The Year That Was, One More Time

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The end of the year came before the end of my moviegoing for 2011, and my recap from the holiday season was admitedly an incomplete look back at last year’s films.  I blame Hollywood.  Most weekends are a drought for quality, then at the end of the year the heavens open.  I suspect we could more easily change the weather than the movie studios’ release schedule, which does create a challenge for anyone who wants to see all the movies that are worth seeing.

By now I’ve seen most, though not all, of what I’ve wanted to see.  (Melancholia, Carnage, some foreign films, e.g., remain on my “must see, but not yet seen” list.)  So, with the red carpet already laid out for the Oscars, it seems like a good time for a 2011 recap redux.

In the post below I’ll offer my quick take on some notable films that I hadn’t mentioned last time, including a few notable for the wrong reasons.  Then I’ll wrap up with my choices for top films for the year.  (As I type this I still haven’t made my list, so I’m as eager as anyone to find out what they are.)

Films of 2011 (Part II)

Films of the Year Recap

2011 Films, Notable and Otherwise

The Artist
A love story in love with movies, and with the way movies were once in love with love.  I found the film fascinating (and the reaction fascinating to read as well).  The Artist aims to recapture something that’s been lost, something more than just the stripped-down conventions of an early movie era.  It wants a way of looking at our world and ourselves free of the ironic and cynical view that’s become commonplace in recent times.  Not all was well in the old days, and The Artist has its scenes of tragedy as well.  Those moments may seem easier for us to grasp; the scenes of wide-eyed innocence feel less familiar.  They feel nostalgic, in fact, and if there is any use to nostalgia, it’s to say there’s something not quite right with the way things are today.  The once-fresh world of movies has grown old and stale, and we need a new way forward.  That’s a critique I find persuasive:  you’ll have to look hard to find anything new on this list of top grossers for the past year.  The Artist has something in common with the films on that list; it too borrows from the past.  But it is not an old film.  It’s wildly entertaining and the freshest film of the year.

Beginners
A film about sadness, but hardly sad at all, Beginners is sweet and warm, yet far too sweet and warm for its own good.  The performances are fine, and give credit to Ewan MacGregor and Christopher Plummer, especially.  The cast makes the film worth watching, but the story seems oddly muted.  Conflict is avoided at all turns, characters are explored only so far, and this tale of how life can be messy and full of surprise seems a bit too neat in the end.

A Better Life
An immigrant gardener and his son, and the struggles of working-class life in Los Angeles.  The Oscar nomination for Demián Bichir is well-deserved, and all the better if it draws a bigger audience for the film, now on DVD.  The bond between father and son is heartfelt and moving.

The Descendants
Frailty, thy filmmaker is Alexandar Payne, the director who has given us Ruth Stoops (Citizen Ruth), Tracy Flick (Election), Warren Schmidlt (About Schmidt), and Miles Raymond (Sideways).  No one is as flawed and as compromised in The Descendants, except perhaps the mother, who is left in a coma after a fleeting few moments waterskiing off the Hawaii coast in the movie’s opening scene.  This film belongs to George Clooney, playing the husband she can cheat on no longer.  He is a true hero by Paynean standards, an accomplished lawyer, a respected patriarch, though a hapless father to his two daughters.  Payne does excellent work blending tragedy with humor, and Clooney and the cast are terrific.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
The film has its flaws.  There’s the problematical appropriation of 9/11 for its ready-made tale of anguish, reducing a still-fresh national tragedy to a simple plot device, to the occasionally annoying, frequently not credible, central character, Oskar, the boy who loses his father in the World Trade Center crash.  The father left behind a key and Oskar searches the city of New York for the lock it belongs to.  So far, not so good.  But Oskar’s encounters provide a number of memorable scenes.  Viola Davis, Jeffrey Wright, and Sandra Bullock  all do good work, and Max von Sydow as the mysterious “renter” shines in a role without a word of dialogue.  A bit gimmicky, but that is par for the movie overall.

Shame
The performances are wonderful.  Michael Fassbender offers a brave and powerful portrayal of a man addicted to sex.  Carey Mulligan shows why she is one of the leading lights of her generation.  The bitter truth that the movie pretends to deliver, however, is all bitter and no truth.  I found the story not just unappealing but hard to believe.  Director Steve McQueen may be more interested in the buttons he’s pushing in his audience than the lives of his characters onscreen.

