1949: Top Ten

1.       Late Spring (Ozu)
2.       White Heat (Walsh)
3.       Reign of Terror (Mann) 
4.       The Third Man (Reed) 
5.       Adam’s Rib (Cukor) 
6.       Battleground (Wellman) 
7.       Kind Hearts and Coronets (Hamer) 
8.       Obsession (Dmytryk) 
9.       They Live By Night (Ray) 
10.   She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (Ford)

Honorable Mentions (Alphabetical Order):  Africa Screams (Barton),  The Big Steal (Siegel), Bitter Rice (De Santis), Border Incident (Mann), Caught (Ophuls), Colorado Territory (Walsh), Criss Cross (Siodmak), Flamingo Road (Curtiz), The Great Madcap (Bunuel), The Heiress (Wyler), House of Strangers (Mankiewicz), I Shot Jesse James (Fuller), I Was a Male War Bride (Hawks), The Inspector General (Koster), Intruder in the Dust (Clarence Brown), A Letter to Three Wives (Mankiewicz), On the Town (Kelly and Donen), The Quiet Duel (Kurosawa), The Reckless Moment (Ophuls), Sands of Iwo Jima (Dwan), The Set-Up (Wise), Le Silence de la mer (Melville), The Small Black Room (Powell and Pressburger), Stray Dog (Kurosawa), Thieves Highway (Dassin), Whirlpool (Preminger), Whiskey Galore! (Mackendrick).

Wishlist/Blindspots: Beyond the Forest, Easy Living, The Fountainhead, Impact, Festival Day, Knock on Any Door, Manon, Slaterry’s Hurricane, Twelve O’clock High, The Spider and the Fly.

2014: Top Ten

I get such pointless anxiety when I try and put these lists together. My thought process is complicated and annoying. For instance, I think you can see that my first four picks are all awards sirens, three of which reek of prestigious domestic auteur status. I genuinely feel stupid for going so steadfastly with the grain, but I can assure you I am being sincere in my adulation. I guess I’d feel equally stupid disingenuously throwing lesser known and loved films at the top if I didn’t truly love them as much.  I’ll admit that I’m the type to go into a Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, and Paul Thomas Anderson (not to mention Jarmusch, Fincher, and Dardenne) with high expectations and said expectations don’t usually prove in detriment to my overall impression. However, I’m convinced that I’m not completely blind to the likely flaws in each of my top movies and I hope I’m not the type to “carry anyone’s water” so to speak. In a way I guess I’m relieved to find the Andersons continuing to challenge even their most steadfast champions either by burrowing further into their inimitable worlds or possibly throwing the final mound of dirt on most of what we’ve known before. Inherent Vice is many things, but the thing that stuck the most with me appears in the book’s epigraph where Pynchon writes “under the paving stones, the beach!” I didn’t really know what to write about it after seeing it as I was trying to arrange all of the information and hopefully make sense of it. I saw today that Glenn Kenny wrote a wonderful essay on said epigraph’s “end of an era” theme and how this worked its way into the movie. For me, Inherent Vice felt like a eulogy buried within a romp about the encroaching extinction of Doc’s way of life. His act of altruism towards Coy Harlingen and his family truly moved me and took it to that next level of adoration that maybe was missing from some of his previous works. Reading the book is certainly helping fill in the voids that mind couldn’t possibly process in a theater (some of the lines were damn near inaudible).

And how about Wes Anderson, whose style and vibe has been mocked and parodied ad nauseam by his fans and detractors. Here he’s created a mock world to ape that of WWII, with a similar encroaching neighbor-sellout-neighbor-malady and a similar (yet fatal) act of selflessness from a dodgy antihero. I’ve spoken to many friends around the same age (early thirties) ---- for whom Anderson’s first three features proved critical to their development  ---- about the weird fatigue that has been setting in even while not necessarily loathing his recent work. I’ve urged them to ignore this and watch The Grand Budapest Hotel as I think it’s got the cure for whatever trivial ailments we thought upset us. And similarly, I think many feel some fatigue from Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Two Days, One Night. I can’t disagree that the film is schematic and predictable, and I’ll admit that it took longer than expected for me to get fully engulfed in the drama, but seeing these two masters land this with such elegance and control (thanks also, obviously, to Cotillard’s second great performance of 2014) was truly incredible.

