Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I knew this moment was coming.
Last year, I went to the premiere for GODZILLA: FINAL WARS, and one of the people I ran into at the after-party was Dennis Bartok, my good friend who runs the American Cinematheque. My wife and I had only recently learned that we were going to be parents, and it all seemed sort of abstract still. Dennis and his wife had just recently had their baby, though, and when we told him we were expecting, he beamed. He was wildly enthusiastic about what he’d just been through, and I found his excitement to be one of the most encouraging and reassuring things anyone said to me about parenthood.
On thing he said in particular really stuck with me. “You’re going to need at least 100 DVDs in the house that you haven’t seen yet for all those long sleepless nights in the first six months.”
Consider me ready.
I’ve let this column lay fallow for a few months, and there are stacks of titles that I’ve already watched that I should review, and there are also tons of titles here just begging to be watched. I know that I’m not going to be attending the same number of screenings and festivals that I used to... at least, not for the moment. Right now, my focus is largely going to shift to DVD coverage, and that’s perfectly okay by me.
So, with that in mind, let’s get right to it this week. I haven’t updated my DVD Aficionado page in a while, so I won’t bother linking to it. Instead, let’s start with some older titles that have been stacking up here at the house, but that are worth some discussion:
THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU
APPLESEED
LEMONY SNICKET’S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS
THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY
MICROCOSMOS
I know Wes Anderson’s most recent film wasn’t a huge hit last Christmas, but I don’t give a shit. I love it, and the more I see it, the more I appreciate just how much affection there is in the way Anderson crafted this vehicle for The Great Bill Murray. I’m currently spearheading the campaign to have his name legally changed so that everyone is required to call him The Great Bill Murray all the time. I think he’s earned it now. Anderson’s writing is perfectly suited to Murray’s strengths as an actor, and it’s such a perfect match that it’s hard to imagine anyone even writing Steve Zissou. He seems to be a riff on Jaques Cousteau in one sense, but I’d also say there’s a lot of Murray’s own personality in the character. After all, when Anderson hooked up with Murray for RUSHMORE, you could argue that Bill was at an all-time career low, relegated to miserable movies like THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE and LARGER THAN LIFE. He was Steve Zissou at that point, his talent increasingly subverted by disappointment. I guess that makes Anderson the real-life Ned Plympton (Owen Wilson), showing up at that pivotal moment to remind Zissou about his own considerable gifts. Watching the wonderful documentary on disc two of the Criterion release of the film, you can see the way Murray and Anderson’s relationship can swing from playful to prickly and back again, often in the space of a single conversation. It may be the most revealing look at Murray’s process that I’ve ever seen, and I’m impressed that he allowed such an unguarded portrait to be released. Bill comes across as appealingly complex, and more than ever, I’m convinced that he’s one of the great underutilized and underappreciated modern American actors.
The film itself improves with repeated viewings. What it makes me think of are some of Fellini’s movies like 8 ½ or INTERVISTA, movies where an artist explores a landscape made up of characters and events from their fiction as well as from their lives, all jumbled up together in a way that celebrates the creative life even as it laments it. Imagine if Cousteau had made a Fellini film and that’s pretty much THE LIFE AQUATIC. The cast has so much fun, and it’s hard to say who I love most in the film. Jeff Goldblum is at his most droll, Anjelica Huston makes an exceptional sparring partner for Murray, and Willem Dafoe couldn’t be a bigger freak if he tried.
There’s a peculiar joy to seeing some of the combinations that Anderson puts together. Where else are you going to see Bud Cort, Knockout Ned from CITY OF GOD, Noah Taylor, Murray, and a three-legged dog all sharing the screen while fighting pirates? It cracks me up when Anderson describes this as an adventure movie. I wish it had made more money, because I’d kill to see more “adventures” like this.
The extras in this set live up to the high standards that Criterion is known for. In addition to the main documentary by Albert Maysles, there’s another documentary by the actor who played the main intern in the film. It’s interesting because he manages to include Maysles in his film, which is much more about the almost familial bonds shared by a cast and crew, especially on a long and difficult shoot like this one. There’s an Italian TV interview with Anderson and some of the cast, there are some great deleted scenes, and most importantly, there’s a ton of stuff about the way Anderson creates his visual palette for each film. The commentary on disc one sounds like it was recorded in a toilet, but it’s got plenty of informative material, so bear with it. Even the liner notes are cool, including an interview with Eric Chase Anderson and Wes about how they collaborate. Great disc. Great movie.
I didn’t see APPLESEED in the theater, and I’m sorry now. Geneon released a Limited Collector’s Edition 2-disc set that comes in a tin case, and having watched the whole thing, I have to say that this may be the ultimate triumph of style over substance. Which is not to bash the film. Like much anime, I find the story to be dense to the point of incomprehensibility, thick with technobabble and obviously in love with technology. This is a film where the look is the point, and it’s quietly revolutionary. There are sequences here that I’ve watched several times, just drinking in the dense attention to detail and the way the 3D cel shading technique makes this pop off the screen in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. It doesn’t look like Pixar’s work, and it doesn’t look like conventional anime. Instead, there’s a hyperreality to the entire endeavor that is very dreamlike. I have to confess that I don’t have much patience with this particular type of storyline, since so often, the films all feel the same, but any fan of animation owes it to themselves to hunt this one down and check it out and be amazed.
Paramount did a particularly good job on their 2-disc release of LEMONY SNICKET’S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS. David Prior, best known for the FIGHT CLUB special edition, was responsible for this one, and I was surprised by the depth of the extras. On disc one, there are two commentaries, and the one with Brad Silberling alone is the more informative of the two. Fans of the Snicket series may want to listen to the commentary by Silberling and Daniel Handler at least once, but the idea of Handler doing the whole thing in character works better in theory than in practice. In fact, after this and BUCKAROO BANZAI, I’m going to say that this almost never works out as well as people want it to. The rest of the extras on disc one deal with the cast as well as deleted scenes and outtakes.
Disc Two contains some of the most exhaustive making-of documentaries I’ve seen outside of a LORD OF THE RINGS disc. The special effects one was particularly fascinating, I thought, as it detailed the efforts by ILM to create a photorealistic digital baby. There’s a piece of test footage that they created early on as a proof-of-concept piece, and we see every step and every decision that went into the creation of that test footage. The number of shots involving the fake baby surprised me, which I guess is a tribute to how successful they were. As a new parent, I spend a lot of time watching my baby, and I can appreciate even more now just how hard it is to replicate something so unpredictable.
