Classic Movie Review: Thief

Thief (1981)

Directed by: Michael Mann.

Written by: Michael Mann based on the novel The Home Invaders by Frank Hohimer.

Starring: James Caan (Frank), Tuesday Weld (Jessie), Willie Nelson (Okla), James Belushi (Barry), Robert Prosky (Leo), Tom Signorelli (Attaglia), Dennis Farina (Carl), Nick Nickeas (Nick), W.R. Brown (Mitch), Norm Tobin (Guido), John Santucci (Urizzi), Gavin MacFadyen (Boreksco).

 

Some directors take their time finding their voice – spending a few films making what will look like rough drafts of their later, better films the first (and second) times out. Martin Scorsese was like that. And then there are filmmakers like Michael Mann – who with his debut film Thief made what is perhaps the purest representation of what we consider a “Michael Mann” film to be. From the first frames of Thief, there is no doubt who is behind the camera. The film opens with a near wordless heist – as Frank (James Caan) and his crew, break into a safe, ignore or discard everything, except for the diamonds – which they take and are out of there quickly. These guys are pros – know what they are looking for, and where to get it. It will be only be during the course of the movie that we’ll get to know Frank as a person at all – his troubled history as a child raised by the system, how a 2 year stint in prison as a 19 year old for stealing $40 became a 12 year stretch, when he had to defend himself against a potential gang rape, and ended up with a manslaughter charge. How his marriage has fallen apart – because she didn’t knew what he did for a living, buying his lie about selling cars (ok, he does have a car lot, but it’s a front more than anything). His relationship mentor and friend Okla (Willie Nelson), still on the inside. Or his new relationship with Jessie (Tuesday Weld), a waitress he meets, and in a brilliant, lengthy sequence in a diner, lays out his life for her to see – no secrets, no lies, and she agrees to be with him from then on. Like all Mann films, Thief doesn’t really stop to make time for this exposition – but just crams it all in on the fly. Every scene is packed with detail – so much so, that you are surprised by just how much he crams into one movie.

 

Early in the film, Frank makes a mistake that will eventually come back to haunt him – we know at the time it’s a mistake, and Frank is pretty sure it is as well, but he cannot help himself. When he gives the diamonds from that first heist to his regular fence – who ends up dead before giving Frank his money – Frank goes to the people he knows has it. They give him the money no problem – but the boss, Leo (Robert Prosky) wants Frank to come and work for him. He knows how good Frank is – and he convinces Frank that by coming to work for him, he’ll be able to take down bigger scores, with less risk. Frank doesn’t like it – he likes working for himself – but when Leo starts throwing around some insane numbers, Frank cannot say no. He’ll do one deal, it will make them all millionaires, then he will retire with Jessie – and their newly adopted son (one that Leo gets for him when more “official” channels do not work out).

 

Mann has often made movies about characters are caught up in a system that is larger than they are – most of the time, they don’t even realize it. In films like Heat (1995), The Insider (1999), Collateral (2004), Public Enemies (2009) and even his latest, Blackhat (2015) he often has two characters – on opposite sides, in a constant struggle with each other’s, even though in reality they are both cogs in the same machine. Thief is a little bit different as Frank doesn’t have the same kind of antagonist as the other man characters do – Leo is really the only supporting character who leaves much of a lasting impression, but even he is kind of one note. Frank likes to think of himself as free – but he really isn’t. And even if he operates outside the law, outside the system so to speak, he is still very much a part of it, as he discovers there is a class system even among thieves. Leo doesn’t want a partner – he doesn’t even want an employee – he wants someone he can control, make money off of their hard work, while he takes little risk, and sits at home in his fancy house – with a wife who seemingly hates him (there is a great moment, late in the film, near the climax where Frank comes to Leo’s house with a gun, a woman, presumably Leo’s wife, sees Frank, barely reacts, and then goes back to watching TV). Frank is very much a part of the capitalist system – even if it is a system that has mainly rejected him – and he it.