I’m in agreement that movies are lacking a genuine representation of all walks of life. We are oversaturated with white, patriarchal, middle/upper class, heteronormative, and entitled protagonists and we need this remedied now. There were a few films to broaden our perspective, I’m hoping 2015 brings us more. They certainly aren’t remedied in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood but I’m not complaining. Linklater and company have honed in on and highlighted the moments in a family’s life (at least a 12 year span) that stuck with me, not by hopping from one milestone to the next but filling in the gaps with those crucial junctures that seem to stick in the back of our minds. Yeah, and it hit me on a personal level, mostly because I’m a new dad and I’m looking forward to some of these milestones and gap fillers, but also because I was once a child with a mom and dad and sibling and life happened. And as for the scenes that elicit what I would consider justifiable grief over either broad caricatures, odd abrupt transformations, and strained reunions I’d like to remind you that these scenes make up about fifty seconds of a film that runs about two hours and forty-six minutes. I completely understand those who don’t connect with it or even find it slight or annoying but for those who try to pin the film’s failure overall on those brief lapses in judgment I just want to remind you that it’s in your embedded nature to blow the negative aspects of life out of proportion. And I hope I don’t ruffle feathers to suggest that David Fincher’s Gone Girl, while probably not the “laying the institution of marriage to waste” masterpiece that so many proclaimed, is also not claiming that Nick and Amy represent manhood and womanhood incarnate. I dread the day in which villains cease to exist, or where writers and directors tread lightly when selecting their antagonists various sexual, gender, racial, or mental health characteristics. I can’t justifiably call out Fincher and Flynn and still be a self-respecting Leave Her to Heaven fan after all. I thought this was a sly, funny thriller with the director’s distinctive knack for pace, space, and atmosphere. I’m reading a lot of gushing about how Michael Mann is able to elevate “high concept junk” via his expressive style and atmosphere, AMEN, but I guess I’d wager that Fincher is doing the same for now. I especially loved how the movie eventually flies gleefully/preposterously off the rails. Still, I’m not impervious to the thought of Fincher and Anderson being knocked off their demigod perch.

Winter Sleep and The Tale of Princess Kaguya dapple with parenthood and marriage amongst other things. The Tale of Princess Kaguya is visually minimal but far from simple, thematically mystifying but far from impenetrable. It’s a fairy tale about a father’s mixed up but benevolent ideas about his magical daughter’s future and how his lavish notions displace her from her idyllic habitat and stifle her true dreams and passions. This leads to a heartbreaking finale, something Isao Takahata had perfected long ago. Winter Light does an accurate job in observing the disintegration of a marriage. At first it seems serene enough, to each his/her own with some minor hiccups, but then our "protagonist" goes from avoiding a fight to being the hammer that only sees nails. It doesn't hurt to have Nuri Bilge Ceylan's eye for composition nor does it hurt to have a cast this good, but the thing that maybe separates it from any other gorgeous movie is its ability to dismantle a relationship without pinning the downfall to a single cause or person. And I’m only highlighting one of the movies many themes, mainly because it hit me at the time personally. Pride is the key to his downfall.  A wiser man however would know when he's licked as Aydin is so clearly licked here. His arrogance (similar to the feeble "protagonist" of Listen Up Phillip) and smug infatuation with age and experience (constantly using it against his younger better half) have finally lost their sting. You see it in Nihal's tired eyes, like the wild horse Aydin pays to imprison with him at his Cappadocian Xanadu she yearns to be free of his reigns.

My friend Jackson described Under the Skin as a feature length Calvin Klein commercial, or something to that nature. I’ve heard similar complaints from other friends with very little company in the “it’s a masterpiece” camp. I get it, but I also think it’s fitting that a film that emphasizes the treachery of surfaces is seen as surface level trifle.  I also get my friend John’s comments about Only Lovers Left Alive being cute, though not any more or less cute than Jarmusch’s other work which he seems to like just fine. I found more to love in both, obviously, and I wrote at length about it. I’m also going to have to just admit that Land Ho! scratched me right where I needed it even as many found it slight. Early Lyn Nelson and Paul Eehoorn deserve awards, all of them now!

