"It is not every man who's offered a country of his very own!"
Alex Cox's most ambitious film, Walker (1987) is a movie like no other. This recounting of America's most notorious filibuster functions on multiple levels: satirical biopic, absurdist critique of American foreign policy, surreal art film.
In the 1850s, American adventurer William Walker (Ed Harris) leads an unsuccessful invasion of Sonora, Mexico. Walker considers retiring, but his fiancee's (Marlee Matlin) death prompts him to conquer Nicaragua for Cornelius Vanderbilt's (Peter Boyle) railroad company. Leading a polyglot band of freebooters, known as the "Immortals," Walker liberates Nicaragua, appointing himself military commander while placing a pliant puppet in the Presidency. But Walker's regime grows more repressive, turning the Nicaraguans, Vanderbilt and his own men against him. Walker still considers himself a "man of destiny," confident that faith will see him through.
Politically and artistically, Walker is remarkably subversive. Besides shooting in Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua, Cox employs a rococo aesthetic, mixing period detail with riotous anachronisms. Characters drink Coca-Cola, read Newsweek and use IBM computers in 1850s Nicaragua. The incongruities extend further: Cox scores battle scenes to lively salsa music, employing slow motion and grisly blood squibs to make Sam Peckinpah blanch. Actors perform Julius Caesar in a riot-torn city. Vanderbilt appears in extreme close-up like an Eisenstein villain, an effect undercut by flatulence.
Filibustering was a long-standing tradition until the Civil War. Possibly the most famous is Aaron Burr, who left the Vice Presidency to claim the Louisiana Purchase as a private fiefdom. Contemporary with Walker, John Fremont established California's Bear Flag Republic, Narciso Lopez invaded Cuba and Irish-American Fenians constantly raided into Canada. Aside from Fremont these men failed, but sewed chaos abroad while commanding much admiration at home.
Historian Robert E. May frames filibustering as the logical extension of "Manifest Destiny." After all, 19th Century America expelled Native Americans and conquered half of Mexico, spreading destruction and slavery alongside democracy. Walker and Co. were merely small-time players in the same market. Likewise, Cox and writer Rudy Wurlitzer depict Walker as the Id of American adventurism, much as Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo equated the Mafia with Big Business.
Appropriately, Cox sends up the absurdity of aggrandizing epics. Walker provides a narration track that incongruously glorifies his squalid actions. (Anytime his troops "liberate" a town, it's accompanied by plunder and bloodshed.) Walker and his Nicaraguan lover (Blanca Guerra) speak in different languages, yet understand each other perfectly. This neatly pastiches the absurdity of standard biopics, transmogrifying historical figures into marble models. Walker borders on cartoon, yet surely the cinematic treatment doled out to, say, Lincoln and Gandhi isn't less ridiculous?
Similarly, Cox and Wurlitzer use Walker to deconstruct the "Great Man" view of history. Justifying his actions with abstractions about God and Democracy, yet admits he doesn't understand his own principles. He sees no incongruity between introducing slavery to Nicaragua and upholding "freedom." His grasp of military tactics consists of walking unarmed towards dumbfounded Nicaraguan troops. Ultimately Walker's campaign becomes not a political or moral crusade, but megalomania writ large.
Ed Harris gives arguably his best performance. Constantly reserved and intense, completely unironic, Harris mixes flinty determination, unlikely naivety and disturbing singlemindedness. Walker isn't so much power mad as blind to reality: he's determined to make an impact, regardless of (and oblivious to) the actual results. It's a masterful turn, humorous yet unsettling, that Harris sells beautifully.
It's Harris's show all the way, but Cox throws the supporting cast a few bones. Rene Auberjounois gets the best secondary role, as a German mercenary who holds Walker to ridicule. Bianca Guerra proves quite memorable as a Nicaraguan matron who seduces and tries to manipulate Walker. Peter Boyle sweats and farts through his scenes, a broad caricature of capitalist avarice. Marlee Maitlin gets some funny bits before bowing out early. Joe Strummer of The Clash, who also produced the soundtrack, cameos as one of Walker's men.
Walker was a colossal flop, damaging Cox's budding career. No doubt Cox's radical politics played a part in its failure, though his artistic excesses undoubtedly turned off mainstream audiences. Definitely not for all tastes, it's nonetheless a remarkable experiment.
The Singer Not the Song (1961) is a definite oddity. Roy Ward Baker's quasi-Western frequently gets tagged with homoeroticism - and with Dirk Bogarde swaggering about in shiny leather pants, it's hard to ignore. Mainly though it's portentous, talky and dull.
Father Michael Keogh (John Mills) travels to Quantana, a remote Mexican village. He clashes with Anacleto (Dirk Bogarde), a sadistic, God-hating bandit who effectively runs the town. Anacleto starts killing locals to hasten Keogh's departure, foiling the Police Captain's (John Bentley) efforts to arrest him. Anacleto grows fascinated by Keogh, saves his life and even contemplates converting. But their mutual affection for troublemaker Locha (Mylene Demongoet), and Anacleto's evil nature, make renewed conflict inevitable.
Based on Audrey Erskine-Lindop's novel, The Singer Not the Song is a pretentious mess. It vaguely resembles John Ford's The Fugitive (1947), another South of the Border religious allegory. But Baker's boring direction lacks Ford's artistry, shooting Spanish locations in pretty but flat Technicolor. Too much overripe dialogue slows things to a deadening crawl. Even the climactic action scene is a yawner, closing with painfully explicit Christ imagery. Of course, Christ didn't die groping a leather-clad gaucho in the dust, so the analogy isn't perfect.
