I have argued that Pulp Fiction,
despite what most people believe, is not actually a very violent film. I stick
strongly to that belief. I don’t want to say the same thing about The Godfather because I believe it is
rife with violence, but it is worth noting that the first violent scene (the
garroting of Luca Brasi) comes 42 minutes into the film. This suggests that
violence exists in the film only when necessary. It places the focus on family
(the subject of the opening wedding celebration), on loyalty (the subject of
the meetings Don Corleone has, as well as the help he provides Johnny Fontane),
and it is about business (the subject of the meeting with Virgil Sollozzo).
A blog mostly dedicated to cinema (including both new and old film reviews; commentary; and as the URL suggests - movie lists, although it has been lacking in this area to be honest), but on occasion touching on other areas of personal interest to me.
Monday, April 30, 2012
"If I Wanted to Kill You, You'd Be Dead Already": Godfather Analysis Part VI
Go to Part V: "Never tell anybody outside the family what you're thinking again."
Saturday, April 28, 2012
The Cabin in the Woods Movie Review
Joss Whedon has built a strong cult following around his
projects that have a tendency to subvert genre conventions and put a new spin
on familiar stories. His short-lived TV series “Firefly” and the follow-up film
Serenity was a sci-fi space western. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which most
people forget was a movie before it was a popular TV show starring Sarah
Michelle Gellar, took the dumb blonde caricature who is always the first to die
in horror films and made her the hero, an ass-kicking, smart-talking, wooden
stake-wielding defender of humanity. As co-writer along with Drew Goddard, who
directs, and producer of The Cabin in the
Woods, Whedon turns his attention to the slasher/horror/torture porn set of
genres and sub-genres.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Damsels in Distress Movie Review
Damsels in Distress
is Whit Stillman’s fourth film and his first in 14 years. If his first three
films fit together as a sort of trilogy (some characters cross over) of early
1980s Urban Haute Bourgeoisie (a term created by one of his characters in Metropolitan, Stillman’s first film),
then this one takes off in a new if slightly familiar direction. For one thing,
Damsels in Distress is his first film
that focuses almost exclusively on female lead characters (he even gives them
the title). More importantly, whereas Stillman’s earlier films were grounded in
the real world, his latest has a setting that belongs more in the realm of
fantasy.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
La ley del deseo [Law of Desire] Movie Review: 25 Years Ago This Month
In the 25 years since Law
of Desire Almodóvar has refined his filmmaking and writing styles to the
point of near perfection. Looking at this older film you almost have to ignore
the occasional stilted dialogue and acting and focus instead on his themes,
which were as rich and fulfilling then as they are now.
Almodóvar has always been fond of setting films with
films or plays within films and Law of
Desire is not different, featuring both. He’s also always pushed the
boundaries of acceptability in filmmaking and here he opens with a sexually
explicit scene that, it turns out, is being directed by Pablo Quintero (Eusebio
Poncela) as part of a film that will make him even more of a celebrity. Pablo
has a fairly strong habit of engaging in both drugs and promiscuous sex with
young men he meets while out in his hometown of Madrid. His regular lover Juan
goes away on an extended holiday leaving open the opportunity for Antonio
(Antonio Baderas) to take his place and become jealous to the point of making
some very poor decisions.
"Never Tell Anybody Outside the Family What You're Thinking Again": Godfather Analysis Part V
Friday, April 20, 2012
"He Never Asks a Second Favor When He's Been Refused the First": Godfather Analysis Part IV
Go to Part III: "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse."
The
next section opens with some stock footage establishing shots of Hollywood and then a few
long range shots of Tom making his way around the studio back lot until he
finds the soundstage where Jack Woltz is. We know from the last conversation in
Don Corleone’s office that Tom was meant to go to California that night. These establishing shots
remind us of that conversation and the problem that Johnny is having with
getting a part in a new war film.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
"I'm Gonna Make Him an Offer He Can't Refuse.": Godfather Analysis Part III
Go to Part II: "No Sicilian can refuse any request on his daughter's wedding day."
Now
Johnny Fontane arrives to the great joy and surprise of Vito, who proclaims
that he came “all the way from California .”
Tom, being realistic and perhaps a little jealous, points out, “it’s been two
years. He’s probably in trouble again.” Of course, Tom turns out to be right as
he’s come to ask a favor of the Don.
