago, so a sequel might seem strange, but it is a different kind of a sequel, it is more a related story rather than a descendant. No characters reoccur in this piece but you will be able to see a direct relationship after the film has played out. There, that's as much as I will say about it.

End of semi-spoiler material.

This movie has several great scenes in it that will startle you and build some fantastic tension. More than ninety percent of what takes place is in a "locked room" scenario and there are basically no effects, visual trickery or CGI manipulation. This is a strange drama played out against a backdrop that remains ambiguous till the end of the film. There are basically three characters and how they interact, what they do and their relationship to each other is all what the movie is about. The reason this movie works so well is not really the premise, but the screenplay. The principle screenwriters are Josh Campbell, Matthew Stuecken and Damien Chazelle. That last name should have rung a bell for me, because he is the writer/director of my favorite film from two years ago, "Whiplash".  I'm sure that the first two deserve all kinds of credit for creating the situation and plot, but I'd be willing to bet that the tension laden scenes in the film were scripted by Chazelle, the building stress and the mental strain exhibited by the characters is so close to what was in that movie about a young ambitious drummer that I feel I should have been able to guess it. 

Unlike the original "Cloverfield", this is not a found footage film, and it is not shot using a 'Go Pro' strapped to someones head. The director here had access to a tripod and used it. That does not mean that the film is static, but it does mean that it is not full of visual flourishes designed to wow bored audiences. Director Dan Trackenberg is trying to tell a story, and not build a portfolio for himself to submit when someone needs a big budget picture made. Maybe he will be able to pull that sort of film off, but if he ever gets the chance it will not be because he was a camera wizard here. It will be due to the fact that he knows how to pace a scene and show the actors and stage a moment. And as i said earlier, there are some really good moments here. 

The cast has to get a huge amount of credit for the success of the film. John Goodman is an actor who works all of the time in so many different roles, that although he is easy to recognize, he is hard to classify. I found an appreciation of his efforts on another site that I read regularly and you might like to go there and see how versatile he really is (AndSoitBegins) . The truth is, he is well respected and has a long list of award nominated performances, mostly on TV. His film career is extensive and it really is a shame that he was not nominated for an Academy Award for supporting actor for "the Big Lebowski". This movie is in a genre that is not likely to change that but it should. He is terrific as Howard, either a savior or a lunatic, who drives the tautness of the film up the wall at times. Howard is more mundane than we might expect, but he has elements to his character that will give you the willies. Walking through the parking lot after the film, we stopped in the "Golden Spoon" yo get some frozen yogurt to take home. My daughter asked me if I wanted it in a bowl or a cone, mimicking a scene in the movie, and I actually shivered for a moment because Goodman makes that scene so real and foreboding. Like Goodman,  Mary Elizabeth Winstead is an actress known for both television and films. I noticed that she costarred with Kurt Russel in two films and did the remake/prequel to the Kurt Russel classic "The Thing", so maybe she has a thing for the grizzled old guys. This film really belongs to her. The emotional journey that takes place during the movie is all about her character. She grows and evolves as a person due to the experiences she goes through. There are some action scenes but more than anything it is the way she relates to her two co-stars that makes her performance memorable. The third actor in the piece is John Gallagher Jr., an actor that I don't know well but for whom this film could be a launching point for bigger things. He has two very effective moments in the movie and matches with Goodman and Winstead, minute by minute. 

That's as much as I'm going to say about the film. If you have seen it, I'd love to engage in some conversation with you about it. Just don't give anything away because then I will have to wish you into the cornfield, and that won't go well. 

London Has Fallen

You did not think that after a surprise financial success with "Olympus Has Fallen", there would not be a sequel did you? Come on, there is money on the table and someone has to take it home, It might as well be Gerard Butler. I am a big fan of the original film, where Butler does his best Bruce Willis impression and the effects teams add enough firepower to take down a whole city. The premise was over the top but in complete congruence with the action films of the 80s and 90s. It was basically "Die Hard" in the White House. Just like the sequel to the original Die Hard, "London Has Fallen" keeps the characters from the original, transports them to another location, and changes directors. Babak Najafi is no Renny Harlin, but he manages to deliver the goods in sufficient quantities that there could easily be  a "Moscow Has Fallen" entry in a couple of years.

I do feel a bit guilty about all the mayhem shown in the film. There are explosions and public edifices wiped out along with what must have been thousands of civilians.  Somehow, it is not quite as disconcerting as it is to me in some other films, maybe it is the cheese factor that you start with. No one worries that much when it happens in a "Transformers" movie because the film never takes itself seriously. "Man of Steel" took itself extremely seriously, and maybe that is the difference to me. At the end of this film, all of London is being rebuilt and there will be little to remind anyone of what happened. The fact that Morgan Freeman provides the denouement instead of Aaron Eckhart's President Asher, only underscores the fact that his sonorous voice is being used to put the button on the story.

Most of the terror attacks happen early in the movie, so the expensive effects shots are used to set us up for the cat and mouse game that makes up the majority of the film. Secret Service Agent Mike Banning(Butler) has the President with him as the terrorists chase them across the abandoned streets of London. The terrorists conveniently shut off the lights so no one will see that the street sets are not real locations and as many shootouts in the dark can be accentuated with firebursts from the tip of a machine gun. The preposterous set up involves half of the London police being replaced by an army of terrorists that no one will notice. When members of the palace guard take their weapons and gun down the German Chancellor, you know there is no logic to the film at all.