One more. Ava DuVernay's Selma hones in on a specific time, place, group of people, and climate for most of its entirety. Like Lincoln, it focuses specifically on the passing of a certain piece of legislation and all of the negotiation and compromise (or lack thereof) that comes with it. For a long duration of time I was convinced it was a masterpiece. I'm not saying it isn't a masterpiece, not yet, but I'll admit that there came a point somewhere after the second march on Edmund Pettis Bridge where the movie started to slide for me. I don't know how else to describe it other than to say that there are moments in movies or even a band's set where you feel it should end. Then the movie or set continues on for whatever reason and some of the air gets let out. I guess I felt that during a few scenes towards the end, maybe one too many meetings or visits to the oval office. So I’m sure it deserves a higher spot but for now I’m going to cheat and keep it as a tie with another timely film about our societal devaluing of human life. It’s an important movie and that goes a long way for me, at least right now.

Honorable mentions? I’m going to limit my list because it pains me to leave these movies off the top ten. I don’t know why or how Snowpiercer isn’t as good as any of the seven through ten picks other than to say that the ending felt a little rushed and expository for my taste. Still, I think it’s incredible and I’ll probably remedy my snub after watching it again. Likewise, I thought James Gray’s The Immigrant would land but I found myself feeling the complete opposite about the ending and rather begrudging some of what came before. Still, it’s another great Gray film that wasn’t seen by nearly enough people. He’ll have his day. I finally caught up with Shoah and it’s as great as I had anticipated. I kept scanning the land for something, maybe remains or even ghosts, but I found Lanzmann’s Last of the Unjust another wonderful companion piece that, once again, could have easily cracked this list. Biggest surprise of the year? I would say Tommy Lee Jones’ strange, disturbing, and consistently surprising The Homesman, my pick for movie with the best ending of 2014. I loved Ida and We are the Best a lot. Why lump them together, because I saw them both on Netflix Instant two nights in a row. John Wick was the best maintstream action movie I saw all year, with Edge of Tomorrow nipping at its heels. Both have lackluster endings however and some other problems peppered in. The Guest was another huge surprise as I’ve been underwhelmed by every long or short film from Adam Wingard. It’s satisfying genre work plain and simple. Life Itself moved me and Birdman (the movie that all of my Williamsburg pals seemed to prefer) is, to me, hopefully a sign of things to come from a director I haven’t frankly cared for in the past. I’m wrestling with American Sniper on a gut level, but that’s probably the intent here. Also, Locke was a great story with a great central performance (another reason to hail Hardy as one of our best living actors) but I struggled with the visual aspects of the movie. I also quite liked Ira Sachs’ Make Way For Tomorrow update Love is Strange and Jimmy P. That’s all folks!

My Top Ten of 2014:

  1.       The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson)

  2.       Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)

  3.       Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)

  4.       Boyhood (Richard Linklater)

  5.      Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

  6.      Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch)

  7.      Land Ho! (Aaron Katz and Martha Stephens)

  8.  The Tale of Princess Kaguya (Isao Takahata)

  9.     Gone Girl (David Fincher)

10.    Two Days, One Night (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) and Selma ((Ava DuVernay )

Honorable Mentions: Snowpiercer (Bong-Joon Ho), The Immigrant (Gray), Last of the Unjust (Lanzmann , , The Homesman (Jones), Ida (Pawlikowski), The Guest (Wingard), We Are the Best (Moodysson), Edge of Tomorrow (Liman), John Wick (Leitch and Stahelski), Life Itself (James), Birdman (Innuaritu) Love is Strange (Sachs).

Blindspots: Goodbye to Language, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Closed Curtain, Stray Dogs, Actress, National Gallery, Stranger by the Lake, Citizenfour,  Last Days in Vietnam, Horse Money, Top Five, Beyond the Lights, Whiplash, Lucy.

