Liza with a Z – 1972 – dir. Bob Fosse

It is hard to describe to those who weren’t there just how famous Liza Minnelli was in the 1970s. During that decade, along with Barbra Streisand who bested her, but not by much, she cornered the market on kooky chic, and a singing voice like a locomotive coming straight at you right out of the dark (Liza was a “belter” in the tradition of her mother, Judy Garland).  Get out of her way!  She was out to overthrow the curvaceous Monroes, MacLaines and Lollobrigidas of the 50s and 60s and create a place for the ugly duckling becoming the swan.

Tabloids and the paparazzi logged her every move, on stage and off. Warhol painted her. Studio 54 and Steve Rubell hosted her non-stop whirl of limos, all-night disco dancing, booze and cocaine.  In show business and in the culture, Liza WAS The Seventies, and it is hard to say now whether she invented them or they invented her but few can dispute that she owns those years, on screen and on stage, in valid and lasting ways.

In spite of being the daughter of Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli, Liza’s climb to the top was not an easy one. She has, in fact, said, “Being the progeny of superstar parents can work against you or it can get you in the door but if you don’t have the talent to back it up, Hollywood will
slam that door right in your face.”

Generations of entertainment audiences adored her mother, Judy Garland, and when she died tragically in her early 40s of a drug overdose, they (esp. Garland’s legion of gay male fans) embraced Liza as a replacement for what they had lost. Beween, say, 1968 (the year of Garland’s
death) and 1972, despite popular and critical debuts in films like The Sterile Cuckoo and Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, Liza remained merely “Judy Garland’s daughter”.

Then came Cabaret, and Liza’s Oscar winning performance as Sally Bowles in Bob Fosse’s
international, award winning song-and-dance smash about sexual decadence in pre-Hitler
Germany. Seemingly overnight, Liza became a megastar in her very own galaxy.  People
stopped comparing her to her mother and she had the sense and the savvy to keep her wagon
hitched to the talents of songmeisters, Kander and Ebb, and to the direction and choreography
of the one and only Fosse. She was on her way!

Coming off the worldwide success that was Cabaret,  Liza With a Z is an absolute valentine to one of the finest entertainers of all time. Here is Minnelli showcased in all her singing and dancing glory; the androgynous haircut, her signature moves, the Halston designs.  If you want to know what all the fuss was about, you have only to watch this hour long fiesta of “everything Liza”

No singer sings like she sings. Every song for Liza is a Mount Everest to be scaled, and scale each one here she does with no safety net and no equipment other than that powerhouse of a voice, melodramatic acting, the stylized arm and hand gestures (a la Piaf), the Fosse brand of dancing she made so famous in those years. (An interesting bit –  Minnelli says Fosse was “knock-kneed and dink-toed” and so what seemed like a newly invented style of movement was, in fact, the only way he knew how to move).

And the Minnelli look!   Who else looked (or looks) like her!  The Louise Brooks bangs. The wacky Clockwork Orange eyelashes, like something out of the prohibition era. Her trademark look
influenced that whole era and was copied throughout the world.  Those soulful banjo eyes. They take you from hilarity to heartbreak before you have a chance to breathe; and when her tiny, little
hands reach for that place beyond the stars that is always so close yet always out of reach, well, we all can relate to that…

Sure, her personal life (the alcoholism, the drugs, the crazy marriages) was a circus but those were circus days, the 70s, what with the glam rock, androgyny, decadence and excess, and if they had
to have a ringmaster, let’s be glad it was our own Liza With a Z!!

New York, New York – 1977 – dir. Martin Scorsese

The legendary Martin Scorcese likes to dabble in different genres: urban angst and alienation in Taxi Driver, sports in Raging Bull,  mobsters in The Departed, mystery/thrillers in Shutter Island. Here, with New York New York is his loving tribute to Hollywood musicals of the 30s and 40s.

Headlining his film are Robert De Niro as saxophone player, Jimmy Doyle and Liza Minnelli as big band singer, Francine Evans, both up-and-coming musicians hoping to make it to the top.

Though not a hit at the box office when it was released in 1977 (Scorsese felt he had failed at what he was trying to do), New York, New York fascinates, and if indeed the director failed, he failed gloriously.

What fascinates most is that a great majority of the dialogue is improvised; the actors fleshed it out as they went along. That whole pick-up scene, for instance, at the beginning, in the nightclub, between Jimmy and Francine, is completely unscripted.  All the actors were told was that the guy is trying to pick up the girl. Minnelli says she was flummoxed by the lack of direction, totally bewildered by what was being asked of her. Watch her get stuck saying, “no”, “no”, “no” to De Niro’s advances out of sheer terror until she realized it was working, and ran with it. Considering that she and De Niro had no script to work from, it is amazing what they came up with. “I can take a hint.”   “Can you take a hike?”

At times, the movie’s upside is also its downside; it is so unrehearsed, we grow impatient with its silences, its burps, while the actors fish for what to say, where to take it. Still, with two performers as gifted as these two are, the journey is one of discovery, a ride we are happy to take with them.

New York, New York is deliberately over-stylized, even hyper-stylized. Scorsese meant for it to be a throwback to the Hollywood of Minnelli’s mother and father. In casting her, (a brilliant piece of casting), he knows he has Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli’s daughter here, and that audiences are going to have them, and the classic movie musicals they made, in mind.   However, this movie is not the sugary-sweet happy ending carbon copy of old-time Hollywood fare. Scorsese
wants to take his players and the genre to a much darker place; for this is a story of a match made in Hell, of an ambitious singer who knows how good she is and a story of two people who might love each other but who cannot get out of the way of each other’s dreams and demons, especially De Niro’s.  In Jimmy Doyle, De Niro creates another of his mercurial screen heels: a micromanaging control freak with a drug monkey on his back and a temper as big as his talent. Romance beats beneath his bushwa, his braggadocio. He means well and we can see he cares for Minnelli. It’s the hothead in him, the self-destructive streak, and the drugs the music world gives him such easy access to that prove to be his undoing. His charm is obvious, but he is too stupid
to get out of his own way and when one chance after another presents itself for redemption, he chooses narcissism, jealousy and bitterness instead.