What's Baker on about, exactly? He and writer Nigel Balchin don't bother making sense. Singer takes place in the modern day yet characters dress like Old West extras, some even toting Winchester rifles. We're told that Anacleto controls the town, yet with three scabby henchmen he doesn't seem much of a threat. All his evil actions occur off-screen; the meanest thing we witness is sabotaging Keogh's breaks. Bush league pranks, surely, for a man representing Evil Incarnate.
Singer gets so wrapped up in allegory it lacks even internal logic. We can almost understand why Keogh wants to convert Anacleto, but what does the latter see in the priest? Anacleto reforms, or pretends to, until affection for Locha drives him back to the dark side. Keogh's briefly tempted by Locha, but is so upright he's not even a good foil. The last act attempts to juxtapose Christian forgiveness with temporal righteousness - as if denouncing a mass murderer is hypocritical! Singer manages the neat trick of being hamfisted and incomprehensible.
John Mills's role plays to his weaknesses, namely woodenness masked as rectitude. Instead of seeming steadfast, Mills comes off constipated. Dirk Bogarde relishes his camp villain, a character the script doesn't even try to make credible. (One wonders if Giulio Questi saw this before making Django Kill.) Laurence Naismith (A Night to Remember) outdoes them both with laughable scenery chewing. Mylene Demongoet just sits there looking pretty, while John Bentley is a stiff stooge.
I'd call The Singer Not the Song a camp classic, but that implies there's fun to be had. Despite the weird premise and good cast, Singer is garbled and unbelievably boring.
I've seen some strange Westerns, but none compare to Django Kill (1967). Giulio Questi's Spaghetti epic is a grotesque carnival of killing, each scene a tableau of bad taste. It's repulsive yet strangely watchable.
The Stranger (Tomas Milan), aka Django, is a Mexican bandit who joins American crook Oaks (Piero Lulli) in a robbery. Oaks double-crosses his Mexican compatriot, killing his men and leaving Django for dead. Django's revived by a pair of Indians who take him to the nearest town, who've denied him vengeance by gruesomely lynching Oaks and his gang. Among the many factions vying for control is Zorro (Robert Camardiel), a sadist with a gang of black-clad "muchachos." Zorro tries to hire Django, then tortures him to ferret out his cache of gold. Assorted twists, betrayals and eviscerations follow.
From the first shot of Django emerging vampire-like from a grave, Django Kill signals it's not your ordinary Western. Questi ups the ante in cinematic sadism: gunfights turn into lynchings, characters are graphically scalped, an adolescent boy is tortured and gang raped. One villain gets torn apart by townspeople searching for gold bullets in his belly! Add Zorro's gay cowboys, two aphoristic Indians, an alcoholic parrot, a sluttish madam (Marilu Toto) who orgasms at the sight of gold and an attic-bound wife (Patrizia Valturri) out of Jane Eyre for a neat blend of tackiness and incoherence.
Questi adds insult to injury, or inspiration to insanity, by dousing Django in tacky symbolism. Like many Spaghettis, it drips with religious iconography. Django inevitably gets crucified in a jail cell, as bloodthirsty bats (!) gnaw on his flesh. Questi additionally subverts small town Western values, showing the townspeople as greedy backstabbers, united only in bloodshed and death. Django Kill so earnestly invests its carnage with "meaning" that it becomes sort of endearing.
Drink, you feathered sponge!
Beyond its guilty pleasure status, Django Kill has little to commend it. Plot-wise, credit Questi for trying something different from the usual betrayal and revenge plot. But the story bogs down in its absurdities, characters revealing motivations than instantly being bumped off. Questi's flashy style proves incoherent, all jerky flashbacks, surreal color schemes (especially the bleached-white desert) and slapdash editing. It's all scored by Ivan Vandor's incongruously bouncy music. The result is more hallucination than movie.
Tomas Milan's Django is uncharacteristically passive, showing little gun-fighting prowess and less resolution. It's not a patch on Milan's iconic turns as Cuchillio or Beauregard Bennett. Robert Camardiel gets the meatiest part, whether drooling over his henchmen or bantering with his bird. The other cast members make little impression.
Django Kill is immune to a review like this. Conventionally analyzed it's terrible, yet its sheer perversity fascinates. Fans of exploitation cinema will have a ball; others should steer clear.
I was rather reticent towards Werner Herzog's upcoming biopic of Gertrude Bell, in which Robert Pattinson has been cast at T.E. Lawrence. Eventually though I got over it because a) it's Werner Herzog, give him a pass, b) Lawrence will be a supporting character, not the star, and c) hey, maybe Pattinson can be decent playing a non-Edward Cullen role. Also, life's too short.
Given the level of historiography present in The Patriot (aka all Brits are child-murdering Nazis) and Anonymous (Shakespeare's plays were written by an incestuous nobleman, Elizabeth I had a son with her other son), it's not imprudent to suggest this Lawrence project will follow the same route. Expect the "real story" behind Lawrence, namely that he was murdered by an MI6-Nazi conspiracy because he impregnated the Duchess of York, hence making him father of England's present Queen! And Seven Pillars of Wisdom was really written by Hannen Swaffer. While they're at it, maybe Emmerich can use Desmond Stewart's trashy biography as a source!
In other words, I expect it to be about as accurate as Lawrence's appearance on Deadliest Warrior:
Time permitting I'll finally get around to my annual blockbuster review. Don't go browsing other blogs now.
