National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

 

There are so many Christmas movies out there that it is sometimes tough to decide which ones to watch on an annual basis. In the case of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, there was never any doubt that this film would become a perennial for us.

Some people are over Chevy Chase and that's understandable. His personal Behavior and professionalism have always been question marks. What has never been in doubt however is whether or not he is funny. That man can make us laugh over the stupidest kinds of things. If there was going to be a Three Stooges of the later half of the 20th century, Chevy Chase would clearly have been one of those Stooges. He can take a board to the face, a slip down the stairs, or a prat fall off the roof, with the best of them. Frankly I started laughing in anticipation of some of those movements before they even happened in last night's screening.

Christmas Vacation succeeds on the shoulders of its star. There are lots of other films where The Supporting Cast can make up for a week lead. This however, is a film that can only succeed if Chase is in top form. In this movie he clearly is. His smirk, his sense of dignity even in the most ridiculous circumstances, and his rants, are all enough for us to ignore any of his personal failings and just enjoy 90 minutes with Clark Griswold and his family.

This film is the second Christmas movie I've watched in the last week that was written by John Hughes. It still has a very strong sense of humor but also a warmth that separates the movie from some of the Lesser Pretenders in the Christmas movie sweepstakes. In the end we are glad that Clark accomplishes what he set out to do, in spite of his sometimes frustrating behaviors. We know that he has a good heart and that he loves his family. Sure he may daydream about the beautiful girl at the lingerie counter, but he stays true to his wife and she in turn is his biggest Defender. He's even willing to put up with Cousin Eddie in spite of his clear dislike of his uncouth relative.

Randy Quaid is brilliant in the part of the dimwitted, thin skilled, hapless husband of Ellen's cousin. The fact that he has no job, no prospects, and no plan for Christmas gifts for his children are enough to make any of us frustrated with him. Yet he still manages to be somewhat lovable and it is as good heart that leads to the solution at the end of the movie that puts us all in the right Christmas spirit. But the movie splits our sides and warms our hearts and reminds us that family is important is the real reason that we should watch this annually. Oh yeah, and the fact that Chevy Chase gets smacked in the face repeatedly by Boards when he is trapped in the Attic. I'm not sure I ever heard my late wife laugh is hard as she did every time Clark stepped on one of those loose boards. The attic staircase crashing into his face was also a gut buster.

This movie has it all for me, there's a great deal of nostalgia, there are appropriate Christmas tropes, and there is entertainment value in just about every scene. The screening we attended last night at the Alamo Drafthouse was a film party where the audience was encouraged to participate in the screening. We were given small American flags to waive during the blessing. We had glow sticks that we waved around our heads every time Clark's house lit up. We even had pine scented air fresheners to open when the family is out searching for that perfect emblem of the Christmas season, the tree. The whole audience was happy to quote along with some of their favorite lines from the movie. No one wanted to spend their holiday dead. And I don't know Margo, is uttered with the complete disdain of 150 people simultaneously. In all it was a great night. I think I had the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby danced with Danny f****** Kaye.

Godzilla Minus One

I was a fan of Godzilla movies when I was a kid. There have been a number of us made films in the last decade that have tried to repeat the phenomena of the original Godzilla. Most of them have not been very successful, but there have been a few that have been Worthy of viewing. None of them, however, will measure up to the film “Godzilla Minus One”. This is the kind of movie that people who love Godzilla want to love. I was inspired to see this film after seeing many positive reviews from fellow bloggers. Everyone enthusiastically proclaimed this the best Godzilla film since the original in the 1950s. I can say that in my opinion those are not hyperbole but in fact an accurate representation of the film. “Godzilla Minus One” is set in a post World War II Japan and tells the story of Godzilla as if it is being told for the very first time. I won't describe the plot in great detail it is sufficient to say that a Japanese Aviator who had not been able to carry out his Kamikaze role returns to his home, which has been destroyed by the the war and he now must confront a new source of Destruction as the giant monster Godzilla begins to approach Tokyo. The fact of the matter is that most of the film is really a drama about dealing with the post-war economic situation for the Japanese. Our pilot basically adopts a woman and a child and takes on responsibility for them out of his guilt for failing during the war. There are a relatively small number of scenes that feature the actual Godzilla. Much of the film focuses on the human drama of the pilot, his adopted family, and the other veterans who are trying to figure out a way to stop the Kaiju. Most of the scenes of Destruction take place at the very beginning and in one long sequence on land. There are several action scenes where Godzilla destroys warships on the high seas. The CGI in this film is combined with some traditional man in a suit moments but the film still looks very good and the effects are convincing.

The work of the Japanese actors, who I am not going to name right now, is excellent. The lead struggles with his guilt and his anger and an unrequited love story. If you can do all of those things effectively you must be a pretty solid actor. I can recommend Godzilla - 1 to those fans of giant monsters, and to people who are interested in the characters that usually just get wiped out in these types of movies. This time we get a real story to go along with all the Mayhem. It feels like a fully formed film and not simply product, so that there is something to fill seats with during the summer. There have been over 30 of these Godzilla movies from the Japanese film industry, as well as a half dozen made by us and other National film companies. With the exception of the first Godzilla film, this is likely to be the one that is the most memorable, the most dramatic, and the one that is most deserving.

Home Alone In Concert (Revisit 2023)

 

One of my favorite concert experiences, is to see a film I love, with the score delivered by an orchestra. Earlier this year I had the chance to see "Star Wars" in Concert with the Austin Symphony Orchestra. I suspect that the music director of the symphony is a fan of composer John Williams (of course who isn't?), because this week, for the second time this year, a score featuring the music of Williams was featured accompanied by the film, in this case it was the holiday film "Home Alone". 