A Separation
This film from Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi ranks high on the list of critics’ favorites.  I’d have liked it more if it were a little less the Bickering Bickersons of Tehran.  It’s a drama about a family being torn apart:  a married couple on the brink of divorce, a grandfather with Alzheimer’s, a daughter caught in the crossfire.  The father hires a housekeeper, but when her pregnancy ends in miscarriage, he ends up in court accused of murder.  Fair to say, Persian justice does not operate the same as our own.  A Separation is a good film, well worth seeing, though I have to say, not as great as advertised.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Did I enjoy it?  Thoroughly.  Will I see it again?  Absolutely.  Did I follow it?  Well, yes and no.  There’s a complicated plot that I wouldn’t dare to describe.  It almost comes as an afterthought, anyway.  Atmosphere, character, and games of trust and deceit are at the center of this Cold War spy story, adapted from the novel of John le Carré, with a cast of mostly Brits headed by Gary Oldman.  First rate all around.

War Horse
A misfire of epic proportions.  A war is fought, millions die, but all is well:  the horse survives.  Steven Spielberg, please phone home.  (We won’t even bring up what you did to Tintin.)

Warrior
Another Oscar nomination (Nick Nolte as the alcoholic father) already on DVD.  Warrior is a father-son drama set in the world of martial arts fighting.  Above average for its kind, though nothing especially groundbreaking.

Top 10 Films of 2011

The List

1.  The Artist

2.  The Tree of Life

3.  Midnight in Paris

4.  Hugo

5.  J. Edgar

6.  Drive

7.  A Dangerous Method

8.  The Descendants

9.  Margin Call

10.  Bridesmaids

A few notes: (1) On any other day, you’d get a different list.  I could see any of the top four or five being #1, for example.  (2) I’ve left off foreign-language films, documentaries, and some others.  It’s silly enough to rank films of different genres telling different stories, but I did want to draw the line somewhere.  These are feature-length, live-action, fiction films in English.  That’s it.  (3) The conventional wisdom is that 2011 was a below-average year for movies.  I think it’s too early to tell.  What we are fond of now and fond of later are often different movies, and ultimately what makes a good year is a few good films that linger in our memory, not the ones we forget.  I’d guess most of the films on the list will stand up, and others will emerge.  But I don’t really know.  Only time will tell.  (Now, I’m wondering how I could have left off Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  The second guessing has already begun.)

The Artist (2011)
Michel Hazanavicius, writer-director
Guillaume Schiffman, cinematographer
Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, Uggie
Trailer

Quote of note
“With pleasure.”
—George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), The Artist (2011)

…58…59…60.

Where Has the Year Gone?

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Last we met, on this page at least, we were heading down the yellow-brick road with Dorothy to celebrate some joyous news with the Munchkins.  That was May.  May?  May!  So where have I been?  Good question.  Where have you been?  Another good question.  And where oh where has the time gone?

Long story short, my already full life became even more full and something had to give.  That something turned out to be writing for this site on any kind of a regular basis.  I had expected that I’d find time to add occasional posts, but that, I’ve learned, is harder to do when it’s not part of a daily or weekly routine.  So the year has slipped away—pffft!—but before it is officially done, let’s take a look back at some of the movies of 2011.

For the record, this is not my list of ten best films of the year.  No reason to stop at ten anyway, and slowpoke that I am, my moviegoing for the year remains a work in progress.  I’m still catching up with a few films from November (and before), and some late-year releases are just hitting theaters (A Separation opens today).

Rather, this is a list of movies I’ve seen (so far) that made going to the theater worth the time and effort.  It’s incomplete and somewhat arbitrary—I’ll have something a bit more definitive to say after I’ve taken in a few more year-end releases, sometime before Oscar time.  Let me add this disclaimer:  these are not necessarily great movies.  Some are only arguably good, flawed but with enough redeeming value to make them worth noting.

I’ve broken out the list into two groups:  one, films from before the deluge, i.e., before Oscar hopefuls hit theaters starting around October, and the other, films that have come out since.

