Month: February 2008

Stalingrad (1993, Joseph Vilsmaier)

I remember when Stalingrad came out on VHS. I was working at a video store and argued for ordering it, based on the ads mention of it having the same producer as Das Boot. Still, I was a little surprised at how much the opening credits try to go for a Das Boot feel. It’s kind of shameless.

Then the movie opens strongly, with the heroes on leave in Italy. Actually, until they get to Stalingrad–so, basically there’s a good train ride and then that’s it–Stalingrad is fine. Once the five soldiers the film follows get there, everything falls apart. Everything except some of the performances. And only some of them. The rest of them are terrible. So, five or six good performances, then a bunch of awful amateurish ones. But the performances fit the script, which is a painfully obvious mess. A lot of the plotting feels like Stalingrad was intended for Das Boot length, but got cut up. There are few transitions and often sequences make no sense.

The director, Joseph Vilsmaier, doesn’t help. Unless Stalingrad was shot on an über-cheap budget, there’s no excuse for Vilsmaier’s composition. His battle scenes are fine, even his soldiers sitting around scenes (which comprise the majority of the film–the script feels like a play adaptation and a bad one), but whenever he’s got to establish a setting, he fails miserably. It often looks like a poorly directed after school special.

The acting from Thomas Kretschmann, Dominique Horwitz and Jochen Nickel is all excellent. Kretschmann’s so good I couldn’t believe it was him. Horwitz is obviously not German, no matter how his hair is cut and I kept wondering if I was supposed to notice. Nickel’s got the easiest role, the sturdy then crumbling sergeant, but he does good things with it. Like I said before, there are a handful of other good performances.

The biggest overall problem with the film is its narrative cheapness. Not only is there the Russian kid the soldiers all like, but there’s also a villain who hunts the soldiers throughout. It’s silly and the silliness is the worst thing about Stalingrad. The filmmakers seem to think its subject alone will make it good and they’re wrong.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed and photographed by Joseph Vilsmaier; written by Johannes Heide, Jürgen Büscher and Vilsmaier; edited by Hannes Nikel; music by Norbert Schneider; production designers, Wolfgang Hundhammer and Jindrich Goetz; produced by Hanno Huth, Gunther Rohrbach and Vilsmaier; released by Senator Film.

Starring Dominique Horwitz (Fritz), Thomas Kretschmann (Hans), Jochen Nickel (Rollo) and Sebastian Rudolph (GeGe).

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Pandora’s Box (1929, Georg Wilhelm Pabst)

I think there’s one bad shot in Pandora’s Box. Maybe not even bad. It’s one of the standard silent one-shots, where the person is shot from low, disregarding the continuity of the scene (i.e. he or she is standing too close to another person). There’s one of those shots in the film and it’s the bad shot. It’s not even bad as compared to another film… but in Pandora’s Box, even a good shot would look bad. All of Pabst’s other shots are perfect, whether they’re somewhat standard composition or if they’re the awkwardly angled close-ups. The film’s amazing to look at.

The film’s split into two distinct sections. First, Louise Brooks ruins Fritz Kortner’s life. Second, she ruins everyone else’s. The film is oddly split into “acts,” which are really nothing of the sort. There are seven or eight of them and for the most part, they could be replaced with fade outs. But that strange choice of segmenting the film really doesn’t hurt it… Instead, Pandora’s Box is most hurt by how traditional a story it turns out to be in the end. It’s a morality story about the dangers of loose women (ignoring, strangely since the film didn’t even need to introduce it, all of Brooks’s problems can be traced to criminal parenting–something even furthered at the end, when her father sends her out on to the London streets looking for a john, just so he can have some Christmas pudding). It’s kind of strange how Pabst doesn’t stick with her, instead going with Kortner’s son, played by Francis Lederer, for the lovely close.

