The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: Johnny Guitar (1954)

Johnny Guitar (1954)
Directed by: Nicholas Ray.
Written by: Philip Yordan and Ben Maddow (uncredited) and Nicholas Ray (uncredited) based on the novel by Roy Chanslor.
Starring: Joan Crawford (Vienna), Sterling Hayden (Johnny 'Guitar' Logan), Mercedes McCambridge (Emma Small), Scott Brady (Dancin' Kid), Ward Bond (John McIvers), Ben Cooper (Turkey Ralston), Ernest Borgnine (Bart Lonergan), John Carradine (Old Tom), Royal Dano (Corey), Frank Ferguson (Marshal Williams).

Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar is one of his very best movies – a Western that ranks among the most wildly over the top films ever made, and yet, somehow, hits all the right notes. Read 10 different reviews of Johnny Guitar, and you’ll likely read 10 different interpretations of what it all means. One of the great things about Johnny Guitar is that it seems to support all these different views on what it all means – and is also deliriously entertaining to boot.

The movie may be called Johnny Guitar, but he is far from the protagonist of the movie. Sure, his arrival in town helps to set in motion the plot, and in some ways he will “save the day” in the end, but for most of the movie, Johnny takes a backseat in the proceedings. The real protagonist is Vienna (Joan Crawford), an ambitious businesswoman, who Johnny rejected five years earlier when he was a gunfighter, and didn’t want to settle done. In the intervening years, Vienna made a lot of money as a prostitute, and now owns a gambling den and saloon on the outskirts of a town who doesn’t want her there. She doesn’t care. She knows the railroad is coming, and with it, lots of people who will want her. The townsfolk are scared of this development, and are futilely fighting progress.

No one more so than Mercedes McCambridge’s Emma Small. Crawford, whose baby this was, wanted Claire Trevor to play the role, but the studio insisted on McCambridge. Apparently Crawford hated McCambridge, and the feelings were most likely mutual, and while that didn’t make for a comfortable set, it aids the movie greatly. Emma is one of the great screen villains of all time – a seething ball of pure hatred who cannot take her eyes off of Vienna. She is apparently in love with The Dancin’ Kid (Scott Brady), another outsider to the townspeople, who are convinced that he and his gang held up the stagecoach and killed Emma’s brother. The movie starts with them all coming to Vienna’s saloon to arrest the Kid and his gang – but Vienna stands up for them. Nonetheless, town elder John McIvers (Ward Bond), gives the Kid and his gang 24 hours to clear town – and Vienna 24 hours to close up shop. He has no real authority to do this, but who’s going to stop him? Besides, it’s Emma who is calling the shots – she runs the bank and with her brother dead, is now the richest, most powerful person in town. What Emma wants, Emma gets.

The surface of Johnny Guitar is wonderfully colorful and over the top. Critics in 1954 were distracted by the melodrama on the surface of Johnny Guitar – they complained about the goofy plot (it is), overwrought score (which it is, unless you’re attuned to Ray’s wavelength) and the undeniable camp of the movie. They dismissed the movie, but right from the start the French loved it – both Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut were big fans, and they saw everything going on beneath the over the top surface of the film.

For one thing, it appears clear now that Johnny Guitar was a commentary on McCarthyism. While the screenplay is credited to Philip Yordan, we know now that the real writer was Ben Maddow, then blacklisted. How more people didn’t see this at the time is a commentary about how shallowly many people watch movies – because it is impossible to watch the scene where the townsfolk brutally question Turkey, one of the Kid’s gang, telling him “just tell us Vienna was one of you and we won’t hang you”, only to, of course, hang him after he does precisely what they say.

