"Classic" Movie Review: Yourself & Yours

Yourself & Yours *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Sang-soo Hong.

Written by: Sang-soo Hong 

Starring: You-young Lee (Minjung), Kim Ju-Hyuck (Youngsoo).

 

The more films I see by Korean director Sang-soo Hong, the more I like his films. His last film, Right Now Wrong Then, is my favorite of his work so far – a film that he basically makes twice, with slight differences that completely changes our view on the characters and the events. To follow-up that film, he has made Yourself & Yours, a fascinating, amusing film that at first I thought was simply Hong playing around and having fun – and yet in the days since seeing the film, it has stuck with me more than I thought it would. It is a film that doesn’t really answer the question at its core – and is oddly stronger for it. That question is this: just how many Minjung’s are there in the film? 1, 2 or 3? And does the answer ultimately matter?

 

Like all of Hong’s film, it has a romantic (sometimes would be romantic) couple at its core. This time it’s Younsoo (Kim Ju-Hyuck), a young man who seems completely in love with his girlfriend, Minjung (You-young Lee) – until he starts to hear rumors about her. His friend tells him that he’s heard from others than Minjung likes to go out drinking with him – and when she does, she draws a lot of attention from other men. This information sends Youngsoo into a rage – and when he confronts Minjung with this information, she does not deny it forcefully enough to convince him. She storms out of his apartment, and tell him not to call her for a while. The film then follows the two lead actors after their separation – with Youngsoo regretting his actions, and trying to get back with Minjung - who seems to have disappeared, as he can never find her at work or home, and Minjung, as she seems to validate all those rumors about herself, as we do see her out drinking, numerous times, with different men. Yet, if she is ever confronted by anyone who knows Youngsoo – she acts as if she doesn’t know who they are, and that her name isn’t Minjung. Then late in the film, the first man we saw this Minjung with confronts another Minjung with another man (a filmmaker, of course, this being Hong someone has to be a filmmaker) – and again, she acts as if she doesn’t know him. It is this Minjung who will eventually come back to Youngsoo – but is she the same Minjung who left him in the first place?

 

The film is amusing to watch, as Minjung takes control of the narrative, and in many ways is the most honest character in the film – even if she is blatantly lying at times (if she is just one person, she lies constantly). Yet, the thesis of the movie may well be her line she tells to one of her boyfriend’s “I’ve never met a truly impressive man”. The line draws a laugh when she says – as does that entire scene, as she is breaking up with him so honestly and brightly that it almost seems cruel. Yet, by the end of the film, she may have found that man in Youngsoo – who because of their time apart actually has grown, and become, at least less of a fool than when the movie begins. The film may ultimately be about how we can never really know another person – that what makes them themselves is something that is only known to themselves alone – but at the end of the film, Youngsoo is smart enough to at least realize this.

 

Ultimately, I’m not sure Yourself & Yours rises to the level of Hong’s best work – I still prefer Right Now, Wrong Then and The Day He Arrives (although, admittedly, Hong has been one of the most prolific directors in world cinema, and he has a large back catalogue of films I haven’t seen) – but it’s more impressive than it first appeared to be. It’s made with his trademark style – lots of long, unmoving, unbroken shots, frequent zoom-ins, and lots of drinking (although, this time it’s beer not soju – the significance of the difference, and I’m sure there is one, is lost on me). Yet he pushes the film into some very interesting territory. The more films of his I see, the more films I want to see.

 

Note: I saw this film at TIFF 2016 and wrote this review then. The film still hasn’t come out in North America since – and at this point, probably won’t, so rather than sit on the review, I thought I’d post it.

Classics Revisted: Broadcast News (1987)

Broadcast News (1987)
Directed by: James L. Brooks.
Written by: James L. Brooks.
Starring: William Hurt (Tom Grunick), Albert Brooks (Aaron Altman), Holly Hunter (Jane Craig), Robert Prosky (Ernie Merriman), Lois Chiles (Jennifer Mack), Joan Cusack (Blair Litton), Peter Hackes (Paul Moore), Christian Clemenson (Bobby), Jack Nicholson (Bill Rorish).

Broadcast News is the type of romantic comedy that Hollywood has forgotten how to make. At its heart is a love triangle – where all three people are fully rounded characters, where either man (or neither) may be the right fit for the female lead. It also has more on its mind than just being a romantic comedy – it doesn’t use its Network news backdrop as simply a backdrop – the way many romantic comedies use their heroine’s job at a New York City Magazine as a way to drop in some colorful characters and an impossibly idealized portrait of her life. In addition to being a romantic comedy, the film is also about the state of the TV news and while it doesn’t have the blistering cynicism of films like A Face in the Crowd, Network or Natural Born Killers it’s certainly not a rosy picture of the industry either. Viewers today – 27 years after its release may think that the film’s view is optimistic by comparison to what they see on the news everyday now – but that just shows how far the industry has fallen in a relatively short period of time.

The film stars Holly Hunter – in one of her first major roles – as Jane Craig, a slightly obsessive and neurotic, but extremely gifted news producer, working in the Washington office of a major network’s news division. Her best friend is Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks) – a reporter for the station who wants to move up – maybe become an anchor – and although he’s smart enough, he also looks, sounds and acts like Albert Brooks – meaning he’s not quite in the Walter Cronkite model of anchor. Tom Grunick (William Hurt) is visually much more of that guy – good looking, charming and a natural on camera. He’s hired to be the new anchor for Craig’s show – despite the very simple fact that he’s not overly bright. He’s not really an idiot, but he doesn’t know what those around him knows – but he says he wants to learn. He started out in the Sports Division, and everyone liked him so much that he keeps getting promotion after promotion after promotion – basically because he’s all style and no substance – which of course makes him the polar opposite of Aaron who is all substance and no style. Of course, because the movie is written and directed by James L. Brooks, he makes the movie a romantic comedy – where both men are in love with Jane. Jane loves Aaron as well – but as a friend, she never really saw him as anything else until he confesses his love for her. But they have so much in common – they make sense together, don’t they? Then there’s Tom, who represents the empty charm that she despises in TV news – but he’s good looking, he’s charming and he shows signs that perhaps one day, with her tutelage of course, he may actually be a good news man.

I’m not going to try and deny that this love triangle is something overly original – it’s basically the prototypical love triangle that has existed since storytelling began, and continues on to today. But I will say that the love triangle works – and works well – because the writing by Brooks is so good, and the performances by the three leads (all of whom received Oscar nominations) are even better. This was that brief span in the 1980s when William Hurt was one of the biggest stars in the world – this was his third straight year getting nominated for an Oscar (following his win for Kiss of the Spider Woman and a nomination for Children of a Lesser God) – and it’s easy to see why he was so popular. He is charming, he is funny and he is good looking. What’s more though is that he makes Tom – who is the hands of a lesser actor may have turned into the object of scorn or ridicule – an easy target for everyone to call a dummy – and makes him somewhat more than that. He is a man who knows his limitations, but is also more of a realist than anyone else who are idealists in a world that is tossing them aside. He’s also, of the three main characters, the one most willing to compromise – to reorganize his life around someone he thinks he may love. In the years since I last saw Broadcast News, I had a slightly different movie in my head than the one it actually is – I was firmly on team Aaron if you will. Watching the film again, I once again loved Brooks in the role – but I don’t see him as the obvious choice anymore. He can be petty – and at times downright cruel – to those around him. It is a brilliant performance by Brooks – that ranks alongside his brief turn in Taxi Driver and his (should have Oscar winning) performance in Drive as the best work he’s done in a movie he didn’t write and direct. The other Brooks, James, obviously wrote the movie to Albert’s strengths – but also gives him a little more depth. For her part, Hunter carries the movie with humor and intelligence. She is in some ways the prototypical feminist character – a smart, capable woman making her way in a male dominated world – but again, Brooks give her a role that is slightly more complicated than that – that at least acknowledges the myth that anyone can really “have it all”. Jane makes choices in this movie as to what to prioritize that seems much more honest than most romantic comedies. Her choice at the end – which apparently some test audiences didn’t like – makes perfect sense, and is in fact the only logical one she could make (an alternate ending on the Criterion Blu-Ray has a scene between her and Hurt, which makes perfect sense from his point of view, and virtually none from hers).

