There’s something to be said for Mervyn LeRoy‘s direction of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (’44) — steady, workmanlike, no surprises but no potholes either. LeRoy always stayed within his safety zone, but he was a good, reliable “house” director. His best film was They Won’t Forget (’37), a Warner Bros. courtroom drama based on the real-life lynching of Leo Frank in 1915.
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo was strictly a WWII morale-builder but a better-than-decent one, and a first-rate action film during the final third. You can totally lean on the solid, straightforward performances from Van Johnson (“I lost my ship!”), Robert Walker, Spencer Tracy, Phyllis Thaxter, Robert Mitchum.
I was especially taken by the extra-handsome, perfectly lighted cinematography by Robert Surtees (The Bad and the Beautiful, Ben Hur) and Harold Rosson (The Wizard of Oz, Singin’ In the Rain), and the fleet, finely timed editing by Frank Sullivan. Plus I’d never seen it in HD.
I began watching last night with the idea of being put to sleep. I fast-forwarded through the first half (training, relationships, flyboy camaraderie) but wound up watching the rest. This happens occasionally.
It’s basically footage of Wilson and Fine, a Rolling Stone editor and longtime friend of the 78 year-old musical genius and Beach Boy maestro, driving around Los Angeles and visiting locations from Brian’s past. And what it boils down to is an intimate portrait of a good, gentle soul, but one who is clearly a bit twitchy and beset by unruly currents.
Honestly? Long Promised Road felt a bit exploitive. It made me feel awkward, uncomfortable. I felt sorry for Brian. He’s a good soul but I felt as if he was being subjected to a fair amount of discomfort in speaking to Fine. There was a medium close-up of Brian performing that reminded me that he reads his own lyrics off a teleprompter. It’s good that he gets out and performs, but there’s something creepy about the film. I felt badly for him.
Friendo: “I met Wilson in 1995, and he could barely carry on a conversation — and that’s true in the film as well. And obviously, he can’t sing anymore. But I don’t find any of that creepy. That’s just who Brian Wilson is, and my honest feeling is: It’s good that he survived, and has a life. He hasn’t written a memorable song in decades, but ‘Smile’ — the 2004 version — is one of my all-time favorite records. I think even now, he radiates the energy of a good soul.
HE to Friendo: “Yes, a good soul. A good heart. I’m glad he’s still plugging away. But the doc still felt a bit cruel. Fine is a decent guy but the very act of training a camera lens on poor Brian flirts with heartless exploitation — I was saying to myself, ‘Jesus, they should leave the poor guy alone.’ A gentle soul but quite twitchy. Kid gloves.”
World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy is polling critics on the five best films of 2021.
HE’s favorite film of the year thus far, hands down, is Thomas Anders Jensen’s RidersofJustice: A truly original stand-out with a deliciously skewed, deadpan sense of humor. On 5.21 I insisted that violence wasn’t funny or certainly couldn’t be sold as such, and I was dead wrong. Riders’ dry, low-key comic tone is really something. I wasn’t expecting anything as original feeling as this. It’s quite the discovery. I’m actually intending to watch it again this weekend.
My second favorite is Jasmila Zbanić‘s Quo Vadis, Aida?, which played at last year’s Venice and Toronto festivals before opening stateside on 3.15.21. It’s a blistering, horrifying, you-are-there account of the 1995Srebrenicamassacre — 8000 Bosnian men and boys murdered in cold blood by Serbian troops under the command of Ratko Mladic. For me it ranks alongside other Bosnian brutality-of-war dramas like In The Land of Blood and Honey, Welcome to Sarajevo and No Man’s Land. Not a suspense piece or a classic war drama but a mother’s perspective saga that asks “who if anyone will survive the coming massacre?” You can feel it coming from around the corner. Devastating.
Third is Simon Stone‘s The Dig (Netflix, 1.15.21). I called this tale of the famous Sutton Hoo dig of 1939, which uncovered a sixth-century Anglo Saxon burial site, generally pleasing as far as this kind of modest and unassuming British period drama goes. I loved Ralph Fiennes‘ performance as real-life archeological excavator Basil Brown — his gutty working-class accent is note perfect, but the performance is in his eyes…at various times determined, defiant, sad, compassionate. And Carey Mulligan‘s Edith Pretty…talk about a performance at once strong, heartbreaking (as in sadly resigned) and resilient. I admired it despite an idiotic subplot about a married Lily James wanting to schtup the daylights out of a young, good-looking fellow, Rory (Johnny Flynn), whom she meets on the dig.