 

The film is built around two heist sequences – the opening one, and the one near the end – the one they spend most of the movie planning, and is one of the only robberies in movie history that actually goes according to plan. Mann doesn’t use much, if any dialogue, in these two sequences – but unlike Jules Dassin in Riffifi (an obvious influence) – he does use music – in this case the techno score by Tangerine Dream, which while not my favorite piece of music, works well here – as Frank is using technology to pull off his heists, and it fits with the music. Much of the visuals of the film are dark – literally, black skies, black waters, black Chicago streets that envelope the characters, giving them no way out. The film, in many ways, is the missing link that connects the gritty, nihilistic crime films of the 1970s, with the more gloss and glamour of the 1980s crime films – something Mann himself would become known for (albeit on TV, with Miami Vice).

 

There are two moments in the films where Frank sits completely silently for a few minutes – and seems utterly content with himself, and his life. The first is at a Chinese restaurant, with Jessie and their new son – who they hadn’t even named yet. They decide on a name, David (great choice!) and call the waiter back over to tell him – and then Frank simply sits there, and looks off into space. He gets a similar look late in the film – as his cohorts are loading the loot from the unbreakable safe that he just broke. The job done, he sits there – utterly contented. Those two moments have haunted me since seeing Thief. What is Frank thinking in those moments? Does he know that everything is about to come crashing down around him, so he’s taking a moment to savor a job well down? Thief is perhaps not Mann’s best film – and it certainly isn’t his most ambitious. But it’s one that takes his lead character seriously – and all the other stuff in the movie, as brilliant as it is, basically boils down to a character study. It’s a great performance by Caan – perhaps the best in any Mann film, because while Frank is certainly a cog in the machine, as many Mann characters are, he remains – first and foremost – a person, who Mann takes seriously. This is why Thief is a masterwork – when of the greatest debut films of all time.

Classic Movie Review: The Conversation (1974)

The Conversation (1974)
Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola.
Written by: Francis Ford Coppola.
Starring: Gene Hackman (Harry Caul), John Cazale (Stan), Allen Garfield (Bernie Moran), Frederic Forrest (Mark), Cindy Williams (Ann), Michael Higgins (Paul), Elizabeth MacRae (Meredith), Teri Garr (Amy), Harrison Ford (Martin Stett), Robert Duvall (The Director).

In his Great Movies essay on Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, Roger Ebert writes “His colleagues in the surveillance industry think Harry Caul is such a genius that we realize with a little shock how bad he is at his job.” – which is something that I don’t quite agree with. I think Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), the main character in The Conversation, is great only at his job – he’s bad at everything else. He is a man who succeeds in recording conversations that no one else could – using his own specially designed equipment, and then mixing together different recordings into one cohesive tape. When he’s on the job – either recording the conversation or mixing them – he’s a genius. It’s everything else in his life that he completely and totally screws up at. We are told that at one time, Caul was the best at what he did in New York – but being the best meant getting a tape that no one thought possible – that lead to a triple murder. So he flees New York, and sets up shop in San Francisco. The opening scene of the movie is basically a brilliant montage of Harry getting the conversation that will obsess him throughout the movie – between a man and a woman who walk around in circles in a crowded public square. Harry will listen to that conversation over and over again, and try to piece together what it all means. And he’ll be completely wrong.

Harry’s is a job that you can only do if you don’t really care about what happens when you’re done. If you need a secret tape of a conversation between other people, the chances are you are not using it for purely good purposes. People will inevitably be hurt by what he does – but it’s the only world he knows, so he continues in it, even though he now knows what the consequences will be. He tries to cut himself off from the rest of humanity – he has an unlisted number that he thinks no one can get, triple locks on the door that he thinks his landlord cannot get into his apartment, he keeps his mistress (and that’s the right word, even if he isn’t married) at arm’s length. But he grossly overestimates his ability to shut out the world around him – and the power of the people he’s dealing with. Being paranoid is not something he needs to be in order to do his job – we see him at an annual convention for people in his business, some of whom flaunt their wares like salesman. It’s just who Harry has become, and it leaves him pretty much destroyed at the end of the movie.