Through the entire movie, although Brooks himself says he saw more as a character driven romantic comedy than a portrait of the news, the film is still able to present a believable world in TV news – one where the constant threat of cutbacks looms large, and people see it more as a entertainment than simply the news. The movie, I think, acknowledges that while style is important to a certain extent – Brooks makes a lousy anchor, while Tom makes a great one – that we still need the smart people behind the scenes ensuring that people actually get the important news they need – and not just a series of puff pieces.

As a writer/director, James L. Brooks has only made a handful of films – but several of them, including Broadcast News – were successful with the Oscars. This was his follow-up film to the Oscar anointed Terms of Endearment (1983) – for which he won both Directing and Writing Oscars. Broadcast News is, to me, his best film. He has always worked in comfortable, rather well-worn genres, but at his best he finds a slightly new take on them. Broadcast News is not an overly daring film in anyway – but what it does, it mainly does flawlessly. They don’t make romantic comedies – or movies – like Broadcast News much anymore. And American movies are poorer for it.

Classics Revisited: Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Directed by: Robert Zemeckis.
Written by: Jeffrey Price & Peter S. Seaman based on the novel by Gary K. Wolf.
Starring: Bob Hoskins (Eddie Valiant), Christopher Lloyd (Judge Doom), Joanna Cassidy (Dolores), Charles Fleischer (Roger Rabbit / Benny The Cab / Greasy / Psycho), Stubby Kaye (Marvin Acme), Alan Tilvern (R.K. Maroon), Richard LeParmentier (Lt. Santino), Lou Hirsch (Baby Herman), Mae Questel (Betty Boop), Mel Blanc (Daffy Duck / Tweety Bird / Bugs Bunny / Sylvester / Porky Pig), Tony Anselmo (Donald Duck), Wayne Allwine (Mickey Mouse), Kathleen Turner (Jessica Rabbit).

Who Framed Roger Rabbit was so popular and critically acclaimed back in 1988 that I’ve often wondered why it didn’t spawn more imitators. True the movie was nowhere near the first film to combine animated characters and live action – they had been doing that for decades – but the film pretty much perfected it. More than any other film of its kind the animated characters really do seem to be a part of the live action environment they are inhabiting. Perhaps the reason there were not more like this is because the process was so painstaking – as animators had to take the shots that director Robert Zemeckis actually shot and draw the characters on them one at a time. Zemeckis didn’t make it easy, as he insisted on his camera to be constantly in motion, so not only do the characters have to move from frame to frame, but the perspective they are being shot in needed to change as well. Perhaps it was because when they did try to imitate the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the result was a failure like Cool World. Perhaps it was the dawning of computer animation – which started just 7 years later with Pixar’s Toy Story, which made animation so much easier that the idea of doing something like Who Framed Roger Rabbit just seemed too time consuming and complicated. Whatever the reason, Who Framed Roger Rabbit stands as one of the most innovative films of its time – and one that remains almost a singular achievement.

The film is 1940s style film noir set in a Los Angeles where toons and people co-exist. The film opens with what appears to be one of the shorts of the era – a troublesome baby getting into all sorts of trouble on his quest to find a cookie, and his rabbit babysitter taking the brunt of the punishment for the Baby’s action. Then we hear someone yell “Cut!”. The Rabbit, Roger, has screwed up again – it’s supposed to be stars circling his head after the fridge drops on him, not little birds. The “baby” whips out a cigar, and starts cursing his co-star and the director. He can’t work like this! The action than goes from the purely cartoon world of that short, into the strange mixture of live action and animation that make up the rest of the movie.

Bob Hoskins stars as Eddie Valiant – a P.I. who once loved the toons, and now cannot stand them because his brother was murdered by one. He’s become an alcoholic, in desperate need of money, so when head of Maroon studios – R.K. Maroon (Alan Tilvern) comes to him with a simple assignment – follow Roger Rabbit’s wife Jessica to get some pictures to prove she’s cheating on him – he reluctantly agrees. And Eddie gets the job done – after seeing Jessica Rabbit’s routine at a nightclub, he snaps some photos of her literally playing “Pattycakes” with Marvin Acme (Stubby Kaye) – head of the company who makes all those wonderful gadgets. The next day, Acme turns up dead, and Roger is the only logical suspect. He’s pursued by the insane Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) who wants to dispose of him once and for all. But Roger tracks down Eddie and says he was framed – and Eddie reluctantly agrees to help.

The film is simply a joy to behold from beginning to end. It’s fun to spot all the cameos that are littered throughout the movie – and is probably the only chance we’ll ever get to see Daffy and Donald Duck in the same scene together (the movie was released by Disney, but producer Steven Spielberg got Warner Bros. to grant them permission to use their iconic characters in the film as well – but only if Daffy got the same screen time as Donald, and Bugs got the same screen time as Mickey Mouse – resulting in both pairs occupying the exact same scenes at the same time – including the dueling pianos routine by the two ducks, which is a highlight). It’s fun to see all these iconic characters pop up – Betty Boop, now down on her luck since the toons changed to color is perhaps my favorite – but Zemeckis doesn’t simply add them in for the sake of having them there (at least not completely). He does it to build the world they inhabit quickly, by using established characters. The main animated characters are of course Roger – that bundle of manic energy – and his bombshell of wife, Jessica – perfectly voiced by an uncredited Kathleen Turner. Surprisingly the human characters fit in perfectly as well. Bob Hoskins wouldn’t have been the first person to come to mind for me to do an animated comedy – but he’s perfect as Eddie Valiant – a grizzled, cynical detective who is hiding a good guy underneath. He doesn’t try to compete with the toons in terms of energy – but does succeed in grounding the movie is some sort of reality. Christopher Lloyd has great fun going over the top as Judge Doom.

 
Watching the film again, I realized that had the film been made today, it would probably be much different. This isn’t exactly a dark movie – but it does include smoking, drinking, sex jokes, murder and a few scary bits (that poor shoe) that would likely have to be sanded off for modern audiences, who are more sensitive about that sort of thing. By doing so, Roger Rabbit would have lost much of its charm. The film stands as a movie lover’s dream – referencing film noir in a family friendly way, and making one nostalgic for the childhood characters they loved. This is probably the best film Zemeckis has ever made – Back to the Future perhaps comes close, but the technical achievement of this film is unparalleled in his career. This is what he does best – make elaborate comic fantasies. And Who Framed Roger Rabbit is one of the best.

