Reconstructing Sir Thomas

I was hoping for a triple-bill of Elizabeth I films this week, but Netflix is being cranky. Instead, I opted to polish off my old review of A Man for All Seasons. That piece used to be an incoherent mess, and hopefully I've made it readable. Typically my pre-2010 reviews are pretty awful, and if time permits I might do it for other favorites. Any comments or constructive criticisms on this score are welcome.

Up Next: Shia LaBeouf as Abraham Lincoln!

In this post last week, I said that Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar might be my most anticipated film of the fall. To be fair though, I'd also said that I was waiting for the trailer before making a judgment.

Well, here's the trailer... and it's not pretty:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD99zwj-ZUg

I like Leonardo DiCaprio well-enough as an actor but he just seems wrong for this part. His attempts at imitating Hoover's voice and mannerisms come off as phony, like, well, Leo DiCaprio doing a Hoover impression. The phony looking old-age makeup doesn't help either.

Of course, it's possible that his actual performance, in context, will be great. After all, Anthony Hopkins didn't look or sound anything like Richard Nixon but he gave a brilliant portrayal of Tricky Dick. But on the other hand, isn't a trailer supposed to make you want to see a movie? Color me skeptical.

This weekend I'll be seeing either Drive or Moneyball, depending on what my mood. I'm assuming neither of them won't have a big star badly miscast as an iconic historical figure. You can also expect a few classic reviews in the near-future if time permits.

Terrorists in 3-D

So, this week I watched The Crucible and The Madness of King George, two good but unremarkable period films I don't feel like analyzing, and rewatched True Grit, which I already have reviewed. So, erm, no reviews for now.

In lieu of my actually exerting my brain cells, I'll draw your attention to a pair of interesting articles:

First is this article by Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, showing how 3-D hasn't been as big a selling point as Hollywood hoped.

Mini-rant: I hate 3-D, a useless, cheesy gimmick that adds jack squat to a film, and nothing aside from finding a real job would make happier than its demise. They've been trying this nonsense for sixty years and can't get it through their thick, gold-plated skulls that no one gives a shit. By the common definition they're insane. Avatar definitely benefitted from it (box-office-wise, anyway) but does anyone really think Toy Story 3 and Shrek 4 wouldn't have been hits in 2-D? Expect its death in the next two years. If I'm wrong, well, you're welcome to rub it in my face two years later.

Also, tonight I rewatched the excellent The Baader-Meinhoff Complex (2008), one of the best films to be made about terrorism and political extremists. Since I've already reviewed the film, I'll direct your attention to a superb article on the film by Christopher Hitchens, my favorite polemicist.

Due to cold, snow, football and the need to do job hunting I'll be shut in my apartment all weekend, which means time for at least a few movies. Expect some actual reviews in the near-future.

Oh, and Here We Go Steelers! Here We Go!

Another Look at Barry Lyndon

Well, I took another trip to the Kubrick Well today. Despite my initial lukewarm reception of Barry Lyndon I've been persuaded to rewatch the film as it supposedly improves with repeat viewings. Sadly, this was not the case with me. A lot of what I said will be redundant to those of you who read my earlier, scathing review back in November, though hopefully some stuff will be explored in more detail. This is a film I really want to like, but can't.

As before I really like the first half of the movie, at least through the Ireland and Seven Years' War scenes. They're full of caustic, dry humor, fine performances and great set-pieces (the duel, Arthur O'Sullivan as Captain Feeny, the battle scenes, Barry's encounter with Potzdorf, Barry's decoration, the intro to Lady Lyndon). The supporting cast is uniformly excellent, even those actors I overlooked last time I watched; it's too bad that the film's leads are a bewigged block of wood and a catatonic dress-up doll. The movie starts to slip a bit during the scenes with the Chevalier (the reason given for Barry's defection is horribly unconvincing and effectively marks where the film starts to go downhill), encountering narrative drift and the first of many well-composed but interminable scenes consisting of well-dressed people sitting around whilst beautiful music plays on the soundtrack, but it's still watchable, and the act ends on a high note with Frank Middlemass's great scene as Lord Lyndon. I'd give the first half a high 7/10; entertaining and interesting, not truly great perhaps, but worth my time.

The second half of the movie, however, is pretty much unbearable. It's like staring at a painting for seventy minutes and about as satisfying; the great music and visual splendor wears itself out before too long simply because there's nothing of interest going on. There's no emotional connection to the characters, no narrative drive, no interesting story (rather a treacly, insipid soap opera), none of the early parts' humor, no themes worth consideration (the aristocracy of Georgian England weren't nice people? Shocker), no reason at all to give a damn about what's going on onscreen really. Presumably we're supposed to be enraptured by the gorgeous art direction but this only works up to a point.