Films of 2011 (Part I)

Pre-Oscar Season (films through September)

Standout Films

The Tree of Life
Terrence Malick doesn’t direct many films—five features in 38 years (though he may be just a slow starter, with nearly as many in pipeline).  What he lacks in number he more than makes up for with uncommonly rich, dense explorations of the beings who people his stories.  His stories are not the linear narratives we’re used to getting at the movies.  Nor are his characters revealed through the usual mix of dialogue and action.  Malick’s works resemble photographed novels as much as they do cinema.  Malick combines images, dreams, memories, and voiceovers to portray lives lived in the context of forces far beyond, and deeper than, ordinary experience.  His latest, The Tree of Life, has divided critics and audiences (making it the kind of movie I tend to favor).  A tour de force or tour de farce?  Depends whom you read.  I lean toward the former view.  The story ostensibly is about a family in a small town in Texas, yet it takes time for meditations ranging from the origins of the universe to the ultimate demise of Earth.  Within that grand sweep we see human life not as a thing in itself but an episode in the continuum.  Few movies take such a wide perspective; 2001: A Space Odyssey, a very different film, is one.  Malick, like Kubrick, contemplates the mystery of it all and gives his audience something rare, a chance to experience wonder.

Midnight in Paris
We think of Woody Allen as a New York director but he seems to have found new life in recent years making movies in Europe.  Since 2005 he’s released four films shot in London and one in Barcelona.  This year it’s the City of Light and Midnight in Paris is the best of the lot.  (Rome gets its turn next year with Nero Fiddled.)  Owen Wilson turns in a winning performance as Gil, an American writer in love more with the city than with his fiancée.  His knack for time travel offers an escape as he hobnobs with greats from the city’s storied expatriate past—Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein, Porter, Picasso, Dalí, and Buñuel among them.  The film is sweet and whimsical, more than a bit nostalgic, and for one interlude in which Gil steals the heart of Picasso’s mistress, wonderfully portrayed by the beautiful Marion Cotillard, it’s altogether touching.

Drive
Drive is a steely cool slice of L.A. crime drama propelled by an unflappable, razor-sharp lead performance from Ryan Gosling.  The film borrows freely from a variety of sources, and influences such as Jean-Pierre Melville and Sergio Leone give the story a distinct non-Hollywood feel.  The driver, never named, is a man of few words.  He works as a mechanic in a shop run by gangsters, does stunt driving for the movie biz, and hires himself out for getaway work.  A loner by nature, he gets involved with his neighbor (Carey Mulligan), who has a young son and a husband getting out of prison.  Complications ensue and plans inevitably go awry.  Among the strong supporting cast is Albert Brooks as a ruthless and surprisingly believable bad guy.

Notable Films

Bridesmaids
A comedy with great laughs and real people.  See, that’s not so hard.  Thank you, Kristen Wiig et al.  More like this, please.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Werner Herzog’s 3-D documentary inside the Chauvet Cave in France, where some of the world’s great art has been sealed for thousands of years.  Ever wonder, What is it to be human?  This film holds part of the answer to that question.

The Company Men
A timely film about a corporate downsizing and for the unlucky duckies who lose their livelihood, what happens next.  A fine cast led by Ben Affleck, Chris Cooper, Kevin Costner, and Tommy Lee Jones.

Contagion
Thanks to the brave leadership of politicians and medical professionals, the societies of the world pull together, avert panic, and successfully combat a mysterious and deadly virus sweeping the globe.  Oops…that’s a different film.  This one’s from Steven Soderbergh, and sad to say, it may be a somewhat more realistic view of what could someday happen.

The Debt
The film is a remake of a 2007 Israeli thriller and doesn’t achieve all that you might have hoped.  Still, it’s a heckuva story, and with Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, and the busy Jessica Chastain, among others, you’re in good hands. 

Dogtooth
A Greek film that’s part horror, part comedy, about three older children living a totalitarian nightmare devised by their deranged parents.  Unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

Hanna
Hanna is a teenage girl living in the northern wilderness, where she is trained by her father to be an assassin.  Saoirse Ronan does a terrific job in the title role.  The film is uneven in spots and has some plot elements that don’t really work.  Nevertheless, there’s plenty of action, some nicely photographed sequences, and a few moments of brilliance.