Classics Revisited: The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
Directed by: Nicolas Roeg.
Written by: Paul Mayersberg based on the novel by Walter Tevis.
Starring: David Bowie (Thomas Jerome Newton), Rip Torn (Nathan Bryce), Candy Clark (Mary-Lou), Buck Henry (Oliver Farnsworth), Bernie Casey (Peters), Jackson D. Kane (Professor Canutti), Rick Riccardo (Trevor), Tony Mascia (Arthur), Linda Hutton (Elaine), Hilary Holland (Jill), Adrienne Larussa (Helen), Lilybelle Crawford (Jewelery Store Owner), Richard Breeding (Receptionist), Albert Nelson (Waiter), Peter Prouse (Peters' Associate), Jim Lovell (Himself (Commander of Apollo 13).

When I first watched Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth in my high school – and then college – days, I found the film to be rather thrillingly ambiguous. Here was a different kind of alien movie – one where the alien wasn’t here to either help or destroy humanity – but rather for his own purposes, that the movie only barely bothers to explain in its final act. It was also rather daring that in the end, the alien ultimately fails – his weakness for the human vices he develops is ultimately his undoing. I didn’t fully understand the movie – I didn’t really understand it at all if I’m being honest – but I liked it. It was visually amazing, and had an odd performance by David Bowie at its core – and if there was ever a rock star born to play an alien, it was Bowie in the 1970s. However, watching the film for the first time in about 10 years again, I’m no longer sure I would describe the film as thrillingly ambiguous – I may be more inclined to call it borderline incoherent. What once struck me as daring choices that served to deepen the films mysteries, now strikes me as some rather shoddy storytelling. I always knew I didn’t fully comprehend the film – and now I think I know why – no one fully comprehends it, not even the filmmakers. I do not demand that a film necessarily wrap up all its mysteries – I don’t need someone to solve David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. or Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color for me as examples. But the storytelling in both of those movies is so confident that I feel at least Lynch and Carruth could fully explain them if there were so inclined (they aren’t). I’m not sure you can say the same thing with The Man Who Fell to Earth.

Thomas Jerome Newton (Bowie) arrives in America with a British passport, and 9 basic patents that will revolutionize earth’s technology, although what these are is left pretty vague (some akin to digital photography is one of them though). All he really wants to do with them is make money – a lot of money – and quickly. He hires a lawyer, Oliver Farnsworth (Buck Henry) to be the head of his company – to run the business end of things while he does, well, I’m not quite sure actually. All he really seems to do is hang out with Mary-Lou (Candy Clark) – who introduces him to earthbound sex, and the joys of alcohol and TV. Meanwhile, a former college professor, Nathan Bryce (Rip Torn) – a notorious womanizer, leaves his position in Academia and comes to work for Newton’s company (doing what, again, I’m not sure). He begins to suspect that something is not quite right about Newton – and will eventually “catch” him as an alien. This leads to Newton revealing himself to Mary Lou – which does not go well, and leads to his eventual imprisonment. Throughout the movie, we are treated to flashbacks to Newton’s home planet – a dry, desolate desert, and shots of his family – a wife and two kids. He’s on earth to try and save his planet – and his family – and he gets close to being able to return to them before he is captured, and imprisoned inside a luxury hotel, where he undergoes medical tests and is plied with alcohol.

I don’t think The Man Who Fell to Earth makes a whole lot of sense if I’m being honest with you. It seems like director Nicolas Roeg and screenwriter Paul Mayersberg skipped over some fairly important scenes and explanatory passages because they didn’t much interest them. What they were interested in was creating strange imagery and an overall surreal tone in the film – and in that they undoubtedly succeed. Bowie is great as Newton, because he really does seem to be otherworldly, even before he “reveals” his true self. It’s more of his mere presence than his performance that makes it work. Candy Clark is quite good as Mary-Lou – a lonely, somewhat pathetic woman who grasps onto Newton tightly, but never quite realizes something is wrong with him.

In terms of plot, The Man Who Fell to Earth asks the audience to connect the dots – but I don’t think it gives you all the dots to connect. Look at the plot description on Wikipedia (which I looked at to ensure that what I thought happened did in fact happen) and you’ll find lines like “However, just before his scheduled take-off, he is seized and detained, apparently by the government and a rival company; his business partner, Farnsworth, is murdered. The government, which has apparently been told by Bryce that Newton is an alien, holds him captive in a locked luxury apartment, constructed deep within a hotel.” (Emphasis, mine). That’s two “apparentlys” in the span of three lines – and no one has bothered to correct it on Wikipedia, probably because they cannot really argue with it – the movie never does really explain who imprisons Newton, why or how they knew about him in the first place. When later, he finds that his prison has become rundown, and is now unlocked, and he’s free to walk away, that’s never explained either. In the final scenes, where Newton is now free and apparently still rich, we never find out how he was able to keep his money. Perhaps these are the kind of dull, boring explanatory scenes that often drag down a movie – but without them (and this is just a few examples) – I couldn’t help but think that the movie doesn’t really make any sense. It’s not ambiguous as much as it’s vague and undefined – which are two different things.

When I saw The Man Who Fell to Earth years ago, I loved it. It seemed daring and different, and I didn’t much care that it didn’t make sense. It’s still daring and different – but I care a little bit more that it never really comes together and that it doesn’t make any sense. I still think it’s a good movie – if for no other reason than because I think we can all agree that a film like this could never be made today – at least not in any mainstream way. If it were made today, it would be by someone like Shane Carruth, working outside the system, where the demands aren’t as rigorous, and people are more willing to take risks. Make no mistake, The Man Who Fell to Earth is a risky film. It’s an interesting film in how it depicts American culture, collapsing under the weight of all its vices, and a pessimistic view of humanity. I admire the film as much now as I did when I first saw it. I just don’t like it as much.

Classics Revisited: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Directed by: Frank Capra.
Written by: Sidney Buchman & Lewis R. Foster.
Starring: James Stewart (Jefferson Smith), Jean Arthur (Saunders), Claude Rains (Senator Joseph Paine), Edward Arnold (Jim Taylor), Guy Kibbee (Governor Hopper), Thomas Mitchell (Diz Moore), Eugene Pallette (Chick McGann), Beulah Bondi (Ma Smith), Harry Carey (President of the Senate), Astrid Allwyn (Susan Paine).

In his excellent recent book, Five Came Back, Mark Harris makes the point (that others before him have noted) that Frank Capra’s personal politics as expressed in his films is murky at best – and that this could be a result of Capra not being overly political at all. Watching Mr. Smith Goes to Washington for the first time in years, I definitely see that point more clearly than I did when I watched the film as a teenager. Here is a movie about the Senate – that caused an uproar in that body when it was released in 1939 – where no one really expresses a political point of view other than that corruption is bad. None of the politicians are identified by party. The biggest political point in the film almost feels like an accident – that big money and media influence has the ability to compromise politicians who will sell themselves out to stay in power. Capra and his screenwriters needed a villain, so they created one in Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold) – who “runs” his home state through his money and his newspapers and never has to hold elected office. Having said all of that, I still must say that I think Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a great movie – and it would take a black souled cynic to completely resist the film – and not be won over by it. Yes, Capra could have made a more complex film had he addressed some more political issues, but there is so much here to love that I find I really don’t care that much.