In a Lonely Place

I used to know this guy who reminded me a lot of Louise Bloom, the titular nocturnal creep played by Jake Gyllenhaal, not because he was advantageous nor starved for social status, but because he had a way of appearing out of nowhere like a ghost with freshly rehearsed subjects on deck to readily sow into the conversation that he spent the previous five minutes pretending to participate in. He lingered around for a few years while things slowly went from awkward to borderline frightening. I think it’s important to empathize and consider another’s past before breaking ties, but there came a time in which it was evident that it wasn’t healthy for anyone involved to continue speaking. To this date I can’t think of another human that I’ve cut off so abruptly and permanently. Like Bloom, he was very well articulated and spoke with rapid-fire urgency as though the words were causing him some physical discomfort while gestating within. This would indicate anxiety, at least to me, but also a need to connect in hopes to validate himself as a knowledgeable and interesting person, which he was. It makes sense considering that he and Bloom would consider their expression a social strongpoint, often oblivious to how suffocating and overwhelming it can be to be the recipient of that wave of verbiage. Above all things he was lonely and in need of social vindication, to the point where it would appear that it became an addiction, much like Bloom’s insatiable lust for standing.

Dan Gilroy’s “Nightcrawler” is an impressive debut as far as I’m concerned. It’s both a character study and an indictment of our current media dilemma, Bloom playing the dichotomous role of the victim and benefactor of our patronage. We first meet him as he’s clipping chain linked fence to sell for scrap. A security guard rolls up on him and we get our first glimpse of his social operation (smile, talk fast, win), which ends appropriately with an act of violence that we don’t get to witness. --- I was wondering about what their tussle resulted in on my way to work today. The guard got a really solid look at him, I’m just saying. ---- He’s a thief, but he’s yearning for an honest living worthy of his effort. He’s willing to work hard wherever he ends up , and he’ll adapt easily and climb fairly quickly if he’s given the chance. The internet is his teacher. His drive carries out the rest. He isn’t looking to make an easy buck; he’s just another down-on-his-luck kid trying to work in our progressively dreary economic landscape. He finds his niche while stumbling upon a camera crew hovering around a car crash like the first vultures to a carcass. The carcass is then sold to the highest bidder on the news circuit, making our suffering a ghoulish commerce, pieces of metal at a scrap yard. After getting a foot in the door at a failing local station, Bloom begins to take his vocation to new depths only earning him more clout in the industry. The corporatized media trade preys upon our fear, lust for destruction, prying, and disengagement with pragmatic reporting. Turn on the news for thirty minutes and behold the horror.

“Nightcrawler” is strongest when working as a procedural, taking us through the mechanizations of a mostly clandestine job. We don’t know much about the procuring of footage, the price that footage goes for, and the way a producer works it into a narrative that has been tinkered to draw in an audience. There have been many great films about the news industry (Ace in the Hole, His Girl Friday, While the City Sleeps, All the President’s Men, Zodiac) but none about the men and women who sit by police scanners waiting gleefully for terrible things to happen. The scenes that I found the most engaging took place within the station headquarters where Rene Russo’s Nina Romina bids for footage and then cuts it and finds a narrative to hang it on, or in Bloom’s apartment or car where he studies police code and the fastest way from point A to B. There is a blunt but effective scene where Nina puppeteers some recently acquired footage, speaking directly into the ears of the anchors, repeatedly emphasizing phrases meant to both scare and incite the audience. Her approach is to emphasize affluent citizens’ safety encroached upon by a creeping marginalized threat. Sound familiar? It’s a fair target; I just wish Dan Gilroy’s directorial debut had sharper teeth. Where the movie fails is in its need to a: spell out the moral dilemma (there is a character planted in this movie for the sole purpose of telling us that certain footage is unethical, never so obviously than a scene in which he reveals information about the aforementioned footage) b: adhere to obligatory “lonely crazy guy” movie prototypes (the lame mirror sequence for instance) and c: the abrupt development of a narrative thread that shapes the remnants of the film in such a way that a big suspension of disbelief will be required to follow it through. This late chain of events succumbs to the same sensationalism that it seeks to indict. It nearly derails the whole damn thing.