The Help
I can think of a few things wrong with this movie, but I enjoyed the performances, especially those of Octavia Spencer, Viola Davis, and Emma Stone.  The racial divide of Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s may not be the same as it is today, but the divide now between the haves and have-nots feels as wide as ever, and for that reason, the film seems unusually timely.

Incendies
A Canadian-made film set in the Middle East and largely in French.  Two adult children travel back to the war-torn homeland of their dead mother to deliver letters to their brother and father and discover the truth about their family and themselves.  It’s devastating.

Moneyball
Films about baseball typically are not great movies.  This is no exception, though it is a cut above many of the others.  The tale leaves behind old-fashioned notions of the romance of the sport.  This one’s all about the science of numbers.  Perhaps that’s the way the game is played these days, but also it’s part of the problem—for the sport and for the movie.  A little more heart wouldn’t hurt.

Super 8
Probably the best Steven Spielberg film this year, though J. J. Abrams directed this one.  I liked the story of the clever kids, breaking curfew to make a movie.  The extraterrestrials show up, and what started fresh begins to feel like something we’ve seen a few too many times before.

Tabloid
Errol Morris’s documentary on the fascinating story of Joyce McKinney, with a big juicy 1960s sex scandal, a kidnapping, Mormons, and dog cloning to boot.

The Trip
Adapted from a British television series, The Trip follows the hilarious Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon on their travels through the Lake District of Northern England.  They drive, they stop at one inn or another, and they eat.  Not a lot more happens.  But they talk, and their repartee and impressions account for some best laughs you’ll find on film this year.  The movie feels a bit slapdash, and I can’t help but wonder what didn’t make it into the final cut, but one thing is sure:  no one who sees it will think of Michael Caine the same way again.

Oscar Season (films from October on)

Notable Films

Anonymous
The story is over the top—but Roland Emmerich was never one for subtlety.  He took liberties—hey, like Shakespeare—so don’t come to this film looking for history.  Whatever merits the Earl of Oxford–as–Bard authorship theory may hold (it does make for fascinating reading), at heart this film is a paean to the greatest writer of the English language who ever lived.  That’s something special, whatever his name was.

A Dangerous Method
Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud at the birth of psychoanalysis, featuring the story of Sabina Spielrein, the patient, protégée, and lover who unites then divides them.  Strong performances from Michael Fassbender and Viggo Mortenson.  Keira Knightley plays the troubled and irresistible Sabina.  It’s a period picture, but with David Cronenberg at the helm, working from a Christopher Hampton script, it’s not at all old-fashioned.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The first of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy to get its English-language big-screen treatment, it delivers more or less what you’d expect (though not much more):  quick storytelling from David Fincher, a pulsating score from Trent Reznor, and dynamite performances from Rooney Mara in the title role and Daniel Craig doing some very un-Bond-like detective work.  The film is the kind of up-to-date genre piece that Hollywood should be making more of, if only it could kick its fantasy habit.

Hugo
A film about the magic of movies, and made with more than a bit of magic itself.  The story of Georges Méliès, the pioneer filmmaker who lost favor with audiences, ran a toy store with his wife at Gare Montparnasse in Paris, and late in life was rediscovered is one that deserves to be told, and now in fictionalized form it has.  Martin Scorcese directed the adaptation of Brian Selznick’s inventive novel.  Fine performances, with many comic touches and sweet moments.  I am probably more fond of this film than any other I’ve seen recently, and it’s the rare 3-D film I’m glad to have seen in 3-D.

The Ides of March
Intrigue behind the scenes of a presidential campaign, with pols and candidates more lifelike than we get on the reality TV known as cable news.  George Clooney directed and stars as Governor Mike Morris, but the film belongs to the campaign manager played by Ryan Gosling, who’s having quite a year.  An all-around fine cast, with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei, Jeffrey Wright and Evan Rachel Wood on hand to do deeds nefarious and otherwise.