The film opens with the Junior Senator of an unnamed (presumably Mid-Western) state dying unexpectedly. This means that Governor Hopper (Guy Kibbee) – an incompetent boob who gets no respect from his family, and less from everyone else, needs to appoint his successor. The “Taylor Machine” names a party hack and tells Hopper he better play ball. Taylor, alongside the well-respected Senior Senator Joseph Paine (Claude Rains) have a deal that requires the state to buy up a lot of land for a dam that they own through surrogates – and they need someone who will play along so they can get rich. The citizens group Hopper hates the guy Taylor wants – and say they want another man – someone will rock the boat. Hopper, not knowing what to do, decides to not listen to either of them – and picks the man his kids want him to – Jefferson Smith (James Stewart) – a popular Boy Ranger leader, who has recently become a hero in the state for his efforts to stop a giant fire. Hopper figures that he’s popular enough to please the citizens groups, and dumb enough that he won’t cause problems for Taylor. So just like Gary Cooper’s Mr. Deeds in Capra’s previous film, the small town boy, with homespun values heads off to the big city – and discovers just how corrupt everything is.

If you were to think of an iconic image of Stewart Jefferson Smith is probably the first character that comes to mind – (if it’s not George Bailey, from another Capra film). Smith is charming, soft spoken and radiates honesty. He represents “simple, hometown American ideals” – so much so that when he arrives in Washington the first thing he does is go on a site seeing tour. Stewart stammers throughout, gets nervous around the girl he has a crush on (Astrid Allwyn) and has the perfect “Aw shucks” charm for the role. Jefferson Smith seems to be exactly what Hooper thought he was – a fool – but underneath that surface is an idealist – and a smart one at that. He hasn’t been corrupted by politics yet. Stewart is perfect in roles like this – it made him a star, and kept him one for decades – and allowed him to explore much darker material – like in his collaborations with Anthony Mann and Alfred Hitchcock – in part because audiences liked him so much that they would follow him anywhere – even if, like in Rear Window and Vertigo, that’s basically voyeurism and necrophilia. Stewart is great as the wide eyed innocent in those opening scenes – and when his famous filibuster starts in the last act – after Taylor and Paine have almost successfully destroyed him and he’s ranting for his life – he’s great there as well. It ranks as one of Stewart’s best performances.

Yet, the supporting cast is almost even better than Stewart. Capra favorite Jean Arthur played a similar role in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town – the street smart, cynical woman who starts out thinking the main character is a dope, but who gradually falls in love with him. But Arthur plays it so well – is so smart, sexy, funny and charming that you hardly care. Claude Rains specialized in villainous roles yet he doesn’t make Senator Paine into a straight black and white villain – he honestly believes that the compromises he has made do not really matter – that they were in fact necessary. It’s just when he faced with the mirror image of who he once was in Smith that he realizes how far he has fallen. Stewart and Rains got richly deserved Oscar nominations for their performances – and so did Harry Carey who played the unnamed President of the Senate – and despite the unnamed part, he deserved it as well. Throughout the filibuster, he sits back at first rather annoyed, and then increasingly amused by Smith, until you feel that even if Smith’s pleas have mostly fallen on deaf ears during his time there, that Smith has actually won him over. It’s a funny, laid back performance. Edward Arnold is the embodiment of greed as Jim Taylor – and even if you wish he was given a more complex character to play, he plays it well. Thomas Mitchell – in the midst of a career year as he would also win an Oscar for playing the drunken doctor in Stagecoach, as well as having supporting roles in Gone with the Wind and Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings – is amusing as a drunken reporter – and Arthur’s sounding board – who finds himself as charmed by Smith as she is. It’s the mark of a great ensemble that a performance like Stewart’s – that in many movies would tower over everyone else, dwarfing them, here is just one note in a larger piece.

The ending of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is somewhat problematic. Like in his follow-up film, Meet John Doe, Capra and his writers seem to have written themselves into a corner and didn’t really have a way out of it that would still give them the happy ending they wanted. In the case of Meet John Doe, the only logical way to end the film would have been for Gary Cooper to kill himself – and they weren’t going to do that. Here, having set Taylor up as a kind of all-powerful tycoon who could do anything he wanted, there was no logical way for Smith to actually win – so they needed to have one character do an abrupt about face that doesn’t make much sense. It works, but only because the audience wants it to, not because of any sort of logic in the movie itself. And when you think about it, the ending doesn’t really solve anything. Perhaps the film is more cynical than it gets credit for.

Frank Capra was often derided during his career – and is still derided by many today. The term “Capra-corn” was invented to describe his movies. It’s not a completely unfair criticism – films like Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life (to name but three) are certainly corny in many respects. But Capra, better than most directors, knew precisely what the audience wanted – and was more than happy to give it to them. Yes, you can write Mr. Smith Goes to Washington off as a corny fantasy – an overly idealistic, patriotic piece of rabble-rousing without a clear political agenda if you want to. Me? I’ll just enjoy the film for precisely what it is – and what it does well.

Classicis Revisited: The Rapture (1991)

The Rapture (1991)
Directed by: Michael Tolkin.
Written by: Michael Tolkin.
Starring: Mimi Rogers (Sharon), David Duchovny (Randy), Patrick Bauchau (Vic), James Le Gros (Tommy), DeVaughn (First Boy), Christian Benz Belnavis (Older Boy), Will Patton (Deputy Foster), Kimberly Cullum (Mary).

Given how big a role God and Religion play in American life, it’s somewhat odd that there have been so few films made that take questions of faith seriously. Older, European filmmakers like Carol Dreyer, Robert Bresson or Ingmar Bergman took questions of faith seriously, and built their careers around exploring them through film. But in America, there haven’t been many. Perhaps it’s because of the fury that greeted a film like Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) – that dared to portray Jesus as a man plagued by doubt, and was tempted by a normal life, before accepting his place on the cross. The recent reaction to Darren Aronofsky’s Noah is another example – Aronofsky followed in Scorsese’s footsteps and made a film about a man who isn’t sure he can do what he is being asked by God to do – and was attacked by idiots who didn’t like that Aronofsky didn’t use the word God (although he did – once – and referring to him as The Creator is more in keeping with Jewish tradition) or that he didn’t make a shiny happy version they remember from their children’s books (because a story about nearly all of life on the planet being destroyed should, of course, be happy). When religious films are made at all in America, they’re usually those low rent, indie movies like the Left Behind films or the recent God’s Not Dead that (by all accounts, since I’ve haven’t seen the later yet) don’t really challenge their audiences, but rather congratulate them on their beliefs.

Michael Tolkin’s The Rapture from 1991 is that rare American film then that actually does take questions of faith and God seriously. In many ways, the film is deeply flawed – and not just by the admittedly poor special effects near the end of the film, that can be explained by the film being fairly low budget. It’s also flawed in that every character other than the main one – Sharon played by Mimi Rogers – is one dimensional, and rather flatly acted (the little girl in the film delivers one of the most annoying child performances I’ve ever seen). The film doesn’t even seem to address one of its main characters conversion to Christianity – it just uses a flash forward of several years and he’s been magically converted. Yet flaws aside, The Rapture is a fascinating film – and one that has the courage to follow the path it set to the only logical conclusion. It is hardly a great film – yet perhaps it’s something even more rare – an film that offers a completely unique view on God and religion.

The film stars Rogers as Sharon, who leads a life that has become monotonous and repetitive. Her job is as a phone operator, where she says the same basic sentences over and over again as she looks up numbers for callers. At night, she and her “boyfriend” Vic (Patrick Bauchau) head out to the bars and find couples to swing with. The non-stop party and sex have become boring to her though – and she starts to think that perhaps there is more to life. She overhears people talking about “The Pearl” and “The Boy” – and knows that this is something to do with God. She becomes determined to find God and leave her life of sin behind her. She finally has the visions the others have been talking about – and becomes obsessed with The Rapture. She wants it come now. She pretty much drags Randy (David Duchovny), one of those men she met while swinging with Vic along with her – even though he expresses the belief that there is no God. The film then flashes forward 6 years – and Sharon and Randy are now married (and he’s now apparently as Christian as she is) – and have a daughter Mary. A tragedy in their life makes Sharon convinced that she has received another message from God – so she and Mary head out into the desert to await The Rapture.