The performances are all great–Brooks establishes herself from her first moment on screen, so maybe a minute into the film, and she never lets up. She’s probably best during the second half, when her life has gotten complicated and difficult, but not yet impossible. Kortner is excellent too, even if his monocle makes him a little hard to take seriously. It’s enormous and takes up most of the side of his face… hard to believe the character would wear such a visibly uncomfortable eyepiece. Lederer is good as the son, though he has little to do but fall from grace. Carl Goetz and Krafft-Raschig are a great pair, funny a lot of the time, but always with the hint of evil below.

It’s a beautiful looking film, slow but rewarding through most of it. The ending falls apart, but not completely, with Pabst giving himself an elegant exit. That exit’s also strange, because he gives it to the film and not to Brooks, who made the film work.

Cape Fear (1962, J. Lee Thompson)

Maybe half of J. Lee Thompson’s shots in Cape Fear are good. Unfortunately, the other half aren’t mediocre, they’re bad. He’s given to iconic shots of Robert Mitchum, some of which make Cape Fear look like stills from an old Universal horror picture, with Mitchum as Frankenstein’s Monster. As a horror film–Mitchum’s Max Cady is an abomination–Cape Fear as some rather effective moments. But Thompson doesn’t play most of it as a straight horror film–the ending, with Mitchum loose, yes–but the beginning… Thompson thinks he can thoughtlessly ape other directors–the Welles Touch of Evil references are legion–and get the same cerebral result. He cannot.

And while Mitchum is fantastic as one of the more terrifying movie monsters, Gregory Peck is playing a superhero. The Great Stone Face. No matter what’s going on, Peck’s got one expression. No matter what’s going on, Peck’s voice has one tone. Eventually, his hair gets mussed up and it finally becomes clear he’s in a panic. Peck rarely gives emotional performances–though better directors certainly know how to make him come off human–but it’s absolutely essential in Cape Fear and he doesn’t cut it. As Peck’s wife, Polly Bergen is okay, certainly more expressive than Peck, but not much. Lori Martin is an able terrified teenager and the rest of the supporting cast, Martin Balsam, Telly Savalas and Barrie Chase, bring a lot to their scenes.

The film plods along–like most horror movies, there’s nothing to it once the viewer knows how it ends–to the blaring Bernard Herrmann score. The score’s way too much and a lot of Cape Fear feels like Universal trying to make a studio thriller post-Psycho (down to using the same set as Mother’s house). They fail, thanks to Thompson, thanks to Peck. What they do get is Mitchum acting really well, which is he did most of the time, and in far better films.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed by J. Lee Thompson; screenplay by James R. Webb, based on a novel by John D. MacDonald; director of photography, Sam Leavitt; edited by George Tomasini; music by Bernard Herrmann; produced by Sy Bartlett; released by Universal Pictures.

Starring Gregory Peck (Sam Bowden), Robert Mitchum (Max Cady), Polly Bergen (Peggy Bowden), Lori Martin (Nancy Bowden), Martin Balsam (Police Chief Mark Dutton), Jack Kruschen (Attorney Dave Grafton), Telly Savalas (Private Detective Charles Sievers), Barrie Chase (Diane Taylor), Paul Comi (George Garner), John McKee (Officer Marconi) and Page Slattery (Deputy Kersek).

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Bugsy (1991, Barry Levinson), the extended cut

It’s amazing what can be done with cinematography and makeup. In Bugsy, specially lighted and caked with makeup, fifty-something Warren Beatty can play late thirties something Ben Siegel, albeit specially lighted and caked in makeup. The lighting is incredibly distracting, particularly in the scenes where Beatty is the only one getting the attempt at age-defying light. It gives the film a bright orange hue and it really doesn’t need any further attention drawn to Levinson’s almost indifference to its place as a period piece. There’s no texture to Bugsy‘s early 1940s Hollywood. It seems like there should be–had the film been shot on sound stages, it would have added a lot.