J. Edgar
Here, friends, is the love story of the year.  Leonardo DiCaprio is a revelation as the one and only J. Edgar Hoover.  Armie Hammer is Clyde Tolson, his colleague, confidant, and more.  Naomi Watts is his lifelong secretary, the loyal Helen Gandy.  A richly told tale directed by Clint Eastwood, probably on balance as good a film as any he’s made.

Margin Call
If you want a movie to help you understand the financial crisis of 2008, I’d recommend the documentary Inside Job.  It shows how the 1% ripped off the 99% and gives you the who-did-what (plenty of bad guys, not a lot of good guys).  Margin Call is the story of some of those crooks.  You might not like them—a few are just rich assholes, after all—but you get a sense of the price they pay.  The film doesn’t let them off the hook, but you can understand why they do what they do.  That may not be a popular take in these times, but it’s an achievement.  The cast is wonderful and the performances well worth the time.

My Week with Marilyn
Marilyn Monroe, as great a star as the movies have known, is brought to life in a remarkable performance by Michelle Williams.  You can’t take your eyes off her.  That’s the reason to see this movie, even if the film may be slight in other ways.

The Pause Button

As noted above, I’ll be back with another post or two early in 2012, recapping the year and looking at the Oscars (February 26).  The regular schedule for posts about movies is on hold for the time being.  I’d like to get back to writing more about movies when time permits, but that will not be very soon.  I have a couple of ideas for other movie projects, and someday I will get to them too.  Meanwhile, my next writing gig will not about movies, and will not be online, but it will keep me occupied for some time, and if and when there is news to share about that, I will let you know.

For you crossword fans, my 16-month series of Gram Cracker minipuzzles wrapped up earlier in December.  It was a fun experiment, and in the end I’d say the puzzles turned out well.  Hope it was fun for you solvers too.  Once again, a big “thanks” to two-time ACPT champ Dan Feyer for his expert test-solving skills, a big help to me getting the puzzles ready for prime time.  The Gram Crackers and other puzzles, as always, are at the MAD Puzzles page.

Hugo (2011)
Martin Scorsese, director
Robert Richardson, cinematographer
Brian Selznick (book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret), John Logan (screenplay), writers
Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley, Chloë Grace Moretz, Sacha Baron Cohen
Trailer

Quote of note
“If you ever wonder where your dreams come from, look around:  this is where they’re made.”
—Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley), Hugo (2011)

…58…59…60.

“Justice Has Been Done”

 
In my five decades and counting I’ve had the chance to witness quite a bit of history, but tonight I can say that I don’t remember a moment like this.  So often the most memorable events are the most tragic—the assassinations of the ’60s, the Oklahoma City bombing, and of course, 9/11.  There have been jubilant occasions, too—the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, the fall of the Berlin Wall—but as an occasion of justice and victory, today’s news, though on a smaller scale, feels like something we may not have experienced in the United States since the end of World War II.

Osama bin Laden is dead.  The news was shocking when it came—not because we’d given up the effort, but because we’d given up the thought that it would actually happen.  Yet now we get to think about it differently.  The effort to get bin Laden (not to be mistaken for our multiple missteps along the way) was not a lost cause, after all.  Suddenly, so it seems, we got it right. 

The past decade has been painful and troubling, filled with more futility and self-doubt than we ever would want to admit.  The demise of bin Laden puts an end to one chapter of our recent history.  Though time will tell what it means, for the moment it is reason to celebrate.

As I watched the news with my wife, who I met in the weeks following 9/11, and my son, who’s approximately the age that I was watching the events of November 1963, I felt a glimmer of hope that I have not felt in a long, long while.  Maybe we can move on now.  It’s about time.

“Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead”

Ding Dong!  The witch is dead. 
Which old witch? 
The Wicked Witch!
Ding Dong!  The Wicked Witch is dead.
Wake up, sleepy head,
Rub your eyes, get out of bed.
Wake up, the Wicked Witch is dead. 
She’s gone where the goblins go,
Below, below, below. 
Yo-ho, let’s open up and sing and ring the bells out.
Ding Dong the merry-oh,
Sing it high, sing it low.
Let them know
The Wicked Witch is dead!

The most fitting movie for the occasion, it seems to me, is the most American of movies, The Wizard of Oz.  The witch is dead!  The nightmare is over.  The time to leave the storm cellar has come.

