Another great comedy to start wrapping up the summer with. Technically, this is the 45th anniversary of "Animal House" but that can't be right can it? This movie feels eternal. I know that sounds strange given that today's climate would not be tolerant of a lot of the things that are used as comedy plotlines here. This movie features cheating, stalking, peeping, underage sex, racial profiling, animal death, theft, drunk driving, shooting guns at others for fun, you know, all the stuff that would put you in Twitter (X) jail forever.
Somehow, it still feels relatively innocent because it is set in a time that was even more repressive than these, and it throws all of this in the face of authority that would try to contain it. It certainly doesn't hurt to have John Belushi as the chaotic dervish at the center of many of these shenanigans. Belushi managed to make even the most twisted sort of behaviour feel like impish fun with his head tilt, shoulder shrug and raised eyebrows. Probably everyone who went to college, at some point knew a loser who was not malicious, but simply clueless as to how they impacted the world around them, Bluto is that guy.
Tim Mathison as "Otter", is the one who really has a story arc, but progress on the plot is not what this movie is about. These are comic character sketches and "Otter" is the slick operator with a pithy comment and detached attitude about the mayhem going on around him. It's interesting that we still sympathize with him when the rival fraternity ambushes him, after all, he just executed the cruelest manipulation to get a date that you are ever likely to see. It is his jovial, devil may care attitude that lets him get away with being a total ass and still we are damn glad to meet him.
The hovel that is the Delta House is also not too unfamiliar. If you are in the right college town, there is always a dump that will pass as student housing, and it is a two way street, the house gets abused by the residents, sure, but the residents are often behaving in a way that seems befitting of the place they live. Which is the cause and which is the effect? Also, all you have to do to spark stupidity is add alcohol, and kids in college seem to take that as an obligation sometimes. The rituals of a passage in their life. Fortunately, in the movies, it results in minor comic moments as opposed to tragedies. That's another reason we give this a pass, we know it is a story designed to evoke laughter, it doesn't pretend to have any life lessons buried inside of it.
I wrote about this film in my original project and you can read those comments here. It was also part of a TCM Film Festival Program I attended and there is some information on that screening Here. "Animal House" is politically incorrect, vulgar, anti-authoritarian, and as funny as hell, almost fifty years later.
Having written about the film just a week ago, I'm not ready to write any new insights but I did see the film again in the theater and I think I will share a couple of things with you. The video above is a few years old but it does an excellent job of re-visiting the filming locations for "Valley Girl". I ran across it this week and I think you might enjoy.
Here is a little taste for you of The Plimsouls in the movie.
It's not the clip from the movie, but the original music video for the song.
Bitchin'! Is this in 3-D?
No, but my face is.
And the montage that makes a grown man cry. Love you Dee.
[I strongly recommend skipping the trailer if you have not yet seen the movie. It's not so much spoilers as it is the discovery of what you are watching that might matter.]
This film came out a year ago and there were plenty of recommendations from friends in the Cinema Loving Community who recommended it. My only reservation was that it is three hours long and I just needed to find a time that would work. When it showed up on Netflix, I thought, "Good, now I have a chance to catch up with it." I never did. Finally, I saw that it was going to be featured as part of the Summer Film Series at the Paramount Theater in Austin, and I decided to wait so I could experience it for the first time on the big screen. Oh am I glad I waited.
To begin with, this movie is epic, hyperbolic and inventive as all get out. "RRR" is a an Indian film, made in a language that is not Hindi and it focuses on two legendary revolutionary figures. Historical accuracy has nothing to do with this film. It is set in India, primarily in Delhi in the 1920s. The British Empire is presented as a near totalitarian regime and represented by a Governor who may have emigrated from Nazi Germany. None of that matters one bit. Although it is filled with story lines that are clearly propaganda gone wild, it is the friendship at the center of the story, and the amazing cinematic visuals that make this movie literally sing. Yes, at times it is a musical.
