DIRECTOR/WRITER MICHAEL WINNER DEAD AT AGE 77 - Celebrating Films of the 1960s & 1970s

DIRECTOR/WRITER MICHAEL WINNER DEAD AT AGE 77 - Celebrating Films of the 1960s & 1970s

Somewhere Charles Bronson is getting ready for his next great action film.

The Last Stand

Trying to save a little time this evening because we had another engagement, so just a quick video blog on this film.

Top Ten Moments I Experienced in Movies in 2012

Let's face it, not all movies are worthy of two hours of our attention, where as some are deserving of even more time. It is often the brief moments in a film that redeem it or that make us remember the rest of the film fondly. I selected ten moments from movies this year that reached up and slapped me. They are sometimes poignant, sometimes harsh and sometime hysterical. Here are ten moments to remember 2012 by.

10. The U.S.S. Missouri makes a guest appearance in Battleship. 

I know that the movie was crap. I also am aware that it is widely despised. I however may be one of the few who overlooked it's shortcomings and enjoyed it for the popcorn junk snack it was. The one part that worked for me was when the old-timers launch the Missouri back into battle. Of course it is impossible, but the AC/DC music, the shots of Big Mo, turning into the ocean, and the real heroes of WW2 jumping to duty gave me a rush of patriotic adrenaline which made me happy.

9. The Hunger Games: Katniss Salutes Rue and District 11

This is the point of the story where Katniss goes from a competitor trying to survive, to a real icon of a revolution. Her brief alliance with Rue and the honor that she shows her, stirs the residents of District 11 to a mild riot. Just the sort of thing the games are supposed to prevent. This is the match that lights up the rest of the stories and makes the material rise emotionally. It brought a tear to my soft-hearted eye and made me care a lot more about the stuff that was going on on the screen.

8. Prometheus: Dr. Shaw Gives Herself a C-Section

This was the most tense and horrifying scene in the movie. This is the only moment that Prometheus rises to the level of the original Alien. We are terrified by the concept that our own bodies can harbor the dangers we most fear, and it takes an act of incredible will for Elizabeth Shaw to take the action she does. The scene is gory, suspenseful and the one truly scary moment in a film that needed more moments like this.

7. The Grey: Liam Neeson Stands Up to A Wolf by Getting Ready to Punch It

If you have ever seen the inspirational poster of the mouse flipping off the eagle as it is about to get torn to shreds, you will understand the impact of this moment. Neeson's character is not going to go quietly into the night. He is going to kick and scream and fight for every moment of life he can get. Whether it could ever work is beside the point. What matters here is that his character is going to try anything he can think of to keep living. This deeply philosophical story is summarized nicely by the deceptive idea that this is an action picture where Liam punches wolves. The real question is whether or not we should bother? This film answers that question very clearly.

6. The Dark Knight Rises: Batman Re-Appears After Eight Years of Hiding

The moment we waited for in the movie. Batman comes out of hibernation and begins to fight for Gotham again. The surrounding areas during a police chase all go dark, and then, to the pounding score, Batman drives out of the darkness on the Batpod, to run down the criminals who just invaded Wall Street. Like the moment from the Michael Keaton Batman film, when he opens his safe and reveals Batman's costume, we suck in our breath and wait for the fireworks to begin. It is a signal that our story is about to take off.

5. The Avengers: Hulk Smash Puny God

Sometimes the super intelligent industrialist, the heroic warrior, the Norse demi-god, and all the SHIELD agents just over think their approach. The Hulk just gets right to the point and we all laugh our asses off and applaud. This is a moment of genius, like Indy pulling his gun and shooting the swordsman, the direct approach is often the most effective.

4. Django Unchained: Dr. Schultz is simply done with Calvin Candy

 Christoph Waltz's character has outwitted a hundred idiots in his career.  He has used cleverness and language to move successfully into his career as a bounty hunter. He is even as gracious as he can be when he gets outwitted. He is simply not going to knuckle under to a stupid request to be treated as a civilized person, by the lowly scum of DiCaprio's Calvin Candy. Even though they have achieved their goal and could safely leave by giving in, Schultz simply draws a line in the sand, and the fireworks that result are the orgy of violence we have waited for through the whole movie.