The Conversation is the movie Francis Ford Coppola directed between the first two Godfather movies in the 1970s – and it’s another masterpiece like those two were. It is heavily influenced by European filmmakers – most notably Michelangelo Antonioni and his 1966 film Blowup – which is about a photographer who think he may have captured a murder in the background of one of his photos. In The Conversation, Harry believes the conversation he records may be evidence of an upcoming murder, and obsesses over what he hears on the tape – analyzing every vocal inflection to try and piece together what the meaning behind the words are. He becomes so locked into one way of thinking, he cannot imagine a different one.

The Conversation is a thriller, but a muted one. There are no chase sequences or gunfights or fistfights, or anything like that. There is a long sequence in the middle of the movie which is essentially a curiously muted party at Harry’s workshop involving the people in his industry – including a great performance by Allen Garfield as his chief competitor, who is pretty much Harry’s polar opposite. He comes across as gregarious and friendly, but there’s a coldness and a ruthlessness beneath that surface that only reveals itself slowly. We learn a lot about Harry in this extended sequence, even though it has nothing to do with the rest of the plot.

That’s because more than anything, The Conversation is a character study of Harry – a paranoid, lonely man who is scared of the implications he thinks he hears on that tape. This is one of Hackman’s best performances – quieter than he usually does, and more subtle. That last, haunting shot in the movie is of a broken man – one undone by his own hand. The Conversation doesn’t have quite the reputation of Coppola’s other 1970s films – but it’s a masterpiece just the same.

Classic Movie Review: The Swimmer (1968)

The Swimmer (1968)

Directed by:  Frank Perry.

Written by: Eleanor Perry based on the short story by John Cheever.

Starring: Burt Lancaster (Ned Merrill), Janet Landgard (Julie Ann Hooper), Janice Rule (Shirley Abbott), Tony Bickley (Donald Westerhazy), Marge Champion (Peggy Forsburgh), Nancy Cushman (Mrs. Halloran), Bill Fiore (Howie Hunsacker), David Garfield (Ticket Seller), Kim Hunter (Betty Graham), Rose Gregorio (Sylvia Finney), Charles Drake (Howard Graham), Bernie Hamilton (Halloran's Chauffeur), House Jameson (Mr. Chester Halloran), Jimmy Joyce (Jack Finney), Michael Kearney (Kevin Gilmartin Jr.), Richard McMurray (Stu Forsburgh), Jan Miner (Lillian Hunsacker), Diana Muldaur (Cynthia), Keri Oleson (Vernon Hooper), Joan Rivers (Joan), Cornelia Otis Skinner (Mrs. Hammar), Dolph Sweet (Henry Biswanger), Louise Troy (Grace Biswanger), Diana Van der Vlis (Helen Westerhazy).

 

There was probably only one time in movie history where a major Hollywood studio would make a film like The Swimmer – and that’s the late 1960s and early 1970s. The studio model was dying, and younger directors no one had heard of were reinventing American movies (basically by copying the innovations of European directors) and delivering box office hits. The studios wanted to replicate this – but didn’t really know how to. The result is movies like Stanley Donen’s Two for the Road (1967), Richard Lester’s Petulia (1968) and Frank Perry’s The Swimmer (also 1968). The film divided critics, and was ignored by audiences – probably because it was a little too strange for the older audiences who wanted to see a Burt Lancaster movie, and a little too square for the younger crowd, who refused to see a Burt Lancaster movie. Like those other two films though, it is utterly fascinating to watch now – a “perfectly imperfect” movie according to The Dissolve and a “horror movie that doesn’t know it’s a horror movie” according to Glenn Kenny – two excellent descriptions of the film.