HE’s #4 is Phillip Noyce‘s Above Suspicion. On 4.1 I called it a jug of classic, grade-A moonshine — a brilliant, tautly paced, perfectly written action thriller (i.e., rednecks, drug deals, criminals, lawmen, murder, car chases, bank robberies) that plays like an emotional tragedy, and is boosted by an ace-level performance from Emilia Clarke. Most people would define ‘redneck film’ as escapist trash in the Burt Reynolds mode, but there have been a small handful that have portrayed rural boondock types and their tough situations in ways that are top-tier and real-deal. My favorites in this realm are John Boorman‘s Deliverance, Billy Bob Thornton‘s Sling Blade, and Lamont Johnson‘s The Last American Hero. Noyce’s entry is the absolute, dollars-to-donuts equal of these, or at least a close relation with a similar straight-cards, no-bullshit attitude. And it revives the strategy of William Holden‘s narration of Sunset Boulevard.
My fifth favorite is, despite its financial failure, Jon Chu and Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s In The Heights. On 6.8 I called it “good, grade-A stuff — engaging, open-hearted, snappy, well-composed, catchy tunes, appealing performances, razor-sharp cutting. One character-driven vignette after another. Dreams, hopes, identity, hip-hop, neighborhood vibes, community, self-respect…all of it earnestly feel-good. There’s no fault in any of it except for the minor fact that I was quietly groaning. Okay, not “groaning” but half-in and half-out. Admiring but disengaged. There isn’t a single moment in which I didn’t appreciate the effort, the professionalism, the heart factor, Alice Brooks‘ vibrant cinematography…all of it is fine and commendable, and I must have checked the time code 10 or 12 times, minimum.”
Michael Cohen: “[Trump is] in trouble, Allen Weisselberg’s in trouble, Weisselberg’s kids, Matt Calamari, Rudy Giuliani, they’re all in trouble. Why? Because there’s documentary evidence that’s in their [prosecutors’] possession.”
“[And they] don’t really need Weisselberg or Calamari, [because] one of them will flip to save themselves. And once you get Calamari you don’t need Weisselberg, [and] when you get Weisselberg you don’t need Calamari. But the truth is, they don’t need either of them because they have the documents to prove exactly the illegalities done by Trump.”
Kimmel: “Have you ever seen Donald Trump cry?” Cohen: “No, but I’ve seen him get out of the shower with his hair soaking wet”….yaaahhh!
Yesterday I noted how IndieWire‘s Zack Sharf was so terrified of using the term “Black western” that he wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole in his riff about a new trailer for The Harder They Fall. Instead he went with Netflix’s term — a “new school Western.”
The folks at Essence were less intimidated. Their headline for Brande Victorian’s 6.24 article reads as follows: “The First Trailer For The Star-Studded Black Western The Harder They Fall Is Here.” The term “Black Western” is also used in the lede paragraph. Holy shit!
Imagine being Jamie Lee Curtis‘ “Laurie Strode”, the Halloween scream queen from the Jimmy Carter era. Imagine having no interests, longings or intrigues in life other than one thing…recovering from the trauma of having been nearly murdered by psycho-killer Michael Myers in ’78, back in her late teens (actually 22 by JLC’s calendar), and then deciding, 40 years later in her early 60s, “this Michael Myers shit ends now!…I won’t stand for it any longer!…even if the guy who’s been playing him for the last 40-odd years, Nick Castle, is 73 years old!”
Except she will stand for it because Halloween Kills isn’t the end…the finale is slated to arrive in mid October ’22 when Halloween Ends opens in theatres. Except if you know anything about the slithering, salivating paycheck whores behind this franchise, Michael Meyers will never really die.
John Carpenter on the original Halloween: “True crass exploitation. I decided to make a film I would love to have seen as a kid, full of cheap tricks like a haunted house at a fair where you walk down the corridor and things jump out at you.”
That’s actually a dodge, John. The Halloween movies are about jump-boo, okay, but the undercurrent has always been about one thing and one thing only — killing sluts for having sex while saving the chaste virginal heroines (Curtis’s Strode) so they’ll live another day….because sluts need to scream and howl and die horribly. Same difference with the Friday the 13th franchise. I first wrote about the slut-killing meme in my Films in Review review of Halloween, 42 and 1/2 years ago. You’d think this would have subsided or evolved over the decades.
From a 10.22.18 Refinery29 piece by Elena Nicolaou: “The horror genre is saddled with blatant sexism, the focus of which is found in the trope of the Final Girl — and in her opposite. In classic slasher movies, the Final Girl emerges from an encounter with great evil, bloody but unbroken. Her other female friends are usually not so lucky, typically meeting their demise after having sex. As the ‘Sex By Death’ trope goes, if a woman has sex in a horror movie, she’s doomed to die.”
