KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975 "The Other Side of the Mountain"

 

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. 

The Other Side of the Mountain

This one is a real deep dive, I saw it once in 1975 and a remembered very little of it. I think this film was a slow roll out across the country and had built up some word of mouth as a romance. My memory may be playing tricks on me but I am pretty sure I saw this with my friend Dan Hasegawa and Diane Heitchew, a girl on the Speech team with us back in High School. We were all friends and Dan was always bringing her to activities that Fall when we were both freshmen at USC and Diane was still in High School. I know that the screening I went to was at the Avco Cinema Center in Westwood, right on Wilshire Blvd. That theater has been replaced with a very different movie complex, but it was a very popular location in the 1970s, with basically no parking and you risked being towed if you parked in the neighborhoods. 

The film is a true story (billed that way in the opening credits, not "inspired by") about skiing champion Jill Kinmont, who as an Olympic hopeful, was paralyzed  the week she appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, in an event that would have qualified her for the U.S. Olympic team. She was in a romantic relationship with U.S. Skier Buddy Werner at the time of the accident, but that relationship did not survive the tragedy. She was also connected with Champion skier and flying daredevil Dick Buek, and that is the romantic angle that this film takes. 

"The Other Side of the Mountain" could be the template for a thousand inspirational TV movies over the next twenty years.  It follows a very straight narrative, showing us the promising young woman in her prime, and the playful connections she has with others in the skiing community. She has a best friend who was also a skier who contracted polio and lost the ability to ski. The true life events in the film all take place in the mid-fifties and there are a lot of things that evoke nostalgia, but also make us glad that we don't live in that era. The tragedy occurs on the cusp of her greatest accomplishment and is emotionally hard hitting as a result.

Anyone who has seen one of these kinds of movies will recognize the style, or lack thereof in the film. The camera is not very dynamic but there are a few scenes of skiing that are mildly satisfying. There are several montages in the film, some of romance blossoming in the snow, some of the difficult rehabilitation that Jill goes through and all of them are accompanied by schmaltzy romantic music which is incredibly generic. Charles Fox the composer of the score was a prolific writer of music, primarily for television, which is why this may sound so cliché. The end song, was performed by Oliva Newton John, at the height of her musical career pre-"Grease". That may account for the fact that the song got an Academy Award Nomination.

  

Beau Bridges, playing a part that could also have been done by his brother, is Dick Buek, the romantic partner who will not give up on Jill. There is a sequence of him coming to the hospital and taking her out of her bed that is funny and could convince you that romance was indeed possible for these two. The rehab scenes and the visit that Jill makes before her accident, to see her friend with polio, will make you happy that you don't live in that period. Sincere medical providers were limited in the resources and tools they had access to, and it makes Jill's struggle even more compelling. 

If there is a moment of injustice in the film, it comes when Jill, struggling to be productive after her paralysis, discovers that academic institutions will not hire a teacher in a wheelchair. Can you imagine the outcry today if someone took that attitude? There would be protests and twitter bombs and outraged tiktok videos everywhere. There was a sequel to the film that featured the same actress, Marilyn Hassett, playing Jill Kinmont, in later periods of time. I never saw the sequel but it would not surprise me that part of it would  feature her pushing back on the barriers that she faced trying to become an educator. 

Larry Peerce was the director of this film and he seems to have missed out on a major career. After some dramatic successes in the 1960s, he was relegated to TV movies in the 70s and 80s, and frankly, based on this film, it seems that he was best suited for those. His film "The Incident" did come up in our Lambcast Discussion this week (Thanks to Howard Casner). 

M3GAN

 

It is possible to spend several paragraphs explaining how this movie could have been something dramatically deep and thematically significant. Like "A.I." from 2001 or "Ex Machina" from 2015, this film deals with the question of human interaction with machines of intelligent design. This movie could have explored issues of attachment, grief, co-dependence, a whole variety of human conditions that might be effected by the development of artificial intelligence. Taking that path however, would have eliminated the primary function of the film, which is to scare us. This is a monster movie, like "Frankenstein", where our own creations turn on us and the audience can at times identify with the monster. 

The trailer will give you the set up, but it comes down to this, an artificial person starts acting in ways that are not socially or morally acceptable. There is little doubt as to what is going to happen, this story has been around for a couple hundred years. The thing that makes it a little different is that the monster in in the form of a little girl doll and the person she has been created to assist is herself a little girl. Even though there was a possibility that the story line could turn to end of the world scenarios, it stays a little more grounded and the threats are immediate and localized.

Does it work? As a scare generator it is effective. We get a couple of jump scares but mostly there is a steady build up of tension and the creep factor which keeps us engaged. Dolls seem to be by definition a little disturbing, acting as substitutes for humans, typically in play situations. In this situation the doll is acting as playmate rather than plaything, and has the additional plot of replacing a human component with one that is generated through artificial intelligence. If that replacement of human contact had been followed, you would have a psychological horror film, but not a thriller. This movie goes the thriller route with mysterious deaths and ominous looks from the mechanical star. 