The fact that the story is nonsense does not distract from the pleasure we get from watching Agent banning kick tail and take names. When he gets to use those names in his interplay with the main terrorist on the scene, it is exactly like a moment form "Die Hard". One thing that is a little different however is that Mike Banning is not going to let any terrorist get up five minutes later and take a dying shot. He seems to be a strong believer in the "double Tap" and when it comes to taking a man down with a knife, clearly a single insertion is not enough. When the President asks if the one killing of a terrorist with a knife in a particularly brutal way was necessary, Mike simply smiles and says, "No".

There is no reason to take any of this as more than a program, popcorn afternoon filler. Jackie Earle Hailey, Melissa Leo, Robert Forester, and Angela Basset, all Academy Award nominated actors are collecting a paycheck. Only Basset has to leave a room for her performance, everyone else sits around a table to deliver their lines. Morgan Freeman, an Academy Award winner, does stand up a couple of times to make his presence worth third billing,  but ultimately this is Butler's show with Eckhart in support. Cracking wise and killing a buttload of bad guys is what this film is all about. It does it efficiently and in an entertaining way, so if you want to eat your Milk Duds in the dark, this is a movie that will facilitate that. Of course all of it's calories are empty as well.

Zootopia

Some films ambitions just are out of reach of their grasp. This animated offering from Disney Studios has a lot going for it, including an excellent cast, an interesting setting and some of the cutest characters you can imagine. It also has pretensions of seriousness that it just doesn't reach at times. The movie is by no stretch of the imagination a failure, but it is so obvious to see the themes and goals of the film makers and it is equally obvious that they strike out a few times. However, for every time there is something just a bit big for the movie, there are moments that make it all worth a trip, even if it is not destined to become a modern classic.

The movie starts as a light hearted story of a can do character in a world where animals all seemingly get along, but under the surface, they face the kinds of barriers that we humans do, small minded prejudice. Allegory 101, Zootopia is "Animal Farm" with jokes. The heavy handed examples of prejudice and stereotyping are likely to go over the heads of the kids watching the movie, but hit their parents and other adults watching right in the forehead. Subtlety goes out the window at times and halfway through the movie, the story gets dark and heavy. Kids will probably lose patience with it and the adults will wonder where the fun went. Just when you despair however, there is a moment that pulls us back into the spirit of things and makes us root for the film still.

Since I am generally a positive person with movies, I'll give you a few things to look at and like about the movie. It is beautifully made with a nice design for different ecosystems in the city and cleverly visualized jokes. There is a fun chase sequence through a rodent style section of the city where our main hero, Officer Judy Hopps, a bunny, chases a perp through miniature buildings and a tiny subway and some habitrals that are complex and fun to imagine as a city for hamsters, mice and other such critters. You have probably seen the joke about the DMV in the trailer and it works even though we got it months ago in the preview. For a movie that is trying to move us away from our prejudices, it makes a lot of use of what would be "ethnic" humor if the characters were human. There are elephant jokes and wolf jokes that all hit the mark when it comes to making us laugh, but if you replaced those characters with an ethnic stereotype, the special interest groups would be howling.

This is a buddy cop film with animals. Think "48 Hours", only the Nick Nolte character is a naive rookie instead of a veteran burnout. Reggie Hammond is named Nick and he's a fox. Together the two are going to solve a mystery. The good thing is these characters are terrific. Judy, the rookie bunny police officer, is a cute as can be. Ginnifer Goodwin voices the character as determined but vulnerable and the artists who visualized the character make her exactly that, with huge expressive eyes and long ears with big rabbit feet. Her "partner" jokes at one point that the the toy store has reported one of their stuffed dolls animals is missing. She may not be a Princess, but the character is marketable as all heck. I expect to see her front and center in the toy aisle at Target. Nick is voiced by Jason Bateman who seems to be the sardonic voice for parts not already taken by Bill Murray. He is a little disheveled, and slick, which is precisely the way he needs to be played. The un-tucked shirt, the sunglasses and the attitude are not Eddie Murphy stylish, but more John Candy clever. When we are focused on these two characters, the movie works. When we get to the procedural and the conspiracy plot, it just falls down a little.

Maybe this film will work better for a different audience. Some of the contemporary visuals like the apps used by some of Judy's fellow cops or the diva like concert performance with dancing tigers just seem too much of the now. It may not hold up over the years and the humor needs to be a little more universal. Fortunately, every time you get a joke based on a contemporary reference (including a "Frozen" line) there is another animal pun about wolves in sheep's clothing or the elephant in the room to make it more sustainable. I wanted it to be more effective, and while I can't always say why it was not, I can say that half of a good movie is better than a bad movie, any day of the week.

AMC Tenth Anniversay Best Picture Showcase Day Two

With the beautiful Santa Anita racetrack, right outside of our theater, on a lovely winter day in Southern California, we spent eleven hours in a dark movie house seeing the remaining best picture nominees yesterday. Today is Oscar Sunday so we will see what actually wins, but for the moment my impressions of the final films.