As far as the film itself is concerned, what impresses me the most is how well Silberling and screenwriter Robert Gordon tapped into the very particular tone of Handler’s Snicket books. The films don’t softpedal the malicious streak that makes the books so much fun to read. Anyone who complains about Jim Carrey’s Count Olaf must not know the books, because the character is vain, disgusting, sarcastic, and genuinely believes himself to be the greatest actor in the world. There may be one or two moments where Carrey falls back on familiar shtick, but only one or two. For the most part, he’s pitch-perfect, and his scenes with Meryl Streep are hilarious. The stunningly pretty Emily Browning has remarkable poise for a teenage actress, and Liam Aiken has matured into an accomplished actor in his own right after spending most of his childhood in front of a camera.
Silberling surrounded himself with some excellent craftsmen like cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and Rich Heinrichs, his production designer, both of whom worked on SLEEPY HOLLOW. It would be easy to accuse Silberling of aping Tim Burton’s style, but the truth is that I liked this film a great deal more than I’ve liked anything Burton’s made in the last five years. The anamorphic widescreen transfer is spectacular, and the 5.1 Dolby Digital mix sounds great. There’s also French and Spanish surround tracks and English subtitles, and if you enjoyed the film at all, this is a great addition to your collection.
Speaking of collections, no one has done more in recent months to pad out the shelves of DVD fans than Warner Bros., and their recent box set called The Controversial Classics Collection was one of my favorites. As always, I enjoy digging into the films I haven’t seen first, so I chose to start with THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY, a 1964 release starring Julie Andrews and James Garner. I’ve heard the title over the years, but it always sounded like some sort of proto-Jane Austen-esque sort of thing. What made me practically slam this one into the player was reading the name “Paddy Cheyefsky” on the back cover. Simply put, Cheyefsky is the ideal that I think all screenwriters should strive to emulate. I’d rank NETWORK as one of the ten best scripts ever written. I’m also very fond of THE HOSPITAL, a dark comedy that was directed by Arthur Hiller. Cheyefsky’s first collaboration with Hiller was EMILY, and it’s surprisingly blunt stuff considering when it was made. EMILY is a dark anti-war comedy a la MASH or CATCH-22, but I’d say it’s better than either of those films. Garner plays a professional coward, a Navy man who has figured out the system so that he can live in almost decadent luxury even in the midst of war. He works for a general (Melvyn Douglas in fine form) who is troubled by the plans for D-Day. As it gets closer, Douglas is afraid that the Army will get all the glory in D-Day, forever making them more powerful than the Navy. Garner doesn’t care at all about who gets the glory. All he wants is somewhere he can sit the war out and a beautiful girl to be with in the meantime. He meets Andrews, all icy exterior and proper manners at first. The proverbial sparks fly between them, even as Douglas hatches his big idea: he wants to make sure a Navy man is the first to die on Normandy Beach, and he wants Garner to shoot a film to prove it.
James Coburn, always a glorious freak, does exceptional work here as Garner’s closest friend. Garner and Andrews are both very well cast, and they’re both appealing and beautiful. In fact, I can’t think of a time where Andrews has been sexier. Garner’s hilarious, but when he adds sincerity to the comedy, like in the scene where he meets Joyce Grenfell, playing Andrews’s mother, he gives the film a sober fury that underlines just what Cheyefsky was writing about. The film’s quite strikingly photographed in black-and-white, which only gives things an even stronger DR. STRANGELOVE vibe during some of the most broadly satirical sequences. At heart, Hiller and Cheyefsky are humanists, and they can’t help but lace their satire with sentiment. It’s an odd combination, but it works, and THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY deserves to be widely rediscovered thanks to this re-release. The WHV release is a handsome transfer, and there’s a commentary by film historian Drew Caspar. I would have loved a commentary, or at least an interview, with Hiller talking about working with Cheyefsky, but I’m not complaining. It’s a great disc.
Finally, there’s MICROCOSMOS. If you’ve seen this film, you probably just thought, “Well, it’s about time they finally release this.” If you haven’t seen the film, trust me... this is a reason to celebrate. This is a totally unique documentary about insects, shot with cameras designed specifically for this film, recorded with microphones designed to give us some idea of what the world might sound like if we were scaled like an ant. Rainfall is like the Dresden firebombing. The attack of a bird is like dynamite going off. This isn’t really a film about bugs. It’s more a film about perception. The world we live in, that we experience every day, simply doesn’t exist for insects. If they were scaled the same as us, MICROCOSMOS has me convinced that the world would be an endless nightmarish freak show. Even relatively benign things like butterflies look like something that would make H.R. Giger scream like a little girl. Like KOYAANISQATSI or BARAKA, this is a visual experience that is almost impossible to describe. Pure cinema. This is a great addition to any film library because (A) very few of your guests will have already seen it, (B) you won’t mind watching it again and again and (C) pretty much anyone you show it to will like it. BVHE did a fine job with sound and picture, even if there’s nothing in the way of extras on the disc.
One of the things that we’ve been doing a lot of here at the Labs in the past few months has been watching the various TV box sets that have been released. In some cases, these are shows that I grew up with that my wife’s never seen. In some cases, these are shows that neither of us are familiar with that we’re giving a chance. And in some cases, we’re just watching old favorites like comfort food. There’s a lot of stuff we’ve seen worth discussing, though, so let’s dig in:
THE HARDY BOYS/NANCY DREW MYSTERIES
BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY
MIAMI VICE
SCTV VOL. 3
ANGEL SEASONS FOUR and FIVE
SOUTH PARK SEASON FIVE
SCRUBS: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
STAR TREK ENTERPRISE: SEASON ONE
RED DWARF V and VI
WILDBOYZ: THE COMPLETE 2ND SEASON
THE LONE GUNMEN
THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN
Part of what has made this whole TV on DVD glut so profitable is the undeniable draw of nostalgia, and I fall prey to it as much as anyone. The release of certain shows on DVD makes me flash back to vivid memories of growing up, each show like a signpost to a specific era. When THE HARDY BOYS/NANCY DREW MYSTERIES went on the air, I was a pretty rabid fan of Franklin W. Dixon’s books, trading them with my next door neighbor Ollie. I remember the show being my first experience with disappointment over an adaptation of something. Looking at these shows now, I can see why I was so annoyed. Universal didn’t really adapt the book so much as they just borrowed the titles and a few character names. The shows are obviously aimed at kids, with very simple mysteries and loads of cornball humor. Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson couldn’t be more pleasant and bland as Joe and Frank, the teenaged sleuths, and Pamela Sue Martin makes an adorably dull, overwhelmingly prim Nancy Drew. In the end, I couldn’t even finish watching this entire collection, not even in the interest of writing this review. If you want a great box set full of Universal mystery shows, then pick up one of their COLUMBO collections instead.
