SPY

After the horrid reviews of "Tammy" from last summer and seeing the horrible poster for this film featuring the star dressed down and colored gold, I thought this would be one to skip. The word of mouth though has been really strong, the Rotten Tomatoes score was impressively at 95%, so I decided to take a chance and I can say I was rewarded. This is an amusing spy parody that gets a lot of credit for playing off the Bond film tropes but then adds the Melissa McCarthy vulgarity in appropriate doses.  When you throw in a couple of extra performers that I have an affinity for, well you end up with a solid piece of summer entertainment.

The titles and title song are perfect reflections of a Bond opening with Maurice Binder like silhouettes and a soft rock piece of cheese that isn't Adele but make you think of her. Jude Law plays as typecast as a spy who is good, and of course good looking, but is extra special because of the control operator he has back at CIA headquarters. He's not incompetent, but he appears to be a little less perfect than 007 would be in the same circumstances. Ultimately, the comedy turns on getting McCarty out in the field, as an unlikely spy with equally unlikely cover.

There is an amusing sequence with the CIA equivalent of "Q". A spy quartermaster that is dismissive of the agent and also expert at his job. Michael McDonald plays a stone-faced bureaucrat in this sequence and to make it work, he has no joy in his eyes. One of the reasons the film works is because they don't play it as a parody but rather as a straight spy film with comic overtones. "Q" might smirk, or make a sarcastic comment, but this quartermaster has no sense of humor. Neither does deputy director of CIA operations Elaine Crocker, played by the always great Allison Janney. She is the straight man to a number of jokes in the set up of the film, I don't know if I knew she was in the movie before today, but ultimately the movie is carried by other performers.

There are three performances that ultimately make the movie work, and then just as a little frosting, there is a fourth actor I want to mention. McCarthy is the big gun here. She knows her way around this kind of material and so far people don't appear to be tired of the familiarity. Her disappointment at the covers she is given is a nice contrast to the hard edged character she ultimately pretends to be (and it turns out, actually is). As the star of the film, most of the focus is on her and if you don't care for her, then this film will not be for you. I was impressed with the cold bitch persona that Rose Byrne manages for her villain character. The dry, dull tone that she uses to pass out orders, insults and backhanded compliments was amusing and matched the tone the movie was trying for.  Jason Statham was hysterical as a spy who can't keep from tooting his own horn in the most outrageous and self delusional fantasies you can imagine. His comic chops are great as he plays against the type of character that he played in "Furious 7". If there is a sequel to this film, look for he and McCarthy to be paired in the mismatched partner story that a sequel would beg for. Also, stick around through the credits for a couple of stingers and an out-take that will make you laugh one more time. Bobby Cannavale is a comedian turned actor who gets to play a handsome in a slick bad boy kind of way, villain. After seeing him in "Win-Win" and "Blue Jasmine" in the last few years, I am increasingly impressed with his work.

The worst poster of the year winner.

This film is not likely to be seen as a classic. The jokes are good the first time through but I doubt they will have a high degree of repeatability. There are several visual gags that help the film earn it's rating, as well as the potty mouth of the star. The people behind this get the joke and they know how to tell it. I thought "The Heat" from two years ago was alright but it was a big stretch to believe the two characters as tough cops. This movie suffers from the same problem but covers it up the same way, by making enough jokes that connect to outweigh the improbability of any of the story.

James Bond Car Infographic

         Everyone has a favourite Bond - and a favourite Bond girl - but what's your favourite Bond car? Infographic by Evans Halshaw. View the interactive version here.

San Andreas

I understand the commerce behind a film like this. Big action, a big star, and over the top visual sequences make money. Look, I put down my twelve bucks so I guess I should not complain too much, except what does it say about me and the rest of humanity when we watch disaster porn? Are we confronting our fears and our own mortality or are we revealing in the destruction and enjoying watching millions of people die? I just can't anwser. I feel a little dirty but it is also such a stupid movie that I feel silly for feeling guilty, talk about mixed emotions.

Southern California is the only home I have ever known, and I know that we are all going to be very unhappy when the "Big One" does show up. I rode out the 1971 quake in Sylmar, the 87 Whittier Narrows Quake that killed my hometown theater, and the 94 Northridge quake which made the area sit up and beg. Every once in a while we get a good sized movement of the earth that reminds us that stuff is happening below our feet. This movie wants to bitch slap you into alertness and then make you care about five people while the whole west coast is going to hell in a handbasket. If anyone is better prepared as a result of seeing this, that would be a good thing. The problem is that this movie suggests that we are all pretty much screwed unless we have a helicopter, a plane and a boat at our disposal. Also, pack Dwayne Johnson in your EQ kit because mere mortals are not going to survive without this kind of hero.

The former "Rock" has been a movie star for fifteen years now. He is in one of the biggest franchises in Hollywood, and he gets better as an actor each time out while keeping the charisma that made him a star wrestler before he moved over to the silver screen. He loads this unbelievably derivative story on his broad shoulders and powers though it as if it were Shakespeare. He does not play it camp and he does a credible job playing the hero that everyone will need in a disaster. If Liam Neeson and others are the Old Guy fantasy of competence, Johnson is right there with them, assuming the old guys look like Arnold Schwarzenegger reborn.

Take three parts "Earthquake", one part "The Towering Inferno", one part "The Poseidon Adventure", throw in a dash of "2012" and "The Day After" and you have this movie. Match it with state of the art visual effects to depress the hell out of anyone who remembers 9/11 and you will see what I mean. This movie is cheesy as hell but also sadly familiar. I spent hours watching tsunami videos after the Japanese disaster a few years ago, and I felt like a gawker at the scene of a car accident, but still not able to look away. The dramatic action scenes in this movie still manage to involve you because the main characters are likable and we have followed them through the whole story, but look around and there are a hundred other stories that end in tragedy every time our leads make it thorough ( which they would never do it this was real.)

Paul Giamatti is credible as a Cal Tech scientist, and he adds a little gravitas to the proceedings but the whole scenerio is so over the top that in the long run it does not matter. If you can swallow your self loathing and just load up on popcorn, you will be moderately entertained. If you are at all conflicted about the idea, then maybe you should wait for the next comic book movie, where it is easier to laugh off the ludicrious amount of destruction as just being a movie.

Fifth Anniversary Of the Blog

Five years ago, in a fit of pique because there was a three week break between the end of the regular semester and the start of the summer session, I decided to vent by creating a project for myself. I was going to have some time on my hands during the day and I decided to start a movie blog project. The original goal was to do a post every day for the summer, first by watching a film and then by providing opinion, history, and context to the experience. While some bloggers seem to thrive on a daily ritual, I don't always find it easy. My schedule changes, my moods range more directions than a herd of cats, and frankly, because I never learned to touch type, my composition was sometimes a chore designed more to reduce typos than to offer deep insights.

The original project ran from May 31 though Labor Day, September 6, 2010. There were 97 movies in the project that I posted on in that time frame, films from the summers of my youth, the 1970s. Most of them were pleasant revisits, a few drove me to distraction, but all of them forced me to think about the movies I see in more than just a passing fashion. When the project was complete, I discovered I wanted to keep writing and sharing my impressions, so by the end of 2010, the blog evolved into a more contemporary film blog, with occasional diversions back into the past. I decided that if I saw a film in a theater, I would post some kind of comment about the experience.