I was confident that I had written a post on this film before. I thought I might have seen it in a Fathom Event screening, so it would have been on my list of films I have covered. When I looked however, I found no record of having covered the movie before, so it turns out this will be a first time as well. "Home Alone" was the most successful film of 1990, and it shared end of the year financial records with "Dances with Wolves".  The Kevin Costner film ended up with all of the end of the year honors, but this John Hughes written, Christopher Columbus directed film ended up as the box office champ. So Kevin McCallister turned out to be the top Kevin of the year, at least when it came to money. The two Academy Award nominations that "Home Alone" did receive however, both went to John Williams, one for the song he wrote which Leslie Bricusse did the lyrics for, and a second for the score of the film.

Before I get to the music, a little at least about the film. Certainly, almost anyone reading this will have seen "Home Alone", it has become a Christmas Classic. It was the first 20th Century Fox film to be released to the sell through market on VHS, and became, along with E.T. the Extraterrestrial, the biggest selling video of the era. This movie has been in the heads of families for more than thirty years, and it has been parodied relentlessly as well as making a star out of Macaulay Culkin. The plot has been described by some as "Die Hard" with a kid.  Young Kevin, having been accidentally left behind by his family, defends the homestead from burglars played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. Amazingly, Pesci was also in the very different role of  Tommy DeVito, a murderous Mafioso, in theaters just a few weeks before this comic role. The combination of the two may have been the reason that his performance in "Goodfellas" was the sole Academy Award win for that film. 

Director Chris Columbus was responsible for adding the character of the neighbor, suspected of being a shovel killer, Mr. Marley. The character played so effectively by Roberts Blossom, is one of the things that raises the film from a slapstick farce to a more touching human comedy. The movie features several sequences where eight year old Kevin, speaks quite wisely, but still like a kid, and most of that works pretty well. His encounters with the checkout girl at the grocery store, and the Santa finishing his shift, let us believe a lot more in the final conversation with Marley in the church. Of course there is plenty of eye poking, three stooges type humor when the home invasion starts, so you can laugh and cringe simultaneously.  

The audience for the concert was wired for this experience from the very start. There was a noticeable amount of applause and cheering for the 20th Century Fox logo at the start of the film. Maybe some of the audience was like me, nostalgic for a classic film studio that no longer exists. The theme music plays throughout the picture, but it is in the last half of the film that the music soars, in part because of the chorale music and singing that occurs around the time Marley and Kevin have their conversation. In the concert hall, this was accompanied by a 70 person chorale of high school singers who came in and sat in front of the orchestra, after an intermission, which is invented by the event and not part of the original film. 

I have said it before to others when talking about this movie, it is so much better than it has a right to be and than you remember. I took my kids to see the film when they were four and two, neither remembers the experience but I do. We went with my best friend's family, they had two children the same age as ours, and we all enjoyed the movie as best as young kids could. It became a favorite of James, my friend's son. Three years later I lost my friend to cancer and his family dropped out of our lives, but I always think of them when I see this movie. Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals.

Die Hard (Revisit 2023)

 

There is nothing like seeing a movie in a theater to remind you of why you fell in love with a film in the first place. Regardless of the number of times I have seen a film at home, the experience of a theatrical presentation contains an electricity you just won't find anywhere else. Part of the effect comes from the sound system that will be so much more fine tuned in most theaters than you can achieve at home. Another part is the size of the screen, which, despite recent tech advances, is just not going to be 60 feet wide and thirty feet high. The biggest difference however, is that you have committed yourself to an experience, disruption free, with a willingness to be engulfed by the movie in front of you. That's what happened to me last night at "Die Hard".

I knew was engaged before the movie started, because the 20th Century Fox Logo that came up was squeezed and I was immediately on edge that something was wrong and the aspect ratio of the film would be off. That tension was short lived as when the film itself started, all was right. I frequently forget the opening section where John McClane is on the airplane arriving in Los Angeles. I should recall it because it is the reason John ends up without his shoes later on in the film. This was also my only exposure outside of MTV to "Christmas in Hollis" by Run DMC, which was not in heavy rotation on the classic rock stations I listened to. 

Speaking of music, I appreciate the stereo in the theater when I hear Ode to Joy in the background of several early scenes. The crescendo of that Beethoven masterpiece at the opening of the vault is a great use of classical music in an action film. McClane is a simple guy, with modest tastes and the everyday manner he conveys in in great contrast to the ostentatious Hans Gruber. The music sends a subtle reminder of these differences. 

The re are people out there who deny that "Die Hard" is a Christmas movie. For all of you doubters, I will refer you to my previous post on the subject: here. 

The Muppet Christmas Carol (Revisit 2023) Rockin' Around the Paramount

 

No apologies, no excuses, no doubt, The Muppet Christmas Carol is the best version of the Charles Dickens story and as a result, the best Christmas movie out there. Years ago on the LAMB, we had a voting bracket that established this film as supreme over all other holiday movies, including "Die Hard". The reasons are very straightforward, Michael Caine and the Muppets.

Michael Caine is not a singer by nature, but then neither was Rex Harrison. Both of those actors can do a walk through of the songs in their respective films, and talk their way through a song with enough rhythm and inflection to fool us into thinking they sing. Harrison was acting against Audrey Hepburn who's voice ended up being dubbed. Caine is singing opposite Kermit the Frog, Gonzo the Great and a dozen other Muppet characters, so he has to work especially hard.

Because Caine plays it straight, the film works dramatically, even though there is Muppet Mayhem everywhere. The story is one of redemption, and Scrooge's encounters with the Muppet ghosts are really effective. The Ghost of Christmas Present is especially moving as he relates the situation of the Cratchetts to Scrooge, who suddenly seems to be awakening to his own indifference. The look on Caine's face when he sees his nephew revealing that the unwanted creature of the guessing game they are playing is Ebenezer Scrooge. 

Getting a chance to see this heartwarming film on the big screen again is great, that it was at my new favorite spot in my new hometown was even better. The Paramount was packed to the rafters for the show. There were some pre-show activities that we skipped because we were meeting a friend for dinner, but the atmosphere was exactly the tone you want for a holiday outing. 