BUCK ROGERS was a sucker’s bet for STAR WARS kids like me. We knew it wasn’t anywhere near as good as Lucas’s movie, but we also didn’t care. The chance to see spaceships and robots on the small screen every week was a powerful siren’s call for a nine-year-old. What cracks me up most about the show when I watch it now is just how blatantly horny Buck Rogers is as played by Gil Gerard. I know a lot of people talk about James T. Kirk as the ultimate SF swinging dick, but he’s got nothing on Buck. Maybe it’s just because his name rhymes with “fuck,” but that’s all he’s got on his mind. He leers his way through about a season and a half, and every adventure seems like a mere distraction until Buck can get laid again. Even better, Buck turns everyone he meets into a late ‘70s swinger, too. Erin Grey does the most she can with her role as underwritten eye candy, but oh, what glorious eye candy she was. The show’s radical revamp in the second season didn’t do it any favors, but the show was cheesy from the start. Even the most forgiving viewer would have to agree that a Gary Coleman guest appearance marks the moment any series jumps the shark, and that’s only disc 2, side A. SF on TV has changed a lot since the days of BUCK ROGERS, and definitely for the better, but there’s undeniable charm to the smarm.
MIAMI VICE was special to me for the same reason as James Bond movies or Travis McGee novels. They were all things I shared with my father. From the moment MIAMI VICE went on the air, my dad was hooked, and watching it with him on Friday night became a weekly event to look forward to. Looking back at it now, I can see why the show became such a huge buzz hit. I remembered the style and the soundtrack, but I didn’t remember how intentionally funny the show was. Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas were a great TV pair, regardless of what you think of their careers outside this show. In this first season’s worth of episodes, there is an amazing easy chemistry between the entire cast. When you look at shows like THE SHIELD or OZ, this may not seem particularly graphic, but at the time, it was a shock to the system. It seemed darker than TV was allowed to be, and it wasn’t afraid to fuck its characters up to prove a point. This is a show that holds up, but it’s also a time capsule, an unusual combination. This is a welcome addition to my collection, and Universal did a solid job with the transfer. Hats off to them for negotiating all the music rights, which had to be tricky, and I hope they put the rest of the series out soon.
I’m pleased by Shout! Factory’s ongoing release of SCTV. These guys go above and beyond every single time, and SCTV VOL. 3 is no exception. Season 4, Cycle 3 marked the addition of two new people, one in front of the camera and one behind. Don Novello, better known to most people as Father Guido Sarducci, signed on as the head writer for the show after Dave Thomas stepped aside. Classy move from Thomas since Bob and Doug MacKenzie had become the breakout stars of the show, and Thomas didn’t want the whole thing to become an ego trip. Onscreen, Martin Short hit the ground running in the last three episodes of the cycle. On disc four, there’s a segment called “SCTV Remembers, Part 3,” in which Short and Catherine O’Hara talk about the show, and about Short’s early days onstage with Second City. On disc five, they’ve got some great stuff from the Paley Fest’s panel on SCTV in 1997, which actually included Del Close, the legendary improv coach who inspired so many of the Second City grads, as well as Rick Moranis, Gene Levy, Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas, Catherine O’Hara, Andrea Martin, Robin Duke, Martin Short, and Second City founder Bernie Sahlins. Just to add further emphasis to the history of Second City, Shout! Factory has included a bonus CD featuring all sorts of sketches from various Second City stage casts over the years, and it’s pretty great hearing guys like Belushi or Mike Myers before they were famous, when all that mattered was getting a laugh. What’s more amazing is how the best material on the CD is by performers I’ve never heard of. “Glass Mamet” is a minor masterwork, an excellent parody of two of the most easily-parodied playwrights of all time, performed by Melody Johnson, Bob Martin, and Jack Mosshammer.
As far as the nine episodes in the set, this marks the start of a real creative high for the show. They’d done 18 shows already in the season, and it seems like this is when they hit their stride. These are some great overall episodes, like “Pre-Teen World Telethon” and “3D Stake From The Heart.” Sure, it dates the show when they spend an entire episode riffing on Coppola’s biggest bomb, but the strength of SCTV has always been in the deft mix of surreal parody and their ongoing characters. As always, the disc looks and sounds better than when the show first aired. My continued compliments to everyone at Shout! Factory for their work on one of my favorite ongoing DVD projects right now.
Nostalgia’s not the only reason to buy these shows, of course. There are current shows that I admire that are well worth collecting, and two recent examples represent the respective best that these shows had to offer. Thanks to scheduling (a real issue in the pre-TiVo days), I stopped watching ANGEL at the end of season three, with Angel trapped at the bottom of the sea and Cordelia gone and Connor a murderer. When I finally caught up with the fourth season, I thought it was painfully dour and relentlessly unhappy, something that later seasons of BUFFY struggled with as well. Now that I’ve finally seen ANGEL SEASON FIVE, though, I’m officially in mourning for the show. Wow. What an amazing last gasp. The decision to hand over control of Wolfram & Hart to the members of Angel Investigations seemed to me to be a desperate way to resolve the previous season, but it turned out to be one of the most vital creative choices the show ever made. The series got funny again, brilliantly so, and the stakes got really, really interesting. David Boreanaz rose to the material, turning in the best sustained performance he’s ever given. The entire ensemble does great work, with special mention going to Amy Acker. Someone needs to give her a series of her own immediately. She’s beautiful, she can sell any joke, and she steps up here playing a second character that’s the exact opposite of Fred, the geek from another dimension that she’s played since season two. I’d go so far as to say that this box may represent the single best season of any Whedon-verse show so far. It’s like he took everything he learned on BUFFY and FIREFLY and even the earlier seasons of ANGEL and poured it all into this batch of episodes. I found the very ending of the last episode to be perfect, a summary of the show’s whole theme in one Quixotic stand against evil. Excellent stuff overall.
I’d also argue that the fifth season of SOUTH PARK is not only the best season of the show so far, but also that I can’t imagine they’ll ever top this for consistency. Let’s say that the only episode of the season was #501, “Scott Tenorman Must Die.” That is such an amazing piece of comedy writing, such a dark and awful high watermark, that I’d buy the box set just to own and study it. But all season long, Trey Parker and Matt Stone and all the other fiendishly funny people who work on the show kept knocking out these casual masterpieces, one after another, and they hold up on closer inspection.
”It Hits The Fan,” “Cripple Fight,” “Cartmanland,” and “Towelie” are just a few of the memorable highlights. Watching the show as it aired, the shock to the system came from realizing what these guys were getting away with. There’s an episode that made fun of the hype around the unveiling of the Segway that may well be the dirtiest thing I’ve ever seen on TV, complete with the hands-down ugliest Cartman joke of all time. I think the show is still strong and funny now, but if I’m trying to explain why SOUTH PARK matters, this is the box set I’ll use to prove my point. The commentary minis by Parker and Stone are often fairly revealing, and always entertaining. Comedy Central continues to do a nice job with this series on DVD.