Since the start of 2011, I have reviewed or pontificated on all the new releases that I have seen, and there are a lot of them. I pay for all my theatrical experiences so sometimes I am selective, I don't see every documentary, indie, or foreign  film making the rounds. Now let me completely contradict my claim about being selective, I see a lot of crap. If Jason Statham or Liam Neeson are are on the poster, there is a good chance I will see it. If it is a horror film with a theme, a director, or word of mouth good enough to get me into a theater, I'm happy to confess my weakness. I have seen all the Transformers movies, fortunately only two were in the time I was writing for the blog.

I like revivals of classic films, and special screenings of recent projects now being sold on Blu-ray and marketed with a one night only opportunity. If I can find "Lawrence of Arabia" or "Jaws" on a big screen within a fifty mile radius, I will usually be there. The American Cinematique at the Egyptian Theater and the "Cinerama Dome" at the Archlight in Hollywood are spots that I haunt, hoping for a chance to see something I have loved from the past in a real movie palace.

I have been fortunate to find new friends on line that share their enthusiasms about films and will listen to me when I am right, and disagree with me when they are wrong. ( OK, maybe the reverse also). There are James Bond Fans out there who are probably tired of me mouthing off on why their selection of the greatest 007 is wrong, or who can't wait to find some other obscure piece of Bond material to fetishize along with me. I've met a few of these folks in person, but most of them are a continent away, and they might freak out if I show up unannounced at their beach house or at Comic Com N.Y..

People have invited me to participate in a multiple blogathons, a round table or two, and even a podcast. I hope to continue in doing all of those things. I will probably create a podcast myself, and if you haven't yet visited the VLOG page, you should make a little time. I have a lot of fun when I post the video material and your impression of the voice behind this blog might change by seeing me in human form. The posts I did for Fogs Movie Reviews are still listed on one of the pages here, and "30 Years On" is not finished. There are a dozen more films for the project that I just got behind on, and then the page will morph into the site for all my retro material. If you are a WordPress reader, I have a doppelganger site at "Kirkham A Movie A Day" , for some people, following and commenting is easier if they are using a site that matches their own.

Anyway, I just thought I should commemorate the date and thank anyone who has come by any of the places I have played in over the last five years. Fogs, Eric, Keith and Michael, I especially want to thank you for the consistency of your on-line friendship. There are a dozen others that comment regularly or allow me to comment on their sites with enthusiasm and all of you are appreciated. Thanks, and expect another epic "Jaws" post in the near future, it is after all the 40th anniversary of that artistic achievement.

Poltergeist (2015)

On the way to the Theater this morning, we made every light between our house and the movie theater. It's almost three miles on a very busy commercial mainline, and there are at least a dozen intersections with traffic lights. We made every one of them. I thought maybe we should go to Vegas, but then it occurred to me that maybe it was a good omen for the film we were about to see. Nope. Not gonna happen. This remake of Poltergeist is as mundane and unnecessary as you thought it would be. Having the names of Sam Rami and Sam Rockwell associated with the film was enough to take a flyer on it, but it all just lays there.

The story is somewhat the same as the original, but instead of an upwardly mobile yuppie couple buying into the American dream, we have a downsized family making due with leftovers. There is no contentious but friendly next door neighbor in this movie. In fact the only other people not directly related to the story sort of look down on folks living in this neighborhood. The dearth of nearby residents is supposed to be explained by the fact that there are so many foreclosures in the neighborhood. That is the only way this film might compare favorably to the original, it at least has an explanation as to how these events could take place without anyone else in the area being aware.

Other interesting points about the movie, well Rosemarie DeWitt who plays the Mother in this film is married to Ron Livingston who played the Father in "The Conjuring".  He definitely got the better end of that deal. It's not an improvement but it is an interesting twist, the spiritualist they bring in to help the family, instead of being a diminutive female Rambo with a Kewpie doll voice, we get a grizzled reality TV Ghosthunter who has an Irish brogue and a gruff disposition. My daughter had a good insight on this film. It would have played better if this was a case the TV guy was doing for an episode of his series as opposed to his agreeing to work this case in spite of the fact that the family did not want to be on TV. It would have played off the two genres against each other and left room for more surprises than we finally get with this fairly standard haunted house story. 

Like the remake of "Carrie" from two years ago, "Poltergeist" does nothing to hurt the legacy of the other film. If audiences are unwilling to go back three decades to see the original, there might as well be a version that they can get themselves to. It's just sad to think that people believe the visual effects from then are inferior to the CGI of today. I'd disagree and the incident at the sink in both films would be a good way to make the comparison. The 1982 film was a lot more frightening with the practical make-up effects.

Sam Rockwell is playing a character who is less interesting and less heroic than the oddball salesman of Craig T. Nelson. There is one brief sequence, which has nothing to do with the story, that allows him to use his Rockwellisms and charisma. It is short and unfortunately, there was no dancing involved. The two young actors playing the youngest children in the family were very good. It was maybe a bit more interesting to give the son more to do but it is at the expense of the rest of the characters. The build up in the first film was intriguing with some moments of levity. This version crashes headlong into the action, and there is never a sense of wonder. It is all about fear. In the original, the clown doll sits like a ticking bomb in the scenes set in the son's bedroom. In this version, it is a ringing alarm from the very first moment it appears. The controversy over Spielberg's taking over direction from Tobe Hooper continues to today. It is safe to say he had nothing to do with directing this film.

Tomorrowland

This movie is a mess. It has a dozen different strands of ideas that it wants to follow, it's tone is all over the place, and the rules of the story seem inconsistent. The idea of making a Disney attraction into a film is not of course new, but as a whole "land" is involved this time, I think maybe the stitching required to get it all to hold together is just more obvious this time out. George Clooney is a movie star that can't really open a film on his own without a strong premise, and he is invisible from this movie for most of the first hour.

Director Brad Bird has made some of my favorite films over the last fifteen years. He is capable of telling a coherent story but this one is just not quite there. You can see the ideas right there in front of you, tantalizing us with the notion that there is something deep and worthwhile in this experience. It just does not come together. It reminded me several times of the movie "Toys" with Robin Williams. There are things to look at, there are good performers giving it their all, but the premise is too fuzzy in the end to be anything more than mildly likable when it is all over. I ended up wanting to see the movie that they tell this story around, rather than the book ends that make up this structure. I think even the story of Casey, the young protagonist played by Britt Roberston, would have worked a bit better. At the end, the conventional issues all undermine the creativity of the imagination that the promise of "Tomorrowland" is supposed to hold.

The opening section that tells the back story of Clooney's Frank Walker was excellent. The setting at the New York World's Fair in 1964 is picture perfect. The Fair contained all sorts of advanced gizmos and concepts and a few of them are illustrated here. We never see the "Carrousel  of Progress" but the song makes an appearance and promises us a great big beautiful tomorrow. Raffey Cassidy is an interesting young actress who may very well have been cast because of her resemblance to Angela Cartwright of "the Sound of Music" but more importantly Penny from "Lost in Space". Baby boomers will see her freckles and the dress she wears in those early scenes and think immediately of the time period being evoked. Casting here went a long way in setting the scene, I think even more than all the special effects. The kid who plays young Frank is also very well cast to give a sense of those hopeful, early sixties dreamers of the New Frontier. His answer as to why he made the jetpack he has brought to the Inventions Hall at the Fair is a great encapsulation of America's can do spirit. The contrast with the heroine's project, to keep the launch pad at Cape Canaveral from closing down, is a little heavy handed but it is clear. We stopped being dreamers.