If there is a third component to the success of the film, it would be the songs by composer Paul Williams. The melodious transition songs are fine but the highlight is the opening number that introduces Scrooge and gives an active part to most of the Muppets in the film.  The wordplay is delightful and sets the tone for the film. 

I was shocked to hear on the Podcast the other day, that my frequent guest, occasional substitute host, and friend, Howard, has not seen this version of A Christmas Carol. If you , like Howard, have not yet found this movie, I strongly encourage you to make an effort to watch, maybe even on Christmas Eve. The Muppet Christmas Carol can put both the Grinch and Scrooge, and maybe even Krampus, in a real Christmas spirit. The fact that this was the first Muppet Project after the death of Jim Henson, makes its quality a sweet comment of the genius of the man who created the performers in this film. God Bless us, everyone. Especially you Jim Henson.

Love Actually (Revisit 2023)

 

This film came out twenty years ago, and that was seven years before I started this blog. That means that this is the first time I have had an opportunity to include it for the main purpose of this site, which is theatrical presentation of movies. Sure, I occasionally have a special post or retrospective, but my real goal is to document my own experiences in a theater and this is the first time I have seen "Love Actually" in a theater since it's original release. 

In the twenty years that have elapsed between then and now, this movie has had a rollercoaster of a ride in the circles I travel in on-line. First it was promoted by fans as a new Christmas Classic, to be repeated annually as part of your holiday. Then there was a backlash, criticisms that it is just a rom-com, treacly at times and unworthy of much respect. Then there was a ten minute charity short in 2017, and the film's love quotient went up again. If you look at a site like Rotten Tomatoes, you will see very divergent views of the film.  Let me say right now, I actually love this film. I bathe in the warmth of the relationships , in spite of some of the contrivances. I enjoy the thought that Great Britain is a nation that is clean, quirky and tolerant of eccentricities. There are moments in the film that make me laugh out loud, and there are sentiments that bring a tear to my eye. I suppose that the film is a sort of Rorschach test for film watchers, it is capable of separating the cynics from the sentimentalist with ease.  

The opening segment of the movie sets up the optimistic tone of the stories. The scenes of actually people greeting loved ones at the airport, and the narration by Hugh Grant, lays out a thick layer of sentiment that will cover the next two hours in various ways. The fact that the stories are mostly interconnected, gives us a little bonus puzzle to work on as we suck up the warm fuzzies. There is a musical segment at a wedding and there is one at a funeral, and they both work. Brothers and sisters connect and divide in just about every storyline, and the struggle of a step father to help his child, while simultaneously grieving for his lost wife, may seem like it is laying it on a bit thick, the winsome performance of the child and the honesty of Liam Neeson, sell it for me.

It is not automatically a picture worthy of love, simply because Bill Nighy and Billy Bob Thornton are in it, but I will say that it pushes me a long way into accepting the film with that casting. Nighy's Billy Mack made the audience laugh every time he was in a scene. Billy Bob channels both the lecherous Bill Clinton and the demanding George Bush into one character. His time in the movie is brief but impactful. Although Hugh Grant belittles many of his films and disliked doing the dancing scene in this movie, he still has the charisma and comic chops to pull off what might otherwise be a impossible version of a high ranking political figure. 

To me, the romantic highlight of the film is the last section of Colin Firth's story, as he travels back to France, to locate the Portuguese woman he has fallen in love with, and speaks in broken vocabulary to her and the assembled crowd at the restaurant she works at. The hope for love, in the unlikely circumstances is one of the things that all of us are motivated by at times. The sweetness of the characters, in spite of what might be seen as incorrect these days, overcomes my bullshit detector and just makes me want to feel the way so many of the characters in this movie do at the end of the day. 

White Christmas (Revisit 2023)

 

When I was younger, I thought of the movie "White Christmas" as a clunky Hollywood story, trying to manufacture a Christmas Movie. It was ok but never a favorite. As I have gotten older, I tend to appreciate some of the finer aspects of the film and I have come to a completely different conclusion, "White Christmas" is a delight and deserves repeated visits, although maybe every other year rather than annually. 

Six years ago, I attended a sing along presentation of the film at the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. When shared with a couple thousand other fans of the film, it is so easy to overlook some of the clunky elements and instead, revel in the joy that so many sequence evoke. The story will take care of itself, the drama is not really what we come to a movie like this for anyway. We are here for the glorious dancing and singing parts, and the performers that make you long for the golden age of Hollywood.

I have always been a fan of Danny Kaye. Every time I see Bing Crosby in a movie, I also appreciate why he was the biggest star in the world at one point. These two guys are unparalleled entertainers, who knew where their lane was and filled that groove with the things we craved.

Bing smoothly croons all of his songs with such a lightness of effort that it might make you wonder if he is not just an AI creation. Of course it doesn't hurt when the songwriter was the amazing and prolific Irving Berlin. Danny Kaye does a beautiful job matching him in the duets and brings a comic liveliness  to the proceedings.

I especially liked the number "The Best Things Happen When You're Dancing". Kaye and the terrific Vera Ellen, glide across a dance set that includes a water feature and fences which allow them to twirl, leap and gracefully fall into one another's arms. The director of the film was Michael Curtiz, who directed two of my favorite films, "Casablanca" and "The Adventures of Robin Hood". He worked with the choreographer to stage some beautiful moments in this sequence and he clearly knew how to make the rest of the film come together as well. The film was the highest grossing film of it's year and for a decade, the highest grossing musical ever. 

With so many segments that are backstage musical moments, the movie does feel a little long, and some of those segments are completely unrelated to the story. That does not matter however, because you want to enjoy them anyway. So Danny Kaye, making fun of modern choreography, and a Vera Ellen dancing segment, or Rosemary Clooney doing a torch song solo in a nightclub, all make the movie luxurious in production, if not efficient in storytelling. 