But that’s just one level of Johnny Guitar. The film has also been called a “Freudian” Western, for the way it deals with sexuality, and questions everyone’s sexual motivations throughout. Nearly every character is drawn sexually to Vienna. The Dancin’ Kid is in love with her, but she simply uses him for sex – and even that stops when Johnny rolls into town, looking to make up for lost time. Johnny loves her as well, and in perhaps the film’s best scene, they talk long into the night, and he gets her to “lie to me”, in a conversation dripping with cynicism between these two. And Emma, of course, is in many ways in love with Vienna herself – which is precisely why she hates her so much. McCambridge’s performance is wildly, madly over the top, and yet it is perfect for the movie – one of the greatest portraits of self-loathing ever put on screen.

Johnny Guitar plays with Western clichés from the outset – from gender reversals (Truffaut said the film was like Beauty and the Beast – with Sterling Hayden as the beauty), and as one character says of Crawford – “I’ve never met a woman who was more  man” – and later Vienna will say of Emma, when she is questioned why she wants to hang The Kid if she loves him – “He makes her feel like a woman – she hates that”. The men in the movie are weak, easily bent and played by the two women – and eventually the men realize that the smartest thing to do is just stay out of their way.

Nicholas Ray had a long, distinguished career as a filmmaker – although he is undeniably more highly thought of now than he was when he was working (he only got one Oscar nomination in his career – for writing Rebel without a Cause). Johnny Guitar is as good as anything he has ever made – films like In a Lonely Place (1950) or Bigger Than Life (1956), which like Johnny Guitar are more interesting the deeper you delve into them. At long last, Johnny Guitar was finally given a proper DVD and Blu-Ray release, and it’s now available for all to savor. It is a true masterwork.

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.

Movie Review: Annabelle

Annabelle
Directed by: John R. Leonetti.
Written by: Gary Dauberman.
Starring: Annabelle Wallis (Mia), Ward Horton (John Gordon), Tony Amendola (Father Perez), Alfre Woodard (Evelyn), Kerry O'Malley (Sharon Higgins), Brian Howe (Pete Higgins), Eric Ladin (Detective Clarkin).

I have two daughters – one three, the other 7 months – so I have quite a few dolls in my house, and I can tell you this – they all kind of creep me out. In Jaws, Robert Shaw’s Quint compares to sharks eyes to dolls eyes – cold and dead – and that is a big part of it. They can lifelike in some ways, but the eyes are always cold and dead. They aren’t really cute like a stuffed animal. In short, before I even walked into Annabelle, I was creeped out by dolls. The doll in Annabelle is way creepier than any dolls my children have – and much of what works about the film is based purely on the doll itself – this despite the fact that it never really does anything but sit there.

If you saw last years The Conjuring – one of the best mainstream American horror films in recent years – than you undoubtedly remember Annabelle from the prologue to that film – where the creepy doll does strange thing to a pair of nurses, who hire Ed and Lorraine to save them from its power – which they do. This film is about the couple who owned Annabelle before those nurses – and what they went through.

Its 1969 – and we see a news report on TV about the Manson family. Young couple Mia (Annabelle Wallis) and John (Ward Horton) are expecting their first child. They live in sunny California – next to an older couple, who lost their only daughter a few years before when she ran off with the hippies. She doesn’t stay away for long in the movie – coming back with her boyfriend, and killing her parents, before coming next door for Mia and John. The pair survives, of course, but not without some trauma. As the young woman lies dying, she holds onto the title doll – and whatever she was trying to do (we learn the pair of murderers were in a cult and were trying to conjure something) – goes into that doll – and follows Mia and John even after they move into an apartment – obviously based on the one in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby.

Annabelle tries, with limited success, to replicate the success of The Conjuring. Both films rely much more on atmosphere than blood or gore, or even the cheap boo moments that many horror films rely on today. The film is genuinely unsettlingly in its best moments – and benefits greatly from the atmosphere in that apartment, and from the appearance of Alfre Woodard as a friendly neighbor half way through – the rest of the cast is merely okay, but she’s actually quite good, and makes you believe her character, even though what she does in unbelievable (and perhaps even a little offensive).