There are series that I never got around to watching while they were on first run. That’s no judgment call. It’s just a matter of how much time I’m willing to hand over to TV in any given week. With a show like SCRUBS, I figured I’d get around to it sometime. Then a buddy of mine got hired to write for the series this fall, and BVHE put together SCRUBS: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON, and I figured it was time to finally give the show a chance, and I ended up watching it all in one big gulp over about three days. I have no idea how the show’s holding up, but that first season of Bill Lawrence’s sitcom was so good that it’s deceptive. SCRUBS makes it look very, very easy. The show manages to be stylish without being obnoxious about it, fast-paced without being frantic. Zach Braff is a great anchor for the series, a naturally gifted comic performer, and it’s one of those casts where everyone clicks. John C. McGinley plays Dr. Cox, mentor to Braff’s J.D., and it’s one of those roles that could have been played wrong so many ways so easily. That makes it even more impressive to watch how completely McGinley nails it from the very start of the very first episode. Donald Faison’s great as Turk, JD’s best friend and roommate. The two of them really do feel like old friends, and they’re very funny even when they’re doing nothing. Sarah Chalke always seemed deeply miscast during her time on ROSEANNE, but she’s perfect as the highly neurotic Dr. Elliott Reed. Judy Reyes is the most prominent non-doctor on the show, and she’s great as Carla, the very embodiment of professional competence. She and the other nurses all provide perfect edge to balance the outsized personalities of the doctors, and I like how SCRUBS portrays nurses as the lifeblood of the hospital.
In fact, I like the overall picture that SCRUBS paints of the running of a modern hospital. It’s smart and bracingly honest, and in a half-hour comedy, they manage to be more realistic than most one-hour dramas. Also, I’d like to say that Neil Flynn is one of the great underrated assets on any TV show right now. The extras in the set are engaging and dense and just as appealing as the show itself, and all 24 episodes look and sound great. I’ll definitely continue to catch up as BVHE releases this series in the future.
STAR TREK ENTERPRISE is another show I never watched while it was on the air. I don’t hate STAR TREK, but I’d hardly call myself a fan. Sure, I’ve enjoyed sampling all three of those magnificent full-season collections that Paramount released for the original series last year, and I’ll keep those for as long as I have a DVD player. But when you start talking about THE NEXT GENERATION and DEEP SPACE NINE and VOYAGER... it’s just too much goddamn STAR TREK. Seriously. Even with the movies, I like a few of them, but overall it feels like the franchise is more padding than not. I really liked FIRST CONTACT as a film, and in particular, I liked the moment in STAR TREK history that it brought to life. Having just rewatched FIRST CONTACT when Paramount released that great 2-disc set, I decided to give ENTERPRISE a try.
Speaking as a casual observer of STAR TREK, I thought it was a sporadically interesting attempt to take the series back to the frontier days of Starfleet. I think the larger conspiracy that drives the plot of the first season is sort of a dud, but the stand-alone adventures remind me of what I’ve always enjoyed about the original ‘60s show, that sense of exploration. Scott Bakula really sums up the overall casting directive of this series: amiable and bland. He’s not bad, but he’s too dull to be a lead as written. Jolene Blalock may be the single hottest piece of ass to ever star in a TREK, but she’s equally dull. The effects are great, but thanks to the way BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and FIREFLY have changed TV effects, it already looks dated. Sound and picture quality is superb, and Paramount put together a handsome package in terms of extras content and the design of the box itself. If you’re a fan, you probably already have this, and if you’re not, it’s probably not worth the investment. More than anything, I’m just eager for them to release the animated series now.
I’m not really sure how I missed RED DWARF growing up, but I did. Missed it completely. Never saw a single episode until Warner Home Video began issuing their season-by-season releases. We’re up to RED DWARF V and RED DWARF VI now, and it seems to me that even a weak series of RED DWARF episodes features a lot of great ideas and some good smart comic writing and performing. I’m enormously fond of the chemistry between Craig Charles, Chris Barrie, Danny John-Jules, and Robert Llewellyn. Each series seems to bend or twist the basic premise of the show as much as possible, but there’s a sensibility that remains the same no matter what. I’m amazed by the depth of each of these two-disc sets and just how complete the extras are. Great commentaries, excellent and extensive behind-the-scenes documentaries, “smeg ups,” and all sorts of special featurettes. Considering each series runs about 180 minutes total, the extra features outweigh the show itself. One of the coolest things for DWARF fans is included on the SERIES V disc, a documentary about the making of the pilot for the American remake of the show. This has got to be one of the gold standards for how you present a TV show on DVD, and I recommend it highly to any fan of SF or comedy.
Comedy is, of course, an incredibly subjective thing. What’s funny to me may not be funny to you, and vice-versa. That’s especially true of two discs I just watched, one of which is a new release, the other of which is only new to me. WILDBOYZ: THE COMPLETE 2nd SEASON UNCENSORED is pretty much the exact opposite of highbrow entertainment, but even so, I still find a lot of the show to be laugh-out-loud funny. Idiots plus nature equals entertainment, especially when nature inevitably gets the upper hand. Chris Pontius and Steve-O both take plenty of abuse as they travel to places like Brazil, Costa Rica, Kenya, Indonesia, and East Africa. The episode on India has pretty much convinced me that I’ll never be visiting that country. The first disc is all the episodes, and the second disc is all bonus material.
It only took one disc to hold the complete first series of THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, but that one disc is packed with all six episodes of one of the freakiest acts of comedy terrorism that I’ve ever witnessed, and I’m glad I now own all three series of the show, as well as the Christmas special, all recently issued by WHV.
The story of Royston Vasey, a creepy little English town, this show never really got a fair shake from Comedy Central when they showed it here in the US, and if you don’t watch this series in order, you’ll be lost. As I wait for the release of their feature film here in the states, or at least for the import of the UK disc, I’m glad I finally had a chance to catch up with the entire output of Jeremy Dyson, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, and Reese Shearsmith. I’m endlessly impressed by how cinematic the work by director Steve Bendelack is, and I am addicted to the score by Joby Talbot. Again, WHV has done a very good job of packing on the extra features, including dossiers of all the characters to help you sort everything out. These guys seem to revel in the ugly and the disgusting, and I’m sure there are people who wouldn’t find anything here to laugh about. I love this disturbing world view, and I can’t deny how hard it makes me laugh. What’s really brilliant about the series is that I’d actually call it horror before I’d call it comedy. Yes, it’s funny, but most of the laughs come from witnessing things so vile and unnerving that you have to laugh as a sort of horrified defense mechanism. Each of the seasons manages to have a completely different style, and the third season in particular is very daring in the way it bends time in on itself. The Christmas special plays like a horror anthology, more like the British TALES FROM THE CRYPT film than like any holiday special I’ve ever seen before. Give this a try, and find out for yourself if you’re local or not.