So I'm settling down for an uplifting movie about how we lost our way and might get it back again, when evil robots try to kill the pretty little science terrorist, and then they disintegrate three police officers out of nowhere and do it with a creepy mechanical smile. Wow, this is a PG rated family film? It features the same kinds of blue guts splattered we saw in "The World"s End" only from humans rather than robots. Watch out for the sudden car accident that also runs over a little girl. Nothing says family entertainment like that. Suddenly our whimsical fantasy film has become an action picture complete with a pint sized Terminator to lead us to the resolution. By the time Clooney comes back to the screen, the film feels completely different. The pursuit of the two science dreamers across different dimensions includes dismemberment of the  robot pursuers in several grim but amusing booby traps. Then it is followed up by a Coke joke. The story meanders around trying to show us background material, but this is one of the few times I can think of where an exposition laden conversation between the two leads might have helped the movie move forward rather than slowing it down.

When story returns to Tomorrowland, it is never clear why things there have gotten as bleak as the other dimension we occupy. The macguffin that is referred to is incompletely explained and the visionary technologies that exist seem to be put to no better use than tracking kids down to kill them. Yep, that's the joy of Tomorrowland. At the very end of the story, the characters try to redeem all we have experienced with a renewed promise, but they have not explained how the same problem cannot occur again or why a new set of dreamers will make any difference. Hugh Laurie's Governor Nix asks at one point how we managed to have the dual problems of obesity and starvation simultaneously? It's a pretty reasonable dilemma, I've got another one for you, How are we supposed to expect the future to be a place for our dreams, when it is trying to kill us at the same time?

Mad Max:Fury Road

Post Apocalyptic stories have been a go to film genre for me since the glory days of the 1970s. I guess since "Planet of the Apes" ultimately counts in this category, technically I have been hooked since 1968. I really loved stories about a group of survivors, struggling against the environment and other treacherous obstacles in a world that has changed dramatically. "Damnation Alley" , a not very good film, featured a cool vehicle with a rotating set of triangular wheel axles. "A Boy and His Dog", mined sex and loneliness and survivors in ragged clothes and armed to the teeth for it's entertainment value. None of those movies prepared me for the experience of first seeing "The Road Warrior" in the summer of 1982. In the rest of the world it was "Mad Max 2", but here in the States, it was a stand alone film that introduced a new film maker to a much bigger audience. Action movies have not been the same since.

Just as in 1985, when my most anticipated Summer Film was a sequel to the "The Road Warrior", 2015 brings on a sense of deja' vu. "Fury Road" has taken a long route to get here, but it has arrived with the kind of force that you would expect. This is a take no prisoners action flick that grabs you with a strong stunt sequence in the first two minutes, followed by a foot chase and combat fighting within five minutes, and in about ten minutes the rest of the chase begins. This is a chase film that goes on for two hours and has maybe three segments when the chase pauses, not for long, just enough to get some exposition in and then back on the road. There are some new gruesome twists on the survivor story. Factory farming will be seen in a whole new light next time you open a bottle of milk. The future is a depressing place if you are not in control of the power, and Max our titular hero is close to powerless at the start of this story.

The vultures that preyed on the weak in "The Road Warrior" and created a twisted economic system in "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome", have evolved into a extended family cult of malignant children of the deformed patriarch of Immortan Joe. For reasons that become obvious early on, a set of women flee his power and Max becomes part of the exodus by accident. The father figure god is unwilling to give up his possessions and so begins an elaborate pursuit by super charged dune buggies, modified big rigs, and and hundreds of Warrior Boys, convinced that their death will result into admission to Valhalla at the feet of their demi-god father. The two previous films in this series, thirty and thirty-three years old, spent most of their time building up to the climactic chase. This movie is all chase and it sustains the chase through a series of set pieces, plot twists and brilliant design that will keep you hanging on from the moment it begins. Plot is thin but the action is thick and the visualization is visionary. Renegade clans in the outer desert are encased in vehicles that resemble porcupines. The washed out white skin of the Warrior boys make them appear to be an army of spooks, descending on the pursued from all angles.  The grimacing regulator that Immortan Joe wears becomes a death mask that follows the heroes from their nightmares to the waking world. There are spectacular crashes and innovative weapons and a disturbing cult of death that brings them all together. Imperator Furiosa, Charlize Theron, seems appropriately named. She is without humor, and determined to save her group of women. Her strategy is to run and keep running and anything that tries to slow her down needs to be mowed down. The war carriage she drives is a moving fortress that is vulnerable to attack only by having overwhelming forces swarm the wagon. Even then, it turns out that she has a secret weapon she herself did not know about, Max.

I have nothing negative to say about Tom Hardy. I think he was well cast and fits the character like a glove. The two criticisms I have of the film do center around Max however, so Hardy may end up a little worse for wear based on my assessment. As great as I think Hardy might be, he does not have the visual charisma that Mel Gibson radiated off the screen in 1982. If you have not seen those earlier Mad Max films with Gibson, I suggest you wait to do so until after you see this and then the comparison that inevitably ensues will not be nagging you through out the film. The character Max is supposed to be cryptic, but as written here, he feels impenetrable and we can't quite commit to him as we might want to. Maybe having to play a second leading role with his face covered by a mask for larger parts of the film is the thing that holds back my full endorsement. Nicholas Hoult on the other hand is surprisingly compelling as a Warrior Boy in  the right spot at the right time. His character had more dimension in the nearly characterless plot than anyone else. Hardy is stoic, Theron is fierce but young Mr. Hoult gets to play despair, joy, confusion and be disgustingly winsome at times. 

The action and explosions and fights are choreographed wit a frenetic pace that stays involving for long periods at a time. Director George Miller invented this kind of Apocalyptic mayhem with the original Mad Max, now he has a budget and enough time to see this vision play out in the grandest scale possible. I am now willing to cancel his debit to me for the irritation that "Happy Feet" brought to me. There is enough credit on his ledger from this film to balance out any more dancing penguins that happen along. 

Ex Machina

This was a very nice surprise, a science fiction film without any explosions, space flight or aliens. This is the sort of story that harkens to the days of thoughtful imagination contained in works by writers like Issac Asimov and Ray Bradbury. The story sets up a question and then follows a path as the question gets answered from the author's point of view. While there are some nice special effects, most of the drama and suspense and energy of the film stems from the questions and the answers that it makes.

I can see a number of similarities to the film "Her" from a couple of years ago. Both stories feature a winsome man confronting a form of "A.I." and losing themselves in the process. The idea of artificial intelligence had been around since the advent of computers back in the 1940s. Thinking machines are a part of "Forbidden Planet", "2001 a Space Odyssey", and pretty obviously "A.I." Most of these stories feature a foreboding sense of drama since human beings are forced to confront our own potential inadequacies and extinction. "Ex Machina" does this without the end of the world fireworks that sometimes are demanded of this kind of speculative fiction. That does not mean however that everything feels safe in this film, it doesn't.