But Annabelle leans a little too heavily on its influence – The Conjuring, Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist among them. The prologue of this film – which is basically a recap of the prologue of The Conjuring – also undercuts the horror of this film as well, as it shows us things that we would probably not wish to forget before seeing this film. The Conjuring, which to be fair was also an Exorcist or Rosemary’s Baby clone – was able to stake out its on spot on the landscape. That’s why it is one of the very best of the many, many clones of that pair of iconic horror films in the last 40 plus year. Annabelle is better than many of those same clones, but nowhere close to The Conjuring. It’s a middle of the road horror film – effective, yet entirely forgettable.

Movie Review: Gone Girl

Gone Girl
Directed by: David Fincher.
Written by: Gillian Flynn based on her novel.
Starring: Ben Affleck (Nick Dunne), Rosamund Pike (Amy Dunne), Neil Patrick Harris (Desi Collings), Tyler Perry (Tanner Bolt), Carrie Coon (Margo Dunne), Kim Dickens (Detective Rhonda Boney), Patrick Fugit (Officer Jim Gilpin), David Clennon (Rand Elliot), Lisa Banes (Marybeth Elliott), Missi Pyle (Ellen Abbott), Emily Ratajkowski (Andie Hardy), Casey Wilson (Noelle Hawthorne), Lola Kirke (Greta), Boyd Holbrook (Jeff), Sela Ward (Sharon Schieber), Scoot McNairy (Tommy O'Hara).

There has always been a dark, comedic edge to much of David Fincher’s work. As far back as Seven (1995), there have been comedic moments in all of Fincher’s films that can make certain audiences uncomfortable – asking themselves “Is it okay that I’m laughing at this?” For as much as he reputation is based the dark subject matter of his films, Fincher has found the undercurrent of comedy in almost all of his movies. His latest, Gone Girl, is probably his most overtly comic film. A.O. Scott says the film is structured like a romantic comedy – and he’s right – and Matt Zoller Seitz says the first half of the film almost plays like Everyone Love Raymond who May Have Killed His Wife – and he’s right as well. The film is dark in many ways, and tackles some very serious subject matter –but Fincher also knows that there is something comedic here. Working off an excellent screenplay by Gillian Flynn – adapting her own novel the right way – which is essentially paring it down to its essentials, which means that while it doesn’t cover all the same ground as the novel, it translates the spirit of the novel to the screen – Fincher has made a very dark comedy masquerading as a thriller – or perhaps vice versa. Either way, it’s one of the best films of the year.

The film features the best performance of Ben Affleck’s career as Nick Dunne – who seems like a stereotypical, sitcom type husband – a basically well-meaning oaf, who keeps screwing up, but has a wonderfully patient wife who just shakes her head at his shenanigans. The film opens with the disappearance of his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) – and for the first half flashes back in time to show their lives up until that point, through the events described in Amy’s diary, and Nick’s current predicament, as the evidence against him seems to gather force. He cannot seem to do anything right in the eyes of the police – and one thing after another makes him look horrible. It doesn’t help that the case has become a media sensation – drawing the attention of Ellen Abbot (Missi Pyle) – a Nancy Grace clone, who hammers Nick nightly on TV for every mistake he makes. Nick tries to convince everyone that he is innocent – but it sure looks like he’s guilty, doesn’t it? The film then twists at about the half-way point, and turns everything upside down – and becomes a much darker, more sinister movie that examines marriage in the most cynical way possible. Yet, through it all, the movie never ceases to be the pitch black comedy that it truly is.