Current Cinema Blurbs: “Land-ho!” confirms Paul Eenhorn as the wisest, most pleasant actor currently gracing our big and little screens. Tara noted that he had “a nice face.” He caught my attention first with 2013’s “This is Martin Bonner” and matches Earl Lynn Nelson’s gargantuan performance step for step. These two should make a set of Crosby/Hope road movies for our viewing pleasure. It also confirms my friend John’s suspicions that Aaron Katz is the real deal, not that we should disregard Martha Stephens’ contributions. This is easily one of 2014’s best, ignore anyone who damns it by claiming that it’s “slight” or tidy They are wrong. Doug Liman’s “Edge of Tomorrow” only falters in its final stretch, which is a bummer considering how fresh the first two thirds are. The death montages had me laughing out loud, especially when the main character rolls under a Jeep much to Bill Paxton’s baffled dismay (Paxton also whips out a refreshing performance in Nightcrawler). Cruise is top notch here, as is Emily Blunt, and the action scenes work precisely because of their willingness to embrace the absurdity of the film’s central concept. It’s an easy honorable mention. You should see it, I should see it again. HBO’s “Olive Kittredge” makes great use of its Maine setting both inside and out. It also surprised me in its reluctance to indulge in worn out archetypes and plot developments. You think you know where it’s going to go, how people are going to act, and how you are supposed to feel about them only wait and wait and wait for something to happen that would have happened in something else. Does that make any sense? It only falters a bit in its final chapters, a little here and a little there. If it was a theatrical feature it’d be one of the standouts this year. Then again, J. Hoberman put Todd Haynes’ “Mildred Pierce” on his list when that came out.

Recent First-Timers:

Masterpieces: 1943 Edge of Darkness (Lewis Milestone)

 Yes Please: 1935 Mad Love (Karl Freund), The Plough and the Stars (John Ford), The Ghost Goes West (Rene Clair), The Devil Doll (Todd Browning), Dracula’s Daughter (Lambert Hillyer), The Limey (Steven Soderbergh), A Lawless Street (Joseph H. Lewis), Jack Reacher (Christopher McQuarrie), Rosetta (The Dardenne bros), The Stalking Moon (Robert Mulligan). 

Great Big Visions

For a film about wormholes, Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" sure likes to take the long way. Like much of his previous work, the narrative thrust lags as the plot piles on more and more baggage, becoming a new movie with its own conflict and concerns, which are almost completely autonomous from the central conflict. He seems to always struggle with the third act, or he tacks on fourth and fifth acts to squeeze things in that he’s not willing to leave on the cutting floor. He usually has a commanding finale in mind (montages set to a narrator’s impassioned epilogue over Hans Zimmer's swelling score, to a sudden cut to black) but finds the most convoluted way to get there. Even as his films stray he’s able to somehow land them manipulatively (positive) so that as I walk out of the theater I’m filled with heavy emotions and a sad score running ringing in my ears. Time, distance, and thought always bring me back down, and yet I still end up seeing his movies on opening weekend.  

“Interstellar” follows Cooper (a reliable Matthew McConaughey), a pilot sent through a wormhole to find an inhabitable planet as Earth quickly turns to dust. There are a dozen planets to survey, but obviously not enough time to do so. The wormholes were formed by “they” as a way to bridge the large expanse between galaxies. “They” are unseen and unidentified beings that can exist in several dimensions with an undisclosed providential interest in our survival. Rest assured that you will find out who “they” are, and true to Nolan’s vibe, it’s not as remarkable as you might hope. The heart of the story lies in a father's promise to return to his daughter (the fact that he doesn't seem to care nearly as much about his son sort of struck me as odd), and consequently to save mankind. His mission therefore is all sacrifice, a fight over flight mentality notably not echoed by his elder son in a later scene. This narrow focus is where Nolan thrives. He finds a way to make the passing of time (earth standard) a constant factor in the mission’s already surmounting dread and suspense. For instance, on a planet that’s almost completely water an hour spent is tantamount to a full seven years on earth, I didn’t even care about the giant waves (which are supposedly scientifically plausible for planets neighboring a black hole) about to smash the spaceship into smithereens; all I wanted was for the crew to wrap it up as soon as possible.