…58…59…60.

Run for Your Life

Our theme this week
Films about runners and running

Featured this week
Tuesday         —   Chariots of Fire

Without Limits

In Chariots of Fire, Harold Abrahams and Eric Littell are runners who race for God and country.  In Without Limits, Steve Prefontaine runs for no one but himself.  Though we’re not supposed to admit it in polite society, Pre, as he’s known, runs for a more noble cause.  As I see it, running has nothing to do with politics or religion, and filmmakers are wiser to keep them apart.  Prefontaine makes a better subject for a movie, and though I wouldn’t claim Without Limits is Best Picture material, in countless ways it’s superior to the British Oscar winner. 

The film came out in 1998 and did nothing at the box office, just as Prefontaine, another film about the Oregon track star, starring Jared Leto, did the year before.  The story, and the films, deserved better.

Without Limits, the better version, in my opinion, was brought to the screen by Robert Towne, one of Hollywood’s great screenwriters (Chinatown) and occasional director.  (His first directing job was another track story, Personal Best, with Mariel Hemingway.) 

Billy Crudup plays the lead, doing first-rate work to capture the spirit, charisma, and headstrong personality that made Steve Prefontaine a key figure in the running world during the 1970s.  Prefontaine is a front-runner, taking the lead early and often winning without a contest.  When his considerable talent doesn’t blow away the field, he has another edge—guts.  He’s cocky and uncoachable, but his faith in himself is admirable.  He knows better than anyone else what he needs to do to win.

Pre’s coach is Bill Bowerman, a legendary figure at the University of Oregon and later co-founder of Nike, portrayed by Donald Sutherland in an award-worthy performance, one of the finest of his career.  Playing Mary Marckx, Pre’s girlfriend, is Monica Potter (inspiration for the Counting Crows song “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby”). 

Well-written, well-directed, and well-acted, Without Limits is small gem, one of those movies you want to seek out, especially if you missed it the first time around.  Though never an Olympic champion, Steve Prefontaine, in his short life, was one of the shining stars of American track, and a figure well worth spending some time with onscreen.

…58…59…60.

Run for Your Life

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In my choice of themes each week I look to find something that strikes my interest, and this week (another light week, by necessity), I’ll take a look at a couple of films about a subject very much on my mind these days.

I started running in the 1970s.  Going for a run has always been my workout of choice.  I would rather go for a run around the neighborhood, or wherever I might be, than go to a gym.  I enjoy the freedom and the solitude of a good long run, and staying healthy, I’ve found, is much better than the alternative.  In my younger years I ran races regularly, mostly 5Ks and 10Ks, and a couple of marathons, not so much for the competition as just a way to keep in shape.

I don’t have what’s called a runner’s body.  I never did, but the older I get, the truer it is.  My pet theory on aging is that people don’t put on years, they put on pounds, and despite my best efforts, it’s happened to me.   This year I decided to reverse the trend.  I would sleep better*, eat better, work out more, and for the first time in two decades, run a marathon.

My date with destiny comes this weekend.  Should I survive, I’ll be back with another look at movies of one type or another.  Meanwhile, a quick look at two films about—what else—running.

* Another of my pet theories:  the key to health is not diet or exercise, but sleep.

Our theme this week
Films about runners and running

Chariots of Fire

I’d love to say this film is a great inspiration.  But it’s not.  Not for runners, and certainly not for movie fans.  I watched it again recently, for the third or fourth time altogether, and what I still can’t understand is how the movie was a hit with critics and movie fans in 1981, and even more puzzling, how it won the Academy Award for Best Picture.  There are a handful of Best Picture winners I have not yet seen, but off the top of my head it’s hard to think of a less-deserving Best Picture winner in history.

Hagiography is not a popular shelf at the video store and the lives of saints do not make for good cinema.  Not when the filmmakers’ only interest is to thrust the saints atop a pedestal.  What we get in Chariots of Fire is not a story about human beings but about icons with all the life drained out.