I'll just say that I swam in the warm waters of nostalgia, smiling for two hours, and glad that there was nothing more pressing in the film than being entertained. The production is spectacular, the look of the film is beautifully colored, and the final rendition of the title song should give you the  " hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny f##king Kaye."

Dream Scenario

 

Nicolas Cage is not only a fine actor, and an interesting character, but he has also become a somewhat cultural icon in the cinema world. His quirky performances intrigue audiences, and the shift in his career to quick, often violent direct to video fare has sometimes diminished his star but not the iconic status. If anything, those plethora of forgettable action films have created an even bigger footprint for social impact by painting his career with a slightly damaged tint. With that in mind it is perhaps essential that he is the star of the new film "Dream Scenario". In some ways it reflects the trajectory of his own story. 

The central character of Paul Matthews is a perfectly nice guy, but a bit of a shlub.  He is enthusiastic when teaching his classes, but like many college professors, his enthusiasm is not enough to encourage his students. At home, he seems to have a playful relationship with his somewhat emasculating wife, but it is never as warm as a deep relationship needs to be. His teen daughters regard him with the parental distain that most teens have, although there is love and not anger there. He is an everyman without any special or exceptional gift. That is until he starts appearing in other people's dreams. At first he is merely a passive observer, much as he is in life. Yet the phenomena of his presence in so many other people's dreams, makes his everyday status disappear in a flurry of social media activity. 

At this point, the film seems to become a vehicle for criticism of our obsessions with fame. Does going "viral" have any worth? Will it give a person the power to expand their horizons? That is the existential question of the film. Paul has to confront the shortcomings in his life in some fairly brutal ways. The screenplay is not just focused on Paul, although he is the catalyst for events, it also questions our gullibility as to what this sort of fame might mean. There is a sequence, which is painful to watch, where an internet start up, struggles to spin Paul's fame into gold. The monetization of our lives is critiqued by a pitch for a soda product. 

Cage brings an overwhelming sense of being overwhelmed to the film. He is oblivious at first to the dangers the scenario entails, and when real life intrudes on the viral mania, it becomes humiliating and provokes a change in the nature of his existence in other peoples dreams. That shift produces the inevitable canceling of Paul, thus offering a further negative judgment of our social media dominated society. Cage conveys futility in a way that reminds me of that scene in Fargo, where William H. Macy is scraping off the window of his car after being frustrated by his father-in-law. Arms flapping in fury and incapable of expressing it in words. 

The film is comedic at first but it makes some dark turns that will leave you a little down at the end. Not that a film needs to be upbeat, but this one is being sold as a light comedy, and that is not what it is. This film reminded me a bit of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" with Ben Stiller from a few years ago. There are some insightful moments that are amusing, but it goes deep and that can be a bit of a downer after the comic moments. 

Silent Night

 

I admire director John Woo and as I have confessed in the past, revenge films are my guilty pleasure. So it gives me no joy to report that the new film "Silent Night", mostly failed to satisfy me. The disappointment is not a reflection of the action scenes, which are effectively staged. Nor is the let down based on the shortage of blood and revenge deserving victims, there was plenty of both. I think the problem that I had is that the conceit was just not necessary and it limits the emotional engagement that I felt throughout the film. The conscious choice that the script and the director make, keeps drawing attention to the film making and thus distances me from the emotional catharsis I am seeking.

If you are unaware, this is a mostly dialogue free film. Except for a couple of whispered words and disembodied voices on radios and intercoms, there is no speaking. That may seem like an advantage when your lead is Joel Kinnaman, an actor who for me at least has been charm free for the last dozen years. His visual range in this movie is so narrow, that I am confused as to why I am mostly unaffected by it. He gets to play anguish and anger. Not to give anything away, but Brian Godlock, Kinnamen's character, suffers a tragic loss that drives him into an angry depression that his equally devastated wife cannot endure. His emergence from a zombie like state only occurs when he commits to a plan that he sets a date of December 24th to complete. That date is the anniversary of the tragedy, and his goal is laid out in three words on a calendar, "Kill Them All". For me, that was the emotional high point of the movie. He finally states what we all are there for, so you would think that the build up and execution of that plan would be satisfying, but it was not.

Everything Brian does to get ready is a cliché, which is fine but could use something to distinguish those moments. There is nothing that elevates these scenes above the obvious. Brian goes into physical training and all the pull up, sit up, weight lifting moments are repeats of beats that we have seen in a bunch of Rocky films and other movies in this genre. The fidelity to the trope, along with the absence of any personality other than a grim determination, left me cold. The same is true with the sequences where Brian acquires a car and a cache of weapons, that would make a prepper blush, they just lay there and do nothing. I think maybe the character has to make some sardonic comment or grim forecast, for these sequences to have the emotional punch that you get from most revenge films. 

There is a hint that the police detective, who is investigating the crime that started this whole chain reaction, is secretly in league with Brian. They appear to have crossed paths and Brian gets some information from subterfuge, but that is as far as it goes until the climax. How Brian manages to stakeout and detail the work of the gang he is after is not really explained. The struggle for answers should be a part of the revenge plot but it is mostly skimped over. The interrogation of one of the gang members includes a fight sequence that should be informing us that this task will not be easy. Of course when the action starts, it is as if John Wick is simply occupying a different environment. 

Look, I still enjoyed the movie. The car scenes were intense, the hand to hand combat was brutal, and th gunplay is full of the John Woo touches that we have come to expect. It just did not hook me the way other films of this ilk have done in the past. Instead of a masterpiece from a master, I feel like I got an experiment that was interesting but not very involving. 

Arthur Christmas (Revisit)

 

Like a lot of people, when the Christmas season rolls around, we have a long list of holiday themed movies that we want to visit with. This year is the 40th Anniversary of "A Christmas Story", a film I saw in theaters when it opened, and I predicted that it would become a holiday perennial. I made the same prediction about this movie twelve years ago. I don't know how it is at your house, but I can say for sure that we have not missed seeing "Arthur Christmas" in the last decade. This year we got to experience it again on the big screen.  