 

The film is based on a short story by John Cheever – and (necessarily) expands it a little bit – but is basically faithful to the spirit of the story. Lancaster plays Ned Merrill – and when we first meet him, he’s in his swimsuit at his friend’s poolside. Everyone loves Ned – he is charming and good looking and he shares some laughs with his friends – all of whom “drunk too much last night” – and are preparing to drink too much tonight as well. He hears about another of his friends has also just put in a pool – and for a moment he zones out – staring across the affluent Connecticut suburb he lives in. He does some calculations in his head and determines that he can “swim his way home” – by hopping from one friends pool to another. It’s a crazy idea – but old Ned just may be able to pull it off. When he gets ready to leave though, his friends try and stop him. But Ned cannot be stopped.

 

So Ned hops from one pool to the next, and along the way, his journey becomes darker. Not everyone, it seems, loves Ned. They keep referring to things – his job, his wife, his daughters – with a look of pity in their eyes. They refer to incidents that Ned seems to have no recollection of – he doesn’t seem to remember anything for the past few years. He meets the girl, now a young woman, who used to babysit for his daughters – Julie Ann Hooper (Janet Landgard) – now a young woman, but still the perfect girl next door. He wants her to babysit for them this weekend – and she’s confused. Surely, his daughters don’t need a babysitter anymore? Still, she joins Ned for a while on his journey – confessing her old school girl crush she used to have on him. He takes things too far with her and she runs off – leaving him alone and confused once again.

 

The longest single set piece in the movie has Ned visit his ex-mistress, Shirley Abbott (Janice Rule). Sydney Pollack directed this sequence after the film was taken away from original director Frank Perry – and depending on who you believe, it’s could have been because Barbara Loden – the actress originally cast – out acted Lancaster the first time it was shot. That’s hard to believe, as Lancaster is brilliant in this sequence – and Rule herself is no slouch in it. By this point, Ned can no longer deny that something is definitely wrong with him. He’s getting tired – he has to use the ladder to climb out of the pool for the first time. The day, that started so brilliantly warm, has turned cold. He tries to reminisce with Shirley – but she seems to hate him. Everything he says happened “last year” – she says happened years ago. His vision of a passionate love affair between the two of them is shattered. He moves on to the public pool – where he suffers more humiliations, before finally making it home.

 

The Swimmer is a dark movie – and one that gets increasingly surreal as it moves along. It’s certainly an allegorical looking at multiple different issues – suburbia, the collapse of the American dream, aging, death and masculinity. Lancaster frequently said that this was both his best and favorite performance of his career – and while I’m not quite sure it’s his best (that would perhaps Sweet Smell of Success, Elmer Gantry, The Leopard or Atlantic City) – but it ranks among them. Stuck in those tight fitting swim trunks for the entirety of the movie, he starts off virile, charming, funny – a classic Lancaster creation. As the movie goes along, he gets cold, dismissive, increasingly delusional and sad – and ends up a pathetic shell of his former self. It’s a rather daring performance by Lancaster – not least because he was in his 50s at the time, and spends the whole movie nearly naked. But he makes Ned Merrill into both an arrogant asshole, and a sympathetic character – one responsible for his own downfall to be sure, but still when the film ends, as it must, I could help but feel sorry for the man.

 

The tone of the movie is odd – in ways both intentional, and I fear sometimes not. This was the first movie for which Marvin Hamlisch wrote the score – and while the music itself is quite good, it doesn’t fit with the movie at all – it’s overly romantic for such a dark movie. Some of the stylistic excesses that Perry throw in the movie have dated badly and do not quite work now – and I doubt they ever did.

