Chicks On Flicks

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 12:22:00 +0000

JAWS (1975)

Neha says
I didn’t step into the pool for months thanks to Spielberg’s adaptation of Peter Benchley’s bestselling novel. Now I’m older and know better but when I watched JAWS again recently that familiar dread snuck up on me and once again I jumped at all the intended places. From the opening credits that give us the killer shark’s point of view shots underwater to the theme song- one of the best movie soundtracks of all time- Spielberg prepares us for what lies ahead. The first half is dark, enveloped in paranoia and eerie in its suggestive brutality, establishing the conflict of how a small tourist island is at the mercy of shark attacks with the Chief played competently by Roy Scheider sandwiched between protecting the people and safeguarding the economic interests of the island and the Mayor whose a different kind of egoistical shark. As we move into the second half the film molds itself into an adventure story at sea with Chief Broody, shark expert Matt (Richard Dreyfuss) and shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) coming together to catch the pirate monster that’s threatening the independence of the island. (It’s definitely not coincidental that the film builds up to the 4th of July weekend.) In lesser hands maybe the scare tactics, coincidences and premise would seem frivolous or forced but with Spielberg at the helm, the breathtaking action centerpieces underwater, ashore or aboard a dilapidated ship are genuinely exciting and the chemistry and camaraderie between the three men underscored by the high stakes of the story keep you on the edge with anticipation. An even tone and intensity, oodles of suspense and scares, good performances (I’m turning a blind eye to Shaw who mumbles inaudibly about a submarine shark attack that I was forced to watch with subtitles) and a wonderful marriage of pot boiler fanfare with an intelligent approach to characters, set-up, fear psychology and the relationship between man and nature had me riveted. A visceral experience and a terrific crowd pleaser makes this event movie stand tall and proud as one of Spielberg’s most thrilling contributions to cinema.

Ira says

“I used to hate the water”
"I can’t imagine why!”

Lull, lull, boom. Lull, lull, fin. Lull, lull, shark! When I first saw Jaws, I must’ve been eight or nine and the eloquence of the last words spoken as above, flew right over my head because by the end of this one and for many years hence, I did hate the water, and I could imagine why! By far the best shark movie ever made, Spielberg’s masterpiece is an action adventure, a frightening thriller and a suspense drama all at once. Taking us in with underwater credits and an unforgettable theme motif that for me till today, personifies the movement and onslaught of a shark (thank you John Williams) the director slips into a moody campfire scene on the beach late at night, where the free of heart play the guitar, romance each other and a young girl goes skinny dipping. She never returns and the aura of terror and doom is palpable. Carefully juxtaposing an eerie tone and the lurking presence of the unseen with a cheerful, sunny setting of a naturally and brightly lit Amity Island, Spielberg builds suspense from the word go through superb camera work, crowded frames, and a naturalistic, often overlapping or deathly silent, effective soundscape. Amity island, a beachy haven, a huge tourist destination, a summer town where everyone knows everyone and relationships are close knit, has got a problem and its out there in the water , beneath the multicolored bathing suits and behind the tingling, silvery splashing and laughter.

The second half becomes a different movie all together; and the three central male characters (all of whom are excellent particularly Robert Shaw as shark hunter, Quint) along with a boat, an open ocean and a deadly great white rule the screen, and I realized this time around that JAWS also has a great screenplay, and one I could now fully appreciate. Man versus beast, small town, big commerce, politics, its ugliness, science and experience, war and camaraderie, men of honor and experience and men of knowledge and expensive colleges all come together in this story where a cop, like a fish out of water, goes from the crime of Manhattan to the relatively quieter demands of a town only to discover a far more powerful mortal threat in nature. While when I was younger, images of bloody waters and the superbly timed, well-executed attacks stayed with me for years after, heck I couldn’t even close my eyes in the shower without thinking huge teeth were going to break through my bathroom wall, this time I got a whole lot more out of the film. This isn’t just an entertainer, the first commercial Hollywood movie to release ‘nationwide’, the father of the summer blockbuster and a hallmark movie in Hollywood’s business history, its a good film and one of the first ever ‘high concept’ ones ever made. Spielberg gives a simple premise with flesh and blood characters and a strong cast. He tells his story with clarity, sharp focus, an immense amount of tension and horrifying, explosive glimpses of that ‘things’ incredible jaws. Nature is bigger, grander, more frightening, close to home and real than we know. Darn hell, you better believe it and after watching this one you wont forget it.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 12:13:00 +0000

NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)

Neha says
You don’t need to be told you’re watching an Alfred Hitchcock movie- there’s just a trademark tone, paranoia, suspense and style that’s as distinctive as it is repetitively enthralling. If North By NorthWest was not made by Hitchcock it would seem as homage to his own 1935 classic 39 STEPS (the parallels are uncanny) but if your more inclined to compare the film with the more traditional Hitchcockian psychological thrillers like Psycho, Vertigo, Dial M for Murder or even Rear Window, then North By NorthWest is a different Hitchcock experience. While the Master of Suspense plays to his strengths with a story that plays out like a detective thriller enveloped in mystery and intrigue, there is an epic quality to this grand outing. Train rides, shifting landscapes, a hair raising climactic chase at Mt. Rushmore and another one that involves our hero trying to outmatch a menacing airplane on his trail would give the action/spy movies a complex. In fact Hitchcock shows us he can do FUN as well as he can do creepy with a great balance of an old-school, passionate romance and adventure, wry humor, drama and action making this fit into a genre of its own that’s both entertaining and pulse-racing. The premise is simple with a suave bachelor Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) caught in a case of mistaken identity, accused of stealing and murder and on the run trying to absolve himself of crimes he did not commit while unearthing a far more sinister conspiracy along the way. But Ernest Lehman’s multi layered script and Hitchcock’s maverick eye for detail makes sure “simple” is the last term you would associate with this one. Trust him to know how to hold on to a moment be it comic, thrilling or dramatic. The pacing, Bernard Herrmann’s suspenseful soundtrack and the exhausting focus with which revelations, twists and confrontations are handled keep you on edge. My favorite scene has to be the one at the art auction where Cary Grant confronts the nefarious Phillip Vandamm (James Mason) while simultaneously sparring with his love interest Eve Kendall (Eve Marie Saint). Hitchcock gives us a master class in conflict management with such a heightened awareness of setting. We are so caught up in a moment that we don’t even realize Hitchcock is actually setting up a plot device that will catch us unaware at a later point in the film. Cary Grant even at 50 is the epitome of cool, debonair and sexy. He would have made such a brilliant James Bond. James Mason plays a great foil to Grant and makes for one of the most enigmatic villains of celluloid. Eve Marie Saint, the femme fatale of the story holds her own and brings a certain class and dignity to Kendall. North By NorthWest is everything you would expect from a Hitchcock-Grant movie and more…Hold your breadth because this creative synergy (the last, final and best of the four films they’ve done together) is in one word “explosive.”

Ira says

If you think the Bourne series is slick and suspenseful, Catch me if you Can is smart and clever and Date Night is funny, you’re missing out on the sophistication of a Hitchcockian classic NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Marked with the natural charisma, old world sex appeal (yes, he does seem to be irresistible to the opposite sex especially in this one) and coming timing of a dashing Cary Grant (his 4th spy thriller with the director), the rich and pulsating music of long-time Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann, the original and ingeniously plotted screenplay by the prolific Ernest Lehman who blends the intelligence of an espionage caper with drama, tension, humor, politics, action, adventure and sizzling romance (watch out for the train sequence in the film) in a typically Hitchcockian cloak of storytelling in tandem with the director, as well as the siren-like presence of the master filmmakers favorite female character, the evil seductress or femme fatale (an arresting Eve Marie Saint) this one is a thoughtfully told, and superbly made film.

Despite being one of his most commercial ventures in terms of its scale and exciting plot, as Hitchcock always likes, there is a sense of immediacy and intimacy to his storytelling that is unique to him. Shots are meticulously conceived, the camera alert, watching and involved, frames are carefully constructed, scenes are played out to their fullest, and in terms of story and characters, nothing is forgotten, everything is relished and little surprises provide sudden thrills or moments of wry humor. The film is long, yes, but one to be noted not just for is technical brilliance and action whoppers, as in the famous crop dusting airplane sequence where Grant is being chased by a plane or the famous climactic Mt. Rushmore set piece (where do you think our Hindi films got their inspiration from then?), but for the nuances in the color tones, the camera angles, the performances, the touches that Hitchcock is famous for and only he could achieve. Savor the master at his most entertaining best and get ready to feast your eyes on one of the first of what the international espionage thriller we know today looks like way back in 1959.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 12:14:00 +0000

ROCKY (1976)

Neha says
While Sylvester Stallone plays Sylvester Stallone and Rocky Balboa is a real to reel extension of the man himself I have no qualms about it because Stallone has two things going for him. 1) He may be limited as an actor but boy as a bum turned champ he sure has HEART- an emotional honesty that gets under your skin. 2) He sure looks like an “Italian Stallion” and brings a rugged personality to his down on his luck, backstreet boy Rocky Balboa with screen presence, sensitivity, humility, charm, aggression and intensity fusing together to give us and the 70’s an iconic pin-up action star. Stallone’s script (yes he wrote it himself) found its inspiration from the Muhammad Ali-Chuck Wepner fight back in 1975 but Stallone shrewdly takes the key event and weaves a classic fairytale story around it that speaks of defining the boxing movie genre as we witness the likes of Rocky get that “million to one shot” against world heavyweight champion, Apollo Creed. But it’s more than a sports movie and an uplifting and inspirational underdog story in my eyes- poignantly crafting a love story alongside a character study of a man who journey’s from hopelessness to hope, solitude to surrender, diffidence to determination, fear to fulfillment finally seeking redemption and glory. The quiet, reflective moments in the film and the dramatic, gripping and unleashed outbursts (Watch out for the confrontational scene between Balboa and his trainer Mickey.) create a moody tone for the film that only serves to beautifully heighten the impact of the essential climax and action centerpiece that not only provides a knock out in the ring but its Hollywood at its cathartic, emotionally soaring best. Rocky’s motivations set him apart as well. He knew he was outmatched and accepted he couldn’t defeat the likes of Creed but all he wanted to do was “go the distance” i.e. 15 rounds and prove he wasn’t “just another bum from the neighborhood.” With a superb musical score that elevates the emotional tone of the movie; with a solid supporting cast of characters including Rocky’s introvert girlfriend Adrian (Talia Shire), Adrian’s brother and Rocky’s hot-tempered best friend Paulie (Burt Young), Rocky’s trainer and mirror Mick (Burgess Meredith); with relationships that sensitively reflect how behind every success story there is a woman and a support staff; with a pro American sentiment that makes for a great American hero yet the emotional pulse of this story makes Rocky so uniquely universal- this one for me is the quintessential crowd pleaser that makes for great repeat viewing-each time reinforcing how the sequels paled to capture the balance of humor, heart, vitality, action, romance and purpose that made Rocky Balboa and consequently Sylvester Stallone a household name.

Ira says

You can't go wrong, albeit a bit bloody and at times rocky perhaps, with the story of The Italian Stallion Rocky Balboa, the quintessential underdog, boxer with the beginnings of a nobody, the body of a champion and the heart of gold. One of America and Hollywood’s most defining epic sports movies and rags to riches stories about a man from nowhere who had what it takes to go the distance, ROCKY, the original, more exciting, alive and vivid in its sheer arc from nothing to stardom, the most memorable of the series because it has novelty, simplicity and no fuss, is an entertaining film with enormous repeat value, however you look at it.

And that’s mainly because you love “Rocky” or rather Stallone, who wrote this and all the Rocky movies himself, who came out of nowhere and rose to stardom with this film, who pushed to make it on a shoe string budget without big names, went on to make it one of Hollywood’s highest grossers ever to date, and who gets the uneducated, but large-hearted debt collector and part time boxer, Rocky Balboa’s walk, talk, punches, smiles, and Italian drawl down to the T. Right from the start you cant help but root for him so once the final half hour creeps up and that famous moment as he runs up the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art unfolds, you find yourself waiting breathlessly, cheering him on till that final match unfolds. From the way he plays with dogs and his domestic turtles, ‘Cuff’ and ‘Link’, to the way he woos his friend Paulie’s sister Adrian (a silent and strong Talia Shire who would grow into her own with the series), a shy bespectacled girl who works at the corner pet store with an infectious, direct, honest charm and poor jokes, to the way he vents his anger at local boxing gym owner Mickey (Burgess Meredith) who took him for a failure till he came begging to Rocky to make him his manager, he’s that simple, decent, capable good guy who may not be too quick on the intellectual uptake, but certainly is on the physical one, an overgrown, lovable fellow with a kind-hearted spirit you cant resist . (NB: Fans may feel this one has less in the ring than they would like but hey come on now, you’ve got the next three films to go).

In terms of setting Rocky up as a character, building and cementing his relationship with Adrian, the only word he repeatedly calls out at the end of the film, and still providing a gathering momentum that leads up to a spectacular final match between Rocky and the worlds heavyweight champion Apollo Creed (an excellent and unintentionally humorous Carl Weathers who’s character is openly inspired by Muhammad Ali), director John G. Aveldson (Save the Tiger, The Karate Kid) does a great job. With a strong and concentrated cast, few secondary characters (of whom in addition to Meredith and Shire, Burt Young as Paulie and Joe Spinell as loan shark and generous father figure, Tony, stand out) and fewer distractions, Aveldson givesyou a focused, straightforward tale about one man and his journey. With a flavor of downtown Philadelphia, insight into its cultural fabric, into the world of boxing and difficult living, loan sharks and meat packers and what it takes to be a champion in any sport, with enough humor and strength to get at your heart and punch your gut, Rocky, quite simply, is a well-made, but crowd pleasing underdog tale with a fiery hero and a tender love story to go with it. Its feel good, its die-hard, its simple, its got romance and action and an unsung star Stallone at its centre.

And lets not forget it’s about dreams and opportunity, not just freak luck after all. And in that, it shall always be remembered and beloved, because as champion Creed points out at one point in the film, the decision to give an unknown the chance of a lifetime, is not just ‘American’, its ‘smart’. Even though Rocky is known for anything but, in being true to what it is, the film remains strong, popular and smart.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 12:03:00 +0000

THE GOLD RUSH (1925)

Neha says
Charlie Chaplin claimed GOLD RUSH as “The picture I want to be remembered by” and while personally I rate City Lights as the essential Chaplin film, Gold Rush in many ways reinforces the recurring themes and essences of almost every Chaplin outing- where our “Little Tramp” character with his twirling cane and little dictatorial mustache and with his two-sizes too short coat, two-sizes too big pants, shoes and hat is always on the hunt for the big Dream- food, shelter survival and a sense of belonging and love. This time round, a high concept tale takes Chaplin to Klondike in search for gold but first he must battle a wanted criminal, starvation, hardships, heartbreak, storms and bears before he realizes his dreams. Yes unique to the Chaplin world of film making, our lone prospector’s journey from Little Tramp to Millionaire is a reality!!! While the plot is marvelously simple, the inventive comic routines that occasionally do seem a tad overstretched stand out for the way in which Chaplin defined the genre of tragicomedy, combining pathos and sentiment, slapstick and pantomime routines, physical comedy and farce with social commentary in a way that can’t help but put a smile on your face. Some of the memorable, well-crafted comic centerpieces include Chaplin eating his shoes and the wick of a lantern; him struggling against the wind; Chaplin changing into a chicken; his shoe catching fire; his dancing act with Georgia while dragging a dog behind him; the wonderfully see-sawing cabin and of course “the dance of the dinner rolls” is my favorite. These elaborate comic routines work because of a character like the Little Tramp who is just simply the perfect vehicle to extract rib-tickling laughs and your emotions. Seeing him waiting with anticipation on New Year’s Eve for the beautiful Georgia will remind you of that sense of isolation that’s such an integral component of his Little Tramp character. You can’t help but feel overwhelmed. Chaplin once said “I don’t need interesting camera angles. I am interesting.” Well with Chaplin in almost every frame of the film, your attention never wavers from how he masterminds the moment and pulls you in any direction of his choosing.

Ira says

In Hollywood, there’s comedy, there’s comic timing, there’s farce, there’s satire, there’s the Marx Brothers, there’s even Laurel & Hardy, but there is only one Charlie Chaplin. Master of mime, brethren to the common man, ambassador of humanity, fool of the heart and artist of the highest order, our little Tramp was and always will be something of a little genius.
And in The Gold Rush, the movie that Chaplin himself has claimed he most wants to be remembered for, the maestro’s ability to provide comedy, laughter and relief soars even today as it did back in 1925.

A simple, complete, original, and thoughtfully made tale, The Gold Rush tells the story of The Little Tramp and his quest to be a part of the Alaskan Gold Rush, where he encounters a prospector named Big Jim McKay played by Mack Swain who has made a discovery of gold and an escaped fugitive Black Larson played by Tom Murray. Opening with the images of hardship that are common in much of Chaplin’s work, the men come together with a comic turn of fate. As they face difficulties of storms and no food, Chaplin’s unique blend of pathos and humor takes over till the 3 are parted and he finds himself in a small town where he falls hopelessly in love with a saloon girl, Georgia played by Georgia Hale (who would become Chaplin’s real-life sweetheart during the making of the film) who doesn’t quite reciprocate the feelings.With a refreshing new landscape (a snowy Alaskan world courtesy Chaplin Hollywood studio and set), a plot fuelled by just a few characters with enough supporting ones to add an authentic flavor and give the film texture and richness, and above all, with a screenplay that seamlessly integrates classically Chaplinesque themes; The Gold Rush, one of the highest grossing silent comedy films of all times is a classic and an entertainer. The little master is superb, in control and mesmerizing as always to watch and his insightful, thoughtful writing incorporates mans primal instincts, universal human values like greed, hunger, and generosity, with moments of farce, comedy, adventure, action, dancing, and romance, and a rags to riches, boy meets girl tale all at once.

The Gold Rush also has some of Chaplin’s most visually beautiful, simple, and elegantly shot and executed, comic and action oriented sequences, like the famous ‘roll dance’ where Chaplin pokes two forks into a couple of bread rolls and makes them dance as if they were living things with rhythm and motivations of their own to hilarious sequences between the three men, particularly Big Jim and Chaplin, struggling not to devour each other, quite literally, to holding on to one another for survival when a storm spins their cabin onto precarious terrain. And along with the somber, the quiet, or the farcical comes a lyrical alive sound score and Chaplin’s incredible ability to create a spirit that is tangible, energetic and boisterous. It has often been said that Chaplin’s films became remedies, and relief for a world made gloomy by the atrocities of the World Wars, that they had an uncanny and timely ability to uplift and entertain. Well, that is the true purpose of great art, and in the world we live in today where things are not much different and gloom of all kinds persists, they still do.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:38:00 +0000

NASHVILLE (1975)

Neha says
I just didn’t feel like I was in a small town, laid back country music haven called Nashville. Well at least not at first. In fact add a few skyscrapers and people in suits and the pulsating opening of the film resembles something more like New York. Did that work for me? Yes…Yes and Yes… Why? It manages to lend a vitality and urgency to the moment and captures the chaotic minds and emotions of these 24 characters whose lives intertwine and evolve during the course of a 5 day music festival. Robert Altman in his interview said Nashville with all the music talent migrating there, trying to maintain or attain success is like a “microcosm of the Hollywood syndrome.” And while there is no denying that, I would go one step further and add that it felt more like a microcosm of the American syndrome, reflecting the political sentiment, nationalistic pride, the common man’s angst and silent rebellion, country music euphoria and the spirit of America in that space and time. I like how on many an occasion Altman manages to reflect all of the above all at once with a technical eye that shrewdly overlaps images and character insights with voice-overs of a politician’s campaign speech and media reports. The greatest and most evident challenge was to balance 24 key characters without getting overcrowded. At first I admit it did feel overwhelming but as you settle into the pace and rhythm of Altman’s narrative, as the characters slowly begin to unfold before you, as the relationship between man and politics and art and politics slowly begins to converge bringing mostly all the characters together, moving intelligently towards a conclusion that makes sense and gives each character a purpose or perspective, the 160 minutes spent with or rather at Nashville feels like an education without really trying too hard to be one. Balancing human drama with slice of country life with the comedy of life and with music that doesn’t look to spoon-feed the narrative’s subtext as much as it does to capture the beat of the people, sometimes having nothing to do with story threads seems to all come together so skillfully- increasing the momentum at will, slowing down the pace on its own accord, pausing to take stock of the moment but most importantly Altman has this sixth sense of just knowing what he needs to do when and how to keep us right where he wants us. As for the wonderful ensemble cast, they simply rise to the occasion.