This Aardman Studios film feels like a computed animated version of one of their stop motion movies. It has an off kilter sensibility, endearing characters, and a plot that is not at all unfamiliar but still comes with a great number of surprises. Very few other holiday efforts in the last few years have managed to pull off the level of excellence in story, humor and heart that "Arthur Christmas" has managed. I want to give a shout out to the voice cast at this point. When I wrote about this on the original post, I simply said it was a cast populate with English actors, the kind of voices and accents that we Americans find charming. So I was charmed by James McAvoy, Jim Broadbent, Bill Nighy, Hugh Laurie, Robbie Coltrane, Andy Serkis and many more. 

Ultimately, this is a family movie because it is about a family. It just so happens that the family it focuses on is the Claus family. The current Santa is reluctant to retire, although he is beginning to resemble Joe Biden as a leader of his people, you know, forgetful, passing work off to the underlings, slightly bumbling. Steve, the heir apparent is competent at the technical parts of the job, but he seems out of his depths when it comes to the children and the spirit of the holiday. Arthur is the eager beaver, bull in the china closet. He enthusiastically embraces Christmas, but he is just as likely as not to break something on his way to trying to do the right thing. Grand Santa, resents having to have retired and wants to show off that the old ways were better than the new. So there is plenty of family drama here, but it is leavened with the droll antics of the elves who populate the North Poll and allow the Santas to accomplish their jobs.

The goal of any good Christmas movie is to warm your heart and put you in the spirit of the season. "Arthur Christmas" does that with a fun story and some brilliant comic moments, while still having a solid dramatic core. When a game piece from a board game can provoke a tear in your eye, you know that you have been in good hands. 

Napoleon

 

This is a late post, I left for an extended trip right after this and I am only now circling back to write about the film. Ridley Scott has usually been a reliable indicator for me that I should be seeing a film, but there have been some that just did not interest me to begin with (Exodus Gods and Kings and The Counselor come to mind as films I deliberately skipped). I am a bit of a history buff so the subject was strong enough to pull me in alone but with Scott navigating and Phoenix starring, I was relatively confident I'd be OK. 

As a longtime movie goer, I know not to get my history from a Hollywood production. Nevertheless, I suspect that a biopic is likely to have some major points about the subjects life correct and I have to admit that my knowledge of Napoleon extended only so far as his reign as Emperor and his final downfall and exile. The sketch of his rise to power in the revolutionary era was interesting, and I assume it was not too fictionalized, since it did not seem to effect any of the personal story plotlines we did get.

The relationship with Josephine was certainly dramatized, but the key events of their life together, the circumstances in which she was living, his position at the time, their wedding and the reasons for the end of that union were all presented in a matter of fact manner. Where I can certainly see the divergence for dramatic purpose is in the sexual encounters between them and the status and power games they played with one another. Whether she was his one true love is a issue of drama rather tahn history, so I was willing to enjoy the story as it was set out.

The order of the battle sequences and the politics involved seem to be accurate, although the battles themselves have almost certainly been enhanced for cinematic purposes. The clever strategy used in taking the fort at Toulon is depicted as a well shot cinematic battle, not necessarily the way things really took place. The Battle at Austerlitz is similarly enhanced I'm sure to make it a visual spectacle for the big screen. The tumultuous retreat and the artillery use to break the ice under the feet of the withdrawing forces, is beautifully and horrifyingly rendered for the film.

Napoleon was certainly a lot more complex than the military leader presented in this film. Joaquin Phoenix seems physically right for the role, but his understated voice and occasional mumbling do not seem to engender those qualities that made Napoleon a favorite of the French citizenry.  Vanessa Kirby is an alluring Josephine, and a good match for Phoenix, although the portrayal of her as a wanton woman, unsatisfied with her physical relationship with the Emperor seems a little overdone. I have heard criticism of the film from some sources but I found it a reasonable presentation of an important historical figure. It may not have the fidelity to the truth that some other biopics have, but I found it very watchable. Some people might be bored, but I thought the film brought the characters to life enough for me to relate to them a bit.       

The Marvels

 

This will not be seen as one of the top tier MCU films, and it may not even be mid-level MCU, but at worst it is near the top of the bottom tier of these films and as such it still offers some entertainment value. I am seeing this two weeks after the disastrous opening weekend, and a week after the movie crashed with a 78% decline in admissions. I was obviously not motivated enough by publicity, the characters or a story line, to make it an essential film. I had always planned on seeing it but it was going to wait, the only reason I went today is that someone else was choosing the movie. I am not disappointed that I waited, but I was also not disappointed in the film, it is fine.

One of the reasons for hesitating is that the film leans heavily into some of the MCU Streaming series that I have not seen or that I only can recall vaguely. Monica Rambeau is a character that started out in the original "Captain Marvel" film from 2019, and then evolved in the streaming service show "WandaVision". I seem to recall that there was an event in the show that might have transferred powers to her, but I only saw that show one time, and it was three years ago, and frankly, that plot seemed superfluous to the rest of the series. As for Ms. Marvel, the other series that contributes a character to this movie, I have not seen any of it. The most I saw of  Kamala Khan before today was in the trailer for this film, and she seemed like a breath of fresh air about to arrive in the strum and dang of the Marvel Films. 

The exposition in this film to bring we unenlightened viewers into the story, is not very artistic and it is quite truncated. However, it was clear enough to explain who the good guys were, who the bad guys were and a little bit about heir powers. Nick Fury shows up, and I think there is another TV series that features his character that would fill in some blank spots and maybe help make all of this a little more coherent. As it is, I shrugged my shoulders and went along for the ride, and tried not to worry too much about all that I was not privy to, and instead focus on what I was seeing in this story. I appreciated that the movie was a lot shorter than many of the recent films in this series have been, but that sometimes means that the obstacles the heroes face are unclear, their powers seem inconsistent, and the solutions seem to be a bit more ex machina than I would like. 