Comic book movies from Marvel and D.C. have nothing on this superhero story that feature two extraordinary men of strong will, who are divided by circumstances not goals. I don't know anything about the actors or the director, they all apparently have a great deal of success in the film community of their native language (not Bollywood by the way). This is the kind of breakthrough film that could extend their film fame to a bigger audience, N. T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan are both charismatic and solid actors. I hope some of their films will make their way into my cinema queue in the future.
S. S. Rajamouli is the most successful Indian director of all time, and one of the influential artists of the world, and I knew nothing about him, that is going to change.
The movie is filled with over the top emotional moments, including oiled up, muscle bursting training montages and close up, love lorn looks, and seething anger and resentment. All of this is accompanied by the exquisite music from M. M. Keeravani, who also co-wrote the Academy Award winning song from this movie, "Naatu Naatu". The dance sequence that is partnered with the song is one of the greatest on screen expression of exuberance in dancing that you will ever see. It puts those moments in "Barbie" that aspire to do the same kind of thing, to shame.
As great and entertaining as the singing and dancing moments are, they are matched by some of the most eye popping, jaw dropping, cheer inspiring action scenes you are ever likely to see. Unlike the "Fast and Furious" movies, this film embraces magical realism rather than pretending physics doesn't exist. We can accept some of the outrageous moments because we know this is a fantasy film. The scenes of rescue are heroically out there, and the attack with the animals is so much fun and looks so great that we don't care whether it makes sense. Our heroes can practically fly in some scenes but still we believe because we know this is myth not history.
The best part about waiting to see this was that the audience I was with was fulling embracing the spirit of the film. They hissed at the villains, cheered at the heroes, and when the music was at its most boisterous, you could feel people doing chair dancing in their theater seats. There was applause at several moments in the film and at the end the applause and cheers were loud and passionate. I had sooo much fun seeing this movie. It's an example of something that is purely cinematic, but also completely different from what we see in most western films. If there is any way you can see this in a theater, do that first, if not, make sure you are watching with some other people, you will want to high five and dance with someone while you do.
I was once a guest on the Lambcast when we discussed this movie. Some of the other guests seemed befuddled at why the film is so iconic and loved. I recall that one person said that Paul Newman's character did not have a story arc and he was the same at the end of the film as he was at the beginning. That my friends is the point! Luke Jackson was a non-conformist in the days when conforming was to be expected. The story is set in the 1950s, but the film came out in 1967. The social revolution was in full swing, and here was a movie that celebrated it's spirit, even if Luke was not a hippie. He was anti-establishment, ant-authoritarian and the friendliest misanthrope you are ever likely to encounter.
Paul Newman was one of our great actors and he excelled in all sorts of parts where his laconic delivery, crooked smile and deep blue eyes could make even a weak script sing. Here the script is not weak, it is powerful with a defiant message about the soul crushing influence of conformity. At one point, the idea is made extremely clear when it looks like Luke has been broken by the repeated torments of the guards. He confesses to Dragline, his friend played by George Kennedy, that he was broken, but as we see in the last act, he returns to his defiant manner and mocking tone. Luke was a world shaker, in the small world that he occupied, but most of us live in such small worlds. It is our own lives that we need to be accountable for. Newman could smirk at God and still seem humble. Whether winning at cards, losing in a fight, succeeding at escaping or failing to elude captors, Newman let's us know that Luke is not going to be changed by the events of his life. The closest he comes to any such movement was the death of his Mother, but it took the unjust act of the prison captain, to put him in the isolation box to discourage running, that provokes the exact opposite reaction.
If you look at the cast list, you will see a bench so deep as to be unbelievable. The character actors in this film are a who's who of great film and TV actors of the 60s and 70s. Even the ones who have no lines and are just seen in the background, add so much to the ambience of the work camp. Hell, Dennis Hopper and Harry Dean Stanton are in this film, and they are swamped by some of the other talent on the scree. George Kennedy deservedly won the Supporting Actor Oscar this year for his character of Dragline. It's a performance that when coupled with Newman almost sucks the air out of the film for any other actor. Almost.