The last series I watched out of this batch was Fox Home Entertainment’s release of THE LONE GUNMEN: THE COMPLETE SERIES, and I’ll admit... I had trouble making it through. The three leads (Bruce Harwood, Tom Braidwood, and Dean Haglund) made excellent guest stars on THE X-FILES, and I remember always enjoying the appearances on that show. They just can’t carry a series on their own, though, and the problem is compounded by the fact that they never figured out what tone this series was aiming for. It’s much more blatantly comedic than THE X-FILES ever was, but it feels forced most of the time, and the result is that nothing really seems to matter. There are no stakes, and it’s hard to know what The Lone Gunmen think they’re going to accomplish at any given moment. Still, hats off to Fox for putting the show on DVD for the sake of any X-FILES completists out there who will want to add this to their shelves.
And now let’s just pull one of these stacks off my desk at random, titles that I meant to review but never got around to, just so we can start catching up:
CLOSER
SPANGLISH
VERA DRAKE
DANNY DECKCHAIR
ENDURING LOVE
THE CHORUS/LES CHORISTES
SON OF THE MASK
HANZO THE RAZOR
Does CLOSER really demand a Superbit transfer? Sure, the cinematography by Stephen Goldblatt was nice, and Mike Nichols did a nice job directing, but this is hardly the sort of visual feast that requires every bit of potential storage space for sound and picture info. I would have enjoyed a commentary with Nichols and Patrick Marber, the playwright who adapted his own work for the screen, or maybe one with any combination of the four actors in the film. There’s a great 5.1 Dolby Digital track, a 5.1 DTS track, and a French Dolby Digital surround track, all of which sound great, and there are French and English subtitles. The 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer is lovely. If you’re a fan of the film and want to keep it, you’ll be happy with the disc, but aside from the video for Damien Rice’s “Blower’s Daughter,” there’s nothing that makes this disc special, and that seems like a missed opportunity.
Okay... let me get this straight. You put out a film called SPANGLISH, but you don’t put Spanish subtitles on it? Really? Why does Sony Home Entertainment so resolutely hate the Spanish speaking community? Why do they refuse to subtitle any of their titles so that Spanish speaking people might also enjoy them? You’ll put Thai and Portuguese subtitles on many films, but not Spanish? It just confounds me. This is the first James L. Brooks film that seems to embrace the possibilities of DVD at all, but it’s still a fairly half-assed package, all things considered.
Seeing this film again, I find myself even more conflicted about it that I was when I saw it last Christmas in the theater. All of the material between Paz Vega and Adam Sandler strikes me as honest and beautifully played, while most of the rest of the film feels like a failed experiment in tone. I think Tea Leoni’s work deserves a second look from people. She’s playing a person who’s hard to like, but the way she balances that with genuine vulnerability is impressive. Also, if you’re handing out accolades for the acting, you have to mention Shelbie Bruce and Sarah Steele, who play Vega’s daughter and Leoni’s daughter, respectively. It’s mature work all around. The audio commentary by James L. Brooks is revealing and more honest than you’d expect. Brooks acknowledges all the rumors about the film and talks frankly about how hard he worked on it. The deleted scenes are quite good, and some of them would have changed the film dramatically if they had stayed in. If you lusted after that awesome sandwich that Sandler makes in the movie, there’s an extra feature for you called, appropriately enough, “How To Make The World’s Greatest Sandwich Featuring Thomas Keller.” More than anything, this made me wish for equally revealing special editions of BROADCAST NEWS and I’LL DO ANYTHING.
I’ve learned by now that I either love or hate Mike Leigh’s films, with little or no middle ground. Even when he makes a film I don’t connect with, there are few filmmakers who have a more distinct signature. The way he works with his actors can yield tremendous results, but can also lead to films that strike me as overly precious. In the case of VERA DRAKE, he had his cast live in character for months before the film started shooting, and it paid off. The Drake family is tight-knit and completely believable, and Imelda Staunton’s Oscar-nominated performance is a brilliant portrait of denial in action. For many people, the only way they can deal with the details of their daily lives is to compartmentalize. Watching the first half of the film with Staunton’s unflagging optimism and her blank smile, you might think she’s simple or even stupid. But she’s not. Vera just made a choice at some point to see the world a certain way, shutting out everything else. There’s something inherently cruel about the structure of the film, the way we watch Vera crumble as she’s confronted with the reality of what she’s done and as her family learns who she really is, but it’s worth it just for the beauty and purity of Staunton’s work.
Mike Leigh doesn’t make movies; he makes shrines to his actors, and this is one of his best. The disc is bare bones, but this one’s worth keeping.
Visually, Rhys Ifans doesn’t really vary from role to role. Even in last year’s VANITY FAIR, he still basically looked like the same Great Shaggy Beast we’ve seen since he arrived, fully-formed, in 1999’s NOTTING HILL. But if you want to see totally different types of performances from Ifans, then these two films pretty much cover the full range.
The trailer for DANNY DECKCHAIR made me twitch when I’d see it in theaters last year. It looked predictable and cute and like the exact kind of film I don’t like spending any time on. I’ll give credit to writer/director Jeff Balsmeyer, though, for making a sweet-natured film that manages to avoid most of the worst conventions of the romantic comedy. In some ways, this reminded me of LOCAL HERO in the way it drops someone into a small eccentric community, only to end up deeply changed by the experience. This is Rhys Ifans at his most cuddly, playing Danny, a construction worker whose mind is rarely on his job. He lives for his vacations, and he’s looking forward to the next one he can take with his girlfriend, played by Justine Clarke. When she cancels their camping trip a couple of days before they leave, it crushes him, and when he learns that she lied about the reason she had to cancel, he feels the need to do something crazy. His opportunity comes at a barbecue, where he has his friends tie giant helium balloons to a deckchair just to see what will happen. He ends up leaving the ground, carried away by the wind, coming to earth hundreds of miles away in the backyard of a beautiful traffic cop, played by Miranda Otto. You can pretty much guess what happens from there, but Balsmeyer’s got a deft touch and manages to keep things light and enjoyable. You’ve got to swallow some fairly tremendous implausibilities in order to believe that things would last as long as they do in the film. Much of the movie boils down to the chemistry between Ifans and Otto, who previously worked together in Michel Gondry’s HUMAN NATURE, and they are undeniably charming together. It’s particularly nice to see Otto let her hair down a bit post-LORD OF THE RINGS. Be warned... you’ll be drowning in the feel-good by the end of the movie, but if you’re looking for a slightly obscure date film that delivers, this one’s got integrity.