The problems are pretty simple. It’s boring and unrewarding. Not in the conclusion, but minute-to-minute. Bugsy is about someone who’s a little nuts and his romance with someone who’s either a little nuts, a lot stupid or deceptive and manipulative. The pair–Beatty and Annette Bening–do not make for a charismatic pair. Bening is mediocre at best. Beatty’s best scenes are with Harvey Keitel (who probably gives the film’s best performance as Mickey Cohen), Ben Kingsley (also mediocre, but his writing is better than Bening’s), Joe Mantegna and, in particular, Elliott Gould. I’ll partially retract my Keitel statement–Gould gives the film’s best performance. As Siegel, Beatty really doesn’t have much to do. When the film tries to give some weight to his suffering, it’s desperate.

The real problem, then, is the script. James Toback, little shock, doesn’t write interesting people and he doesn’t write interesting historical fiction. With such unappealing character arcs, all Bugsy has going for it is the chance at being really good historical fiction. It isn’t. The whole film is based on the premise the movie stars are going to make the uninteresting story–I mean, really, a paragraph could summarize the pertinent action in the film–interesting. It’s also based on the premise, but only at the end and somewhat ludicrously, the audience is supposed to be upset mobster Siegel got a raw deal from the mob. Whoop de doo.

If Levinson had pushed and given the film some visual flare… it wouldn’t have done much good. The Ennio Morricone score, which sounds a lot like all of his other scores from the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties, is a poor fit to the material. It’s distracting and goofy.

Still, it’s a competently made Hollywood vanity project (I don’t know who’s vanity, Beatty’s I guess). But it’s an excruciating two and a half hours.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed by Barry Levinson; screenplay by James Toback, based on a book by Dean Jennings; director of photography, Allen Daviau; edited by Stu Linder; music by Ennio Morricone; production designer, Dennis Gassner; produced by Levinson, Beatty and Mark Johnson; released by Tri-Star Pictures.

Starring Warren Beatty (Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel), Annette Bening (Virginia Hill), Harvey Keitel (Mickey Cohen), Ben Kingsley (Meyer Lansky), Elliott Gould (Harry Greenberg), Joe Mantegna (George Raft), Richard C. Sarafian (Jack Dragna), Bebe Neuwirth (Countess di Frasso), Gian-Carlo Scandiuzzi (Count di Frasso), Wendy Phillips (Esta Siegel), Stefanie Mason (Millicent Siegel), Kimberly McCullough (Barbara Siegel), Andy Romano (Del Webb), Robert Beltran (Alejandro), Bill Graham (Charlie Luciano) and Lewis Van Bergen (Joey Adonis).

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Flesh and Bone (1993, Steve Kloves)

Dennis Quaid’s performance in Flesh and Bone is complicated. The character, the hints the film offers into him, is more complicated, but Quaid’s performance somehow encapsulates all those unknowns without defining them. The film has some really strange touching scenes, as Quaid’s character lets down the wall long enough to express himself. And the anguish at not being wooden to everyone plays beautifully on Quaid’s face. I don’t think I’ve ever used wooden as a compliment to a performance before, but here it’s essential. The film wouldn’t make any sense if Quaid were any different.

The surprising performance–it’s no surprise Quaid is good–is Meg Ryan. The kewpie doll almost, but not quite, broken by life’s hardships. Ryan’s great during the “salad days” scenes and the almost comic scenes (Kloves knows how to mix genre), but she’s better during the other scenes. The scenes where she isn’t cute and she especially pulls off the odyssey scene. It’s hard to explain that scene. She walks across endless cornfields, empty of anything else, but full of everything unsaid in her character’s past. It’s a stunning sequence (ably assisted by Kloves and the sound designer and composer Thomas Newman).

As for Gwyneth Paltrow and James Caan… both are fantastic. Caan has one of those beautiful roles–he gets do whatever he wants, but it’s also very grounded and terrifying. Paltrow’s performance suggests dramatic potential she’s never realized.

Kloves’s script and direction are perfect. The script is something singular in its plotting. He gently brings the character relationships to new levels, subtlety, almost with a hands off approach. With the romance between Quaid and Ryan, it makes sense, since their husband and wife status does something for the film. But the odd relationship between Ryan and Paltrow… it’s more impressive. Kloves’s handling of female characters–there are the two main ones, one minor one, and one even more minor–is perfect.