The Rapture has the audacity to take those Bible thumpers who proclaim “The End is Nigh” literally – there really is a full scale Rapture at the end of this film, complete with Horsemen, the Grim Reaper, earthquakes - the whole nine yards.  Yet while it takes those doomsayers literally, it also questions their belief system as well. Sharon’s faith is proven to be correct in the film, but it also leads her to some terrifying actions – actions that she takes no responsibility for – right to the end of the film when she still demands more from God than he is willing to give.

The Rapture didn’t make a large impression on audiences in 1991 – and has pretty much been forgotten in the years since. Perhaps this is because Tolkin never became a major director – directing only one other film (The New Age in 1994 – a film I’ve never been able to find) and because Rogers never really became a major star. Rogers’s performance in the film is great though – going from hedonist to holier-than-thou and making the transition seem natural. Her performance in the final act of the movie is quietly, subtly terrifying. The rest of the performances aren’t very good though – with Duchovny a boring monotone, as is Will Patton in the final act as a kindly cop. Patrick Bachau isn’t given a real character to play, and poor Kimberly Cullum is given nothing to do but annoyingly whine through the scenes in the desert. Perhaps the film never found an audience because it was too sexual in its opening act for the religious types, and too religious in the final acts for the non-believers. Or perhaps it’s because The Rapture is a deeply flawed film on many levels. This is clearly one of those films that is far more interesting to talk about than it is to actually watch. But it is fascinating to talk about – it is fascinating to ponder its implications and should inspire lively debate among those people who aren’t absolutely convinced that their approach to God (or lack thereof) is the only one worth having (so pretty much everyone who doesn’t go on television to talk about their faith or their atheism). The Rapture is far from a great film – but it’s utterly fascinating one that takes its questions of faith and God seriously. If for no other reason than that, it deserves to be more widely known.

Classics Revisited: Naked (1993)

Naked (1993)
Directed by: Mike Leigh.
Written by: Mike Leigh.
Starring: David Thewlis (Johnny), Lesley Sharp (Louise Clancy), Katrin Cartlidge (Sophie), Greg Cruttwell (Jeremy G. Smart), Claire Skinner (Sandra), Peter Wight (Brian), Ewen Bremner (Archie), Susan Vidler (Maggie), Deborah MacLaren (Woman in Window), Gina McKee (Cafe Girl), Carolina Giammetta (Masseuse),  Elizabeth Berrington (Giselle), Darren Tunstall (Poster Man), Robert Putt (Chauffeur), Lynda Rooke (Victim).

Mike Leigh is one of the great humanist directors working in the world today. Throughout his career, the British Class system has been one of his major, recurring themes – where he often finds the humanity in flawed people in the lower class trying to do the right thing. In between two of his best movies – Life is Sweet (1991) and Secrets and Lies (1996), which were two movies about flawed families trying their best, he made what could be his masterpiece – Naked. The film is every bit as well observed, well directed and well-acted as anything Leigh has done – but it takes all that repressed anger and resentment that is often buried in his characters and brings it to the surface. This is a harsh, violent, ugly film in many ways – it starts with what at best is violent sex that turns into rape and at worst is straight ahead rape – and simply gets darker from there. It contains one of the greatest screen performances of the 1990s by David Thewlis as Johnny – an angry man in his late 20s (although he looks older) – who pretty much hates everyone and everything – and isn’t afraid to tell anyone that to their face.

The structure of Naked is mostly episodic – there really isn’t a plot to the movie, because its characters wouldn’t fit neatly into a real plot. After the rape that begins the film, Johnny is scared – he’s going to take a beating, and doesn’t want it – so he steals a car and leaves Manchester bound for London. There he shows up, unannounced, on the doorstep of an old girlfriend – Louise (Lesley Sharp). She’s not there, but one of her roommates, Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge) is. She’s immediately drawn to Johnny – and he uses her in order to anger Louise – likely for the sin of leaving Manchester for the Big City. But he cannot stand being at their place for long, and will eventually head out into the dark streets of London to spread his misanthropic worldview to anyone who will listen to him. What follows is pretty much one ugly encounter after another. It doesn’t matter if the people he meets are nice to him – like a security guard who takes pity on him being out in the cold alone – or are mean to him. Johnny wants to punish them all equally. For what? Nothing, except for the fact that Johnny is still alive and all he wants to do is spread misery to all.

All of this probably makes Naked sound like a long, bleak, depressing movie – and truth be told much of the film is just that. At times, the film resembles Johnny – and seems like it may devolve into little more than a long, angry rant that can be both brilliant and tedious. The best remembered scene has to be the one with Johnny and the security guard, where he essentially lays down his bile filled worldview in all of its ugliness for the world to see. Thewlis is brilliant in this scene – it really is one of the greatest rants in screen history. Yet I think Naked is far more than just a bitter, brilliant rant at the world. In the film’s late stages, it becomes almost touching as Johnny finally lets his guard down and lets us see the person underneath all of that anger. We are told early in the film that Johnny and Louise were together for an entire year – and we wonder how anyone could possibly stand being around him for anywhere near that long. But those late scenes show a glimpse of the man Johnny is under all that bluster. He is a man who wants desperately to be loved, and yet cannot stand to be caged – domesticated if you will. He punishes Louise by using her roommate if for no other reason than because she loves him – or at least still feels affection for him. Sophie’s feelings don’t enter into his vision at all – and the pair share another violent sex scene that is perhaps the saddest, most pathetic sex scene I’ve ever seen in a movie. Thewlis, rightly, gets a lot of praise for his performance in this movie (he won the Best Actor Prize at Cannes that year). It’s the type of performance that can define an actor’s entire career – as it does here. Even when he plays someone much kinder, like in the Harry Potter movies, part of me always sees Johnny. But the other actors deserve credit in the film as well – especially Sharp, who makes Louise into the film’s only somewhat normal character, and a wealth of humanity, and Cartlidge, whose Sophie is one of the saddest characters you’ll ever see in a movie – wanting so desperately to be loved, and never getting any.

Leigh’s only misstep in Naked is the character of Jeremy (Greg Crutwell) – the women’s rich landlord, who we periodically return to throughout the course of the movie until he finally shows up at the house in the late stages. He’s an even bigger asshole than Johnny is – with no redeeming qualities whatsoever – and an undeniable rapist. He’s rich, of course, so he just thinks he can take whatever he wants from the poor characters – and he’s mainly right. I’m not quite sure what he’s doing in this movie – perhaps he acts as Leigh’s excuse for Johnny’s poor behavior, showing it could be worse or that the rich can be assholes as well. But he doesn’t fit into the rest of the movie, and never really becomes a fully rounded character. Leigh, who spends months working with his cast, improvising the screenplay with no cameras, before having a final screenplay written in time for the start of shooting, usually doesn’t allow a character as one dimensional and blunt as Jeremy into his films. And he really shouldn’t be here either.

But that is a relatively small complaint about an otherwise great film. Leigh’s films have always been interested in class – and there has always been a thread of anger and resentment running through them. For the most part though that anger and resentment has always been buried – kept behind a façade of normalcy. In Naked, he brings it to the front and lets all hell break loose. That Johnny is a horrible human being is not really debatable. But Leigh sees him, and the world he inhabits, with perfect clarity. Naked may just be the best film of Leigh’s career.