Like all sentient Americans I watched Super Bowl XLVII last night. Who doesn't love watching football while gorging on assorted greasy snacks? It was three quarters of lousy football capped by an exciting fourth, which beats most Super Bowls. Suffice it to say that I hate the Baltimore Ravens, but since they didn't beat a team I care about I'm not depressed.
Apparently Beyonce provided a great halftime show. Not that I'd know: halftime is when I do something productive, like take a shower or fold towels. Heck, last year's show had M.I.A. flipping the bird and I still didn't watch. To quote Ahnold, "I'm da pahtee poopah!"
Yes, there was a power outage during the third quarter. It was annoying. The news covering it like the next 9/11 is more annoying.
At least as many people watch the Super Bowl for the commercials as the game. Here's where Groggy proves himself a right cynical bastard. I hate most of these ads, and this year was no different. Lots of time, effort and millions of dollars into 30 seconds of ludicrous, overblown idiocy. I've seen Adult Swim programs more appealing than most of these ads.
In the interest of fairness though, I'll do a Best and Worst list. There were a few spots that didn't make me want to hurl a brick at my TV, which deserves some recognition. Just know I relish the latter far more.
Best Ads:
10. Leon Sandcastle (NFL Network)
Good old Deion Sanders. An insufferably obnoxious player; a surprisingly likeable, self-effacing TV personality. Between this and his DirecTV fairy ads, I've forgiven Deion for his Primetime antics.
9. Morning Run (Milk) Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson doing what he does best: being funny, self-effacing and badass in a silly context. This sort of humor works better at a minute than 90 minutes though.
8. Prom (Audi)
This ad doesn't necessarily make me want to buy this car. It does make me want to travel back to high school and French kiss my not-so-secret crush at prom. Too bad she's hiding out somewhere in New England...
7. Asking Amy (Best Buy)
Amy Poehler is a funny lady. That's why this commercial works: it's short, simple, funny and makes good use of a celebrity spokesperson. Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen blathering nonsensically for 90 seconds isn't and doesn't.
6. Team (Hyundai)
This ad starts predictably (a kid is told to "get your own team" by football-playing bullies) then takes a clever turn. No, the kid doesn't assembles a team of conveniently-visiting NFL stars. He gets a juvenile bear wrestler as his placekicker. Bonus points for using Quiet Riot.
5. Happier Than Dikembe Mutombo... (GEICO)
If there were a lifetime achievement award for stupid commercials, GEICO would win for its endless barrage of irritable cavemen, cockney lizards and jabbering swine. So I'm happily surprised they managed a funny spot. See Coke, this is how you do a Super Bowl ad: a simple gag (Mutombo swatting a box of Cap'n Crunch) well-executed. But we're getting ahead of ourselves...
4. Soul (Mercedes-Benz)
Willem Dafoe plays Satan. He could be shilling for Go Daddy and still earn a spot.
3. Love Ballad (M&M's)
M&M's ads have gone a bizarre route the past few years, hinting at sexual relations between humans and chocolates. Now we see the logical conclusion: Red M&M finds out his girlfriend's greatest wish is to eat him! While singing Meat Loaf, no less.
2. Brotherhood (Budweiser)
Give Budweiser credit: their Clydesdale ads are always winners. This touching spot is no exception. Sure it's treacle, but it's well-done treacle. Don't tell me you aren't tearing up at the end
1. Miracle Stain (Tide)
This one's got it all: a clever premise, Super Bowl tie-in, recognizable product and funny payoff. One caveat: while many treat football as a religion, comparatively few worship the 49ers.
Worst Ads:
Now for the fun part. Don't like my choices? Complain in the comments section.
10. Viva Young (Taco Bell)
Two objections: one, Taco Bell's entire demographic is 30 and under, so why the senior focus? Two, most 20 year olds with cast-iron colons can't keep Taco Bell food down for 15 minutes. Pity these poor seniors gulping Taco Supremes.
Strangely, this seems to be one of the most popular ads. Are old people that hilarious?
9. Wonderful Pistachios Get Cracking (Emerald Nuts)
Signs an obnoxiously over-hyped "music sensation" has reached their sell-by date: 1) Glee covers their song. 2) They star in an Emerald Nuts commercial. An MTV reality series can't be far behind for PSY.
8. Party (Pepsi Next)
I lost 30 pounds last year and Pepsi Next was a big part of that. That's my way of saying Pepsi Next is awesome. This lazy, stupid ad is not.
7. Get In, Get Happy (Volkswagen)
This asinine spot generated unwarranted controversy for "insulting" Jamaicans. The real problem is stupidity. Whether you're from Kingston or Massapequa, no one talks like Bob Marley unless they're baked. If that be the case, kiss your job goodbye, mon! Worse, I didn't even remember what was being sold - the sure sign of a bad ad.
6. Fashionista Daddy (Doritos)
Admittedly, I had trouble finding laughs in transvestites playing with little girls right after watching The Damned. Regardless, men wearing frilly things has long since supplanted the pun as comedy's nadir. Witness ABC's Work It. Witness this ad. To quote Bobby Hill, "Cross-dressing's been done." Apparently Doritos didn't get the memo.
5. Save It (E-Trade) The e-Trade babies aren't funny, period. They weren't funny in 2008, they aren't funny now. Come to think of it, CGI-lipped talking babies weren't funny in Baby Geniuses or Baby Bob, either. It's never funny. It's creepy. Stop for the love of God.