Affleck is perfectly cast as Nick – I’m not sure if it’s his performance in the film, or just the fact that he is the perfect embodiment of the character that makes him work so well in the role, but no matter – he is perfect. Like his performance in Terence Malick’s To the Wonder – Affleck is perfect physically for the role, and you almost get the sense that all he had to do was show up, and he would perfect. But Affleck does a lot of subtle things in the role that make him perfect. I’ve never thought he was the best actor in the world – but there are some roles that are made for certain actors, and this is one for Affleck. Pike is just as good as Amy – without giving too much away, let me just say that she makes what in many ways could have been an unrealistic role completely relatable – you may just be surprised by how much you identify with her, or at least recognize her as a type. She is in some ways a twisted feminist hero – rallying against the expectations that popular culture thrusts upon women. Debra on Everyone Loves Raymond may have grown frustrated with Raymond, but she always accepted him for who he was. Amy will settle for nothing less than what she thinks she deserves – and if that’s just a fantasy, no matter – it’s what she wants.

Fincher has always had a gift for casting – even when he casts actors you would never suspect in roles. The supporting cast of Gone Girl features a perfect performance by Tyler Perry as Affleck’s lawyer, who it would have been easier to turn into a Johnny Cochrane type showboat, but actually becomes one of the more grounded characters in the film (with the films best laugh line – his last in the movie). Neil Patrick Harris is quietly creepy as a mysterious character out of Amy’s past – Fincher has described him as a type of Claire Quilt (from Lolita) character – and he’s not wrong. Kim Dickens does subtly impressive work as the lead detective – so subtle you may not notice just how good she is. Patrick Fugit says little, but is wonderful as her partner. Cassie Coon is a kind of audience surrogate as Margo – Nick’s twin sister – who wants so desperately to believe him. My favorite supporting performance may well be by Pyle as the Nancy Grace clone Ellen Abbot – seen mostly only on TV – and she does a dead on impression of Grace, while actually dialling it down a little bit (as if doing precisely what Grace would do would be too much comedy for the film) – and she has a great scene, in person, near the end.

The filmmaking by Fincher is, as always, impeccable. The film is dark and violent, and although it runs two an d half hours, it moves at a rapid pace. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross once again redefines what a score can do in a movie. The film is very funny, but Fincher never overplays his head, turning this into an abject farce – but something even darker. And the film has some real things to say about marriage and relationships – dark things that people most often do not talk about.

 
I know some will pick on Gone Girl – they already have. They’ve already described Flynn’s novel as trash or an airport novel (if Gone Girl is trash, what they hell does that make Dan Brown) or pick on the plausibility of the story. But Gone Girl isn’t really concerned with plausibility or realism – it’s got bigger, more important things on its mind. The film is disturbing – and like all great black comedies sometimes it makes you laugh out loud, and other times those laughs stick in your throat. I walked out of Gone Girl having had a hell of good time at the movies – but the longer I get away from it, the more disturbing it becomes.

Movie Review: The Two Faces of January

The Two Faces of January
Directed by: Hossein Amini.
Written by: Hossein Amini based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith.
Starring: Viggo Mortensen (Chester MacFarland), Oscar Isaac (Rydal), Kirsten Dunst (Colette MacFarland), Daisy Bevan (Lauren), David Warshofsky (Paul Vittorio), Yigit Özsener (Yahya).

The Two Faces of January plays like a classic Hollywood thriller – and I mean that in the best way possible. The film is based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, and takes place in 1962 – and I think it’s safe to say that this is a film that very well could have made at that time. It is made with skill and precision by writer-director Hossein Amini – and contains two excellent performances by Viggo Mortenson and Oscar Isaac. It does precisely what it sets out to do – and if it isn’t the most ambitious film in the world, that’s okay because it works very well on its own terms.

The film opens in Greece, where an American couple – Chester and Colette MacFarland (Mortenson and Kirsten Dunst) are on vacation. They have a lot of money – Chester works in investments, and is apparently very good at his job. The spot another American – Rydal (Isaac) who works as a tour guide – mainly targeting attractive, young, female tourists, who he charms, and then takes advantage of – scamming them out of a few dollars here and there. We immediately suspect that he will set his sights on the MacFarlands, and try and take advantage of them. But the movie doesn’t play out quite like that – Rydal isn’t quite the scam artist we think he is, and Chester isn’t the innocent American business man we think he is. Soon, the two men have to dispose of a body, and then the trio need to get out of town. The two men circle each other – and we’re never quite sure if they are allies or enemies – mainly because neither of them are so sure either – and we’re never quite sure where Colette’s loyalties lie either.