There are some elements of the movie that are entertaining, but are completely artificial and seem to be bizarre to begin with. The Skrull are now living on another planet that is being threatened by a Kree faction. How they got there, what connection Carol Danvers had with their presence in that location, and what Nick Fury is supposed to be doing about it all is never answered. We get a reference to quantum entanglements, which appears to be the tool the brain trust behind this movies, is going to use as a crutch to justify whatever new plotline they can come up with. The sequence on the planet Aladna, feels like a lost segment from "Flash", the 1980 comic book misfire, beloved by many but stupid beyond reason. 

Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel, steals the film as far as I am concerned. Her gee whiz adulation of Carol Danvers Captain Marvel is funny and will be something all the comic book geeks in the audience should appreciate. Her hysterical reactions to some of the events in the movie provoke enough laughter to keep the story fairly light. Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau was fine, although her tense relationship with Danvers is a bit forced and noting comes from it except a brief moment of tacked on drama. Brie Larson continues to be the sardonic hero, Captain Marvel, who has powers that surpass all other characters in the MCU, although she gets tossed around by secondary guard characters without much difficulty, so how is that possible? 

If you are looking for consistency in plot quality, you will not find it here. If you want the MCU to expand and the Avengers to be a central part of that expansion, you will only get a small fraction of what you are looking for. If you want a little entertainment, strung together around some impressive effects that signify things that you will not understand or care about, well now you will get your ten bucks worth of investment. "The Marvels" is not all it could be, but at least it is not "the Eternals", and for that you can be grateful. 

Thanksgiving

 

If you remember seeing "Grindhouse", the two film collaboration between Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, you will probably also remember that there were trailers between the two films. The fake trailers included two that were subsequently turned into actual films; "Hobo with a Shotgun" and "Machete". We now have a third film based on those fake trailers, "Thanksgiving" is also directed by Eli Roth, who made the fake trailer for a film titled "Thanksgiving" for the 2007 Grindhouse project. Not to disparage the other films, but "Thanksgiving" turns out to be the best of the bunch, at least until "Don't" or "Werewolf Women of the S.S." get made.

After the success of "Halloween" back in 1978, there were dozens of films that took holiday themes to the slasher market. "Friday the 13th", "April Fool's Day", "My Bloody Valentine", and many more. Roth's trailer for "Thanksgiving" is a parody and salute to those types of films. The full film does a great job of following that inspiration by repeating many of the tropes from those films. There is a foundational event that prompts a revenge scheme, we get a masked killer, the deaths are often played out as holiday related events, and there is macabre humor in just about all of it. 

This film is very satisfying to those who enjoy a dark humored look at American Traditions and horror films. The opening section includes a scene that reminds us of real world horrors associate with Black Friday sales at department stores. Unruly crowds are pretty darn scary without throwing in the gore, but why skip the gore when you are doing a parody like this, Eli Roth doesn't. He lays it on thick with his frequent use of skin being removed from the body by accidental means. Shopping carts and restaurant freezers are not benign objects in this movie. There are plenty of decapitations, stabbings, strangling's and assorted other mayhem to keep all of the gore-hounds engaged, but it is all delivered with a large tongue inserted into a cheek. When a severed body is displayed next to a 50% off sign, you know that this is not meant to be taken seriously. 

With one major plot exception, the film plays out the crimes with a pretty straightforward fidelity to law enforcement investigation. There has to however, be a point at which logic gets defied, and the results show up to start the third act. The creation of a mythical character, John Carver, as the avatar of the killer almost works. Like the Baby masks in "Happy Death Day", this allows for suspicions to be cast on a variety of supporting characters and it adds the requisite mystery to the plot. There are a few moments that brush up against the torture porn that Roth has been known for, but I think it mostly stays this side of being prurient.

There are not a lot of holiday films that feature Thanksgiving as their central premise. It's nice to have one more to add to the list, and especially one as self aware and entertaining as this one is. So fill your plate, over indulge and forget leaving room for dessert, the main course will fill you up and as the tagline says, "There will be no Leftovers". 

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: Bite the Bullet

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.

Bite the Bullet

I have been extremely busy the last couple of weeks, including travel. This is a repost of two entries on a 1975 film that I love, but did not have time to watch again fore the project. 

Next time someone tells you everything is available on line, try to get them to find the original trailer for this movie. I looked all over the place and could not find it.

[As you can see above, this has changed since the original post]

That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, but I suspect that may be the case.

Sometimes, you have to make due with what you have. I have this movie on a DVD that goes from a letterbox format for the credits to a pan and scan version for the rest of the film. This is really too bad because a lot of the pleasure in this movie are the vistas and wide-screen images of the contestants in this horse race. The scanning seems to take some of the grandeur and a lot of the energy out of the story, (at least as I remembered it.)


I saw this movie at the Chinese theater, on the big screen. Of course at the time there was only one screen at the Chinese Theater. There are actually quite a few westerns on my list, which is a little surprising since the 70's were supposed to be the death of the western. It so happens that this particular Western stars my favorite film actor Gene Hackman. I looked over his filmography, and for a guy who got started in the business in the late 60's, he has actually made a lot of Western Films. Earlier this week, we came across Zandy's Bride, which I had nearly forgotten and came out a year earlier. Gene Hackman was a big star at this point, he was cast as the leading man a couple of years earlier in "The Poseidon Adventure" but he has always been a character actor to me. When he plays a part, he is the charater he is playing not the star. In "Bite the Bullet" he is the first lead but really just one of a dozen characters that make up the story.