I was a little apprehensive about the film. I haven’t seen it in nine years and it runs over two hours and I remembered it being boring. It’s not boring, not even in a good way. Nothing happens–Kloves’s gimmick, if it qualifies–isn’t an issue for the majority of the film so it’s not getting in the way. It’s a character study with the possibility and ingredients for sensationalism and it never strays. It’s always perfect. Especially given the short present action (four days or so) of the film. It’s exceptional.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Written and directed by Steve Kloves; director of photography, Philippe Rousselot; edited by Mia Goldman; music by Thomas Newman; production designer, Jon Hutman; produced by Mark Rosenberg and Paula Weinstein; released by Paramount Pictures.

Starring Dennis Quaid (Arlis Sweeney), Meg Ryan (Kay Davies), James Caan (Roy Sweeney), Gwyneth Paltrow (Ginnie), Jerry Swindall (Young Arlis), Scott Wilson (Elliot) and Christopher Rydell (Reese Davies).

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Gone Baby Gone (2007, Ben Affleck)

There’s one singularly profound moment in Gone Baby Gone, when Affleck plus vieux has one of those filmic moments directors rarely have. He takes a broken, melodramatic scene and makes it sublime. It’s a wonderful moment, coming just after the film’s second ending and before the third and fourth. The film has a lengthy list of pros and a lengthy list of cons. The cons have a lot to do with the script–specifically, I’m assuming, the particulars of adapting a novel. There’s also Affleck’s handling of Michelle Monaghan, who might have been a main character in the novel, but is a fourth wheel here. But the major problem is Affleck the filmmaker–not even the director, because Affleck does a great job–because he doesn’t seem to understand to make a film in this genre great, it has to accept it’s in the genre. Gone Baby Gone is, everything aside, an investigative mystery. Regardless of who is investigating, regardless of how the intricate the crime… it’s an investigative mystery. And Affleck refuses to label it and spends a lot of energy trying to distance the film from itself.

That error aside–I’m going to deal with Monaghan now, just so I can have a couple paragraphs of praise. Monaghan is important in the first act, almost absent in the second, and thrown in for effect in the third. When the film started, I thought it was going to be a gritty Thin Man. It’s not. The film’s about Affleck plus jeune being Catholic and understanding himself. The film skirts the Catholicism, which is a real mistake, because it dictates lots of important decisions. As for understanding himself, a lot of it is in relation to Ed Harris’s character and, for a lot of the film, it’s about Affleck and Ed Harris… not Affleck and Monaghan. She’s part of the character’s ground situation, not an active mover in the story, at least as Affleck plus vieux‘s script sets her up. So she’s a real problem third act. Monaghan’s good, really impressive, but she almost could have gone unbilled.

Casey Affleck is, no surprise, excellent in the film. He holds his own against Harris, who’s turning in some of his best work in recent years here (Harris gets the genre, however). Also excellent are Titus Welliver and Amy Ryan. Ryan’s no surprise either and Welliver’s a good actor, but he’s better than I expected when I saw his name on the credits. His role’s one of the more complicated and he does great work. Running through the laundry list, Amy Madigan, Edi Gathegi and John Ashton, all good. Morgan Freeman is severely underwhelming. It’s a perfectly fine, boring Morgan Freeman performance. It’s getting hard to remember his great acting… back when it was electrifying, instead of Bromo-Seltzer.

Technically, great John Toll photography, great score from Harry Gregson-Williams.

A sign of great future potential from the Affleck brothers. Hopefully next time, Affleck plus vieux won’t be trying so hard to prove he’s legitimate.