3. SKYFALL: 007 Has Two Great Moments in One Movie

OK, maybe it is a cheat, but It is my favorite movie of the year and I did not put these at the top, so indulge me a little. In the pre-title action sequence, Bond makes a daring leap from a back hoe that is collapsing on top of an escaping train car. As he jumps into the passenger car, he takes a moment to pay attention to his stylish appearance. Like Connery pulling off a wetsuit to reveal a tuxedo, or Roger Moore straightening his tie after flicking a bad guy off a building, this was a moment straight from the hearts of 007 lovers everywhere.

As a fan of James Bond since I was seven or eight, there are many iconic moments, characters and gadgets that I recall with great adoration. In closing the second act and beginning the third in Skyfall, the film makers bring back an old ally in a reveal that frankly gave me a little too much of a charge. Thankfully the only body excretion was a tear.

 

2. Piranha 3DD: The Greatest Line in 2012 (Maybe in Movie History)

This is not a great film, but I was entertained. I will never be able to erase from my memory (nor do I want to) this terrific piece of dialogue.

 

1. Les Misérables: I Dreamed a Dream

There were a lot of things I did not enjoy about Les Miz, but all of them are forgiven because we got Anne Hatheway doing the key song from the play. If she is not the Academy Award Winner for Best Supporting Actress, I may never watch the awards again.

 

 

 

Gangster Squad

I selected the trailer above because it still has a brief clip in it that makes reference to a shootout in the Chinese Theater, a scene that was removed from the film and caused this movie to be moved to January after the Aurora CO. shooting. I understand the sentiment but it seemed to be a little overdone to me. The film probably is a good fit for a January release when action fans are starved for a little love. The trailer makes it very clear that this is an action popcorn film and not really an attempt to make a classic crime film. The idea of machine gun shootouts on the streets of L.A. is clearly an invention of a creative mind. The story of how the LAPD kept organized crime to a minimum in the city has been covered before by better films like L.A. Confidential and Mullholland Falls. This is basically a pulp version of that tale and fidelity to the actual history goes right out the window.

There is not really any originality to the story or the film making. The plot is basically "The Untouchables" transferred to the West Coast, and instead of Robert DeNiro chewing the scenery, we get Sean Penn.  Of course in the DePalma film, we got some interesting character development and some actors who had charisma in spades. Here there are cryptic references to the characters past but almost no follow through on why any of that matters. Josh Brolin is a good tough guy but he has no personal development in the film, just the back story that is created for his character. Ryan Gosling I suppose is a stand in for Sean Connery, but with a love interest and lacking 30 years of gravitas to back it up. From the pregnant wife to the doomed members of the squad, and even the death of an innocent bystander, everything about this movie is predictable. There are some attempts to put a California Dream spin on the story, and that may be the right way to go, but anytime there is something that resembles a theme being raised, it is immediately overtaken by a shootout of some sort. The California Paradise idea is a good one because this was the land of opportunity after the war. Thousands were flocking to the Southland, to take advantage of  wide open spaces and the fantastic weather. That criminals would be among the immigrants is not surprising. What is a surprise is that the only hint that this criminal intrusion into SoCal was having was dead kids and kidnapped wanna be starlets. The details of the rackets are not explored, we just get histrionics from Penn's Mickey Cohen.