This film features a 700 mile horse race across deserts, over mountains and through forests. There are gunfights, action, dramatic twists and a sense of history as things go on. Hackman and James Coburn play two of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders a few years after the Spanish-American War. The modern is mixed with the old west at a time when the world was in fact changing. Ben Johnson basically repeats his role as the last of a dying breed from the Last Picture Show. Candice Bergen is the female lead in a pretty solid part for a woman in a movie like this. This same month she was starring in "the Wind and the Lion", so it was pretty clear she was Box Office at this moment in time. There are other familiar faces as well, but I want to take special note that this was the period of time that Jan-Michael Vincent was ascending and he was very promising in the movie. It is a shame that drugs and alcohol sidelined a guy who could easily have taken over a lot of leading man roles in the next few years.

Opening the movie is a prologue that introduces several character, including the wealthy owner of the favored horse and the newspaper people that are sponsoring the race. It was a little odd that there was so much time devoted to those story arcs and that they basically disappear from the movie. The only thing I felt was unsatisfying about the film was the last ten minutes of the race. The result was fine, but there is no resolution for some characters and it feels like an epilogue would have been appropriate. I recall that the film got a very fine review from the LA times when it opened; probably Charles Champlian wrote the review, he was the main critic at the Times in those days. This movie seems largely forgotten now, which is too bad because it is a good action film with some realistic situations and characters. It runs off the track a bit in the last act, but that can be forgiven pretty easily.

POST #2

This is an update to a post I did nearly two years ago on one of the Original Movie A Day Project Films. I have long wanted to see Bite the Bullet in it's original widescreen form, but it has not been available. The version in the original post was a pan and scan DVD that I acquired for a very modest price. You can find my original comments here. "Bite the Bullet" was a big scale Western at a time that such movies were dying out. It features a brutal 700 mile horse race across deserts and mountains and plains. It is perfect for a director to compose shots that will fill that screen with those vistas and also show the characters in relevant space. A month ago I read a review of a Blu Ray release of Bite the Bullet and went in search of it. It turns out that the film was not being mass marketed but was a specialty release with only 3000 copies being produced. None of them was available at any of my local retail outlets so off to the internet I flew. I could buy a new copy on Amazon for $36 plus shipping. I found a used copy on ebay for thirty and went for it. I am happy to say that it was worth the investment. I still think the last few minutes of the movie are underdeveloped, but the rest of the film looks spectacular.

There is an early shot of two trains passing each other in a railroad yard that would cut out one of the trains in the pan and scan version. Since the character we are following would need to stay in the frame, a severely cropped for television version leaves out a side of the picture. Here one gets a greater sense of the enormous changes that are taking place in the world at this time because of the trains passing each other in what might charitably be called a small town. Later shots of the railway also cut out the whole train in the shots, but here we get to see it as it moves across a bridge or travels though a forest. These are mostly little points in the movie, the real use of the widescreen comes in the horse race scenes, especially those set in some wide desert vistas. In the current widescreen Blu ray, we can see shots that include several of the contestants in the race at once, although they are clearly a great distance from one another. The empty spaces between them emphasize the desolate nature of the environment. In some later scenes, the layout of the territory in a chase and prison break makes more sense because of the way we can view it. There is a scene in which Gene Hackman's character chases down Jan Michael Vincent and lays into him for the negligent way he has treated his horse, it has more drama and excitement in it with the space not being as condensed as in the pan and scan version.

This was one of the first times I remember seeing the death of a horse from exhaustion being visualized in such a dramatic way. John Wayne's horse in True Grit gives up the ghost when he is trying to get Maddie Ross back to the trading post. Here, we see all of the horses perspiring and covered in foaming sweat. Their legs are shaky and the riders are either tender and cautious or reckless and indifferent. As the animals are falling in the sand or rolling down a hillside, the broad view makes us much more aware of how difficult the race really would be. I am very satisfied with the quality of the picture and the extra price was worth it to me. One more comment about the movie that is unrelated to it's presentation. Hackman has a great piece of dialogue about the charge at San Juan Hill that his character was supposed to be a part of. It sounds at first like it is going to be a sucker punch slam at the Spanish American War and Teddy Roosevelt. Instead it reminds me,and I hope you, of why Theodore Roosevelt was in fact one of our greatest leaders. After having his glasses shot off and his arm nicked, Roosevelt rallies the Rough Riders to storm the hill. Hackman's character says that they didn't follow out of a desire for victory, or to promote freedom. They went willingly with Roosevelt into the rain of death from above because they would have been ashamed not to. If it's not a true story, it feels like one.

The Killer

 

As always, If I see a film in a theater, you will read about it here. I noticed several comments on-line that castigate this film as boring or even dreadful. I was very surprised at that evaluation because my experience was far from that. I enjoyed the heck out of the film, it has a slight throwback style that may not be satisfying to adrenaline junkies, but hits the spot with those of us who are interested in plot and character. Which may seem a bit strange because we know very little about the main character of this film, not even his real name, but in the long run, that is the point.

There are plenty of films about paid assassins out there. Most of them are focused on the job at hand or the intrigue behind the murder in the first place. This film essentially does not give a damn about those well worn paths, instead, it focuses on logistics and the kind of character that is needed to be a success in this business. Michael Fassbinder is playing a guy doing his level best to remain faceless and anonymous. We get to see the level of detail that he puts into his work. The meticulous set up and clean up of his job takes the first twenty minutes of the film, and when the job goes wrong, we see what discipline it takes to get away clean.  The movie reminded me early on of the Charles Bronson 70s classic "The Mechanic". In that film, we have a dialogue free opening ten minutes, and it is an excellent primer on how to tell a story visually. "The Killer" does not remain silent in the opening section, the main character is providing a voiceover to his actions. Most of the time he is explaining the principle behind his craft, not the details of it's execution, we see those being played out. 