Reader's of this site know that there is a companion site devoted to the great character actor Strother Martin. I would encourage you to visit there and find some other indelible performances, but let me add a few sentences here before I move on to other contributors. The Captain, is one of the most evil characters Martin would ever play, but on the face of it, he seems almost compassionate towards the prisoners. Of course what he says and what he does are two different things. He gives a speech of welcome to the incoming prisoners and he seems mildly interested in them, but allows the man guarding them to abuse the men without any reprimand or reservations. Much of his performance is silent, as he stares at the prisoners and the guards from his porch, taking in the cruelty and abuse from both the inmates and their jail keepers. His gentile voice and disarming twang, suggest some humanity, but look at the dispassionate expression on his face when Dog Boy, played by Anthony Zerbe, breaks down over the death of one of his beloved bloodhounds. The Captain couldn't care less. The façade of compassion is only broken when Luke mouths off after being captured and beaten. His ego having been attacked sets loose an inner rage that we don't ever see again. It is when Martin tries to restore the image of humanity to the Captain that the famous quote from the movie emerges from his mouth. Not a reprimand but an attempt at explanation. "What we've got here is...failure to communicate."
When Stephen Jannise, the programmer who introduces the films, noted that Stuart Rosenberg is not a household name when it comes to film directors, he is right. but he was nominated five times for DGA Awards, including a nomination for Best Director for this film. Watching the scenes fade in and out, using crane or helicopter shots, is pretty impressive. The sequences where Newman is escaping and trying to throw off the scent that the hound dogs are following, are staged very cleverly and a entertaining as heck. The race of the prisoners to finish tarring the road is a collaboration between Editor Sam O'Steen , Cinematographer Conrad Hall, and Composer, Lalo Schifrin. The visual and music elements are great but Director Rosenberg should get some credit for putting it all together. I think the more often I see the film, the more I am impressed with the technical aspects of the film and not just the performances. Even the title scene deserves some attention for setting up the theme of the film right from the start.
Once more, watching the film with an audience is a treasure to be savored. I heard laughter and groans and intakes of breath for a dozen scenes in the movie. People responded to Like' resilience in the fight scene, they were horrified by the egg eating sequence, and they were cheering the ways Luke tried to outfox the hounds. I have watched this movie dozens of times at home, but the three times I've seen it on the big screen with an attentive audience, are the screenings that will always stand out to me. Classic film fans will always show up for this kind of event, but the rest of the movie going world needs some encouragement. Remember, if you haven't seen it before, it's a new movie for you, regardless of when it was made. So "get your mind right", and make the effort.
Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother
Once the door had been opened by Mel Brooks with "Blazing Saddles", it became inevitable that there would be comedies coming on a regular basis from the collection of crazies that had put that gem together. The follow up was "Young Frankenstein" and it's a better film, although maybe just slightly so. Parodies of Silent films, Hitchcock, and Biblical epics would be coming down the pike soon. In addition to Brooks, Gene Wilder would direct some of these 70s and 80s comedies and Marty Feldman would write and star in some of them as well. Today's entry into my Throwback Thursday series is the first movie that Gene Wilder directed.
He had this idea for a comedy take off on Sherlock Holmes while he was working with Marty Feldman and Madeline Kahn on "Young Frankenstein", and Wilder said that if he had been unable to cast the two of them in the film with him, he would have just skipped it. Fortunately, they read the script and liked it and both joined up to continue the shenanigans they had begun with Brooks. This is a farce with it's heart in the right place, and although it does descend to a couple of sex references that are mildly risqué, if you are watching with tweens and teen, you should be OK.
Mycroft was the brother that was mentioned in the original Conan Doyle books, and what Wilder has done is simply added a younger brother, frustrated by being in the shadow of his siblings and anxious to prove himself. Sigerson Holmes is a funny enough name and it fits with the other two Holmes siblings as odd enough but also slightly sophisticated. The name comes from an alias that Holmes used in a short story written by Conan Doyle. Both Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are characters in this film but they are mostly in the background, with one big exception. There is a very amusing scene where Holmes and Watson are supposedly leaving London, which is why Sigerson is stepping in for him. It is a subterfuge, and the manner in which it is accomplished is very amusing.