The film is beautiful to look at. In many ways, this is a film noir – but it’s one when much of the action takes place in the sun drenched, beautiful countryside in Greece – not in the dark, shadowy back corners like many noirs do. It is every inch a Highsmith story – who’s most famous creation was Tom Ripley – a charming, cultured sociopath and serial killer, who motives are always murky. That describes Chester, and perhaps to a lesser extent Rydal as well.

Mortenson has always excelled at playing characters like Chester – those who appear to be one thing, but whose charming surface masks so much more darkness (or sometimes, vice versa). He would have excelled as a studio player back in the day, because he’s able to do so much by doing so little. Isaac matches him as Rydal – or nearly does anyway, his character isn’t as well defined – and in many ways resembles a younger version of Chester – which is precisely why Chester doesn’t trust him – he knows who he is. The flaw in the movie is that Dunst doesn’t get much of a character play – she’s just another part of the beautiful backdrop that the main action plays out on. She does what is required of her, but in a movie where the motives of the two men remain murky because they are complicated, her motivations remain murky, and it’s more likely because her character is underwritten.

This is the first film as a director by Amini – who has been working as a screenwriter for years now. He made a good choice of material for a first time directing effort. The film is clean, cold, calculating - and most importantly doesn’t try to be anything greater than what it is. Many first time directors try to do too much – Amini keeps The Two Faces of January humming on its rather modest scale.

That is what holds The Two Faces of January back from being a great film – it is little more than its charming, beautiful surface. There is no deeper meaning here. So the achievement of The Two Faces of January is rather modest – but it’s still an achievement. There is nothing wrong with making a pitch perfect, old school genre film – and that is what The Two Faces of January is.

Movie Review: A Million Ways to Die in the West

A Million Ways to Die in the West
Directed by: Seth MacFarlane.
Written by: Seth MacFarlane & Alec Sulkin & Wellesley Wild.
Starring: Seth MacFarlane (Albert), Charlize Theron (Anna), Amanda Seyfried (Louise), Liam Neeson (Clinch), Giovanni Ribisi (Edward), Neil Patrick Harris (Foy), Sarah Silverman (Ruth), Christopher Hagen (George Stark), Wes Studi (Cochise), Matt Clark (Old Prospector).

Seth MacFarlane can be very funny – but he works best in small doses. Almost every episode of Family Guy has at least one or two moments that make me laugh out loud – but they are most often surrounded by so much crap that the show itself is never more than average. MacFarlane gets laughs simply by telling so many jokes that some of them are bound to land. When he made he feature directing debut, the result was the surprisingly funny and consistent Ted – which was a very well structured comedy that was actually funny from beginning to end. His follow-up A Million Ways to Die in the West is sadly much more like Family Guy – a film that piles up one joke after another, with very little thought given to the structure of the movie as a whole. Yes, there are moments in the film that made me laugh – but they are all isolated moments. The movie has no real flow – and is way overlong (I saw the unrated directors cut on DVD – which was 2 hours and 14 minutes) – and the film simply drags on and on and on.

MacFarlane stars in the movie as Albert – a sheep farmer in some backwater town in the West in the 1880s. When the film opens, he backs out of a gunfight with a local tough guy, because he knows damn well that he will lose, and be killed. This marks him as a coward – and his girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried) leaves him on the spot. He goes into a funk – but comes out of it when he meets Anna (Charlize Theron). He doesn’t know that she is married to Clinch (Liam Neeson) – an outlaw who has killed many times before – he just thinks that she is a new farmer in town. Clinch is lying low, waiting for his chance to strike. Meanwhile Albert and Anna start to fall in love – even as he still pines for Louise, who is now dating Foy (Neil Patrick Harris) – who is very proud of his moustache. The other major characters are Edward (Giovanni Ribisi) and his girlfriend Ruth (Sarah Silverman) – who works as a prostitute, but won’t have sex with Edward until they get married – the relationship between these two is actually much sweeter than that brief description would imply.