From that failed mission the movie finally succumbs to the Nolan bros’ trademark narrative glut. The excesses here begin when the crew, depleted after the loss of life and resources on the water planet, bicker over which planet to visit. With not enough fuel and resources to visit both, they (meaning Cooper and Anne Hathaway’s Amelia Brand) choose the planet manned by Mann. Without spoiling anything, I should note that this deviation ultimately leads to nowhere except a admittedly great “docking” sequence and a reveal about the nature of the mission itself. Both could have been accomplished without the beacon call and time spent paying redundant homage to the giants that came before, and all of the amped up chatty suspense that results. The time spent on this icy planet only exists to fulfill a quota. It’s part of the long way that I was referring to before. And even as characters fight, they talk and divulge/repeat information that frankly only strays from ticking clock that distances father from daughter, and makes it all the more unlikely for their reunion to happen within a reasonable period of time. And after that’s resolved we move on to the real “mindbender” which my friend correctly called “Shyamalanian.”

After the catastrophe at the ice planet, Cooper, Brand, and their two robots (the wonderful Bill Irwin adding some much needed comic relief) decide on a plan. First they move towards the black hole where they send their robot TARS to report back data on its singularity, while they slingshot (one of many nods to Arthur C. Clark Rendezvous with Rama) themselves towards the other planet manned by Hathaway’s implied love interest Edmund (but none of that really matters outside of her/Cooper’s subjective motivations weighed against the mission’s objectivity). Needless to say this chain of events results in some twists and turns due to an act of self-sacrifice as “Interstellar” enters its own “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” phase. I don’t want to spoil anything here so I’ll leave it alone other than to say that it’s a ballsy development that overcomplicates things and sacrifices the crucial reunion that the movie ultimately hinges on. In fact, I think the film could have been much better if it never returned to earth outside of the video messages that were so effective and brief.

And while I’d have to ultimately have to say that “Interstellar” feels to me like a noble/fascinating/frustrating failure, I still can’t shake it. There are enough successes to warrant at least one revisit. The docking sequence that I mentioned before is a brilliantly composed set piece with some of Nolan’s best use of sound and vision. Frankly, it’s one the best things I’ve seen this year and it reminded me of a much simpler sequence in “The Dark Knight” where Heath Ledger’s head was out of the window of a cop car set to persistent ominous ringing. I was also moved by the scene where Cooper drives away from his family, set to the countdown of his space shuttle, with a crucial intimate moment where he looks under the blanket of his passenger seat. Again we have great use of sound and montage, followed by some wonderful early scenes in space. With moments like this I find it hard to dismiss him outright as others have. I’m thankful that he wants to approach big budget Hollywood genre films with intelligence and economized human vision. But thinking back to the failures of the later acts, I am reminded of slogs in the first; the derivative agitprop vision of Midwest America, the cliché angry dad deriding the NASA-hating teacher, the far too-convenient NASA station coordinates, the characters talking to each other about things that were better shown. I’m reminded of an ironic scene in which Anne Hathaway’s Brand reminds Cooper of the importance of knowing when to shut up. For a director who posits himself as the smart pop-artist against the dumb system, he’s awfully susceptible to some of that system’s worst tendencies.     

Alejandro Jodorowsky is no stranger to ambitious vision and the Hollywood system that seems to thwart it. Between “The Holy Mountain” and “El Topo,” he’s solidified himself as a cult icon with fans like The Beatles to David Lynch. He’s an interesting interviewee, with that perpetual smile that often contradicts the words coming out of it. In the 2014 documentary “Jodorowsky’s Dune,” director Frank Pavich tells the story of the doomed movie that never was with interview from adoring friends like Nicolas Winding Refn and Richard Stanley to legends-in-their-own-right like H.R. Giger. The less skeptical talking heads, like Refn, claim that the film was never made because Hollywood was afraid of his imagination. Hearing hagiographic declarations like this, you can see why the director perpetuates his own greatness so emphatically. The reoccurring line of this movie is “I did this!” which is amusing considering what was actually accomplished. Jodorowsky has his spiritual army and they are so devoted/unbending that they can’t acknowledge the importance of the only physical vestiges left behind, the concept art (constructed by Giger and Christopher Fosse). The movie also insanely alleges that the un-filmed “Dune” gave birth to everything from “Masters of the Universe” to “Alien” to “Star Wars.” The evidence is laughable (especially when you realize that they actually imply that the world would have been a worse place without Masters), outside of the fact that he put Giger, Dan O’Bannon, and Jean Henri Gaston Giraud might not have been involved in the Ridley Scott film if it wasn’t for this experience. 