Posted on 2.3.21: Hollywood Elsewhere saw Sian Heder‘s much-adored, Sundance award-showered CODA this morning. It’s moderately appealing and nicely made for the most part. Understand, however, that it’s an “audience movie” — aimed at folks who like feel-good stories with heart, humor, romance and charm.
It’s about a shy Gloucester high-school girl named Ruby (Emilia Jones) with a decent if less than phenomenal singing voice. She’d rather attend Boston’s Berklee College of Music than work for her deaf family’s fishing business, we’re told. The film is about the hurdles and complications that she has to deal with in order to realize this dream.
CODA is one of those “real people struggling with life’s changes and challenges” flicks, but given the fishing-off-the-Massachusetts-coast aspect it’s fair to say it’s no Manchester By The Sea — trust me. It’s a wee bit simplistic and schticky and formulaic -— okay, more than a bit — and contains a fair amount of “acting.”
For my money Jones overplays the quiet, withdrawn, still-waters-run-deep stuff, but it’s an honest performance as far as it goes — she has an appealing, unpretentious rapport with the camera. Eugenio Derbez‘s performance as an eccentric, Mexican-born music teacher is probably the film’s best single element. Bearded, baggy-eyed Troy Kotsur and 54 year-old Marlee Matlin are engaging as Ruby’s live-wire parents.
Matlin and Kotsur are the source, actually, of some clunky sexual humor (frisky parents noisily going at it during the late afternoon, randy Kotsur urging chaste Ruby to make her boyfriend wear “a helmet” during coitus, that line of country). Except the jokes don’t really land, or at least they didn’t with me.
In a phrase, CODA is not a Guy Lodge film.
But it’s an okay thing for what it is. It works here and there. It didn’t give me a headache. I can understand why some are enthusiastic about it. It deserves a mild pass. Heder is a better-than-decent director.
Friendo: “It’s a by-the-numbers family romcom with an added progressive-minded openness for the deaf.”
Most name-brand directors, producers and actors enjoy 12-year streaks when everything is cooking and breaking their way. Some directors and actors are lucky enough to last 15 or 20 years or even longer. Your task, should you choose to accept it (and I know I’ve posted about this before), is to list any number of Hollywood heavyweights and when their 12-year hot streaks (or better) happened.
I’m not talking about the ability to work or get work — I’m talking about the years of serious heat and the best years falling into place.
Cary Grant peaked from the late ‘30s to late ‘50s. James Cagney between PublicEnemy and WhiteHeat — call it 20. James Stewart between DestryRidesAgain and AnatomyofaMurder — 20. Clark Gable’s hottest years were between ItHappenedOneNight (‘34) and The Hucksters (‘47). Humphrey Bogart happened between High Sierra / TheMalteseFalcon (‘41) and TheHarderTheyFall (‘56) — a 15-year run. Robert Redford peaked between Butch Cassidy (‘69) and Brubaker and OrdinaryPeople (‘80) — 11 to 12 years.
Elizabeth Taylor had 15 years — 1950 (Father of the Bride) to 1966 (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf). Jean Arthur — mid ’30s to early ’50s (Shane) — call it 15 years. Katharine Hepburn — early ’30s to early ’80s (On Golden Pond). Meryl Streep — 1979 (The Seduction of Joe Tynan) to today…40 years and counting.
Martin Scorsese is the king of long-lasting directors — Mean Streets (’73) to Killers of the Flower Moon (’22)…a half-century! John Huston had about 15 years — 1941 (The Maltese Falcon) to 1956 (Moby Dick). Alfred Hitchcock had 23 years — ’40 (Rebecca) to ’63 (The Birds). Steven Soderbergh‘s had 23 years so far — 1989 (sex, lies and videotape) to 2012 (Magic Mike) and he’s obviously still kicking. John Ford enjoyed 27 good years — ’35 (The Informer) to ’62 (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance).
John Wayne had an amazing 37 years — 1939 (Stagecoach) to 1976 (The Shootist). George Clooney‘s peak period lasted almost 20 years. Tony Curtis‘s hot streak was relatively brief — 1957 (Sweet Smell of Success) to 1968 (The Boston Strangler). Kirk Douglas had about 15 years — Champion (’49) to Seven Days in May (’64). Richard Burton — 1953 (The Robe) to 1977 (Equus) — almost 25.
It’s a basic creative and biological law that only about 10% to 15% of your films are going to be regarded as serious cremedelacreme…if that. Most big stars (the smart ones) are given a window of a solid dozenyearsorso** in which they have the power, agency and wherewithal to bring their game and show what they’re worth creatively. We all want to be rich, but the real stars care about making their mark.
Please supply more noteworthy names and their peak periods.