Brooklyn

This is a very sweet and sentimental love story about an Irish girl who comes to America and falls for both her new life and a young man. The courage that it takes someone to get up and move halfway around the world and start over is amazing. I saw a Hollywood Reporter story about an actor's ballot and he ranted anonymously about how immigration was not really like this and that if you wanted to know how it was, see America, America.  I'm all for exploring the many variations on the immigrant experience but I suspect they are as divergent as the cultures that people came from. I sat watching this with my friend who's Mother had a very similar experience coming from Ireland and she said it was not dissimilar to this film. The Irish Catholic immigration story from 1950 is probably different from the Italian Catholic story of 1900. So let's take this for what it is rather than what someone else thinks it should be.

A young girl has little hope of a satisfactory life in her native land, and her enterprising older sister arranges for her to move to New York and start anew. The production design here is the kind of thing that makes me want to return to those days. The Department stores were elegant, the cars were huge, and the clothes were vibrant and becoming to both men and women. I know it is a technicolor wash of the old days but it looked completely dreamlike and wonderful. The village in Ireland was quaint but gorgeous and the streets of New York were vibrant and active.  The screenplay by Nick Hornby is filled with words that sound like they were spoken in 1952, both in the world and in the movies. Actress Saoirse Ronan is excellent in the part and she seems luminescent despite supposedly being  the plain Jane in her circle of friends at home and in New York.

The story takes a dramatic turn that forces us to think about what the choices in life we make really mean. It seems for a while that the hopes she carries are tested by the dreams of her youth. In the end, the audience is satisfied that the right choice is made and there was a point to all the process that we watched. I doubt that the film will win but as I said to my companions, if it does, it will be a victory I can live with, all of the movies nominated this year are worthy in my opinion.

Spotlight

This is a movie that uses so many things that Hollywood films have loved over the years. There is a political mystery, being unraveled by journalists, fighting a seemingly implacable foe. There is also no rooting for the other side because the evil that is being fought against is the worst kind of crime and the hubris of the institution is one of the most unforgivable sins imaginable. There is enough finger pointing to go around by the end of the story that even the journalists themselves do not emerge unscathed.  There is a collection of colorful characters and the ensemble acting is top notch.

I did think that the usually reliable Mark Ruffalo was the weak link in the cast. He was not bad, but I could see his performance so much more obvioulsy than everyone else. This is the fault of the screenplay which gives him one scene of histrionics that feels very out of place with everything else we have been shown. Michael Keaton was extremely good and of the cast I'd have picked him for the acting honors rather than Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams. Maybe the biggest performance that is over looked however belongs to Stanley Tucci, as a quirky attorney, filing lawsuits that never get the attention and the punitive damages that they deserve. His fury is so controlled it is disturbing. He seems odd but he may be the most stable of the lawyers involved in the whole mess. Familiar TV actor Jamey Sheridan and Movie idol turned character actor Billy Crudup are attorneys who do their jobs and live by their code of ethics, but each seems unsatisfied and unable to do anything about it.

The functioning newspaper in the film may be a relic of the past, but it is a good contrast to the dysfunctional strategy of the Catholic Church hierarchy to address a true evil by treating it as a character flaw the equivalent of  being an alcoholic. That they cared more for the priests that made up their order than they did for their parishioners is the thing that will damn them to the hell they earned. That this movie manages to unwrap this horror in the calm, deliberate manner that it does is perhaps it's most impressive feature. It is not my favorite film of all the nominees, but If i were a voter, I'd cast my vote for this movie which manages to make a serious story into a thriller with a conclusion that is only satisfying in the sense that the truth was uncovered. Director Tom McCarthy made a film a few years ago that I really liked, "Win,Win" and he has made another seriously entertaining film about a hard subject to look at.

The Martian

From a purely entertainment point of view, this was my favorite of the films nominated. "The Martian" takes a great near future speculative science story and turns it into a tense two hour rescue comedy. The idea that this is a comedy may seem strange, that was my view when it was nominated in that category by the Golden Globes, but it is pretty funny, and I know it had a lot more laughs than some of the alleged comedies of Will Farrel. So, OK, it's a comedy by that standard. I like the idea of science being used to tell a story but it is a fiction and some of the science here feels a little tacked on to get us out of the conundrums the story put us in in the first place.

Matt Damon may not be one of my favorite people, but he is a fine actor and he has to carry the movie with a star like performance. Like Russel Crowe from fifteen years ago in "Gladiator" director Ridley Scott has taken a big screen "movie star type performance" and surrounded it with technical marvels and enough drama to keep us enthralled for the run of the picture. This is just solid big screen entertainment. Scott was not nominated which seems to suggest that the film has little chance of winning, but it has every chance of being watched repeatedly for years to come, unlike a few other good, but not repeatable, films on the list.

The Revenant

While it is still an excellent film, and it may be the movie to beat this year, a second viewing highlights some of my original evaluation of the movie. It is longer than it needs to be, it is a little more self important than it has earned any right to be, and sometimes it is simply so grim that we should all get an award for enduring it. If Leonardo DiCaprio wins for best actor because of the rigors of making the movie, then we need to retroactively give Harrison Ford an Oscar for some of his Indiana Jones films. The degree of difficulty standard seems to be applying here. This is a film that was next to impossible to make and contained some breathtaking images, but maybe it could use a little work with the script.

