Dream Scenario

 

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

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

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

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

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

Silent Night

 

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

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

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

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

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

Arthur Christmas (Revisit)

 

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

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

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

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

Napoleon

 

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

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

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

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

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

The Marvels

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanksgiving

 

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

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

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

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

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

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: Bite the Bullet

Throwback Thursday #TBT

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

Bite the Bullet

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

POST #2

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

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

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