 

Yet the movie has a distinctive power all its own – and one that is fairly undeniable. It’s an odd film to say the least, but I liked how distinctive the film is. This is one of those films that auteurism fails to explain – even those who worked on the film (according to the documentary on the new Blu Ray) cannot agree if Frank and Eleanor Perry – who directed and wrote the film respectably – were two not very talented people who lucked into a great story by Cheever and a great performance by Lancaster and just had to not screw it up – or if they really are underrated filmmakers. I love auteurism – and it frequently helps to put certain movies into perspective by looking at them as part of the larger work of a filmmaker (I lean it perhaps too heavily at times). But with a film like The Swimmer, you have to approach it as a film all by itself. That can be invigorating in its own way as well. Whoever is responsible for The Swimmer – the Perrys, Cheever, Lancaster, Pollock – it doesn’t really matter. This is a fascinating, surreal nightmare of a movie. That it has its flaws is almost undeniable – but somehow those flaws almost work in the films favor – making it an even stranger, more singular film. It’s not a masterpiece – but it is one of a kind.

Classic Movie Review: One From the Heart (1982)

One From the Heart (1982)
Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola.
Written by: Armyan Bernstein & Francis Ford Coppola.
Starring: Frederic Forrest (Hank), Teri Garr (Frannie), Raul Julia (Ray), Nastassja Kinski (Leila), Lainie Kazan (Maggie), Harry Dean Stanton (Moe).

Francis Ford Coppola had one of the greatest decades any director has ever had in the 1970s. He directed four films – The Godfather (1972), The Conversation, The Godfather Part II (both 1974) and Apocalypse Now (1979) – all four of which were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, two of them winning. He won a Best Director Oscar for The Godfather Part II, won three writing Oscars (for Patton, and the two Godfathers) and the Palme D’Or for Apocalypse Now. More important than any of those awards however is the fact that three decades later, all of his 1970s films are still considered to be masterpieces. Making Apocalypse Now was a long, torturous process, but he ended up making what I still consider to be the best film ever made. And then, with 1982’s One From the Heart, the bottom fell out.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. One From the Heart was supposed to be a simple movie – an antidote to the bloated production of Apocalypse Now, and was supposed to help establish Coppola as a truly independent filmmaker – and get his Zoetrope ideal off the ground running and finance personal projects for Coppola and other filmmakers. Instead, the film, originally budgeted at $2 million, exploded into a $28 million dollar movie, that bombed at the office and with critics, and led to Zoetrope, and Coppola himself, going bankrupt. Pretty much all the films Coppola directed for the rest of the 1980s and 1990s were made in an attempt to pay off his debts – which eventually he was able to do – and thanks in part to a successful winery, he is once again able to make just the films he wants to make – which has led to Youth Without Youth (2007), Tetro (2009) and Twixt (2011) – personal movies, that have mainly be greeted with a shrug (although I found much to admire about the first two – and still need to see Twixt). One thing is for sure though – One From the Heart marked the end of Coppola’s career as a truly great director. There is much to admire about some of his later films – but never again would he reach the heights of the 1970s.

Watching the film three decades removed from its release, it’s easy to see where things went so wrong with the movie – but also easy to admire much of what Coppola accomplished with the film. I’m not going to go nearly as far as the film’s most adamant defenders, who claim it is another Coppola masterpiece, but the film is not an epic failure like Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate either. Coppola used innovative editing techniques that are still used today. It’s easy to see the film’s influence on films such as Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge (2001). The film is always at least interesting, and sometimes brilliantly so, to look at and listen to. Coppola built his stage bound Las Vegas sets, in all their garish, brilliant color (which is what sent the budget skyrocketing) – but damn it, if they don’t look impressive. Too bad all the technical brilliance on display throughout One From the Heart is at the service of a rather simplistic, rather dull story.

The film stars Frederic Forest and Teri Garr as Hank and Frannie – a couple who has been together for five years, and are stuck in a rut. They have different ideas on where they want the next step of their relationship to go – he’s spent money buying out his roommate in the rundown home they pair live in, so he can fix it up nicely for them. She’s spent money on a trip to Bora Bora he doesn’t want to go on. They argue, they breakup and each goes running to a friend – he to Moe (Harry Dean Stanton) and she to Maggie (Lainie Kazan). They also both meet an interesting stranger in the night – her Ray (Raul Julia), a romantic waiter who says he’s a singer and piano player, him Leila (Natassja Kinksi), a travelling circus performer on the road with her family. The whole movie is set to a brilliant song-score written by Tom Waits, and performed by Waits and Crystal Gale. Waits would receive the film’s only Oscar nomination for his music – that apparently even inspired the production design of the movie, and certainly inspired the film’s overall tone.