De Niro built a screen career playing these mercurial men; his character can go from 0 to 100 in the blink of an eye, and 70s moviegoers (esp. females) thrilled to his “You don’t know what I’m going to do from minute-to-minute here but stick with me and I guarantee I’ll take you on one of the most exciting rides of your life!”   De Niro was dangerous in the tradition of Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney. You know he’s going to explode; you just don’t know when his volcano’s going to pop. His energy is so hot, he can get an inferno going with just one look.
Watch him ignite when a bouncer throws him out of a club, exploding more than the white hot lights he smashes with his legs and feet. A firecracker of an actor, he more than deserves his place as one of movie history’s live grenades.

Liza Minnelli more than holds her own against him; her signature vulnerability (she was a master at portraying tender bewilderment) making both her and us wish this match could somehow work. From the very start, we know (and Minnelli knows) this is not the type of guy she should ever hook up with but she cannot resist his punk-ass swagger, his punk-ass duds, the smirking gum-chewing grin. His confidence sweeps her off her feet, and us and the movie with it.

This is Minnelli’s own version of her mother’s A Star Is Born, the iconic tale of one performer whose star eclipses the star of the man she loves. And she aces it; balancing electrifying star power
with human frailty; she loves her man but realizes all too clearly they mix like oil and water.

New York, New York is about the rigors and unpredictability of a musician’s life, the rigors of road touring, and the pain of a relationship gone terribly wrong. For Scorsese means this to be a
re-invention of the conventional music bio, the antithesis of movies Judy Garland, Vincente Minnelli and their kind made. This time out, love isn’t enough. No happy endings here, folks…

New York, New York gets the period right: lush sets, glitzy costumes, the sparkle and shine of big bands and jazz. Scorsese captures exactly the world of musicmakers with all the glamour but all the sleaze, too, the one not being able to exist without the other. There is a scene that finds the two stars in a snow-covered forest saying a painful goodbye to each other. The actors are not the only characters in the shot; the set is the third character here, as much of an attraction and a symbol as they are, glorious in the artifice of the old Hollywood it harkens back to while making it abundantly clear that all of them — actors, emotions, scenery are fake, that none of it is real and none of it ever was.  It is a shattering, bittersweet moment. Scorsese is ringing a death bell for the Hollywood fantasy machine.

Treats do abound:  the beloved character actor, Lionel Stander, who had only to open his cement mixer mouth to evoke all of New York City, is here, as a booking agent. And Mary Kay Place of the  “Mary Hartman Mary Hartman” t.v. show, plays a girl singer De Niro has an affair with.

One scene says it all about New York, New York;  De Niro, boiling mad because Minnelli is more of a success than he is, is playing to the crowd, and when she tries to join him onstage, he uses music to blow anger at her, to blow her away. The music becomes his fury. The music is both Creator and Destroyer and that is what Scorsese wants us to know:  music exalts the culture we live in but the price paid for that exaltation by those who make it is way too high.

The years have been kind to New York, New York and have transformed it from a piece of experimental coal into a dark, shiny diamond.  Better entertainment than this is hard these days to find…

Hedwig and the Angry Inch – 2001 – dir. John Cameron Michael

Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the 2001 motion picture based on the successful off-Broadway musical of the same name, is a rare bird indeed: a stage adaptation that doesn’t fall flat, it has visual verve to spare and feels right at home on the big screen. The colors pop and the music (composed by Stephen Trask) truly rocks. Hedwig is perhaps too wild to be considered a throwback, but there are moments, such as the triumphant sing-along number “Wig in a Box,” when this film gives audiences that same giddy rush that comes from watching the best old Technicolor musicals. It’s one of only a handful of really special movie musicals to come out of the ‘00s, and one of the decade’s most unique films to boot.

Critics and fans at a loss to describe Hedwig often fall back on comparisons to Richard O’Brien’s 1975 midnight perennial The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but one can’t help but feel that the comparison does both films a disservice. Cult cinema fans are constantly hearing claims that the latest odd-duck movie to escape into theaters is “the next Rocky Horror,” or “insert-other-film-title-here meets Rocky Horror,” but the truth is that no movie is likely to spawn the sort of bizarre, love-hate relationship that Rocky Horror fans have with their favorite flick. (Let it be known that anyone attempting to make catcalls at the screen during a showing of Hedwig and the Angry Inch will likely earn a dirty look from me, though singing along with the film is strongly encouraged.)

While it’s true that Hedwig’s glam rock aesthetic is deeply indebted to the same milieu that spawned Rocky – the rise of “cryptohomo rockers” who changed the world by bending their gender in the early seventies – director and star John Cameron Mitchell does more than merely echo Bowie, Bolan, Jobriath, Lou Reed, and yes, that lip-smacking, corseted Tim Curry, with his turn as the title character in Hedwig. For all of the bruised bravado of Tim Curry’s big ballad near the close of Rocky Horror, the fact remains that his character is an alien, and a cannibalistic alien too. Other glam icons traded on similarly otherworldly personas – Ziggy Stardust was from Mars, after all – a tactic that amplified their outsider status but also suggested that their marginalized, complicated, or confused gender and sexuality made them simultaneously more than human and less than human.

By contrast, Mitchell’s Hedwig is powerfully, painfully human. She isn’t an alien looking to corrupt or enlighten a bunch or square Earthlings. She’s just struggling to make sense of herself. It’s true that Hedwig’s situation is extreme: she’s the victim of a botched sex change operation and a child of the Cold War’s divided Berlin. But audiences have so embraced this character because her struggles to accept herself, and to find someone to love, are so universal.

Hedwig uses music – the music that came over her cherished radio as a child, and the music that she makes with her band in the film – as a means of holding together her wildly fractured identity. “The saving power of rock and roll” is a cliché for a reason: rock music remains one of the most powerful outsider art forms ever to puncture the public consciousness, and few films capture that power quite as well as Hedwig does. The aforementioned “Wig in a Box” is a soaring showstopper, “Angry Inch” (a chronicle of that nasty operation) bristles with raw punk energy, and “Midnight Radio” is one of our best-ever songs about, well, songs.