There is this pulsating energy with which Nashville has both been written and edited that never feels like a western, laid back haven of country music but more like a bustling New York. There is as the title suggests a specific focus on Nashville and how the lives of 24 characters get interweaved with one another over a 5 day festival but the film manages to encapsulate a universal America of that time and space with both political sentiment, cultural fabric.

There’s something to be said about the bustling and tight energy of this film that never feels like we are in a laid back country music haven of Nashville but feels so much like a New York.

Ira says

Robert Altman’s films (MASH, THE PLAYER, GOSFORD PARK) are never as light-hearted as they appear on the surface. Widely known as an actors director and for his unique experimental technique that combines several plot lines, multiple characters and an extremely naturalistic slice-of-life style, Altman’s films require patience and often force you to pay attention to the small things. So, while its great to have lyrical moody tunes to help you along in the opening credits of his critically acclaimed, NASHVILLE, he instantly sets up the dichotomies of his storytelling right there in a recording studio where two kinds of music are being recorded; patriotic country and gospel. Altman doesn’t let you forget for a second that this is a film that’s set at a time in Nashville, Tennessee, circa 1975, where music, be it country, gospel, alternative, folk or rock isn’t just a way of life, a form of artistic expression, a cathartic release, or entertainment, it is religious, spiritual, personal, communal and most certainly, as the director intends, political. Not the kind of ‘politics’ that’s in the oval office, but the kind that’s part and parcel of everyday life for ordinary people. The kind that’s in the films visual images of American flags, in the parades and crowds gathered at concerts, the omnipresent voice of unseen candidate Hal Philip Walker on a loudspeaker emanating from an omnipresent van in the film. And the kind that’s preached by its characters like clever political strategists, or evident in the film’s mixed raced themes and characters, and its variety of music. The kind you realize, as much as the films characters do which, you cannot disconnect from.

On the surface, Nashville is very specifically about the coming together of several characters during a musical weekend where a ‘replacement’ party candidate for presidency is holding a political rally, but its also a statement on politics, its methods, role and machinations; a wonderful compilation of memorable music (‘I’m Easy’, written and performed by Keith Carradine won him and the film, several awards fro Best Original Song) and a character driven relationship story at the same time.

The film’s 24 characters, its 13 released soundtrack songs, and over a dozen more used in the film, its languid pace, Altman’s trademark overlapping dialogue, parallel stories, intertwining narrative threads and the way you sense he places his camera in situations and lets his actors do the rest, provide an authentic flavor and an absolutely realistic feel to everything that happens. Blending elements of race, (note subtle touches like the white and African American girls in the band of young female performers in the opening parade sequence), with social, cultural and religious sentiments seamlessly and without a heavy hand, Altman creates a solid fabric for his characters who use music as a release and a tool of sharp political, personal, and emotional commentary. Even as you feel not much is really happening till about halfway through, as gentle drama unravels, you are drawn into this world and feel as if you are actually getting to know its people, and in terms of plot, while nothing feels discordant, much is still surprising. Wonderfully made, this is a film that lingers with you and somehow makes you feel richer, informed and wiser.

Altman gets some superb performances out of his large ensemble cast here too. Most notable for me are debutante songwriter Ronnie Blakely as Barbara Jean, Nashville’s ethereal, fragile country music sweetheart who falls apart in more ways than one despite some beautiful musical performances, Henry Gibson as Haven Hamilton, Nashville’s most beloved, traditional and respected singer and the central force of the films political motivations, Geraldine Chaplin as a neurotic British journalist who provides an outsiders perspective and becomes a sort of narrative point of view for us in the film, Lily Tomlin as Linnea Rosse, mother of 2 deaf children, wife to Hamilton’s lawyer and a woman who has darker secrets than we first know along with Barbara Harris as Winifred, an aspiring singer and Jeff Goldblum as a hilarious silent biker who does card tricks.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:29:00 +0000

DUCK SOUP (1933)

Neha says
The first image that pops up on screen is of quacking ducks, circling around in a boiling pot of water- the symbolic, literal representation of the title with a narcissistic pulse foreshadows what’s to follow as a stinging political satire. Groucho’s lyrical musings on how his character, Rufus T. Firefly’s leadership will leave Freedonia worse for wear mirrors with a twist of simmering irony how the people of this little fictional nation are like those quacking ducks and it’s the likes of free-wheeling, shrewd-thinking, money-grabbing Firefly who is going to make a fine soup out of them, dragging them even to a state of war. In the Marxian world, literal means literal, from the names of their characters like Freedonia or Firefly down to their comic set-pieces. There’s simply nothing subtle or incidental about what they do and how they do it- combining flair and centre stage antics with carefully churned, rib-ticking devices be it the sight gags, physical humor, musical routines, rapid fire one-liners, sharp delivery, characterizations or set-up. This no-nonsense, outlandish approach works miraculously because of miracle workers The Marx Brothers- a rare species of comic talent, gregarious energy and confidence. Borrowing a line from the dictionary of our cricket commentators- The Marx Brothers are cool as cucumbers and wily customers. Almost every other scene jumps out at you- Chico and Harpo, spies hired to grab some dirt on Groucho at the peanut station, testing the patience of another street food seller or the duo emulating Groucho as they break into Mrs. Teasdale’s (Margaret Dumont) home to steal his war strategy plans or even Groucho’s
showmanship in front of what he thinks could be a mirror only to discover its an equally Groucho looking Chico or maybe Harpo (still figuring that one out!!!) playing his reflection. Let me not leave out Groucho’s cunning machinations to woo Dumont or even his cabinet members. I could go on but I think you get the drift. The gags work as individual units and stitched up together get ready for a consistent stream of non-stop laughs that may be scripted but in the hands of The Marx Brothers (who clearly have their improvisational skills well manicured) it all feels so wonderfully alive, vital and spontaneous. That back-to back focused attempt at providing laughs is what separates this one from Night at the Opera, the other Marxian film on the AFI list, lower down the list. Notice how one tends to refer to the trio more often that the individuals. Maybe that’s because they collectively come together, with an equal amount of screen time and comic zeal and some great chemistry, timing and comfort with kin to give us an experience that feels very close to surreal. You can’t speak of one without talking about the other!!! The impetus is showmanship, the goal is entertainment and the process is discovery- how do we find new, creative, sharp and clever ways to involve and refresh our audience? And decades down I’m still laughing. A job well done I say.

Ira says

The place is the mythical land of Freedonia, a grand country with a far from grand financial predicament to face. So, what happens when this poor, quite literally bankrupt nation, supported only by the funds of a wealthy widow, (reliable Margaret Dumont playing Mrs. Gloria Teasdale), has to solve their problems and stay afloat? They get Rufus T. Firefly aka the indomitable Groucho Marx, local buffoon and cinematic master of anarchic, absurdist comedy, vaudeville, slapstick and satire to become their leader. All hell and lots of laughs breaks loose and while Duck Soup, the final of five films the Marx Brothers would do with Paramount and the last to have Zeppo in the team, was not a commercial success at the time it was released, it contains some of the finest comic sequences the brothers are famous for and some of the sharpest war -satire comedy in Hollywood.

If you don’t have a ‘taste’ for this sort of Marxian humor, you might find that some of the numerous one-liners, double entendres, verbal jokes, and comic antics that ridicule war (as in the final minstrel show battle sequence or in that now notoriously popular catchphrase, “This means war!”), either don’t go down so well or fly over your head quicker than you can say duck, or soup. But that’s fine. Because whether you chuckle inadvertently, guffaw and exclaim, “god, that’s so stupid”, or find you just missed one of the cleverest digs at governance and society by getting distracted by Harpo’s side-splitting silent physical comedy, you cant help but feel your lips stretched into a smile, inadvertently almost all the way through because the more you watch it and the closer you watch it, you realize, Duck Soup is funny, satirical and loaded with meaning. At a short 67 minutes, hell, you could watch it twice, get more out of it the second time and still feel like you just watched one wordy movie where you missed something!

While from the moment a grand party welcomes him in and hails him as the new leader of Freedonia, to the way he trivializes any such political clout, reducing it to a moment of classic slapstick as he announces for his car and gets tricked by Harpo who drives off with half of it leaving him behind, to his classic mirror scene with Chico in the latter half of the film, Groucho leads the ceremonies in more ways than one here. His beady eyes wildly roving, witty, sarcastic, slyly suggestive words and non-sequiters tripping off his tongue, Groucho as Firefly mocks leadership with flair, retains a clever sense of familial pride and skewed brotherhood and returns to pursuing his only earthly desire of living the good life by chasing wealthy women. But for me, Chico and Harpo playing spies for his rival, the ambassador of Sylvania (an excellent Louis Calhern) steal the show and many scenes too in this one even though they are without their famous harp and piano. (see my review on ‘Night at the Opera’) The hilarious lemonade and peanut stand war, their first meeting with the ambassador where Harpo has a fixation for ‘cutting’ everything in sight without a flicker of remorse and merely exhibiting a gleeful sense of triumph, the final war song and battle sequence and the superbly executed break in to Mrs. Teasdale’s home sparkle with superb comic timing, Chico’s drawling Italian accent and Harpo’s mesmerizing face. One of the brothers’ gems, to be watched and added to the collection. Ps: Here’s something fun; and its only a wiki search away for those who want more. The title "Duck soup" was provided by the films direction Leo McCarey for consistency with the brothers’ previous three animal title films, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers. The term is an American English slang phrase meaning something easy to do. But in true Groucho style when he was asked for an explanation, he quipped, "Take two turkeys, one goose, four cabbages, but no duck, and mix them together. After one taste, you'll duck soup for the rest of your life.”

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 10:03:00 +0000

SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS (1941)

Neha says

Writer/director Preston Sturges was truly the master of dialogue comedies and Sullivan’s Travels is yet another case in point. Refined writing with clever one-liners as memorable as the movie; with dramatic irony that wonderfully carries characters and themes forward; with biting Hollywood satire and depression era commentary that creates a unique language of communication for the film and Sturges own uncanny, intuitive strength of using the rights words to communicate a thought, emotion, mood or motivation penetrates straight out of the tube and hits you where it matters most. Never missing a beat to mock his hero, maybe even an alter ego of Sturges himself, Hollywood movie writer/director Sullivan (Joel McCrea) decides to venture away from light hearted movie making to make serious cinema in the form of a script titled “O Brother, Where Art Thou” (Yes the Coen Brothers movie title got its inspiration right here!!!) Sullivan sets off for a tramp adventure, hoping real world troubles would give him that first hand knowledge to enrich his cinema. I like how Sturges adopts and abandons genre conventions at will. Never really fitting in the box of a true blue comedy, Sturges brings romance, drama, tragedy, road movie and prison film dynamics into play that feed off each other with aplomb while making the graph of his story dramatically unpredictable and intriguing. Yet he has a conventional regard for characters and set-up and understands the piercing impact of tone-spending the first half to amuse and tickle our senses with a romance sub-plot that has more fireworks between its leads, a charming McCrea and a luminous Victoria Lake in their first meeting alone than most movies can accomplish between its stars during an entire running time. Sullivan’s desperate antics to find “trouble”, his attempts at hoodwinking the hired brigade keeping tabs on him or his slice of slum life with Lake that plays out like a silent era movie handsomely complements the director’s screwball comic overtones. But then in the second half Sturges unexpectedly tightens the screws, adopts a darker, more sinister and realistic tone as Sullivan finds himself smack-bang and alone at the centre of inhumane, inescapable trouble that leads up to a climax that beautifully makes a statement for both the canvas of cinema and life, The message of the film, like Sullivan’s realizations, is both poignant and unassuming as it tells us with an entertaining and crisp 90 minutes how movies are remedies and the only source of pure escapism for the tragedies and stresses of life. One wordless moment that sums it all up with a pinching honesty has Sullivan along with other inmates at a chapel, laughing out loud in gay abandon at the innocuous, brainlessness of a cartoon, Well-acted, superbly written and skillfully directed-Preston Sturges puts his money where his mouth is with a film that echoes his belief- “Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”

Ira says

Right, so it isn’t as dense as and hasn’t the scope and depth of self-discovery that Jonathan Swift’s classic (a requisite feature for anyone who’s ever studies English Literature beyond high school) Gulliver’s Travels has, and perhaps just as well, because this one more than anything is a good old fashioned feel good film. Preston Sturges’ satire, Sullivan’s Travels, a story about a director named Sullivan (Joel McCrea) who wants to make socially relevant cinema but finds out comedies maybe arts finest purpose after all, is a lovely film. We’ve seen movies about movies; movie making and showbiz in Hollywood for years and many of these have had satirical, political, social and romantic undertones. Some of these, in fact, we’ve looked at right here in the AFI project! (Remember YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, The Marx Brother’s A NIGHT AT THE OPERA and Chaplin’s, MODERN TIMES?) But Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels is an uncommon and memorable one thanks to some fine storytelling and a well etched, well written story.

The film opens with a dedication to comediennes the world over and slips effortlessly into a quickly edited, well-executed action sequence between two men atop a moving train. The cuts become faster, the shots closer till the men fall off in a frantic tussle and the screen says “The End”. The above happens on a projector screen and illustrate Sullivan’s latest efforts at movie making; a shift away from lighter fare, a move to make meaningful cinema about the common mans crisis that he tries desperately to sell to his colleagues and employers. No luck. According to them, Sullivan, who went to private boarding schools and college was not one to go around talking of human misery. And so determined, brilliant filmmaker Joe Sullivan sets out on a hilarious, poignant and life altering mission to find “trouble” and learn to experience what it is.

Intelligently directed with a confident, strong hand by Sturges with a delightful screenplay that blends irony, with just the right splashes of farce, humor, wit, romance and moments of real pathos and tragedy, this one tugs at your heart strings and still leaves you with an uplifting feeling that’s hard to resist or forget. Sturges avoids sentiment and sassiness, though the film has elements of both and characters with each, but things never get mushy, heavy handed or didactic. Instead we get clever wit and humor in abundance. McCrea’s understated, dry performance carries this one. He has an air of dignified charm and inherent goodness about him whether dressed in a suit, bathrobe, or tattered clothing, scrambling onto a moving train, caught with chains on his feet or falling into a swimming pool. I loved the chemistry and relationship between the vibrant Lake & McCrea, the montage of the two as homeless wanderers, the significance and symbolism of feet in the film, and a wonderful moment of surprise when a man who steals money from Sullivan, driven by greed and poverty meets an unexpected, tragic fate. As Sullivan wanders, loses and later finds his way, the film takes on a slightly graver tone, but Sturges balances the serio-comic with ease and doesn’t lose control of his storytelling. The dark and light, the high and low, the rich and poor, black and white, love and divorce, life and death and all those wonderful opposing pairs of contradictions in the narrative that really reflect the very fabric of human existence find a eureka moment in a scene in a church where criminals in chains, men of god, common folk, men, women, strangers and children find something common to laugh at; Disney’s MICKEY MOUSE. “There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that’s all people have? It isn’t much but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan”. Amen sir, to that.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 10:01:00 +0000

AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973)

Neha says

The title doesn’t quite prepare you for the loving and atmospheric homage director George Lucas pays to a bygone 60’s era and yet in retrospect there couldn’t have been a more enigmatic title to capture the dying vestiges of innocence, youth, spirit, rebellion and 60’s American culture. In many ways it’s semi-autobiographical as Lucas tries to recreate the mood, look and feel of a time that carved his own childhood and yes in many ways for someone like me who hasn’t been a part of that era, American Graffiti (1973) and the director’s personal insight immortalizes the period so skillfully and soulfully. It almost feels like a time travel device to the 60’s!!! Vintage cars dominate the screen in fine glory (Boys, it’s your Wonderland!!!). An American drive-in diner subliminally becomes a witness to the events of this high school story with interwoven stories of a bunch of young individuals and their difficult transition from adolescence to adulthood. A radio-jockey, The Wolfman, his commentary, his music and his omnipresence adds yet another intriguing and revealing dimension that captures man’s relationship with the radio at the time. Drag cruising and the intimacy of a small town existence captured primarily through the many conversations characters have, rolling down their windows and talking across cars at a traffic light or while driving becomes a wonderful counterpoint to their own internal conflict of moving away from the familiar and embracing the real world that’s full of the unfamiliar. The icing really is the foot-tapping, nostalgic soundtrack full of pop hits that occur almost continuously creating an energy, mood and character that’s so divine and so very 60’s. A fine ensemble cast including Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss, Cindy Williams, Charlie Martin Smith, McKenzie Phillips and a very young Harrison Ford got their first break in this low budget movie and as far as fans of the director are concerned- If you want an insight into the man and the road that led to his follow-up blockbuster Star Wars then American Graffiti must be on your to-view list if you haven’t seen it already. Romance, Racing and Rock n’ Roll- Buckle up for a sublime Blast from the Past!!!

Ira says

“Same ol Curt. All the time we were going together, you never knew what you were doing! (Pause) I gotta go”
“Where you going?”
“Nowhere”
“Mind if I come along?”

Straight out of an Archie comic book? Well, almost. Coming of age meets high school pains and pangs, in George Lucas’s American Graffiti, as a pair of friends tries to figure out where they want their lives to go, the night before they are scheduled to go off ‘east’ to college. The most amazing discovery for me in this one, which really is all about pubescent eye openers, experimentation, and lesson learning, is that George Lucas, the visionary creator-director of the Star Wars empire and one of Hollywood’s most successful effects wizards, (Industrial Light and Magic anyone?) writers and filmmakers to date, once made a slice of life of American high school life, circa the 1960’s. Set in the age of free love and rock and roll, he gives us a simple, accessible, relatable tale about all those angst’s, tensions and desires that we’ve all felt and struggled with. Nostalgic strains of that first love, punch, kiss, all those ‘first times’, complete with a “Freshman Hop” (prom/annual dance/social, whatever the equivalent is across schools and cultures) and a flurry of stock teen school characters you know actually do exist in every group of young teens everywhere!The second most amazing thing here is that the wonderful, underrated Richard Dreyfuss, 26 years old when he starred as our hero Curt in this one, pulls off a seventeen year with an effortless, infectious and totally endearing charm. And the third most amazing thing is that that lanky guy who plays Steve, the one dating Curt’s sister Laurie (Cindy Williams), is the man who made A Beautiful Mind and Frost/Nixon. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s Ron Howard!

Shook you up a bit yet? Right, lets get back to Lucas then. There’s no special effects, no fancy tricks, no science fiction just a friendly neighborhood drive in and one night of some serious realizations and decision making to unfold in this character driven tale which Lucas controls masterfully without fuss or frills. I love how he uses music, (the film has a fantastic sound score of some of Rock and Roll’s finest tracks) and cars in the film as both storytelling tools and as symbols of energy, laughter, sadness, fear and ownership, feelings that are synonymous with youth and imminent change. There’s lots of deceptively aimless driving around, lazily shot driving sequences with great looking vintage cars, sequences where the world of these teenagers comes alive, a world of cruising, teasing, making out, and making up, where finding strangers to ride with and falling prey to dangers is part and parcel of these characters’ scope of excitement and adventure. There are couples with problems, out of towners, bullies, and nerds, and girls of different shapes, aspects and ages to complement the boys. Where the high school sweethearts Steve and Laurie are having some issues, high school stud Milner (an adequately good looking, cool Paul Le Mat) finds himself stuck with a fourteen year old kid sister and group nerd Toad (the perfectly cast Charles Martin Smith) ends up having the most fun with an exotic looking blonde, and a night of unexpected mishaps.