My parents were part of that wave of immigrants. They came out here in 1947, and got started in the entertainment business like so many others. The nightclubs and bars and hot spots shown in the film, all have a very authentic feel to them. My daughter took the train into Union Station for a year after she graduated from but continued to work at USC, and it still looks like the 1940s. Clifton's cafeteria is used as a set, and they probably did not have to do much more than take the newspapers out of the racks to make it look like it belongs in the era. I'm pretty sure the scene in the Mexican restaurant was shot at El Cholo, and it looks exactly the same. All the old neighborhoods of East L.A. and Pasadena, as well as large sections of the Fairfax district, still resemble the suburban paradise that vets were looking for.  It looked to me like the Chinatown sequence was done on a soundstage, but the reproduction from the long standing main square in the area was tip top. Some of the daytime shots of the city, with large sections of empty hillsides are clearly CGI, those spots were being filled in with new homes when I was a kid. While there may be a few blank spots here and there, the crowded hillsides don't resemble the spacious vistas of the late 40s and early 50s. The clothes, and cars and general language of the film are all accurate and it is a big draw for the audience. Those of us raised on the film noir of Hollywood, lust for the days when men wore hats that made them look sharp instead of like shlumps. Women dressed up when they went out, and all the nightspots were decorated with neon and deco themes. The vision of a gangster wielding a machine gun harkens back to Hollywood's heyday of Warner Brothers gangster films, populated by Cagney, Bogart and Robinson. The film makers know this is what we are looking for, but it happens so often in this movie that each time feels less dramatic. By the climax of the film, it is just one more shootout in a nostalgic location with the weapons used more in the movies than in real life. There was one shot of a bad guy with a Tommy gun in each of his hands. This owes more to John Woo than Howard Hawks. I think because so many locations harken back to those days, and they are iconic from movies or collective memory, we will continue to get films set in this city, but at that time period.

Brolin is stoic and determined, Gosling is wain and smouldering, and Sean Penn is over the top. Robert Patrick gets the best scenes and lines, but he is not in the story as much as Connery's old timer was in "The Untouchables". Emma Stone is really very pretty, but she and Gosling don't have the chemistry that they had in last years, "Crazy, Stupid, Love". Her part feels tacked on and underdeveloped. The other guys on the Gangster Squad, could have had something to do that might have made the story more profound, but every time an idea pokes it's head up, the shooting starts again. Michael Pena is in this movie for no reason, and Giovani Ribisi and Anthony Mackie, get only a little time to register. I always love the disclaimer at the end of a movie that says this is a work of fiction and it is not based on any person or location. That's silly, the LAPD headquarters building is named after the Police Chief played by Nick Nolte here. They slip in a reference to a more recent chief by having Darryl Gates as his driver and the guy Parker uses to bring in Brolin's character. I know they want to avoid lawsuits, but when the movie is all based on Location (LA) and real people (Mickey Cohen and Chief Parker), it is ridiculous to deny a link.

I liked this movie pretty well for what it is; a slam bang action piece with a cool setting. They overdo the shootouts and violence. The characters are not given much chance to develop past their archetypes. The city looks great and the music is good (even the segments copped from Ennio Morricone's score for "The Untouchables"). There are no story surprises and very little tension. There are plot-holes galore, but don't worry about it because the plot is just a chance to play cops and robbers in a cool setting. No one except the set dresser, art directors, costumers and make up people will be looking at this with a huge amount of pride. There is nothing embarrassing here, there is just a lack of something to care about or any originality. If you do go to see it, stick around for the credits. They play over some beautiful postcards of Southern California from that era, and you get a sense of how well they nailed the look, without getting much else right.

"It's A Major Award"

OK, maybe not a major award but it is an nice acknowledgement from one of the blog pages that I frequent. Nick over at the Cinematic Katzenjamer included me in his first annual Awards poll on his site. I guess I was a big enough pest in his posting sections to qualify as a know it all. The category I was in was "Most Likely to Teach You Something". Old guys like me acquire bits and pieces of information if we live long enough and then we are lucky to pass it on.  Fortunately, I have found some folks on line who share my interest in movies, both good and bad. What is nice is that I tied in this category with a guy who's web site is a lot more organized than mine is (and I suspect he has a lot more breadth than I do in some genres). I'm sure I benefited from the support of my readers and those on Nick's site that I have been lucky enough to add something to their knowledge. I am in awe of the effort that all these other folks put into their blog pages. If I had the skill and time, I'd wish my site was half as cool as Public Transportation Snob, Fog's Movie Reviews or the CinematicKatzenjamer. Still let me thank all of you that have supported me and this project. Let's have a great 2013.