I suppose it will win for cinematography, because so often, the movie with the most beautiful locations gets that award. I was a bit weary of the fish eye view of the trees that was used as a transition so often and if J.J Abrams can be criticized for "camera flare" can we give Alejandro  Iñárritu a special award for "lens fog"? At least three times he lets the camera deliberately get close enough to the action to get fog on the lens, taking us out of the movie in spite of the effort to use this technique to bring us in. 

The film is full of ponderous moments and spiritual flim flam, but it also contains some really impressive moments. Most of these take place in the first thirty minutes of the movie. The attack on the trappers camp and then the bear attack would probably be enough to make this a great film. Unfortunately, for every solid moment like that, there is a dreamlike sequence of skulls, burned churches, and haunted trees to remind you that this movie is supposed to be a spiritual journey and not just a revenge movie. Frankly, "The Grey" did that more effectively, I just wish they had stuck to the adventure.

The poster giveaway at the AMC Showcase was not as satisfying as it has been in the past. They have chosen to go with mini-posters this year and they lack the artwork that marked all the Best Picture nominees. On the other hand the embossed lettering and the Tenth Anniversary slogan, "I Saw the Best Back to Back" is a very nice design.

 Till next year, thanks AMC.

Eddie the Eagle

"I always turn to the sports page first. The sports page records people's accomplishments; the front page nothing but man's failures."-- Chief Justice of the U.S. Earl Warren

I love some sports because of the drama inherent in the competition. I love all sports ultimately because of the drama inherent in taking a sport seriously and trying to do your best. "Eddie the Eagle" might at first seem an odd subject for an inspirational story. The real world character appeared to be a bit of a joke at the time he made his Olympic appearance, and let's face it. he was not a winner by any stretch of the imagination. He was however different, and judged by the true spirit of the Olympic games, he may be one of the biggest winners of all time. It's unfortunate in my mind that the world as become so cynical, that a sweet, inspiring movie like this will be crushed underfoot by other films that will be forgotten in a week, despite their budgets. 

This is a small story about an unusual character,  it fits into the "Inspirational Failure" category of films pioneered by the original "Rocky". Since the main events of the story really did happen, it has a place in popular culture outside of the movie context and it is hard to understand why it would not be more successful, except that "upbeat" and "inspiring" seem to have become negative descriptions in Hollywood these days. Eddie was not a fool, and in fact he was portrayed as a competent skier ( and in real life, he narrowly missed being on the British Downhill skiing team). What is accurate is that he switched to ski jumping to give himself a better chance at making the Olympics, even though he had little experience. 

Taron Edgerton from last years great "Kingsman: The Secret Service"  plays the adult Eddie after a quick opening section showing Eddie as a child and as a teen. One of the things that help make this movie work is that it does not spend a long time following the child Eddie but uses him simply to set up the contemporary version. It keeps the story focused and it avoids some of the wandering that traditional biopics sometimes get lost in. We get to know him as the awkward, sincere and somewhat innocent athlete who strives to be the best he can, but falls short of the Olympic ideal that he holds out for himself. The movie plays up a battle and antagonism between himself and the British Olympic Committee as a way of building tension and I thought that the largely fictional characters played by Hugh Jackman and Christopher Walken help get the focus on the issue of his desire rather than on the showboating. The IOC has since instituted qualifying rules that would keep out someone like this, but much like the Jamaican Bobsled team, these are the kinds of stories that make sports so compelling. Competition at elite levels is important, but we need the "Rudy" type characters to be able to be part of the pageant of sport as well. 

This movie gets a lot of comedic value out of the situation, but never at the expense of the character. He always comes across as passionate and a big dreamer. Exactly the kind of person who would ask a world champion for some tips and who would not mean it ironically. I doubt that it is true but there was a nice moment when Eddie is going up the lift for his big moment when he encounters the World's Greatest shi jumper, and they share a moment that is about sports and not about winning. If we could get that kind of moment more often in real life, people who see sports as unimportant or distracting from more significant pursuits would get a chance to know the impact that sports can have on character. We have far too many examples of negative sports characters that have dominated the world lately, it's really important to have some from the other end of the spectrum on a regular basis to balance out the less pleasant aspects of competition. 

Jackman plays a cliche role created for the purpose of making the story "more" than just the journey of Eddie, and I liked the fact that he was willing to be in the background for much of the film. The director, actor Dexter Fletcher, manages to make us cringe with every vertigo inducing view of the ski jumps and we flinch when we see the mistakes that inevitably are part of the world of ski jumping. If you are too young to remeber "the Agony of Defeat" take a quick look at this clip:



A ski accident happens at 70 miles an hour and it isn't pretty. Several times I looked over and saw my daughter cringing behind her hands as the true danger of the sport was exhibited. Ultimately, the thrill of victory, even a small one, seems to be enough to get a dedicated person to take the risk. "Eddie the Eagle" is a touching reminder that while not all of us are gold medalists, it is our hearts that ultimately make a soar like eagles.

TCM Fathom Event The Maltese Falcon

I love an opportunity to see classic films on the big screen. Today the film was "The Maltese Falcon", celebrating it's 75th Anniversary. TCM provides a nationwide venue through Fathom events and the theater was relatively full for a Sunday afternoon.I've seen this dozens of times but I was lucky enough that the first time was in a revival theater back in the 1970s.