The family portrait now includes Michael and Kay. |
American Reunion Movie Review
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Tuesday, April 17, 2012
"No Sicilian Can Refuse Any Request on His Daughter's Wedding Day.": Godfather Analysis Part II
Go to Part I: "I believe in America."
After the dark interior opening, the film cuts to a sunny exterior shot of the wedding celebration with music playing and people dancing. This virtuoso opening sequence brilliantly introduces us not only to most of the important characters in the film, but also to some of the key plot points, although we don’t know it yet. The opening sequence in Corleone’s office has an average shot length of just under 27 seconds. The remainder of the wedding sequence averages just under 8 seconds per shot – an indication that the sequence moves quickly, cutting between exterior and interior scenes, revealing all the characters and some of their personality traits that will figure prominently later.
After the dark interior opening, the film cuts to a sunny exterior shot of the wedding celebration with music playing and people dancing. This virtuoso opening sequence brilliantly introduces us not only to most of the important characters in the film, but also to some of the key plot points, although we don’t know it yet. The opening sequence in Corleone’s office has an average shot length of just under 27 seconds. The remainder of the wedding sequence averages just under 8 seconds per shot – an indication that the sequence moves quickly, cutting between exterior and interior scenes, revealing all the characters and some of their personality traits that will figure prominently later.
From My Collection: Inside Man Movie Review
I’m kind of a shameless sucker for heist movies. I love
the team camaraderie and the way the films are usually structured, often
beginning with an opening heist teaser, followed by a gathering of the team
members, the training and planning stages and finally the execution. Spike Lee’s
Inside Man turns a lot of the
conventions of the genre on its head by beginning with the heist and allowing
it to unfold with the audience in the position of the hostages and the police.
We don’t know what the plan is, what they want to steal, or how they plan to
make their escape. Hell, we don’t even know who is involved. It all gets pieced
together slowly over time as the main detective slowly catches on, at which
point it’s too late.
Monday, April 16, 2012
From My Collection: The Departed Movie Review
When Frank Costello asks a man how his mother is and he
replies that she’s on her way out, Frank’s rejoinder, “We all are. Act
accordingly,” sets a tone for the film. As the title suggests, death hangs like
a pall over Martin Scorsese’s The
Departed. It is a film in which most of the characters live with the fear
of death around them at all times. They are cops and they are criminal mafia.
The story is of two young men, played by Matt Damon and
Leonardo DiCaprio, who become embroiled in an elaborate plot to take down
Costello’s crime organization from one end and infiltrate the Massachusetts
State Police Force from the other. Damon plays Colin Sullivan, the mole inside
the State Police investigative unit for organized crime. He is recruited by
Costello as a boy in an extended prologue that introduces most of the major
players. Then there’s DiCaprio’s Billy Costigan, a new police recruit fingered
for a special deep undercover assignment to help bring Costello down.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
The Hunger Games Movie Review
I like futuristic dystopia stories for what they suggest
about humanity at present and where we are ultimately headed if we continue
down certain paths. But I generally like the vision to make some sense. I don’t
necessarily demand a lot of back story and exposition to explain how the future
became such as it is, but I would like it to make some sense according to what
I know of the world today. Even when our real life timeline inevitably reaches
the fictional year of some such movie or story and it turns out the vision hasn’t
really panned out, in the best ones we can find some parallels and maybe say, “Well,
it’s not 100 percent accurate but I can still see it as a possibility.” The
year 2001 came and went and although we have yet to develop the capabilities to
forge deep space travel as depicted in 2001:
A Space Odyssey, we have been to the moon since the film’s 1968 release and
humanity has explored (via unmanned probes) the far reaches of our solar
system. Blade Runner presents a
vision of Los Angeles in 2019 that is not close to coming to fruition, but
still looks like a possibility in some more distant future.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Project X Movie Review: 25 Years Ago This Month
Where have all the social message movies gone? As I plumb
through the films of 25 years ago I continually come up against movies that
speak to the socio-historical context of the time. Many of these movies have an
agenda. Maybe it’s a lack of hindsight, but I don’t see the same type of issues
movies coming from the studios nowadays. More than likely the answer is to be
found in the fact that the message movies have always been few and far between,
but they are more likely to stand the test of time and be remembered years
later.