4. Space Babies (Kia) More babies, plus cute animals, wrapped in higher-grade CGI than Prometheus and a nonsensical premise dreamed up on a millionaire's bar napkin. Another popular ad, though this one's more explicable: everyone's had "the talk" with their kids. And everyone loves astronaut babies and thumbs-upping panda cubs. Everyone except Groggy, who hates overpaid ad execs trying too hard.
Of course, I actually drive a Kia. The last thing I'm thinking about while skidding around the snow-encrusted back roads of Pennsylvania is space penguins on a baby planet.
Speaking of astronauts...
3. Lifeguard (Axe Apollo)
Note the warning that this is a "fictionalization." So there wasn't really a lifeguard who gill-punched a shark, rescued a beach babe and then got cock-blocked by a nerd wearing Buzz Aldrin duds? Damn, thanks for shattering my illusions Axe!
P.S.: This is a deodorant ad. Please explain how I'm supposed to know that.
2. Perfect Match (Go Daddy)
What sort of troglodytic horn dog does Go Daddy market to, exactly? Their entire campaign is a slobbering monument to the kind of male chauvinism that went out with bell bottoms. As a male, I'm offended by the notion that I'm only interested in scantily-clad women. As a nerd, I'm offended by the notion that smart equals fat and ugly. As a functioning human being, what the hell is this garbage? Here's hoping a mob of angry feminists burns down their corporate headquarters.
1. Mirage (Coca-Cola)
This commercial epitomizes everything wrong with Super Bowl ads: pointlessly contrived, needlessly expensive and profoundly unfunny. I can just imagine Coke's ad department brainstorming this:
"Okay, we need a Super Bowl ad. Ideas, guys? Bob, you watched Mad Max last week right? Tina, you wanted to be a Rockette when you were little, so here's showgirls driving a bus. Groggy, you won't shut up about T.E. Lawrence, so here's an Arab with a camel. Cowboys, those are popular right? How about they're racing each other? How wacky! And it will only cost enough to feed Zimbabwe for a year!
"Um, guys? Where are you going? Why are you all printing your resumes?"
This plays out exactly like it sounds: a jumble of bizarre, nonsensical ideas spewed forth Katyusha-style in hopes of triggering a laugh and rampant Coke buying. My reaction?
Look, Coca-Cola could run 30 seconds of polar bears crapping without denting their market share. You don't need to put this much effort into being stupid, guys. And that goes for all of you.
Every bad joke you've heard about how much Hollywood sucks just came true.
Recently my T.E. Lawrence obsession has taken full flower. I'm growing more and more excited about the upcoming Lawrence of Arabia re-release (hoping, praying even that it will play within driving distance of me). I've also been expanding my long-moribund T.E. Lawrence blog, with new book reviews and an upcoming interview with one of Lawrence's biographers.
Today is the release of the newest (and hopefully) last Bat-astrophe from Christopher Nolan. I'll probably see it eventually, because a) a good chunk of it was shot in Pittsburgh, b) a few of my friends are extras in it. My actual excitement level is slim-to-none. The fact that I've never written more about The Dark Knight than the desultory few paragraphs in the blog's early days should indicate my level of interest.
I would have let this momentous date slide without comment, except now the Nolan fanboys are crawling over each other to be the dumbest, lamest, nerdiest loser alive.
The IMDB boards are a reliable source for idiocy. Just browse through some of the thread titles here to get an idea. Of course they'll be completely different ones 15 minutes from now.
Of course, a real-life tragedy has dwarfed the web chatting. At one midnight screening in Colorado, a psycho showed up and killed 14 people. My condolences to those killed in this horrible tragedy.
I'm planning to go out this weekend with friends so probably not a lot of movie-watching in the near-future. I'll try and find something to keep you all entertained. See you in the history books, people.
Epic (non-film) news! Troy Steele just published his first review at Blogger Beware in 13 months. For '90s kids like myself, Troy's dissection of R.L. Stine's Goosebumps book series is a must-read. A potent cocktail of nostalgia, esoteric cultural references, snark and What., it's sure to distract you from work and give you a mean-spirited chuckle.
Troy has finally reached the Horrorland series, the currently-running (since 2008) Gooesbumps installments. Why did it take him so long between reviews? Well, here's a passage from one of the more recent books:
"Gallons of thick brown vomit spewed up like an erupting volcano."
Seriously.
Remove the years of distance, the selective memories and what is your childhood? Crappy books full of turgid prose, eye-rolling, and vomiting, misogynist ventriloquist dummies. I guess there's always Jurassic Park.
In the years following Jaws, theaters were overrun by killer creature features. Among the non-shark offenders: alligators, ants, barracuda, bats, bears, bees, bigfeet, crocodiles, dogs, elephants, giant squid, Loch Ness monsters, octopuses, piranha, prehistorical fish, sea turtles, sharktopuses, spiders, worms. Almost all of these ripoffs suck bilge, some achieving epochal bad movie status. Who can forget Grizzly, where Christopher George dispatches the titular bruin with a bazooka?
The most infamous is Orca (1977). Producer Dino De Laurentiis seriously thought he could outdo Steven Spielberg, resulting in this overblown monstrosity. It has moments of camp hysteria, but is mostly boring and ponderous.
Drunken sea captain Nolan (Richard Harris) kills a pregnant female killer whale, earning him the wrath of its mate. The surviving orca goes on a vendetta, laying waste to the Newfoundland town Nolan takes refuge in. After several of his buddies are killed, Nolan sets out to settle scores, with marine biologist Rachel (Charlotte Rampling) and a wise Indian (Will Sampson) in tow. Through a tragedy in his past, Nolan feels a personal connection to the whale, but his finny antagonist won't let bygones be bygones.
Orca hilariously kicks off with a whale killing a great white shark (take that Spielberg!) and goes more insane from there. Apparently thinking Jaws lacked sufficient pathos, the filmmakers jam early scenes with nauseating sentimentality. We see carefree orcas frolicking through the ocean. Director Michael Anderson provides close-ups of a whale eye weeping as its mate gets harpooned. Then the damned thing roars like a bear as Mrs. Orca miscarries a fetus onto the ship's deck (!).
I did not make up any of the proceding paragraph.
Orca sadly abandons this silliness for stultifying pretension. Characters spew an incomprehensible mixture of biology, nautical nonsense and tribal lore that undermines any credibility. Nolan and Rachel fall for each other, seemingly to mark time as they have nothing in common. Writers Luciano Vincenzoni and Sergio Donati (far removed from their Sergio Leone films) provide Nolan a tragic backstory which, all things considered, is laughable. Killer whale rampages don't lend themselves to deep character drama.
But the last straw is the ludicrous attack scenes. This is a resourceful cetacean, blowing up half the town by gnawing through a gas line, then pulling an entire house off its stilts. Of course it gloats over the destruction, leaping in the harbor as the town burns. Most amazingly, this marine Macguyver wants a mano-a-aleta showdown with Nolan. Perhaps Donati and Vincenzoni conceived this as a Spaghetti Western, complete with stylized flashbacks, ocular close-ups, and Ennio Morricone score. Even so, the protracted polar finale slavishly recycles Jaws.
Richard Harris's scenery-chewing provides some laughs, especially when the film tries for pathos. By contrast, Charlotte Rampling and Bo Derek find emotion a foreign concept. Will Sampson (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) is an annoying stereotype, while Robert Carradine (The Long Riders) and Keenan Wynn (Dr. Strangelove) play whale munchies.
Orca is a whale of a flop. The movie neither makes sense nor scares, and even the unintentional humor wears thin pretty fast. If you're inclined to check out Jaws ripoffs, stick with Alligator, which is at least intentionally funny.
Yesterday I was browsing Wikipedia and came across news that Lionsgate and WWE are teaming up for a "reboot" (God I hate that word) of Leprechaun.
Sadly this isn't an early April fool's joke. Apparently Hollywood is so desperate for ideas that they think rebooting direct-to-video Warwick Davis vehicles is a good idea.
The best part of this article is this comment by a tone-deaf, double-speaking executive:
As for its deal with Lionsgate, Luisi said: "We have been looking for ways to continue our relationship with Lionsgate and we saw 'Leprechaun' as the perfect opportunity to take a well-known franchise and put a modern-day spin on it. This is a property that we believe our audience will respond to and we continue to look for ways to surprise and engage them."
Oh, they'll "respond to it" all right.
As for the "modern spin": this is a very valid concern, inasmuch as cheapo horror films about avaricious Irish goblins made in 2003 date very quickly. Are they going to have the Leprechaun Tweeting or complaining about Obamacare? Ooh, handy!
Anonymous (2011) is a truly wretched film. It's bad history, which might be forgivable if it weren't a really, really bad movie as well. Thar be spoilers in this review, but I feel ruining certain twists something akin to a public service.
Turn-of-the-17th Century Tudor England is a hotbed of intrigue. Elizabeth I (Vanessa Redgrave) nears her deathbed, and her minister Robert Cecil (Edward Hogg) schemes to put Scotland's James VI on the English throne. Unfortunately for Cecil, Elizabeth has several bastards, including Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex (Sebastian Reid), with a more direct claim. Through this we're introduced to Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans), who as a young man (Jamie Campbell Bower) romanced Elizabeth (Joely Richardson) and impregnated her. De Vere is also a brilliant playwright, but afraid to publish his own work, he delegates credit to actor Will Shakespeare (Rafe Spall). The two strands intersect when De Vere pens a subversive play (Richard III) that helps inspire the Essex Rebellion, where Essex and his followers attempt to assert their "rightful" claim on the throne.
I don't give the Oxford theory of Shakespeare authorship any credence, since it's based on snobbery (no way a country boy like Shakespeare wrote such great plays) and dot-connecting (hey, Oxford spent time in Italy, ergo he's Shakespeare!) of a JFK conspiracy/9/11 Truther sort rather than actual evidence. That certainly doesn't mean the topic lacks dramatic potential, but it deserves a better shake than Anonymous. I wouldn't worry about the film's possible impact, because it's so outlandish that it discredits itself.
Anonymous is utterly laughable. John Orloff's terrible script juggles lurid melodrama with obtuse characterization, adding a pointless flashback structure on top. The movie strains credulity in too many ways to count; a hilarious scene shows Oxford with Shakespeare's complete works lying around in his office! Characters come and go without explanation: Christopher Marlowe (Trystan Gravelle) only gets a post-mortem identification, and Oxford's mistress isn't even afforded that. Emmerich drags in the Essex Rebellion to muddle things further, but bafflingly makes the Earl a bit player in his own plot. This is Bad Screenwriting 101, folks.
Anonymous will surely drive history buffs into an apopleptic rage. It dredges up the hoary Prince Tudor theory, that Elizabeth pupped out numerous bastards and somehow kept this a secret. But that's mere sensationalism worthy of The Tudors. Emmerich also (major spoiler) posits that Elizabeth slept with her own son and had a child by him. This grotesque distortion requires so much suspension of disbelief that one might as well argue Shakespeare was a Reptilian space alien.
Unfortunately, Anonymous isn't content with being speculative fiction but purports to be a shocking secret history. Emmerich has given several interviews defending the film's premise and amusingly called out historians for criticising him. Unlike Shakespeare in Love, which puts dramatic license at the service of a comedy, Anonymous is in deadly earnest with its nonsense. Fortunately, the movie's disastrous box office take deflated Emmerich's Oliver Stone pretensions.
Emmerich helms a handsome production. The movie certainly looks good in spots, with a mixture of impeccable sets, costumes and well-incorporated CGI. A few set pieces, including several spirited stagings of Shakespeare and Essex's abortive uprising, are competently handled. Then again, a corpse still decomposes no matter how many flowers you place on it.
Surprisingly, Rafe Spall's goofball Shakespeare is the least offensive performance. Rhys Ifans is a boring brooder without a flicker of emotion. Vanessa Redgrave (previously Anne Boleyn and Mary Stuart in other Tudor flicks) seems an ideal Elizabeth but has nothing to work with. Joely Richardson's (The Patriot) awful performance is nothing so much as a bad Cate Blanchett impersonation. David Thewlis and Edward Hogg play the Cecils as one-note turds. Derek Jacobi (Day of the Jackal) disgraces himself with a brief cameo.
Anonymous is a tragic waste of time. Even disregarding its myriad inaccuracies and promotion of specious nonsense, it's just plain trash - a bad film on any level, literary, cinematic or historical.
P.S.: On the off-chance you're inclined to take the film seriously, this site provides a comprehensive debunking of the "controversy." Ron Rosenbaum's Slate piece addresses it more succinctly.
Yesterday I started reading Georgina Howell's biography of Gertrude Bell. Ms. Bell is a really fascinating individual: an Englishwoman who spurned pretty much all of her era's conventions, she did turns as an archaeologist, explorer, mountaineer, spy, Arabist and political player. If you're looking to credit (or blame) anyone for the current State of the Middle East, look no further than Ms. Bell; indeed, Christopher Hitchens calls her "the woman who made Iraq."
Today I came discovered that Ridley Scott, once he wraps up Prometheus, his mooted Alien prequel, is planning a biopic of Ms. Bell. Scott wouldn't be my first choice for the subject, but beggars can't be choosers.
Which leads us to the $64,000 question: Who is playing Gertrude Bell? Funny you should ask...
As if that weren't insulting enough, Jolie is also lined up to play Cleopatra.
Why get worked up over this? Hollywood recently has been turning lots of fascinating history into lousy films, from Public Enemies to J. Edgar. Red Tails, debuting this week, seems likely make a mess of the Tuskegee Airmen if the trailers are any indication.
This isn't a new phenomenon, of course; Hollywood's been cramming actors into ridiculous roles for time immemorial (Gary Cooper as Marco Polo? John Wayne as Genghis Khan?). Regardless, for a history buff like me it's disheartening. These are important, fascinating people who deserve to have their stories told, not poorly-thought-out schlock or Oscar-baiting bores. Is it so hard to ask they cast someone who looks and acts vaguely like the individuals they're portraying? Is it possible that a Ridley Scott epic can be anything but dull and derivative? And Angelina Jolie, seriously?
On the plus side, this might mean a Lawrence of Arabia remake with Leo DiCaprio. Stay tuned.
Now let's hope they don't take me up on the second part of the offer, e.g. vampires. If that happens, I might have to eat some white ketchup to induce vomiting.
P.S.: Happy Veterans' Day! I'm too tired for a substantial post but rest assured I appreciate your service.
For the first time in awhile, I went a whole week without seeing a single film, though not for want of trying. A combination of lots and lots of school work (an academic conference and term project, most notably) and buggy technology conspired to prevent my watching anything. I got through half of Gunga Din before the hideously-scratched DVD (thanks Carnegie Library!) froze up.
This is almost as odd - and strangely flattering - as the time someone contacted me via Facebook last year to help with a T.E. Lawrence museum exhibit.
Still, this bodes well for my career as a critic. Now you'll all be able to cite my brilliant commentary on Leprechaun in the Hood in your upcoming thesis paper. And my Earth-shattering, epochal critique of Howard the Duck will surely be as revered by future cineastes as Pauline Kael's review of Bonnie and Clyde is today.
Groggy Dundee: Wikipedia Approved! Now if that's not a ringing endorsement...
I want you to look at the above picture and draw your own conclusions about Commando. Seriously.
I'm not even going to bother with a conventional review format here. This is a film which really speaks for itself. Arnold spouts an endless stream of dumb-ass one-liners ("Let off some steam, Bennet!") as he shoots, punches, hacks and, erm, steam-pipe spears his way through hundreds of goons. Rae Dawn Chong is onhand as comic relief and a nominal love interest, Dan Hedaya plays a would-be Pinochet and Bill Paxton has a bit part. More ammunition is spent in the final gunfight than was fired in both World Wars combined, an action scene that's awesome in its sheer carnage and ridiculousness in its, er, versimilitude to reality.
It's hard to tell whether or not this is all earnest, but who the fuck cares? It's a fun action movie of the most brainless sort imaginable, and just what I needed whilst waiting for the Super Bowl (which we'll not discuss further). Nothing like Arnold wasting hundreds of losers while spouting off gems like: "You know how I said I'd kill you last, Sully? I lied!"
Oh, and he eats ice cream and pets a fucking deer with his little girl.
The idea of a 4th version of A Star Is Born has been floating around for some time now. Even this pic fell apart and just came back together. Back in January, Deadline repported that Nick Cassavetes was in early talks with Warner Bros to direct an updated version of the well-worn story of a love affair between an alcoholic star on the way down, and a young artist on the rise.
There have been a trio of A Star Is Born versions made since the 1930s, the last one coming in 1976 with Kris Kristofferson playing the boozy singer and Barbra Streisand the ingenue. Or even 4 if you consider What Price Hollywood (1932) made by George Cukor and is often forgotten since the film was remade successfully so many times.
Next: Michael Mann to helm a My Fair Lady remake starring Lady Gaga!
On Thursday my family watched that towering cinematic masterpiece, the George Lucas-produced Howard the Duck (1986). Why has it taken me three days to get around to reviewing it (besides my general laziness)? I'm glad you asked...
Any more questions?
I've reviewed many terrible movies for this blog before, and after sitting through the Billy Jack films and Batman and Robin you would think there's nowhere for me to go but up. However, the Universe always finds a way to prove me wrong, and it seems every month or so I'm able to find a new standard of bad by which to judge movies.
Howard (voice of Chip Zien, played by innumerable little people) is a duck living on a duck planet where ducks are like people (get it?). Then he's blasted across time and space to a truly hellish new world - Cleveland, Ohio. He meets up with scatter-brained, friz-haired rocker Beverly (Lea Thompson), who seems to fall for Howard (no kidding unfortunately) and is determined to send him back to his home planet, enlisting her impossibly geeky, chillingly Eddie Deezen-esque lab assistant friend (Tim Robbins) to "help". Things grow more complicated when scientist Dr. Jenning (Jeffrey Jones) becomes possessed by an alien calling itself the Dark Overlord, who has plans to take over the world (MWAHAHAHAHA!). Ultimately, Howard is forced to decide whether he should go back to his home planet or save the Earth - and the audience is left with an even bigger question: Why should we care?
There's always something particularly obnoxious about utterly awful, big-budget stink bombs. Low-budget flicks like Ed Wood films or direct-to-video slasher sequels can be excused to an extent by their format and budget. It's certainly fun to pick on something like Bride of the Monster, but in a sense it's like kicking a crippled kid who's fallen out of a wheelchair. Stuff like Howard and the aforementioned Batman flick is a whole other level of bad. There's no excuse of a miniscule budget or lack of access to good actors and crew or even lack of ideas; the fact that it's failure wrought on a huge scale makes it even more obnoxious, and the idea that a major studio and hugely successful producer thought this material was filmable in the first place. The only response is a big, incredulous, Troy Steele-inspired What.
It's not a question of talent either. I'm not the biggest Star Wars or Indiana Jones fan in the world, but George Lucas showed in those films he knows (or knew) how to make entertaining movies. The film was written by Gloria Katz and directed by William Huyck, who worked on Lucas's pretty good American Graffiti. So what the hell convinced George Lucas that making a movie about a wiseass talking alien duck was a good idea? Did he happen to read the comic book while high and thought it would be a bitching film? Or was he just walking through the park one day, saw a duck, and got an idea for a film? (This would also explain how Willow came to be - he was walking through Hollywood and ran into Warwick Davis.) Either way, this movie is, if nothing, ample evidence that there is a danger inherent in a studio giving a successful director or producer carte blanche. Because that day they have an inexplicable brain fart or do drugs can end up sinking $100 million of your studio's money into a ridiculous project doomed to failure.
It's really hard to see how this film is meant to appeal to anyone. Howard is an obnoxious, anthropomorphic duck who spouts off lame puns ("No more Mr. Nice Duck!") that not even a four year old would find amusing, along with a lot of painfully obvious fish (duck?) out of water humor that was old in the Three Stooges' era. His frequent swearing and sexual innuendos would (theoretically at least) rule out a younger audience, but it's doubtful that a mean, cranky midget in a duck costume would appeal to any adults either. The action scenes are just plain pathetic, lacking in inventiveness, tension, suspense or quality. The movie really stops cold, however, when Beverly mock-seduces Howard. It's surely one of the most repulsive, disgusting scenes in film history; the fact that it's meant as humorous only makes it that much more obnoxious and disgusting. Any chance of audience enjoyment goes out the door with that scene - though the film nearly tops it with a climactic rock number almost as bad as the end of Leprechaun in the Hood.
I don't see much point in analyzing the film's technical aspects. The direction is perfectly adequate given the atrocious material. The special effects (particularly the stop-motion on the Dark Overlord) are done reasonably well, but as the saying goes, one is upset to find it done at all. Lea Thompson seems completely unable to account for her presence in the film, Jeffrey Jones (Amadeus) chews scenery with reckless abandon, and Tim Robbins gives a singularly annoying performance, almost on the level of the theater douchebag in Silent Night Deadly Night 2.
In the end, Howard the Duck is just a huge question mark of a movie. There's no reason at all for it to exist, least of all as a mega-budget would-be blockbuster. I can't even think of much fun to poke at it; it's just bad. Stay away, or if you must watch it, let the film speak for itself.
"I don't think this is a very flattering picture, Rock. I mean, the lack of color fails to bring out the flannel's true potential."
The last two films watched in our film class, Blonde Venus and Stella Dallas, were not films I had a great deal to say about. Blonde Venus was pretty dull and formulaic, Stella Dallas entertaining but rather forgettable I thought, Barbara Stanwyck's performance notwithstanding. So it is with great pride that I return to my once-weekly film class column with a film decidedly worthy of note: The Deer Story!