Classics Revisited: The Iron Giant (1999)

The Iron Giant (1999)
Directed by: Brad Bird.
Written by: Tim McCanlies & Brad Bird based on the book by Ted Hughes.
Starring: Jennifer Aniston (Annie Hughes), Harry Connick Jr. (Dean McCoppin), Vin Diesel (The Iron Giant), James Gammon (Foreman Marv Loach / Floyd Turbeaux), Cloris Leachman (Mrs. Tensedge), Christopher McDonald (Kent Mansley), John Mahoney (General Rogard), Eli Marienthal (Hogarth Hughes), M. Emmet Walsh (Earl Stutz).

Brad Bird’s debut film The Iron Giant was not a box office success in 1999 – barely passing $20 million, on a budget that Box Office Mojo estimates to be $70 million (IMDB has it at $48 million – although even then, the box office results aren’t good). This is probably why it took Bird a few years – and a change in company – before he got to make his follow-up film – The Incredibles – and why shamefully, The Iron Giant still has not gotten a Blu Ray release. The critics loved the film back in 1999 though – and in the 15 years since, its reputation has only grown – it’s at a point now where in a recent survey of people who work in animation, The Iron Giant ranked in the top 10 animated films of all time. Watching it again, I can only say that I think it’s inclusion alongside such films as Pinocchio, Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Toy Story, Snow White and Bird’s own Incredibles – is fully justified.

The film has a deliberately retro animated look to it – and it looks even more retro now, given that it is done in the more traditional hand drawn style rather than computer generated images. The story takes place at the height of the Cold War – 1957 – and nuclear paranoia. The kids at school are shown an animated video telling them to duck and cover under their desks in the event of a nuclear attack (the video is quite funny – showing how everything around the desk and the child is destroyed, but they’re perfectly safe under that desk). Its small town America and it’s here where a fisherman will see something fall out of the sky one night – and he’s not shy about telling those in town about it although no one takes him that seriously.

The story centers on Hogarth Hughes, a young boy whose single mother Annie works as a waitress at the local diner, so he’s often left to fend for himself – eating Twinkies and watching monster movies on TV. Then one night, he thinks he hears something outside – and he heads out to investigate. What he discovers is The Iron Giant – a huge, hulking alien creation, who survives by eating metal of all kinds. When the Giant attacks the wrong thing – a power station – Hogarth saves him by shutting down the power. The giant is confused – there’s a dent in his head – and he follows Hogarth home, who does his best to hide him. The only person he lets in on the secret is Dean – the local scrapyard proprietor and “artist” – who agrees to hide the giant. Meanwhile, a paranoid, somewhat incompetent government agent – Kent Mansley – shows up in town, determined to find out what is going on, and he sets his sights on Hogarth.

The story resembles that of E.T. in many ways – as much of the action involves Hogarth bonding with an alien creature that he has to hide from everyone who will want to destroy or exploit it. The difference being that while E.T. could pass as a stuffed animal and be easily hidden – the giant is at least 50 feet tall, so that’s not really possible for him – and the movie has great fun in finding new ways to try and hide him in plain sight. Amazingly, the emotional connection in the film is what resonates most – as the giant is not just a giant robot, but a thinking, feeling entity. He may have been designed as a weapon – but he has at least some free will “You are what you choose to be” – Hogarth tells him.

Perhaps it was the old school setting that audiences didn’t want to take their child to back in 1999. I was thoroughly charmed by another old school film a few years ago – Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie – which I thought would be good for older children, but audiences stayed away. They seem comfortable taking their children to any brightly colored piece of crap churned out by the studios – but something with a little more darkness to the story – a darkness that I think children understand, and can deal with – seems to be out of the question. Here, the time and place are essential to the story – Bird taps into the paranoia of nuclear destruction, the fear of the Russians who had just launched Sputnik, as well as recreating some of the fears expressed in the science fiction movies of that time period. But he does it all in a way that won’t really scare or confuse children – Hogarth only partly understands it all himself, and children will feel the same way. Watching the film with my two and a half year old, I doubt she got the intricacies of the story, and know she didn’t get all the references to 1950s America – but she was drawn into the movie anyway (the climax upset her a little, until the end of the movie). Kids have a way of intuiting these types of movies, and don’t demand the same level of understanding that many adults do – particularly the ones who treat movies and TV shows like a giant puzzle they need to solve and explain away. Kids don’t to do that.

The climax of the movie is truly wonderful, and truly heartbreaking. I remember being a 17 year old watching the film on VHS in my basement with tears running down my face (I didn’t cry in movie very often then – I’ve become a big softy ever since I had kids) – and even now knowing what happens, it still has the same power over me. It is the simple goodness of the Giant that does it.

The Iron Giant is a great animated film. The style of the film is wonderful – one of the more distinctive of the non-Disney animated films of its time. The story is wonderful and heartfelt – and shows even in his first film, Bird had a knack for storytelling. He has since moved on from animation – after The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille (two of Pixar’s very best films) – he’s now directed the latest Mission: Impossible film (which was probably the best of the series) – and is working on two other live action films. That’s too bad, as Bird has to rank among the best directors of animation of all time with his great animated film. There are many people who could make an entertaining Mission: Impossible film. Based on the fact that no one has really followed in his footsteps in the last 15 years, I wonder if anyone else could direct a film like The Iron Giant.

Classics Revisited: Bound (1996)

Bound (1996)
Directed by: Andy & Lana Wachowski.
Written by: Andy & Lana Wachowski.
Starring: Jennifer Tilly (Violet), Gina Gershon (Corky), Joe Pantoliano (Caesar), John P. Ryan (Micky Malnato), Christopher Meloni (Johnnie Marzzone), Richard C. Sarafian (Gino Marzzone).

As much as I admired the first two Matrix movies (before the third came crashing down in the most un-imaginative way possible) as well as the wildly ambitious Cloud Atlas, a part of me wishes that The Wachowskis had stuck to making films like their brilliant debut – Bound. The film is an erotically charged lesbian love story, a dark neo-noir and an intricately plotted heist film all rolled into one, and playing out exclusively in primary colors – dark blacks, pure whites and deep reds. Watching it again recently, for the first time on Blu Ray, I was once again struck by just how brilliant a stylistic film this was, and how enjoyable it is. It is probably my favorite film the Wachowskis have made, even though it is undeniably their least ambitious. It is a small, perfect little film.

The film stars Gina Gershon as Corky – a lesbian recently released from prison that has got a job remodeling an upscale apartment. Next door lives Violet (Jennifer Tilly) and Caesar (Joe Pantoliano). He’s a low level gangster – a money launderer who works at a club, and she’s his sexy, flinty voices moll. Violet and Corky lock eyes on an elevator ride up to their floor – and Caesar seems to miss the instant erotic charge between them. There’s a few flirtatious scenes between the two women, who are feeling each other out for a while, for different purposes. Corky is wondering if Violet is just posing as a lesbian, or really is one. She doesn’t care at first – after years in jail she just wants to get laid – but when Violet comes up with a plan that involves stealing $2 million from the mob, and needs Corky’s help, she becomes curious. The walls in the building are thin – and Corky hears Violet and Caesar having sex – and later another man who shows up at their door, who is clearly in love with Violet. But Violet tells her what Corky heard was “work”. Corky had told her she became a thief because she was good at it and could earn a living. “You think you’re the only one with a talent” – Violet asks her when Corky questions her about her “work”.