There have been a thousand things said about this film, most of them said by people far more eloquent and learned than me, but maybe not as enthusiastic. I love this movie for the dialogue, the performances and the production design. It makes me want to live in San Francisco in 1941.  Today I watched every time Sam Spade rolled a cigarette and then lit it with a match ir lighter that was right on the desk, table or nightstand where he found himself. Each of those beautiful items looked at home on the sets and in the offices of that world. I never smoked but I want to have those items of elegance spread out over my house.

Even though I've seen each movie more than a dozen times, today was the first time I realized that Miles Archer was also the DA in "Miracle on 34th Street". It's a bit like driving down the same road every day for a year and then looking up suddenly and seeing that there is a bookstore or restaurant there on the road that you never saw before. You feel a little foolish at first but you are glad to be out of your stupor for a moment. Everyone else in the cast is always so memorable, and Jerome Cowan had just the one scene (and his death) so early in the movie that I guess you sort of forget he was there.

Every little moment with Peter Lorre is worth the price of admission. He is so fey and belligerent and feckless but at the same time lethal. When Bogart slaps him around and tells him that he'll like it when he does so, you can see the fear and anger in his face. Elisha Cook Jr. was a familiar character actor in movies and TV shows all my life and I remember when I first saw this how young he looked in contrast to his more grizzled later years. Ward Bond is in so many John Wayne and Errol Flynn pictures, you might forget he was also in "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Gone with the Wind". Sydney Greenstreet explaining all the kinds of men he does not trust would make a good set of memes for any social media site.

The best part of the film though is Humphrey Bogart trying to figure out Mary Astor and playing with her lies the whole time.

" We didn't exactly believe your story, Miss O'Shaughnessy. We believed your 200 dollars."

Mary Astor was terrific as the bad girl trying to pull the wool over the eyes of everyone in the story and playing coy the whole time. She and Bogart are terrific in the movie and they worked together again in Across the Pacific a couple of years later. The TCM intro and exit were the usual well crafted moments that give you just enough to anticipate and then remind you of what it was you just enjoyed.

AMC Tenth Anniversary Best Picture Showcase

It's been an amazing ten years that AMC Theaters have put on the Best picture Showcase. In 2007, there were only five films nominated, continuing a long tradition since the 1940s of only including five films in the top category. In 2009 there was a change in the nomination process and up to 10 films would be honored as Best Picture Nominees. That's when the Showcase evolved into a two day affair spread over two weekends. Since then we have had two years of ten nominations, two years of nine nominations and two years of eight nominations. While it is nice when extra films are included, the four a day weekends are a little easier to get through than the two five a day weekends they had when the rules first changed. Someday though, I hope to tackle the 24 hour marathon when they have eight to ten films play back to back in a single 24 hour period.

Shane, the AMC host for the event at Santa Anita

So this year, for some reason, I've not seen as many of the nominees as usual. That means I don't have a lot of reviews to link back to. I will try yo make my comments extensive enough to give you a sense of the film, without necessarily giving you a full review. 

Bridge of Spies

How it is that I missed a Steven Spielberg film, starring Tom Hanks and featuring Cold War spy intrigue is a mystery to me. I think that Mr. Spielberg has reached the point where everyone seems to take for granted that his films are going to be good. A bit like Meryl Streep, his movies get nominated a lot but don't usually end up taking the prose. This is his third nominated film in the last five years, he has had eleven Best Picture Nominations in his career, but only one has taken home the top prize. It gets to the point where we just expect great work from him and then don't need to confirm it with an award. As an artist with a high degree of consistency, Spielberg is hard to match and he has another excellent film with this movie.

The production design of this film is meticulous. The late fifties and early sixties are evoked in the subway rides and the vistas they reveal. Sometimes we are moving through an elevated train in Brooklyn, and other times crossing the border between East and West Berlin. The data that was being gathered by the Soviet agent is never described or explained, only the context of his arrest and the times. Tom Hanks Manhattan attorney works in the sort of firm you imagine would be found at the time, with big oak desks and solid doors with engraved nameplates to indicate the partner who's office we are in. The bleak apartments and prisons of the Communist dominated sections of Germany are contrasted with lush Western hotels and meeting rooms. Only the Soviet courtroom where Francis Gary Powers is convicted, has the grandeur of the western locations. 

Working without John Williams for the first time in forever, the music of Thomas Newman is dramatic without having a signature touch. Hanks is as usual excellent, but the stand out in a not quite wordless but certainly an economized set of lines is British Theater star Mark Rylance, playing a Soviet agent who remains unperturbed by his predicament. The impenetrable web of lies that the east Germans, Soviets and Americans  share with one another, has to be translated by the boy scout of an attorney played by Hanks, and there are national security issues in every step. It plays out effectively with the usual Spielberg professionalism and eye for details. The parallel images of boys jumping over neighbors back fences in New York and families being machine gunned as they try to cross the new wall in Berlin, is just one mark of that eye that Spielberg has for connecting the visual with the emotional. 

Room

I'm not sure I have recovered from seeing this movie yet. A dark story that will horrify and inspire simultaneously, "Room" may be the best acted film nominated this year. Young Brie Larson is almost certainly going to be the winner of the Best Actress award. Her portrayal of a wounded lioness trying to raise her cub while at the same time learning to live with the damage done to her was remarkable. She works with a child actor equally gifted at this stage, Jacob Tremblay. The two of them are the focus of the film almost entirely, even in scenes with other actors, including accomplished veterans, they form the kind of symbiotic performance that makes your heart melt in one moment and freeze in the next. 