There is not a moment in One From the Heart than is anything other than interesting to watch. Coppola is doing some brilliant technical things throughout the movie, and the music sets the tone for a film that is both romantic, and mournful. Yet the story itself really lets the technical achievement done. Hank and Frannie just do not seem right for each other – and Ray and Leila do more than provide a contrast for each of them to compare their current lover to – but actually both represent a far more logical option for both of them. They seem to be on the same page, want the same things moving forward, and they have undeniable sexual chemistry together. Hank and Frannie have run their course – but the movie doesn’t seem to realize it, continuing to let them crash back into each other right up until the “happy” finale. For the most part, the performances are fine – but they are awfully one note.

I’m not sure why Coppola felt this rather simple, rather wrong-headed story deserved such epic treatment. Had he had a better one, perhaps One From the Heart really would be a masterpiece, even if it still bombed at the box office. But he doesn’t. What the film really is, is a hugely ambitious misfire with so much to love about it, that I wished I could like it more.

Classic Movie Review: Simon of the Desert (1965)

Simon of the Desert (1965)
Directed by: Luis Buñuel.
Written by: Luis Buñuel & Julio Alejandro.
Starring: Claudio Brook (Simón), Silvia Pinal (The Devil), Enrique Álvarez Félix (Brother Matías), Hortensia Santoveña (The Mother), Francisco Reiguera (The Devil as an Old Witch), Luis Aceves Castañeda (Priest), Antonio Bravo (Priest), Enrique del Castillo (The Mutilated One).

Luis Bunuel was an atheist, who nevertheless spent much of his career making films about God and religion. For the most part, his films mock organized religion – in particular the Catholic Church – and the true believers, but he has made some films that are surprisingly sympathetic to the people who truly believe in God. Take for instance Nazarin (1958), which is about a simple man who wants to live his life according to simple, Christian principles – only to have those around him make that impossible. His 1965 short film – which wasn’t a short film by design, but because the producer ran out of money, forcing a hasty resolution to the movie after only 46 minutes – is not quite as sympathetic to its main character as Nazarin, but it isn’t as merciless as some Bunuel films could be either. If anything, Bunuel seems to pity poor Simon, and attacks his followers and the priests far more than the Holy fool himself.
 

When the film opens, we learn that Simon (Claudio Brook) has spent six years, six months and six days on top of a 10 foot high pillar – a sacrifice he has made willingly to show his devotion to God (if anyone realizes the time spent there is 666, the sign of the Devil, they don’t mention it). Now, because of a “wealthy benefactor”, Simon is being promoted – they’ve built him a 25 foot pillar to stand on. Unfortunately for Simon, no one will leave him alone. The crippled and deformed make pilgrimages to him to try and be healed – and even when Simon does perform a miracle – giving a thief back his hands – they don’t seem overly grateful to him. The priests are even worse, seeing Simon as a threat to their own practice of religion – after all, his sacrifice makes theirs look small by comparison – and he doesn’t ask for any money either.

Meanwhile, the Devil, in the form of the gorgeous Silvia Pinal, arrives and tries repeatedly to tempt Simon down off his pillar. The Devil takes on many forms to try and accomplish her goal. Eventually The Devil will give up trying to tempt Simon down, and just transport him from his desert in the 4^th Century, to modern day New York, where she places him in the middle of a nightclub, full of dancing young people. If this is a vision of hell, than as Pauline Kael noted, it’s a rather pale one. But perhaps it’s just meant to represent Simon’s idea of hell. No longer can he simply cut himself off from humanity, and stand atop a pillar by himself, with people worshipping him. Simon looks even more ridiculous in that nightclub than he did on top of that pillar.