There are action sequences but they usually come after a slow build up to the scene. For instance, there is a truly brutal fight scene that entails significant jeopardy to the main character, but first we see the stalking of the target. That process involves a lot of sitting in the car, waiting for other characters to act, and then a tentative approach to the subject. When the fireworks start, they are pretty elaborate with frequent changes in who is dominating the combat, and consequences for most of the physical actions. While lacking the perspective that we might have for John McClane, we can still feel the brutality and notice some of the aftereffects. That makes this movie feel a lot more authentic than some of the action cartoons that pass themselves off as drama in cinema's these days. 

I wonder if the reason that some of the people who are not reacting positively to the film comes from the fact that they watched this on Netflix rather than seeing it in a theater. As always, the theatrical experience forces you into a relationship with the film that is substantially different than the one you will have in your own home. The passage of time feels different and more immediate. The absence of ambient noise or side conversations press us into focusing on what is on the screen in a different way. The score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is propulsive without being in your face. The story transitions are smooth and fun to watch as the character makes his way from Europe, to the Dominican Republic, to the U.S. , and there is a running joke about the aliases he uses that some parts of the audience might miss but they got a chuckle out of me each time. 

Up front, the Killer himself talks about how dull his profession can be, because it involves so much waiting and watching. He goes to great lengths to avoid having to improvise. Sure it's fun when some character can Macguyver up a bomb with kitchen chemicals and a microwave, but that would be an anathema to our protagonist, who sticks to the plan, fights only the designated fights, and sees empathy as a weakness. The character has no story arc it is true, the fascination comes from watching how sticking to his foundational process works. It forces him to make choices that other screenwriters would have found a conventional way out of.  While we are spared having to watch him disassemble a body for disposal, we know he is doing it because that is what is called for. 

There are at least two times in the film when we could expect a screenwriter to try and inch the character away from his own manifesto, but the authors of the graphic novel that the film is based on, and the screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, stay true to their character. The detachment the lead feels from his job, is aty odds with the relationship that powers the majority of the film. As a wounded subject, we might expect there to be emotional justification for his actions. The story never makes a point of his emotions in the murders he commits after the failed original mission. He simply puts his professional face on for a personal retribution that maybe lacks the satisfying punch that most revenge films seek, but nevertheless gets the job done. His confrontation with the Tilda Swinton character is a perfect example of how his professionalism can be seen as dull, but we also get to see it is the reason he is efficient. Director David Fincher allows stories to unfold in their own time. "Zodiac" and "Gone Girl" show us dramatic moments as they might play out, without the theatrics if an edited, rock score propelled sequence. If you are looking for a "Goodfellas" moment, there isn't one. There is just the cool, mannered and meticulous pathology of the Killer and his director.  

The Holdovers

 

There seems to be a long line of movies about students and teachers at elite boarding schools. From "Goodbye Mr. Chips" to the "Harry Potter" series, something about the confines of elite education seems to fascinate us. Often the stories focus on the conflicts between rich entitled students and their poorer scholarship counterparts. Sometimes it is the ennui that privilege seems to inflict on the rich kids, which an inspirational teacher tries to overcome. Often, the ethical standards of the institution present a conflict with a student's sense of right and wrong, and the story tries to resolve that. "The Holdovers" joins that deep genealogy of academic settings and personal angst.

If you watch the trailer, you will get the premise immediately. Like young Scrooge in the Dicken's story, a student gets left at school during the holidays. In this case it is a student who seems to be thriving in his classes, although struggling with his peers. Newcomer Dominic Sessa plays Angus, a bright but but petulant kid who has been thrown out of three other elite schools and is on the brink of being removed from Barton Academy, the setting of the film in New England.   The teacher who ends up having to watch over the students during the holidays is history instructor Paul Hunham, played by the great Paul Giamatti. Giamatti has been largely engaged in television wok for the last few years, and I am unfamiliar with the shows he has been spending time on. I welcome him back to the big screen because he is a welcome presence as a dramatic actor with a gift for reaching the humor in even deep drama. That is exactly what he is doing here, and I think his performance will be one that is recognized by the end of the year honors that will soon be upon us. Mr. Hunham is an acerbic curmudgeon, who can see the faults in others and is not blind to the ones in himself. 

Both of the main characters eventually get left together with the occasional influence of a third character, Mary Lamb, the cafeteria manager of the school played by  Da'Vine Joy Randolph from "Only Murders in the Building". The film is set in 1970 and Mary worked at the school chiefly to allow her son to attend, but is now a grieving mother who lost her child to the Vietnam War. So you have a disaffected student, a bitter teacher and a depressed mother, stuck at the school together for a two week period. Maybe it sounds like there will be a lot of well worn plot points as these three people manage to bond and help one another through this period, you would be right in assuming that. You would be wrong though in thinking that the film will be trite as a consequence. It is really much cleverer than the set up. Each of the three characters reveal histories that give us insight into their conditions. The plot does not play out in the obvious ways that have been set down for it, and there is enough humor in the characters to keep us from wallowing in their tragedies.

In our modern film era, filled with superheroes, paid assassins, and horror premises that sound more interesting than they are, it is such a joy to have an adult drama to take in with an audience. We cab see a lot of what is coming in the story, but not everything. We have seen these kinds of characters before, but they are well played and still engaging. And the time period of the film reflects the characters and the emotional tone of the story, no anachronisms here. This is not a post modern twist on "The Dead Poets Society", it is instead a counterpart story. Characters, like people in the real world, gain insight into others and as a consequence into themselves as well. I think that is a universal concept that can be told in a movie on a repeated basis, as long as the characters are interesting, and here they are.

Alexander Payne has made some excellent films in the last twenty years or so. "Sideways" is a jewel, "Nebraska" was excellent, and "the Descendants" while not my favorite, was widely respected and worth your effort. His previous film "Downsizing" was an apparent misfire, the word of mouth on it was so bad that I never bothered to see it. "The Holdovers" seems to be a return to form and for my point of view, one of the best films of the year. 

Five Nights at Freddy's

 

Not scary, not tense, not funny, not good.