Lions Gate included a commentary with Ifans and the writer/director, as well as a brief making-of featurette. There’s a perfectly okay 5.1 Dolby Digital surround mix and a 2.0 Dolby Stereo mix that doesn’t sound significantly different, and both English and Spanish subtitles are included.
Because he’s played so many comic roles by now, I wasn’t prepared for the work that Ifans does in ENDURING LOVE, and I have to say... this film got deeply mistreated last year. Paramount Classics has a good track record as far as taste goes, but they never manage to sell these great little films that they pick up. Roger Michell strikes me as a filmmaker of substance, a guy who approaches each film seriously. I still think NOTTING HILL is far better than what Hollywood passes off as romantic comedy most of the time, and CHANGING LANES is so good it actually made people think Ben Affleck can act. This time out, Michell’s working from a Joe Denhall script adapted from Ian McEwan’s novel. In other hands, this same plot could turn out as a generic shitty thriller, but everyone treats this as something more, elevating the material.
The way the film begins, with a pastoral picnic between Joe (Daniel Craig) and Claire (Samantha Morton) interrupted by a surreal and terrifying hot-air balloon accident, sets the viewer on edge right away. This is a film that crawls under your skin, and it features tremendous performances all the way around. At the scene of the accident, Joe meets Jed (Ifans), and the two of them share a strange moment, a temporary connection. As they return to their regular lives, Joe and Claire can’t shake the horror of the accident. Joe, in particular, is haunted by questions about his own cowardice. Jed finds himself haunted by something totally different, though, questions of his own that only Joe can help him answer. This is like a very high-minded FATAL ATTRACTION, and both Craig and Ifans bring their A-game to the film. Ifans is creepy and unnerving, but he’s not just playing some generic movie psycho. He gives you a view into the troubled heart of this lonely, damaged man. Craig also plays levels of ambiguity here, never quite sure if he’s really being stalked or if he’s simply losing his mind. The two of them manage to create such a fascinating ballet that if there were nothing else to the film, that would be enough.
Samantha Morton doesn’t have a lot to do, but when she does step up, she and Craig have some explosive moments together. I particularly love the film’s denouement, an effective character payoff that neatly ties up the biggest mystery of the film. So often, movies like this resort to easy answers in order to force a happy ending, but ENDURING LOVE earns its conclusion, and it’s impressive all the way up to the last frame. Even without any extras at all, this is a disc I would recommend, and it really shows off a range that Ifans has only hinted at previously.
Check out the back cover of LES CHORISTES and you’ll see comparisons to MUSIC OF THE HEART and MR. HOLLAND’S OPUS. Ignore them. This is a French film by Christopher Barratier, and it aims to strike a balance between earned sentiment and wicked character comedy. It’s strenuously honest, so when it builds to its emotional conclusion, you don’t feel manipulated. People tossed around Chaplin’s name an awful lot when LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL was released, but this film seems like the real deal. Try to imagine The Little Tramp in place of Gerard Jugnot. It would be pretty much the same film. Jugnot is delightful as Clement Matthieu, a man who has already failed at a number of jobs when he gets hired as a prefect at a school for troubled boys. There are some rough kids in the film, and I admire how they made some of the characters complete bastards. There’s a tyrannical headmaster, but we see shades of grey to his character along the way. Watch for the scene where he gets hit in the head by a stray soccer ball. Great stuff.
Turns out one of the many jobs held by Clement Matthieu over the years, and the one thing he truly loves, is arranging and conducting for a chorus. When he decides to use the boys from the school to put together a chorus, it’s not some saintly social experiment or some clever ploy to make them better men. It’s an almost entirely selfish act, something he does so he can stay sane in this otherwise terrible situation. He’s just as trapped in this school as the kids are. It manages to buck the conventions of the “magical mentor” films like DEAD POETS SOCIETY and MONA LISA SMILE. Clement Matthieu isn’t some gifted educator traveling from school to school touching people’s lives and inspiring everyone he encounters. Far from it. This is an accident, and when big changes do happen, Clement is as surprised as anyone else.
The kids are all naturals, the music is lovely, and the film is shot and transferred at a gorgeous 2.40:1, burnished memory perfectly captured by three cinematographers, Jean-Jacques Bohon, Dominique Gentil, and Carlo Varini. The Dolby Digital 5.1 surround mix is warm and engrossing, and BVHE’s included both Spanish and English subtitles.
Making a sequel to the Jim Carrey film THE MASK at this point, a full ten years later, seems like one of those wide open ideas. I know... the knee-jerk reaction is to say, “Why would you do this without Jim Carrey?” but I’m not sure I agree. I think I would have begged Joe Dante to make this film, since he’s already made several full-length films that perfectly evoke the spirit of the classic Termite Terrace cartoons. The Mask is the thing, the franchise. Whoever wears it becomes pure unleashed id. You can tell any number of stories with that basic device. The key is figuring out the exact right combination of story and star.
Which they absolutely did not do here.
There are so many missteps along the way that one hardly knows where to start, and in the end, it’s almost not worth beating this film up. It’s awful from end to end, but there’s a germ of an idea in there that might have worked. The best stuff taps into the very real fears inherent to impending fatherhood. Casting’s a real issue for me here. I don’t like Jamie Kennedy, so him with the wacky turned up to high just doesn’t do a thing for me. He doesn’t spend a lot of time in the Mask, and that’s a good thing. The animated CGI baby stuff is creepy instead of amusing, though, so the best stuff ends up being what the animators do with the family dog once he puts on the Mask. If you want to see the state of the art in digital baby work, check out that behind-the-scenes stuff I mentioned earlier on the LEMONY SNICKET disc. Both films were done by ILM, but the work couldn’t be more different in terms of quality. Also, I have to say that using a pitch meeting as the ticking clock for your film is pretty much never going to be interesting. New Line’s Platinum Series DVD is nicely put together, and I’ll say this... if you’ve got kids, this will probably work much better for them than it will for any adults in the room. But I’m sure you can find better options, ones they’ll thank you for later. This is pretty much completely skip-worthy.