Class Action (1991, Michael Apted)

With Conrad L. Hall shooting it and James Horner (pre-Titanic and fame) scoring, Class Action is great looking and sounding. Apted’s composition is frequently excellent. But it’s a vehicle for Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and it, rather unfortunately, eventually just works on that vehicle level. There’s no real surprises, no real content… just running time with good acting, directing and production values and nothing else. Class Action isn’t even an exciting courtroom drama. There are maybe three scenes in court. Most of the movie is Mastrantonio realizing she doesn’t want to be a heartless corporate lawyer and, given how evil her bosses act, it’s not a surprise.

There is one excellent underlying detail to the movie though–with Mastrantonio playing Gene Hackman’s daughter and Larry Fishburne playing his protégé, the film actually takes the time to acknowledge (but not explore, which is realistic but not necessarily the best move in such an anorexic story) their complicated relationship. The scenes with Mastrantonio and Fishburne are her best, mostly because her other relationships are generic. She’s mad at Dad, so those scenes have to play a certain way. The scenes with love interest Colin Friels are troublesome (as is Friels’s one note performance), because it’s unbelievable she’d ever be with him.

As for Hackman… he’s great in the scenes with Mastrantonio. Her worst and his best (she’s good throughout and excellent in parts, just not those). Even though Hall’s lighting is most loving for Mastrantonio (her skin glows), he’s very soft on Hackman too. The other Hackman scenes are somewhat standard Hackman material, but in the scenes with Mastrantonio, he’s exercising some of his other acting muscles.

The supporting cast–besides Jonathan Silverman (his performance in this one is indistinguishable from, say, Weekend at Bernie’s)–is solid, Jan Rubes, Fred Dalton Thompson and Matt Clark being the standouts. And Fishburne, of course.

Class Action is fine, but had it definitely gone either way–legal drama, family drama–it would have been in better shape. But for a movie written by a couple “Growing Pains” writers, it’s pretty good.

The Magic Cloak of Oz (1914, J. Farrell MacDonald)

I was going to say it was odd Frank Baum wrote the screenplay, but I guess he wrote a bunch of them back in the teens. The Magic Cloak of Oz is a silly little film–I’m assuming the target audience was children–and a lot of fun. Baum has a good time with the title cards (the villains are motivated by an irrational desire for soup), but director MacDonald shows a lot of creativity as well, particularly in the first act. The rest of the film is populated with silly characters (in sillier costumes), but the first act contains the most scenes shot inside, which gives MacDonald a real chance to create the Oz setting and he succeeds well enough.

The main action of the film is a bunch of grown men dressed up as animals (these animals, ranging from crow to elephant, are all the same size) either fighting each other or men not dressed up as animals. The battle scenes are funny–the mule’s a lot of fun–and some of the costumes are fantastic.

The secondary action involves a couple kids becoming the King and Princess of a land of Oz through absurd means. There’s some funny scenes, but for the most part, they’re all filler. The meat of their story is the villainous (well, mildly villainous…) Queen from another land, who turns out to be incredibly helpful in the end.

Imaginative filmmaking–a few of the composites are better than ones I’ve seen in big budget films today–helps a lot too….

I’m not sure it’s a wonderful world of Oz (the location shooting of a village at the end hurts), but it’s a fine one.

2/3Recommended

CREDITS

Directed by J. Farrell MacDonald; written by L. Frank Baum, based on his novel; director of photography, James A. Crosby; produced by Baum and Louis F. Gottschalk; released by Paramount Pictures.

Starring Mildred Harris (Fluff), Violet MacMillan (Bud), Fred Woodward (Nickodemus), Vivian Reed (Quavo) and Juanita Hansen (Queen Zixi of Ix).

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The Last Hunt (1956, Richard Brooks)

Here’s a strange one. I just had to look to see where it fell in careers, Richard Brooks’s and Robert Taylor’s, because it’s… well, it’s something else. It’s sort of early in Brooks’s directing career, before he took off, and it’s at the very end of Taylor’s MGM contract. Taylor plays a villain in it. And Brooks handles his villainy in a singular way–he never lets anyone get away from it. Some of the scenes play like a hostage situation, but hero Stewart Granger can always leave. Lloyd Nolan and Russ Tamblyn play skinners to Granger and Taylor’s buffalo hunters and they too can leave. Even “Indian girl” (literally, the character has no other name) Debra Paget could, until a point, leave. But no one does. Taylor holds them–and the viewer–captive.