Texas Chainsaw 3D

OK, you know there is no reason for you to see this if it does not interest you in the first place. Decent human beings and discerning movie goers will wisely stay away. This review will simply be for those depraved horror fans and goremeisters who wonder whether there is anything here for them to lap up. If you fall into either of those categories, there is a small amount of consolation for you here. All others should wait for a more varied horror film down the road. I will say that the trailer for the "Evil Dead" remake played with this, and although it was not the sick red band version that I saw on line, it still looks like something worthy.

I usually do not read reviews on other sites before I see a movie, because I want the impressions that I share to be mine. In this case I have made an exception and there is a reason that I mention this. "Fog's Movie Reviews" posted his evaluation yesterday, and I knew I was going to see this today regardless of what he said. In the talk back section one of his reader's mentioned a set of standards that his father uses for judging movies like this. I thought it was a sweet set of criteria to use, so I am going to borrow it and use it here to talk about my reaction the the film. His first standard is "Was it A Jumper?", how many times did it make you jump in your seat? Texas Chainsaw has several moments that attempt to get us to leap up out of fright. From my own personal reaction it worked 2 and 1/2 times. The first jump was not in a suspense scene at all, and it introduces an extra character to the story. I think it works because it was so out of context. The second jump I had, was right in context, I knew it was coming and it worked anyway. Looking into a dark area in a creepy basement, you know something is coming out of there, and it does, but like I said I bit and jumped a little. They go back to that well a couple of more times but do not get me to go with them. I added the 1/2 because even though the third shot did not get a jump, it was a slight intake of breath, and again, I knew it was coming.

The second question is “How’s the gore?” or is there a lot of gore? Is it realistic, or comedic?There was a fair amount of gore in the film. It is after all "Texas Chainsaw". The problem that I had was that the gore is not used in a suspenseful manner or for comedic effect. It usually occurs separate from the plot or the attacks on the victims. For example, it gives nothing away for me to tell you that at one point, "Leatherface" is clipping the fingers off of one of his victims, in the kitchen sink. The victim is already dead, we cut right to the shot and there was not dramatic intent, it was simply a gratuitous bit of gore, it served no point except to gross out the audience. If that is OK with you, then the gore quotient is probably high enough. At the very end, there is a pretty good sequence with a fight and the chainsaw and a giant meat grinder. This is the one place where the gore served a story point and satisfies a desire of the audience for an emotional reaction connected to the visceral.

The third criteria offered up by "Spikors" Dad is “How stupid is it?” How foolish is the comedy, or how horrible are the decisions that are made? There really is no comedy in the film. Not a single laugh to release tension and only a couple of laughs because the movie is so stupid. I don't like spoilers and I always try to avoid describing too much of the movie. I will simply say that there is a line that comes from our main heroine in that final sequence, when a secondary villain confronts our main antagonist, that is laugh out loud stupid. The movie tries to play both ends against the audience and this line shows a switch in  point of view that epitomizes why remakes are often problematic. When doing a movie like this, stick to the essentials and don't try so hard to set up an emotional backstory that will justify your sequel. There is plenty of stupidity preceding that line however, which makes all of the characters deserving of being carved up. Cops don't act like cops, rednecks treat everyone as if they are expendable, and characters lose their loyalty toward their friends because the story calls for it. I did like that some characters do change your original view of them before they are snuffed out, but I don't think this device is going to work for the main characters.