Oscar Issac plays Nathan, a Steve Jobs like genius programmer who lives as a recluse but is admired by his employees at the search engine tech company he created. He has arranged for programming whiz Caleb, a nicely cast Domhnall Gleeson, to spend a week with him in his scientific retreat, located in a Northern Wilderness, hundreds of miles from civilization, in order to participate in a test of his most recent breakthrough. While at first it might seem that Caleb was chosen for his knowledge, that turns out to be only partially true. As much as this story is about Artificial Intelligence, it is also about the invasive mining of information by users of the internet. Those folks who are paranoid about what the NAS is doing with their e-mails should be looking no further than the search bar on their own computers for the real dangerous data mining. At least we know the agenda of the government, but do you know what it is that Yahoo and Google want from you?

The lovely Alicia Vikander is the female robotic manifestation of the A.I.. She is only partially there for most of the movie but her face is enough to hook the young programmer. The test of the A.I. often seems to be going in multiple directions at any time and the tester and the test taker frequently switch roles. Young Miss Vikander is having a good year in 2015. I saw her in "Seventh Son" back in February and she is due back again in this summers "Man From Uncle" (which I am all over). There are basically three main speaking parts in the film but there are a couple of other secondary characters that will manage to both evoke sympathy and fear by the time the movie is over.

A film that asks big questions is something that people should talk about with each other in face to face interactions. The conversation on these questions would give too much of the story away for those who are interested in seeing the movie. The answers that the screenplay provides can be disturbing when you think about the implications of what you have seen. If ultimately, the human race is destined to be supplanted by creatures of it's own creation, I worry that we may leave out some of the best stuff in ourselves that is worth preserving. Maybe I am just nostalgic for the kinds of things that I knew before; a good book, a good joke, the record store or library, but progress changes all kinds of things and often not for the better.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

I can't imagine anyone would be encouraged to see or discouraged from seeing this movie on the basis of any film goers comments. This is a movie that sort of demands a first hand experience from anyone who is interested. It is likely to be the biggest film of the year, there is a good chance that it will be one of the biggest films of all time, and critical assessment by professionals or amateurs is not going to change that fact. So, that having been said, let me weigh in on the film and if anyone wants to talk about it, I'd be happy to go into greater depth. As of this moment I can say it is a terrific popcorn film that has moments of greatness. It is also overstuffed and convoluted to the point that unless you were to write a near synopsis of the story, it is still not likely to be very clear.

A few problems that I had with it to start with and then we can get to all the good stuff that makes it worth seeing. "Age of Ultron" is a continuation of the concepts in the first Avenger movie but we have had four Marvel Universe Films in the time period between and many of the other films have pieces of business in them that play small parts in the story and actions displayed here. I know these are comic book tales but the way that events speed through, get resolved and a new set of threats pops up without much establishment is a little frustrating. the stand alone films (with the exception of the IronMan movies) have generally taken their time building up a set of characters, revealing a plot or plan slowly and then the movies get to the action stuff in the last third of the film. This movie feels like the third act of a bigger story, but not necessarily the story we have been watching in the other movies. I'm glad that Pepper Potts does not show up and impersonate Ironman, but the end of that film seemed to be moving away from Tony Stark as hero and center square. Yet that is exactly what continues in this film, with a twist on his intentions that is being reworked and repeated over and over again in the films he is featured in. He is a conflicted War profiteer who loves and loathes his job and he creates as much havoc as he solves. When you arrive at the end of this film, we play out the same scenario again, and everybody sees this except him. Ironskull might be a better nickname since he seems incapable of learning from his own mistakes. I have said many times that "Experience" is the only teacher that some people will listen to (including my oldest child) but Stark is not capable of listening to experience at all.

The opening of the film features a battle sequence at a fictional castle in a fictional country with characters that may have been in another film but if they were, it was for a nanosecond. The Avengers are on the attack and it is hard to believe they would be slowed down by the conventional forces they face after the alien invasion they repelled in the first movie.  Faster than you can say "Who the heck is that?" the main bad guys appear to be disposed of and the secondary mutants "Quicksilver" and the "Scarlet Witch" are introduced as traumatized volunteers in another super soldier program that is "Hydra/SHIELD" based. The fight is exciting although the CG animation in the opening actually looked noticeable for this sequence. It worried me but the rest of the movie settled down a little. The money shot of the Avengers in action in the first movie, waited until the third act. In this film it is almost in the third minute of the movie.

It would be difficult to give plot points away, since there is another one every two minutes. The Avengers are damaged by some early contact with the new characters, the secret plans are partially revealed, Artificial Intelligence takes over, another battle sequence begins, the Avengers are manipulated into internal strife, a love affair springs up between characters, secrets of one of the Avengers are revealed, another character reappears, Avengers fight each other, they discover part one of a plot hatched by Ultron, they discover part two of the plot hatched by Ultron, they secretly search for answers on their own, they come together again,...whew, it is simply exhausting. There is so much narrative and it is so rapidly delivered that there is virtually no time for emotional connection to any of it.

Now that those issues are out of the way, here is some of the good stuff. Ultron, the A.I. creation of Stark (with a little push from the Tesseract), is played perfectly by the voice work of James Spader. His tone and wit are dry and the moments of high camp drama are delivered with suitable venom and at times anger. The script use of the song from Pinocchio is exactly right and sets up a macabre  attitude whenever the Avengers encounter one of his many forms. While the visuals might be a bit confusing as to which robotic character has the true Ultron persona at any time, Spader manages to make it work with the right amount of cynicism and philosophy.

Once again, Captain America is a standout character that manages to influence the group productively even though he is not the smartest, strongest or most cunning of the lot. He manages to be the butt of a joke about language use that someone of my generation can appreciate, even though I'm one generation behind him. His character works well with all of the other characters and in the fight scenes he manages to stay relevant because of that. He also has the high ground on ethical issues and seems to be the voice of reason much the way Tony Stark is an exuberant puppy dog willing to try out everything.

Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, gets a better part this go round and his interaction with the the Scarlett Witch near the end of the movie is one of the few pieces of drama that works in the story, while everything else is in a rush to show us what is next. I don't know that the background story he is featured in is necessary, in fact I'm pretty sure it could be cut and no one would really miss it. This would have been a place to go in a lower budget stand alone movie with his character, but I get the impression that those kind of films will not be a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.His character has the most interaction with the new Avenger characters and there is a pretty good payoff for both of those figures.

There is a lot of humor in the film and I suppose because it is comic book based, we should expect that. Everyone has a one liner to throw down and most of them hit the funny bone but they do tend to take away from any sense of danger or drama that is going on. Another new character is introduced late in the film. It's nice that the actor who has been in most of the earlier films gets a chance to show up on screen, but it was confusing and rushed and not altogether certain that the character is reliable. Ultron's plan for global eradication of humans is an interesting one, but like so many other elements of the film it is rushed. The story is a little more coherent than that of Furious 7, but both films are designed for visceral  visual junkies to get a fix from. Avengers: Age of Ultron works more effectively because the universe it operates in is contained in the fantastical galaxy of super heroes, aliens, and technology.