Madeline Kahn was a national treasure who left us far too soon, but not before contributing to some of the greatest comedies of all time. In this film she is the romantic female lead, and her character seems to be a variation of Brigid O'Shaughnessy, from "The Maltese Falcon", you can never trust anything she says, and from the beginning Sigerson knows it. Kahn performs several dance hall songs from the era the film is set, the 1890s, and she has a great singing voice and can do the singing in a comic manner that is required.
Marty Feldman also left us much to early and here he plays a combination of a Dr. Watson/Inspector Lestrade character. The comic bit that they create for him is that he has photographic hearing and sometimes gets stuck in repeating back information and needs a little push like a record that is skipping. As the comic foil to Wilder's Sigerson, the two of them are well matched clowns who carry off both some verbal humor and some slapstick.
There are some great visual jokes, like the duel on top of hansom cabs and the sets behind the scenes of the opera they participate in. Dom Deluise hams it up as a conspirator in the plan by the well known nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, Professor Moriarty. Leo McKern is the professor with a case of Tourette's syndrome. There is a sword fight near the end and there was a "Chekhov's Gun" set up early on. Wilder was in fact proficient in sword play having trained in fencing during his time in a theatrical school.
This is ultimately a pretty sweet film although it has some distasteful moments. All of that will be forgiven when the Kangaroo Hop comes along. Enjoy.
One of the reasons I took the approach I have for this blog, was so I can do exactly what I am doing now, writing about a film I love, because I saw it in a theater. I have watched "The Great Escape" dozens of times, I own it on Laserdisc, DVD, and Blu-ray, but I have never seen it in a theater on the big screen, what a magnificent film! The story of the biggest prisoner escape during WWII is told in a straight forward narrative with plenty of suspense and great characters along the way.
Take a look at this cast, it is very impressive. There are a ton of British actors that you will recognize, even if you don't know their names, and the American cast is stacked with legendary stars like Steve McQueen and James Garner. The film is nearly three hours long but never feels too long because all the pieces are put together so well. The plan is laid out for us, we know who everyone is and what their responsibilities are. There are great character points and a bit of humor here and there, but no one simply exists as comic relief. The one plot line that suggests it was designed to amuse us with humor, ends tragically and sets one of the characters on a different trajectory.
Donald Pleasance, who had made dozens of things before this, first appeared on my radar as Blythe in this film. His fish out of water forger was sympathetic and ultimately tragic, which I think made him stand out for me for the rest of his career. He was Blofeld in "You Onley Live Twice", he was in "Fantastic Planet", "THX1138", a terrific TV Movie version of "The Count of Monte Cristo" and he is Dr. Loomis in the "Halloween" series. Heck, I even liked his parody of Robert Stigwood in "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". The relationship he and James Garner develop in the film is one that will resonate well with people who come together under trying circumstances. Garner is great as a scrounger, he basically played the same character the next year in "The Americanization of Emily". Garner's aw shucks flim flam style will sustain him through a dozen future feature films and the television show "The Rockford Files".
For a decade, I was was sure that Charles Bronson was once an Academy Award Nominee for supporting actor for this picture. It wasn't until sometime in the 1990s, when I looked it up on line, that I discovered I was mistaken. Watching his performance however, I can easily see why I thought it was true. His character, Danny, The Tunnel King", is a man of strength who has a weakness that he faces repeatedly, but has finally reached a tipping point. His temporary abandonment of the tunnel as the escape route has some great moments of close up and voice performance. He is so solid in this part, and he mostly is stoic for the rest of his career, I see so much more that did not get played out as it could have in lesser films in his future.