I’m not completely disinclined to big egos and self-mythologizing. I understand its place in art but only if it’s there to exalt the work itself. The real conflict here seems to be the funding, though it didn’t stop the “spiritual warriors” from putting together an expensive book to help their pitch. But when the smile fades and true colors appear, this once smiling dreamer begins to rant about how he just might make the film twenty hours or ten if he likes, which might sound like a good idea to his warriors, but admittedly might not sound so good to the guy funding your film. This is common sense, and where money is concerned common sense sometimes means the difference between sinking and swimming. Jodorowsky correctly notes that money is "shit," but then proceeds to complain about people who are unwilling to give him theirs. And the more you hear this overconfident story about the little dreamer up against the machine system; you realize that he was willing to make ridiculous compromises to his vision in order to get what he wanted, like paying Dali $100,000 for every minute he appeared onscreen. The moment I realized that I hated this film came when he so eagerly besmirched Douglas Trumbull for his supposed self-importance, an attribute he so openly displayed before and after this mini-rant. Suddenly the “we are all Paul” spiritualist becomes the gossipy malicious brat who met an artist who didn’t buy into his legend so easily. He then basically claims that he is not a real artist but a technician, or a robot, which is funny when you consider who sought out whom in the first place. This story would have been better told on an episode of Karina Longworth’s wonderful podcast, “You Must Remember This.” Thankfully, Jodorowsky’s work can speak for itself because I frankly need a break from the guy.

So Nice, I Watched it Twice

As a kid, we never had cable and therefore had to rely on both my dad’s Friday-post-work trips to the local Blockbuster and VHS recordings from TNT and AMC. My grandmother had cable and my dad would somehow get wise to a movie playing on one of those two stations and convince her to record them. I remember one of the tapes was the 1954 Jerry Lewis/Dean Martin/Norman Taurog movie “Living it Up” along with the 1946 Danny Kaye/Virginia Mayo/Norman Z. McLeod movie “The Kid from Brooklyn.” Both were originally shot in glorious Technicolor, each taking full advantage of the three strip process that eventually went archaic after Eastman essentially cut out the dye absorption process. The final movie to be shot by their three strip camera was made in the same year as the McLeod film, making way for a 1952 invention that allowed a single camera negative. Eastman looked to cut out the expensive middleman and entice Hollywood away from the pricey/long process. Due to its weight and immobility (or the relative pain in the ass to move it around), the slowness of the process itself, and the overall cost, it wasn’t long until the competitors moved in. Technicolor became Eastman in 1975 only to reintroduce the dye transfer process in 1997 for film restorations. I’m not sure why I’m regurgitating this information, other than to say that I’ve always been in love with that loud saturated aesthetic. The more garish or like an oil painting the better, though as I get older I find myself more and more in awe of restraint in that time of discovery. I still wonder what my response to color association would dig up; perhaps I’d better leave that alone.

Both “Living it Up” and “The Kid from Brooklyn” are about playful ruses. Each follows a paltry good-natured man caught up in a scam perpetrated by voracious men. Each film deals with media hysteria, not unlike “Gone Girl” but in a much more lighthearted manner, drawing much of the laughter from the idiocy caused by the mix-up. Each is a remake of a 1930’s film (1937’s Nothing Sacred and 1936’s The Milky Way), and each arguably considered the inferior work by most. “Nothing Sacred” was written by Ben Hecht and directed by William A. Wellman starring Fredric March and Carole Lombard while “The Milky Way” was directed by Leo McCarey and starred none other than Harold Lloyd. “The Kid from Brooklyn” is a startlingly faithful adaptation, McLeod mimicking shots and Kaye taking direct cues from his mentor. There is either an obvious reverence, plagiary, or both at play here, up until some of the final scenes where Kaye’s many gifts of singing, dancing, and tongue twisting made their customary appearance in the form of an impromptu song number. I’ve never really understood why Kaye didn’t join the respective comedy ranks, but after some nice write-ups over at The Movie Morlocks blog as well the illustrious Farran Nehme Smith’s appreciation of “The Court Jester” I’m beginning to see the overdo comeuppance begin to surface. It seems that many dismiss him as toothless, which is probably fair, but also beside the point. I have to admit that I cringed reading Pauline Kael dismiss Kaye’s “violently evident” talents because they remain, according to her, sunk “in the mud of family entertainment.” 