The casting in this movie is just about perfect. As Corky, Gershon does what she did best in the 1990s – and that is ooze sexuality. A smart actress – she seems to be the only cast member of Showgirls who was in on the joke – she knows that in Bound, she’s been cast to play the “butch” – and she does it just about perfectly. Jennifer Tilly was just two years removed from an Oscar nomination for playing the ditzy gangster moll in Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway, and her role her is outwardly similar – except of course Violet isn’t a ditz – she just pretends to be one. The pair’s chemistry is instant – the sexual heat coming from these two is thick from their first scene, and their sex scenes (erotic, but not over the top) simply enhance that tension, not relieve it. If you want to cast a violent, paranoid gangster role, there are few who can do as well as Joe Pantoliano – who is wonderful as Caesar, always a step behind. For most of the movie, this is a three hander between these three – but it does get some help from a pre-SVU Christopher Meloni as a psychopath gangster who hates Caesar.

The real star of the movie though is the Wachowski’s themselves. They have never been subtle directors, and they certainly favor style over substance. Yet when the style is as good as it is in Bound, I find it impossible to complain. They take a premise that could lend itself to being stilted – or feeling like a filmed play – since almost all of the action happens in the two neighboring apartments. Yet the Wachowskis use color well in this film. They give the film a noir look – not easy to do in color – by mainly limiting the colors they use. Everything in the movie is either black, white or red – and sometimes the combination of them is striking (the blood in the white paint).

The plot of the film takes one skillful twist after the next. I’ve seen the film a few times over the years, and yet each time I got caught up in it anew. Corky and Violet come up with detailed, intricate plan to steal the $2 million for a briefcase and get away with it – that involves a lot of assumptions about how everyone else is going to react. Of course, it doesn’t play out like they think it will – and have to improvise on their feet, and get out of one tight spot after the other. I was reminded of another pair of sibling’s debut film – The Coen’s Blood Simple – where each and every decision in the film makes sense at the time, but only because the characters don’t have all the details the audience does. The Wachowskis are easier on their characters than the Coens are however – leading to the conclusion we want.

I remember back in high school in a media class when we were discussing homosexuality on film – and the teach brought up Bound to dismiss it as a “male fantasy”. Sure, to a certain extent it can play that way – Tilly and Gerhson are almost impossibly sexy in this movie – and Tilly flaunts her body in skintight, short dresses in each and every scene. There are lesbian love scenes, shots of Gershon bound (hence the title I guess). I’ve never really bought that though – The Wachowskis did hire Susie Bright, a writer of lesbian erotica, to be a “technical consultant” on the sex scenes – which is perhaps why they aren’t as over the top as something like Blue is the Warmest Color. And knowing what we now do about Lana Wachowski (who was Larry at the time), it does put things in a slightly different light. Besides, how many American movies have featured lesbian in any type of role in the 18 years since Bound? We’re still not at a point where homosexual characters are allowed in most movies unless they are about their homosexuality. Bound is an intricate, erotic thriller – where the characters just happen to be lesbians. That’s still somewhat refreshing.

Mostly though Bound works as a thriller, erotic and otherwise, and as Roger Ebert points out at times like a slapstick comedy. There is a lot of physicality in this movie – and no one seems to be taking it overly seriously. Bound is an undeniable genre exercise – but a great one. Part of me wishes the Wachowskis had never made The Matrix – and continued on the path they set in this movie. Or least that they would revisit it from time to time.

Classics Revisted: Pinocchio (1940)

Pinocchio (1940)
Directed by: Hamilton Luske & Ben Sharpsteen.
Written by: Ted Sears & Otto Englander & Webb Smith & William Cottrell & Joseph Sabo & Erdman Penner & Aurelius Battaglia & Bill Peet based on the story by Carlo Collodi.
Starring: Dickie Jones (Pinocchio / Alexander), Cliff Edwards (Jiminy Cricket), Christian Rub (Geppetto), Evelyn Venable (The Blue Fairy), Mel Blanc (Donkeys / Gideon (hiccup) / Marionette Soldiers), Walter Catlett (J. Worthington Foulfellow), Frankie Darro (Lampwick), Charles Judels (Stromboli / The Coachman), Clarence Nash (Figaro / Roughhouse Statue / Donkeys).

In April 2014 on a survey of people in animation, Pinocchio ranked as the greatest animated film of all time. This somewhat surprised me – but when you look at the rest of the top 5, it comes a little easier to see how Pinocchio did it. While Disney had more films in the Top 100 than any other studio, only Dumbo and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs made the top 10 aside from Pinocchio. The second and third ranked films were Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro by Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki, while fourth and fifth were Pixar’s Toy Story and The Incredibles. It seems to me that Miyazaki and Pixar devotees were split on their favorite – where Disney fans rallied around Pinocchio – and with good reason. I’ve always thought it was the best animated film Disney has ever made – and watching it again for the first time in a few years confirmed that for me. What it also confirmed for me is that a film like this would probably not be made today – it would be “too dark, too scary, too intense” for children – and would have its edged sanded off. But it’s that darkness that for me makes the film as great as it is.

The story is well known to everyone. Gepetto is a lonely woodcarver, who creates the marionette puppet Pinocchio, who is brought to life by the Blue Fairy. He’s still a puppet, but the Blue Fairy tells him that if he proves himself worthy, he can become a real boy. A jolly cricket named Jiminy is assigned to be his conscience – although Pinocchio will ignore him again and again on his journey. He’ll be lured away by Honest John the Fox and Gideon the Cat, who sell him to a ruthless puppeteer named Stromboli. The Blue Fairy will come to his rescue however – but when she asks how Pinocchio ended up with Stromboli Pinocchio lies – causing his nose to grow and grow and grow. Once he gets released, he will again be lured away by Honest John and Gideon, who sell him to an evil coachman, who collects “naughty young boys” and takes them to Pleasure Island – for what purpose we don’t know at first. Then of course there is the climax involving Monstro the Whale.

The sequence on Pleasure Island is one of the most disturbing ever in a children’s film. The Coachman is a large, sweaty man – he looks almost like a cartoon version of the stereotypical child molester – and he is appropriately creepy. Once the real purpose of Pleasure Island is revealed – that by indulging themselves with alcohol, cigars and vulgarity, the boys are literally turned into jackasses, who the Coachmen then sells, things get even darker. If there is a more heartbreaking moment in movie than young Alexander crying out for his mother, I don’t know what it is. If there is a scarier moment in animation than when his friend Lampick laughs at him, and reveals a donkey’s heehaw, again, I don’t know what it is. Even more disturbing of course is that while Pinocchio gets away, the rest of the boys do not. They’re stuck as jackasses forever. The other famous sequences – the nose growing and the chase with Monstro the Whale are scary and intense in their own, more traditional sense – but it’s the sequence on Pleasure Island that haunts me. You would never get away with a sequence like that in an animated movie aimed at children now – but that’s precisely what makes it so memorable. Once you see it, you’re not going to forget it.

It’s hard to believe that Pinocchio was only the second animated feature by Disney – following 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The animators were still inventing ways of telling a feature length story in animation – in camera movement, in suggestion of off screen action, of the different types of creatures created for the movie – which moves away from the human characters of Snow White into a broader world here. Yet here, Disney and company pretty much perfected the animated film – making a film that is runs the gamut of emotions from exuberance to terror, and everything in between. There are moments in the film of pure joy, some wonderful songs and beloved characters – like Jiminy Cricket. And there are moments that still scared me all these years and multiple viewing later. I’m not sure Pinocchio would be get my vote as the greatest animated film ever made – but it would certainly be on the shortlist of the top 3 or 4. It is a masterpiece.