But perhaps “The Origin of Love,” a song based on an excerpt from Plato’s Symposium, best sums up Hedwig’s distinctive appeal. The song tells the story of how humans were once two-headed, four-legged creatures (some male-female, some male-male, and some female-female) before the jealous gods tore them apart and condemned them to spend their lives in a search of their other halves. Accompanied by an endearing animated sequence in the film version, “The Origin of Love” makes it clear that Hedwig’s problems are everyone’s problems, and she isn’t a freak at all. At least, no more than the rest of us. It’s a key moment in a picture that defies categorization or comparison.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - 2004 – dir. Michel Gondry

In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (dir. Michel Gondry, 2004), Jim Carrey plays against his quirky, impulsive type as subdued, quiet Joel, who has either just met, or really wants to forget, Kate Winslet’s quirky, impulsive Clementine. In this inside-out romance, the point-of-view zips around from future to past, and from imagined to real, in a race between the persistence of memory, and the true cost of forgetting.

Who hasn’t thought, after a particularly bad break-up, that it would be better to be able to forget all about it, like nothing ever happened? Joel and Clementine attempt to do just that. Most of the story is related in a surreal picaresque as Joel attempts to erase every last vestige of Clementine from his mind, revisiting every peak and valley of their romantic landscape as things shift and dissolve around him.

In a plot point borrowed from science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, we are introduced to Lacuna, Inc., which performs a kind of plastic surgery on the mind, offering to erase specific painful memories for a fee.  Joel and Clementine had met as an attraction of opposites, his stability to her spontaneity.  They are both creative but manifest it in different ways, Joel in his writing; Clementine in her lifestyle.  They’re both a bit lost and a bit found, and complement each other; he offers needed grounding for her flights of fancy, and she buoys him up with new experience. But they have their share of misunderstandings and friction, and after two years and a particularly bad fight, they split.  Joel is distraught.  And then he learns that Clementine has decided to have “the procedure;” to erase her memories of him, to leapfrog over the pain and commence the “moving on” portion of her life. At which point Joel decides to have the procedure too, and the movie begins.

After collecting every knickknack, photo, and journal entry that referred to her in any way, Joel arrives at Lacuna for an MRI-like evaluation where clusters of emotional memories are targeted for erasure later that evening.  The actual procedure will be done at his home, so when he wakes up he will not even be reminded that he went to Lacuna. That night, the team shows up at Joel’s apartment, fits him with electrodes, gives him a sedative, and commences work, zapping dots on a computer screen in the manner of tech support rebooting a hard drive. Most of what we learn about Joel and Clementine comes from this session, a series of remembered highs and lows, briefly experienced by Joel one more time before disappearing forever. Outside Joel’s head, in his apartment, the Lacuna receptionist (Kristin Dunst), who is dating Mark Ruffalo’s technician, comes over and the party begins, as the computer can take care of most of the work by itself. But then, mid-procedure, Joel changes his mind.

Without completely regaining consciousness, Joel realizes that he doesn’t want to lose these memories after all.  Despite the pain, they are what he has left of Clementine, and without them, he will be less of a person, a sad, dry husk without even the memory of the complicated yet enervating spirit he loved.  So he starts “running:” dream-Joel grabs dream-Clementine and proceeds to try to hide her in parts of his memory where she never was: he is four years old under the table. He is seven, fighting with the boys in the neighborhood. He is fifteen, masturbating to adult comics. He is 28, walking through November woods. Joel and Clementine caper through a series of absurdly comic and sad situations in various sizes and costumes, in an effort to outrace the computer. But computers tend to be efficient given specific targets, and mnemonic environments dissolve and morph with dream-logic into dream-bits, becoming scattered and meaningless and safe.

The title of the film comes from a line in “Eloisa to Abelard” (http://www.monadnock.net/poems/eloisa.html) , an 18 th-century epistolary poem by Alexander Pope. Eloisa and Abelard (known by various spellings) are the real-life characters in one of history’s most tragic romances. Abelard was a celebrated scholar in 12th century France, and Heloise his much younger star pupil. They fell in love over ideas but her family disapproved; they were found out and Abelard was castrated for his trouble. And yet, that did not end the affair. They never met again, but many years later, when they were abbess and monk, respectively, they began a correspondence that resulted one of the most beautiful, resonant and sensuous meditations on love and loss in Western literature. In Pope’s poem, Eloisa begs to have her memories of Abelard replaced with thoughts of God instead, to have her slate wiped clean – her pain still physical despite the years and miles. The “spotless mind” she postulates would be filled with the “eternal sunshine” of spirit – or at the very least it would not be saturated with the endless rain of longing. This story has a particular appeal to Kaufman, who also enacted it with marionettes in Being John Malkovich (dir. Spike Jonze, 1999).

Kaufman’s surreal, introspective scripts tend to focus on a downbeat, slightly neurotic leading man, often a writer of some kind, who shies away from any actual leading, and who tends to think about the script of his life from the outside, perhaps not unlike Kaufman himself. Left to his own devices a character like this might spiral endlessly down the rabbit hole of his own worries, as in Kaufman’s self-directed static epic Synecdoche, New York (2008). But in Eternal Sunshine, director Michel Gondry’s experience with fast-paced, pop-inflected music videos infuses the tale with needed movement, bringing both the humor and the deeper philosophical issues into sharper contrast and better balance.

Jim Carrey’s gift for physical comedy is here judiciously restrained; Gondry never lets the slapstick overwhelm the script, any more than he lets the metaphysics sink it. Instead, as he amps Kaufman up, he tones Carrey down: the scenes jump forward and back in time, and in and out of fantasy, transposing both manic movement and philosophical paradox into a satisfyingly conceptual action-adventure.

And, of course, a romance. It turns out that there are more than two unreliable narrators in the tale, and the twists and turns become so tightly interwoven yet messily realistic that some viewers might want to see the film twice to sort it all out. Love is a probability cloud of many possible states and orbits. And while stories may trace their trajectories through time, we yearn to stop and touch.  Happily ever after, or ever after at all, will be up to Joel and Clementine, or what you imagine them to be. The film stops where stories should: reality, after all, requires more than a rhetorical flourish.