Lucas’s tone is consistent, his characters real and living and his landscape just the right blend of colorful and dark. As tension builds in the narrative, once that climactic scene of graffiti spraying and trickery is complete, the mood becomes grimmer, the lighting dimmer, and frames are shrouded with foliage, dark roads, old garages, and murkier waters in the characters’ individual emotional journeys. There’s a road race and a hint of tragedy in the air, but life is just starting and these guys are too young for things to get so real, no matter what else blows up in their faces. A surprising, sweet, classic high school gem courtesy some of Hollywood’s best, it’s a keeper.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 12:32:00 +0000

CABRET (1972)

Neha says

Apart from composer/lyricist duo John Kander and Fred Ebb’s classic soundtrack that’s part-whimsical, part-comical, part-sensual, part-profound and part-emotional with tracks like “Life is a Cabaret, old chum” or “Maybe this time” or “Money makes the world go round” or “If you could see her through my eyes” sublime even today in composition, vocal power, staging and Rob Fosse’s creative execution, what really captivated my attention was how skillfully Fosse was able to create and intertwine two parallel worlds-one of dark “divine decadence” a.k.a The Kit Kat Club where as the film’s narrator croons at the start and end of the film “In here life is beautiful. The girls are beautiful and even the orchestra is beautiful. Beautiful…” In here Fosse pushes the envelop of theatrical realism that’s almost bordering on surreal with his tour-de-force narrator played by Joel Grey oscillating between being endearingly Chaplinique and sinister and made even more dynamic by his look in the film-a cross between a gothic vampire and a circus buffoon. The other world, outside the doors of the club, the “real” world follows the drama of larger than life club singer Sally Bowles played with a contagious charm and vulnerability by Liza Minnelli and her love interests- a poor, British academic Brian Roberts played with a chocolate boy goodness by Michael York and a rich, German Baron Maximilian played by a suave and aristocratic Helmut Griem. Along with the grey moral values and guarded realities of these three characters that make for a complicated yet intriguing love triangle, Fosse empowers his story with a solid yet underplayed sense of time and space- 1931 Berlin riddled with post depression trials, unemployment, pathos and a growing civil unrest with the expanding Nazi tyranny. I love those suggestive bursts of violence and Nazi patriotism; the occasional dialogue between the Baron and Brian where questions such as “Can you control the Nazi’s?” are casually raised and even the more heightened, dramatic moments that have a dance number intercut with Nazi brutality. There are two things happening here quite marvelously. (1) Inspite of the turbulent political climate, the film never steers away from the characters and their perspective-emotional, cynical or manipulative and (2) Even the placement of the music tends to reflect, mirror, enhance or bring an audience surrogate view that adds a “strange and extraordinary” dimension to the film. The play on words, the balance of drama, comedy and music; the art design and thoughtfully executed character looks; the dedicated performances; the commitment to marry style with substance without compromising on any of the genre prerequisites and Fosse’s ability to take the stage hit and personalize it pays rich dividends as we completely get transported into the mesmerizing world of Cabaret and its characters.

Ira says

I may have said this before but I will say it again. When I stop taking notes while watching a film, it’s either a bad thing, or a really good thing. And with Bob Fosse’s multi Academy Award winning darkly comic musical feature film CABARET, it is most certainly the latter! As soon as the opening image and the blurred reflection of painted faces comes into a glimmering focus onto the screen, the camera glides across to reveal JOEL GREY (who is phenomenal in the film, sometimes I thought even better than Minnelli; both won Academy’s for their roles), and as the exaggerated makeup of Grey’s hugely expressive face fills the screen, hell, I left my troubles outside, if life was or is disappointing, I did forget it, because Fosse does take us into a beautiful world. A world where the ‘girls are beautiful’ (albeit often men beautifully made up as women), the ‘orchh-estra is beaautee-fful’ and everything is unusual, strange and extraordinary.

Topping that list is SALLY BOWLES (Liza Minnelli), an American star attraction at Berlin’s wonderfully recreated, famously political KIT KAT CLUB circa Germany, 1931. Right from her no holds barred, scintillating first musical number, “Mein Herr”, Minnelli takes centre stage in this one, a sexy, strong, girly, wide-eyed, and thick eye-lashed force of nature who for the most part, completely steals the dances, the words, the music and the scenes from under the men’s noses. Masterfully told through Fosse’s expressionistic, dark mood, experimental, intimate and skewed camera work, vivid color palette, superb production design, and the often edgy but seamless editing, CABARET is delectable to hear, sense and experience with food for thought to offer.

Not just a super musical with fabulous music, each song complementing the narrative and its progression and none superfluous (my favorites along with “Mein Herr”; “Money Money”, “Life is a Cabaret” and “If You Could See Her”), Fosse’s film is also a socio-political slice of Berlin pre World War 2. A snapshot of life, art and culture in the Weimer Republic, and a fractured sense of a country that is Nazi ridden, living in the shadows of a growing Nationalist Socialist Party, with religious sentiment growing and divine decadence being the one outlet for art to rear its fascinating, bizarre, provocative, entertaining, escapist, and very necessary head. At the same time, it’s a story of love, friendship, sex, and the flapper era indulgence of alcohol, a lapse in sexual mores, rules, values and preferences. Pitting strongly opposing characters who range from wild to wilder and simple to protected against each other, and providing enough entertainment through the characters and central relationships of Sally and Peter, a British born English teacher from Oxford (Michael York), Sally, Peter and Max (Helmut Griem), a wealthy German aristocrat who adopts the pair for his private amusement, as well as Fritz and Natalia a Jewish couple who need to overcome barriers of class and social acceptance, CABARET is sexy, exciting, dark, totally alive and involving with lots to tap your feet to. Ps: Fosse, considered by many to be one of the most influential choreographers of the 20th century won his only Academy award for Direction for this one (the film won 7 more). Oh, and did I mention he won it over Coppola for Godfather?

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 12:30:00 +0000

NETWORK (1976)

Neha says
Outrageous, thought-provoking, clever, hard-hitting and a biting satire about the business and bastardization of television news journalism and the industry, Network (1976) will alter the way you view television just like a JFK or All the President’s Men revised the way we understood politics. On the micro level it’s about how a network uses and abuses a distinguished television commentator Howard Beale’s (Peter Finch) mental breakdown to boost TRP ratings but on the macro level Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar-winning, potent and layered screenplay, that’s one heck of an exhilarating mental work-out, addresses the bigger issues of corporate conspiracies, corruption, dirty takeovers, underhand money transactions with foreign conglomerates (How relevant is that when today’s headlines are all about our very own IPL-Gate WSG-MSM media scandal) and asks one deeply disturbing question- Is democracy today not about nations, people and ideologies but about business, sell-outs and Currency? With a BBC documentary-style baritone voice-over that immediately commands credibility to the many, penetrating monologues that flesh out the thematic threads of the story- Be it Mr. Jenson’s (Ned Beatty) sales pitch to Howard Beale or Beale’s on-air outbursts that expose the decaying, ugly truths of the world- there is a unfailing focus and dynamism with which characters, motivations and ideas are set-up and find completion. And as a sub-plot the relationship between ambitious, alpha female, Vice-President of Programming, Diana (Faye Dunaway) and fired media head-honcho Max William Holden), empowered by sharply written, symbolic dialogue represents the core of this story- Would you rather be a dehumanized, unfeeling, robot of the system or would you like Max refuse to sell your soul? With such a fabulous pedigree of actors who sink their teeth into the rich material; with a consistent urgency around and within the characters; with dialogue that in a league of its own creates a world that’s both intimidating and incisive- NETWORK holds its weight in gold.

Ira says

There is something freakishly funny and oddly frightening about the anecdote that opens Network. Two characters are standing inebriated on a street corner, recounting an episode where someone mistakenly thought one of them was going to commit suicide when all he was actually doing was trying to reach somewhere to get a story. The man in question is Howard Beale (Peter Finch), a popular news reporter who doesn’t know that he is about to be fired by his old associate and closest friend Max Schumacher (William Holden). Little does Beale know how much suicide would feature in his life and career thereafter and little do we know that Network will unflinchingly and grimly look at the idea of ‘suicide’ in many ways. The suicide of human feeling, thought, and basic decency as we’ve known it through the prism of that popular culture force we call the media.

Its all and I mean all about the numbers in Sidney Lumet’s (12 Angry Men, The Verdict) newspaper-backroom drama Network which, explores the inner workings, machinations and manipulation of a fictional TV programming network, UBS and its strategic politics, games, successes and shocking failures. A fine team of veteran actors including Robert Duvall, Faye Dunaway (very well cast for the part of Diana Christensen, a ruthless entertaining programming producer and ultimately vice president), Peter Finch and William Holden lead the group of superbly etched characters who are employees of UBS. Characters who are driven, ambitious, cunning, noble, ignoble and complex, flung from positions of power, or honorary, nominal statuses to puppets in the hands of craving or disapproving audiences, colleagues and media players.

With a superb screenplay that’s acerbic, sharp, incisive, darkly funny and completely fearless in its ability to strip the media, its function, its commerce and its unseen uglier side and still create flesh and blood characters and a distinctive sense of human individualism, identity and society, this one holds even today as a masterpiece of media examination- the industry, the people who make it and the people who view it. What is truth? Entertainment? News? Showbiz? Humanity? And what do we really want from the people who bombard our TV screens on a daily basis, from publications and magazines we read on a regular basis.

Are we, mad as hell, sick of the bullshit and what are we willing to take anymore? Think of our own Indian television, watch the film, and trust me you will think about it again. As you watch former news reporter turned mentally unstable, evangelist ‘prophet’ Howard Bowles, (played with a fierce conviction by the extraordinary Pete Finch) takes over the screens of UBS’s most ‘popular’ show, where psycho-babble, self-help, entertainment, sensationalism, and preaching replace hard news, fact and truth, that knot in your gut gets thicker and tighter. As you watch him looming crazy-eyed on the stage live, and caught on a screen at the edge of a frame simultaneously, the lines between viewer and reporter, reality, fantasy, entertainment and humanity are blurred at horrifyingly inhumane costs. A man becomes a product, of use till he brings in the ratings, and as worthless as a tin can when he doesn’t. (Something The Truman Show would look at with similar insight decades later). Network is a classic and an uncompromising film. And as it rages on, as public rage meets shocking behind the scenes forces of engineering, you will find you rethink and re-question not just the role of the media in our world, but our role as human beings, and our sense of a grounded and humane identity.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 08:54:00 +0000

THE AFRICAN QUEEN (1951)

Neha says
From a hot stew to a passionate boil, the chemistry between veterans Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in John Huston’s 1951 classic The African Queen has a delicious, slurpy, cup of sweet hot chocolate aftertaste. The tagline of the film could have easily read Romancing with the Stars!!! When hard-drinking, sea-hardened, riverboat captain Charlie volunteers to transport a devout Catholic and prim English Rose aptly named Rosie it’s only the start of an adventure meets quest journey of romance and self discovery aboard a dilapidated The African Queen. (Think the polar opposite of the opulent Titanic!!!) “Opposites attract” and “fish out of water” rom-com clichés today are given a classic character in John Huston’s handling of it as a series of unhurried, galvanizing and slowly-building moments are peppered with comic zeal, revealing character insights and epic charm. So when Hepburn absentmindedly drop tea; sulks like a petulant child when Bogart refuses to take the boat down the dangerous river; prudishly takes a bath in the river; haughtily with a revealing vulnerability keeps her hair in check- the old English propriety of it all is such a wonderful counterpoint to Charlie’s brashness that has him emulating crocodiles, monkeys and even Rosie’s “that’s an absurd idea” oh-so-pro-pah ways. When confronted by the challenges and contradictions of nature, the fears and weaknesses of these two precious characters are nurtured with as much focus as the bravado and hope that reenergizes them. Faith and destiny add another texture to the film when hopeless moments transform into miraculous escapes. The World War 1 setting and Rosie’s ambitious plan to destroy a German ship pirating the seas makes us wonder where Huston is going with this one but it all comes together quite nicely in a brilliantly witty and well-etched climax that celebrates life, love, spirit and quite literally takes these characters home.

Ira says

“Lady, you’ve got ten absurd ideas for my one!”

Who would’ve thought that forty years before Spielberg gave us his rollercoaster action adventure (Raiders of the Lost Ark) there’d be Houston, out in the wildness of East Africa giving us another, just as exciting adventure and action-packed story. And who would’ve thought he needed just two great actors, two completely opposing characters and an absolutely unlikely relationship between them to do so! The time is 1914, and in the arid regions of East Africa, Hepburn plays prim Rose Sayers, a plain looking English woman living with her brother Samuel as a missionary in a small village. The pair lives in this alien land with a misplaced sense of propriety and a painfully unsuccessful commitment, evident in the opening psalm singing sequence, to converting a clearly rooted and unshakable set of Africans to Catholicism. Enter, lower class Cockney-bred Captain and sailor, ‘Mr. Olnut’, played by Humphrey Bogart who regularly delivers the siblings their mail with news of a War breaking out, a hilarious tea drinking ceremony, a German invasion, the destruction of their village, and the delirium and death of Rose’s brother Samuel and its up to Mr. Olnut and his sturdy boat, The African Queen to save what’s left of Rose’s life, self-worth and happiness.

Houston (The Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Misfits) sets it all up with a clean simplicity and clarity in his storytelling revealing the scorching, exotic landscape and the physical, social, cultural, and spiritual climate within the first few minutes of the film. Once its just Ms Sayer and Mr. Olnut on the boat, the adventure is just about to begin. As the writing creates action, tension, and tragedy right from the word go, Houston’s controlled and focused direction reveals characters and relationships with empathy and humor. I loved that the wonderful screenplay, based on C.S Forester’s classic novel balances an insight into human nature with external discoveries and revelations about nature and Africa circa, finally reminding us of the small pleasures of life through the characters of Rose and Charlie and a wonderful, old fashioned romance that blossoms at the heart of the narrative. Using plenty of natural light, a rousing sound score, a superb visual landscape, quiet exchanges that build the central relationship, and a series of extremely well executed action sequences, think predators of the wild like crocodiles, insects, leeches, roaring rapids, thunderstorms and swamps, Houston gives us a unique, uplifting, touching, often humorous account of hardship and love. And most of all, its his leading man and woman, two strong, well-developed characterizations, the adorable growing love between them and their rich performances that make this one a human, relatable, universal story of love that transcends barriers of class and conventions and celebrates a kinship that can form out of the most difficult conditions and in the most unexpected of places.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 08:50:00 +0000

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1992)

Neha says

Raider’s of the Lost Ark (1981) marks the successful collaboration between box-office czar’s Steven Spielberg and George Lucas but that cinematic milestone is defined by the universe they create- a universe that’s a strange potpourri of historical fiction with the Nazi’s playing but obviously the bad guys; supernatural mystique; geeky archeological mumbo jumbo; rustic landscapes rich in ethnic diversity as tribals, Americans, Germans, Egyptians and even an Afro-American add color and texture to Indie’s adventures and have all of these elements collide head-on with jaw-dropping action set pieces, globe-trotting adventures that take us from the jungles of South America to the desert outskirts of Cairo and aboard a pirate ship where we cheer our whip-lashing, fan-boy-delighting hero Indiana Jones empowered not dramatically but by the screen persona and dry wit of a Harrison Ford who owes Spielberg an arm and a leg for this career-defining opportunity and what we have is a true blue action masterpiece that takes the experience of FUN to a whole different level. The fun comes from watching Indie outsmart his adversaries, particularly his arch-rival and fellow French archeologist Rene Bellog (Paul Freeman) in this race to unearthing the lost Ark, “a radio for speaking to God” that’s eluded man for 3000 years. And while Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) plays Indie’s love interest and partner, the romance is most memorable for its “kiss with a funny twist” in Act 3. The joy lies in how Indie navigates his way through death traps, his Achilles’ heel-snakes, lethal spiders and poisoned dates to name a few. Sometimes the solution is as elemental as using a shot gun when a scary, sword swishing, hired Nazi goon goes all Godzilla on him and sometimes as he so rightly puts it he has to “make it up as he goes along” but each time the unexpected Indie maneuver elicits a chuckle and the witty undertones wonderfully offset by the high-stakes, stunt-driven thrills on display, heightened by that brilliant soundtrack leaves you wanting more. Think of Indie as a prodigy from the genetic pool of the best icons out there-he’s got the ruggedness of a cool cowboy, the quick thinking and clever art of deductive reasoning of a Sherlock Holmes, the invincibility of an archetypical comic book superhero, the air of detachment of a James Bond. So it’s no surprise our Dr. Jones (1) is every woman’s dream and (2) every young fan-boy secretly wishes to grow up and become more like Indie.

Ira says

When your hero almost dies in the opening scene and comes out of it with the skin of his teeth and a droll sense of humor intact, you know that the excitement is just about to begin. And when unexpected laughs and those cliff hanger moments just keep on rolling during the first ten minutes and all the way through you know this is going to a total ride. And that, we can be rest assured is what Spielberg gives us. Suspense, mystery, action and romance come together in this nail biting, well-made, first film of the hugely successful Indian Jones franchise that immortalized ‘Indy’ Jones as the professor/ adventurer/archaeologist/action hero and obtainer of rare antiquities, who had both, the brains and the brawn. Well, ladies too. (Remember the student who wrote the words “love” and “you” on either eyelid early on in the film? Nice touch.)

The first of four in the series, and still one of the highest grossing films ever made, Raiders of the Lost Ark is a commercial pot boiler and as fun today as it was in 1981. The narrative traces Indy’s attempts to recover an ancient chest where the Jews locked the ten commandments and which holds a god-like power within it and the plot is filled with chases, fatal escapes, exotic locations and non-stop, and I mean non-stop, action. I loved the sound score, the always-moving camera and the energetic, crisp pace of the film. And I liked that along with a series of heart stopping moments, while characters are on the run, spouting cool one-liners, and moving across all sorts of explosive, far-flung areas spanning England, Nepal and Egypt, they are helped by a solid plot that has enough tension, surprises, meat and drama. Archaeological and political intrigue, an overriding Nazi threat, and broader religious, occult overtones add weight and plenty of international flavor. Performances are wild, fun and often funny and have the same racy energy, tone and mood the film does.

While our hero Indy is played with a cool, nonplussed, macho confidence by Harrison Ford (still known the world over for this, his most famous and popular role) leads the way with his iconic clothes and trademark whip and hat but, he isn’t alone in the game. Arabs, French, and Germans join in the fun and Indy finds a worthy opponent and nemesis in Belloq played with a sinister finesse by Paul Freeman, and a hard-drinking, hard-talking, hard shooting, skinny former lover, and heroine in Marion played with spunk by Karen Allen. Spielberg’s establishing film in a hugely successful franchise plays out as it should, an exciting treasure hunt, but with well-developed characters at its centre, and keeping you thoroughly engaged and entertained from start to finish, it stands the test of time. The best thing about it? It never forgets its hero and neither can we. So matter how crazy or dangerous things get in the film, whether on horseback, hanging from a truck or swinging by a rope, you can count on one thing; Indy Jones will save the day. ‘Making it up as he goes’ as he says. And well, as long as there aren’t too many snakes around.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Wed, 26 May 2010 11:18:00 +0000

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966)

Neha says
It takes 131 minutes with George (Richard Burton) and Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) to know the answer to who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? But every minute of this emotional rollercoaster ride teases and taunts and blows us away with its emotional power. You will feel like a fly on the wall of their quaint little cottage, the main set piece of all the mind games, acid dialogue, biting sarcasm and marital bickering that envelops the space with a claustrophobia that’s palpable. Burton may seem like the henpecked hubby but the resounding impact with which he can crack the whip is as nerve wracking as the outwardly brash Taylor whose disillusionment, passion and idiosyncrasies find voice with a fire known only to Elizabeth Taylor. So yes you do not want to be stuck in the middle these two veterans whose characters do not understand the term “anger management” or rather “emotional control”. In all probability it would prove disastrous like it does for biology professor Nick (George Segal) and his brittle wife Honey (Sandy Dennis.) The razor-sharp dialogue, tense scenes, first- rate performances and the well-paced insights into the background and psyche’s of our four characters makes them so deliciously three dimensional but come the BIG REVEAL at the end and what we have is a shocking fourth dimension to George and Martha that is an “Ahhhh” and “Ohhhh” moment for some but for me it was a “Damm” moment-How could I be so fooled into feeling I knew these two guys to only know I was so wrong?” A wrong that felt so right, giving George and Martha a bone-deep motivation that will melt the most cynical heart. For a directorial debut, Mike Nichol’s effort is nothing short of a milestone and an honorable adaptation of dramatist Edward Albee’s Broadway sensation for which Taylor, Dennis and cinematographer Wexler even bagged the Oscar nod. For a psychological understanding of mid-life marital blues where love and abuse are two sides of the same coin, it’s a class room case study of the frailty of the human spirit, the masks we wear and the damage we do sometimes consciously and sometimes tactlessly. Nichol’s never looses that focus with a grip on tone; the drama just explodes like a grenade on screen almost in every scene and watching four yes just four characters feels far from under crowded-there is so much baggage in the closet that a clean up is required and the one night the film revolves around is just that- a much needed, revealing and disturbing clean up.