Not to mention, I find the narrator insufferable in the later passages of the film. I will grant I enjoy his snarky commentary on the early segments of the film, when the film functions on some level as a satire and such commentary is appropriate, but as Barry's life falls apart (and the story devolves into soap opera) it just seems cruel and mean-spirited to the extreme. This part of the film is perhaps the strongest argument for Kubrick as anti-humanist cynic. And even that wouldn't bother me that much (who says a filmmaker has to love the characters he portrays?) if something worthwhile were going on! But nothing is! It's redeemed a bit by the wonderful Barry-Bullingdon duel but it ends on as empty and uninteresting a note as it's been chugging along under for the past hour and a half or so.

I feel a need to raise a dissent on the issue of the film's cinematography and art direction. Certainly it's a beautiful film, but it's not a beauty I particularly like. It's an aesthetically distant type of beauty, flat, dull and uninteresting - very pretty to be sure, but to what end? Kubrick shoots the film with rote camera movements of the sort that the likes of Fred Zinnemann get routinely criticized for. It certainly looks nice but it doesn't amount to much because, not only is much done with it beyond producing an endless series of pretty pictures, for much of the film there's rarely anything interesting going on within the shots themselves. Compared to Lean or Leone or Hitchcock's films, or even Kubrick's own 2001, A Clockwork Orange and The Shining, the cinematography is empty and uninteresting, the kind of stuff that we're supposed to appreciate and admire rather than enjoy. If you enjoy it, power to you, but that does not apply to me. In my opinion, truly great films are both artistically sound and entertaining. If I had to chose one or the other though, I'd generally choose the latter.

So yeah, I still don't like Barry Lyndon. It's a film of great individual scenes and moments but fails as a whole. I gave it another shot, and it appealed to me roughly as it did the first time around. I might be generous enough to give the film a bump from a 5 to 6, but that's about it, I fear.

As I did with my last review, though, I'll provide you with something to balance out my bitching: a nice interview with Kubrick on the film. Give it a look.

Public Enemies - Second Viewing Musings

In want of anything else to do, I went to see Public Enemies for a second time today, this time with my brother. Rather than a re-review of the film (I still stand by what I wrote here), here are a few other observations and criticisms of the film that stood out in the rewatch. This after a rewatch, a re-read of the book, watching a History Channel docu and much discussion/argument about the film in the meantime.

- The film's overall sound quality seemed significantly better - maybe enough people complained that they tweaked it for subsequent viewings, but I picked up on a lot that I missed the last time due to better audio if nothing else.

- Historical inaccuracies didn't bother me nearly as much, if only because I knew they were coming this time. I still had a problem with Nelson's death scene, mostly from Purvis personally shooting him full of holes. Otherwise I mostly got over it.

- That being said, I didn't get a lot more out of the viewing besides some details about characters/dialogue that I missed the first time around. Some examples: I spotted James Russo's character this time (he gets wasted in the jailbreak); the crooked cop Martin Zarkovich getting a prominent supporting role; Dillinger historically shooting a cop during one of the bank heists; and Alvin Karpis's buddies are indeed the infamous Barker gang. But these aren't enough to significantly change my opinion of the film, most of them being little more than curios. The plot, story and characters affected me about the same, though I did get a bit more enjoyment out of the Little Bohemia shootout than my first viewing, perhaps for the reasons named above.

- Another thing that struck me this viewing: it stood out that the silly scene where Dillinger infiltrates the Chicago PD is supposed to that he's the last of a dying breed. However, the movie directly contradicts this by showing Dillinger planning another heist with what is fleetingly identified as the Barker Gang. So, what gives? Karpis isn't given a prominent enough role to really do anything, and given the film's twisting history to suit its theme, why the hell is he even featured in the film? It only seems to muddle whatever point the film is trying to get across.

- It struck me how little Billy Crudup was actually in the film - I somehow remembered him having a lot more screen time. I guess his performance was that good. Best Supporting Actor anyone?

- In a similar vein: Peter Gerety really stood out this time as Louis Piquet, giving a hilarious, pitch-perfect turn as the sleazy, hambone mob lawyer.

- The shooting of Dillinger at the end was as effective as it was the first time I saw it. I called that scene the one truly transcendent moment of the film and a rewatch confirmed it.

- I think the last scene between Billie and Winstead was uber-cheesy. I didn't mind it first time but it really bothered me this time around. The movie should have ended with Dillinger's death or a Hoover/Purvis epilogue.

- I still sat a row in front of chattering old douchebags providing their own running commentary on the film - almost as annoying as it was the first time.

- My brother thought it was an okay movie except he hated the shaky cam and didn't like the romance. We disagreed also as to the quality of Depp's performance.

Overall, my opinion is basically the same as it was after my first viewing: It's a good enough film, but it could have been a lot better.

Will I get back to writing substantiative things in the near-future? Perhaps, but you'd better quit bitching first.