Other than the doll itself, the two main characters are played by Allison Williams as Gemma, the aunt who takes in her orphaned niece, and who also happens to be a cutting edge toy designer, and Violet McGraw as Cady, the nine year old with a deep psychological scar from her parents death. The least realistic part of the film is the way these two manage to be around each other before the introduction of the doll. Aunt Gemma acts as if she has never encountered a child before, was detached from her dead sister, and only overcomes professional setbacks by using shortcuts that no legal department would ever really allow. Cady gets a little more leeway, after all she is a kid suffering a great loss, but her character is more truculent than sympathetic. Only a few times, planned to make the other parts of the plot work, does she let her emotional guard down. They are better written characters once the plot kicks in.

M3GAN, is the doll at the center of the story, and she is played by a combination of a young actress in costume and a variety of puppets,and some CGI. The actress/puppet element makes the movie so much more effective because the creepy doll looks like a child sized version of those adult rubber dolls that are sold as sex toys. The element of the story that is helpful in engaging us is how young Cady bonds with Megan and Megan seems to be providing comfort that the Aunt is incapable of. If you watch the demo scene played out where Megan comforts Cady while an audience of executives look on, you can see some to the places that this film could go. It doesn't go there however, it becomes a straight up horror picture,like "Child's Play" but without any supernatural element. 

Ever since "2001" let loose an AI that we could not control, there have been a string of horror films that follow the same path. "Skynet" is not that far off my friends. The more we turn our lives over to "Siri", "Alexa" and Bixby", the more vulnerable we will be. Maybe we don't really need to worry about malevolent machines, but we should be worried about the unintended consequences of giving technology increasing control of our daily lives. That's not what this movie is about, but it could have been. This is a solid January horror film, but it will be forgotten when the next scary movie comes out. 

A Man Called Otto

 

I understand why film buffs get irritated when there is an English language remake of a well regarded foreign film. It seems disrespectful to the original and it suggests that American audiences are too lazy to read subtitles. The former is always going to be in the eye of the beholder, although most adaptions are probably done out of affection for the original work, if there are too many changes it would support that conclusion. The later is in part probably true. It does seem that foreign language films have difficulty reaching American audiences because subtitles are distracting and require a different sort of engagement. The biggest reality though is that you need to adapt to the audience. American audiences are not so much unsophisticated as they are locked in their own paradigms. We relate more to familiar surroundings, to experiences that we are likely to encounter. We are a racially mixed culture but there are enclaves within the broader culture that have limited experience with some parts of the world. Every writer, speaker and artist who is trying to reach a particular audience knows that they need to craft their work in a way that the intended audience will respond to. 

The source material for this Tom Hanks vehicle is a well regarded Swedish film that was the highest grossing foreign language film in the U.S. the year it was released. It was nominated as the Best Non-English film by the Academy Awards that year. It brought in less than 3.5 million at the boxoffice in the States. Assuming an average price of $10 a ticket, that means that it was seen by about 35,000 people in a theater in America. That is a small segment of the potential audience, regardless of why so few got around to seeing it. An English language remake gives the story a second bite of the apple and a chance to let the audience find it. If you want to criticize the film and compare it's artistic merit to the original, that is fine, but first evaluate the film that you are criticizing, rather than it's reason for existence.

I have to admit that I did not see the Swedish film. I wish I had. Whether it played outside of my range of theaters, or was released in an inconvenient window, I don't remember. I did hear about it but resigned myself to catching up with it another day. "A Man Called Otto" will not be a substitute for seeing "Ove", but it is the film that is in front of audiences now, and that is the context in which I will offer my opinions.

Most people probably think of Tom Hanks as the avuncular nice guy that is his public persona. He has played roles that have made him very popular but not all of those parts were happy go lucky characters. Some of them are quite dark. Otto Anderson is a much darker character than might be suggested by the trailer for the film. To begin with, he is not just a crotchety old man, he is a man who has lost something in his life that propped him up and helped him balance any anti-social inclinations with a more practical attitude. Robbed of the main source of happiness in his life, he has allowed despair to take over and guide him. We can recognize that this is a bad choice, but someone in the midst of his situation is not likely to be thinking in different terms. I can say from personal experience, that without some intervening force, depression and self destruction are paths that might be taken without much effort.  Fortunately, the right kind of force is what is the catalyst for this story. 