Ira says

Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolfe? I am, I am. Well at least of Mike Nichols’ no holds barred, gut-wrenching adaptation of Edward Alcee’s powerful play about a middle aged couple living in New England with some awful skeletons in their closets and serious demons to battle. Elizabeth Taylor, who put on a clean thirty pounds for the role of Martha and looks frumpier, more jaded, and wearier that you can imagine (she is considered one of the worlds most beautiful women after all) delivers a performance of a lifetime and Richard Burton is absolutely on par. (This being one of six films the couple would star in together during the 1960’s). Ernest Lehman’s shocking, volatile, roller coaster of a screenplay gets life, breath, fire, and silent eloquence through these two actors who become Martha & George, a couple who love, hate, and love to hate one another. Who taunt, tease, hurt, play games, and emotionally and verbally abuse one another, but who ultimately cannot let go of the deep bonds that tie them together.

Nichols opens his film with sheer atmosphere, a long, wide take as the camera pans slowly from right to left and then stays still, watching. A lyrical, haunting melody plays (the film has an eerie, yearning sound score courtesy Grammy nominated Alex North, the man who brought jazz and modernism into Hollywood’s world of music and sound) as the opening titles appear against a dimly lit façade of a college campus building. Martha & George are exiting, at first small, indistinguishable figures, slowly bigger, Taylor’s cackle-like laughter shaking the screen just as the bold lettering of the films title, “Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolfe” appear, the title itself a reference in the film, to an amusing song and dance that made everyone laugh at a college get together from where the two are returning.

Pain and laughter, bitter hatred and deep love, caustic sarcasm and gentle, tender affection are two sides of the same coin, the same sentence, sequence, frame and mood of the film almost throughout the narrative and Nichol’s masterful storytelling oscillates between these tremulous extremes with ease giving us moments that burst with emotion or simmer with quiet thoughtfulness. All the while, the director draws you in with a steady, gripping urgency and a growing intimacy. Superb camera work, the use of either cluttered or deliberately stark frames, closes and extreme closes and an economical use and play of spaces create a hysterical claustrophobia right from the word go as Martha brusquely shoves things under a bedspread, metaphorically pushing things under the carpet, avoiding confrontation, truth and reality, preparing to receive the two ‘guests’ who are about to show up at their house in the dead of night. A younger couple, biology professor and his slim-hipped, mousey wife. The fireworks are just about to explode.

Taylor hisses, and yells, purrs and moves with a snake like, languid but precise gait, breathing sensuality and forgotten glamour. But there is something sad about her Martha even as she guzzles down bourbon and makes crass jokes. Sad in the way she changes her clothes into something tighter, barer, more revealing. Something sad in Burton’s loaded silences as he tries to ignore her humiliation and mockery in front of their guests, and something horrifying and powerful in how the narrative strips each of these characters down naked. I loved the dancing interlude about halfway through where frenzy, fallacy, fiction and truth hurtle together and I loved how Nichols gets his actors to perform as if a camera wasn’t there, sans inhibitions and fear. That’s what Albee’s writing requires after all. This is a compelling, often brutally honest, painful psychological, emotional and personal journey for the two protagonists and Albee creates a distinctive universe for them to live in, one of rich language, metaphors and pent up feelings. A world where human beings are often better understood as mice, witches, murderers, monsters, failures, lovers, and flops. Evocative, gripping and chilling, Nichols, in his debut directorial feature shows his skill in adapting material from the stage to the screen beautifully and proves, as he would with future films like The Graduate & more recently, Closer that he’s unafraid to make us look at ourselves. And in this case, so are his incredible actors. Well done, all.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Wed, 26 May 2010 11:15:00 +0000

UNFORGIVEN (1992)

Neha says
EASTWOOD loves his characters- you can see it with the sort of time he spends lingering over them, giving them heart, scars and demons to wrestle with and you can actually feel it through the performances, the nuances, the rustic mid west setting and the darkness looming in and out of each frame- I’m talking about UNFORGIVEN here folks- and a true connoisseur of his art ( I’d like to believe I am) will relish the insights, the tragedy and the triumph that we get to see in this 1992 Oscar winning western drama. Here Eastwood plays WILLIAM MUNNY- a tragic and temperamental widower who gives up the world of guns and assignations for the simple life. But when an arrogant cowboy kid comes by- asking him to pick up the gun once again to kill two evil cowboys responsible for disfiguring the face of a hooker back in the small town of Big Whiskey with a 1000 $ prize money attached to it- Munny feels this might just be the opportunity to earn some much needed cash. So he joins the kid on his journey, picking up his ex partner NED (Morgan Freeman) on the way. But the three musketeers didn’t account for Little Bill (Gene Hackman) a notorious local sheriff who will not allow guns and assassinations in his domain-who can crack the whip, pull the trigger and flash a cocky smile to get what he wants, when he wants.

When the camera pans slowly onto Eastwood’s face with a cowboy hat at a 100 degrees angle with his brooding intensity in place and he fires an old 80’s rifle and knocks down not one but five cow boy heavy weights it’s a bonafide western movie moment. When he aims his gun at an important character and bellows “See you in hell” your screaming for an encore. There’s enough of rustic gun fighting and shootouts on offer- but it’s really in Eastwood’s hands that you celebrate more often the character whose doing the shooting than the actual physical gun match itself.

We spend the better part of the film understanding the nuts and bolts of Munny’s character and how this hunter became the haunted. In a poignant moment Munny, in a delirious state turns to his friend Ned and talks of dying and seeing the angel of death. And yet the irony of it all is that while he insists he’s no longer a killer anymore, each step of the way he walks towards that very destiny and when its play time-the gun comes out and he fires like it’s what he was born to do. I call that the POWER of dramatic writing.

There’s another thing that stands out- Little Bill- the so called bad guy of the story. I couldn’t wait for the face-off between Eastwood and Hackman-albeit only two but watching these actors in the same space is my kind of eye popping candy. Little Bill is an enigma-his violent actions are understandable but his sadistic nature is highly questionable. Hackman makes him quite the charming bad boy, giving Little Bill that big edge (especially when you have the svelte Eastwood to lock horns with). I for one would have loved to see even more of Eastwood and Hackman at cross-fires with each other- in more of a verbal battle- but I’ll have to settle for watching those two scenes in repeat mode to satisfy that urge.

Eastwood settles for the real and raw feel-I wouldn’t want it any other way. He focuses on his characters and gives each one a definite edge-he makes us sympathise with the bad guys and makes us deconstruct the bad actions of the good guys in a new and empathetic light. So my question to Eastwood really is- Who do you want the audience to root for? There’s just enough enigma surrounding each one to make you root for all-and maybe clever, clever Eastwood that was always the plan.

Ira says
Munney: It’s a hard thing killing a man. You take away all he’s got and all he’ll ever have.
The Schofield Kid: Yeah but I guess they had it coming.
Munney: We all have it coming kid.

What is it about the Western film that makes you question ideas of humanity, morality, and mortality so fundamentally? There’s something unforgiving in the exchange above and a stone cold steeliness on Eastwood’s face, somehow befitting the man who has been Hollywood’s quintessential anti-hero since he started his career in the 1960’s.

There is, in fact, something unforgiving about the way Eastwood, revisits the genre that made him a Hollywood icon. Unforgiving in the opening scene and in its depiction of violence, in the Sheriff’s (a brilliant Gene Hackman) reaction to a woman in his town being ‘slashed up’ by an angry cowboy, in the way the narrative penetrates ideas of justice, morality and humanity and in the films characters who are at once familiar types but much greyer and complex than we assume. Prostitutes, outlaws, no good tramps, vicious ex-gunmen, fresh recruits with no respect and patience for their elders, and supposed lawmen like the Sheriff who turns out to be the most ruthless are not ‘types’ but fleshed out, complex personalities making us question and re-think that eternal conundrum of good guy versus bad guy with a fresh, often unsettling new vigor and interest.

The story of an ex gunman William Munney played by Eastwood, who’s reluctantly pulled back into one last mission, Eastwood’s swan song to the genre won 4 academy awards including for Picture, Director, Editing and Supporting Actor for Hackman and is a strong, uncompromising film. Eastwood brings a brooding weariness to his performance but this time he’s also aided by a superb supporting cast and a rich screenplay. Hackman, Richard Harris, Morgan Freeman and Maggie Smith are excellent and I liked how the writing not only inverts traditional ideas, mores and norms of right and wrong but also, pivots the story around women, blends elements of fact, fantasy, fiction, with violence and truth through the character of ‘WW”, a writer names Beauchamp played by Saul Rubinek and brings in a generational theme through the character of The Schofield Kid (James Woolvett).

Surprisingly dark and layered in its writing, its dimly lit, moody landscape, and orange-tinted color palette, through sharp editing and camera Eastwood also creates the precision and economy he’s famous that convey both a sense of tension and often a ruminative silence. In its landscape, its texture, its cast of veteran male and female actors, in its themes of gunmanship, gunplay, killing, prostitution, law, moral accountability, and a way of life, this one is a hard hitting, well made tribute to the Western, a film that is for all ages.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 14 May 2010 12:55:00 +0000

TOOTSIE (1982)

Neha says

8 reasons why you should see Sidney Pollack’s 1982 drag comedy Tootsie that was voted as the second funniest American movie of all time by the AFI…

REASON # 1- Dustin Hoffman is a class act and while he plays a character Michael Dorsey quite like himself – “ a method actor” he also plays a female character Dorothy Michaels a.k.a. Tootsie quite unlike himself. His timing, energy and the nuances he brings to both his characters has you glued. In fact he is so convincing as a woman that I even forgot that it’s a man playing the part. You simply applaud his emotional commitment to his Mrs. Doubtfire- Dorothy Michaels.

REASON # 2- For a good comedy you need a fun premise and Tootsie milks its mad premise for all its worth without getting gimmicky or resorting to cheap laughs. What if a man parading as a woman to get a job on a soap opera falls in love with his female co-actor Julie (Jessica Lange) whose father Les (Charles Durning) falls in love with her/him? What a crazy pickle!!!

REASON # 3 -- Larry Gelbart’s script is a winner. While a comedy of errors is par for the course, Tootsie has a real story to back its fun premise. First we meet Michael Dorsey, an out of work actor whose perfectionism is misconstrued for an attitude problem. When his girlfriend Sandy (Terrie Garr) is rejected for the part of a female nurse on a daily soap opera Michael believes it’s his dream role. He auditions for the part, gets it and begins to live, eat, breathe Dorothy Michaels on and off the camera. While his female co-star thinks of her/him as a good female friend, he/her develops feelings for her. But in the process of being a woman he also develops a sensitivity and an understanding for the gender stereotyping that women have to contend with. When Julie’s father falls in love with her/him things get complicated. In a weak moment Dorothy tries to kiss Julie, Julie thinks she/he is gay and the film without loosing its focus even addresses homosexuality in the 80’s as well. Why does power make a woman feel masculine? Why should a woman be given derogatory nick-names like Tootsie i.e. darling while the same doesn’t hold for men? What are the subtle motivations that triggered the battle of the sexes? The film tackles all of this but doesn’t loose its primary goal of being an entertaining, breezy and sharp drag comedy.

REASON # 4- What sublime comedy!!! Be it the scenes with Michael Dorsey/ Dorothy Michaels with his/her agent played by director Sydney Pollack himself or all those hilarious comic moments that have her/his male co-actor and Julie’s father, Les making a pass at him/her. Wonderfully witty and unforced with memorable punch lines that are a byproduct of set-up and arise out of a heated discussion or an uncomfortable moment. Add to that the comic timing of its talent and the way in which they draw from each other’s energies without overcooking a gag moment and what we have are real comic sequences that we could anticipate happening to anyone in such a messy situation.
REASON # 5- Director Sydney Pollack needs no introduction but with his own unique style he brings a skillful tautness to the comedy and compassion to the relationships that emerge out of Hoffman’s “man in dress” farce.
REASON # 6- A great supporting cast as well. Bill Murray, Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman, Charles Durning, Geena Davis do their bits to complement the tour de force Dustin Hoffman.
REASON # 7- Even in the mask of a comedy, if there is a small little message in there then I like to give movies like these a brownie point. Michael was all “yang” before this “female experience” post which he had a better balance of yin and yang. His female counterpart is all “yin” but a single mother and bread earner of the family makes her nurture the yang in her. All of this yin/yang business is wonderfully summarized by Michael when he says “I was a better man with you as woman than I ever was with a woman as a man, you know what I mean?” It’s one of the most poignant and revealing comic moments that defines this film.
REASON #8- Tight, sharp and well paced, Tootsie has an infectious charm and confidence to it that never lets up. I’m still chuckling!!!

Ira says

“I don’t believe in hell. I believe in unemployment”, says Hoffman distractedly, as he feverishly packs his clothes for a weekend get away with the woman he’s fallen head over heels for. Seconds before he was searching for his pink nightgown and his buddy and roommate Jeff played by Bill Murray was staring at him in disbelief.

Now, if you thought Mrs. Doubtfire was funny, and if you haven’t seen Tootsie, you are seriously missing out! This is one of my all time favorite comedies (romance in there too) and a film that shows you just how darn talented, and versatile an actor Dustin Hoffman is (multi-time Academy Award nominee and two time Academy Award winner for Kramer vs. Kramer & Rainman). Hoffman stars as Michael Dorsey, a New York based, struggling actor, part time waiter and part time acting coach. Michael is a talented actor but unfortunately, he’s preceded by a reputation for being ‘volatile’ so no one really wants to work with him.

As Michael reveals in the crisp opening credits, a montage of acting lessons and miserable auditions, unemployment is a serious problem for actors (hell, I can tell you that! Not just in New York City circa the 1980’s but anytime and everywhere). So, when the competition is tough, when you just aren’t old, young, short, or tall enough, have been out of work for 4 months and totally desperate, you are pretty much ready to do what it takes to land a part. For Michael Dorsey that means finding a way to raise money to do a play and finally get the opportunity he feels he deserves. Little does he know what that would take.

When the creators of a popular American soap opera, (or daytime drama, as director Ron Carlisle, played suavely by Dabney Coleman would prefer) Southwest General hold auditions for the role of their female hospital administrator, they unexpectedly find someone or ‘something’, unlike anything they’ve ever seen before. A middle aged, feisty, independent, strong-minded actress named Dorothy Michaels whom they cast her right away. The only thing is, Dorothy is a man. Hoffman rather. Dorothy’s a hit, a champion for women everywhere, a new symbol of independent female characters on American TV, TRP’s are up and fan mail is pouring in. Only thing is Michael is living a lie, pretending he’s a woman in real life as well, and is meanwhile falling hopelessly in love with his co-star Julie Nichols played by Jessica Lange.

Love, sex, chauvinism, feminism, farce, absurdity, social commentary, and hilarious moments of irony, conflict, and desire come together in this intelligently wrought screenplay and through Pollack’s vibrant, energetic storytelling which always feels so personal, intimate and alive. I loved the sound score and the real time Manhattan flavor Pollack creates and I loved his leading man/woman. Hoffman plays a woman with comfort, spunk, and absolute control. With a superb supporting cast including Pollack himself, who plays George Fields, Michael’s agent (apparently Hoffman convinced him to do the role and it’s a good thing because they have some of the best and funniest scenes together!), Bill Murray as Jeff, another struggling artist, in this case a writer, Teri Garr as a hysterical actress named Sandy, and George gayness as Dr Brewster, a slimy, old school, deluded doctor on the TV show, this one is an ensemble, gender crossing riot. An actors delight, (all its principal characters are thespians after all and cross dressing as Michael says, being the biggest often most frightening challenge for an actor), but also a satirical, clever, unpredictable, laugh out loud film that kick started the trend of cross dressing in Hollywood and became a hallmark for drag films that have got humor, bite and soul.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 14 May 2010 12:54:00 +0000

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)

Neha says

It’s a scary future and trust Kubrick to make it churn and burn with violence as crime rates soar and society remains agonizingly at the mercy of hoodlums and the havoc they create. It sounds like comic book splash but Kubrick has other plans. The film follows the story of one such vicious and juvenile delinquent Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) who epitomizes the word “brutal” as stealing cars, bashing up rival gangs and “filthy, old, dirty drunks” on the streets, robbing homes and raping women brings him as much pleasure as Beethoven and Mozart’s classic notes do, Alex may be the self appointed leader of a quartet of like-minded cronies but when two of his gang members, Dim (Warren Clarke) and Georgie (James Marcus) no longer want Alex to call the shots and speak up, they need to contend with Alex’s wrath in a slow motion, superbly stylish fight sequence by the waterfront where Alex sets the record straight regarding who is the boss. Dim and Georgie quietly bide their time and take the impulsive Alex unawares during a robbery gone wrong, bashing him up and leaving him for the cops to find. Alex is tried and convicted with a 14 year jail sentence. Parallely the Government implements a crime reform program where criminals are conditioned to suppress their violent instincts through medicine and a series of hypnosis sessions. Alex sees this as a ticket out of prison even though critics of the program believe (and this is fascinating) that in the absence of choice, individuality and the ideology of liberty is severely compromised. But when Alex returns to the real world reformed or for some repressed by Government intervention he needs to confront demons from his past, deal with anti-Government agents who want to use him against the Government and wrestle with his instinctive evilness and his inability to do something about it.
“Duality as the Ultimate Reality” -Anthony Burgess
From the cryptic title to the brutal and nihilistic “ultra-violence” on display; from the trippy and contrast-rich color palette to the stylish and futuristic spatial design; from the carefully layered themes, motifs and symbols to the use of classical music where excerpts from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and even “Singin in the Rain” become psychological triggers to propel the plot forward; from Malcolm McDowell’s career-best and nightmare-inducing portrayal of Alex (Can’t get the climactic scene with the Minister of the Interior feeding a bedridden, hospitalized Alex out of my head!) to the use of language in the film- a strange mix of slang, Shakespearean pentameter and English cockney that may at first alienate and create a wall between us and the savagery before us but as we get accustomed to this alien world and the so called performance art of these hoodlums as they dress up and revel in the twisted satisfaction derived from their violent antics we also get subliminally dependent on a befriending voice-over where Alex doesn’t miss a beat to call himself “your friend and narrator.” Yes you eventually start to care for a character you’d love to loathe! As we watch Alex transform into a convict, we see the film easing out its Shakespearen undercurrent and in that process this character of Alex becomes potently real and Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s 1962 bestselling novel transforms into a cautionary social commentary that warns of both the dehumanization of society and the politics of Government that may “sell liberty for a quieter life.”
I love how Act 1 and 3 are inverted mirror images of each other. Where in Act 1 we see Alex in his home, streets and a small country cottage called ironically “home” (well he sure is at home when he’s evil!) preying on his unwilling and unwitting victims in Act 3 we see him revisit the same places and his victims who willingly and wittingly prey on him. These symmetries do wonder’s to ingrain the themes, contrasts and dilemma’s of the story.
Intriguingly worded in the quote above duality is the driving motivator of the story- good vs. evil, neutrality vs. commitment, man vs. government, moral choice vs. science, humanity vs. violence, intellect vs. intuition and at a metaphysical level the gripping impact of these opposing forces succeed in showing us the dynamics of the world and the often crude reality of it. Many a time repulsion to the radical sort of “evilness” we see unfold before us leads to an implicit understanding of its opposite- humanity. The long and short of it is sometimes you need to be starkly reminded how not to be to instinctively know how to be! Sadly at the time of its release many people missed the subtext of the film and were entertained and even mimicked the brutality which led to the film being banned in England.
Bold, eccentric, bitingly satirical, dark and disturbing-this is a Stanley Kubrick special that reminds us why Kubrick was indeed one of the sharpest, futuristic and most experimental film makers of his time.

Ira says

Disturbing, deeply affecting, and quite, quite brilliant. A Clockwork Orange is quite unlike anything you or I have ever seen and either of us is likely to see. A dystopian story about Alex, a young sociopath brainwashed by an authoritarian British government, Kubrik’s film version of Anthony Burgess’ classic novel is unabashedly, aesthetically, and masterfully violent, graphic, satirical, moving, confounding and evocative. A dense, unforgettable masterpiece, and a film you cannot shake off. For a long time to come.