The story is told effectively in the first half, with limited camera movement in a claustrophobic space that induces hopelessness. Even after the two emerge from the location of the first five years of young Jack's life, they seem to still be trapped in that space. It is surprising that Jack, who has known nothing but "room" his whole life is the one who exits the cocoon with the least amount of difficulty. His mother Joy seems at first to be ready to be back in the world but the trauma of her experience is more likely to haunt her for a much longer time than her tough little kid. The scene where her parents and step father sit and confront the elephant in the room will show you how everyone was traumatized by the experience and also give you hope that Joy can recover. Her philosophy toward her son and his existence is humane and righteous, and the fact that her father can't really deal with it crushes her despite her new won status. 

The story is never exploitative, which says a lot for the screenplay and the director. It could have been a horror film or a melodrama, instead it is an opportunity to consider the reality that all sorts of crime perpetrate on our psyches. You may recoil at the suggestion of the media that Joy may have missed an opportunity at one point to spare her child, unfortunately you will also recognize the brutal nature of the news to find any point of controversy to exploit for interest sake. She is a young woman who survived a horrible tragedy, finds a way to rescue herself and her child and then gets second guessed by someone who can't see that her life is still coming apart in spite of the fact that she is restored to her family. Anyone who doesn't love animals may not get it, but the healing power of both real and imaginary dogs will cover you with a final warm message. 

Mad Max: Fury Road

My third favorite film of the last year, Mad Max Fury Road is the kind of movie that I loved as a kid and would never expect to be nominated for Best Picture. Action films are often seen as mere entertainment and despite the fact that they have been put together in polished and inventive ways, they are mostly neglected at awards season. This is the fourth film in a series that has not been active for thirty years. As a reboot it expands the vision of the director and takes the real. in camera effects that make us movie fans, and puts them on the screen like they did in the days of Ben Hur. 

 There is also much more of story here than you may at first believe. While the whole movie is a chase film, it is also a film that empowers it's female characters and pushes back against the brutish domination of women that is often seen in action films. Charlize Theron and Nicholas Hoult are the real lead characters They play wounded souls who are aided reluctantly by the titular hero. 

The Big Short

I am clearly not as smart as I'd wish to be. Even with Margot Robbie in a bathtub and Anthony Bourdain making metaphors in the kitchen. a lot of the financial hocus pocus this film was trying to show us was invisible to me. I have a vague understanding of the concepts but an unclear vision of how it was carried out. In an interesting way, none of the groups pictured in this story are the bad guys. They saw what was coming and did make a killing on it, but they simply screwed the real bad guys, whop were the incompetent and indifferent Wall Street types everyone worries about.

Written and directed as if it were a thriller. "The Big Short introduces us to a variety of characters that deserve admiration for their acumen and criticism for their scruples. It was put together from a non-fiction work that tried to explain how the economic meltdown of 2008 came about. According to the screenplay, avarice and stupidity combined with circumstances to bring about a situation where the housing market collapsed on itself. A combination of economic gurus, hedge fund analysts and up and comers anticipated the collapse and created a way to short the market that greedy banks and investment houses were all too willing to try to take advantage of. 

The hit and run nature of the story does not give us much chance to care about the characters. We learn that Steve Carrell's character has a tragedy, that Christian Bale's character is a genius with no ability to connect to people, and that the character of Ryan Gosling is a weasel who simply cares about getting richer. Most of the action consists of people talking and screaming. Sometimes they are doing so in a humorous way, and every time they prove how stupid someone from an investment company. a government agency or a newspaper is, we get more depressed. After seeing "The Wolf of Wall Street" a couple of years ago, the director and screenwriter Adam McKay seems to have followed the director's crib sheet and he tells the story through narration, comic freezes, and outrageous moments of human foibles. It's a good film but I was not as impressed with it as I thought I might be. At least we skipped most of the drug use and sex parties of the Scorsese film. 

Next week, the other four films, two of which I have seen and look forward to seeing again.

Deadpool

Violent, vile, irreverent, and generally self aware, "Deadpool" has got to be the sort of film that fans of the Marvel comic book were looking for. Not being a comics guy myself, I can't say how true the film is to the spirit of the character, all I can say is that the film character makes me want to read the comics. This film was a blast from the start to the finish and it will make some people want to accalim it the greatest film ever and others predict the end of civilization as we know it. While it is substantially different from anything that has come before it, I can say that the spirit of the movie is in line with "Kick Ass" and "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World". It is not quite a parody of comic book films, but it does act as if those movies are there to be mocked, inspired by and definitely commented on.

Ryan Reynolds is playing this character for a second time. In "Wolverine Origins" he played the mercenary Wade Wilson. I saw that movie one time and I have a vague recollection of it, but I do know that a lot of people thought he was cast right and they immediately started lobbying for a stand alone "Deadpool" film. After the misbegotten "Green Lantern" it's a wonder that anyone let Reynold near another comic book character. Then he was in "R.I.P.D." and came close to never being in anything again. Someone had faith however and their faith has been rewarded. Reynold seems the perfect match for this comic icon. He starts as pretty boy gorgeous, and is transformed into mildly hideous, but only someone as good looking as he was could imagine that his true love would not be able to stay with him with the disfigurement caused by his mutation being released. Wade Wilson was not a good guy, but he was less bad than others and aware of his own faults to the point that he had a loose code of conduct. The condensed romance that serves as the background for most of the film is centered on the warped personalities of the two lovers more than mere physical attraction, and that is the ultimate payoff at the end of the story here.