That's my two cents. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, but it did not impress me the way "The Winter Soldier", "The First Avenger" and "The Avengers" did. I commented in my review of "Guardians of the Galaxy" that I did not need to see Peter Quill and Tony Stark trading barbs with one another. After this movie, I can see it happening, I still don't think I will like it. Hope you all enjoy the film, I know you will see it whether you read this or not. 

Alien/Aliens Special Screening

The power of these two films is impossible to deny. Both films have been out for more nearly thirty plus years, both have extensive home video formats available. In fact, earlier in the day on Friday, as I walked through Sam's Club, I saw the two films being sold in stand alone packages for a very moderate price. Last night, I ended up in the Stand-by line, hoping to get a seat to a screening of the films at the American Cinematique program at the Egyptian Theater. The program had sold out and the theater holds almost eight hundred people. Not bad for a couple of films that are older than my kids.

I have met my daughter after work for screenings in Hollywood, several times before. She works in Venice and we live in Glendora. Those of you not familiar with Southern California topography simply need to know these are opposite sides of L.A. County and Hollywood is somewhere in between. Usually, I drive down to the Egyptian Theater but since I was free in the afternoon yesterday, I availed myself of public transportation. I took the train to Union Station and then the subway to Hollywood and Highland, where I walked the two blocks to the theater. My phone rang as I entered the courtyard and it was Amanda, asking where I was. When I told her she asked if I was inside, because she did not see me, ...for the two extra seconds that it took me to come around the corner. We had managed to simultaneously reach the box office from opposite ends of the world. Timing is everything. It was then that we discovered the movie was sold out and we waited in the Stand-by line. There were about thirty of us and several people bought tickets from others who had extras. That is finally how we got in, and ended up a little closer than we might have chosen otherwise but still in seats that were very workable.

The films were introduced by a guy from an effects based organization, I was negligent in getting his name or remembering the name of the group. Several seats were up front and it turns out that at the break we would be treated to a behind the scenes slide show of photos from the production of "Aliens" by some of the effects wizards behind the movie magic. So it was definitely something to look forward to. Our host asked the audience how many were seeing these films on the big screen for the first time, and I was surprised to see the hands of nearly two thirds of the audience go up. He shook his head and wondered out loud where all these people have been for the last thirty years. Anyway the films then began.

It is a great experience to be able to contrast the styles and moods of the two films from a single screening. "Alien" is atmospheric and moody and builds a sense of tension slowly. It is a horror film, but one that is smart and creates suspense deliberately and with a dark style. This is the same theater where I first experienced the movie back in 1979 and it was fun to tease Amanda with that information, she gets tired of my nostalgic ramblings sometimes so it is a dad's privilege to annoy a child with useless personal trivia from time to time. If you click on the image of the poster, it will take you to the original post I did from the Movie A Day project back in 2010.

The guests presenting the slide show between the film were quickly introduced, and I got only two names for sure. They were the Academy Award winning brothers Robert and Dennis Skotak, and they  shared several personal memories about the making of "Aliens". Digital computer work was mostly new when they made the film with James Cameron. They had honed their craft working on Roger Corman films like "Battle Beyond the Stars" and "Galaxy of Terror". Several of the pictures they shared showed them and young Mr. Cameron behind the scenes of those very modestly budgeted films. It was their experience on those pictures that allowed Cameron to make the film on the scale he envisioned for a budget almost half of what Fox thought it would need to be. In fact, that is why he got the job.

This shot taken from my seat shows how some of the props and sets were destroyed after the filming, because Pinewood Studios would charge a storage fee if they were left on the lot and sending them all back to Hollywood would have been too expensive. Film geeks everywhere will mourn the fact that the sleep pods from this film are not collectibles that they could buy on ebay and then put in their own bedrooms.

Like the special features programs on the home video versions of the films, last night's discussion was filled with little details about the techniques used and the problems solved during filming. The secrets I heard about the loader that Ripley uses to battle the alien Queen at the end of the movie were really cool. The fact that Cameron himself designed the Alien Queen because they could not afford to hire H.R. Giger to do the job was also interesting.

The presentation went on for a good thirty or forty minutes. There were some other tech guys peaking as well and I am so sorry that I was not taking notes and can't give them the credit they deserve for the work they did on the film and the kindness they showed for coming out lat night.

"Aliens" is a different creature than the first film. It has horror elements but it is basically an action film set on a different planet. The scenario and the look of the weapons are probably responsible for much of the design of modern video games like Halo. This is a shootum up in outer space. It does have a wonderful central spine concerning the relationship between Ripley and the young survivor Newt.

The pacing and the music are two ways that the films are distinct. "Alien" unfolds slowly with a ethereal electronic score by my favorite film composer Jerry Goldsmith. James Horner's much more bellicose, Academy nominated score, is a perfect fit for the action beats of the film and the G.I. based plot. The humor in the film is often provided by the Marine mentality of the troops versus the corporate thinking of Paul Reiser's Burke. Bill Paxton provides fantastic comic relief and if you look at the mashup I included in my post on an "Aliens" screening from a couple of years ago, you will find it a great contrast to his character in "Edge of Tomorrow".Again, if you click on the poster to the left, it will take you to the Vlogpost that I did on this film, if you have twelve minutes , I think you will enjoy.

One final note, Sigourney Weaver became a star with her role as Ripley in these films. She is the strong foundation on which these stories are built. She deserves all the credit she can get for making these two films favorites of movie fans from around the world. Pretend the other films in this series don't exist and you will have a perfect pair of bookends with these two movies.

Furious 7

I can't say I am a big fan of these films. I saw the first one when it came out and did not return to the series until the previous film, Furious 6. That film had a convoluted plot, brought back a dead character, and pushed the limits of what is believable in a car chase film. Somewhere along the line the gang of criminals featured in these stories became the good guys and they now are working as intelligence operatives because they pissed off the wrong people. I don't buy a second of any of it, but watching it was not annoying in any way and if you are willing to give up any sense of realism, recognize that gravity and physics don't mean anything to making movies any more, than there are worse ways to pass a couple of hours.

Vin Diesel and crew are the continuing attraction. They race cars manically and they take dangerous stunts to the ultimate level. Paul Walker's death in late 2013 delayed this film as they had to create a way to tell the story with bits of his role that had been filmed and plug in spots where there was no footage to work with. I guess you could spend the time playing "spot the CGI double" but that is too much effort for such a weightless film.

To me, the two best things the movie has going for it are reliable veteran film tough guys, Kurt Russell and Jason Statham. "Handsome Rob" is playing the villain here. He is an unstoppable tornado of violence that kills at the drop of a hat. It looks like in the introduction there is already a body count in the dozens and the movie is just starting. I like Statham as a tough guy and he is appropriately menacing in this, however, he is much like one of the vehicles that gets thrown into the story, indestructible because it would slow things down. His character shows up in places that he has no reasonable ability to be and we never see any planning from this bastardized version of James Bond. The most elite military teams in the world can not hit him with a single shot despite the presence of dozens of  high tech weapons. He is a cardboard bad guy made to a boogeyman that is hard to enjoy.

Mr. Russell shows up as a surrogate for Dwayne Johnson's F.B.I. agent. The Rock's character is sidelined early on but he did get a nice fight sequence with Statham and he picks up a big machine gun at the end of the movie and does the best impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger ever. Kurt is cool and smarmy and gets involved in only one real action scene and it is the most believable character arc in the story and it is ridiculous. Just having him swagger in and smile is worth whatever they paid him and I would not be surprised to see his character pop up again if the series gets another film, which given the box office seems inevitable.