So, what finally, are we to make of Simon? His decision to stand on a pillar as a form of sacrifice to God is both crazy, and more than a little admirable. After all, don’t we normally admire someone who puts their principles and beliefs above all other things – including worldly goods? But therein lies the problem for Simon. Is it really that admirable to deny your own life in the service of God? Isn’t it somewhat disrespectful to God to waste the life he has given you, simply standing on a pillar?

If Simon of the Desert isn’t one of Bunuel’s best films – at least to my eyes – it has more to do with the strength of his other films than weaknesses in this one. When you think of films like Viridiana, The Exterminating Angel, Belle de Jour or Tristana, than Simon of the Desert doesn’t quite seem at the same level. Would it be had Bunuel been able to make the full film he wanted to? Perhaps, but I think although Simon of the Desert is “incomplete” as it is missing scenes Bunuel wanted to film, as a film unto itself, it is a coherent whole. It may not be Bunuel’s finest film, but it’s still fascinating, funny and quite serious about its subject. Only Bunuel could make a film like this.

Apologies for Lack of Reviews

Just a quick note to apologize for the lack of reviews of new releases in the past little while. To be honest, I've had a little trouble gathering up the requisite enthusiasm for many recent releases. It also doesn’t help that I wasn’t able to shake off a cold for a few weeks there – and that just tired me out. Now that my paternity leave is over, and I’m back at work, it’s a little harder to find the energy to get up and go to the movies for a late show on Sunday, Monday or Wednesday nights, which is normally when I go. I have made the effort when I feel I have to – like Furious 7 – but for somewhat lesser titles, like Get Hard, Run All Night or The Gunman, all films normally I would have seen, the sickness and the tiredness conspired against me. Other titles that normally I would have checked out – like Danny Collins or Woman in Gold – aren’t playing at my local multiplex, so a 45 minute drive each way would be necessary – which I do not mind if it’s something I really want to see, kind of do mind when it’s a seeming mediocrity like those.

Rest assured however, that I will be coming back strong soon. Friday sees me with an afternoon and evening off in Toronto, so that means movies – will definitely fit in Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young and Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria. And after that, despite my caution on both titles, both Unfriended and True Story are opening close to me this weekend – and both have subject matters too far up my alley to miss.

I’ve also been catching up or some home viewing in preparation for upcoming movies – I watched the Mad Max trilogy over the weekend (I had seen The Road Warrior before, not the other two) and Tobe Hooper/Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist (for, which I am ashamed to admit, I had not seen before). I hope to write about them soon – although I may hold back to closer to the release of the remakes in May before posting. I also finally caught up with 2012’s Sinister – after seeing the creepy trailer for the sequel made me remember I had never seen if before. I may write something on that as well – although, again, since the sequel doesn’t hit until August, I may hold off posting it. I’m on a little bit of a horror kick recently – and will likely catch up with some “classics”, both old and new, of the genre. Up next for me a double bill of Kiyoshi Kurosawa – Cure (1997) and Pulse (2001) – both of which has been on my “to watch” list for far too long, Amer by Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani – which is one of just 6 films on the on The AV’s Club recently published 100 Best of the decade - so far – and the second highest ranking “missed” title right behind Bertrand Bonello’s House of Pleasures (another film I plan to eventually catch up on). And, because I like the title, Larry Cohen’s God Told Me To (1977).

All of that is in the weeks to come however, and doesn’t do readers any good right now. So, I’m dusting off a few old reviews I wrote last year and didn’t publish – for classics like Luis Bunuel’s Simon of the Desert, Frank Perry’s The Swimmer, Michael Mann’s Thief, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation and One From the Heart and Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (that last one is a pre-requisite re-watch before we all groove out on Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, on Blu-Ray in a few weeks – and yes, I still watch Blu-Rays – and even DVDs!).