I’m realizing now that I’m spending more time writing about McLeod’s film, when it was McCarey’s that I recently caught up with. It’s very odd seeing the original after seeing the remake, like hearing and loving a song only to realize it’s a cover. Unlike “Living it Up” or “A Song is Born,” “The Kid from Brooklyn” is so faithful that you can’t help but recall most of the scenes in one once you’ve seen the other. It’s a case of déjà vu. And while McCarey and Lloyd, I can’t help but love and maybe even prefer the 1946 version. It’s a new cinematic conundrum for me, though I’ll admit right now that I prefer McCarey’s “An Affair to Remember” from 1957 to his own “Love Affair” from 1939. Looking at the two, years apart, I think I have a softer spot for “The Milky Way” considering what it did with its constraints, jumping ahead ten years all McCleod and company could add was popping color and their star’s abnormal bag of tricks. It should be noted that McCleod directed some scenes in the 1936 film when McCarey was hospitalized, which may explain the decision to film his version so faithfully. So nice they tried it twice. One of the better choices, in my opinion, was to bring Lionel Stander back as Spider, there is just a tinge of nuance in his slightly aged performance. It was considered Lloyd’s best crack at the talkies, probably because so much of Buleigh Sullivan’s screen persona hinges on quick movements, mostly of the ducking kind.

I guess I should now point out that the story here, based on a successful Broadway play from two years before, follows a meek milkman who is falsely accused/extolled for knocking out the middleweight champ in a street fight. Amongst the drunken ruckus, Sullivan ducks just in time to avoid a hard right from Spider, which causes a media frenzy, a scam, a love story not only between the milkman and one of his clients but also the milkman’s sister and the former middleweight champ, some swollen ego, and a calf kicking a man in the face. It’s a screwball, a genre that McCarey just may have perfected amongst other subgenres. And while McCleod isn’t necessarily perched up there with his old friend, he probably should be. He directed many of the Marx Bros classics, the Topper films, “It’s a Gift” from 1934, the 1933 “Alice in Wonderland” often credited to the great William Cameron Menzies, “Pennies from Heaven,” and two underrated films from the late 40s (The Paleface and The Secret Life from Walter Mitty) and that’s just scratching the surface.

Samuel Goldwyn nearly made it impossible for us to ever see “The Milky Way” by buying the rights to the original and destroying all of the prints that he knew existed. The problem is the doofus didn’t know that Lloyd preserved a nitrate print and kept it in good condition, some spit in Goldwyn’s greedy eye. While this type of assholery could be considered fair reason to consider McCleod’s film < or downright contemptuous, you should never blame a film for its producer’s sliminess lest you learn to hate most of the films you currently hold dear to your heart. And I guess I’ll wind this down by saying that I think you should all see both films, though in fairness you should start with the original and then catch up with the remake and let me know how things work out on the flipside.    

1968 Favorites

1968 in roughly preferential order:

2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)

Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski)

Shame (Ingmar Bergman)

Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone)

The Great Silence (Sergio Corbucci)

Kuroneko (Kaneto Shindo)

Night of the Living Dead (George Romero)

Faces (John Cassavetes)

The Color of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov)

The Mercenary (Sergio Corbucci)

The Boston Strangler (Richard Fleischer)

Mandabi (Ousmane Sembene)

Targets (Peter Bogdanovich)

Hour of the Wolf (Ingmar Bergman)

The Stalking Moon (Robert Mulligan)

Stolen Kisses (Francois Truffaut)

Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea)

Death by Hanging (Nagisa Oshima)

Witchfinder General (Michael Reeves)

If…… (Lindsay Anderson)

Where Eagles Dare (Brian G. Hutton)

The Producers (Mel Brooks)

Salesman (Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin)

Dark of the Sun (Jack Cardiff)