Oh wait, it's All That Heaven Allows: A Deer Story. Mea culpa.
Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) is a widow living in a small town. She is pretty much resigned to her lot in life, with her kids fully grown (and golly gee, they sure are swell at annoying the shit out of everyone in the audience!) and a few friends at the exclusive, gossipy Country Club. But this was before she paid attention to Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson). Yes, Ron Kirby. The quintessential Man's Man. Studly, handsome, secretly gay and always wearing flannel shirts, he's many degrees removed from the high-society types she usually hangs with. Cary falls in love with this younger, flannel-wearing Stud Muffin who is the rugged manly type who doesn't talk much, reads Henry David Thoreau, lives in a shack in the woods, and is so in harmony with Nature that he not only wears flannel (the epitome of Manly Toughness) and pets wild deer, but shoots geese as well. Unfortunately, he's not a member of the Upper Class, and he's younger than Cary, so when she begins a relationship with him, everyone in town from the fuddy-duddies to her obnoxious cildren take issue. Cary drops him like a hot potato as a result, only to find that sacrificing her love for her community ain't all it's cracked up to be. Then there's some contrived, gushy ending which is supposed to make us feel happy and warm, but then makes us laugh so hard our appendixes explode. Er, or something like that.
So, here is a Douglas Sirk film. With a name like Sirk, you've gotta make Crap!
Actually, this is my first Sirk movie, although I've heard a great deal about them beforehand. And boy, I was expecting a cheesefest, but this exceeded my wildest possible imagination. Nowhere in the recesses of my quite imaginative mind, the one who used to watch Days of Our Lives on a daily basis and who willingly sat through 4 Leprechaun movies and The Sound Barrier, could I have ever imagined the Hell wrought by Mr. Sirk.
Here is a movie, quite frankly, that drips syrup out of every frame. Overwrought emotion. My irrational paranoid fears about diabetes are given extraordinary credence after watching this movie; it was so syrupy sweet that my pancreas just died on me. (Which means this may be the last entry for this blog ever. Come back guys, I was just making a tasteless joke.) It's not even the cheesiness that bothers me, really. It's the way the film is made, making everything so bloody obvious to the audience - spelling it out every letter for us. It's not enough to have a broken vase show up fixed - you have to talk about it (and then break it again, and then fret about how much effort went into it before it was broken). You can't have people put down without having them then talk amonst themselves. And certainly you can't have them break up, have Cary experience the emptiness which has occurred from this, and want to go back to him, without having her explain all this to the audience. I mean, really. The only good that comes out of all this long-winded exhortation is the cinematography with its wonderfully florid, exaggerated, almost surreal color palette. Either Sirk is a master satirist, or he's assuming that his target audience were rock-stupid. Maybe both.
The characters are even more fun to think about. Cary is like Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter, only without the accent. And the depth. And the humanity. And the intelligence. And the... Okay, she maintains a bit of dignity, thanks to Ms. Wyman, but she's still a cypher no matter how you slice it. At least she has a sliver of humanity compared to Rod, who as played by Rock Hudson is a wooden stump. He may be hot but he can't act any better than the star of a Coleman Francis film - at least not here. No matter how many tough, manly attributes you wish to give him, he's still just a line on a script. The hysterically obnoxious gossipy associates barely rate a mention, except to say that they're the most realisitic characters in the movie. I've known enough horrible people in elementary and high school to know that bitch Mona is a very frightening reality.
Oh, but her children. Son Doug is just a jackass, pure and simple, who feels that something has come between him and his mother - not Rod, but the door that is quite literally in between them on the camera. (Gee, Mr. Sirk, thanks for making literal that metaphor at the same time you are talking about it!!!) And then, at the end he ditches her for a job in Iran. See, this is what being a good parent gets you: you sacrifice your one true love for the sake of your children, and your son runs off to do wet jobs for the CIA. Nice.
As for daughter Kay? At first, with her thin figure, long brown hair, and dorky glasses, I thought she looked like a mousy Sabrina-era Audrey Hepburn, but after listening to some of her never-ending stream-of-consciousness rants about Freudian psychology (as my friend Troy Steele would say, "What.") in an irritating voice, I realized who she reminded me of...
Okay. Imagine that spouting off Freudian psychobabble for an hour and a half. Yikes.
And then there's that damned deer who pops up at the end. I mean, really, what can you say to that? The entire class laughed at the deer, who conveniently pops up to be backgrounded during our leads' reconcilation. If all we wanted were deer, we'd have watched Bambi instead. I'm sure it's a symbol of romance or Ron's rugged MANLY! nature persona, but it's also stupid. And cheesy. But don't take my word for it:
So, is this movie really that corny, or is it actualy a brilliant satire, a scathing mockery of these very sort of films? I hope it's not out of line for me to say that Revisionist Critics need to get a grip on themselves and stop masturbating over how "original" they are for coming up with such concepts. Because really, they're just being thick clods. For yes, I do truly think that Douglas Sirk intended this movie to be that stupid. You can do melodrama and make it interesting, so I choose to believe that Douglas Sirk just plain sucks. I'm simply too tired to consider other possibilities. Besides, if that were true, I'd have to throw this whole review out and start from scratch, wouldn't I?
(Note: I'm classifying this a bad movie simply because it sucks. I'd worry about pissing off a reader or two, but as there aren't very many around as of yet, I'm sure I'll sleep soundly giving it such a classification.)
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