Movie Review: Furious 7

Furious 7
Directed by: James Wan.
Written by: Chris Morgan based on characters created by Gary Scott Thompson.
Starring: Vin Diesel (Dominic Toretto), Paul Walker (Brian O'Conner), Jason Statham (Deckard Shaw), Michelle Rodriguez (Letty), Jordana Brewster (Mia), Tyrese Gibson (Roman), Ludacris (Tej), Dwayne Johnson (Hobbs), Lucas Black (Sean Boswell), Kurt Russell (Mr. Nobody), Nathalie Emmanuel (Ramsey), John Brotherton (Sheppard), Tony Jaa (Kiet), Djimon Hounsou (Jakande), Ali Fazal (Safar), Ronda Rousey (Kara).

While I am never going to join the Fast and Furious cult – those film critics who somehow see this series of films as some sort of masterpieces, I do have to admit that over time, this series has worn me down, and won me over with its increasingly absurd brand of action filmmaking. I didn’t think too much of the first three films – which were sort of bland and forgettable, but starting with the fourth installment, it seems like the filmmakers have decided simply to throw everything and the kitchen sink into the films. They have shot down planes, leap off across bridges, dragged enormous safes through the streets, and engaged in all sorts of mayhem – all while looking good, driving insanely expensive, fast cars and surrounded by women, who are all insanely good looking. I don’t think I’ll ever love a Fast and Furious movie – but dammit it all if I don’t find them fun.

The latest installment once again finds Dominic Tortetto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) and his team, sorry “family”, having to go up against some insane bad guys. This time, it’s Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), the brother of Owen, who was the bad guy in the last film who the team put in a coma. Deckard isn’t happy about that – and like every bad guy in every action movie, he’s a rogue, ex-elite forces guy, who moves like a shadow, and can kill any and everyone who gets in his way. In the time honored tradition of action villains everywhere, he wants revenge for what our heroes did to his family – and he’s going to get it. But how can Toretto, O’Conner and company track a shadow? That, of course, requires them to get an insane sounding computer program, which means first they need to rescue the hacker who made that program and has been kidnapped by some mean, bad guys in the middle of nowhere. And they’ll need the help of a shadow on their side – Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) – to do so. Through the course of the movie they will parachute out of planes – in their cars of course – and they also drive an even more insanely priced car inside of a skyscraper in the Middle East, whose brakes fail meaning they have to jump it from one building to the next. There are also gunfights, insane hand-to-hand combat sequences (which is why they brought in Tony Jaa obviously), and even modern day gladiatorial style fighting with giant wrenches. All of it is completely and totally ridiculous – and all of is also totally entertaining.

The director this time in James Wan – best known for horror movies like Saw, Insidious and The Conjuring – taking over for Justin Lin, who directed the last four installments. Wan isn’t quite as good as Lin is at directing the insane action sequences – but he more than gets the job done. Considering however just how good he is at mainstream horror – 2007’s misfire Dead Silence aside – I think I’d rather him keep making those films however. But hey, he seems to be having fun like everyone else involved in the project, so who I am to complain.

The series, when it hasn’t been doing insane stunts, has had a lot of talk about family – something that it underlines a little too much this time out. The untimely death of Walker gives a poignancy to the film that the other films lacked – and while you could accuse the film of being shamefully manipulative in trying to milk tears from the audience, especially in the final scenes, I thought it was a rather fitting, and respectful tribute to Walker. I may not have cried – like some have admitted to – but I came closer than I ever thought a Fast and Furious movie could get me.

To me, Furious 7 marks an obvious end point to the series. How many more times can they really go to this well? The worst installments are the probably the ones that don’t feature both Diesel and Walker – neither are really great actors, both are perfect for this series and their roles in it – so I feel it’s time to call it quits. This segment even started edging towards Expendables territory, bringing a bunch of action stars for “guest appearances” – like Jaa, Russell and Statham – and so it’s probably best before the series really jumps the shark. Then again, the film made $140 million in North America on opening weekend, so I’m sure we’ll see Furious 8 – or Fast 8 or whatever the hell they’re going to call it. And more than likely, so help me God, I’ll be there.