Winchester ’73 – 1953 – dir. Anthony Mann

It has been said that this film has every western cliché in the repertoire: dance hall floozy who’s a good girl at heart, trusty sidekick, shooting contest with incredible demonstrations of marksmanship, heroic stand by the Calvary, noble but inevitably defeated Indians, climactic shootout for two… even Wyatt Earp. Yet, Casablanca-like, the film gets away with a bevy of stock situations and even stock characters because every performance is so strong. The subtleties of the most subsidiary characters come across in a believable and refreshing way.

The actors were helped by a crackling screenplay, completely rewritten by Borden Chase using some older drafts by Robert L. Richards, and Chase would go on to work with James Stewart and director Anthony Mann two more times. Another partner in the Stewart-Mann successes was producer Aaron Rosenberg, and it was he who suggested Stewart for the lead and Mann as the director of Winchester ’73 in the first place. The latter had just directed Devil’s Doorway, a western film that portrayed American Indians in a sympathetic light even more skillfully than Broken Arrow, and Stewart, impressed by that, was all for his taking the helm.

The rifle of the title is the proudest possession of a series of men throughout the movie, neatly intertwining the characters’ stories and representing not only virility, but for Stewart’s Lin McAdams, vindication in his drive for revenge.

The relationship between McAdams and Dutch Henry Brown (Stephen McNally) is clarified at the end, but fascinating from its first moment, when the characters grab for absent guns at the sight of each other. Into their tense attempt to draw, they insert a flash of gladness to see each other—one of those tiny details that make this film stand out. Did the actors come up with that on their own? Did Chase write that in? Or did Mann direct them to add that touch?

Mann’s direction of Stewart brought the star a whole new image. After numerous roles as a gangling and clean-cut young man in comedies and light dramas, he had played a somewhat darker character in It’s a Wonderful Life, and more mature, disillusioned ones in Call Northside 777 and Rope, but this role revealed in addition more physicality and toughness than audiences were used to seeing in him. Mann’s genius was in interweaving this seamlessly with Stewart’s vulnerable side; still, Lin McAdams’ near-psychotic rage toward Waco Johnny Dean (Dan Duryea) brought gasps from the movie’s original audiences. This was only the second western role the public had seen Stewart play (Broken Arrow was made earlier, but released after this film), and as the first was the mostly comedic Destry Rides Again, this was a departure.

Stewart worked hard for believability in the character, practicing shooting for hours with a technical advisor from the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and carefully considering his choice of clothing and hat. He relied upon his stunt doubles Ted Mapes and Ron Meyers for advice about sartorial and behavioral authenticity, and sought their assistance in honing his already considerable horsemanship. (Stewart was to use Meyers’ daughter’s horse, Pie, in Winchester ’73 and all his ensuing western roles for another 20 years.)

In an interview made to accompany a laser disc release of Winchester ’73, Stewart stated that he was conscious of a need to change the impression he gave the audience—he couldn’t deliver his lines in the old Stewart drawl, as he put it—but emphasized that he was helped immensely by Chase’s story and Mann’s direction.

But along with the contributions of producer, writer, director and star, the strength of Winchester ’73 lies in the plausibility and resonance of every small part, and in its details: Stewart’s dirty, sweat-stained hat; the way he combs his fingers through his horse’s forelock as he rides; Millard Mitchell’s tongue-twisted recollections of what Earp had told them previously (Lin’s reaction: “I think you better spit”); the increasingly edgy menace of the mysterious Dutch Henry Brown (McNally) in contrast with his good-natured henchmen (Steve Brodie and James Millican); the hospitable but tough and no-nonsense owner of the roadside hotel and bar (John Alexander); all the sly humor about life-or-death situations (“Whaddya guess for our chances?” “What chances?”); the suggestive, yet domestically promising, exchange between Lola (Shelley Winters) and Lin (Stewart) about the bullet she wants as a keepsake; the way Dan Duryea plays an absolutely despicable character and still comes off as likable; the breathtakingly painterly image of an Indian on horseback against a sunset behind two foreground characters (cinematography by William H. Daniels); Shelley Winters’ affectionate kisses and compliments for grizzled Jay C. Flippen.

These raise the movie above convention and make it one of the classics of western cinema. Borden Chase was already famous for his scripting of Red River (directed by Howard Hawks and Arthur Rosson, starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift). Chase subsequently wrote two additional Stewart westerns directed by Anthony Mann (Bend of the River and The Far Country), as well as other western stories and screenplays. (Yet another Stewart vehicle, Night Passage, had a Borden Chase script and originally was to be directed by Mann, but the director was not enamored of that screenplay. When he pulled out of the project, Mann and Stewart went their separate ways for good.)

Note: If you find it fun to spot early appearances of then little-known actors destined to achieve movie fame, stop reading here and come back later! However, if you want to be sure not to miss them, read on and do not overlook early roles here for two 1950s stars: “Anthony Curtis” plays a young Calvary soldier (didn’t capture his name in the credits, so, from the VHS era on, viewers have had one of those “Wow, is that…?” moments), and a nearly unrecognizable Rock Hudson does a good job as the Apache chief Young Bull.

There Will Be Blood – 2007 – dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

A film such as There Will Be Blood only comes around every decade or so.  It is a picture that transcends the contemporary (and often times, overemphasized) allusions to current issues, eventually revealing the true heroics of man.  Usually, films such as these relish in the battle of man with the world around him.  This time, Paul Thomas Anderson has taken a step back, graciously inviting his audience to participate in his fantastic allusion.  There Will be Blood is our modern American epic.  Already resonating with films such as Citizen Kane, the personal psychology has an intrinsic connection with today’s audience.  All corporate evil aside, this is film is about competition.  To go even farther, There Will Be Blood is an objective look at the driving force of ambition, and the right of man to climb to the top, however he may get there.  It all starts with Daniel Plainview.