Jonathan Kaplan’s Project
X deals with the issue of animal welfare in the context of the military
industrial complex at the tail end of the Cold War. It’s a real do-gooder of a
movie that wants to portray the government and especially the military as cold
and unsparing as you move further up the chain of command. The top officers and
bureaucrats are viewed as calculating and rather inhuman while the enlisted
men, serving as surrogates for the average viewer, are compassionate while they
follow orders.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
25 Years Ago This Month: April 1987
The Police Academy franchise continued in April 1987 with the fourth installment, subtitled Citizens on Patrol. Each film in the series earned less at the box office than the previous chapter leading me to wonder how they went on to make parts 5, 6, and 7. The only actor who could reasonably be called a star in the entire series is Steve Guttenberg and he bowed out after the third film. Everyone else was famous for nothing other than their roles in this lifeless, flaccid, completely unfunny comedy series. David Spade made his film debut here as one of the titular citizen police officers. Sharon Stone also makes an early film appearance.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
The Last Days of Disco Movie Review
For his third feature film The Last Days of Disco, Whit Stillman graduated to better financing
and a bigger budget, but maintained his unique writing style and
characterization depicting the “Urban haute bourgeoisie” of his first film Metropolitan. Again the characters are
well-educated Ivy Leaguers and New England liberal arts college graduates who
spend a lot of time talking. Stillman’s Barcelona
brought these characters to another country, but this time he brought them back
to New York City, where the well-to-do of that first film paraded around in
tuxedos and ball gowns discussing philosophy, literature and social mores. The
setting has changed slightly with the characters frequenting the dying disco
scene of the early 80s, but the conversations are similar.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Chaplin Movie Review
The problem that plagues most biographical films is the
way they try to encompass far too much. In my experience, the best films about
historical figures have honed their stories to focus on one period in their
lives or on one particular aspect. It’s nearly impossible to depict an accurate
sense of a person’s life in the space of a feature film. How do you distill
what usually fills several hundred pages of printed words to a story that fits into
so short a time span? Richard Attenborough tried it with Gandhi and though the result is a well-regarded film, it is also
remembered by most people (myself included) as more than a bit boring. Several
of Attenborough’s films focus on real historical figures, but his next straight
biographical film was Chaplin in
1992.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Charlie Chaplin's A Countess from Hong Kong Movie Review
As Charlie Chaplin entered the twilight of his life he
struggled to get films made the way he was accustomed. Exiled from the United
States, he no longer had the playground of his own studio to make films in the
painstaking manner that was his style. Because
he was in thrall to a studio that was not his own, he had constraints in terms
of budget and time. After leaving the United States for England in 1952 he only
made two more films in the next 25 years.
We can possibly blame the quality of his final film, A Countess from Hong Kong, on this among
several other factors. For Chaplin, A
Countess from Hong Kong represented many firsts: first color film; first
widescreen film (despite his ridiculing of the format in A King in New York); first comedy not starring himself; first time
directing international movie stars. The effect of all these factors is a film
that is both not funny as well as technically shoddy.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
The State of the Blog: Year 2
Today is the two year anniversary of the start of this movie blog. It has turned out to suck up a lot more of my time than I really expected and still I haven't been able to do all the things I have planned.
It rather unfortunately still sits here on blogspot, which I absolutely do not want. I still want to build this thing into a real website with new and classic reviews and other features. Some kind of blog might remain part of the final product but the focus would be a movie website.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Charlie Chaplin's A King in New York Movie Review
A King in New York
is probably Charlie Chaplin’s most deeply personal film. Though he claimed he
was just trying to make people laugh with another comedy film, there is no
denying the overt political arguments he makes with his screenplay. The film is
undoubtedly critical of the United States and its policies in the 1950s
regarding political party affiliation. A
King in New York was Chaplin’s first film made outside America because he’d
already been exiled from the country he called home for almost forty years. His
exile was the result of allegations that he was a member of the Communist Party.
By all accounts, Chaplin loved America and was devastated when he was not
permitted to return. With that in mind, we can read A King in New York as a cathartic experience for Chaplin to have
made it when he did.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Charlie Chaplin's Limelight Movie Review
Buster Keaton (left) makes a brief appearance as Calvero's partner on the stage. |
As Charlie Chaplin’s popularity began to fade his work
output slowed considerably. He took longer and longer to complete scripts. His
script for Limelight took him about
four years to finish. In it he explores the effects of an irrelevant career on
an aging Vaudeville performer. Chaplin plays Calvero, a once great Music Hall
entertainer who now finds himself receding into obscurity as the world moves on
around him. The film takes place in 1914, presumably on the eve of the First
World War, but the amount of time that seems to pass in the narrative suggests
that the war should have begun during its course. Yet there is no mention of
war at all. This is a mistake, I think, because the presence of the war could
have added a very real dimension to the Calvero’s downfall. As the world
teetered on the brink, who had time for music halls and stage entertainment?
