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.
Jaws
This was a hectic day and I didn't get a chance to rewatch a film for the project, so I'm sharing with you some of the material from the past on the greatest film of 1975.
I had two theatrical presentations of Jaws this year, one in May, and the second in July. Of course I have seen the movie at home a couple of times earlier in the year. Frankly, I could watch this movie ten times a year rather than the four or five that have been standaard for me over the last couple of decades. This is the movie that I know I have seen the most and it is also the one I have written about the most.
Back in 2015, on the fortieth Anniversary of the film, I did an extensive set of posts celebrating the four decade long reign of this film as my favorite (At least of the second half of the twentieth century).
Here are some links for you to go back and see from that time frame.
A list of non-shark shark sightings in the film.
Everyone knows the most famous line from the film, here are some other good ones.
We have probably added a dozen to the collection in the last eight years, this was Amanda's Closet in 2015.
The three leads are not the only great characters in the picture.
Ah, now eventually you do plan to have megalodons, in your megalodon movie, right?
For a movie featuring giant sharks, there is an awful lot of tangential story development and action that features big sharks only in the background. At least Spielberg had a reason the shark was not seen much in the opening act of Jaws. Director Ben Wheatley seems to think this is an espionage, action thriller and that the sharks are not really why we are coming to see this movie. The movie starts with a James Bond of the Oceans sequence, then spends a big amount of time playing Armageddon games. Then the movie transitions to Die Hard on the high seas, before turning into Jurassic Park of Thailand. Finally we get to the good stuff, and what do we have? Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus.
Look, this was always going to be a popcorn picture that we laughed at a little, but still felt like it should be taken seriously. That does not happen. There is nothing you can take seriously in this movie. When we start meeting the new characters, the first one is basically working on his Iron Man suit. The villains you can pick out in a few seconds of screen time and the set up for the climax moment is presented as if the character who will use it did it as an afterthought.
I like Jason Statham films a lot, but there are getting to be too many "Fast and Furious" imitators out there and if he is going to be in all of them, he will be overstaying his welcome. He is great in the action scene opening, and he does a great impression of Ed Harris without the liquified oxygen. When we get to the actual shark battles that come at the end, he looks good enough on a jet ski, but the cars and motorcycles of the other series probably make this feel like a repeat. So many of the shots have a deliberately cartoon feel to them that there is no suspense at all. I understand the presence of sub-titles since the film is partially produced by Chinese interests and will be marketed there, but some of the Chinese style shorthand in storytelling, makes the film even more like a Syfy weekend programmer, in spite of it's budget.
Shortcuts are taken everywhere. How did the most technologically advanced company in the world not know that part of it's resources were being given steroids, so that an even more advanced technology can make the impossible, possible? The cash and resources can't be covered up like a bookkeeping mistake. The usurping of the chain of command is also something that just does not get explained. Maybe Chinese audiences expect that from capitalists, I don't know or understand. The secondary heavy, a bad French sailor, is smart enough to know that a boat engine will draw a meg to a boat when he is warning his troops, but twenty minutes later, he is clueless and we know bad stuff is going to happen to him.
After we have escaped Blofeld's drilling platform, oops, I mean Jing Wu's scientific sea station, we relocate to an area that will give the audience the surrogate thrills they are seeking, but it pays off a lot less interesting than the first fill. Even with Megmouth Cam. To punch it up, other characters have to become action heroes, and against all odds they do. Of course it requires the bad guys to ignore the common threat to everyone on "Fun Island". Yes, it is actually called "Fun Island". It's been five years since the last film, and that interval resulted in the laziest writing you are going to get in this summer's film lineup.
"The Meg" was so much fun, you just assumed that a sequel would have it's moments. No, it doesn't. it's like a beached shark instead of a beached whale. The crowds will stand around it for a little while, but after a few days, the smell will drive them away.
Do you remember when comedies used to come out on a regular basis and they were funny? Somewhere in the last ten years, people seem to have lost their sense of humor. Comedy films got released, ignored and then disappeared, and as a result, there are far fewer of them. Nowadays, the comedy has to be mashed up with horror, action, romance, to get to the big screen. The last straight up comedy that I saw was "Good Boys" from 2019. Don't get me wrong, I love me some "Stuber", or "Sisu", or "Renfield", but they all bring you in on a different vibe. This movie is a throwback to films like "I Love You Man" or "Role Models". The goal is to tickle your funny bone and break your heart, with a little lesson included. The mayhem is of the everyday variety, no hatchets to the head or super heroes.