Adapting the screenplay from Upton Sinclair’s “Oil!,” P. T. Anderson (former protégé of the late, great Robert Altman) has updated the classic McCabe & Ms. Miller period piece to an entirely new plane of thought.  Rather than Anderson’s usual ensemble cast of Hollywood talent, (another trademark of Altman) and the various stories intertwining throughout the tale, the young director puts his intricate narrative web aside and leaves his fantastic craft of character in the hands of one man.  Before all hell breaks lose, Anderson’s penetrating portrayal of one of America’s earliest oil men is assumed by one of Hollywood’s most gifted actors.  Igniting the kindred flame of wealth and power is Daniel Day Lewis, whose rigorous portrayal of Daniel Plainview is nothing short of history in the world of cinema.  The implications of ambition are so rarely tackled so meticulously; who better to bear the weight of the 20^th century dream?  Plainview is the ultimate teammate, entirely consumed by a game to which he knows all the moves and of which he assumes the role of both starting all-star and head coach.  To his rival’s dismay, Plainview is incapable of mercy; for sympathy, morals and rest have no place in the world of competition.

Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) is the only one foolish enough to attempt any opposition to Plainview.  While under the visage of an entirely different set of tactics, Eli will only allow Plainview to drill if he agrees to fund his church: “That’s good, that’s a good one.”  Dano (Eli) pushes his acting talents to the extreme to balance Lewis’ unstoppable force in his practice and expansion of the small town Evangelism that would soon rise from the mid-west.  Playing off of Plainview’s offense, Sunday rallies his congregation on the sidelines, unconditionally attached to the progress of “Little Boston” – the town that can barely grow anything beside potatoes.  While the Preacher puts on a few spectacles of his own, his game plan is an insult to Plainview’s vision of progress.  This is illustrated in his inspirational (and most beautifully sequenced) promise of irrigation and eventual cultivation, under the firm belief that “it’s an abomination to consider that any man, woman or child in this magnificent country of ours should have to look upon a loaf of bread as a luxury.”  The battle between the real and the ethereal plunges onward, with a final act that can never be forgotten.

While there is no doubt that what is seen on the screen drives the story home, Johnny Greenwood’s score certainly delivers a gracious crescendo that becomes a character of its own across the dreary landscape.  Both avant-garde and eerily independent, the singular tones of Greenwood’s score are something unmatched (or ever really tried) in any other Hollywood film.  As if speaking for the characters in a twisted interior monologue, the music provides a voice for the chaotic descent into the depths of the all-consuming quest for power.  Some songs even provide a literal vessel for the emotion that is lost with the voice of Plainview’s son (an orphan who serves as a poster boy to project the idea of a wholesome family business).  Through biting metaphor, the silent voice of the future generation haunts the picture’s edgy finale, portraying a warped sense of family as something Plainview sees as both vulnerability and vicious paranoia.  Greenwood’s score truly depicts the film for exactly what it is: A piece of art.

What you have in There Will be Blood is a relic.  Although the film is only three years old, its contemporary overtones, developed through elegant writing and unmatchable acting talent, deliver a classic portrayal of early American values.  There Will Be Blood is an instant masterpiece.  A work of art so astute in its writing, delivery, and tone, that its spectacle is a quintessential mirror of society at large.  I take back the earlier designation of an American epic.  This is the American Dream.  Better yet, this is just plain America.  It is a view of capitalism so apparent in the reflection of the dark crude, its unmistakably vivid.  As for the title, there’s very little actual blood in the film; however, perhaps Anderson is foreshadowing the growing prices of oil from a historical point of view.  Maybe someday the price of oil will become much more substantial.  Perhaps in the future there will be blood.

The Man From Laramie – 1955 – dir. Anthony Mann

Prominent among the James Stewart films most often shown on television in the 1960s and ’70s were the five westerns that he made with director Anthony Mann. Despite this exposure, Mann, though something of a successor to John Ford in the genre of more psychologically complex westerns, is arguably not as well known today. Perhaps this is because he was considered more of a craftsman than an actor’s director, but in the western films Stewart made with him, the actor emerged as more understated, and showed audiences a whole new facet of his personality.

Although James Stewart was capable of subtlety and emotional appeal from the outset of his career in the mid 1930s, he frequently displays a kind of manic energy that is sometimes (unintentionally) almost laughable.  Stewart shows just as much intensity in his Anthony Mann and Alfred Hitchcock movies, but that shaky, crazed anger of his is more convincing and frightening as his acting ability matures and his dramatic characters become more hard-bitten.

Perhaps he became more believable because “crazy and edgy” were a better fit in these darker and more serious films than in the lighthearted work for which Stewart is also remembered. As movies about the old west continued to move away from stock characters and made audiences more curious about characters’ backgrounds and motivations, it was the collaboration of director Anthony Mann and James Stewart that brought forth a kind of western noir, and it was in these tough, mettle-testing stories that Stewart’s fervid streak worked best of all. (Then, too, with a drawl like that, even a central Pennsylvania boy makes a believable westerner!)

Mann described his westerns’ protagonists as not necessarily heroes, but men with a purpose. Instead of white-hat wearers, these lead characters were complicated, vengeful, and often troubled and violent. In a reversal of pattern from Stewart’s other Mann films, his character begins this film as a man with a peaceful turn of mind (as the title song has it), but becomes vengeful as the film progresses. In Winchester ’73, Bend of the River, The Naked Spur, and The Far Country, he’s a bitter and outraged individual who learns to mellow and finds peace by the last reel.

Will Lockhart (Stewart), the man from Laramie, rides into a village in New Mexico Territory ostensibly to deliver goods to the town’s general store, but he is on a personal mission as well: to learn who was responsible for Apache acquisitions of repeating rifles, which led to the death of his brother and 11 other Calvary officers. Will soon endures senseless persecution at the hands of the local landowner’s twisted son Dave (Alex Nichol) and is not only beaten and dragged through a campfire, but has to watch his freight wagons destroyed and even some of his mules shot down. This was one of the most frightening and brutal scenes in western films up to that time—at least, it was until a climactic scene later in this same film.

The cattle baron who owns the town and surrounding lands is Alec Waggoman (Donald Crisp), a Lear-like figure who adores his shiftless son but places his real trust in his ranch foreman and veritable surrogate son, Vic (Arthur Kennedy). Though once a formidable and cruel acquirer of the surrounding lands, the old man is becoming more subdued and fretful as he experiences portentous dreams about his family and his property. After Will Lockhart has a knock-down-drag-out with Dave and Vic in retaliation for Dave’s earlier attack, Alec breaks it up and pays Will for damages, but warns the stranger to get out of town.

The one holdout in the land grab was rival rancher Kate Canady (Aline MacMahon), a woman who long ago was in love with Alec Waggoman. She convinces Will to stay on as foreman of her ranch, and he finds that his troubles with Dave are only just beginning.

Arthur Kennedy’s character of Vic also evolves in interesting (though not entirely consistent) ways in the course of the film; he comes across more as tragic figure than one-dimensional villain, but one of the weaknesses of this movie’s script is the way that he suddenly becomes scapegoat for so much. As the story is established, viewers can feel his frustration over having the real responsibility for the ranch without a secure claim to it, and he is shown to discourage Dave’s ruinous behaviors, yet events conspire almost mythically to make him the bearer of all guilts.

These overtones of Greek tragedy were no accident. Anthony Mann believed that “The West is the one place audiences will accept the violence and passion of the classical writers.” His whole career long, the director wanted to make a western version of King Lear. Although Mann never accomplished that, the plot and characterizations of The Man From Laramie certainly echo elements of the Shakespearean work closest in theme to Athenian tragedy. (Philip Yordan and Frank Burt wrote the screenplay, based on a magazine short story.) A patriarch of competing heirs struggles with his decisions as to who will receive his legacy, then suffers as his lack of judgment puts into motion a series of cataclysmic events.

London-born Donald Crisp (who frequently played a Scot) does an impressive job with an American accent and adds to his well-known portrayals of gruff and distant fathers. His dream, which he believes is a portent, adds to the Shakespearean air of the proceedings.

Cathy O’Donnell plays the niece of the landowner, fiancée of Vic, and unambitious proprietor of the store; someone who intrigues Stewart’s character, but never truly functions as romantic interest. O’Donnell is somewhat stiff in her portrayal of a breathy innocent almost too good to be true; it’s a bit startling when Kennedy plants an impassioned smooch on her, for she has come across as rather daughterly to every man with whom she has interacted in the movie.

Despite its plot holes the movie somehow comes together, probably thanks in the main to the star power and acting ability of Stewart, who was more versatile than the company line would have it. Hitchcock often gets the credit for revealing the grittier and more multi-layered Stewart in Rope (1948); I’d argue that it was Anthony Mann who showed him to us, starting with Winchester ’73 (1950).

That first of the Mann-Stewart westerns was a black-and-white film in the traditional ratio; The Man From Laramie, their last, was shot in Technicolor and CinemaScope. Like John Ford before him, Mann knew how to choose and direct cinematographers (in this case, Charles Lang) to full advantage in capturing the vast and hard landscape of the west in ways that reflected the emptiness or challenges felt by the stories’ characters. Most of this movie was shot on location in Sante Fe and Taos, New Mexico. Audience members at The Brattle are fortunate to be seeing this one as it originally was meant to be seen; if you watch at home, make sure you’ve got a high-quality widescreen version.

Grizzly Man – 2005 – dir. Werner Herzog

Grizzly Man (dir. Werner Herzog, 2005) is two documentaries in one: the first is video shot by Timothy Treadwell, the self-described bear-whisperer, of himself in the Alaskan wilderness; and the second is edited and narrated by director Werner Herzog, about Treadwell’s controversial life and death. Herzog weaves these two voices together, the naive enthusiast and the experienced adventurer, while the conflict between man and nature plays itself out to its tragic end.

Before falling in with the bears, Treadwell’s life proceeded in fits and starts. Prone to fantasy and self-invention, at college he claimed to be an orphan from Australia, instead of the average kid from Long Island he actually was. He changed his name from Dexter to the more mellifluous and symbolic Treadwell.  He blamed his heroin addiction on losing the part of the Cheers TV bartender to Woody Harrelson. After stumbling through various addictions and dreams of glamour, a sympathetic friend recommended that Treadwell go up to Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska and take in some nature. At that, Treadwell’s star was set. He successfully swapped his substance addiction for an equally powerful image addiction—the romantic sweep of wilderness, nature, and of course, bears. He would become the man who could talk to the animals.

Treadwell never stopped to consider whether the animals could really talk to him.

Werner Herzog is uniquely positioned to tell this tale. Throughout his prolific career Herzog has been fascinated with extremes—of man, of nature, of the lengths to which we will go to find meaning, substance, wonder, or the fabled far edges of the earth. By mapping the negative spaces of extremity, Herzog has shown us in ever-sharper outline what it means to be human, what it means to be wild, and what it might mean to be free. And as well he has an eye for the absurd, for in the seeming contradictions of our behavior and beliefs often lies the key, not to what we make of it all, but what we all might make of each other.

What Herzog makes of Treadwell is a remarkably sensitive and balanced portrait of a sincere man in a sincerely troubled quest. Making full use of Treadwell’s own footage, Herzog allows the contradictions in Treadwell’s words, friends, and actions to fight it out amongst themselves, all the way to the tragic conclusion.

It is fair to say that Werner Herzog maintains the opposite view of nature from someone like Timothy Treadwell. “The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don’t think they—they sing. They just screech in pain.” (Herzog quoted in Burden of Dreams, Les Blank’s documentary of the making of Fitzcarraldo). Herzog is no stranger to work in the field, either the natural one or the field of dreams. But where Treadwell’s glasses are permanently rose-colored, Herzog’s lens is perfectly clear, and never shies away from uncomfortable observations; in fact, he revels in them. As the director of Klaus Kinski and Bruno S, Herzog also knows well the beautiful yet painful paradoxes of human passion and comprehension.

Onscreen, Treadwell seems eager to be a one-man Wild Kingdom episode, playing Marlin, Jim, the cinematographer, and the animals, all rolled into one, with undisguised glee. His unquestioned belief in the romance of landscape, in a view of a wilderness in which we can gain perspective and get in touch with our own real nature, if only we will embrace the idea, is one that has wide appeal, and, to a less extreme degree, wide acceptance. We miss the wild. There are few really untouched places left anymore; it seems all of nature is managed and bounded and provided with a few roads and signposts to guide our wanderings, as well as helpful naturalists to guide our imaginings.  Interestingly, Katmai is just such a managed space, host not only to bear populations but to thousands of tourists and photographers annually. How Treadwell interacted with these signposts and guides is telling—he pretended they were not there; he insisted, to himself, that he was alone, in the wild, with only his video camera and his wits to guide him.

One might be reminded of Chris McCandless, the subject of Jon Krakauer’s book “Into The Wild” (and Sean Penn’s biopic of the same name), who insisted on walking into the Alaskan wilderness without a map, because he so desperately needed to believe that there was still an unmapped place to call wild. In fact he was only a few miles from a Park Service cabin and a river-crossing tram, and the bus in which he took refuge was specifically placed for hunters, all of which he would have known (and might perhaps have saved his life) had he taken a map and talked to a few more locals. McCandless believed that by discarding the map, both he and the landscape could be free.

Treadwell took a similar approach. Instead of studying biology and ecology and researching his chosen mammals, Treadwell “threw away the map” in the belief that his approach was more “natural.” But nature is not just what we wish it to be. Superficially, Treadwell might have seemed to be mimicking the methods of immersive research scientists like Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. But Goodall and Fossey never traded their careful observations for what they wished to be the case. They immersed themselves as zoologists and primatologists, and studied the social primates, who are more tolerant of another primate in their midst with a notebook. As for Treadwell’s claim of bear-whispering; significantly, horse- and dog-whisperers work with domesticated animals. These crucial differences did not register with Treadwell. He petted the bears. He named them: “Cupcake,” “Freckles,” “Taffy.” He set up his nylon tent in the dense brush where they preferred to hide out. He did this all on the strength of his belief that he could be their friend, in much the same way he tried to charm his way through human society.

For a dozen years, his timing was right. The bears had plenty to eat and were acclimated enough to humans in the Park that they tolerated this capering, camping creature who constantly got too close. From the footage, it does not appear that any of the animals Treadwell encountered did more than tolerate him, although he clearly believes he has tamed them like large dogs, or perhaps has even insinuated himself into their society. Back among people, Treadwell made high-profile appearances on Letterman, Rosie and the Discovery Channel.  But eventually, his luck ran out. Given Treadwell’s unshakeable belief in his own beliefs, this was perhaps inevitable. Beliefs tend to run up against the hard wall of reality, only to get knocked flat on their backs. Hit it hard enough and that wall will crush not only the beliefs, but the believer.

Given the choice, I’d cast my lot with Herzog over Treadwell as a wilderness guide. But a better option is to just venture out to the theater, and watch this fascinating, troubling, and provocative film, which will stay with you long after you’ve packed up for home.

Before Spider-Man took off, Sam Raimi’s distinctive eye for campy horror was so acute that any B-Horror fanatic was sure to spot his films a mile away.  Only later did fans begin to realize that his reputation had grown.  He began with Evil Dead, (and its two superb sequels) later came Darkman (with Liam Neeson), The Quick and the Dead, and The Gift, reaffirming Raimi’s status in the directorial realm.  To most, Sam Raimi was a skilled director, but his style was peculiar: something about it just screamed a mixture of slapstick humor and suspense.  In Evil Dead we get the most comprehensive explanation to what really makes his films so enjoyable.

Evil Dead’s story is both pencil thin yet entirely sufficient: the plot centers on awakening demonic spirits from an ancient Sumerian book (bound in human flesh).  What really advances the story is its delivery.  Raimi’s primitive yet elaborate plot seethes medieval grandeur.  It appeals to both mythological and mystical fans alike, kindly bracing his audience for the ecstatic bombardment of terror that quickly consumes his actors.  But Raimi’s protagonist is unlike any other Hollywood hero.  For one, Bruce Campbell is anything but Hollywood.

Now a legendary B-Movie actor for his role in the Evil Dead Trilogy, Campbell has scored a cameo in nearly every one of Raimi’s films since the group of amateur’s found themselves knee-deep in kero syrup blood on the set of their first film.  Ash (Campbell) takes the demonic possession of his friends rather well, desperately holding onto his sanity throughout the process.  But throughout all the mayhem, never once does Evil Dead lose its charm.  In fact, much like Campbell himself, the haggard sequences and gruesome acting is what makes the film so much fun.  For Raimi, the fine line between horror and humor is what frightening audiences is all about.

For the amateur film crew, Evil Dead holds its own in terms of low-budget productions.  Not only did Raimi and his crew pull this off guerilla style, but Raimi’s own camerawork and choreography became a distinctive quality in itself.  (Check out Russell Crowe’s final shotgun blast at the end of The Quick and the Dead, you’ll see what I mean.)  It’s the particularly messy quality that erupts so satisfactorily throughout the picture.  Evil Dead defines low-budget effects, but to the point where they compliment the sheer tenacity of the picture itself.  What is most remarkable about this zombie shocker is the director’s ability to keep the film firmly on the ground, while delivering some of the most bizarre horror imagineable.  Somehow, Raimi is able to maintain the balancing act to create a terrific journey into the Book of the Dead.

But any horror film is nothing without its gore, and Raimi is sure to pull off enough of it to keep his audience satisfied.  After the incantations are read from a tape recorder they find in the basement, the plot takes off with evil spirits quickly possessing everyone in the house.  It’s certainly one of the few films that will show the real physical abuse people may endure from the forest itself (or its director).  Raimi plays hardball when it comes to the physical aspect of acting.  It’s rare to see the particular energy needed in order to highlight a film of this type.  Loud noises, smashing windows and falling debris all take on a heavy role with the actors in order to get the best out of what they had available.  You’ll easily be able to see that the future blockbuster director really wants to get the most out of his movie.  Ash takes a continuous beating throughout the picture.  What’s worse is the pure pleasure the audience begins to have after Campbell’s been put through enough mayhem, yet still seems to carry a strong air of comedy in his act: that’s exactly what Raimi is looking for.  The slapstick fanatic is ready and willing to place all his trust in his actor’s ability to take a good beating.