I don't know if anyone has ever talked about "The Great Escape" without mentioning Steve McQueen, and if they have, how could they do it and Why? McQueen is the top billed star in this film, but it is an ensemble picture, and he is not in it any more than many of the other actors. The reason everyone remembers him in the movie is because he is magnetic. His character is a defiant iconoclast, who never the less fits into the military structure very effectively. His casual interplay with Richard Attenborough and Gordon Jackson contrasts nicely with the defiant reminder to the German Commandant, that he is Captain Hilts. That was a moment of charisma so important, that it is reimagined for "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood". Of course the biggest moment for him in the film is the motorcycle escape. My wife and I used to joke that if we watched the film one more time, this time he will make it over that second fence.
Director John Sturges had a way with masculine adventure stories that seemed to peak in the 1960s. In addition to this film, he made "The Magnificent Seven" (also with Steve McQueen, James Coburn and Charles Bronson) and "Ice Station Zebra" the baby boomers gateway drug to submarine movies. Sturges often used Elmer Bernstein to score his films and in addition the his theme for The Magnificent Seven", his iconic score for this film is well loved. I read somewhere, probably on IMDB, that soccer fans hum it during games. (I would have thought whistling Colonel Bogey's March would make more sense).
The fact that this is based on a true story and the techniques used by the prisoners were pretty closely followed in the film, give rise to even greater respect fore the fighting men of the Allied forces in WWII. The film makers do what must always be done in creating an entertainment, they romanticize some things, ignore the inconvenient, and have to change characters around. Still the film feels very honest, in part by the fact that there are no speaking roles for women in a P.O.W. camp. Hogan's Heroes would fix that later. This is one of those thousand films you must see before you die. so I have several lifetimes worth of viewing it to my credit.
The trailer is included above, but like a lot of horror films, I think you will enjoy the movie more if you don't watch the trailer first. I knew nothing about this film before I saw it, except that there was a hand. I kept trying to call the movie "Take My Hand" or "Hold My Hand". When the film started, I suddenly discovered that it was an Australian film. OK, I did know that it was a horror film because that's why it was recommended to me. This is the debut feature film from Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou, who collaborated with a bucket load of people to come up with the idea and the script.
The premise will sound like a lot of other horror films, people get enamored with an object that seems to have supernatural abilities, and they end up taking the playful interaction with the spirit world too far. Maybe you remember JoBeth Williams as the Mom in Poltergeist, playing with the spot in the kitchen? It's like that, or as Ian Malcolm would say, "Oh, yeah. Oooh, ahhh, that's how it always starts. Then later there's running and um, screaming." The problem here is that you can't really run away. Somewhere there is also a fentanyl allegory here, because it does not take much to push things over the edge.
Our hero is Mia, played by actress Sophia Wilde, a teen who is dealing with the grief of having lost her mother. She has adopted her friend's family as a surrogate when she has difficulty interacting with her dad. Here Best friend Jade and Jade's younger brother Riley are her closest confidants. Like all teens, they sneak out to party, but this time they are going to a gathering where people are taking turns interacting with the spirit world. I don't really believe in that sort of supernatural stuff, but I would not be taking those chances anyway, why tempt fate? Of course if people never made stupid choices, most horror movies would end before they begin.
There are a couple of jump scares but the most horrifying moments are of self destructive behavior by those in the thrall of the supernatural hand at the center of the disturbances. Horror movies often leave things abstract, because an answer to some questions would minimize the mystery of what is happening. There is a bit of that here in the second and third acts of the film. Mia is drawn to the spirit world for one reason and repulsed by it for others. Is she hearing the truth or is she simply imposing her fears on the voices she is listening to. It is not quite clear, and the resolution does little to make it easy to understand.
I did think the final moments of the film work pretty well. We get some good suspense, an ironic outcome and a sense that the story is never really finished. Because we are seeing a distorted world it is not entirely clear how some of the other characters get resolved, but that is a minor quibble. The film was able to create a sense of dread, follow that up with some shocks and finish off with a frightening coda. That makes it a successful outing as far as I'm concerned and I would recommend the film to you.