At a certain point–the film gets off to a rocky start, with Brooks having the most trouble establishing the character relationships effectively–it becomes clear it’s not about watching Taylor’s crazed gunslinger turned buffalo hunter (he’s an Indian War veteran, clearly suffering from the experience) redeem himself, but about seeing if the rest of the cast can survive knowing him. And Taylor’s performance might be his best. Once it becomes clear he’s the villain, he’s amazing. Absolutely terrifying, with all the trappings of a tragic character, but he’s so evil, it’s impossible to feel any sympathy.

Brooks juggles two big issues (The Last Hunt certainly signifies, the same year as The Searchers no less, the developing consciousness of the American Western… it also shares a theme with The Searchers, which is a little odd)–buffalo hunting and racism. The two wear heavy on an already somber Granger. Granger, second-billed to Taylor here, gives a great performance too. Brooks doesn’t deal much in subtext here and Granger’s perfect at dealing with conspicuous unrest (even though a lot of his internal turmoil is silent).

The rest of the cast, except Paget, is fantastic. Brooks’s direction is excellent, as is (after the first act) his dialogue. He has some problems with the day-for-night shooting and some rear screen projection, but it’s forgivable. Brooks really makes something great here and it’s a quiet (even though it’s Cinemascope) mid-1950s great.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Richard Brooks; screenplay by Brooks, based on the novel by Milton Lott; director of photography, Russell Harlan; edited by Ben Lewis; music by Daniele Amfitheatrof; produced by Dore Schary; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Starring Stewart Granger (Sandy McKenzie), Robert Taylor (Charlie Gilson), Lloyd Nolan (Woodfoot), Debra Paget (Indian girl), Russ Tamblyn (Jimmy O’Brien), Constance Ford (Peg) and Joe De Santis (Ed Black).

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Daylight (1996, Rob Cohen)

Stallone is Kit Latura, disgraced EMS chief (he cared too much). Besides the name, Stallone’s just the disaster movie lead and not even any interesting one (besides the caring too much). There aren’t even any Stallone grunts in the movie and he plays it straight and as well as anyone can play the terrible script. Daylight is a terrible attempt at a disaster movie as it forgets a couple of the golden rules of the genre. First, have a recognizable cast. Jay O. Sanders might barely qualify, but whoever plays his wife (Karen Young–and she’s awful) is not. And the less said about Sage Stallone the better. The second broken rule is to make the characters likable. With the exception of Stallone and security guard Stan Shaw, there isn’t a single sympathetic character trapped in the (unnamed) tunnel. In fact, when Viggo Mortensen dies, it’s a relief, since it’d have been awful to spend the rest of the movie with him around.

Besides the plotting problems, the script’s generally awful–bad dialogue, bad characters–but Daylight‘s not abjectly bad. Rob Cohen is a boring director, but he’s not bad. The sets are all very intricate and impressive (the other visual effects, terrible CG and silly composites, are not), even if the action occurring on them is mediocre at best.

When he’s not spouting off terrible character development dialogue, Stallone’s keeping the movie going. At the beginning, when it’s amusingly ludicrous, he gets some help from Dan Hedaya. Then, in the tunnel, a little from Shaw. Eventually, he’s got to push ahead himself and, at that point, Daylight gets particularly long. Maybe it’s because the ending is straight out of The Goonies.

Randy Edelman’s score is awful, Amy Brenneman is awful, Barry Newman is hilariously awful. Trina McGee is okay in one of the smaller roles and Vanessa Bell Calloway’s fake Caribbean accent (it goes in and out of course)–at least makes her scenes funny.

It’s funny to think of disaster movies as a complicated art form, but Daylight certainly proves they’re far from easy to make successful.