The main story is set in 1920s England, at Cambridge University, where runners Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) and Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), among others, race and train for the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris.  Abrahams is a Jew, an outsider who must overcome the anti-Semitic attitudes of the administration and staff, though in the film he never suffers any real discrimination, let alone, persecution, so we’re left to wonder what all the fuss was about.  Liddell is a devout Christian, the son of missionaries, who runs for the glory of God.

If you enjoy movies about the pious and snobbish, this is the film for you.  But my beef, at least what I’ll get into here, is the film’s failure as a drama.  The essence of any good story is conflict, but at every turn the movie softens its rough edges instead to wallow in pretty pictures:  the period costumes, the historic scenery, and the slo-mo glory of amateur athletes back in the day.  Worse, it’s all accompanied by the score of Vangelis, an odd choice that was lauded at the time but seems like a serious misstep to my ears.

Later in the film, on his way to the Olympics, Liddell discovers that he’s scheduled to race on a Sunday.  His religious conviction won’t allow him to compete on the Sabbath, putting in doubt his chance for a medal.  The filmmakers took some liberties with the actual record, but it amounts to a crisis, as close as the story gets to having one.  Not to diminish Liddell’s faith, but it’s a rather thin reed to hang a movie on.

More interesting than the film itself is the story behind its success.  It screened at Cannes and was panned by French critics, who may not have appreciated references to “Frogs” in a boring picture about the glory of all things British.  An American, however, came to the rescue.  A young and influential critic named Roger Ebert engineered an “American Critics Prize,” the first and only time one has been awarded, and by a 6-5 margin Chariots of Fire came out of Cannes a winner.  Otherwise, its prospects may have been doomed.  The rest, even more than the story onscreen, is history.

…58…59…60.

Elizabeth Taylor, R.I.P.

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“I have never felt more alive than when I watched my children delight in something, never more alive than when I have watched a great artist perform and never richer than when I have scored a big check to fight AIDS.  Follow your passion, follow your heart, and the things you need will come.”
—Elizabeth Taylor, her final interview, Harper’s Bazaar, February 2011

Elizabeth Taylor, R.I.P.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
“Miss Taylor… is terrific as a panting, impatient wife, wanting the love of her husband as sincerely as she wants an inheritance.”
—Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, 1958

Not everything as Tennessee Williams intended it to be, but the film still packs a powerful punch.  During production, Elizabeth Taylor’s third husband, Mike Todd, died in a plane crash.  It was the only one of her marriages not to end in divorce.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2011

Our theme this week
Performers inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011

Featured this week
(See Monday post for theme introduction and program note)
Monday         —   Alice Cooper
Tuesday         —   Dr. John

Darlene Love

It took a long time for women get proper respect in the world of rock.  The girl groups of the 1950s and ’60s didn’t get the star treatment of Madonna or Lady Gaga, but hey, they could sing.  And nobody had a voice like Darlene Love’s.  She started as a backup vocalist working with Phil Spector and was the lead singer for several groups.  Her hits make for a good soundtrack of the era:  “He’s a Rebel” (a #1 single of 1962, her biggest hit), ”He’s Sure the Boy I Love,” “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,” “(Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry,” “Wait ‘Til My Bobby Gets Home,” and “Why Do Lovers Break Each Other’s Hearts?”  Love has continued working through the years, and frequently on Broadway.  In the 1980s, she starred in Leader of the Pack, later on, in Grease and Carrie, and just a few years ago, in Hairspray.  Her best-known role in movies was as Danny Glover’s wife in the Lethal Weapon franchise.

Love on film
Basketball Jones (1974)
Lethal Weapon (1987)
Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)
Lethal Weapon 3 (1992)
Lethal Weapon 4 (1998)

Contributed songs to soundtracks of many films.

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Rotary Club

Our theme this week
Mayhem, murder, and a telephone in the title

Featured this week
(See Monday post for theme introduction)
Monday         —   Dial M for Murder (1954)
Wednesday    —   Call Northside 777 (1948)

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

A telephone is never just a telephone.  It’s a device serving different roles in this week’s featured films.  In Dial M for Murder, it’s a trigger for a carefully devised murder plot.  In Call Northside 777, it’s a means to answer a desperate plea for help.  In Sorry, Wrong Number, it’s a lifeline to the outside world for a wealthy, spoiled invalid—and then a source of terror as the lines are crossed and she overhears two men plan a murder to be carried out that night.

Barbara Stanwyck is Leona Stevenson, the bed-ridden wife, in a role played previously on radio by Agnes Moorehead.  Adapting the 22-minute drama for the big screen gave the filmmakers more time to tell the tale.  One addition was the backstory of Leona and her husband, Henry (Burt Lancaster), shown in flashback.  She’s the daughter of a millionaire (Ed Begley) and hardly a likeable character.  She meets and falls for Henry, young, uneducated, and far outside her social sphere.  Leona typically gets what she wants, and despite the objections of her father, she gets and marries her man.  Henry, though, is wrapped up with the wrong crowd, and a crooked character named Morano (William Conrad) blackmails him into plotting her death so he can inherit her estate.

In the bedroom, where the film begins, ends, and returns several times, Leona makes phone calls to piece together the mystery.  She finally discovers the intended victim of the murder plot—herself.  Henry, in a change of heart, telephones her with a warning, and as the police approach his phone booth, he hears her screams over the line.

The ending, and the famous last line, earned legendary status in Hollywood, and the film—a bit of noir, a bit of hokum—is a classic of its kind.  Stanwyck earned her fourth and final Best Actress nomination for her performance.  It was hardly subtle, and actually rather hysterical in bits, and perhaps an inspiration to later generations of scream queens.

One of the great actresses of the golden age, Stanwyck worked another four decades.  As her co-star, six years her junior, Lancaster was just starting out.  He went on to get four Oscar nominations himself, winning in 1960 for Elmer Gantry.

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Rotary Club

Social media is quite the thing.  It’s how we make friends these days, and so I hear, how revolutions are made in the Middle East.  If you believe what they tell you on TV, you’d wonder if people had any way to communicate before Facebook and Twitter.  Well, I have it on good authority that there was in fact a social network before The Social Network.  They called it the telephone.

In the post-war years, the country had a new numbering plan.  People moving to the suburbs needed a new way to stay in touch.  Use of phones grew, and Hollywood took notice.

Onscreen, the ubiquitous telephone was hardly an innocent device.  It was often a signal there’d be mayhem and murder afoot.  This week, a threesome of films from mid-century with the telephone getting the most prominent and ominous billing—in the title.

Our theme this week
Mayhem, murder, and a telephone in the title

Dial M for Murder (1954)

Dial M for Murder is a movie set in London made by Alfred Hitchcock in Hollywood.  Actors Ray Milland and John Williams lend their British accents to the production, starring with Americans Grace Kelly and Robert Cummings.

Milland plays onetime tennis pro Tony Wendice, a husband with murder on his mind.  He’s married to Margot, his would-be victim, the wealthy and unfaithful wife played by Kelly, in her first of three roles for Hitchcock.  Cummings is the paramour, a fellow named Mark Halliday.  Williams is the veddy British police inspector who unravels what turns out to be a less-than-perfect crime.

Wendice plans the murder with great attention to detail, blackmailing an old school acquaintance (Anthony Dawson) to carry it out while Wendice himself is safely away from home at a stag party.  Hitchcock pays great attention to detail too, and his execution proves more successful than Wendice’s, making for an especially memorable murder scene.  Watch Kelly in her beautiful white negligee (Hitchcock at first planned for a robe but took Kelly’s advice), and watch out for those scissors.

Wendice gets to hear it all over the telephone, but he does not become a suspect until after the wrong person is convicted of murder.  His ultimate undoing comes after much business about a latchkey.  It’s always something.

Though not as accomplished as the best of Hitchcock (a high standard indeed), the movie does have some great moments.  The director had a long fascination with blackmail and murder—and blondes—and it’s all on display here.  Adapted from a play by Frederick Knott, the film feels somewhat stagebound, in part because of the limits of 3-D filmmaking.  In a post-Avatar world, it’s hard to see the appeal of 3-D for this story (1 more D than neeeded), but Hitchcock loved to experiment.

Another odd aspect (from our vantage) comes less than an hour into the film, which clocks in at a brisk one-hour-forty-five minutes:  an intermission.  And they say we have short attention spans.

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