Finally, we’ve got HVE’s release of the HANZO THE RAZOR trilogy to consider, and I have to say... there’s not another film or group of films I’ve watched recently that have made quite the same sort of impression on me. There’s really no way to prepare someone for HANZO, and you almost don’t want to spoil the surprise by trying to describe it ahead of time. The first one was released in 1972, and was called GOYOKIBA, or THE RAZOR. For this box set, they use the subtitle SWORD OF JUSTICE for the first film. Directed by Kenji Misumi, this is obviously the Japanese answer to DIRTY HARRY and SHAFT, a film that is meant to establish a Samurai anti-hero that is more twisted than anything America can dream up. It’s also a sort of antidote to the Zatoichi character. Misumi had directed many of those films by the time he made this one, and Shintaro Katsu, who played Hanzo, became famous playing Zatoichi. Hanzo is a beast, a fucking animal, but he’s bound by his own particular code of honor. That code seems to include self-torture, rape, and wonton bloodletting, but somehow, Hanzo is the one man in his town who is interested in “real” justice. Every other samurai is corrupt, on the take, untrustworthy. Hanzo cannot be corrupted. He’s above concerns about money, and he cannot be tortured because he’s already trained his body to withstand anything. As a result, only Hanzo can tackle the really tough cases that involve the rotten power structure of his town. One of his main weapons seems to be his ability to rape any woman into submission, following which they will inevitably fall in love with him and offer to help him any way they can. We’re treated to some spectacularly twisted sex scenes in this film, including one that appears to be shot from inside the woman during Hanzo’s vigorous thrusting.
As bold and insane as the first movie is, the second film in the series, THE SNARE, really seems to understand the rules that the first one set up and exploits them even more, leading to a sequel that actually improves on the original. I’d say the first film is better directed, but the second film has much better set pieces. The action’s fast and furious under the watchful eye of director Yasuzo Masamura, and there are numerous occasions where he takes an idea from the first film and elaborates on it. Hanzo’s house, for example, is a series of elaborate traps, and not only does he spring them in one great scene, he also includes a scene where they aren’t able to be sprung, playing against our expectations.
The third film, WHO’S GOT THE GOLD?, finishes things out with humor being the obvious priority, and that’s fine. By this point, it was obvious that the filmmakers were going to stick very close to the original, afraid to do anything too different with the subsequent HANZO movies, and part of what made the first one so amazing is the shock to the system of seeing something so crazy. When it’s repeated like this, that shock wears off. Still, the HANZO trilogy as a whole is something special, and I’ve got to commend Home Vision Entertainment for not only finding these, but restoring them. The print quality on all three films is fantastic. I’d have a hard time arguing these as great movies, but they’re magnificent exploitation, and the best way to watch them is all at once, in one big four-and-a-half hour blast of sleaze, with a bunch of friends and a bunch of your favorite intoxicants. HANZO’s not just a trilogy... it’s a test of your threshold of filth that just happens to be beautifully crafted. Easily one of the great oddities to cross my desk this year.
And now we’ll close out today’s column with probably my five favorite recent titles I’ve watched here at the house, films that really made me sit up and take notice:
UNFAITHFULLY YOURS
THE BAD NEWS BEARS
GUNNER PALACE
TOM HORN
NIGHT MOVES
I’ve reviewed a pretty even mix of new and catalog titles this week, but when picking my five favorite titles out of the stack, I notice that almost every one of them is an older film. I don’t think it’s just some mood I’ve been in, either. There have just been some exceptional releases lately, and it’s been a pleasure to see this many wonderful films, one on top of another.
For example, Criterion’s release of UNFAITHFULLY YOURS had me dancing when it showed up here at the house. It’s been way too long since the film was available to own, and it’s nice to finally be able to study one of the most controversial titles in the career of writer/director Preston Sturges.
It wasn’t controversial the way something like AMERICAN PSYCHO is (although it’s pretty strong stuff for a 1948 comedy), but among Sturges fans, this film is often maligned or even dismissed outright. What Criterion has always done well is help renovate a film’s reputation. This was a very personal project for Sturges, one he tried to get made for many years. It’s an unconventional narrative, and I can see why an audience in 1948 might be shocked by it. Watching it now, there’s a very contemporary, edgy sense of humor driving things, more cynical than Sturges typically is. Rex Harrison stars as Sir Alfred DeCarter, a symphony conductor of international renown. He’s married to the beautiful – and much younger – Daphne (Linda Darnell), who he obviously adores. He returns from a trip and is given reason to suspect that she’s been sleeping with his assistant, carrying on an affair right under his nose. He imagines confronting his wife. He imagines three methods for killing her, fantasizes the perfect scenarios. He tries to execute his plan. Things do not go as planned. Hilarity ensues. Classic comedy set-up, but the way Sturges tells the joke is the thing. This is a beautiful bit of filmmaking, and it’s incredibly sophisticated in terms of execution.
Rex Harrison’s an unusual choice for a Sturges lead. He’s very European, enormously successful and rich, justifiably arrogant. In a way, we want to see this guy taken down a peg. He’s pretty much the opposite of Sullivan, the defining Sturges character from the defining Sturges film. But what’s great is the way Sturges sets him up and knocks him down with surgical precision, and when we see that he’s just a guy who is afraid of losing this beautiful woman who makes his life complete, it humanizes him. Anyone can relate to that. When the film shifts gears in such a dramatic manner, I’d guess that’s what threw the audiences of the ‘40s.
Sir DeCarter’s fantasies take place while he’s conducting his orchestra through three powerful classical pieces. Each fantasy is different, dictated by the mood of the music being played. It’s brilliant and beautiful, and that first push in on Harrison, closer and closer until we vanish into his eye, into his raging interior landscape, is one of the classic images from all of Sturges’s films. It’s also something that seems really advanced in terms of film language, as innovative as anything in CITIZEN KANE.
When he kills his wife, he takes such manic glee in it that he’s like a BATMAN villain, sitting in court and laughing hysterically as her lover is sentenced to die. That’s dark, and Harrison seems to be having the time of his life. He gets increasingly worked up, visibly hostile as the concert progresses. Darnell’s got a hell of a role, having to not only play each of the fantasy versions of Daphne a different way, but also playing Daphne’s real reaction to this nervous breakdown that her husband appears to be having.
The movie is, ultimately, crushingly romantic. If your wife/girlfriend/s.o./self wants to see a mainstream romantic comedy like HITCH, try this one with it as a double feature. UNFAITHFULLY YOURS feels utterly modern, the sign of a great comedy. These laughs were built to last. Criterion did a great job here, with a beautiful book of liner notes featuring an essay by Jonathan Lethem, a beautiful HD digital transfer, an audio commentary by three Sturges scholars (which I haven’t listened to yet), an insightful Terry Jones introduction to the film, a new interview with Sturges’s widow, and the original trailer. It’s a hell of a film and a hell of a disc.