Evil Dead is a comprehensive analysis into the growth of any budding filmmaker.  The only difference with Sam Raimi is that his earliest quirks and charms in Evil Dead are still present in his most successful blockbusters.  He may not be the most eloquent artist in the world, but Sam Raimi is certainly a star in the American horror circuit.  His latest picture, Drag Me To Hell, is a throwback to his former fame as a horror director, but brings to the table a more palatable substance (for some) and of course a much higher budget. The beauty of Evil Dead, however, lies in its grit.  The pure horrific exposé of all that is B-Horror finds its way into the earliest installment of the now cult-favorite Evil Dead series, continuously throwing scares and laughs at high speed in every direction.  Sit back and enjoy the ride when watching Evil Dead, because the most assured lesson of all is that Sam Raimi is still in the business.

The survival of the auteur in today’s synthetic assembly line of blockbusters keeps Hollywood’s integrity afloat. It is in these few select films that come around every few years from some of cinema’s greatest American visionaries that we see their luminescent glow shimmer above the rest. So quickly can one fall victim to conventional archetypes, predictable sub-plots and meandering character development, that it makes the survival of these writers/directors so much more integral to the continuing art of storytelling. It is Quentin Tarantino, in his most self-reflexive film to date, who fanatically bombards his audience with Inglourious Basterds. Using the backdrop of Nazi-occupied France, the film-fanatic/director graciously tears away the expectations of a tale so many times told with such clearly defined lines. Because Tarantino knows what to expect, (no doubt from his years as a movie-store clerk) and reaffirms the fact that all great films are held together entirely by one type of glue: character. Inglourious Basterds not only does away with the conventional robotic façade of the Third Reich’s top men, but also reveals its director’s most beloved passion of all: the cinema itself. Tarantino’s sixth film not only reveals his maturity as an artist, but also clearly reflects his ever-evolving passion for the significance of the cinema itself.

Let’s begin with the “Jew Hunter,” also known as Colonel Hans Landa (played by German actor Christoph Waltz, who until recently lay hidden in the international film circuit). His remarkable delivery channels the complexity of his director’s script. The opening scene carefully extinguishes all possible expectations at first glance, casually revealing the all too likable personality of Hitler’s most capable detective (complete with Sherlock Holmes pipe.) Perhaps his most effective quality is his charismatic clarity and table manners. In a declarative reiteration of German propaganda, Landa uses pure logic to illustrate his effective method of detecting his “prey,” so that it becomes nearly impossible to believe the man is really that evil. Instead, through the most becoming character dialogue, does the audience find itself trapped in the auteur’s grasp. Our fascination with the character takes over and the plot is able to reveal itself organically. Our love for the story evolves from sheer interest in the people involved in the situation. By the time the opening scene is finished, all the audience is on edge, anxiously awaiting the return of their now favorite Nazi detective.

The home team, that which garners the title of the film itself, serves primarily as a catalyst for the action (already set in motion by the Colonel). For all intents and purposes, the Basterds are Tarantino’s usual band of outsiders (Orange and White, Jules and Vincent) sent on the righteous crusade of “Nazi killin’.” While the entire brigade embodies an even flow of humor, characteristically, Aldo the Apache (Brad Pitt) and Hugo Stiglitz capture the spotlight. A couple more Basterds serve a good hand in the film’s climax, with some truly comic translations as they pose as Italian filmmakers. Again, just to be clear: actors, directors, poor translations and premieres – Tarantino hasn’t just written a near Shakespearian turn around of comedic-drama, but skillfully weaves his own personal frame of reference into the mix. The humor that comes with the business of cinema, as integral to the plot as it is, is supposed to be fun; Tarantino doesn’t ever appear to forget this.

As in any Tarantino film, the story is broken up into periodic segments, with the first two chapters serving as an prologue to the final three. The film’s focus is revenge, but instead of the would-be-warriors under Aldo’s wing taking the center stage, the true protagonist is the orphaned Jewish girl Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent), who escaped her family’s massacre all the way back in chapter one. And what does Shosanna now own through untold means? That’s right, her very own movie theater. What comes of this is a concentration of film-related roles. For example, there is Archie Hicox, former film-critic now turned British Operative sent to help the Basterds. Notice the intricacies within his introductory scene (and the humorous cameo by Mike Myers) as they discuss Goebbels’s cinematic exploits within the context of American Cinema. Tarantino’s almost superfluous film-theory is carefully imbedded in the text, making Hicox (Michael Fassbender) the perfect man for the job. We also have German actress Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), who works undercover for the British Secret Service; Operation Kino is considered her “brain-child.” The film takes an unexpected turn during the long (but insatiably tense) basement barroom sequence, building towards the film’s climax. Stumbling through the attempted rendezvous with von Hammersmark, we see the sheer capability Tarantino has for taking his favorite across-the-table banter and polishing it into a stream of expositional genius. The deceit that comes to fruition at Shosanna’s theater is a story of novel eloquence. With his complexity of disguise – whether it’s from the German actress, the sharp detective, or the Nazi war hero turned actor – Tarantino has conjured up one intricate set of characters.

Inglourious Basterds is as intense, quick and comical as the rest of Tarantino’s repertoire. This time, however, with a steady maturity to his craft, he has easily constructed a film much more self-reflexive than his earlier pictures. A common allowance of any director who has come as far as he, Tarantino’s World War II backdrop has given him an already defined atmosphere from which to extrapolate the fine art of character development. What resonates so well is his ability to individualize each archetype, when historical context has defined each one already. Beneath his torn conventions lay the sheer power and all-inspiring nature of movies in general. Aldo couldn’t be more clear in the final shot of the film, staring proud into the camera, “I think this just might be my masterpiece.”