In a movie assembled from action pieces, strung together by oversimplified spy tropes, and depending on dialogue written as if it is going to be delivered in a big balloon over the characters head, the cast does what it can to sell the emotional components of the film. There is a nice epilogue with Paul Walker that seems to be a fitting goodby to their co-worker. Now it is time to get back to work, crank out another one and make another couple of billion on the shallowest  movie franchise this side of "Scary Movie" parodies. The cheese is laid on thickly, and it goes down quickly and will not upset your stomach too much.

It Follows

So this is a pretty great horror film that gets by on the premise, a small amount of action and some very effective film making skills from writer/director David Robert Mitchell (how is it fair that he has three first names? two other people behind him in line got nothing). The horror genre is a field where someone can shine if they have a great premise and good basic story telling skills. John Carpenter lived most of his career in that pocket and did great work. I hope Mr. Mitchell does not feel it is below him to continue working in the genre if he can find the right idea because it is clearly his work that makes this premise sing.

I always try to be spoiler free but I'm going to tip a couple of points by making some comparisons for you. Nothing I will say should hurt your enjoyment or suspense with the film, but it might give you a little more to think about. First of all, like the horror films of the 80s, this movie is launched by sexuality. If having loose sexual morals can bring on disaster, this movie shows it with a bit more direct relationship. The whole subject may simply be a mediation on the guilt that comes from making a sexual choice. There are long periods of dread and anticipation, much as if a sexually active person begins to wonder if they have acquired an STD or an unwanted pregnancy. Another comparison is easy to see if you watched the trailer. The tag lines ape the speech that Reese gives Sarah Conner when he first tries to save her from the Terminator. "It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."

Two more quick story comparisons and then a few comments on the film making to finish off. First, it does have some things in common with a zombie film, the slow moving kind of zombies that is. Characters can outrun "It" but they can be fooled or cornered and that is part of the danger. The bigger danger is that "It" will screw with your mind and weigh on you like a guilty conscious.  Eventually despair and exhaustion represent the gravest danger. If there is not enough guilt already, then get prepared for the main twist in the story telling, the curse can be put off with a game of tag. It is a concept that struck me as very similar to the theme of "The Bottle Imp" by Robert Louis Stevenson ( another guy with more first names than he is entitled to). Eventually, fate will have to be dealt with, but first come grief that is self inflicted.

Two things stick out about the way the film is shot. The director seems to deliberately choose wide shots with the horror just out of eye line in the opening section of the film, and then it slowly marches in front and center on the wide shots in the rest of the movie, emphasizing the inevitability of the bad things that are about to happen. The music score is effectively loud at times without having a tune that is memorable but still managing to build up tension with snippets of music that are integrated into the story very effectively. While there are some horrific images, the movie is not gore infested and it plays by it's own rules pretty well. We know less than is usually given an audience in this kind of film and we learn it as the story progresses. The one character that is responsible for plot points is never clearly explained and that mystery is a bit creepy as well.

There are three or four tense scenes with a little action but most of the movie is atmospheric without being too terrifying. There are the requisite jump scares but the thing about the movie that will haunt you is the premise and the almost dream like nature of the world that these kids live in. Suburbia and the Hell of more central Detroit, are both vaguely out of place and our focus is distracted by the entity and the fear and sadness from the characters.  The lead character Jay, is as sweet as modern girls get, and her hopeful dream is shattered by nasty reality masquerading as fiction.

TCM Film Festival Day 3 Finale: The Grim Game

Harry Houdini was and is the most famous magician in the world. This was true a hundred years ago and it is true today. Even with the widespread medium of television, David Copperfield can not hope to supplant the name Houdini as an invocation of the world of magic. Houdini was a sensationalist and a pioneer in a variety of fields, including aviation and film making. He made five full length silent features and and it was thought that this film was mostly lost, with only about ten minutes of it held in Paramount studios hands. A private collector however had a copy that came from the Houdini estate. As someone at the event told it, the estate sold the film since their insurance company would not insure the house if the nitrate film remained there.(This was incorrectly attributed by me to magic historian Dick Brookz, it may have come from another TCM Guest and I simply did not remember)  It stayed in private hands for nearly seventy years after that, being screened maybe two or three times for magician friends of the collector. Brookz finally managed to get the owner to turn the film over to TCM who restored it under the care of Rick Schmidlin, a preservationist who lead restorations of "Greed" and "Touch of Evil".


As I stood in line with another capacity crowd waiting to get in and see this treasure, I chatted with Teresa from Minneapolis and Ken from Winnipeg. They had both enjoyed the Festival immensely. We compared notes on the films we'd seen and passed an hour very pleasantly. I noticed a group of people waiting to get in who all seemed to know each other, and Teresa noticed the flamboyant boots that one dark and long haired man was wearing. Everything about that group set off familiar bells in my head that I have not heard for nearly thirty years. These people were magic folks, come to see the great Houdini on the screen. My guess is that they were an invited group from the Magic Castle, located just up the hill from the Chinese Theater.  There had been a screening of the Tony Curtis Houdini picture earlier in the evening and it featured some performances from the Castle. Also featured was prominent magician and Houdini authority Dorothy Dietrich.


She did not perform before "The Grim Game" but she provided a substantial amount of background information on the film and the steps it took to bring it to restoration. Along with author and collector Brookz, they shared a piece of Houdini memorabilia and did a rising card trick with a vest that Houdini once owned. 



The trick was fine and the audience was enthusiastic but everyone was really waiting for the movie to start. One of the reasons that the screening started a little late is that the small orchestra for live accompaniment had to be set up. This was a silent film and a new score had been commissioned by TCM for the event. The composer would also be the conductor for the piece and the four or five piece "orchestra" would play live immediately below the screen during the film.

"The Grim Game" is a melodrama full of convoluted story twists designed to give Houdini a chance to show off his escape expertise. From manacles, to jail cells and straight jackets, nothing could keep our intrepid reporter from reaching his girl and solving the case. The movie contains a half dozen escapes and an thrilling aerial accident that really took place and was left in the film. Neither pilot was seriously injured but the dramatic sight of two planes colliding in the sky could not be wasted when film was rolling.


I'm not a music expert so I hesitate to be too critical of the score. It is done in the style of the times and it had a old fashioned tinny sound to many passages. It is certainly an authentic representation of music at the time but it seemed a bit repetitive to me and although it was well played and synched to the story, there were passages that seemed ill used and some dead spots during the film. It is probably my jaundiced modern ear that left me satisfied but not astounded by the work done here.

The film is an interesting treasure of century old movie making and a historical gem detailing the skills and showmanship of the star. It was a bittersweet presentation because it was the final film of the Festival and it brought the curtain down on all but the wrap party. It is also the conclusion of my week long recap of my Festival experience. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have.

TCM Film Festival Day 3: Out of Sight

It is not hard for me to see why a lot of attendees at this years TCMFF would be scratching their head over the inclusion of a film that is only seventeen years old. George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez continue to make films and it is a little hard to think of them as "classic" movie actors at this point. They reek of contemporary status. The answer turns out to be pretty simple and it was also the main driving force in my selection of this film for viewing on the last day of the Festival. Anne V. Coates identified it as one of her favorite films that she worked on.