The films opens in the Korova Milk Bar and an extreme close-up of the riveting, artfully painted, freakish Malcolm Mcdowell playing Alex our protagonist, as the camera zooms out slowly, we meet his four droogs sitting against the avant garde backdrop of a trippy stark, white, blue and red bar and you instantly realize, you aren’t going to be getting your familiar morning cuppa at the movies here. As the discordant notes of Kubrik’s fabulous sound score strike up, jarring your ears, resounding through the screen and in your head, and that crystal clear, absolutely pitch perfect, deliciously articulated voiceover begins, appy-poly-logies, but you are going to be sucked in, whether you like it or not.

Unafraid to hit you with stylized, almost beautiful violence, frightening cackles of laughter, Kubrik slams you head on with his hoodlums at play; ‘filliying with travelers of the night, hogs of the road’, young adolescent boys with a penchant for the macabre, a love for the senseless, a fetish for physical assaults, and brutal rape. These boys aren’t just boys, they’re strangely but similarly attired members of a teen subculture, they’re gazing at the camera with an unsettling intensity, they’re drinking milk that’s spiked with mescaline and they’re just about to plan another night of the ‘good old ultra-violence’.

A world of dystopian disturbia and searing social, political and moral satire ensues. Bashes, blows, nudity, expletives, Alex’s weird mesmerizing language, take over your senses because Kubrick is just unapologetic, in his writing, storytelling and characterizations. Singing in the Rain isn’t singing, and in no rain of any happy kind here. As lyrical as it was in Butch Cassidy last week, it’s as polar opposite in this one. As inspiring as you may have found Beethoven’s 9th symphony as you may have till now (I know I did and have ever since my music appreciation course at college), that’s as disconcerting as it will become for you here. And as much as you appreciate the wild, whacky, and experimental in Kubrik’s visual landscape, camera work, frames and interpretation, that much cleaner, detailed, clear, focused, sharp and intended is his plot progression and narrative. The structure-less takes form, and every scene has a meticulous role to play in the grander scheme of a very important film.

So much has been said about A Clockwork Orange, so much will be and the very form and content itself allows for numerous, and diverse interpretations. Universal themes of authority figures, teen rebels, individuality, morality, the very nature of society, culture, and human nature, Alex’s anti-hero character, his obscure, cryptic, language called Nadsat, and the dystopian vision of a futuristic Britain, are all as relevant today in a modern context, symbolic of counter culture, subculture, and a secret criminal code or jargon much like a modern day mafia and the clash between society and individual. But the real genius here is in how that dystopian universe comes alive on screen and that’s where this one becomes special because its in the hands of a one of a kind director. Kubrik’s storytelling roars, it doesn’t just sail along pleasantly; it hurtles along steadily, with a startlingly consistent force and an absorbing, increasingly layered narrative structure.

Fantastic music, (always such a crucial part of the directors’ films), accompany almost ninety percent of the films action, arc and plot graph. A pop colour driven, experimental, 60’s style, techno inspired production design and great art direction balance hard hitting, often uncomfortable, bizarre imagery. (Remember the trippy scene in the music arcade where Alex picks up two young women and takes them back to his bedroom?) And top of the game performances led by an outstanding McDowell; add the tour de force and life in the film. Notice how every actor seems to be speaking at a raised tone of voice. No, its not because Kubrik doesn’t think we can hear them, its because he wants us to hear them, drink them, chew them, spit them, digest them. And FEEL them. What really struck me too was the sheer energy of the performances themselves. As an actor, I can tell you, each scene, each mini scene in fact, must’ve been exhausting. And exhausted you feel by the end of watching it all. Stripped, drained, bashed, at times as jumbled up in your head as Alex’s Nadsat words sound to you, but still as riveted by each image Kubrik controls and holds in front of you, you cant help but be shaken up. And, trust me, it wont be easy to shake it off.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 14 May 2010 12:15:00 +0000

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998)

Neha says

We all know a certain Mr. Steven Spielberg loves the theme of war- starting with his home movies about World War II when he was a young adolescent to his blockbusters- Remember the Nazi treasure hunters in Raider’s of the Lost Ark or those battle sequences in Empire of the Sun and more so the holocaust inspired and acclaimed Schindler’s List.. His 1998 Saving Private Ryan would not have had the same impact had it not combined Spielberg’s unflinchingly brutal vision of frontline chaos with his Schindler’s List cinematographer Janusz Kaminski’s edgy, documentary-style frantic and realistic execution. The film’s one juicy hotdog!!! The meat of the story has Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) on a public relations mission of finding a Private James Ryan (Matt Damon) the sole survivor of 4 brothers in the army. On either side of it, there are gruesome, gigantically drawn, graphic battle sequences that leave you numb with horror with an uncanny real time report of battle mayhem. If I didn’t know better and if there was no Tom Hanks in the frame-I might have just as easily assumed it was archival footage. Guts and blood spill, dismembered body parts, the smell of fear and the primitive survival instinct, the screams of soldiers crying out for their “mamma’s”, the tide turning red with blood in the Normandy beachfront encounter and those dramatic moments where sounds and voices drown out with Miller feeling like he’s smack bang in the madness of hell. It’s these visceral moments that haunt with their urgency, immediacy and that kinetic energy that in no small part is a product of the gritty camera, the razor sharp editing, the eerie sound design and effects and the uniformly excellent cast who do so well to nail that unpredictable randomness of war. The second mega battle sequence in the final act employs more strategy but Spielberg makes all the tactics collapse, reminding us that in chaos there can be no control.

The film raises some important questions as well- Is one man’s life more valuable than others? Is a public relations mission worth risking a soldier’s life? The army may want to get James Ryan to his mother but don’t the others have mothers as well? We see the characters in endless discussion and while Spielberg doesn’t resolve these dilemma’s what he does do is use them to reflect the way in which war dehumanizes man. Hanks does well to show us how distant he is and how he must be to do the awful things that need to be done. Jeremy Davies give the most memorable performance as a French and German translator Corporal Upham who really is the audience surrogate here with no real sense of what it entails to be behind enemy lines but as he joins Miller’s mission we see the realities slowly transform him. At first he fights it when he convinces the contingent to let a German soldier go but in the ultimate scenes of the film, face up against the heartlessness of war, his transformation is as convincing as it is required. Matt Damon when cast was unknown but he makes an impact. I can’t forget that one scene between him and Hanks where he tries to remember the faces of his dead brothers by reliving a memory that came so tangibly alive through just his words and emotions. Tom Sizemore as the deft sergeant, Edward Burns as the argumentative Private Reiben, Barry Pepper as the religious sniper, Adam Goldberg as the lone Jew and Vin Diesel as Private Caparzo do well in familiar but freshly presented character roles.

It’s an original, real and frightening re-enactment of history and Spielberg excels in painting it in all of its brutal glory with a pro technical team, solid cast and a thought provoking premise that leaves us with that one recurring phrase used in the film- FUBAR (fucked up beyond all recognition). That’s the crux of war and that sure is the world of Saving Private Ryan.

Ira says
Technical Sgt. Mike Horvath: What are your orders?
Captain Miller: Sergeant, we have crossed some strange boundary here, the world has taken a turn for the surreal.
St. Horvath: Clearly, but the question still stands
Captain Miller: I don’t know. What do you think?
Sgt Horvath: You don’t want to know what I think.
Captain Miller: No, Mike, I do.

‘Thinking’ is something war rarely allows you the time to do. At least not while a battle rages on endlessly, unstoppable, deafening, and bloody, as in those stunning first 25 minutes of Spielberg’s epic film where through gritty camera work and superbly executed action, Omaha beach is left spotted and crowded with corpses and the ocean is bathed with blood. Not while you watch a man, friend, comrade, and fellow soldier burn, cry, be torn apart and lose his breath by your side or in your arms, or while you listen to ‘orders’, realizing those eloquent words of great war poets, echo with a grueling, harsh reality of a soldiers life; ‘ours but to do and die’, and not while you stand by helplessly watching as things get FUBAR i.e. f***** up beyond all recognition.

And yet, it’s amazing how much Spielberg’s World War 2 war epic, Saving Private Ryan, makes you think. With one of the most unique premises to come out of a war story, here is a film that questions morality, honor, duty and service in an evocative and powerfully humane way. When a troop of men under Captain Miller’s (Tom Hanks’) command set out to find Pvt. Ryan, to get him safely home to his mother, war for them becomes a ‘public relations mission’ and yet is still war, a constant minefield of danger and risk. Losing 2 men along the way, through perilous territory, literally on ground and psychologically, characters, relationships and dynamics begin to clash against each other. When the troop finally finds him, Ryan (played by an alive and strong Matt Damon, great casting choice), clearly saddened and upset by the news of his brothers’ death, refuses to leave his station of duty, not being able to see the ‘sense’ in why he should be thus privileged. Why none of the others, who fought as hard as him, should go on without a chance. And that’s when Captain Miller, played with a firm, quiet inner strength and mesmerizing solidness by Hanks, is at a loss. The one in command, suddenly vulnerable and unsure, needs a second viewpoint, help, and advice from a friend. Which is what Sgt. ‘Mike’ is to him. And what many of these men are to one another. ‘Brotherhood between soldiers’ as young Upham, a field mapper and rookie who’s taken into Miller’s troop as translator because of his knowledge of German & French, would call it. When Upham tells his fellow soldiers he wants to write a paper on this subject of ‘army brotherhood’, they scoff at his naiveté, idealism, and ignorance. The irony is the brotherhood exists, but becomes precarious, challenged, by national sentiment, by internal tensions, and by the system of hierarchy in the army through the course of the film. Relationships are hugely important in Spielberg & Rodat’s story.

Even as the action never stops, feels real, and accessible, so do Spielberg’s characters. Each etched sharply, each memorable, each drawing our empathy and somehow making us connect to them. Its not just relationships between the men themselves, but between country and them, home and them, and between these young soldiers and their mothers (we hear a soldier cry out to his mother at least three distinct points in the narrative, a clever and fascinating thread that is fully fleshed out in the wonderful Church scene where WADE recalls his childhood memories of living with his mother). I’m not saying Rodat gets Freudian and analytical on us, I just liked how he touches on that umbilical relationship and on the idea that war, a futile loss of innocent lives, is a reminder of something primal, taking you back to the innocence of being a child, and forcing you through the horrors of its surroundings, to grow up before your time.

When Tibbs (Poitier), colored cop from Philadelphia enters at the heels of the murder of Sparta’s most powerful and wealthy man, Mr. Colbert, he’s at first mistaken for his killer and brought in for interrogation by the slimy, eager to please Wood purely on the grounds of being a black boy sitting alone at a station in the heat and darkness of the night. In a brilliantly edited, tense scene at the station that follows, within seconds, tables turn and where Gillespie first taunts and mocks Tibbs, trying to size him up, Poitier glares at Steiger in a penetrative silence. As he flings his badge across to him moments later, an embarrassed Gillespie must turn from uncouth to civil. And Jewison kickstarts his film, pitting the white and the black of it, strongly against one another.

In this case, the mission is one man, so who’s to decide which life is finally more important than the next. War creates a limbo of anonymity along with its sense of national sentiment and Spielberg doesn’t make these ideas easy for us to answer. His atmosphere is real, raw, waiting to explode, yet simmering with uncertainty. The deaths of Carpazo and later Wade simmer with potent questions, difficult choices, and the inevitable conflict each leader has to face when it comes down to losing one of his own for the ‘greater cause’. in the quiet interlude of the Church where the men take rest, Spielberg chooses shadows, candlelight and clean frames creating a nostalgic, haunting tone that counterpoints much of the rest of the film. And in that unforgettable dog tags scene, as Miller’s men flip through their fellow soldiers identities, reduced to metal plates with names on them, for a moment you forget who’s the enemy and who’s on the same team. Then when Hanks, in a fit of desperation, having lost a man and found a wrong soldier, starts calling out for ‘RYAN’ at random, stumbles onto a partially deaf character, you laugh out of nervousness, releasing all that energy Spielberg builds to that moment.

The power of Spielberg’s storytelling for me is not just in the brilliant technical aspects, fantastic cinematography and action sequences, sharp, thoughtful editing, realistic, grey production and art design, or in the absolutely amazing sound score, sound editing and mixing, its in these characters. And I liked how Spielberg doesn’t lose touch, or let us lose touch with them, no matter what. Not when we yearn to know, almost as much as his juniors who Miller really is, where he’s from or what he did, not when and how we finally discover he is a school teacher to 8th graders and not when you feel Hanks whispers to you as he does to Pvt. Ryan close tot the end of the film, “Earn this. Earn it.” Spielberg, for this one, one of the most raw, moving, well –performed, absorbing war entertainers Hollywood has made in the past couple of decades, you have.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 14 May 2010 11:57:00 +0000

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994)

Neha says
Writer-director Frank Darabont’s 1994 moving period prison drama ( based on Stephen King’s short story “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”) may have tanked at the box office, grossing just $ 28 million; may have been overshadowed by the other 1994 news makers that include Forest Gump and Pulp Fiction and may have landed itself a consolation prize in the form of 7 Academy nominations but in the league of cult classics that have names like Casablanca, Office Space and It’s a Wonderful Life you have one more- The Shawshank Redemption, a film that stood the test of time and has through home video, numerous cable TV airings, critical acclaim, word of mouth found it’s audience and it’s rewarding place in many a top 100 lists. It’s far too good a film to be ranked at # 72 on the AFI list but like the many mysteries of life the parameters that determine these rankings continue to baffle me.

Following the story of Shawshank Prison inmate Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) wrongly incarcerated for the murder of his wife and her lover, we see how Darabont manipulates the conventions of the genre, where violence, injustice, gang rivalries, corruption, homosexuality and physical abuse, along with a ruthless prison guard prototype in the way of Captain Hadley (Clancy Brown) and a “discipline and bible” loving, crooked, self righteous Warden Norton(Bob Gunton) present insurmountable obstacles but Andy lies redeemed by both a friendship with another inmate Red (Morgan Freeman) and his inner fortitude and patience. He refuses to surrender his hope for change or be “institutionalized” The gentle and understated manner in which Darabont contrasts the dark and doom of prison life with the foresight and cunning intellect of an Andy who manages to use the system to beat it, never wavering from Andy’s journey, reinforces how sometimes a story needs to be ultra specific for it to break the confines of character and become universally accessible. At some point the myriad ideas of faith, survival, friendship, freedom, redemption, love, loneliness, isolation, life and death, fear, persistence and optimism took me on my own personal journey of discovery and contemplation and when a film is able to do that so unpretentiously it’s a pot of gold. When you see Andy crawling his way through a sewage tunnel coming out on the other side triumphant in spirit or when you’re on the receiving end of powerful dialogues like “I guess it comes down to a simple choice. Get busy living or get busy dying” you want to revisit it time and again to simply be inspired.

When the film released it was criticized for its 142 minute long length and slow pacing but for me I was too involved to even feel it. The necessary pace captures the passage of time so crucial to the story, character arcs, growth of a life-long friendship between Andy and the reflective Red and that churning endurance that eats away at the nmates, quietly and unhurriedly earning my sympathies. It’s only when you reach that dramatic and rewarding culmination where Darabont unleashes that contained energy do you completely appreciate the journey. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman add that heart, soul and humanity to their characters while James Whitmore is endearing as life-long inmate come prison librarian Brooks. Clancy Brown and Bob Gunton capture that misplaced moral superiority in their brutal characters with a penetrating satanic flair that makes a stronger case for the more empathetic characters like Freeman and Robbins. Technical credits are 1994 standard. The musical score is stirring; the production design and layout of the prison, the prime set piece of the story is top notch and does well to create a lived in atmosphere and the camera work never lets the setting get monotonous to the eye.

A true cinematic inspiration! Surrender to the experience and walk away the better for it! A film that reminds me why I love the movies as the writing, direction, performances, message of hope and spirit and technical chops come together in dynamic synergy to give us a love letter that celebrates being human.

Ira says

I remember watching The Shawshank Redemption for the first time when I was thirteen years old. And I remember how affected I was, and how, for many years hence, often to the bewildered expressions on my schoolmates faces, I would quote it as one of my absolute favorite films. Hell, I somehow feel a pang of righteous possessiveness even today, seeing it at the #1 spot on the IMDB list, hearing it quoted by people as their favorite film. It was mine way back when I was a rebellious, brooding, teenager! After all, that is the beauty of a truly great film, and no matter how often I watch it, no matter how much my list of top 10 favorite films has adapted over the past decade and a half, it still manages to hold its own for being one of the very few movies that makes me laugh, cry and feel magnificently uplifted. (Elephant Man and Chariots of Fire being the other two from my childhood that have the same impact). So much has been said and so much will be said that I feel I need to re-look, reassess and give you something fresh. And this time while watching, I chose to do so through a funny, not often recounted moment.

“Lord it’s a miracle! A man just disappears like a fart in the wind”. Desperate, comical, absurd, wonderful, exhilarating and bursting with the capacity of the human spirit to endure and overcome, Norton’s frustration when he discovers Andy Dufresne has escaped from Shawshank prison after 19 years, without a trace, and through a finely fool proof method, is priceless. And more than that image of Andy crawling through shit to freedom, ripping his shirt off and bathing himself in the pouring rain as a free man, more than even the lingering opening scene, inter-cut between Andy waiting for his wife and her lover and the courtroom where he is being convicted, where we don’t know whether he actually did it or not, (Everybody in Shawshank’s innocent, after all), and more than the unforgettable final image of the happy reunion between two central figures, tinier moments stand out and tickle you in Darabont’s story.

A story that explores not just themes of law, morality, humanity, friendship and the triumph of the human spirit but also of the darker, greediest, often inhumane, violent, primal, brutal, aspects of human nature. On Andy’s first night in prison, when Red loses his bet on him being the first one to crack and cry, groups of prisoners chant taunts and teases and one passing voice yells, “I don’t belong here either. They run this place like a f****** prison”. The sarcasm is sharp, frontal, visceral and almost escapable. And even while here is something astonishingly sincere and graceful about Darabont’s storytelling, the tone of satire and anger is just beneath the surface. And this time, I found myself to moments like these. Red being rejected from his parole, again and again. Old Brooks, prison librarian who’s spent half a century inside those walls attacking a fellow inmate Heywood, desperately hoping they would keep him in prison. Tommy Williams, a new young prisoner, taken under Andy’s wing meeting his ultimate fate.

Prison is a funny, strange and frightening, place, a place that turns innocent men, ‘straight like arrows’ in real life into crooks on the inside, a place that has the capacity to hurt and make life hell, a place as Red explains, you hate, get used to and then somehow, start to depend on. A place that gets all kinds of men and all kinds of criminals and spreads them out on the same clean slate. And that slate gets miserable, confining, and painful, with the ability to drive a man mad.

Andy & Red’s friendship and the performances of Robbins & Freeman (two actors that didn’t get their due that year because of Hank’s our de force, Forrest Gump) are what root this one and help it turn on its wide axis. Freeman’s voiceover, consistent, felt and moving in its simplicity begins the film, it also carries it. And I truly mean that. Things would’ve been different, incomplete, and somehow hollow without his voice over (a tool Darabont places in the hands of the only actor I believe who could’ve carried its force). Freeman lends his voice and narration loveliness, a lyrical but lofty timbre and an even optimism that carefully steers away from the sentimental and seeks the simply sincere.

Theirs is a friendship, which is unlikely and absolutely real, genuine and touching, one that stands the often-grueling test of time. From the moment they first meet, to the way they find instances to surprise or help one another, to Andy’s ability to stay untouched and infuse an inexplicable sort of calm to those men around him. While they drink beer on a sun kissed rooftop, tasting freedom for a few brief seconds, or while they listen to opera on the prison speakers resounding through the open field or even while Andy creates a centre of books and music, of learning, of the men’s redemption if you will, Red is the one though closest to Andy, who seems furthest to him. And even as the years pass and you can feel how close these two men are, you can’t also help feel how different they are. And that’s what really for me is special about this one. The way the narrative and Darabont’s writing, camerawork and editing constantly pit these two sides (along with the third of Hadley & Norton) against each other. Through the layers of politics, violence, corruption, greed, awful truths, scams, conspiracies and the friendships within the prison walls, 2 men, 2 views, 2 worlds, the outside and the inside, 2 realities and 2 ways of looking at life, emerge.