Classics Revisited: Menace II Society

Menace II Society (1993)
Directed by: Albert & Allen Hughes.
Written by: Tyger Williams and Allen & Albert Hughes.
Starring: Tyrin Turner (Caine), Larenz Tate (O-Dog), Jada Pinkett (Ronnie), MC Eiht (A-Wax), Vonte Sweet (Sharif), Ryan Williams (Stacy), Samuel L. Jackson (Tat Lawson), Glenn Plummer (Pernell), Charles S. Dutton (Mr. Butler), Jullian Roy Doster (Anthony), Marilyn Coleman (Grandmama),  Arnold Johnson (Grandpapa),  Saafir (Harold Lawson), Bill Duke (Detective), Erin Leshawn Wiley (Ilena), Samuel Monroe Jr. (Ilena's Cousin).

In the early 1990s that were quite a few “hood” movies – about violent young black men in gangs. Most of these films have mainly been forgotten – but two of them certainly still stand out – and still pack a punch. In 1991, John Singleton made Boyz in the Hood – which told the story of a good kid (Cuba Gooding Jr.) growing up in the wrong neighborhood in L.A. – and eventually gets out. Boyz in the Hood has been held up – even by members of Congress – as an R Rated movie that teenagers should see. It is a positive film. The Cuba Gooding Jr. character comes close, but never crosses the line and does anything that would make him irredeemable. He’s one of the “lucky” ones in that he has two parents, who while they are divorced, still care about him and help set him on the right path. Even the “violent” one – played by Ice Cube – seems more resigned to his fate than anything else by the end of the movie. He’s too far gone, and knows it – and the movie lets us know he didn’t last long after the events in the film.

Two years later, The Hughes Brothers made Menace II Society – and it’s an altogether trickier, more daring film. Its main character, Caine (Tyrin Turner) repeatedly crosses the line that the Gooding character never does – the film’s first scene has him and his best friend O-Dog (Larenz Tate) go into a convenience store where the clerk says the wrong thing to O-Dog – and ends up being murdered. O-Dog than kills the man’s wife as well, and takes the security tape showing what happened – and will use it to show off to their friends. You can forgive Caine for this transgression – he didn’t do anything, didn’t know it was going to happen – but he also does nothing to stop it. It won’t be that long though before we do see Caine participate in a murder – a retribution killing against the men who killed his cousin. Throughout the movie we’ll see him do other “bad” things – including carjacking another young black man for his stereo and rims, avoiding a woman he slept with who tells him she’s pregnant with his child, and thoroughly beating her cousin who shows up to try and talk to him about it. When his grandfather asks him if he cares whether he lives or dies Caine thinks about it for a second before answering. “I don’t know” he says.

Yet what The Hughes Brothers – and writer Tyger Williams – are able to do in Menace II Society is still make you care about Caine, still feel sympathy for him and most importantly see things from his point of view. After that first scene in the convenience store, Menace II Society flashes back to show us scenes from Caine’s childhood. His mother was a junkie. His father (Samuel L. Jackson) was a violent drug dealer, who thinks nothing about shooting a man for a petty reason in front of his young son. Both are dead before Caine is a teenager. Another man, Pernell (Glenn Plummer) takes him under his wing and shows him the ropes – basically how to be a drug dealer. Caine is surrounded by people who only know one way of life. He, like everyone else in the movie, has a limited perspective on life – he doesn’t see anything outside of his world. What chance did Caine really have?

That’s really the key to Menace II Society. Caine is not an “evil” character – although we see him do some horrible things. He’s not O-Dog, who Caine describes in his voice over as society’s worst nightmare - “Young, black and doesn’t give a fuck”. Caine does care about his grandparents. He develops a relationship with Ronnie (Jada Pinkett) – the girlfriend of Pernell, now in prison doing life with no parole – and for their young son Anthony who he wants to show the ropes to, just like Pernell did for him. But Caine, like many teenagers from all races makes stupid mistakes – and where he comes from, making mistakes carries more serious consequences. By the time he realizes that his way of life has no future – it’s already too late for him. During a prison visit, Pernell asks Caine to take care of his son and teach him that “the way we grew up was bullshit”. Pernell used to be Caine and now realizes the mistakes he made – but it’s too late for him.

The Hughes Brother admit to be inspired by Scorsese – particularly GoodFellas, and you can see that in every frame of Menace II Society. The structure of the two is similar – starting with a violent scene, than flashing back to scenes of the main characters childhood, before rushing into the present. The camera work is similar as well – The Hughes Brothers camera rarely rests, it’s always moving, always circling the films characters. There is a kinetic energy to the movie. The violence in both movies is presented the same way – often quick, brutal and bloody scenes. Both films take the audience into a sealed world that seems foreign to them, but seems natural to the characters. Had Scorsese been a young black man in the 1990s, Menace II Society would be the film he would make.

The performances in Menace II Society are effective – Turner has a rather flat monotone in much of the film – but it works for the character that is numb to his surroundings. He certainly has a limited range – and given his post Menace career, one can assume he never developed further. Much better is Larenz Tate, who looks so young and innocent, which is makes his psychopathic violent streak all the more chilling. The Hughes Brothers get some good work from three veterans – Jackson is chilling as Caine’s father, Bill Duke excellent in one scene as a cop interrogating Caine (“You know you fucked up now”) and Charles S. Dutton has a few nice scenes as a man not unlike the Laurence Fishburne character in Boyz in the Hood – the father of a friend, trying to look out for everyone, but knowing the reality they are facing.

Last year, I read a number of stories about a “renaissance” in black filmmaking – basically based on the fact that three black filmmakers made successful, acclaimed films in the same year (Lee Daniels for The Butler, Ryan Coogler for Fruitvale Station and Steve McQueen for 12 Years a Slave) – and more than once, someone would point out that this “renaissance” seems to happen again and again, before taking a step backwards. I couldn’t help but think of John Singleton and The Hughes Brothers when I read those stories. Singleton became the youngest filmmaker ever to be nominated for a Best Director Oscar for Boyz in the Hood – at only 21 – and was also the first black filmmaker to be nominated. The Hughes Brothers were the same age when they directed Menace II Society just two years later. Yet sadly, neither of them have been able to match the success of their first films since. Singleton made some interesting films after Boyz in the Hood – Poetic Justice (1993), Higher Learning (1995), the vastly underrated Rosewood (1998) and Baby Boy (2001) – but has mainly had to do action films – like Shaft, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Four Brothers and Abduction - in the past decade and a half. For their follow-up to Menace II Society, the Hughes Brothers made the excellent Dead Presidents (1995) – a look at black Vietnam veterans who become criminals. Since then, there hasn’t been much – the documentary American Pimp (1999), the stylistic Jack the Ripper movie From Hell (2001) and the action movie The Book of Eli (2010)  - and Allen’s solo directing effort Broken City (2013). It’s a shame that two directing careers that started out so promising have not been able to quite follow through – but I cannot help but wonder why that is. Do Singleton and The Hughes Brothers have a string of projects they have not been able to get off the ground? And if so, why not?

What remains though is Menace II Society and it is a masterpiece. This is a tough film, a violent film but an honest one. The final scene in the movie is heartbreaking. So many lives wasted for nothing.