The best part of the movie was the opening summary of the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", which completely explains the events of the first film in the series in about three minutes during the credits. Everything that follows the truck death of the Sawyer brother from the original film, begins the process of trying to change the point of the movie. This seems inherently stupid when you already have a premise that works. I don't want to know what happened to Hannibal Lecter as a child to turn him into a monster, I want to know how he is going to act once he is that monster. I want to see how the victims are chosen, how they fight and how they die or escape. A pathological horror film is fine, but mixing it with a gore fest and then adding on characters that behave stupidly or inconsistently does not work well. Look, I did not hate the movie. It was actually pretty well made and directed. The script betrays all of the actors and the audience and that is the main downfall of this flick. The 3D is actually a good justification for seeing this. Chainsaws being thrust in your face is a lot more satisfying than watching the emotional turnaround of a horror franchise like this. 

The Traditional Top Ten List for 2012

Everyone has their criteria for deciding the best of the previous year. Not everyone explains the criteria they use. Some judge by quality of workmanship, others by their own personal enthusiasm, and some do an aggregation of  positives as a way of figuring out the top of the heap. My personal film going is not exhaustive enough to be definitive as to the best of the year. I get around to plenty of films, but many of the quality films slip under the timeline at the end of the year, or they played for limited times during the year and I missed them when they came out. For the last seven years, I have caught up with several Academy Award nominees at the AMC Best Picture Showcase, so although they did not make it into the yearly tally, I did get to see them in a theater. This year I saw sixty two new films that came out in 2012. In addition, I went to twenty other films, the ten at the BPS and another ten which were special screenings of classics. If I just used that as my standard, the best film I saw this year in theaters was Casablanca. So I limit my choices to ones that were originally released in the calendar year. While it is fun to challenge others and to be challenged to defend your own assessment of a single movie, I use my end of the year list for sharing with others my personal enthusiasms. I do not pretend that all of my choices are award worthy or superior to the things others might like. My list is "my list" of the movies I responded to the most positively during the year and at the end when comparing all of those responses. I hope you enjoy and feel free to post your own lists in the reply section.

10. Wreck It Ralph

I think animation is one of the great artistic mediums for people to work and to touch others. I have frequented animation festivals at different times in my life, and of course by personal library is stocked with Disney fare and Looney Tunes. Wreck it Ralph is a fresh story, set in a world I am not familiar with but one that I understand. The voice work was excellent and the design of the film was cotton candy amazing. I struggled a bit in choosing this over "ParaNorman", which is equally well designed. Ralph wins out because the story seems a little more coherent to me and it is accessible to everyone. ParaNorman might be a little creepy for smaller children.

9. Django Unchained

The last film I saw in the last year, was Quentin Tarantino's riff on the spaghetti western. It has a wicked sense of humor, and a grim view of the "peculiar institution" which was the focus of the civil war. All of this was accompanied by the florid violence and witty dialogue that  have become trademarks of a Tarantino film. He makes movies for people who geek out over movies, so in essence he makes them for me. Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz do the buddy movie with a vengeance. Leonardo DiCaprio is a late arrival in the film, but brings considerable talent to making his character a loathsome piece of crap that we can hardly wait to get smacked down. 

8. Paul Williams Still Alive

I was most aware of Paul Williams film music, but I knew he had a huge body of pop hits to go along with the movie work. When I was younger, he was everywhere: on TV, in Movies, doing concerts and acting. Somewhere along the way he virtually disappeared. As the title implies, he is still alive, and as a matter of fact was President of ASCAP, the music rights group for composers. He simply stopped being the attention seeking celebrity he had been for most of his career. A week before I saw the film, he made an appearance at a screening of Phantom of the Paradise and did some Q and A. I stayed and got a chance to shake his hand. At the documentary premier, he also did a Q and A and was equally charming. I enjoyed the film immensely, and while it may not be a traditional documentary, it was strengthened by the choices the director made and of course by the subject himself.

7. Lincoln

I had a little trouble with the story the film tells. I thought it focused on an odd period of time and an event that was less interesting than other episodes in the President's life. In fact the selection of the Constitutional Amendment as the fulcrum for the story actually reduces Lincoln's prominence in the film. Never the less, the performances are staggeringly good and Spielberg does his usual excellent job at making a film that matters. It was a movie that I admired more than I loved, but it was definitely one that is high quality and will bear repeating down the road.