MacFarlane basically spends the entire movie winking at the audience. He makes no real attempt to make a realistic Western, and his character essentially plays like a modern character transported back in time to comment on how ridiculous this time period was. MacFarlane should well have known that making a Western comedy like this has to be good – after all, you are inevitably going to be compared to Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles (1974) – which is one of the greatest comedies every made. MacFarlane is no Mel Brooks – which we already knew – but here he’s even worse than he is normally.

The main problem with A Million Ways to Die in the West is that is basically just one joke after another, and very few of them are actually funny. MacFarlane doesn’t pay attention to things like plot and character – he just basically riffs on the Western genre, and then calls it day. He does anything for a laugh, even if it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the movie. Now, had it been funny, I could have forgiven it – but sadly it isn’t really funny at all.

A Million Ways to Die in the West would have made more sense had it been MacFarlane’s first film, not his second. With Ted, he showed he knows exactly what is needed to make a mainstream comedy in Hollywood – changing his television style to fit a different medium. In A Million Ways to Die in the West, he seems to have forgotten everything that made Ted work so well.

Movie Review: Dancing in Jaffa

Dancing in Jaffa
Directed by: Hilla Medalia.
Written by:  Philip Shane & Hilla Medalia.

When I heard the premise of the documentary Dancing in Jaffa I thought I knew what to expect from the film – an inspirational documentary that doesn’t so much deal in reality but wants to put a sunny face on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The movie is about Pierre Dulaine, who was born in Jaffa to Palestinian parents, but who immigrated to America in his youth where he became a champion ballroom dancer, and later a teacher. But what he has always wanted to do is return to Jaffa, and teach the children there – but the Jews and Muslims – to dance together. While the film is in many ways the inspirational documentary I thought it would be – but it also doesn’t shy away from the realities in Jaffa specifically and Israel in general.

The smartest thing that is said in Dancing in Jaffa is by Dulaine early in the film when he tells a cab driver that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are going to go anywhere, so they need to find a way to live together. The hardliners on both sides would disagree with that, but to most of us, that seems reasonable – it acknowledges the reality of the situation that isn’t likely to change until both sides can agree on that one simple thing.

When Dulaine starts teaching at various schools in Jaffa, things don’t go quite as smoothly as he would like them to. In the individual schools, things go pretty well – the kids, who are all around 10 or 11 – dance together and have fun. It’s when he tries to integrate them together when things go wrong. Some of the children refuse to touch each other – they talk about what their parents would think. The film shows many of those parents, and Dancing in Jaffa acknowledges the situation. It shows the protests and celebrations on both sides – the Jews would want the Muslims to leave the city, and the Muslims who want the Jews to leave. Neither side really deals or talks to the other side at all – they don’t see each other as people, but as something they want gone.

As the film moves along, the children start to get better – the ones who Dulaine select to take part in a competition do start to touch each other when they dance, do get to know each other, and talk to each other – and a few even see each other outside of the class. They acknowledge that before the class they didn’t even talk to someone on the other side – and now they have become friends with some of them.

Dancing in Jaffa never loses sight on how little impact the program is actually having. The world outside of the class doesn’t change at all, and the movie doesn’t really argue that all the sides need to do is get to know each other, find common ground, and then they can move forward. The film knows that the progress made in Dancing in Jaffa will have little to no effect on the situation in general – and then even some of the kids in the class have not made all that much progress. But for others, it does make a difference –it makes some of the students see each other in a way they have not before. Perhaps Dulaine didn’t accomplish everything he wanted – but he did accomplish something. If more people were at least willing to try, then slowly things may start to get better.