Anne Coates has worked as an editor on films since 1952. That is more than sixty years in the business. That makes her the classic element of the selection. If you still have doubts let me dispel them with one title: "Lawrence of Arabia". That's right, she edited the greatest epic film of all time and won the Academy Award for doing so. She has been nominated four other times for her work including the current subject, her collaboration with Steven Soderbergh. This was a very creative process that included some  interesting choices. There are dramatic freeze frame moments that are not based on an action beat but instead serve the character or the emotions of the moment. A dream sequence is flawlessly inserted into the narrative, mixing both the reality of the plot and the fantasy of the romance.

The screenwriter, director and editor all managed to fashion an effective flashback structure that is interesting without becoming too confusing. "Out of Sight" may be best remembered for the performers, especially the sequence with Clooney and Lopez in the trunk of a car, but it will be studied by film students for the creative story telling and the innovative editing choices made by the film makers.


I'd  skipped the screening of "Lawrence" to be able to go to the "Dawn of Technicolor" presentation. I have seen Lawrence on the big screen a number of times in recent years, in fact it is a bit of a mania around our house. The pass that i chose also left me out of the hour long conversation that was scheduled, but her speaking at this screeening would give me an opportunity to hear from one of the greats in the industry and it was worth the extra fee I had to pay for the non-included screening. While Host Ben Mankiewicz seemed to delight in the seeming inconsistency of  Miss Coates editing both "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Fifty Shades of Grey", she treated all of her own work with some degree of respect. She seemed to recognize that the salacious "Grey" and silly "Masters of the Universe" were just pulp product for mass consumption, there were still choices to be made. She believed that the film of "Fifty Shades" is better than the book ( a claim I think everyone will probably agree with) and she hinted that the movie could have been much more explicit, prompting Ben to say he looks forward to the extended cut on home video.

I'd like to add one delightful side note on the screening if I may. During the previous activity down at the Egyptian Theater, I'd messaged one of the bloggers I was trying to connect with, Citizen Screen (Aurora). Here is a breakdown of our contact.


That's right, standing in the back of the Standby line for "Out of Sight", I looked down on the very long line of people waiting to get in, and there was an enthusiastic woman waving up at me. I waved back and smiled broadly having finally connected in at least one way with my colleague. I was clearly not thinking like a film maker at that moment, because a photo of her wave would have been a nice capstone for this post. Hi Aurora, it was fun seeing you. We should wave at each other again next year.

TCM Classic Film Festival Day 3: Gunga Din

The second day of the festival, I saw the 1975 classic, The Man Who Would Be King. Thirty-six years earlier, in the greatest year of Hollywood, 1939, this Adventure film, also based on a work by Rudyard Kipling debuted. It is the cinematic grandparent of the second film, filled with comedy, daring do and adventurers who are sometimes more motivated by their own greed than anything else but who are loyal to a fault. This movie is one of the great classics of the golden era and seeing it on the big screen at the Egyptian Theater demonstrates why.

As great as the movie is, the screening is elevated substantially by the program surrounding the film. This was one of the Academy Conversations screenings. Two Academy Award winning technicians presented an in depth analysis of the making of the film, including background on the locations, sound effects in the film and behind the scenes film clips not readily available on your home video version of the movie. I happened across the same two wonderful teachers on a showing of "The Wizard of Oz" just two nights ago on TCM. They did another wonderful job there as well, explaining how studio shots were matched with matte paintings and how the colors were controlled and a dozen other pieces of fascinating information. I haven't mentioned their names yet because I have a special little clip to do that for you:



Craig Barron is an Academy Award Winning Special effects guy and Ben Burtt practically invented the sound effects awards of  the late Twentieth Century. Best of all though is that they are movie fans. They treasure the classics and eat, drink and dream of the techniques used by the earlier generations to do the things that they do today. What especially drew me to this screening was the work that the two of them did the previous TCM Festival for my favorite movie, "The Adventures of Robin Hood". It is my hope that the video of that screening will someday be shown on TCM so that I can relive it. That was my first TCMCFF event and it hooked me completely. These guys know their stuff and they enjoy talking about it.

It turns out that Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and director George Stevens, all had home movie cameras that they brought to the set. What is really amazing is that some of those movies were in color. Our hosts frequently contrasted the images of a scene in the classic black and white film with the color shots of the same scene shot by one of the principals. It was a very unique look at the film.

Just as they had done on "Robin Hood" they made a treasure hunt out of tracking down the original shooting sites of the movie. They matched up contemporary photos of the locations with the same location as it appeared in the movie. Sometimes there is a housing development in the spot where a scene was shot, but frequently, the locations remain unchanged. In fact there is one site that they claim an archeological dig would recover artifacts from the movie, including props and set foundations. Most of the movie was shot outside of Lone Pine, in the Sierra Nevada mountain range here in California. When I was a scout, Lone Pine was usually our last stop before we got to the trailhead that our ten days of back packing would take up. Today I'm afraid I would need to be able to drive to the location, and according to the two jocular hosts, you can actually do that.

They showed a neat match of location with the suspension bridge used in the film and then the layered mattes and animation that gave the illusion of depth and movement.

This video is not their work but it is similar to some of the things they showed.



There were also some film clips of explosions that had been tested out and some comparative sound recordings that showed how the locations substantially increased the retort of the guns being fired during several scenes in the movie. One homemade film showed the complexity of a choreographed fight going wrong and when it showed up in the film in it's correct form, everyone got a good laugh at what they had just seen.

I hope to heaven that these guys continue to contribute to the festival in this way. It is the best mix of old and new Hollywood that I've seen here and there are dozens of movies with histories like this that deserve this kind of quality presentation. It would be a crime if these talks stayed in some archive somewhere and never get to take a walk out among a broader film loving audience.

TCM Classic Film Festival Day 3: Nightmare Alley

I'm not a carney so I don't speak with an insiders view of that world, but my family was in show business. My parents trooped with a variety of vaudeville, circus and carnival acts. My Dad was one of those magicians that the boss at the last carnival in this film said are a dime a dozen. He was close friends with well known mentalist Glen Falkenstein and helped him with information about stage mentalism from a vast array of books and portfolios that he owned. So I do come to this movie with a little bit of knowledge, a natural curiosity and a vivid memory of early times I've seen it.

Classified as a film noir because of the dark themes, it fits into that genre in an unusual way. There is no murder investigation, the crimes that are being committed are fraudulent but don't seem physically dangerous just mentally cruel. There is no private eye, police detective or amateur sleuth trying to solve a problem. Helen Walker fits the role of femme fatale but no one dies as a result of the machinations of Stanton Carlisle and her psychologist Lilith Ritter, so the label "fatale" would be a misnomer. Still, there is a crime element to the film and some of the darkest most unpleasant on consequences occur in the course of the story.

I mentioned in an earlier post that a woman I ran into at another screening was dismissive of this film, preferring the book and really diminishing Tyrone Power as the lead. I thought Power was excellent. He comes across as a sharp guy with good heart, who can talk himself and just about everyone else into something not so good. Joan Blondell appears in a second of my TCM Festival films, I'd seen her on Friday in "the Cincinnati Kid". Having packed a bucket load of 30s classics in her resume, she is a well known presence who is just aging out of the youthful roles she filled so often and is just right as the faded glamorous "Zeena", the fortune telling mentalist that Stan sidles up to and manages to get a valuable secret from. 


