Classic Movie Review: Salesman (1969)

Salesman (1969)

Directed by: Albert Maysles & David Maysles & Charlotte Zwerin.

 

It is odd to think that a film made in 1969, about a profession that has all but become extinct in the decades since (and was already on its way out at the time) still feels very much like a portrait of modern America. Salesman is a documentary that follows a few Bible salesmen, who work door-to-door, trying to sell their expensive, illustrated bibles to people who don’t really need them, and cannot really afford them. They do this with the help of local churches – that’s where the names come from – and on behalf of a company who we see sell the salesmen themselves on a life that are assuredly never going to have. Wealth is not coming to any of these guys – no matter how good they are at selling. The film really is about how the salesmen exploit the people they are selling to, at the same time as being exploited by the company they work for. And what is the filmmaker’s role in all of this? After all, when the salesmen show on the doorstep of the people they are trying to convince to buy bibles, they are doing so with a film crew in tow. And remember, this is 1969, when people didn’t obsessively document every moment of their lives – and the equipment needed to film it all was large and cumbersome. The reactions of all involved certainly changed because they were being filmed.

 

Salesman was the first feature film by the Maysles Brothers, Albert and David, who alongside co-director and editor Charlotte Zwerin would follow this up with Gimme Shelter (1970) – one of the greatest of all rock documentaries, and a definitive statement on the end of the 1960s, and who (with different filmmakers, not Zwerin) would make Grey Gardens (1975) – one of the most highly regarded documentaries of all time just a few years later. Salesman is probably not quite as well-known as those other two – it doesn’t have the benefit of the Rolling Stones, or the eccentricities of Big and Little Edie to make it as iconic as those films. But it is, in its way, a quietly sad film about its subjects – all of whom are chasing their version of the American Dream, and not really getting anywhere.

 

The sales tactics the salesman use on the poor people whose houses they invade could be described as high pressured, but friendly. They pretend to never hear the word no, but they quite clearly hear every word they say, because everything they do say, the salesmen turn it back on them, as another reason why they simply have to have this bible. Isn’t it beautiful? Don’t you think you would get a lot of use out of this? And who cannot afford just a couple of dollars a week – for months on end. The people they meet almost all try and be friendly – even if they know they don’t want it – they don’t want to say they don’t want it.

 

The film ends up focusing on four salesmen – but really hones in on Paul – aka The Badger (they all have animal names) who on the surface seems like the happiest of the salesman – he is full of little jokes and one liners, he sings to himself in the car – but is also the one who probably more than anyone else sees through what they are doing. And yet, he is the saddest of them all as well – a Willy Loman type, but one who realizes that he is Willy Loman, and is just tired of it all. Where the rest of them are at least going through the motions of trying to be successful, The Badger no longer much cares. There is stench of desperation about him, and perhaps that’s why his sales are down.

 

Because, of course, in America the confident man usually wins. Everyone knows, on some level, that all of these salesmen are there to take advantage of them. No one really needs a $50 bible – especially when you struggle to put food on the table, and already have a bible of you own. But if you can confidentially sell your crap, people want to buy, they want to believe – even if they know somewhere they shouldn’t. Hell, you can become President that way.

Movie Review: Fyre Fraud

Fyre Fraud *** / *****

Directed by: Jenner Furst & Julia Willoughby Nason.

Written by: Lana Barkin & Jenner Furst & Jed Lipinski & Julia Willoughby Nason 

 

Hulu was smart back in January of this year when they decided to release their Fyre documentary just a few days before Netflix released their documentary – virtually guaranteeing that many people would watch both documentaries for comparison purposes. The two then got into an ethics-off of a sort –with the Hulu directors accusing (not incorrectly) the Netflix people of working with Fuck Jerry Media – which ran the marketing for Fyre festival, and have questionable (at best) ethics in everything, and the Netflix people accusing the Hulu people (again, not incorrectly) of paying Billy McFarland $175,000 for an interview and footage for their documentary. Both are dubious, ethically, to be sure – but I don’t think either fatally hurt either documentary. I also think Hulu was smart to release their documentary at the same time, because it is clearly the inferior movie overall – and had it come out later than the Netflix documentary (like it did here in Canada – where we do not have Hulu, and they eventually released it to other streaming platforms for rental. I rented it wanting to see what they had that the Netflix documentary did not. The answer really is not all that much – and it is has a jokier style that I don’t think works as well. It’s an interesting documentary – and I think goes well with the other film – but if you’re only going to watch one, watch the other one.