The movie is filled with violence of the type that we have come to expect in a hard "R" rated movie. You will see dismemberment, decapitation, splattered brains and torture of a wide variety. If that does not appeal to you, stay way. If on the other hand those things are selling points for you, get ready for a steady diet of satisfying money shots with bad guys getting pummeled and the hero going full James Franco for one scene. All the while, Deadpool provides his own commentary track on the film and the actions. He is the one to make a reference to "127 Hours". He actually names the two main actors who have played Charles Xavier in the X-Men films. This character makes no pretenses toward being real or serious, he is a send up of all those other mutants that populate the Marvel Universe. His real super power is not that he is indestructible, it is that he can't shut up. Thank goodness because a steady stream of trash talk and sarcastic self reference keeps this moving along at a jolly clip.

Instead of getting into the plot, you can know all you need to know about the film by hearing about the opening credits. The actors are not listed by name, they are described by type "Villain with British Accent" for instance. Reynolds own cover of "People" magazine naming him as the "Sexiest Man Alive" is used as a throw away visual reference to his being in the movie. The writers give themselves the credit as the real heroes of the story. I laughed out loud from the very beginning of the film. The opening scene is actually a middle of the story event that we flash back and forth to several times during the film. The character, speaks to the audience as active observers and reminds us of points that have been made or will need to be returned to. The script is a miracle of filthy talk, childish humor and clever cultural references. It is delivered with a sardonic cynicism that plays exceptionally well to an audience overwhelmed by the number of super hero movies they have been subjected to in the past few years. "Deadpool" is a palate cleanser of sorts, designed to have all of the action of a comic movie, but built to entertain people who are jaded by those very action motifs.

Attitude is what this film is all about, bad attitude. You will be hard pressed to find a two minute segment where something is not offensive to someone. I did see several people bringing kids to the film and I wondered how they will explain the doggy style sex jokes to them when asked. There are references to erections, testicles and vagina's everywhere. I don't know what the old folks are thinking, but they better not complain because everyone was warned early on that this was not a safe X-Men movie. It still has a sense of fun for the non-vile people out there as well. Wait through the credits and you will get a Samuel Jackson joke and a tribute to 80s films as well. This may not be everybodies cup of tea, but I would certainly be happy to put on another pot and sit down to further afternoons with this irresponsible jerk, who is as funny as hell.

SPECTRE Reconsidered

There are very few films that I see in theaters more than once anymore. Except for the occasional classic, a return visit to a theater for a contemporary film is rarely needed. I have a subscription service through DISH and Netflix and Amazon give me plenty of opportunities to see recent films again, without having to make a trip. There are however exceptions and one of the film series that I will take in as often as possible in a theater is James Bond.

It is no secret if you have visited this site before that I am a 007 fanatic. I had a lot of fun last year coming up with 7 things I loved for each of the EON James Bond films. This was all in aid of the debut of SPECTRE, the most recent addition to the James Bond canon. As a fan there is always something satisfying about a new episode with 007, but it is also easy to be disappointed, especially in light of how great the previous chapter was. Inevitably, SPECTRE was going to suffer a little by comparison to the previous film. Bond's ancestral home is destroyed, his Aston Martin DB5 is massacred, and his boss steps off the stage in a thrilling ending with a villain that was exceptional. It's hard to find ways to make what comes next feel compelling. The screenwriters did find a hook to try and keep things at this heightened level, they make all of the events in the previous three Bond films the design of a secret organization with a strong hidden connection to 007 himself.

I suspect most Bond fans would have been happy to move on and start with some stand alone assignments. That's exactly the way I felt at the end of Skyfall, we were at a new beginning. To quote Michael Corleone, "Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in again."  SPECTRE ends up with a Jerry rigged connection to the three previous Daniel Craig films. I originally wrote that this was my biggest problem with the movie. I did not see the film as a failure, but I was less enthusiastic than I might have been. There was however a beacon of hope that might alter my opinion a bit. As an enthusiastic fan, I'd purchased a special pass that came as a steel engraved card with my name on it and the SPECTRE Octopus logo. It entitled me to see the film once every day, in any format that it was playing in at a Regal Theater. I took advantage of my financial commitment and as a result I have now seen the movie more than a half dozen times on the big screen. This has given me a chance to adjust to some of the rapid character points and clumsy plot development that I was originally hesitant about. It also gave me the ability to see a couple of things that are actually important to the ability of the Bond films to continue to entertain.

Ever since the departure of Pierce Brosnan as Bond, the producers have tried to get Bond back to basics and turn the character into a more reality based character. Gone are the invisible cars and avalanche surfing days. They have been replaced by extensive scenes of torture and casual cruelty. Casino Royale features a grim Bond freshly minted into the 00 ranks. His opponent LeChiffre is a terrorist financier who manipulates the situation through a romantic mole. It turns out that there is a secret figure behind the plot that emerges at the end, Mr. White. In the follow up, Mr. White is a figure in a mysterious consortium called Quantum, and they have their fingers everywhere, including at the side of M. Suddenly, this organization looks like it will be the main opponent for Bond in future films. When we move to the third Craig film though, Quantum has disappeared and it seems like a rogue hacker that Bond is up against. According to the plot of the current film all of these are linked together under an umbrella organization, with a name familiar to Bond fans from the 60s.

The conspiracy gets deeper, the violence levels affecting the general population gets greater, and Bond and MI-6 are like the boy plugging the dyke with their finger. At this point the series is getting murky and it begins to feel a little like an X-Files episode with the tag line "Trust No One."  I don't need a jet pack or submersible car, but I would like a little fun to go along with the adventure. In going "Bourne" the producers were at risk of losing much of what made James Bond fun for several generations. SPECTRE does not return us to the parody days of Brosnan and Roger Moore, but it finally does restore a sense of humor to the movie series. So let me spend some time praising the virtues a a little levity in the newest film.

The cold opening has a couple of moments that bring a smile to our faces. Bond stalks his prey behind a deaths-head mask and suit and has a local beauty for cover while he does so. When he gets her to the hotel room and kisses her, we might be expecting a romantic clutch but instead when she turns back to him after climbing on the bed, she is taken aback by his near instant transformation into a regular suit with an angry looking weapon at his side. He steps out and says he'll just be a moment. Finally a laugh in a Daniel Craig film. [To be fair there were a couple in Skyfall but this movie is clearly more engaged in Bond's humorous side.] He does get a Roger Moore moment when as the building that he shot into collapsed and then triggered a similar collapse in the one he is occupying, he ends up landing on a couch after dropping a couple of stories, with a sconce in his hand. A second laugh in the pre title sequence, this might be a laugh fest.

We also get a return to the traditional byplay with Miss Moneypenny. They don't quite flirt but it seems as if they could. When she delivers material to his apartment at night, there is a subtle joke about his lack of effort at decorating. When he reaches out to her in the middle of a car chase, at three in the morning, he comments on her having a male guest at her place at that time of night. This is the possessive James Bond we knew from the old days, paying attention only when it suits him.

Bond juxtaposes his bad ass assassin facade with a jesters grin when he dispatches two killers sent to kill the widow of his first target. She claims that it will be a no use for him to intervene because in five minutes there will be another killer at her door. His response "Just enough time for a drink." A little gallows humor to ingratiate himself with a key informant. Thank you Mr. Bond. When he boldly bluffs his way into a secret meeting of the phantom group, he  calls the screener an asshole as he introduces himself as Mickey Mouse, oh yeah, in Italian. When the head of SPECTRE reveals himself at the meeting to James, he does it with a little cuckoo call. The bad guys have a sense of humor as well.

Only one moment of humor feels exaggerated in a way that is similar to a Roger Moore Bond. During the car chase in Rome, Bond's DB10 ends up behind a slow moving mini-Fiat. The driver comically remains in front of Bond until pushed into a parking spot and then the airbag goes off. That felt very clown like. Bond's exit from the car before he parks it in the Tiber river is also a bit over the top, but only in the same way that the ejector seat was in Goldfinger.  Most of the humor in the film plays off of the way Bond expresses himself. He remains cool and cocky, even when being tied up to be tortured. They don't go quite as far as to make a joke based on the bad guy scratching his testicles (like they did in Casino Royale) but there is a moment of levity before Christoph Watlz reveals his character's new name. Bond speaks softly and greets the white Persian cat that walks across his lap in a casual way. No joke, just a moment of incongruous levity.

A second issue that I need to reconsider is the title song. When I first heard the Sam Smith tune "Writings on the Wall", I was underwhelmed. His breathy deliver and wan styling seemed too soft for a James Bond film. When you watch the opening credits and see the nude silhouette of Daniel Craig, surrounded by faceless girls and octopus tentacles, it is almost laughable.




But once you get over the novelty of that image, it is both frighting and sad, and that's what the story is ultimately about. The sadness of uncertainty, especially about love. The tune becomes a haunting reminder of all the losses for Craig's Bond, and the fear that he can never have the real love and stability that he professes to want. A lot of people have said that they see this movie as a remake of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. They believe the relationship with Madeleine is doomed. If that is true, then the music has perfectly captured that notion. I'm not a 100% convinced but I am a lot closer to seeing this as a lesser Shirley Bassey effort rather than a miserable Madonna failure.

My final criticism in the original review was about the climax of the film. The damsel in distress card is played and that is such a conventional moment. It was also arrived at quickly and without much sense. Madeleine leaves Bond abruptly, disappears and ends up tied to the railroad tracks, oops, sorry, tied up in the building about to explode, and Bond has to find her. Their exit from the building is really solid however and the music score pumps up the boat/helicopter chase pretty well. I love the fact that M,Q, and Moneypenny have something to do at the end, but it is a little disconcerting that the new intelligence agency, that is supposed to be state of the art, has no alarms, guards or obvious security. The anti-terror squad shows up at a helicopter crash in less than a minute, but the head of the new inter-agency intelligence network takes a header 15 stories down into the lobby of the headquarters and no one shows up except our crew.

Finally, although it comes before the credits, there is a bit of a stinger and the producers know exactly where to hit a real Bond fan to make us want more. A miraculous resurrection is lingered over with a shot of the historically significant gear shift knob, and 007s oldest ally comes in to slap us awake at the exit. Cue the original theme played over the scene in perfect placement and now I want to see the movie again and I can't wait until the next installment shows up.