Hope is a dangerous thing Red insists. And Andy, thrown into a dark cell for a month, Mozart in his head, will never agree with him. Hope is all we have, and that is the truth. Get busy living people, he says.Do that people, and find films like this one, it won’t happen often.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 07 May 2010 12:24:00 +0000

BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID (1969)

Neha says

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is the definitive buddy movie of the western genre. William Goldman’s Oscar winning screenplay seamlessly offsets the likes of a dreamer like Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) who has all these grand ideas to rob banks across the globe from Bolivia to Australia with the more grounded, gunslinger The Sundance Kid (Robert Redford). Brains vs. brawn, pacifist vs. aggressive, gusto vs. intensity are contrasts that play off each other effortlessly to give us a true-blue story about friendship with ripe and real moments that take comic flight and make the adventures, heists and chase sequences so involving and unpredictable. The easy camaraderie between the two veteran actors, their portrayal of these memorable characters and the mix of girth, glamour and guile that the duo embodies makes us root for them for the entire running time of 110 minutes.

The only similarity between Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch and George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, both of which released in 1969, is their comment on changing times and how technology, transportation and strengthening of law enforcement led to the decline of the outlaw way of life, driving the rebels to the South American border to seek refuge. While The Wild Bunch pays a more conventional homage to the genre, adopting melodrama and a gravitas to tell its tale, punctuated by its path-breaking presentation of violence on celluloid, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid tinkers with the formula playfully, keeping traditionalism and western values intact but George Roy Hill experiments with treatment and tone, making it a matinee potboiler, a relationship story and a nod to the genre. From the opening credits that use a fast-paced, sepia-toned silent movie with a Chaplinisque flavor to it to show us a train heist with a caption that reads “Most of what follows is true” Hill tells us upfront that this fact meets fancy ride has both audacity and a certain whimsy to it that makes for a different experience. And a different experience it is as we see him corroborate that intent with treatment choices that reflect his cinematic inspirations and add that X factor to the genre. Burt Bacharach’s energetic and spirited music; the Oscar winning, memorable song “Raindrops are falling on my head” has Butch performing center stage antics with a bicycle portraying his curiosity and his receptiveness to change; Hill also uses the occasional pantomime to salute the silent era and the journey to Bolivia feel like a year book spread as a montage of photographs of travel and escapades is a nice little touch to add balance to the more home grown, sweeping vistas of the outback that dominate the first two acts of the film.

Redford and Newman are always wondering whether the reputed Indian tracker and the famous lawman are the ones on their trail. Except for the long shot and the rare profile we never see who they are, adding another layer of intrigue to the story. While cinematic convention has us believe that it’s always a woman who comes between two men here we see how Redford’s girlfriend Etta Place (Katherine Ross) has a suggested attraction to Newman one that doesn’t come in the way of two buddies. Was the common love interest a plot device used to reflect the solidarity of true friendship? Was it underwritten, leaving us with an uncomfortable question mark? Or was Redford simply not that taken in by Etta to be affected by the comfort she shared with Newman? Something to chew on but personally I would have liked the love triangle to be a bit more emphatic in its intent.

The fact is the pairing of Redford and Newman was a master stroke; the characterizations of the two only get further enhanced by the genre setting but take Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid out of the landscape and put them in any other setting, be it a road movie, character drama or even an action film and that relationship would hold its weight. That my friend’s is the transcendental power of the duo!!! The climax is one of the best culminations I’ve seen with an obvious eventuality but the build up and execution is a marvel with the duo poking jibes at each other while embracing their fate. True to character and tone it leaves us feeling not sentimental or aggrieved but with a desire to celebrate a rare and affecting relationship. We take these characters home with us and four decades down they still have the power to entertain, thrill and enrapture.

Ira says

Butch: What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful.
Bank Guard: People kept robbing it.
Butch: Small price to pay for beauty.

The opening lines of Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, (along with dozens of fabulously funny, wry, well-timed one liners) are classic. Newman’s i.e. Butch’s crisp interaction with the Bank guard instantly declaring a simplicity, a moral code, a way of thinking that belongs to the Western hero, or anti-hero where stealing and robbing banks in particular, is after all a thing of beauty, an art, a habit and a way of life. The iconic figure of a rebel without a cause, a symbol of the American Wild West, who lives on his own terms, moves around with faithful steed, a gun in pocket, and a loyal sidekick by his side him takes on a witty, lively, and strongly challenged new turn with the unique pairing of the nicest bad guys around. ‘You will never meet a pair like Butch and the Kid’, claims the 1969 poster. And they are right.
Cheeky, graphic, and comic book style opening credits begin the film. As a whirring projector on the left of the screen, plays out a sepia tinted chase sequence in a series of worn out but energetic images, the titles appear on the right, along with a lilting, trot-like melody, and introductory note about the Hole in the Wall Gang, ‘now all dead but once rulers of the West’, cleverly making our heroes, heroes already. Only a few minutes in, and that cool introduction, Newman at the bank and Redford, the Kid, at a cards table, the entire sequence bathed in a dusty, yellow sepia hue, and Hill wins us over almost instantly. As do the two men.

Interestingly, as I watched the film, I felt myself finding some connections with several of the films we’ve been reviewing in the AFI over these past weeks. And I started to once again look at that baffling, wonderful question, what makes a great film, a great film? While there is no one answer of course, there are some qualities that make a film, somehow unique. And funnily, you often find similarities in the kind of qualities there are! Confusing you yet? Let me explain.

Not as graphic or rich as The Wild Bunch perhaps, not as trippy as Easy Rider, and yet often as experimental in its technique and narrative style (montages, particularly the one in Coney island, reminded me of the one, again with 2 men and a lady in Sophie’s Choice and the edgy camera work and play of light that many directors of the 60’s experimented with- some of those low angles and dimly lit shots felt almost Tarantino-esque to me), Butch & the Kid, for its genre and technique, is a special film.

While its set in the mid 19th century as most conventional Westerns were, at the end of the era where technology was about to explode, where the future was in the bicycle, where the horse is about to be discarded, where the existence of the Western Hero was in serious danger, I loved how Roy Hill plays within and with the genre. Sometimes parodying it (think Lefores wearing a white straw hat and Butch & Sundance in black hats when in the course of the film, the ‘good bad guys’ are our heroes, and the unseen Lefores is more the villain) and sometimes playing with it as in the lyrical, moodily shot interlude of Butch & Etta on the bicycle, riding through fields and softly lit lenses to the tunes of Singin in the Rain, or in the constant word play and verbal comedy. Sometimes penetrating and questioning it as in the unforgettable scene where Butch and Kid are being chased and have discarded all but one single horse, as they desperately arrive at the house of a Sheriff and old friend Ray hoping he will save them by getting them enlisted into the army, or finally paying homage to it as in the rawness of the shootouts and the intensity of that climactic action sequence.

Hill combines elements of the traditional Western in his desolated landscape, his characters and the overall themes of society and its outlaws, but for the way he brings flavor and texture to his story through sharp, dark comedy (courtesy and Academy Award winning screenplay from William Goldman, the man who also won the Academy for All the Presidents Men), moody, silent moments, intermittent but potent action, a beautiful sound-score, and fantastic cinematography, and through the combination of his central pair, Butch Cassidy is not only a one of a kind Western, but a great film. As ‘colorful’, as Percy Garris (a hilarious Strother Martin) says he’s become staying in Bolivia for over a decade, Hill’s film, much like Martin’s uncanny, marginally insane character, is not just rebellious and engaging, its seriously funny, often poignant and always on the brink of explosive violence. There is tension and humor on either side of the horse at each turn, and hidden within each line. And as the film moves from establishing its characters with lively wit and cool, machismo, it lulls soon after into a more ruminative mood. As we follow Butch & the Kid being chased, we feel a growing sense of loss, as they do because Hill takes us along with humor, with pathos and with a silent desperation.

Newman & Redford make this one what it is. At least now, looking back and iconic-ally. While neither is a brilliant actor, they fit their parts fabulously well. Newman as Butch, the aging leader with the brains, multiple beauties and the heart of gold. And Redford as the silent, brooding, brute of the pair. The one with the sizzling woman and the even more sizzling gun which he can use with guaranteed precision repeatedly And yet, each has elements of the other and the great part is how well, in moments of silence, or in 4 line exchanges where they seem to have an implicit understanding, there is an innate, evident, mutual understanding and respect here. There is a code to Western films, to Western heroes, and to the Western way of life. And Hill, Newman & Redford have created and given us their own. And that’s what makes this one special, and universal. Sundance, can I make a big thing out of it?

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 07 May 2010 12:20:00 +0000

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)

Neha says

A whodunit meets horror meets psychological thriller- this three in one terrifying, faithful and unhurried adaptation of Thomas Harris’s bestselling novel of the same name reminds us that female action leads don’t have to be all about stilettos and silicon’s but can be cerebral with the grit and complexity of a Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee played by the beautifully haunted and well directed Jodie Foster. In the absence of special effects and splatter frenzy, the 1991 Silence of the Lambs has only two genuinely shocking sequences- one involving an autopsy of Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine), a manic serial killer’s latest victim and the other, more disturbing centerpiece has “Hannibal the Cannibal” Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) a psychiatrist turned psychopath, unleashing all that suggestive, pent up brutality on a bunch of cops as he masterminds a prison break.

Animals are a big motif of the film be it lambs (and hence the title), moths or even the more subtle one of a caged cobra that manifests itself in Anthony Hopkins’s portrayal of celluloid’s most memorable and chilling villain who may only have a 16 minute role but played with such animalistic fervor and precision that one can’t help but be hypnotized by Hopkins and his beady eyes, facial expressions and that slithering, controlled drawl with which he savors and enunciates Starling’s name “Clarice”. (Get the goose bumps just thinking about it!) With Buffalo Bill on a killing rampage, the FBI sends Clarice to visit Lecter in prison, hoping to extract an insight into Bill’s identity and modus operandi. But a role reversal ensues, as Lecter starts to psychoanalyze Clarice and a series of long winded and tense conversations, the crux around which the film revolves have Clarice opening up the pandora’s box to her childhood, her most cherished memories of her father and her regrets. While these moments of gripping question and answer liberate the two in different and drastic ways, it’s really the subtext that fascinates. The growing intimacy between the two hints at an unnerving sexual tension between hunter and haunted and that implication alone exposes the film to a prism of alternative interpretations one of which gives Clarice a far darker and sadistic streak. In contrast her unwavering vulnerability makes her an even more captivating case study. Credit to Demme that he handles this with both intelligence and a strange kind of sensitivity.

Winner of 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture, this horror masterpiece being the first of its kind to woo the jury members is essentially a slow, grinding, roller coaster descent into the hell of psychological disturbia that relies on alarming motivations and madness to steer the course; that is empowered by its cast and their calibre; that uses stark close-ups to unsettling effect; that has Demme reminding us of his own unique realistic style that heightens suspense and atmosphere. It’s not the best horror/thriller film out there, competing against the likes of Kubrick’s Shining and almost every other Alfred Hitchcock classic but it still even today after watching it a zillion times over leaves me with this sense of dread. I would never want to meet a guy like Lecter or Bill and that visceral reaction is enough of a reason for AFI to acknowledge the film’s impact and achievement.

Ira says

One thing is for certain, there isn’t much silence in this one and even if Hannibal Lector’s pulse stayed at 85 when he attacked a female nurse and ate her tongue, for the most part, (and that’s Demme’s genius), mine was racing, actually galloping ahead. Heart in mouth, knot in stomach, shoulders mildly tensed. And it starts right up at the front with the opening credits. Eerie music, that breathless, sweating run as Foster i.e. Agent Clarrrice (the single most deliciously frightening, hiss like name in FBI crime drama movie history?) completes a training course, bold lettering, and a gathering momentum lead up to the moment of revelation when she’s called out to, stopped, and asked to come in to meet a superior follow. The determined pace of her run, an extreme close-up of her resolute face, the FBI on the callers cap, and the ‘yes sir’ that follows, are enough to tell us all we need to know.

Demme is a master of blending powerful emotion with gripping storytelling. And THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, only one of 3 films to ever win an Academy in all major categories (i.e. Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, screenplay) haunts, holds and chills you to the bone. Yup, the kind of bone any of those psychopaths would’ve had for breakfast.

Gruesome imagery, gruesome acts, gruesome dialogues, and very gruesome characters fill Demme’s narrative which really combines a detective story with a more hard hitting, evocative, brutal psychological drama. And Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lector, a monstrous cannibalistic serial killer and ex psychiatrist, steals, commands and just takes this one to a different level all together. The Silence of the Lambs would be the shrill, raving, silliness of the lambs if it wasn’t for Hopkins’ unforgettable performance, one that has already and will continue to go down in history. Lector himself is a character unlike one you’ve ever seen, a criminal mastermind who is the only clue to finding another deranged killer, a monster and a man you don’t want inside your head. As you discover the real time horrors of Buffalo Bill’s bizarre ongoing murders, motives, meanings and human emotion get blurred through the perspective of Lector, sitting calm, in control and absolutely insane, a man who is an expert in and a rebel of the very cause that can provide the answers to whom and what he is. And even though Hopkins screen time is a mere sixteen minutes, he is electric to watch, and Foster’s committed performance, unwavering even for a moment, with those piercing, unblinking blue eyes, inner strength and lurking fear, stands up to his particularly when they are on screen together.

The scene where they first meet, paralleled later by the scene where she goes to return his drawings are fantastic pieces of storytelling where Demme is in total control. The tension of their first encounter, built up through the darkly lit, deeper than deep, maximum security space where Foster is lead by Dr. Chilton (a snake like Anthony Heald), that stunning moment where they are both bathed in red in a mid shot when Chilton reveals the psychopathic, monstrous tendencies Lector is capable of as a warning to Clarice, to the revelation of an erect, frighteningly still Hopkins and the sheer force of that first meet where in a fiery, controlled atmosphere of closes, extreme closes, quick cuts and fabulous performances, he strips her down naked with the power of his eyes and the brilliance of a fantastically disturbed, but sharply analytical mind.

Peppered by Freudian overtones, psychological anagrams and literal ones, Academy Award winner, Ted Tally’s super screenplay plays out like a murder mystery, a complex human story and a riveting crime thriller all rolled into one and Demme’s storytelling forceful, alive and starkly real in its tone, despite its horrifying subject matter, stays with you long after. Great camera work, with a lot of closes and some notable aerial shots (remember the end of the scene where we learn what the title really means? Where Lector sits caged in a circular space in the centre of a large room, and takes Clarice back to the painful memories of her childhood? Shot with a fluid camera almost completely through thick iron bars, the scene ends with an overhead image of the room from above where barbed wire clouds the foreground, the cage forms the centre and Hopkins watches in silence from inside the bars. The image reiterating the complexity, the mystery, lack of clarity in knowing the truth and the way the relationships between doctor and patient, prisoner and investigator, and murderer and victim become blurred or reversed, as they often do in the film.)

Jonathan Demme’s films after all, are never easy. To watch or to digest and that’s just what he intends, Whether its Philadelphia, Beloved (based on Toni Morrison’s highly acclaimed, moving, powerful novel), The Truth About Charlie, or Rachel Getting Married, his fascination with human behavior, relationships and the complexities of truth, sex, and human impulses fester here as well. But this one wouldn’t be this one if it weren’t for the performances of Foster & Hopkins. While the supporting cast is strong, here is a movie where the 2 leads stand out, stand above and absolutely shine.

Rich, gripping, unsettling and an original horror movie going experience, Silence of the Lambs is up there with the likes of Exorcist, Halloween, The Shining, & Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte and even more memorable for its quietness and lingering, terrifying qualities. This one has a silence that is deafening, and not easy to resist. Somewhere about halfway through the film, as you watch two insect specialists use their bugs to play a game of chess you almost manage a weak smile at the innocence of it all. But we only have to find the moth in Buffalo Bill’s victims throat till we begin to understand that nothing in this one is innocent.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 11:43:00 +0000

IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967)

Neha says

Winner of 5 Academy Awards, the 1967 In the Heat of the Night has Sidney Poitier’s Virgil Tibbs at the centre of two parallel stories that feed off and into each other like an uncontrollable, sinister, spreading viral attack. On the one hand his colored skin, fat wallet and presence in his Mississippi hometown make him a suspect of a murder mystery. But soon at the behest of the murder victim’s wife, Mrs. Colbert (Lee Grant) Tibbs, a police officer himself takes charge of the case which unfolds like a classic whodunit thriller. And while for a long time you sense that Tibbs is accumulating the isolated pieces of the puzzle that delight with their suspenseful overtones, the pay-off doesn’t quite do justice to the ride. The culmination of the investigation seems hurried and the dramatic promise threatens to waver as the motivations for the crime dangerously verge on the anti-climactic. While a representation of life with an inherent sense of realism intact, the drama in this storyline didn’t explode exponentially but suddenly felt like it came to an abrupt conclusion.

On the other hand, the more dynamic storyline, tracing the racial prejudice of the time has Tibbs dealing with the white man’s repressed and at times expressed anger. I like that Stirling Silliphant’s screenplay pencils in the varying degrees of racial archetypes capturing the extremists like a bunch of white town bullies who resort to West Side Story antics to scare, torment and drive Tibbs out of town. (Although their abrupt arrival in the climax did seem out of place.) From a diner attendant who refuses to serve Tibbs to the common white man who refuses to talk about his sister’s philandering ways in front of Tibbs to an upper class Mr. Endicott (Larry Gates) who wears a progressive mask to only slap Tibbs unexpectedly when Tibbs interrogates him to a cop Sam Wood (Warren Oates) who arrests Tibbs on account of his skin color…all these characters among others capture the atmosphere of the time and are varnished with grey tones that never reduce them to time bound stereotypes.

But the pulse of this story is the relationship between Tibbs and Police Chief, the gum chewing, robust Bill Gillespie played by Rod Steiger that adds an engaging, emotional complexity and depth to the proceedings. Their first, pressure cooker meeting is buzzing with racial overtones but in the first encounter itself we see the chief pragmatic enough to accept that Tibbs’s expertise as a “number one homicide expert” is more that valuable for a case that does seem way out of his depth. In many riveting moments we see the Chief fight the voices in his head one that wants to be ethically fair and the other that can’t help but succumb to an ingrained racial bias. In one such explosive episode the Chief goads Tibbs by asking him what he is called among his colleagues in Philadelphia and in a career-defining moment Tibbs responds doggedly, righteously and emphatically “They call me Mr. Tibbs!” (It’s what I call a pause, rewind and replay moment) As their relationship develops there comes a moment when Tibbs realizes that he too has his share of suppressed racial angst against the white man, a revelation that makes time stand still as we see Tibbs ever so gently process his own hypocrisy. But with this insight follows another insight that connects the two. Like Tibbs, the Chief too is alone, married to his work and an outsider in his land. You cannot doubt Newison’s dramatic direction in this scene as he first takes us down a road that could have easily hit the sentimental road block but just in time he takes a swift u-turn as the Chief rigidly draws boundary lines to shield his exposed vulnerability.

To watch two great actors Poitier and Steiger (who took home the Best Actor Oscar) at the top of their game, crossing swords with each other and absorbing each others energy to take the drama, moment and emotion to the next level is as exciting as it is rare. Also noteworthy is the brilliant musical score by Quincy Jones with Ray Charles’s title track setting the tone and mood for a rustic, small town setting. When we look back at this film it may seem outdated but it’s the personal individual struggle, the triumphant journey of this inter-racial friendship and the high-voltage, electrifying performances that hold, engage, thrill and suspend us in time.

Ira says
“ How’re you so sure?”
“Why do you doubt it?”

Questions, often unanswered, or answered with another, burn and simmer in the air like hot arrows, as they do in that moment above in the latter half of the film, as Poitier feels he has come close to finding the killer and Steiger challenges him. They stare at each other, eyes ablaze, the silence, quick but potent because what Poitier is really saying is “Do you think I’m wrong because I’m black?’ Murder becomes less important and race takes centre stage in this battle of wits (well Poitier’s intelligence and the startling foolhardiness, impulsiveness, prejudice, provinciality and flawed reasoning of Steiger and the people of Sparta), between two men Virgil Tibbs and Bill Gillespie, each standing their ground, firm and strong with Poitier and Steiger delivering two power house, completely on par and fiery performances.