 

The film follows the same basic format as the Netflix documentary – first introducing us Billy McFarland, and his previous companies and ventures – and how be made a name for himself with his credit card for Millennials – before moving onto Fyre – which was supposed to be a talent booking ap – and then spiraled into the music festival in the Bahamas. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, and basically it all went wrong because of McFarland and his hubris – he just never could convince himself to pull the plug on the venture, even when it should have clear it was never going to come off.

 

Chris Smith, who directed the Netflix documentary, really focused more on interviews and footage from the island to make his documentary. He has great access, and really does show you step by step how everything flew off the rails. The one thing he didn’t have was access to McFarland himself – who refused an interview because they wouldn’t pay him, like Hulu did. In the end, I’m not sure how big a difference it ended up making – McFarland doesn’t really reveal too much we don’t already know, and pretty much confirms what we do know – that he is a pathological liar, who cannot be trusted, who really didn’t know how to pull off what he wanted to pull off but kept pushing on anyway. Where it went from being incompetent to being criminal is debatable – but it got there.

 

I do think that Fyre Fraud does try to be a little too clever for its own good – bringing in clips from The Simpsons and other pop culture touchstones to make the whole thing funnier – jokier. The film doesn’t have as much time for the real victims of the Fyre Festival – the locals who were never paid for the work they did. The film just kind of breezes over them – and even, for the most part, the attendees of the festival. It wants to stay more focused on Billy and his team than anyone else.

 

Fyre Fraud is a fun little documentary. I don’t think it quite hits the heights of Smith’s Netflix documentary (although to be fair, since I saw that one first, this one cannot surprise you in very many ways). The two documentaries kind of fill in some blanks of each other – and it probably it worth your time to see both if you like this story. But if you only want to watch one – the Netflix one is clearly superior.

Movie Review: Possum

Possum ** / *****

Directed by: Matthew Holness.

Written by: Matthew Holness.

Starring: Sean Harris (Philip), Alun Armstrong (Maurice), Simon Bubb (Mr. Evans), Andy Blithe (Michaels Father), Pamela Cook (Mother in Park), Charlie Eales (Michael), Daniel Eghan (Police), Ryan Enever (Michaels Uncle), Raphel Famotibe (Simon), Joe Gallucci (Lee). 

 

Had writer/director Matthew Holness had made his debut feature Possum into a 30 minute short, it may have been great. There is real talent in the direction of this film in terms of building and maintaining atmosphere and tension that is reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s underrated Spider (2002). And yet, unlike Spider, there really is no narrative here and the film basically repeats itself again and again and again for its 85-minute runtime until the abrupt finale which is both the only possible outcome and comes completely out of the blue. I look forward to seeing what Holness does next – because the talent is here – but is more bored than unsettled by his debut.

 

The film stars Sean Harris (best known as the villain from the last two Mission Impossible films) as Philip, an extremely introverted puppeteer who is experiencing dark visions, all of which may just be in his head. Over the course of the film, we will hear the dark children’s tale, about Possum – a create with a spider’s body and a human head. Philip carries around a huge puppet of Possum in his bag, which he is constantly trying to get rid of, but can never quite do it. His only relationship is with his Uncle Maurice (Alun Armstrong) – who still treats Philip as if he were a disobedient child. Dark things keep happening around Philip – a child goes missing, and not for the first time – but because we are trapped with Philip, we never really know what we can trust and what we cannot.

 

I cannot imagine that Holness is not a big fan of Cronenberg’s Spider – as he really does try and do something very similar to what Cronenberg accomplished there. And yet, that film was a complex examination of Spider’s fracturing mind – flashing back and forth in time from the events of 20 years ago, and what is going on today. Cronenberg’s film is a masterpiece of psychological horror, and dives deep. In Possum, Holness gets the surface correct, but not much else. Philip isn’t that complex a character – Harris plays him as a quiet surface level, without really communicating the underlying trauma in his character. Armstrong, as the menacing Uncle, is clearly evil from the get go, and it’s a fairly one note performance – like the rest of the movie.

 

But the surface is really good. I do like the look of the film, and sustained mood that Holness is able to maintain throughout. It’s just there’s not much else here other than that sustained oppressive mode. It’s a dark and depressing movie – but one that establishes that in its opening minutes, and really has nowhere else to go.

Classic Movie Review: Ride in the Whirlwind

Ride in the Whirlwind (1966)

Directed by: Monte Hellman.

Written by: Jack Nicholson.

Starring: Cameron Mitchell (Vern), Millie Perkins (Abigail), Jack Nicholson (Wes), Katherine Squire (Catherine), George Mitchell (Evan), Rupert Crosse (Indian Joe), Harry Dean Stanton (Blind Dick), John Hackett (Winslow), Tom Filer (Otis), B.J. Merholz (Edgar), Brandon Carroll (Quint Mapes), Peter Cannon (Hagerman), William A. Keller (Roy), Neil Summers (Ward), Bill Keller (Roy).

 

Monte Hellman shot Ride in the Whirlwind back to back with the shooting in the Utah desert in 1965 – with some of the same cast – and ended up producing two Westerns with the same kind of existential dread to them. Ride in the Whirlwind is not quite the film The Shooting is (that probably has some to do with the writers) – as The Shooting builds to some sort of strange, surreal climax that cannot be clearly explained. By contrast, Ride in the Whirlwind is a simpler story in many ways – full of dialogue that sounds like it was stolen from dime store Western novels, and a plot to match. And yet, that same weight is coming down on these characters – they are not getting away free.

 

Ride in the Whirlwind is about three cowboys on their way to Waco, Texas when they happen across a group of bandits hiding out in an isolated ranch house. We know they’re bandits because of the opening scene – where we see the group (led by Harry Dean Stanton) robbing the stagecoach – and the cowboys size them properly right away as well. Both groups of men figure that if they just stay out of each other’s way however, they can get through the night, and just go on their way – all the while pretending they don’t know what is really going on. It’s a plan that pretty much works – except for the fact that a rogue vigilante posse descends on the house early the next morning – and pretty soon, there is a lot of shooting going on. The cowboys cannot very well try and say they aren’t members of the game – even though it’s true – because who would believe them? Two of them – Vern (Cameron Mitchell) and Wes (Jack Nicholson) are able to escape – but the posse is behind them, and aren’t going to give up.

 

The screenplay was written by Nicholson himself – and it’s a fairly spare, basic setup. Not as spare as The Shooting – which is basically just four characters – but spare just the same. This time, he’s basically got four different groups – the innocent cowboys who are caught in a situation, the bandits who are responsible for them being there, the vigilante posse out to catch the bandits, and in the last act, a family unit that Wes and Vern have to take hostage in an effort to get out alive. Like The Shooting though, this is a Western devoid of things that populate other Westerns – there are no Sheriffs around, no real towns, no commerce, no regular people going about their lives. And everyone in the film is equally doomed. So much so that you could almost feel like this isn’t a Western as much as post-apocalyptic movie – there is no signs of civilization anywhere.

 

Compared to The Shooting, Ride in the Whirlwind clearly isn’t quite as good. That film is a mini masterpiece – a surreal, existential Western, that foretold much of what was come later in the genre, even if it’s hard to argue it influenced it because no one really saw it. This is a more standard – bare bones affair – but an effective one. It’s especially good both early and late – in the scenes involving the cowboys and the bandits, and later, the cowboys and the family – that show how things have been turned on their head. A sequence with the sound of chopping wood coming through the walls and driving Nicholson crazy is particularly effective.

 

So no, Ride in the Whirlwind is not quite The Shooting – but it’s cut from the same cloth, and is an effective, minimalist Western from Hellman and company. And while it’s not quite the top of his game – it’s close enough to make it a fascinating companion piece to a masterpiece.

Movie Review: The Wind

The Wind **** / *****

Directed by: Emma Tammi   

Written by: Teresa Sutherland   

Starring: Caitlin Gerard (Lizzy Macklin), Julia Goldani Telles (Emma Harper), Ashley Zukerman (Isaac Macklin), Dylan McTee (Gideon Harper), Miles Anderson (The Reverend).

 

The Wind is a horror/Western hybrid where the villainous outside force may well be nothing more than loneliness. The film takes place on the desolate plains of America, sometime in the 1900s, and really just has a handful of characters. There is Lizzy (Caitlin Gerard) and her husband Isaac (Ashley Zukerman) – who until recently were the only settlers in this part of the country. They are joined by Emma (Julia Goldani Telles) and her husband Gideon (Dylan McTee) – who move into an old cabin not far away. We know from the outset that things here are not going to end well – the opening scene has Caitlin walk out of her house, covered in blood that is not hers, cradling a dead new born. We will spend the next 87 minutes constantly in Caitlin’s company, seeing things from her point-of-view. We will bounce around in time as well – from when Emma and Gideon arrive, until Emma ends up dead on their table, her baby dead as well, and what happens after – when Isaac goes away for a few days and leaves Lizzy by herself. Eventually, we’ll flash back even farther to Lizzie’s own ill-fated pregnancy. The wind is constantly howling outside their small home – and there are strange noises all around. But are those noises supernatural? Are they only in Lizzie’s head? I’m not sure the movie ever really resolves that – and it doesn’t much need to.

 

The Wind is a horror movie clearly made on a budget – and that doesn’t hurt it in the least. The debut film from director Emma Tammi, does an excellent job at establishing atmosphere, and doesn’t really concern itself with gore or violence – although the film can get bloody when it needs to. I don’t think it’s a coincidence the movie is called The Wind – also the name of a 1928 film by Victor Sjostrom, starring Lillian Gish as a woman from out East, who moves West with her family, and is slowly driven mad. We sense the same process may well have happened to Lizzy as well – although by the time we meet her, she is already unreliable in terms of what he sees, what she thinks, what she remembers. But because we spend all our time with her, she is the most relatable character out there.

 

The film could be described as a feminist Western if you want to – not because it portrays either Lizzie or Emma as some sort of feminist forerunner, but because I think it shows more accurately what their lives were like – and how little control they have over them. Lizzy moved out here because Isaac wanted to – and now Emma has had to do the same because of Gideon. The husbands are both very different – Isaac is the strong, silent type, Gideon is more nervous and doesn’t quite know what he’s gotten himself into. What they have in common is that neither really understand their wives. They love them – in their way – but that only goes so far. Isaac dismisses Lizzy’s concerns outright – he doesn’t want to hear them, and thinks out of sight, out of mind. Gideon has no idea what to do with his wife – who is a city girl at heart, and is now stuck on the plain with no one around.

 

Of course though, we only ever see the rest of the characters as Lizzy herself sees them – we barely get a portrait of Gideon at all, because she barely speaks with him. Emma can bounce from one extreme to the next – and we never really know how much of what we see Emma do or say (or write) is accurate. Emma’s journey mirror’s Lizzy’s – but is that because this is what these desolate plains do to every woman – or is it because Lizzy reads too much into what Emma does?

 

The film is a slow burn of a Western and a horror film for that matter. Maybe it’s because I just watched Monte Hellman’s 1966 Western double bill – The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind – but I thought about those films while watching this one. All of them have small casts, desolate plains – and are devoid of Western tropes like town, law enforcement, community, etc. They are all about characters having their own private apocalypse.

Movie Review: Shazam!

Shazam! *** ½ / *****

Directed by: David F. Sandberg.

Written by: Henry Gayden and Darren Lemke based on the character created by Bill Parker and C.C. Beck.

Starring: Zachary Levi (Shazam), Mark Strong (Dr. Thaddeus Sivana), Jack Dylan Grazer (Freddy Freeman), Asher Angel (Billy Batson), Djimon Hounsou (The Wizard), Adam Brody (Super Hero Freddy), Faithe Herman (Darla Dudley), Meagan Good (Super Hero Darla), Grace Fulton (Mary Bromfield), Michelle Borth (Super Hero Mary), Ian Chen (Eugene Choi), Ross Butler (Super Hero Eugene), Jovan Armand (Pedro), D.J. Cotrona (Super Herp Pedro),Marta Milans (Rosa Vasquez), Cooper Andrews (Victor Vasquez), Ethan Pugiotto (Thad), John Glover (Mr. Sivana), David Kohlsmith (Young Billy), Caroline Palmer (Billy’s Mom).

 

With Woman Wonder, Aquaman and now Shazam, I think it’s clear that DC got the message that their shared universe of comic book films needed to lighten up a bit if they were going to move forward. They took their lead from Nolan’s Batman films – but those films are almost a breed unto themselves, and trying to replicate it on a mass scale was a dismal failure in films like Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad and Justice League. I don’t hate all of those films – but they were definitely too dour, too dark, too morose to make me want to spend 20+ films in that Universe – which I’ve (mostly) gladly done in the Marvel Universe. So DC reset, and tried to lighten up a little bit. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Shazam – which is a big, goofy film about how much fun it would be to be a kid who turns into a superhero on command. In terms of ranking it in the DC Universe, it’s no Wonder Woman – but it’s a lot better than the rest.

 

In the film, Billy Batson is a 14-year-old foster kid – who got separated from his mother at the fair one day, and never found her again, although he’s never stopped looking. He has just been moved to his latest foster home – run by the loving Rosa and Victor (Martha Milans and Cooper Andrews) – who are already raising four foster kids – the college bound Mary, the largely silent Pedro, gamer Eugene, adorable Darla, and the superhero obsessed Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer). Billy doesn’t much want to be there – but for now he has no choice, and once he is transported to a strange world, given strange powers by a Wizard (Djimon Hounsou) and transported back again, he finds Freddy’s knowledge of all this stuff to be quite helpful.

 

Because now, Billy can transform himself into a superman like person simply by saying the word Shazam. When he does this, he is now played by Zachary Levi – who was the right choice to play this role, which is essentially a child trapped in a superhero’s body. Of course there is a bad guy – Dr. Sivana (Mark Strong) – who as a child was deemed unworthy by the Wizard of having those powers, but has spent his life trying to get back there in order to get the dark side of these powers. And of course, the two will eventually square off – but not before Billy learns some valuable life lessons about home and family, etc.

 

Like many origin stories, Shazam has to do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of establishing powers and character relationships, etc. instead of just focusing on its story. While it would be true to point out that we’ve seen things like the montage of Levi trying to figure out what powers he has before, it would also be true to point out that here, it’s more fun than most of the time, as it really doesn’t feel like a big, dumb goofy kid playing around. While the movie does establish that there will eventually be a conflict between Shivana and Shazam – I wish it felt somewhat more organic. Basically, it just kind of feels like Shivana sits around and waits until the movie is ready for him to confront Shazam, so we can get to the climax.

 

I had some other problems as well. While this is certainly the lightest movie DC has made to date, I wish it were even lighter. There is a truly violent and scary scene when Shivana storms in to confront his father in a board meeting – and unleashes his beasts based on the seven deadly sins (which by the way, seems like a missed opportunity, because they are look like the same black, smoky blobs to me) – and it ends with heads being bitten off, and more violence they you’d expect. If ever there was a superhero custom made to be kid friendly, this is it, but I guess when you hire the director of horror films Lights Out and Annabelle: Creation, you should expect some more horror movie type violence. Still, it feels like a missed opportunity to open the audience up to more people – and given that the violence and scares don’t really add much to the film, it’s a disappointing decision.

 

Still, Shazam is mainly a fun film from beginning to end, and it’s nice to see DC lighten up a bit – even if I think it would better to lighten up even more. This is a goofy superhero film – and I mean that as a compliment.

Movie Review: Sunset

Sunset **** ½ / *****

Directed by: László Nemes.

Written by: László Nemes and Clara Royer and Matthieu Taponier.

Starring: Juli Jakab (Írisz Leiter), Evelin Dobos (Zelma), Vlad Ivanov (Oszkár Brill), Levente Molnár (Gaspar), Judit Bárdos (Szeréna), Susanne Wuest (The Princess), Julia Jakubowska (Countess Rédey), Marcin Czarnik (Sándor), Christian Harting (Otto von König), Uwe Lauer (The Colonel), Péter Fancsikai (Robert),

Dusán Vitanovics (Balkó), Dorottya Moldován (Lili), Balázs Czukor (Nulla), Sándor Terhes (Braun), Benjamin Dino (Andor), Tamás Fodor (Izidor), Tamara Dózsa (Fanni Braun).

 

László Nemes’ stunning debut film, Son of Saul (2015) was one of the most acclaimed debuts of the decade – winning the Grade Jury Prize at Cannes along with a Foreign Language Film Oscar, and a host of other awards – immediately establishing Nemes as a major new filmmaker – and the biggest discovery to come out of Hungarian film since Bela Tarr. His follow-up, Sunset, has received a more muted reaction since debuting at the Venice Film Festival last fall – and yet, I cannot quite figure out why. It’s a stunning achievement for Nemes – an even better film than Son of Saul, although clearly a more difficult one to parse, and one perhaps without the immediate emotional impact of Son of Saul – which may explain why it hasn’t received quite the reaction of that film. And yet, I think the film is an absolute stunner – a film that for nearly two and half hours keeps up a hypnotic style and pace, and never really lets up. It’s a film that demands your attention – and rewards it. Son of Saul established Nemes as a great filmmaker – and Sunset more than confirms it.

 

The film is set in 1913 Budapest –and stars Juli Jakub as Irisz Leiter – a young woman of about 20 returning to what was once her parents hat store. When she was just 2, the store burned down, her parents killed, and she was sent off to live far away, where she trained to be a milliner. Now, she wants a job at the store that still bares her parents name – but nothing else. The new owner, Brill (Vlad Ivanov) and his assistant Zelma (Evelin Dobos) try and shoo her away – it’s the store’s 30^th Anniversary, and they have daily events for the next week, and they do not want her to get in the way. And yet, no matter how often they try and get rid of her – she refuses to leave. She doesn’t trust that they are being honest with her – and she shouldn’t – and she starts hearing rumors and whispers about a brother she never knew she had – a brother who became a murderer, and has gone into hiding. As Irisz continues to dig, she keeps finding darker and darker secrets – and never quite the ones she thinks she will discover. The film seemingly climaxes at the 90-minute mark, only to reset itself and do something similar again – this time, with the royal family involved.

 

Nemes uses the same style he used in Son of Saul – mainly focusing his camera (the brilliant cinematography is once again by Matyas Erdely) on Irisz’ face throughout the film – keeping the background somewhat out of focus and hard to see. In Son of Saul, he uses a boxier aspect ratio – keeping the horror of the Holocaust just out of sight by omni-present throughout – the sound design of that film was brilliant, as it is here. This time though, he uses widescreen cinematography much in the same style however – keeping that background blurred and out of focus, and yet you feel the chaos, the violence there right behind her – often yet hiding behind the pleasant façade of the hat store, or other places she uses. Jakub delivers a brilliant performance here – which is remarkably given how little she seems to be doing. She never smiles, never breaks in the film – but it’s a subtle, quiet, powerful performance – one that nonetheless, telegraphs the fear, the anxiety that teams all around her.

 

The film is basically a nightmare you can never quite put your finger on throughout its runtime. Why does everything seem so dark, so terrifying, so oppressively dense. Viewers with a better understanding of Hungarian history will probably be better able to parse the allegorical nature of the story that Nemes alludes to throughout - and kind of explains in the film’s final shot. And yet, the films work remarkably well even if you don’t understand that at all – and the nightmare is inexplicable. This is a directorial tour-de-force from Nemes – who outdoes his own impressive debut with this masterwork.