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Night Moves (1975, Arthur Penn)
I have a confession to make with Night Moves. I first started watching it when I was fifteen and home sick from school. I wanted to see Knight Moves with Christopher Lambert and I got this one instead. I liked Gene Hackman (or said I did) so I started watching it and I turned it off. Why?
Because fifteen-year olds are stupid.
I don’t know how I rediscovered it. I had the old Warner Home Video laserdisc, pan and scan from the early 1980s with the bubbles around the picture on the cover (f you know, you know). That must have been before film classes at college, so the only thing I can think of is Arthur Penn. I saw an Arthur Penn film on AMC (back when it was good) and went after his other stuff. At this period, I was buying laserdiscs film unseen. Blind buying. People do that with DVDs and DVDs cost $10. LaserDiscs cost a lot more. It’s possible I got the Night Moves laser on sale somewhere….
Night Moves is probably Arthur Penn’s best film, unless The Missouri Breaks is better than it looked from the moments I saw (I have it coming, right now, from Nicheflix, actually). That’s a big deal when you directed Little Big Man. I just realized I have watched Night Moves lately (2001). But this time is the first widescreen. Oh, so beautiful.
In the old days (2001), I’d have to tell you to find a good video store and still hope they stock Night Moves. With DVD, I don’t have to. You can just see it.
I’m still trying to figure out what happened to Jennifer Warren. She was in Night Moves and Slapshot and then did TV movies. She’s a great actress. Odd to appear in two of the more important American films of a decade and then nothing. Susan Clark’s in Night Moves too. Susan Clark is really good (no, I never watched “Webster.”) And as for Eugene Hackman. He’s become–edging out Dustin Hoffman–my choice for the finest actor the 1970s ever birthed. I know it’s cheating, I know Hackman and Hoffman started in the 1960s, but still….
He’s simply astounding. See Night Moves.
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The Lower Depths (1936, Jean Renoir)
So it was a play….
I know Renoir for Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game and I’m aware he had a Hollywood period, then went back to France. The Lower Depths is earlier.
Jean Gabin is fantastic, so is Louis Jouvet. Renoir juxtaposes royalty on its way down and a thief on his way out. The relationship between the two men is fantastic and when the film veers from it–into the long scenes with the flophouse’s other residents, I started checking the clock. Adapting a play well takes more work than just adapting a novel–a play has so much that isn’t going to work on screen.
Not changing the setting from Russia to France works against the film too… though maybe not. I suppose there are plenty of American films of the period set in other languages told in English. However, I always think of Russia as having a distinctiveness that The Lower Depths does not (I’m mostly thinking Ballad of a Soldier). The Lower Depths isn’t rich with the atmosphere, in fact it seems kind of anorexic with it. The film never succeeds in making the audience believe there are more than the people we see throughout–when there’s a huge crowd at one point, it’s totally out of place.
Still, it’s an interesting “in-progress” work from Renoir. From the first shot, you can see he’s doing something special.
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Tremors (1990, Ron Underwood)
When I first rediscovered Tremors, around 1995, it was on laserdisc. In the 1990s, Universal was one of the finest laserdisc companies, probably the finest. They put out a special edition of Tremors and, remembering that I liked it when I saw it on video (everyone saw Tremors on video), I bought it. Probably from the expensive place next to this movie theater… laserdiscs were hard to find in suburbia. At that time, somewhat due to the mad-love for their laserdiscs, but also because Universal still made generally acceptable films back then, I actually believed Tremors was a willful decision–a film to invoke fond memories of Universal’s 1950s sci-fi films. Tonight, I watched Tremors over It Came From Outer Space, also set in the desert….
Tremors, quite nicely, holds up. Perfectly acted, amazingly well-constructed, it’s a shame the team behind it hasn’t gone on to more. They actually went on to more Tremors, during Universal’s 1990s direct-to-video rush… Sequels that are all right. The first film being made for cheap probably didn’t hurt the following films from being cheap either.
I’ve had Robert McKee on the brain all day, reading him for the first time today, all about the deconstruction of a scene. Tremors doesn’t work like that. It has some scenes, sure, lots of them, but it’s mostly action and it’s almost all in one setting. I’m not going to sit around and pick at it–it’s too good–but, for me, thinking about McKee, it’s interesting. I’m reading McKee for fiction writing and McKee writes for screenwriting. So how come he doesn’t work for Tremors? It is–arguably–one of the more lastingly popular films to emerge in the last fifteen years….
Anyway, if you haven’t seen it in awhile, check it out again. I always watch Tremors after dark, though. Don’t know why, it’s just one of those films that you watch after dark.
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The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005, Rebecca Miller)
So… what happened?
Sometime in the first four months of this year, I proclaimed Rebecca Miller the best new filmmaker since… shit, I don’t know, Wes Anderson or somebody. Sure, Wes Anderson. Wes Anderson is the last great filmmaker. Or P.T. One of them, just not Paul W.S. Anyway, this conclusion about Miller was based on Personal Velocity.
I talk a lot–if not at The Stop Button, then in personal conversation–about artists shooting their wad. When they’re done, in other words. There are famous non-wad-shooters like Woody Allen, John Carpenter, John Ford, Clint Eastwood, and Stanley Kubrick and on and on and on. It looks a lot like an Owen Wilson-less Wes Anderson does not produce a wad… Anyway, Rebecca Miller appears to have shot her wad with Personal Velocity.
It’s not that all of Jack and Rose is bad. It’s not. Not all of it. Miller’s reliance on Bob Dylan songs, bad. Miller’s shot composition, excellent. Her dialogue and some of the scenes, also excellent. It’s just that it’s too long for her. I should have known after I read Personal Velocity, the book….
Anyway, there were four good stories in Personal Velocity, the book. Miller put three of them in the movie. The long stories in the book were painful and failed.
Kind of like Jack and Rose. I’m not as upset about the film as I thought I’d be, just because now I realize I should have seen it coming. I should have seen the long narrative as her undoing. Miller’s greatest potential appears to be in doing small stories, like a TV show. I can see her doing a really good TV show. But I’m not holding my breath for her next film.
I hope she proves me wrong.
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