"No Hard Feelings" aspires to be "The Hangover" or "Bridesmaids" and it almost succeeds. There is enough here however to recommend it, and you will definitely laugh out load at a couple of sequences. Does it get the mix of raunchy, sentimental and outrageousness perfect, no. It is the best thing this side of the Farrelly Brothers you are likely to see this year, and you have star and producer Jennifer Lawrence to thank for that.
As is often the case in a comedy, our protagonist is not an entirely sympathetic character. Maddie Barker is a self centered underachiever, living in the house she inherited from her mother, and struggling to make ends meet in the face of rising property taxes due to the influx of wealthy summer people driving up land values in her Montauk Beach community. Lawrence plays her as a mean girl with a bitter tongue but one who can also sweet talk her way out of some things, but not everything. Maddie drinks too much, is promiscuous, and indifferent to the feelings of some of the people she comes into contact with. The premise of the film is far fetched, but it is supposedly based on a real Craigslist ad. Maddie has lost her car, the main source of her income as an Uber driver. She sees an ad that offers a car in exchange for giving an introverted high school graduate, the "girlfriend" experience. Desperate times call for desperate measures and this early 30s party girl decides to take up the offer to make a man out of a 19 year old college bound innocent.
In spite of the extreme unlikelihood of the premise, the follow through is very entertaining. Andrew Barth Feldman as Percy Becker, has the right geek quality that confirms him as an outsider, but not necessarily a loser. The idea that exposure to, and a sexual relationship with, the older woman might help bring him out of his shell seems conceivable. The humor comes from the awkwardness of the situation, the inevitable subterfuge from passing Maddie off as a woman attracted to Percy and not as an employee of his helicopter parents, and the fact that Maddie defies conventions that Percy has learned to accept or impose on himself.
The boldest scene in the movie involves Maddie convincing Percy to go skinny dipping with her in the ocean, and then having some teenagers bully them by taking their clothes. They have no idea what they are in for. Maddie shamelessly comes out of the water and engages them in a fistfight, completely nude, but fearless. Lawrence does not shy away from the demands of the scene and she plays Maddie exactly they way we would expect of this ballsy woman with a lot to lose if things go wrong. Seth Macfarlane will have a lot to add to his actress shaming song if he ever hosts the Academy Awards again.
Maddie is the butt of a lot of cracks about her age, which at 32 does not seem old to me, but to the college bound kids at the Princeton mixer, it is like she was born in another century...oh wait, she was. The humor in this party scene includes referencing the Gen Z obsession with recoding every little thing, and then using it to create a cancel culture. I about bust a gut when the virtue signaling parents at the party get incensed at a joke they consider inappropriate. The juxtaposition of generations in the scene was way too on the nose for comfort.
Like all real stories, there need to be high points and low points in the relationship between the characters. We can see trouble coming when Percy is more enamored of Maddie than she is comfortable with. He breaks through her hard shell with a sweet musical moment, that she smothers as quickly as she can. Of course there will also be crossed wires, unintended over heard conversations, and personal revelations that make the story more interesting and engaging, even if we see most of it coming. Director and co screen writer Gene Stupnitsky, who also made "good Boys", has all the ingredients of a great comedy, but somewhere in the process, it just does not jell as well as it should. Maybe it's a timing issue or the tone switches need a little more percolating, but it just misses working all of the time.
Don't worry though, it works enough to make it worth a visit. I laughed out loud several times and I did understand the sweetness that underlies the raunchy. Jennifer Lawrence is very good and carries off the funny quite well. Matthew Broderick plays Percy's overprotective and indulgent father, and it seems completely appropriate, since forty years ago, he would have been playing Percy himself. There are amusing side characters with strings of plotline that are not particularly important, but they add to the film to make it more rounded. Frankly, the line about "Jaws" would have been enough for me to recommend the film, even if if fall just short of being great.
Regular visitors to this site will not be surprised at the fact that we had a return visit to "Jaws" on the big screen, just a month after our recent screening. Yes the 47 year old film is widely available for home viewing, yes there is an expense and inconvenience of traveling to a theater thirty miles from home, but those things don't matter. Seeing "Jaws" in a theater is a chance to share the experience with an audience, it is an opportunity to treat the moment as special, and it is one more instance where we can sit in awe of the accomplishment of the film.
The screening was promoted as a "Movie Party" and the audience was provided with some tools to participate, including a shark fin hat that I tried on but took off while watching the movie. The bloody inflatable drink cozy was not needed in the theater but might come in useful in a hot tub. We were encouraged to respond to lines in the movie but the audience was relatively subdued. I did sing along with Quint about those fair Spanish Ladies and with all three of our hunters when they were tired and wanted to go to bed, but I did not hear others doing so. There was one audience member enamoured of the response line when Hooper Identifies the kind of shark the skiff load of fisherman hauled in, he repeated the line "A What? " with a great deal of impressionistic accuracy.
Another example of the advantages of seeing a film with an audience is being able to see the reactions of others to the moments you are reacting to as well. The man sitting next to me jerked involuntarily when Ben Gardner's head appeared in the hole in the hull of his own boat. The audience laughed together at several points and you could also feel the pall that fell over everyone, on -screen and in the audience, when Mrs. Kitner confronts the Chief. At that moment it doesn't just feel like a story, it feels like a tragedy.
I think we also felt a collective sense of community joy when Mayor Vaughn tells Brody and Hooper, "For Christ' sake tomorrow is the 4th of July and we will be open for business". Since we were all sitting in a theater together, the day before the Fourth of July, it just seemed especially relevant to us. Whenever someone asks what a great movie to watch for the Independence Day holiday, this is always the first answer.
When I first saw this movie on it's original release, I have to admit that I did not quite get it. There is a vibe to Wes Anderson's film making style that I was not tuned into. The arch, dry, detached story telling left me less engaged than I thought I should be. I did not dislike the film, I was simply indifferent to it. Flash forward twenty years and I have evolved a bit when it comes to Anderson's style. I have seen more of his films, adjusted to the off kilter approach and I have embraced the absurdity of the production design with enthusiasm.
"The Royal Tenenbaums" is Anderson's most commercially successful film, but it is not my favorite. "Isle of Dogs" the stop motion animated film, was my number one film of it's release year and contains most of the mannerisms that this film has, but it adds more heart to the story, which is where I think "Tenenbaums" shoots for but only partially succeeds at. The film is not meant for us to love the characters, they are all deeply flawed and that is the joke. We do understand them a bit better by the end and we don't wish them ill, but we can also see that they are still problematic human beings. Laughing at Royal's clueless cruelty and self centered behavior was easy, seeing him as a figure of redemption is a little harder but the steps he took seem right in retrospect.
As always there is an impressive cast in a film from Anderson, and the thing that helps me re-evaluate this film more positively is the presence of my favorite actor, Gene Hackman. As the patriarch of the family, Royal is a passively malevolent figure in his children's lives. As the lead character, he is a delightful figure to watch with jaws dropped as he utters the cluelessly cruel comments about his own family. Hackman sells this narcissistic persona flawlessly. His rapid delivery of the lines may finish before we even realize how thoughtless his words are. At this stage in his career, it pleased me to note that I was not put off by those flashbacks where he is made up to look younger. Although the image is imperfect, the acting was spot on.
If I have a reservation about the film, it is that there is a scene that involves the death of an animal. It takes place off screen, and there is some acknowledgement that it is supposed to be in a humorous context. Unlike the same sort of scene in "A Fish Called Wanda", we had a bit of a connection with this dog and that makes the film a little more sensitive for us animal lovers. Maybe this is the reason we got Isle of Dogs", if that's the case than the fiction is worth it.
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 Drowning Pool
At one point, I was set to buy this on ebay, believing that Strother Martin was in the film for a second Harper Story. It would have been for my companion blog, "The Strother Martin Film Project". When I looked closer at the credits, I realized that Strother does not appear in this film, so I skipped it and never ended up seeing it until this last weekend. In 1975, I could easily have skipped this simply because I had limited resources or availability. Although there were six screens within walking distance of where I lived, not everything played in my town.
This is a fish out of water story following Lew Harper, a private detective from California, who ends up in Louisiana, trying to help out a woman that he'd had an affair with several years earlier. The plot at first involves blackmail, but as things roll along, there is political corruption, bribery, kidnapping, murder and assorted other felonies that become part of the story. This is a sequel of sorts to "Harper" which did feature the same character that Paul Newman is playing and in which Strother did have a part. Since it was directed by Stuart Rosenberg, who had done "Cool Hand Luke" and "Pocket Money" with Newman and Martin in each, that's why I was confused.
Newman is a natural at playing an aw shucks, slightly disheveled, low key private investigator. Harper's persona is not unlike that of Jim Rockford from the TV series, they are both wise guys, eager to talk their way out of trouble rather than fight their way out, but willing to sucker punch someone in the right circumstances. Newman is playing against his real life wife Joanne Woodward, as Iris, his ex-flame. Melanie Griffith is an ingenue in the film, and she is in the middle of a busy year here. In 1975 she was previously in "Smile", and she will appear in "Night Moves" which was released the same month as this. Character actors Richard Jaeckel, Andy Robinson and Paul Koslo also are in the movie, but the most important other character was played by a co-star in the most important film of the year, decade, era and maybe ever.
Murray Hamilton plays the not very well disguised villain of the piece, J.H. Kilbourne, a wealthy oil baron, aching for the land that belongs to the family that Woodward's character Iris is a member of. There is a secondary villain that you can probably figure out but is much better hidden for the eventual reveal at the end of the film. Hamilton is an oily, self centered kook, with a slightly Cajon accent. His performance is very distinctive from his role as the feckless mayor of Amity in "Jaws". Hamilton worked primarily in television but had an important part in "The Graduate" and then his two biggest parts were the films that came out this year.
The movie is a diverting piece of slow burn southern mystery, that will not compel you to rewatch it but also will not irritate you for taking the time to check it off of your list. The sequence referred to in the title is actually pretty effective and it is all done in camera so it looks really good. Not an essential film from the era, but definitely has the vibe of all those other 70s films that you remember so well.
Apparently, I should have chosen 1981 for my Summer Movie Season debate claim from the Lambcast a couple of weeks ago. After all, 1981 had "An American Werewolf in London", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Superman II" and this film, the one that turned Kurt Russell from a Disney kid into an action star. I saw "Escape From New York" in the Summer of 1981 at the El Rey Theater on Main Street in my hometown of Alhambra California. I'd been married for a year and I had summer off between semesters, while my poor wife had to work, so I saw this at a matinee by myself. I had to take her to see it the next week, because I knew she would love it, and sure enough, she fell completely for Kurt Russell.
This was a low budget film that made the most of every dollar they had to spend. John Carpenter was a viable director after his success with "Halloween" and he had made a TV biopic about Elvis with Kurt Russell, so it feels a little inevitable that they would work together in a completely original project. The premise is a simple one, Manhattan has been turned into a maximum security prison, where the convicts are dumped to make out the best they can. In the middle of an international crisis, the President's plane goes down in the area, and someone has to go in and recover him and the McGuffin he in possession of. Former military hero, now convict Snake Plissken, is given the job as a way of gaining his freedom.
Russell does his best Clint Eastwood impression throughout the film, and that makes sense because when Carpenter originally wrote the screenplay years earlier, he had envisioned Eastwood in the part. Snake is an anti-authoritarian, like John Carpenter himself, so the movie is full of middle fingers extended toward the government, convention, and anything else that was pissing off the director at the time. Russell plays Snake as a sullen outsider, who wisely trusts no one and is a lot more of a strategic thinker than he is given credit for. He snarls and growls his way through the plot, remaining cool in the face of every obstacle he ends up against.
The action scenes are not complicated but they are fun. As Snake tries to get away from a swarm of crazies at one point, he uses his weapon to improvise a door through a wall. It's a terrific looking action piece and emblematic of the kinds of creative moments Carpenter brings to the film. I combat sequence in a boxing ring is brutal without getting as gory as it would be if this film were made today. The nihilism evinced by Snake is downright compelling, even if it runs contrary to the world's best interest. He is so indifferent that he even puts off a moment of personal revenge because he is tired. His final FU to the whole affair is completely fitting with the character and the semi-dystopian world that all of the characters are operating in.
Four years ago, we got to see the movie at the TCM Film Festival, with both Carpenter and Russel in attendance.
I'd been a fan of the TV critics Siskel and Ebert since I'd discovered their show on PBS a couple of years before this film came out. While putting this post together I came across their reviews for this film, and if you have a few minutes you can watch it here:
As much as I respected Roger Ebert, I usually found myself on the same side of the equation as Gene Siskel. This may have been the tipping point for me way back in 1981, and lasting until Siskel's death in 1999.
Last night's screening was presented by Austin based film maker Robert Rodriguez. Before the movie screened he did a brief introduction and he surveyed the house on the number of people seeing the movie for the first time, for the first time on the big screen, and who had seen it in theaters in 1981. A couple people up front were given some nice gifts, one of which were some personal sketches done for the film and signed to Rodriguez by production designer Joe Alves (the production designer of Jaws also). He shared a bit about his personal relationship to the movie, and how he came to be acquainted with Carpenter and worked with Kurt Russell on "Grindhouse". He promised a few stories after the film as well.
The most amusing one involved Kurt Russell. Rodriguez was showing off his love of "Escape From New York" to Russell when they were together one time by showing that the wallpaper on his phone was an image of Snake Plissken. Russell responded by getting out his own i-phone, fumbling with it for a minute and then asking Suri "Who am I" , to which Suri replied, "You are Snake Plissken". Kurt laughed and said, I'm the only one in the world who can do that.
I've posted the trailer for Jaws a dozen times before, so I am changing it up a little for this post. Chief Brody is the character in the film with the most important story arc, and the sequence above explains that his instincts are really headed in the right direction. The fact that Mayor Vaughn talks him out of closing the beaches does not make him the bad guy. Martin Brody has a huge about of guilt poured on him when Alex Kitner is killed by the shark, but remember, his kids were on the beach, and he was trying to be cautious in pursuing his responsibilities as Chief of Police for this community. The fact that he gets bull rushed by the Mayor and Selectmen about closing the beaches a second time, shows that he is not the one ultimately responsible, but he shoulders that burden anyway.
His wife Ellen, tells Hooper about Martin's fear of the water and dislike of being on the ocean. It takes an act of courage, fueled by his own guilt, to get Brody onto the Orca and to join the fight to end the shark. Once on the boat, Brody is made a figure of ridicule by both Hooper and Quint. Their jabs are subtle, sometimes condescending, but all of them are attempts to assert dominance in the triumvirate that is on this odyssey. Martin is the realist, who believes they are outmatched when he sees the shark and utters the famous line from the film. Some might see it as cowardice, Quint certainly does, but it turns out he was entirely correct. The good man, who is not blinded by his fear from thirty years earlier, or by the intellectual superiority that Hooper assumes, is the one who had the best advice, and he was ignored because of the other two men's assumptions.
I have seen this film well over a hundred times, and every experience bring satisfaction. Sometimes it is for the inventiveness of the director, sometimes I am awed by an actor's performance, occasionally I marvel at a technical achievement. This time, it is the spine of the script that I was noticing the most. Chief Brody is the glue that holds the film together. He is an average family man faced with extraordinary circumstances. We watch him get out of bed, struggle with mundane issues like feeding the dogs and chastising his kids, before he gets slapped in the face with the remains of Chrissie Watkins. He finds the fortitude to try to do what is right. he defers to authority when it is necessary, and defies authority when it is clear that someone else has to act.
Roy Scheider's Chief is the odd man out on the Orca. Both Quint and Hooper are experienced sailors. Maybe their experiences are different, but they are comfortable on the water. We know Brody is not. Quint is Ahab, chasing the White Whale. Hooper is an academic, determined to prove his superiority to the old fashioned ways of the senior fisherman. Brody just wants to kill the shark, however it can be done. It is his responsibility to take care of the extended family of the Amity Community. He is not trying to prove himself or impress anyone, he just wants to get her done.
I have written about Scheider's performance before. He is excellent in this film, but Dreyfuss gets the funny lines and Shaw has the mic drop moment in the film. Brody is the everyday hero that a family and a town need.
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.
Rollerball
This was one of the films from my original project back in 2010. I was writing about films from the summers of the 1970s, my formative years, and this movie came out the same week that "Jaws" hit the marketplace. In spite of mixed reviews, I suspect it would have been a big hit except that it was overshadowed by the competition. I chose the film this week because it was referenced in a television series I am currently streaming. "Daisy Jones and the Six" is a fictional look at a 70s era band, along the lines of Fleetwood Mac. Two of the band members are obsessed with "Rollerball", actually calling it brilliant, and they are on their way to see it for the eighth time. That fictional enthusiasm was enough for me to go back and watch the film again for Throwback Thursday.
When I went back to my original post, I was happy to see that it expressed my feelings about the film almost exactly as I was experiencing them this week. You should read that post here. The strength of the film is in the design of the game the movie is based on. The combination of roller derby, soccer and football plus the acceptance of violence that goes well beyond that in hockey and rugby, is a great show that will hypnotize the masses. The production design of the film starts off with a bang by showing off the track, the ball, the teams with their motorcycles and some futuristic fonts that seem to be realistic from the perspective of time.
The color schemes of the teams are the only distinguishing element. I guess a logo might imply more choice than the proles are entitled to. The combination of the high tech track and the traditional fugue music sets an ominous tone that we will feel every time the game commences. I thought the teams individual struts on the track as they were entering also sets a martial tone and a sense of inevitable clash.
Houston, the team that Johnathan E (James Caan) plays for, has the simple Houston stride, an in-line synchronized march that is direct, elegant and feels very determined. Other teams seem to have been more artistic, for example the Tokyo team has an arrow wedge that looks fearsome, and as they break out of the formation, they drop down to the center of the rink in a kamikaze style flourish. The film comes to life the most in the three matches that we see. Of course as the rules are being changed to force Johnathan out of the game, the clashes become more elaborate, violent and ultimately deadly.
Obviously, the script and the director were trying to say something about the dangers of corporate control over the world. Unfortunately, there are few places other than the game and Johnathan's personal life, that we see the stilting effect of corporate decision making. There is a sequence where Johnathan attempts to discover how corporate decisions are made. His wife had been taken away from him in what he sees as an arbitrary action. He wants to know why.
The computer system that has replaced all the books, is limited in access and intelligence. There are not really librarians, just clerks who try to direct people but have no ability to find information on their own. It's as if Wikipedia had to be accessed through a human, who did not have any understanding of the information they control access to. Later in the film, Johnathan goes to Geneva, to the main data storage facility. If the director had spent less time at the idyllic party of drug addled executives, there might have been an opportunity to do some interesting exposition with the main computer "Zero". A video of the corporate wars or a quick summary of the current social conditions might have made Johnathan's individualism seem mor meaningful. Instead, there is a mildly amusing Ralph Richardson, playing word games with an A.I. that has a defective memory. It is a lost opportunity to do the thing the film purports to do.
Early on there was a moment that I thought could be contrasted to the world of today in an interesting way. As the corporate anthem is being played before the first game, all the players are lined up obediently standing at attention, but Johnathan is clenching his fist and lightly pounding it against his leg. It is certainly not the act of defiance that kneeling on the sidelines or staying in the locker room for the anthem would have been. It sems the smallest act of individuality that could exist in the corporate world.
Throughout the film, Director Norman Jewison uses classical music to set the mood, in a way that seems to deliberately invite comparison to "Clockwork Orange." The use of some interesting architecture in West Germany (at the time), which is modernistic in the way a futurist might have suggested does the same thing.
As I said earlier, my original post expresses my feelings about this film perfectly, but I hope that the few extra note here made your visit worthwhile.
I have written about this movie before, but as you can see from all the "Jaws" and "Lawrence of Arabia" posts, I don't necessarily feel sated by one entry on a film. "Casablanca" may be one of the most important films in my love of movies. The main character is my namesake, and the circumstances under which I first fell under it's spell, tell a traditional story of a movie fanatics love affair.
Eleven years ago, there was a 70th Anniversary screening by Fathom Events, You can read my comments on that occasion here:
My opinion on the film has not changed at all, the movie is still perfection. The Sunday Night show that we went to was three quarters full, which is good, but the audience was elderly, which is less so. That comes from someone who just reached the Social Security milestone, so it was noticeable. This is a program that is designed to sell the release of the film on a 4K format, which probably means little to most of the fans who came out, but maybe it will help bring in some younger viewers so that the near Universal respect that this film is held in will continue.
There has been a Social Media prompt the last couple of weeks, listing a series of items to answer, you know: "Movie that I Hate", "Movie that I find overrated", "Movie that I can watch over and over again". Several of my on-line friends played along and the one item that stood out to me was that at least three of them answered "Movie I should have seen but haven't"; CASABLANCA.
Far be it for me to chastise people for having a blind spot, believe me I have plenty. I am just surprised because this is such an accessible film Unlike some foreign language cinema masterpiece, or a dense metaphysical dive into existentialism, "Casablanca" is emotionally engaging, easy to dive into and a pleasure rather than a chore. I hope that all of you who have not caught up to it will do so soon.
The love story at the center of the film, features a broken romance, a love triangle and the complications of the Nazi threat to the world. All of those get a satisfying resolution at the end, at least from a moral perspective. Everyone lives up to their duty and faith in the face of horror. My favorite elements of the film however, repeatedly involve Claude Rains as Captain Renault. His presenting self is as a neutral in regard to others and the politics of the war. He cynically accuses Rick of being a sentimentalist underneath his gruff exterior. Renault, is among the least moral characters in Casablanca, engaging in corruption and exploiting women through his power to grant an exit visa. Yet he is also the most charming and insightful of characters, and every time he and Rick engage in verbal by-play, it is music to my ears.
It's the end of the year and time to narcissistically look back on what my Movie Year entailed. After two years of Covid impact, things started to get back to normal, but the streaming monster that was awakened may very well be set to stomp all over the Cinema World.
Data Dump
I saw fiftythree new features in theaters this year but I actually went to a lot more film screenings than that number would indicate. Fully forty percent of all Theatrical experiences I had this year would be called "Classic Film Releases"
There were an additional thirty one films that I saw in theaters, these ranged from 1940s War pictures to three of the Harry Potter films. This will also include our annual theatrical screenings of Lawrence of Arabia and Jaws (Including a 3D screening of the shark film)
It is the practice of this site to focus on films seen in a theater, so the seventeen new films that I saw which went straight to streaming are excluded from this inventory. I will say however, that "Prey" the Predator sequel, would have made my top ten list for the year if it had a theatrical release. "The Banshees of Inisherin", "Glass Onion" and "Tar" all disappeared from theaters so quickly that they never had a chance to make it on this site. "The Fabelmans" might have suffered the same fate if I had not diligently sought a venue where I could see it before it vanished into our televisions.
The Lambcast
On the Podcast Front, I personally hosted 48 of the 52 Lambcasts this year. I'd like to thank MovieRob, Todd Liebenow and Howard Casner for volunteering to cover for me when I was traveling in the past 12 months. It always lets my head rest easier when I know I have competent, responsible LAMBs who can back me up. In addition to the Movie of the Month, Decade Lookback Shows, Compilation shows, we covered 24 new theatrical releases. That averages out to two new films a month, most of which were crowded into the Summer film season.
Here are links to three of my favorite Lambcasts from 2022:
TCMFF
Almost a dozen of the classics I took in were at the TCM Film Festival in April. We stayed at the Roosevelt Hotel for the first time in the eight festivals we have attended. Of course that is because I am no longer commuting from home everyday for the festival, having moved to Texas in 2020. The most amazing thing about the trip was that my friend Michael, who I met for the first time at the TCMFF in 2014, picked us up at LAX and drove us to Hollywood for the first night we were there. Michael is a
longtime friend from the blogging community, and you can read his work at "It Rains...You Get Wet".
Listening to Steven Spielberg at the opening night screening of "E.T.", was also pretty good.
Strother Martin
Over the Summer, I did a weekly dive into the Strother Martin Film Project. I tried to cover films that had not been on the project before, and the weekly post I put up became "Strother Martin Wednesdays".
You can visit the site by clicking on the link to "Pocket Money"
I still hope to put together a scrapbook/journal of my 007 thoughts and experiences. If I ever get it done I will self publish, and put a link here, but I doubt it will be ready this next year
Biggest Disappointments of the Year
"Don't Worry Darling" may have been the film I hated the most this year. It was pointless and the premise, a take on "The Stepford Wives" was less clever than that 50 year old film.
Coming in a close second on my list of shame, Alex Garland's Men.
This is a pseudo intellectual proto feminist, revisionist horror film that wastes the great Jessie Buckley and has poor Rory Kinnear as the face of every man in the story. Up until Babylon, it had the most visually disgusting sequence of the year. Gross but not frightening.
Racing past "Men" for the most vile imagery on the screen this year, just under the wire, is Damien Chazelle's look at Hollywood history in the tears the film industry was transitioning from silent to sound films. "Babylon" does have some things to recommend it, including a great performance by Margo Robbie. Unfortunately, the style that makes some scenes so appealing, also renders many sequences revolting. If you are willing to be defecated on, vomited on and peed on, there may be something here for you. For me it only held disappointment.
How you take five great actresses, but guns in their hands, and make the most boring action movie of the year is beyond me. Simon Kinberg manages to do it with "The 355"and test my patience, even though I am wired for this kind of film .
One other Thing
I did this to my bedroom. I am not a big DiCaprio fan but I am a big fan of Rick Dalton.