In the heat of the Night, as the soulful voice of Ray Charles (ironic that decades later another fine African American Academy Award winning actor like Poitier, Jamie Foxx would play this very singer in a film named Ray and be the 3rd of only three African American men to take home an Oscar!) beats out his melody to dark opening credits, in the pitch black moonlit night of a small town named Sparta (a sparse yet deceptively powerful ring to it, much like the men who inhabit it), a man steps off a train, a cop, Officer Wood played by Warren Oates, with an aura of cockiness and self-importance takes a breather at a diner where the counterman, a strange, lanky BOO Radley-ish looking fellow named Ralph played by Anthony James, determinedly swats flies with an elastic rubber band. Within the first few minutes, Jewison creates an eerie and unnatural sense of foreboding. Ralph grins strangely at Wood as he leaves the diner after a gruff, but innocuous encounter and little do we know that murder, mystery, egos and racial tensions are about to collide, in a huge way.

In the Heat of the Night is a focused, gripping film that says a lot with economy and precision. Jewison (Cincinnati Kid, Moonstruck) an Academy Award winning filmmaker who’s equally adept at lighthearted comedy and powerful drama, uses extensive close-ups, moody and stark lighting, firm frames and wonderful grittiness in his storytelling to take us into the lives and minds of his characters. Rod Steiger plays Bill Gillespie Chief of Police to a group of small-town cops with pet names, private, inside jokes and a whole lot of prejudice against Negro boys. A sentiment that permeates the town’s very fabric and the landscape of Jewison’s narrative. Its in the attitudes of local people, the distances between characters in the frames, the underlying, always latent violence, the images of affluent white folks and their African American domestic help, of cotton pickers in a field and in the fierce contradictory nature of the films central relationship. Between Gillespie, a stocky white man of authority, a law enforcer and head of police whose errors in judgment are horrifyingly comical and who’s intelligence, blatantly less sharp and informed than his black counterpoint Virgil Tibbs.

Tension is everywhere and underneath everything even while the narrative itself is simple in its structure, the mystery suspenseful but somehow, less and less important, as the arc of the plot becomes something quite else and sinister in its tone of prejudice and racial hatred. We feel for Mrs. Colbert who makes an impact in just one scene, we even feel for that poor young girl who gets knocked up by the wrong guy, but the concerns of a small town where nothing stays a secret and where murder becomes a community issue become secondary, and the presence of a ‘negro’ outsider, a smart homicide expert who is the only one who seems to be getting anywhere in the case and who seems more in control than anyone else, primary and overriding. Tension is in the atmosphere and how Jewison creates that from the word go. As Officer Wood, on his nightly patrol, drives through dark desolate streets, a peeping tom, watching a naked woman in the window, till he stops by a corner, noticing something in the alley. As he discovers the scene of crime, the color RED permeates Jewison’s mis en scene. The siren on the police car, the red wood on the outer façade of the corner store, the fire hydrant and the blood.

Blood never appears again in the film, and Jewison chooses muted shades instead throughout, enhancing his storytelling through a deliberately neutral palette, latent aggression and ordinary settings. Yet, using music, lighting and prison cells to create moments of darkness, real intrigue or suspense. I loved the grays and browns of the rest of the visual landscape. I loved Jewison’s camera work, which isn’t afraid to get close and often uncomfortably personal. I loved the short specificity of scenes, the crispness of the dialogues, the sharpness and flavor the characterizations provide, the skewed angles the camera takes at crucial points, there is a purpose to everything and a fascinating focus in the direction.

And I loved how Jewison creates moments that ring with subtext. The silences between Gillespie & Tibbs, Gillespie’s mistakes, the resounding two slaps and the car rides through the town trying to retrace the events of the night the murder took place. The reversal of roles, the malice of prejudice. All these themes are explored through vivid, insightful storytelling. There are images of these men, laughably pompous, frighteningly self-assured yet ignorant that stay with me even now. Whether its in a close-up of feet and dogs trying to clamber up rocky terrain to catch the first suspect Harvey and the way that cuts to a wide shot of Harvey escaping along a bridge, or in the final tableau-like confrontation when the murderer is finally discovered or in that quiet, moody scene where Gillespie lets Tibbs into his own, private space. The white man the weaker, the more vulnerable and the black one, impeccably clothes, somehow superior.

Even as the murder is solved the film leaves us with a vague incompleteness just as Jewison intends. The complexities of race, men, motivations, socio cultural relations, discrepancies of status, wealth, and human dignity remain unresolved and often inverted. Resolution, if of any deeper kind, occurs for me in a most poignant way at the very end. As two men, diametrically opposite in every way, forced to work together finally bid each other goodbye, Gillespie tells Tibbs to take care, and with that subtle semblance of mutual respect appearing quietly, the film at its close feels for the first time, humane.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 11:40:00 +0000

FORREST GUMP (1994)

Neha says

If you put James Bond and Forrest Gump in a room together here’s how they would introduce themselves. “My name is Bond. James Bond”. In reply to which our simpleton, slow-witted, southern Forrest would say. “My name is Forrest. Forrest Gump…” What a fun movie that would make!!! But for now lets talk about Forrest Gump (1994), one of my favorite films of the 90’s that told us we can use special effects and CGI not just for sci fi and Bond movies but we can use it in sweeping character drama’s to place a fictional and memorable character like Gump in dialogue with Presidents, from Kennedy to Nixon and re-imagine history; we can use a character like Gump more effectively to represent how we as people manage to knowingly be witness to changing, turbulent and landmark political and cultural times but in hindsight we unknowingly impact and define history.

So when a younger Gump (Michael Conner Humphrey) meets a then unknown passerby Elvis Preston and innocently with his “magic legs” does a jig that later went on to become a part of Preston’s performance act, he accidentally contributed to the King’s brand equity. Or when an older Gump (Tom Hanks) meets Nixon as a ping pong champion to then later be the one to call the cops when the Watergate burglary was underway, he was the one to open the pandora’s box that led to Nixon’s fall from grace. None of these so called re-imaginations get heavy handed, political or over baked. Flashes of archival footage with effects seamlessly placing Gump in the action, television newsreel bulletins and finely used, suggestive voice over references all come together to recreate the period and space but they also give us just the right amount of fodder to connect Gump with these touchstone events. The comic value derived from having Gump shaking hands with Kennedy to only talk of how he wants to go to the toilet is precious and simply priceless.

But while inventively used historic context and special effects is part of the film’s recipe for success, the major contributive factor remains its evocative characterizations and through Gump and his interactions, experiences and relationships, director Robert Zemeckis celebrates life, destiny, universal moral values, triumphs and tragedies, love and death. The “Run Forrest Run” iconic scene rings dramatic and cinematic even today. The older Forrest Gump truly went on to run towards extraordinary times that made him in his own words “a football star, war hero, national celebrity and shrimp-boat captain” and the breaking of his leg braces which is simply a powerful metaphor for how he shatters his mental, inferiority shackles to embrace his destiny resonates through the subtext of the entire story. At one point Gump asks his mother (Sally Field) “What’s my destiny, Momma?” When his “best good friend” Bubba (Mykelti Williamson) lies wounded in Gump’s arms and says, “Why’d this have to happen?” and when his Lieutenant from Nam, Dan Taylor (Gary Sinise) cries in frustration,” I had a destiny. I was supposed to die in the field of honor.” or when Jenny’s life (Robin Wright Penn) takes a darker turn, Zemeckis along with the soul-stirring and rich writing from Eric Roth reminds us how “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what your gonna get” and with the poignant use of a wandering, CGI created white feather to show us how we drift through time guided by the invisible hand of destiny that eventually takes us just where we need to be, Forrest Gump as an experience is thoughtful, thematically pulpy, dramatic, occasionally peppered with tuned yet unexpected humor and filled with life essences that inspire, involve and assault our tear ducts.

The unassuming, real and heart warming performances do wonderful things to convert sentimentality into raw and reaching emotion. It’s really a master class in acting with Sally Field, Robin Wright Penn and Gary Sinise doing immense justice to their meaty roles but its Tom Hanks and his earnest Gump who we remember this film for. The way in which he understands this character’s big hearted spirit and goodwill, captures his humanity, enraptures us with an endearing empathy and innocence in his eyes and physical makeup, navigates gracefully through heartbreak, loss of loved ones and reunions with old mentors like Lt. Taylor and remains unscarred by the cynical balls that life throws his way just made me want to be a better person. Forrest Gump gave Hanks his second Oscar to decorate his cabinet (the first rewarded for his performance in Philadelphia). Gump’s the sort of underdog that only has a low IQ against him but can run as fast as Usain Bolt and his journey reminds us that the secret to success is not altitude but attitude and Gump has loads of that in a humble, earthy, pure, unruffled and optimistic sort of way that draws people to him, even passerby’s at a bus stop who take out time to hear his tales. I was also affected by the gentle, unconditional and bittersweet love story between Jenny and Gump. No matter where or what Gump is going through, he invariably thinks of Jenny and she becomes an omnipresent influence in his life, through the good and bad times. In fact come to think of it the love story is one of the most touching romances I’ve seen that gently glorifies the redemptive power of love.

With Zemeckis’s assured and mature direction, top-notch performances from Hank’s and the supporting cast, easy pacing and a lovingly calibrated narrative, Forrest Gump is not just another Oscar pleasing movie exercise. It did win 6 Academy Awards including Best Picture but its got soul and passion, insight and drama, universal appeal with many a memorable dialogue and moment that stays with you long after its curtain call.

Ira says

‘Life is like a box of chocolates’, the kind of boxes that don’t come with sophisticated leaflets telling you what shape is which flavor. The line that begins Forrest Gump, a movie that floated its way down into our consciousness in 1994 and swept 6 six Academy Awards (some well deserved but I still think Shawshank was shortchanged), is one of its most memorable and quoted to date. But to me, more special and more memorable is what Forrest, (a mesmerizing Hanks, the only actor the world can associate with the character even today and the only one in my eyes who could play him with that drawling, matter of fact poignancy and simplicity) says next, that really sticks. ‘Mamma always said you could tell a lot about people by their shoes. Where they’ve been and where they’re going’. Elegant, lucid and meaningful words, their significance made richer through the film from that unforgettable scene where he breaks his braces and Jenny urges him on to run to the final episode of his life, where for no particular reason, Forrest, just, runs.

Even though ‘Run Forrest, runnn’, is a line that’s been parodied, used affectionately or in jest ever since, (I found myself mimicking it again!) and though the moment, especially on a second or third viewing, has a ring of sentimental indulgence to it, I have to admit, I enjoyed Zemeckis’s inspiring, heartfelt fable, yet again. And that’s really what it is to me. More than an epic, more than a pop cultural trip down memory lane, its historical scope or its sprawling romance, it’s a fable about an extraordinary man.

Zemeckis, who’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit is still unsurpassed for its pioneering use of special effects, animation and live action and is a superb film if you haven’t seen it, of course brings his expertise in technology to the table here as well. But more than the special effects (think Gump meeting Nixon and the like) this time he gives you an uplifting and sweeping story in an uncommonly intimate way, because of its uncommon and wonderfully intimate hero, a man we grow to love.
The film spans thirty years of American history and political evolution, and Gump’s journey at times feel exaggerated, and the oddball, but delightful role of fate, coincidence and chance, gets repetitive (he meets Elvis, teaches him how to dance, he meets 3 American presidents, becomes a millionaire, becomes a billionaire investing in Apple, and goes from Football star to Vietnam soldier to Shrimp boat Caption with a blasé sense of normalcy). But even while the narrative does get too far fetched, the music too literal, and writing veers precariously towards the sentimental, GUMP, man more and movie, get you because Zemeckis keeps his touch focused and his characters rich and rounded.

Wonderfully edited with that difficult and famous crane shot following a feather floating down to Forrest’s feet, from the word go, we see it all through his perspective. That incredible voiceover narration of Hanks, who is Gump, iconically and consistently, is one of the best in any film I have seen in the voicing and in how Zemeckis weaves it into his storytelling. The feather lands gently and the camera moves up slowly to reveal a neatly dressed man, perhaps a little too neatly, dressed in comfortable, casual and perfectly aligned clothing, sitting with legs slightly apart and hands resting on his knees. There isn’t something completely quite right and yet Hanks makes Gump his very own imbuing him with the body language, mannerisms, voice, intonation and eyes of a truly endearing and remarkable hero. His name is Forrest. Forrest Gump. And he’s just as normal as everybody else.
Hanks is Gump. A character who’s not just ‘special’ or mentally challenged, but one who’s simple, childlike understanding of events, people, and the world around him, turn poetic, humorous, moving and surprising in delightfully unexpected ways. And magical realism, the impossible blend into his journey, because Hanks performance grounds them into a believable, plausible reality.

Fuelled by his love for JENNY, childhood sweetheart and one true friend, played with a gripping, vulnerable, spontaneous honesty by the always lovely ROBIN WRIGHT PENN, at one point Gump insists in a quiet, funny tantrum like moment that he ‘knows what love is’, that he understands that emotion. He may not be smart, he may not know what life’s box of chocolates will give him, but he goes where it takes him, always wary, wondering, protective of, and deeply attached to his Jenny.
Is this love, as we know it? Can it ever be? But does it really matter? ‘Have you ever been with a girl Forrest?’ Jenny asks proceeding to remove her top and place his hand on he breast. Gump is a boy, at the end of it all, and Hanks’ subtle squirm, eyes shifting downwards and up again, embarrassed, tell us more than enough to remind us of that. Part idolizing, part romanticizing, part forgiving, Jenny is mother and friend and the love of his life. Jenny is the thing that keeps him going, so it becomes that much more moving that the first time we see Hank cry, is not when his best good friend Bubba dies, or even when his mamma dies, its when Jenny dies, and a little before, when he first sees what Jenny gives him, his son, the smartest in his class, Little Forrest.

But even as the movie insists on celebrating Forrest, and his immunity to somehow be touched by darkness, you cannot help but think that therein lies the all too simple ideal of not having to comprehend, question or worry about that which lies beyond our realm of comprehension. War, money, health, love and pain are experienced by this character through a prism of free spirited openness, the ability to embrace life and what it has to offer. If you think about it, that worldview the film accepts seems simplistic but we have to take Gump for what it he is and what Zemeckis gives us. And to me, its because of the evenness of tone, an avoidance of melodrama, splashes of oddball wit, satire and irony, and the episodic landscape Zemeckis creates, that it works. The performances and his great cast too make this one stay rooted and devoid of caricatures. Be it Sally Field as Gump’s mamma or Gary Sinise as Lieutenant Dan, the much needed cynic who balances out and negates excessive mush.

Apart from the motif of running through the film (one of favorite images and metaphors especially in that final section), I like that Zemeckis allows for moments of real tension, of real pain, of real loss, in addition to the joy, humour and discovery. Jenny lingering at the edge of the top of a building, Lt. Dan crashing to the floor off his hospital bed and dragging Forrest down with him, or Jenny breaking down before her abusive fathers old house till she collapses and Forrest’s attempt to console her, the two sitting in silence on the ground as his voiceover explains, “sometimes there just aren’t enough rocks”. Sometimes, you just have to accept that Shit Happens. Which Gump has, abut his condition without self-pity and without shame. As he loses his mamma, friends, Jenny, finds himself alone, it is his eternal spirit of optimism, and his belief in keeping on going that takes this film floating like its final feather into a realm of universal, and life affirming hope. And that’s really all I have to say about that, for now.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 09:04:00 +0000

ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976)

Neha says

The brilliance of Alan Pakula’s 1976 All The President’s Men lies in it’s ability to marry an authentic true story account of the Watergate scandal with the high-thrill, suspenseful pacing of a detective whodunit thriller that succeeds in not only recreating the darkest hour of American politics but it also vividly portrays the crucial role of investigative print journalism that triggered the shame-laced downfall of President Nixon’s administration. With scintillating detail, scene after scene bombards us with one revelation after another as Pakula’s protagonists, two hungry reporters Woodward and Bernstein, follow a convoluted money trail that eventually leads to the top men at the White House (and hence the title). And while this journey of discovery and dissection comes with its fair share of red herrings, dead ends, scared witnesses and “non-denial confessions”, the fact that I felt like I was playing out my own Nancy Drew fantasy with a notebook full of charts and arrows to connect the clues says a lot for Pakula’s ability to make us feel like we are right in the heart of the action.

As a natural byproduct, Pakula observes the incestuous, slippery relationship between politics and journalism but he also knows how to create and sustain a chilling sense of dramatic paranoia with an air of danger looming over each frame. Woodward with his back to the camera secretively whispering into the telephone of a public booth or the darkly lit and dingy underground car park where Woodward often visits his well connected, enigmatic informant nicknamed “Deep Throat” (the truth of his identity deliciously left anonymous) or the numerous witnesses who feed that sense of dread with a belief that they are being watched to Woodward and Bernstein themselves fearing for their lives and add to that Gordon “Prince of Darkness” Willis’s provocative cinematography and what Pakula masterminds is an atmospheric political thriller. Pakula shrewdly uses the buzzing, edgy newsroom set piece and the banter and internal politics between different department heads, not to mention the stand out satirical turn from Jason Robards, Jr. who essays the part of the iconoclastic Post editor Ben Bradlee to give us a highly realistic, well-crafted, ground zero sense of time and space.

Redford as the fact-following, ethical Woodward and Hoffman as the impulsive Bernstein who could do with a lesson or two in public relations are really two halves of a whole and together they embody the grit and focus, use perseverance and strategy, employ confrontation and rhetoric in a way that’s so specific that the actors or rather stalwarts soon divest themselves of any starry baggage and become Woodward and Bernstein who are simple every day blokes inspired by their job and the responsibility that goes with it and hence unfailingly earthy and relatable. So when the final moments do come with Nixon on television being sworn in for his second term in the foreground with the two reporters in the background writing their iconic piece, its such a visually potent moment and feels like a well earned exclamation point one that celebrates not just the triumph of the press and the power of the written word where the pounding of the typewriter key is akin to the firing of an AK 47 but it becomes larger than that…it leaves you with a cheer of how with powerful intent justice, truth and democracy does and can truly prevail.

Ira says

Pakula’s All the President’s Men is one of the most gripping thrillers I have ever seen. Make that newspaper, true story inspired, political, conspiracy thrillers. Not only because its set against Nixon’s Watergate scandal (a topic, time period and incident in America’s political history that has fascinated filmmakers and filmgoers across the world since it occurred in the early 70’s, most recently revisited in Ron Howard’s highly acclaimed FROST/NIXON), not only because it firmly places Pakula, a director who knows his suspense, storytelling and subject matter, gives intelligence and depth to a genre that is less about action, than about mystery, details, information, and intrigue, top place amongst the directors of the 70’s (Pakula was still to make this dramatic and emotionally powerful Sophies Choice), not only because it has two super performances from an always good Hoffman (Bernstein) and a surprisingly convincing Redford (Woodward) , but because it draws you in to the world of the WASHINGTON POST, circa June 1st, 1972. And it tell you the story of 2 young reporters who are about to crack open a story that would change the shape, meaning and value of the country’s political fabric and entire governing system forever.

Pakula wastes no time, no characters, no scenes, spaces, silences or frames. Smacking you with that opening typewriter font that whacks on the date onto the screen, plunging into live TV coverage of Nixon’s chopper landing onto a roof, and the lofty voice of an announcer introducing the president of the United States just before he is to address the “House of the Senate” to efficient, non-fussy opening credits and a seamless, startling, abrupt sequence of 4 suited men, ‘breaking an entry’ into a secured building, he sets up context and incident within the first ten minutes.

AAnd that’s only where things start to get interesting. Swiftly taking you into the realistic, rapid-fire typewriter-clicking infused, crowded, busy, and ticking office of the Washington Post, as you meet the men who constitute the American capital’s most widely read newspaper, including two young reporters Woodward and Bernstein, the film begins to take on the colors, detailed art direction, crystal clear focus, texture, flavor, intensity and absolutely engrossing narrative structure of a story about investigative journalism and what will become the biggest scandal in the country’s political history. In a brilliant cut early on in the film, that enhances the urgency of what is about to unfold and brings the story back to these 2 unlikely, determined, indefatigable reporters, (because the film is really theirs from start to finish despite the great supporting cast) just after the senior men at The Post have been arguing about letting these young ones handle the case, one reminding the other about a time when he was ‘hungry and what that hunger can fuel, Pakula cuts to Redford furiously typing, his sheer determination established right there. From the wonderful scene where Woodward and Bernstein first interact, Hoffman silently taking the only ‘nine month experienced’ Redford’s papers, making minor adjustments to his incoherent notes, that single encounter hinting at how well they will work as a team, how they would play off each other, at their latent egos and edge of competitiveness that fades as they get further embroiled in the case, to the way Pakula build, creates and sustains tension in his film. That superb library of congress scene is unforgettable, Redford and Hoffman, bent over a large round table in the overpowering building, flipping diligently through mounds of library cards, the camera overhead watching them, moving slowly wider, and wider, the music and the sounds of turning slips clear and steady, taking us deeper into the story, holding us on the edge of our seats, as we wait, breathless to see if they will find the ‘hard’ evidence they desperately need. The image finally of them, shot from high up, their frames small and indistinguishable, leaving you hoping and yet somehow knowing the distance means they are lost once more.