Chaplin’s own fall from grace similarly coincided with the start of WWII.
Barcelona Movie Review
Whit Stillman’s Metropolitandrew on his own experiences going to debutante balls and hobnobbing with
wealthy socialites. His second film, Barcelona,
similarly drew on his own life, this time mining the time he spent living
abroad. Ted and Fred Boynton are cousins who share Ted’s apartment for a short
time when Fred turns up unexpectedly as part of a Navy advance man ahead of the
arrival of the Sixth Fleet’s shore leave. Ted works for an American company out
of their Barcelona office. Fred is a brash outspoken American who vehemently
defends the United States’ honor against the frequent verbal abuse levied by
Spanish locals. Ted is a bit more reserved, though no less a patriot, and
versed in some of the subtleties of Spanish culture.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux Movie Review
The only film for which Charlie Chaplin grew a real mustache. |
The vast majority of silent film stars faded into
obscurity rather quickly with the advent of synchronized sound. Directors
tended to fare better as their craft was built around telling stories. We
forget (or in most cases don’t know) that John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock
started in silent films. Actors tended to have the most trouble transitioning
to sound films. Charlie Chaplin was most famous for his iconic tramp character
who was necessarily a silent character. He made some headway by continuing to
make artistically viable and successful films in the silent tradition with City Lights and Modern Times. But eventually something had to give.
The Great Dictator
was his first dialogue-driven film, but even that had strong roots in the
silent traditions. Truly it was not until Monsieur
Verdoux in 1947 when Chaplin released his first film conceived entirely as
a talking picture. Think for a moment about how incredible that is – that’s
fully 20 years after the beginning of the talkies.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Metropolitan Movie Review
On the cinematic evolutionary line after Woody Allen but
before Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach is Whit Stillman. He wrote and directed
three films all released in the 90s and then disappeared for 13 years (his
fourth film, Damsels in Distress
opens this month). As a writer he stands tall among the giants of literate
screenplays written by, for, and about educated people. His characters are
often reflections of his own upbringing in a world of upper class privilege and
Ivy League education. His stories explore issues such as social group dynamics
versus coupling, distinctions between social classes, and conservative
political values. He’s a writer unafraid to give his characters interesting
things to say and have them sound intelligent. If you find yourself
occasionally lost, it’s quite possibly because the conversation is centered on
something outside your experience.
Classic Movie Review: Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator
Charlie Chaplin was ahead of his time in most respects
when it came to his filmmaking. The greatest irony being that he was late to
the game when it came to making talking films. His first film conceived and
made completely with dialogue was The
Great Dictator, released in 1940 – more than a decade after the advent of
synchronized sound and dialogue. But even if he was the last significant
holdout clinging to silent film, The
Great Dictator was well ahead of the curve in terms of world politics.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Classic Movie Review: Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times
At a time when synchronized sound was the standard in
moviemaking, there was increasingly less room for the silent stars, especially
comedians who relied so heavily on pantomime to make their comedy work. Charlie
Chaplin’s Tramp character was universal in being voiceless and without language
he had no firm ties to a particular geographic location. He could be Russian or
Japanese or Brazilian. The sentimentality of his stories could be understood
anywhere in the world. Chaplin’s last completely silent feature film, City Lights, was released in 1931, four
full years after Al Jolson’s profession, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet,” in The Jazz Singer ushered in a new era for
motion pictures. Chaplin made Modern
Times between 1932 and 1936 and though it is for all intents and purposes a
silent film, it does utilize sound effects, a synchronized musical score and
some spoken dialogue. It was Chaplin’s way of sticking to the type of film
making he knew best while giving a small tip of the hat to the new mode.
From My Collection: American Pie 2 Movie Review
I’ll usually be the first one to rail against sequels
that are nothing more than a retread of the first film. These films are cynical
ploys to earn more money using the same formula a second or third time. And of
course audiences tend to fall for it every time. This is especially true in the
comedy genre: take a group of people in a comedic scenario, have them do funny
things, wash, rinse, repeat. Then take the same group and put them in a
slightly different scenario to repeat similar gags. I did not find this to be
the case with American Pie 2.
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