Jeymes Samuel‘s The Harder They Fall (Netflix, later this year) seems to be a harmless, ultra-violent, all-black fantasy-revenge western — a gang of African-American desperadoes (Jonathan Majors, LaKeith Stanfield, Regina King, Idris Elba, Zazie Beetz, Delroy Lindo, Danielle Deadwyler, Edi Gathegi, R.J. Cyler, Damon Wayans Jr., Deon Cole) holdin’ up trains, settlin’ scores, blowin’ holes in a bunch of white guys, etc.
No harm, no foul…and it’s probably about as good as Antoine Fuqua‘s The Magnificent Seven (’16), which I called “cheap dogshit.”
Synopsis: “When outlaw Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) discovers that his enemy Rufus Buck (Idris Elba) is being released from prison he rounds up his gang to track Rufus down and seek revenge. Those riding with him in this assured, righteously new school Western include his former love Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz), his right and left hand men — hot-tempered Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi) and fast drawing Jim Beckwourth (R.J. Cyler) and a surprising adversary-turned-ally. Rufus Buck has his own fearsome crew, including ‘Treacherous’ Trudy Smith (Regina King) and Cherokee Bill (LaKeith Stanfield), and they are not a group that knows how to lose.”
I was living in an upstairs one-bedroom apartment at 948 14th Street in Santa Monica, doing nothing, working as a tree surgeon…my lost period. (I began my adventure in movie journalism the following year.) Right below me lived a guy named Eddie Roach and his wife Tricia. At the time he was working with the Beach Boys as a kind of staff or “touring” photographer. Dennis Wilson fell by two or three times and hung out a bit, and one time I was part of a small group that played touch football with him at a local high-school field. Dennis mocked me that day for being a bad hiker, which I was. (But Dennis was a dick… really. Insecure machismo, didn’t like him, felt nothing when he died.)
Anyway it was a cloudy Saturday or Sunday afternoon and I was lounging in my living room when I began to hear someone tooling around on Eddie’s piano downstairs. It sounded like the beginnings of a song. It began with a thumping, rolling boogie lead-in, complex and grabby, and then the spirited vocal: “Back home boogie, bong-dee-bong boogie…yay-hah…back home boogie, bong-dee-bong”…and then he stopped. One of the chords wasn’t quite right so he played a couple of variations over and over, and then again: “”Back home boogie, bong-dee-bong boogie yay-hah!” and so on. Then another mistake and another correction.
Then he stopped again and started laughing like a ten year-old drunk on beer: “Hah-hah, heh-heh, heh-heh!” and then right back into the song without losing a beat. Really great stuff. Who is this guy?
I grabbed my cassette recorder and went outside and walked down the steps leading to Eddie’s place, and I laid it down on one of the steps and started recording. I must have captured two or three minutes worth.
Then I decided to knock on Eddie’s door and pretend I needed to borrow a cup of milk or something. I had to know who the piano guy was. Eddie opened the door and I said “hey, man,” and in the rear of the living room stood a tall and overweight Brian Wilson. He was dressed in a red shirt and jeans and white sneakers, and was cranked and excited and talking about how great some idea might be, gesturing with his arms up high. Then he saw me and almost ran over to the doorway.
I suddenly knew who it was and it was a huge internal “whoa!” Wilson looked like a serious wreck. His hair was longish and sort of ratty looking. His unshaven face was the color of Elmer’s Glue-All, and his eyes were beet red. I didn’t mean to disturb the vibe but a look of faint surprise or shock must have crossed my face because Wilson’s expression turned glum. It was like he suddenly said to himself, “Wow, this guy’s some kind of downhead…everything was cool until he showed up.” Eddie spotted it too and said, “Sorry to disappoint you.” I said everything was cool and retreated back upstairs.
Way back in ’83 or thereabouts, I was acquainted with a pair of youngish film producers (man and woman, probably married) whom I’d met at an industry gathering or screening. Their names escape…sorry. But we were moderately friendly, on good terms. They lived in a beautiful, old-world, high-ceilinged apartment inside Harper House, a pre-war Spanish building at 1134-1336 No. Harper Ave.
And I distinctly recall that in their living room Marlon Brando‘s Royal Navy uniform and bicorn hat, from Mutiny on the Bounty, was on display. Made of seemingly authentic materials, it rested upon a white, Brando-sized mannequin. I was deeply impressed, and asked if I could sniff it. I was hoping it might have retained the aroma of Brando or Tahitian sand or coconuts or some organic remnant of that 1962 film. Alas, it smelled like Holloway Cleaners.
In any event here it is on iCollector — it sold in December 2019 for $10K. How much had my producer friends paid for it in the early ’80s? Maybe one-tenth of that. Who knows? Or maybe it’s a scam — maybe dozens of would-be Brando uniforms have been made and sold as Real McCoys.