The ups and downs of gathering information, following leads, breaking through, not breaking through, getting the story, making front page, going deeper, getting facts that are ‘harder’, that take on stakes and a meaning that is national and larger than anyone can imagine, a real fact the men at the newspaper become increasingly aware of. The boys know it, especially Redford who knows ‘facts’ make a story and reminds Hoffman constantly, bringing his wilder, coffee satiated delirium down to reality. Though both actors embody their characters with absolute commitment, I loved how their way of working, their personalities and their chemistry plays off and balances each other so well. And Pakula lets each of them play. Hoffman, as he cleverly interrogates a woman in her own living room or Redford as he finds out crucial information in a fabulous long take of him sitting on his desk, making calls, the camera moving in closer ever so slightly as the discovery of two key players is confirmed. I loved how gritty, how personal, how involved, Pakula makes you feel through his camera work, great editing, sharp writing and sheer suspense. The screenplay unfolds like a puzzle and just when you think you are hitting home, a big fat loophole emerges again. Investigative journalism is a fascinating, layered and rich maze of information, fallacies and truth and Pakula gives his story the cast, characters, setting and tension to make for a real-life slice of the Washington Post and America’s brittle socio-political climate of the time.
I also loved how the presidency, the re-nomination, the re-election are a part of the story, as it is part of the frame, omnipresent and constant but not bigger than the story itself. That the figures, the millions, the extent, the depth, the scale of the expose unravels slowly, in bits and pieces, in incomplete parts but even then echoing through the workings of a seemingly normal political system. The overt, national sense of normalcy is frightening.

In a scene somewhere around the halfway point in the film, a TV set on the edge of the left side of the frame blares in the foreground, as Redford, on the right, in the background, types without once looking up. Slowly, as the re-election becomes less important, the story and the culmination of Woodward and Bernstein’s efforts becomes the focus, the deliverance, and the more searing, crucial outcome of the narrative and that scene. I loved the sense of intrigue Pakula never lets go of, characters like the always half lit source DEEP THROAT (a man who who’s identity was hidden for 30 years in the actual case) whom Redford meets in a quiet, desolate, dark parking lot, the secondary, supporting cast of men and women (the endless doors and houses Woodward and Bernstein go knocking on, the very few who actually come through with information, with the fearlessness to ‘talk’ at whatever cost) and I loved that Ben Bradlee (played toughly by Jason Robards) stands by his boys, going with the story, allowing the spirit of journalism, camaraderie and American freedom of speech come through powerfully in the film. With moments of humor, (think a nervous top political official worried about his clandestine affairs coming out in the paper, repeatedly asserting that he has a ‘wife and a family and a dog and a cat’!), and closing credits that ring with hard cold, unshakable weight, truth and victory, All the President’s Men is a film that sucks you in with intelligence and doesn’t let up. To paraphrase COLSEN, Special Counsel to the president, when you ‘get em by the ‘gut’, their hearts and minds will follow’. Pakula pretty much does that with this one.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 09:01:00 +0000

MODERN TIMES (1936)

Neha says

The legendary Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin or should I say The Little Tramp remains to date the funniest icon of world cinema and while that declaration won’t surprise many, what did intrigue me as it might you, was how an inspired conversation with Mahatma Gandhi in one of Chaplin’s tours in Europe sowed the seed for the story of his 1936 classic social satire Modern Times. I would have loved to be a fly on that wall as Gandhi and Chaplin discussed politics, fascism, inequality and more significantly the pitfalls of technological excess. When Chaplin returned to America to see how unemployment was corroding the core of the nation with technology making workers redundant, Modern Times was his rebellion, his grunt and his voice against modern equals to tech-changing times. Its not that he had a problem with progress he just had a problem with greed motivated, livelihood-stealing, technological corruption.

Early on in the film Chaplin, a factory worker is the designated dummy to test out the workings of a huge feeding machine. And while the slapstick routine around the machine is quite unforgettable, the “How lazy can you be?” cautionary subtext of being over dependant on a machine that after all can break down is not lost. As Chaplin wrestles his way in and out of jail and jobs, moving naturally from one inventive comic set-up to the next, Chaplin digs into his never ending handy bag of distinctive comic mannerisms, nuanced expressions and whimsical physical humor to keep us heartily entertained. Yet in this man vs. machine battle it’s the triumphant nature of humanity and that bittersweet quality of pathos that we today call “Chaplinisque” that wins us over, explored mainly through a never seen before Chaplin love story that has him forging a tender, lively and spirited relationship with a runaway orphan played by a luminescent Paulette Goddard (then Chaplin’s wife and probably his best leading lady here and in The Great Dictator that followed after.) In a dream sequence we have Chaplin giving a send up to the great American dream where he returns home from work to be greeted by a loving Goddard at the door and in a trademark comically Chaplin way the milking of a cow for a glass of milk or the plucking of an apple from the tree outside a window is uncanny in it’s reflection of the modern times that you and I live in where organic living is the buzz of the day. Inspite of the many setbacks, Chaplin’s “never say die” attitude rubs off on Goddard and as they strut off into the sunset in the closing shots of the film one has to admire Chaplin’s understanding of human behavior and emotions and how he masterfully uses comedy to varnish a soul stirring socially conscious subtext that has a relevance in a world where Y2K’s and Copenhagen climate change summits govern headlines.

At the time sound technology had made great headway but Chaplin was still holding out against spoken dialogue, keeping in tune with both his story’s thematic stand and his belief that to tell a good story you do not need dialogue. He generously did use though a rich, synchronized orchestra with a plethora of sound effects and his own music, a score that includes the unforgettable “Smile” and later on in the film he does choose to finally speak his first words on film in a garbled, gibberish tongue that’s yet again a rebuke to the modern times of dialogue driven cinema. Strangely enough today the litmus test of a good screenplay is how effective it is without dialogue!!! So yes while watching the film I couldn’t help but sense Sir Chaplin rolling in his grave, chuckling in glee at how right he got it and how ahead of his times he really was as both a visionary and a storyteller.

Ira says

Here’s something funny. And I mean funny in a Chaplinesque way, a way that tickles your rib consistently but is poignant, moving, sad, and often rebellious. In these Modern Times of the internet, touch-tone-technology, plastic money, fast cars, fast people, fast everything, 3d, dizzying effects, dizzying spectacle and endless words, nothing could be more refreshing than going back to Chaplin’s always ‘Modern’ silent movie masterpieces. This one, part of his more overtly political films of the 30’s, a ‘story of industry, individual enterprise and humanity in the pursuit of happiness’ is as timeless and relevant today as it was in post depression America. Vaguely sensing how meaningful it would be for my 9-year-old cousin to watch the film, instead of downloading an episode of those popular sitcoms, I felt myself realize how a Chaplin film is really amongst Hollywood’s finest cinematic and movie-watching experiences at any time, for anyone.

Because that is the beauty of a true classic, its appeal across time, across age, across culture, it’s significance, which is pertinent decades later, and its ability to entertain and enlighten. When Chaplin opens with an image of a herd of sheep, cutting to men flocking out of a subway, the resemblance, the analogy, the parody is striking and startling, and you instantly know the director, star and music composer intends to give his buffoonery plenty of bite. As the rousing, stomping music score picks up, the men move mechanically to factories to begin their day of work. A day that allows no time for ‘stalling’ i.e. going to the bathroom, and less for eating lunch. Machinery, cogs and wheels, larger than life, and much larger than the men themselves fill the screen till a huge TV screen image begins to boom out orders from the ‘president’ of the “electro Corp’s” chamber where the suited man sits doing jigsaw puzzles and reading comic strips in the newspaper, for the most part. Chaplin, a factory worker, dressed in grimy overalls, who’s task is to tighten screws along a moving panel of iron machine parts stands in a 3 man assembly line, attending to his duties with a fierce precision.

As you watch that incredible body language, the twitching arms, slightly jumping feet, the eyebrows that have a life of their own, the eyes that never rest, and the hilarious, perfect comic timing of all his action and interaction, as always, you just cant take your eyes off him. Some vaudevillian style slapstick and mimed antics follow, Chaplin plays truant, disaster strikes, he’s made a guinea pig for an automated feeding machine (a sequence that is as stifling, scary and uncomfortable to watch as it is funny) and before you can say ‘unit 5’, he’s been maimed and marred by machinery, visual comedy that is typical of him but imagery that is seething with satire. Watching him slip down into the cogs and come out unscathed is funny, and a relief, a feeling much of Chaplin’s work provides but frightening in its obsessive determination for a worker to obey orders, complete the work, avoid what could and will be grave censure from the higher powers that be.

Obsessively tightening screws, faster and faster, slipping into dance and ballet, tightening screws on everyone and everything he sees, think overall straps, ears, buttons, and women’s clothes in inappropriate places (a Chaplin film, after all, is never without moments of cheeky, naughty humor too!) in a fit of hysterical, extremely funny madness, Chaplin dances around, out onto to the street, and back again, swinging from a life size hook, driven to a nervous breakdown by the demands of being a dehumanized, almost machine like, automated thing, himself.
The irony and analogy of his very job, “tightening screws”, what needs to be done to the brains of men who believe in making machines of other men is obvious but never in your face. The image of him caught in the wheels, constrained in a feeding machine or hanging by a hook, similarly, meaningful but funny. And as the film moves into chapters, as he is whisked away to a hospital to recover, released and wrongly assumed to be leader of a workers communist revolt, prison becomes Chaplin’s second and desired home, a place of comfort where his affable nature and charming spirit make him feel welcome and most safe.

The law, the city, modernity, poverty, social acceptance, survival and love are persistent themes in this one as they are in many of his films. But Modern Times is especially enchanting because of how humor, a wonderful, alive music score, truly energetic performances, not just from our innocent, wonderful hero but from his lady Goddard, (playing a petty thief, a gamin who ‘refuses to go hungry’), and the underlying social and human themes blend in with each other. Goddard, feisty, without missing a beat, in her introductory close up, stripping stolen bananas and tossing them to young street kids, brims with youthful beauty, a comely, humorous charm and a rebellious spirit perfect for a Chaplin heroine. Attempting to save her from going to prison, only too happy to return there himself, Chaplin epitomizes the unemployed but positive spirit of the poor but in many ways carefree. His is a hero of the common people, one who little else but a shirt on his back and a smile to go with it. And yet, Chaplin as hero and icon is so much more. I loved how he inverts things in the narrative, going against our expectations be it how his rescue and attempt to protect Goddard fails miserably as a witness assures the policeman it was the girl who is the thief, or the way he comically believes ‘smuggled nose powder’ to be salt, gets high as a kite on a drug and helps prevent a prison-break or the way he is, though recommended by the Sheriff as ‘honest and trustworthy’, often dim witted and not so honest. Chaplin never gets weepy, sentimental, didactic or weighty. Letting a delightful supporting cast, fantastic sound score, music, editing and mood do the talking, through elegantly, succinctly titled chapter like episodes, his storytelling is sharp and meandering, satirical and touching, sweet and scathing, and always so very simple.

As Goddard and him sit by the side of a street, on the run from the law, fugitives but funnily in love, knowingly kindred, you see an image of a pretty little home and a perfect little middle class couple in the background of a wide shot. The wife runs out to bid her husband, off to work with his hat and briefcase, goodbye. Giddy and affectionate, she clasps her hands together, her right toe lightly lifting up backwards a she rushes back, sighing, into the house. And its not Chaplin’s harmless, inoffensive imitation of her, or the hilarious dream sequence of Goddard and him as he asks her to imagine if they had a little home like that, or the way that image has apples and grape trees, cows, steak, floral patterns and a table to eat at that stays with me now. It’s the image of them skating through the 4th floor of a department store, a floor entitled, ‘toys’ and of them becoming children again, the image of her writing down words of a song Chaplin just cant remember as he is asked to perform before a live audience at a swish restaurant they both have jobs at, on his shirt sleeve cuff, and it’s the image of them walking down a road, not into the sunset, but at ‘DAWN’, into the sunrise, undefeated, but together, that stays with me, even now. For his optimistic spirit, for his ability to blend farce, tragedy, and humanity into everything he touches, his performances that are physically demanding, effortless, entertaining, and tireless, and for his storytelling that packs in so much, one viewing alone is never alone to appreciate the humor, simplicity, poignancy and beauty of it all, for me Chaplin is a one of a kind and undefeated entertainer.

noreply@blogger.com (chicksonflicks) — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:14:00 +0000

THE WILD BUNCH (1969)

Neha says
The game changing gritty violence and carnage, along with the sweeping vistas of the outback and the high contrast photography by Lucien Ballard has a new vigor and sharpness in the beautifully restored widescreen director’s cut edition, making Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 elegy to a fast disappearing western tradition and his epic story of good vs. evil, cop vs. robber that much more breathtaking and numbing. Peckinpah’s thematically rich screenplay is constantly gnawing, albeit with its share of moral ambiguity, at the fragile relationship between right and wrong. Central to the story is the Wild Bunch, a group of bandits led by Pike (William Holden), coming to terms with changing times with only a code of honor that sometimes causes friction in the ranks but eventually brings them together. Holden, Oates, Johnson and Borgnine take the unscripted but Peckinpah’s inspirational on-set addition, the long walk to their death, choosing to take on the might of the ruthless Mexican General Mapache (Emilio Fernandez) to save their love struck comrade Angel (Jaime Sanchez) in a climactic apocalyptic tragedy where an orgy of erotic and bloody carnage changed the face of cinematic violence forever. Pike’s broken relationship with Thornton (Robert Ryan) is a core emotional thread explored mainly by the power of suggestion and it reaches its admirable conclusion with Thornton taking Pikes’ pistol from his holster as a memento of both an affecting friendship and betrayal. These anti-heroes garner much sympathy from us as Peckinpah observes uncompromisingly not only their flaws but also their humanity in some hair raising moments. The Bunch leaving Angel’s village like in a funeral procession or when Pike uses two simple words “Let’s go” to convey an awakening of the spirit dazzle us with the power of quiet introspection. While the extended sequences of decadence at General Mapache’s camp could have done with a little trimming to tighten the running time, the film manages in this full throttle, testosterone, epic ballad to capture the time period’s objectification of women in a way that disturbs as much as it enlightens. The quality of the cast and performances cannot be undermined nor can Peckinpah’s ability to balance melodrama with realism that leaves us with some unforgettable impressions of a time, era, culture and internal struggle.

Ira says

There is something almost unsettling in the way Holden, Borgnine, Oates and the wild, withered, unconventional, and motley men of the bunch inhabit the roles they play. Because, it isn’t easy to like them and it isn’t easy to understand them. The first fifteen minutes of The Wild Bunch are a mini film right there and Peckinpah, who knows the thin lines between humor, humanity, violence and fear, plays wildly during that first section, socking us with a blood bath and what will be the beginning of a game of cat and mouse, in every form and shape, and with everything in between to follow. And yet, his storytelling is simple, straightforward, his editing incredible especially during the action sequences, his landscape rugged, raw, dusty, arid, lonely, yet lyrical, his camera moody, involved, sharp, unhinged and at times absolutely still, in those moments, mesmerized it seems, almost as much as we are, by the world its capturing and by the fascinating confluence of characters that inhabit it.

To me, The Wild Bunch isn’t just a Western in the strictest sense- the outlaws, the Mexican, Texan landscapes, characters on the outskirts of society who are for the most part, on horses (well done cast, for being so at ease on the animals, hell, more than you seem on land- except if you have guns, women or alcohol), the law, the other law, all kinds of law and no law, and a country, which in this case, is for old men. As it is for children, and I loved how these two extremes are used as such powerful symbols in the film. Peckinpah opens with the bunch, disguised as ‘soldiers’ on stolen army horses, riding silently into a town where they take some railroad folks captive. As another gang of ‘gringos’ hired by those railroad officials, tries to outwit and catch them, a temperance union sings of abstinence, strolling down the streets of a brown, faded landscape to ‘gather by the river’. Meanwhile, children, their young, innocent faces, smiling and frighteningly happy by the side of a railway track are caught in extreme close-ups, delighting as they watch a scorpion fight off a sea of worms and maggots. And you feel yourself cringe, suck in your breath, because the images are disturbing, the silences unnerving and the false mirth ominous. It will all explode, the town does get ‘burnt down to hell’ and the rifles and screams resound till that image of the scorpions being scorched in a fire, dissolves into the massacred bodies on the street. Right from the broken opening credits and that cross cut opening sequence, it’s a violent, violent game and a fractured one. And yet there’s a code, a unity, a camaraderie, a law of ‘men’, of a strange brotherhood in a time and in a country which, is really a desolated, torn apart, war zone. As the film moves through that Mexico-US border territory physically, it captures these ambiguous essences of the time where gangs, bandits and ambitious, cruel generals, beyond their time and at the fag ends of their lives still try to rule, slaughter, rebel, loot and kill, their sole aim being to attain gold and women, stay out of harrowing prisons, be beyond the arms of the ‘law’, and hold on to the only life they know, whatever the costs.

Characters, including music, secondary figures, silent figures, the setting itself take on a new meaning in Peckinpah’s tale which to me is haunting, disturbing and fuelled by the highest of stakes. And with its layered narrative, occupies several genres. A western, a heist, a chase, action adventure and a human drama of brotherhood and a way of life.

Holden is superb, and the scene by the campfire, soon after the opening raid as he ponders over his life as a bandit, Peckinpah cutting back to a color saturated flashback now and then, makes him almost sympathetic from the beginning. There’s a softness in his eyes even as his plans never fail, as he never gets caught, he goes on killing without a flinch or suggestion of conscience, a comrade dies and he needs to move on, its all part of the deal, part of the role he must pay as leader to the others, and rebel to himself. Yet there are regrets and compassion for Sykes, for Angel, for the woman he beds and will never se again, and for the man who’s after him, with whom he once ‘ran’, who was once on his side. As commanding as Holden is, equally effective is his foe, Mr. Thornton played with a silent, bitter intensity by Robert Ryan. But to me, Holden is Pikes. And his performance is incredible, baffling, irksome. Why do I like a man like that? Is it principles? It is the laughter? Moments of levity, the humor that all of them bring in to the fabric of the tale and their performances so scarily and effortlessly? Is the kindness in his eyes? Or is that Peckinpah paints him, though old and morally reprehensible, as a paternal hero? I think it’s a bit of all of that. And not any one.

Violence can’t be shaken off though, not by me, not by the wild bunch, and not by the story Peckinpah wants to tell. And in his showing of it, he never cowers. The action is hard-hitting and visceral, without fuss, without effects, without even the lyrical melodies that fill a lot of the other sections. Interludes in a Hot Bath, in a Mexican town, folk dances by a campfire, women and merriment, music that is not excessive and used for mood and emphasis, natural light, and Peckinpah’s astounding screenplay which constantly breaks your anticipation with sharp observation and rich but minimal dialogue, provides counterpoints in values, institutions, characters and beliefs throughout. Apart from Holden, Sykes, Angel, and Mapache, stand out as symbols of the time and the film, and for their heartfelt, open and honest performances. Pitting men of varying ages, backgrounds, with different personal journeys, weaknesses and strengths against each other, Peckinpah paints a picture of a time where survival, perseverance, loyalty and desperation infuse his narrative at every step, making you question it all through a real time grittiness.

When the men are out on their final mission to steal guns for general Mapache, that wonderful train robbing sequence takes time, quiet apart from the sounds of the chugging engines and men moving about or calling to each other, building slowly, in suspense to derailing and escaping, being chased, almost faltering on a bridge, blowing that up with dynamite, getting away and laughing in victory, and ending in that unsatisfying knowledge that the game, the chase, that this life, is never over. Sharing the last few sips of a bottle of liquor, leaving none for the last man, the men heartily enjoy the inside joke and I was jolted once more by the recognition of how alive they are in those moments of laughter. Does it excuse their actions? The Bunch’s multiple killings or Mapache’s men’s’ actions as they destroy their own people out of sheer ignorance, with a machine gun they don’t know how to use? Not in the least, and the best thing about this one is that Peckinpah doesn’t ask us to let it.