THE BAD NEWS BEARS is a bare-bones Paramount disc, part of a box set that also includes BREAKING TRAINING and GO TO JAPAN. I remember as a kid... those sequels were big fucking deals in terms of advertising. Those films were hyped, and it was because there was so much love for the 1976 original. It was a monster hit when it was released, and more importantly, it was a really good movie. Michael Ritchie may have been hit-and-miss as a director, but this was one of his bullseyes. The script by Bill Lancaster is good, honest ‘70s writing, and there’s not one obvious set piece in the whole thing. Scenes evolve naturally, as does the story. It’s smartly structured writing, but invisible. Lancaster’s other great script was for John Carpenter’s THE THING, and I actually think the two films are similar in terms of how he handles character. He tells you just enough. The way he introduces all of the kids in BAD NEWS BEARS is impressive, and Buttermaker (Walter Matthau) is solid gold from the second he appears. Tatum O’Neal, the Dakota Fanning of the early ‘70s, is amazing, just like she was in PAPER MOON. She was a gifted comic performer, as funny as young Spanky McFarland (as high a compliment as I know how to pay to child actors), but she also seemed able to tap into real pain at a moment’s notice.
And that leads to the real reason I love this movie. It respects the fact that kids are not perfect beautiful innocent little angels, and that parents are not always straight from a sitcom sweet themselves. Vic Morrow’s really good, for example, as the coach of the team that the Bears have to battle for the championship, and that scene with his son late in the movie is tremendously affecting acting on both their parts. And, yes, I love the film because it has the balls to have Tanner dismiss his whole team with the infamous rant, “What do you expect? All we’ve got on this team are a bunch of Jews, spics, niggers, pansies, and a booger-eating moron.” Yes, I love it when Buttermaker gives all the kids beer at the end of the film. Yes, I love the air hockey scene with Amanda, and the stakes she sets. Mainly, I love putting this on because it’s like a window into my childhood. THE BAD NEWS BEARS was made when I was six years old, and it does a great job of capturing the texture of everyday life exactly as I remember it. I’m just glad no one’s ever been crazy enough to remake this one.
Palm Pictures sends me strange and interesting titles every month. They have impeccable and eccentric taste in Asian films, they’re responsible for the Director’s Label, one of the most exciting DVD series being published, and now they sent me GUNNER PALACE, which I missed in the theater. This is a unique and wonderful film, a documentary that deal with Iraq in a way that both conservatives and liberals should be able to enjoy. It’s a non-political film about an incredibly political situation. Nice trick.
It’s not a film I’d try to summarize, since it’s not really a narrative. It’s an experience. Director Michael Tucker lived with 2/3 Field Artillery (nicknamed “The Gunners”) for two full months. During this time, the Gunners took possession of Uday Hussein’s bachelor pad, his so-called “pleasure palace.” It’s a little bombed out, but this is where the Gunners make their home. The film just puts you face to face with these soldiers and doesn’t tell you what to think of them. It gives these guys a voice. It gives them faces. It makes them real, individuals. We say we care about soldiers, “our boys,” in the abstract. This movie makes it specific. This isn’t the distant past. These are our soldiers right now, and they’re complex and they’re dealing with a daily reality I can’t imagine.
As much as MURDERBALL inspired me, so did this. GUNNER PALACE is a snapshot of characters who have character, a real treat. Michael Tucker and his co-writer/producer/director Petra Epperlein both deserve enormous attention in the future based on this film’s promise, and Palm did a great job with the transfer overall.
TOM HORN was one of those “Oh, fine, why not?” sort of purchases for me. A number of Steve McQueen films came out on the same day, and I was picking up a few of the others when I saw this. Holy shit... talk about a winning lottery ticket. This is my favorite kind of film... you put it on expecting nothing and POW! You get a masterpiece.
Yeah, that’s right. I said the “m” word. I don’t know who the fuck William Wiard is. I’m sure I can go look him up on the IMDb, but I’m not going to. Doesn’t matter what else he made. This film is a goddamn classic. The script by Thomas McGuane and Bud Shrake is great, like vintage John Milius or Walter Hill. Basically, it’s another of McQueen’s love letters to the fading cowboy archetype, like JUNIOR BONNER, but deeper and richer. He saw the writing on the wall. The world was changing. Cowboys were “old-fashioned.” McQueen must have really believed in the romantic myth of the West. Tom Horn is the last of the great gunslingers, and he finds himself in an age where the gun is no longer the accepted way of settling things. He outlives his usefulness, and the New West crushes him beneath the wheels of progress.
What’s most amazing about the film is how consistently it plays against your expectations. McQueen was really smart about how he tweaked his tough guy image. The film opens with a gorgeous shot of him seated against his saddle at sunset, looking like an iconic badass. He takes his horse into town, gets it a stable stall by itself so it doesn’t stomp anyone else’s horse to death, then heads into a saloon. While he’s there, some boxer keeps mouthing off about being the champion of the world, and McQueen can’t resist being a smart-ass right back to him. The boxer takes offense, McQueen doesn’t back down and inch and the film sets you up to expect that we’ll see just why Tom Horn’s such a badass when he beats the piss out of the bigger man without breaking a sweat.
Nope. Instead, Horn gets beaten so badly that all he can do is crawl back to the stable and hide under his horse. His attitude draws the attention of a local businessman, though, played by the always-great Richard Farnsworth. He admires Horn’s fearlessness and approaches him with a job offer. Seems that all the local cattlemen have been dealing with rustlers, and they’re frustrated. Farnsworth believes that Horn is the answer to the problem, and representing the other cattlemen, he gives Horn permission to do whatever he has to in order to fix things. Horn’s solution is violence, and for a while, the film looks like it’ll be a pretty straightforward gritty action film, but there’s something more going on here. As you watch, McQueen seems determined to twist familiar Western moments with scenes that recall other films like ONE-EYED JACKS, TRUE GRIT, or even his own NEVADA SMITH. There are moments of shocking brutality intercut with some affecting interludes as Horn tries to find some peace and happiness even as he deals out death. By the time this film was made, McQueen was already dying of cancer, but he doesn’t let it slow him down. Instead, it adds a sort of pained dignity to his work. The film is ultimately a tragedy, as emotionally powerful as UNFORGIVEN, and what really sticks with me is the way that McQueen’s performance taps into a sadness that’s not present in his other work. This was the next-to-last film he made, released the same year as THE HUNTER, and it breaks my heart because it seems like he was better than ever. I know one of the raps against McQueen was that he didn’t really have any range as an actor, but that’s horseshit. This is nuanced, mature work, and one of the best films ever made about the sunset of the American west.
Arthur Penn was one hell of a filmmaker. His BONNIE AND CLYDE is widely acknowledged as an American classic, and rightfully so. But NIGHT MOVES doesn’t really share that reputation, and that’s a shame, because Penn made