Otto has been forcibly retired, in a period of great need to feel useful, and the consequence is that he sees nothing ahead that would be worth waiting for. Suicide seems a delicate subject to use for comedy, but it has been done before. Otto seems serious in planning his exit, but the intervention of an unexpected force, bad timing, or poor quality materials foil his attempts and point his life in a different direction. The movie has fun with those moments but it also builds a character that in spite of his brusque manner, we hope can be redeemed. This is a sentimental heart tugging story that works on both the comedic and the dramatic playing fields. I have no problem with a crowd pleasing film and this is engineered to please the audience.

There were three or four spots that I  had to close my eyes and take a deep breath to get through. That is not due to any disturbing visual in the film, but rather because I was recalling moments from my own life that parallel Otto's. Younger audiences can still relate to the experience, but when a moment plays as if it were a repeat of your own life, it takes a second or two to recover. A couple of small coincidences contribute to that, the car Otto drives is the same model and color my daughter dives and the car parked on the street in front of Otto's house for every exterior shot, is the same color and model of the car I drive regularly. Substitute old dog for feral cat, and multiple illnesses for one terminal disease, and it just hit close to home. 

This is a mainstream film, made to appeal to adult audiences and gain as wide acceptance as possible. Not having seen the original yet, I have nothing to take umbrage at, and I am happy to say that in this "steaming" heavy world, where these kinds of movies usually end up, I saw it in a full theater with mostly adults in attendance. Maybe I liked it more because I related to the subject so much and I have no reason to look down on it as a remake. I just laughed, cried and thought about my own life a little more hopefully after the movie was done. 

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975 "Brannigan"

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. 

Brannigan

John Wayne was in his final decade in the 1970s. He finished off the 60s with a much deserved Academy Award, and then made 10 films in the 1970s. As a child of the sixties, I had seen Wayne in dozens of cowboy films and war stories. He'd been the biggest star in Hollywood for almost forty years, and in spite of several health related setbacks, he continued to work well into his 60s. Apparently, he was at one time offered the role of "Dirty Harry" and turned it down. After seeing the success that it became, he signed up for two contemporary cop stories with the same lone wolf cop plot line. The first was "McQ" which came out the year before and was a modest success, "Brannigan" followed and it was not.

This is a standard 70s cop action film, where the righteous, break all the rules cop, goes after the bad guys and mayhem ensues. Wayne plays Jim Brannigan, a Chicago police detective, who has been pursuing crime boss Larkin, familiar actor John Vernon (he played the Mayor in Dirty Harry). Brannigan has had a contract put out on him by the crime lord. Larkin has relocated to London and Brannigan is sent to bring him back under extradition. So in addition to it being a cop film, it will be a fish out of water story as the American detective crosses paths with the British Criminal justice system. There is plenty of culture clash and the usual rogue cop shenanigan's, and that adds to the fun of a fairly standard action flick.

Wisely, the sixty-seven year old Wayne is not given a love interest, but there is a paternal angle as he is accompanied on his British escapade by a young policewoman that he becomes something a mentor to as she babysits him for Scotland Yard. Judy Geeson was charming in the role and I kept thinking I'd seen her in something recent, in fact I had. Geeson is the British neighbor across the hall from Paul and Jamie Buchman in the TV series "Mad About You" which I had been rewatching during the pandemic. Her character is lucky it is a John Wayne film rather than an Eastwood picture, if you have seen the other Dirty Harry films, you will know why, partners don't fare well with Harry. Her boss and Wayne's counterpart at Scotland Yard is  Cmdr. Swann  played by Richard Attenborough. He is a by the book British Official, who will be shown up by and then influenced by the Yank. 

There is a lot of gunplay in the film, and Brannigan is of course violating British Police policies by carrying a weapon. Swann frequently tries to get him to surrender his Colt but Brannigan simply smiles and offers a quip instead of his sidearm. The cop film replaced the cowboy film as the primary action format in the 1970s. This film very much feels like a western set in the modern era. Instead of horseback pursuits, there are car chases. We still get a bar fight, but it is in a British pub and it is played for laughs, much the same way as a dozen other Wayne cowboy bar fights might have been. The good guy and the bad guys face off at the end, but the last duel is not a gunfight in the dirt street of a western down, but a showdown with a sports car in a dockyard in London.

Sure John Wayne is playing a version of the same character he has portrayed before, but he seems to be having a good time doing so and there are enough twists and character points to make it fun. I especially enjoyed him throwing those haymakers in the pub, and the cautious approach to a toilet in his booby-trapped boarding house room. Sometimes the procedural of following kidnappers directions for a ransom payoff becomes a little tiresome, but the last bit with the double homing devices was fun. 

I originally saw this at the El Rey Theater on Main Street in my hometown of Alhambra California, That location is long gone but it was very typically the theater in the Edwards Theater chain that played these kinds of action films. I watched this yesterday on Pluto, it was free but I did have to sit through a lot of commercials.   

Top Ten Favorites of the Year

 

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End of the Year Summary

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.