6. Silver Linings Playbook

Another end of year addition to the quality list. The ads make it look more comedic than it was, and the romance is truer than you might expect. There are three great performances in the film and the depiction of someone with bi-polar addictive personality is harrowing. This is a movie that one can enjoy more afterwards than during, because several scenes are uncomfortably realistic and sad. Oh, and it has football in it.

5. The Grey

The earliest release on my list, this is a film that opened a year ago and may have slipped by the attention of the usual critics groups and Awards organizations. Liam Neeson stars in an action based mediation on what is valuable in life and where do we get the will to go on. Because it was promoted as an action film, many may be unaware about how deep the spirituality is in this movie. It is also a sharp, thrilling piece of entertainment. The title refers not only to the wolves that stalk our protagonists, but to the cloudy arenas in which we make our daily decisions. It is sad but also very moving.

4. Frankenweenie

I like Tim Burton style, even though I have not always liked Tim Burton movies. His roots as an animator have always pervaded his live action work. Here he is basically an animator again and it shows that this is his true medium. I have nothing but praise for this movie. Yes it is sentimental and it drips with all the Gothic imagery that Burton brings to the table. Unlike Dark Shadows earlier, here you have a real story and there is an emotional core to it. I must have seen the trailers fifty times during the lead up to this, and I thought I would be burned out on just the idea. Once the movie starts, the magic takes over and I remember why I love movies so much. All it takes is a boy and his dog.

3. Looper

This movie starts out with all kinds of things that I usually hate. A fictionalized world where criminals lead lives that are over the top and have no consequences to them. Sin City is one of the most annoying films I ever saw and this had every indication that it was going that direction. At some point however, there is a shift, the science fiction element in the story, forces us into a deeper look at the main character and the main character takes a deeper look at himself. This movie ends up going in a very different direction and I was really impressed by the way the story telling pulled us through some moral dilemmas and some exciting action set pieces as well. What started out as a piece of pop crap actually turned out to have something to say to us and to say it in a very interesting manner.

2. ARGO

In my opinion, the best picture favorite at the Academy Awards, and the best made drama of the year. ARGO takes a real historical event and turns it into a gripping suspense film, despite the fact that the audience is likely to know the outcome before they even step into the theater. The art direction, costumes and make up for this movie do not go over the top in making the late seventies a time period for mocking. Instead, they set the scene for a reliving in an honest way of a breathtaking piece of espionage success in the midst of what to that point was one of the biggest disasters in American Foreign relations. Good people doing their jobs are victims and they act in an heroic manner. They are rescued by other good people doing their jobs in a creative and dramatic fashion. As a bonus, Hollywood film production gets a short historical review with a realistic depiction of how the business worked at the time. By the way, all of the actors are very good and the ensemble performances by the six who escaped being taken hostage by the Iranians is noteworthy for the subltelty of their work.

1. SKYFALL

This will not be a surprise to anyone who knows me. I am a Bond fanatic and so it might be expected that 007 would put in an appearance. He does, but he does so not simply out of loyalty to the character. This is simply a terrific film. The story manages to update Bond and connect him to his roots all at the same time. It has the most spectacular action sequences of any film released this year and some rock solid performances. I got to participate in a blog-a-thon leading up to the release of this movie and the whole experience is the shining highlight of the last six months.. Even if you have never been a big fan of Bond, you will almost certainly enjoy this film. I saw it twice on opening day (including the midnight advance screening) and I have watched it twice more since then. It may only be up for one award at Academy time (Adele impresses me a lot), but this is a movie people will see over and over again for the next fifty years. I don't know who goes back and watched "The Hurt Locker", "Crash", or "The King's Speech", but everyone can watch a Bond film and enjoy it repeatedly. This is admittedly a selfish choice for the top of the list, but it is my list after all.