 The host of our screening was Eddie Muller, the founder of Noir City Film Festival in San Francisco. He was enthusiastically grim when he described this as maybe the bleakest film noir ever. I was surprised to see that when he asked who was seeing this for the first time, three quarters of the house raised their hands. I will forever remember the line "You know what a geek is, don't you". Although there is another five minutes in the film, to me, that is the exit line that summarizes the whole film. 

TCM Classic Film Festival Day 2: The French Connection

I left my friend Michael to head over to the Chinese IMAX Theater for the screening of The French Connection on Saturday Night. This is another of those seventies classics that were made in that ten year period when the lunatics were in charge of the asylum. I'd watched "The Seven Ups" just a couple of weeks ago, and while it is not a sequel to "The French Connection" it sure feels like it. The Producer was the same for both films, Roy Scheider stars and the gritty streets of New York are the sets. Both films also feature smashing car chases.

The host for our screening was again Alec Baldwin, and he would be interviewing William Friedkin after the movie. I have admired a number of actors through the years. I never joined any fan club and I'm not a twelve year old Judy Garland singing to a picture of Clark Gable, but Gene Hackman has always been my favorite star. He is an everyday type, who looks like a guy you could run into in a boardroom, a back alley, or a grocery store. This is the film that elevated him to star status. While he had two Academy Award nominations behind him when cast in this movie, he was not seen as a leading man. Friedkin explained how the studio and he wanted a number of other actors before they settled on Hackman. It is difficult for me to believe that they wanted Jackie Gleeson for the part and that he did not get it because his previous movie had bombed. The audience, Baldwin and Friedkin all seemed to enjoy making fun of "Gigot". Paul Newman and Peter Boyle were also considered but Newman would have used up most of the budget and Boyle was not really interested after playing a similar personality in "Joe" a year before.

Friedkin and Baldwin never sit down for their discussion. They stalk the platform at the front of the stage and direct their questions and answers all over the theater. Now I have heard William Friedkin on a number of other programs over the years and I knew it would be an interesting conversation. He is fearless in expressing his opinion and he is also free with information. Baldwin would not have to do any coaxing to get him going on a subject.

If anyone has read about the making of "The French Connection", than you know that it was done almost in a guerrilla style. The New York authorities and the corrupt officials that worked in many of the departments wanted fees and stipends and insurance bonds that would have crippled the film and were largely being made up on the spot. There was one scene that a permit was obtained for and it cost them $30,000. On a film budgeted at $1.5 million, you can see the cash draining away quickly. They decided on a strategy of "better to ask forgiveness than permission' for the rest of the movie, including the famous car chase. They sometimes had to outrun the New York transit police when they were filming on the subways.

One thing that was different about this guest appearance was that the audience was invited to ask some questions as well and two microphones were set up out on the right and left sides of the house. The first question was a little misunderstood by the two hosts but it lead to an interesting answer about preview screenings. The second question concerned the sound design of the film and it was asked by TCM fan and Academy award Nominee John Singleton, the director of "Boys in the Hood". He stood in line to get to his question like everyone else and Friedkin was more than happy to answer it and also give him a shout out from the front of the crowd. The movie had started at nine, then finished at eleven, but it was closer to twelve thirty when we finally got out of there.

 


This was just a brief clip of the perspective I had and the energy that Friedkin brings to the experience.

This was just a brief clip of the perspective I had and the energy that Friedkin brings to the experience.

TCM Film Festival Day 2: The Wind and the Lion

It is a little hard for me to believe that I got a chance to see two, that's right two Sean Connery films from the same great year, 1975, on the same day of the TCMFF. I also was very confident when I heard this was programmed that Michael would be joining me. He commented on a post I did on this movie a few years ago. We are both fans of this film. The crowd was a little sparse for the line up, although the theater did fill in quite a bit, so we decided to move our location down closer to the front of the theater for this presentation. We had to move over in the aisle we selected because some of the seats were reserved, but we were dead square center for the program.

Stuntman and coordinator Terry Leonard shared a lot of stories about the making of the film. There was a nice Video Tribute to Mr. Leonard right before he was introduced. I could not locate that, but I did find this featurette on the TCM site that I thought I would share here.




The jump off the balcony that looks so spectacular in the opening kidnapping scene turned out to be far more hazardous for the rider, Mr. Leonard, than for the horse. It turned out that he did have a fracture in his back as a result but it was not discovered until nearly a year later.

The subject of his work on "Raiders of the Lost Ark" also came up in the conversation. Terry Leonard did the truck chase gag where Indy goes under the truck he is chasing and then gets dragged by his whip as he tries to get back into the truck. It is an amazing sequence and one of the best known stunts from the days in which practical effects and in-camera effects were still part of the film making business.

I have a hard time understanding how this film was not nominated for the Academy Award for screenplay. Maybe the story was crowed out by other pictures that year, but if you hear the words being said by the characters you will know that the script is sometimes poetic in the way it portrays the conflicts of the characters. It was nominated by the Writer's Guild for the year award that year. Look at this example:

"Raisuli: Woman, I want you to understand this: I am not a barbarous man. I am a scholar, and a leader to my people. I am not a barbarous man. These four men have dishonored me. They have eaten from my trees, they have drunk water from my wells; they have done all of these things to me, and they have not even evoked my name to God in thankfulness. I am treated this way because I make war upon the Europeans... You see the man at the well, how he draws the water? When one bucket empties, the other fills. It is so with the world: at present, you are full of power, but you're spilling it wastefully, and Islam is lapping up the drops as they spill from your bucket."

The final letter from the Raisuli to President Roosevelt is also a moment of movie poetry and it contains the line that provides the title for the film. I will share it with you at the bottom of this post.

It was fortuitous that Michael and I moved down from our previous seats in the theater, for as the interview with Terry Leonard ended, the host pointed out that we were being joined for this screening by the writer/director himself, John Milius. We turned to look at where he might be seated and waving to the crowd, but we did not have to look far, he was right behind us in the next row.  This may have been the coolest moment of the whole weekend for me. The applause and ovation for him was thunderous and at the conclusion of the movie it was repeated. I wanted very much to turn around and speak with him and share my love of the movie, but I thought better of it. I'd seen the documentary about him last year and I believe he has some medical issues. He struggled a bit to stand when he was acknowledged,  and since he did not speak as part of the festival, I thought he might not be able to deal with a crowd so I just held back and slapped my hands together a bit harder so that the world would know my appreciation.

Coincidentally, I wrote a post focusing on the performance of Brian Keith as President Roosevelt for a blogathon back in February.This  is my entry into the 31 days of Oscar Blogathon hosted by Paula's Cinema Club, Outspoken and Freckled and Once Upon a Screen. It also means that this is the second time I've watched this movie in the last two months, something that made me very happy. Just while I'm thinking about it, "The Wind and the Lion also has my favorite score by my favorite movie composer Jerry Goldsmith. You will find a note of appreciation for Mr. Goldsmith's career at this link.

To Theodore Roosevelt - you are like the Wind and I like the Lion. You form the Tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the Ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours. - Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates.