I’m very, very sorry that another season of Westworld is about to unfurl. I won’t be watching, of course, but the mere fact of its existence is enough to bum me out.
Month: May 2022
Fred Ward, Adieu
Respect and salutations for the great Fred Ward, who passed last Sunday (5.8) at 79, but whose death wasn’t announced until today.
Ward’s last performance was as “Eddie Velcoro” in True Detective in 2015, when he was 72. I don’t know why Ward didn’t work over the last few years, but I always loved what he brought.
Ward tried to become a movie star in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (’85), but the public wouldn’t bite. He gave a cagey, flavorful performance as the bald-headed Henry Miller in Phil Kaufman‘s Henry & June (’90), but — be honest — nobody wanted to see Ward generate any sexual energy.
Ward just didn’t have that X-factor movie-star schwing — he was more of a quirky, amiable, laid-back oddball type.
My all-time favorite Ward performance was as the yokelish Earl Bassett, the best friend of Kevin Bacon‘s Val McKee, in Tremors (’90).
My second favorite was Sergeant Hoke Moseley in Miami Blues (which Ward also executive produced).
He was also a memorable Gus Grissom in Kaufman’s The Right Stuff, and I loved his cameo-sized performance in Silkwood (’82 — see below video).
Ward lived in Venice (not Italy) for the most part. I ran into him at Gold’s Gym once when he was training for Remo Williams….”yo!”
Now That “The Northman” Is Streaming
…reactions from HE regulars would be appreciated. $20 to rent a UHD version for 48 hours; $25 to buy it outright.
4.21.22 HE review excerpt: “Technically and compositionally first-rate, at times amusingly ultra-violent, The Northman delivers the kind of suffocating, soul-draining ordeal that only a major artist could have provided.
“I loved Eggers’ The Witch and The Lighthouse but I pretty much felt nothing this time around.
“Excessive isn’t the word — startling, repetitious, numbing, eye-filling, confounding and yet all of a single harmonious compositional piece. Obviously the work of a serious artist. Handsome, exquisitely composed and about as bereft of humanity as a film in this vein could possibly be.”
Breakin’ Up Is Hard To Do
I can order a Region 2 Bluray of the fully restored 124-minute version of Andrej Zulawski’s Possession (‘81), which premiered last fall. I’m not, however, seeing a U.S.-friendly Bluray. (Metrograph offers a streaming option.) Which is my fault, of course. I have mixed feelings about re-watching this creepy, West Berlin-set marital breakup flick, but I won’t wimp out. Isabelle Adjani’s demonic femme fatale performance won a Best Actress trophy at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival.
Netflix to Anti-Chappelle Loonies: “There’s The Door…”
We’re at peace with trans activists on our payroll working somewhere else. Feel free to create your various futures elsewhere. Go with God.
Katie Porter for President
If she were to run for the 2024 Democratic nomination, I would vote for Katie Porter in a New York minute. I think. She seems like a smart, straight-shooting liberal without the woke bullshit, but maybe I’m not paying close enough attention. She’s never struck me as the sort of politician who would say “I’m not a biologist” when asked to define what a woman is. I know she’s not the running-for-President type, but she seems frank and sturdy and honorable.
Raoul Walsh, Preferred
Arguably the greatest action director of Hollywood’s big-studio era, Raoul Walsh (1887-1980) didn’t hit his stride until just after his 50th birthday, or around 1938 or ’39. Walsh’s glory period happened in the 1940s and ’50s.
Here, in my opinion and in this order, are his 18 finest films:
White Heat (’49), High Sierra (’41), They Died with Their Boots On (’41), Objective, Burma! (’45), Gentleman Jim (’42), Pursued (’47), The Thief of Bagdad (’24), The Big Trail (’30), Dark Command (’40), They Drive by Night (’40), The Roaring Twenties (’39), Captain Horatio Hornblower (’51), Along the Great Divide (’51), Battle Cry (55), The Tall Men (’55), Band of Angels (’57) and What Price Glory? (’26).
Old School, To Put It Mildly
The jet-fighter combat footage in The Bridges at Toko-Ri won an Oscar. Obviously primitive by even late 20th Century standards and nowhere close to the knockout aerial footage in Top Gun: Maverick.
But the aircraft carrier landing footage has a docu-realism quality, and even the third-act miniature stuff (the bridge-bombing footage, William Holden crash landing in the North Korean countryside) seems strangely acceptable. There’s something plain and palatable about it.
Dazzling as the Maverick footage is, you’re never quite sure which shots are organic (if any) and what’s digital. I know that some (most?) of the cockpit footage is “real”, but I still don’t trust it.
Some YouTube commenters have actually complained about Toko–Ri spoilers…a film that’s nearly 70 years old and they’re complaining that Illeanna Douglas has spoiled the ending! Prima donnas!
“Maverick” Maniacs United
Say it again: Top Gun: Maverick is a totally square, totally flash-bang, sirloin steak, right down the middle, Tom Cruise-worshipping, un-woke, stiff-saluting, high-velocity, bull’s-eye popcorn pleasure machine.
If you submit to it, that is. For this is a formula thing, this movie…one super-mechanized, high-style, bucks-up thrill ride with a few heart moments sprinkled in. Au Hasard Balthazar, it’s not, so if you see it with, say, a Mark Harris attitude (and he wasn’t wrong when he put down the original Top Gun nine years ago), you won’t have as good of a time.
If you can just park your quibbles and show obeisance before power…if you can surrender to this military glamour fantasy, this glossy Joseph Kosinski breath-taker, this thundering Cruise + Chris McQuarrie + Jerry Bruckheimer G-force engine, this audience-friendly, holy-shit delivery device…if you submit you’ll enjoy it and then some.
What else are you going to do? Fight it? Stage a protest with speeches and placards?
Everything in Top Gun: Maverick is hardcore, highly strategized, mechanized, high-octaned, and totally fucking shameless. It’s like a two-hour trailer for itself. High style, brash energy, fleet editing, classic rock (even the 65-year-old “Great Balls of Fire” is celebrated), movie-star smiles, Top Gun nostalgia and a totally driller-killer finale.
Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise) is a somewhat rakish, middle-aged loner who lives only to fly solo while pushing the limits. After losing his test pilot gig, Mav is assigned to be an instructor at the Top Gun Academy in San Diego. His students include Rooster (Miles Teller), the son of Anthony Edwards‘ “Goose” who despises Maverick for taking his name off the Naval Academy list. (There was a reason.) There’s also the brash Hangman (Glen Powell) and a cool woman pilot, Phoenix (Monica Barbaro).
Maverick’s former rival Iceman (Val Kilmer), a retired admiral, has convinced the commanders that Maverick is the best guy to prepare pilots for a top-secret mission — the destruction of a uranium enrichment plant in some snow-covered mountainous region. Fighter jocks need to swoop in, detonate and get the fuck out before enemy missiles and dogfights ensue. You know what’s around the corner.
Remember Luke Skywalker‘s big Death Star challenge at the climax of Star Wars: A New Hope? Portions of that classic action sequence are recalled here. Oh, and also like Star Wars, the enemy has no face, only a dark gray helmet…no nationality or ethnicity.
There’s a moment near the end of Top Gun: Maverick when it seems as if the finale of another film about fighter jocks — Mark Robson‘s The Bridges at Toko-Ri (’54) — is being replayed. You’ll recall that it ends with William Holden and Mickey Rooney huddling in a muddy ditch and being killed by North Korean troops. If only the Kosinski-Cruise-Bruckheimer film had gone the distance in this respect.
But the absence of even a shred of wokeness is wonderful. Remember that it’s locked into a mid ‘80s mindset to start with, and that it was written and filmed before the woke thing kicked in bigtime.
