Welcome back to the Dailies. Before we discuss today’s films, I wanted to share the news that Blockbuster Video is closing close to 1000 stores in the calendar year of 2010 (so I guess that means 500 have already closed?), and the store nearest my apartment in Somerville is one of those casualties.
Usually, I’m a sucker for long-established institutions. I bemoan the coming deaths of the newspaper and the record store. I regularly play twenty-five year old video games. But fuck video stores. Who wants to pay three or four dollars to rent a movie for a couple of nights when you can buy it outright for a little over double that? Who wants to pay late fees? Why do none of these stores carry anything made prior to three years ago? I think it’s hilarious that Blockbuster was so short sighted that they rapidly over-expanded and then had no way of coping with changes in format (DVD) and delivery (Netflix/OnDemand/Redbox/people stealing movies online).
I’m proud that I contributed to the death of video stores by switching over to Netflix long ago. I was also happy to be able to pick the bones of my local Blockbuster by purchasing a used copy of Michael Clayton and a brand new copy of Reservoir Dogs (expanded edition!) for about $15. So keep an eye on your local Blockbusters and other video chains and be ready to scavenge their good movies when you get the opportunity.
Fight Club (1999)
Director: David Fincher
Starring: Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter
Academy Awards: Nominated (Sound Effects Editing)
Today’s theme is “movies that everyone else has seen and seems to love”. Fight Club is the first entry, a movie beloved by many people in my generation. IMDb voters have Fight Club currently ranked as the #17 best movie of all time (which is fucking insane).
The aesthetic of Fight Club might be its most striking quality. It’s very dirty and gritty looking; from the rec centers that host the local cancer support groups to the dilapidated estate that Norton moves into. The look of Fight Club might be the best thing it has going for it; it perfectly matches the tone and pace of the film. Norton and Pitt, of course, provide strong work as the two catalysts, each crazier than the other in their own ways. For the two people who haven’t seen this, they let off some steam by creating a fight club, which soon boils over into a myriad of much more illegal activities.
The plot twist is what everyone talks about with Fight Club, though I think it hurts the film more than it helps. Much more interesting is the dynamic between Norton and Pitt, with Norton playing the pseudo-straight man to Pitt’s maniacal Tyler Durden. How will Norton extricate himself from Pitt when things get too ridiculous? Will we get a more detailed picture of the psychological grip Pitt has on Norton? These are interesting questions that are set up and then unfortunately go unanswerable, because the movie takes a ridiculous left turn for its last forty-five minutes. What was already a mind-bending, enjoyable thriller actually becomes tedious and complicated with the added twists. Fight Club is an entertaining film, but the idea of it being a cultural touchstone is beyond me. B.
Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
Director: Guy Ritchie
Starring: Jason Flemyng, Dexter Fletcher, Jason Statham, P.H. Moriarty
Well, we know who to blame for the rash of fast-paced, low-rent action-thrillers that have inundated theaters over the last ten years! Guy Ritchie absolutely deserves credit, however; he truly did create a new style of filmmaking with Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. It’s new, funny, and hip, and a combination like that is sure to be imitated ad nauseum (see Formula 51, Layer Cake). Quick cuts, lots of action, and little wasted film or dialogue are Ritchie’s hallmarks, and they work together to create a fun, violent crime caper.
The film works because of the large ensemble cast working within it. These characters are all intriguing in their own ways, and the seamless way Ritchie weaves all of their stories together is very well done. I’d relay the plot, but there’s simply too much happening all at once. People owe other people money, drugs are involved, guns are involved, and everyone ends up wanting to kill everyone else, sometimes not knowing why. It’s a thoughtful, well acted, and funny crime film that rightfully helped to launch Ritchie’s career. B+.
The Usual Suspects (1995)
Director: Bryan Singer
Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Spacey, Chazz Palminteri
Academy Awards: Won (Supporting Actor – Spacey, Writing – Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen)
Speaking of insane IMDb rankings, The Usual Suspects is listed as the twenty-third best movie of all time. Just in front of Once Upon a Time in the West. Yikes.
A little like Fight Club, but more jarring in this instance, The Usual Suspects shows us that twists can simply be a disguise for a film that really wasn’t all that great to begin with. People tend to focus on the crazy twist with a positive, “Can you believe that?”-type reaction, often ignoring either a poorly constructed film or the idea that the film would have been fine without the ridiculous swerve. In The Usual Suspects, we listen to Kevin Spacey talk about the exploits of he and his thieving pals, as they’re apparently extorted into completing a monumental illegal task for mysterious crime lord Keyser Soze.
Without giving away specifics, everything about his story, and everything we see in the picture, turns out to be false. These types of twists aren’t exciting to me; they’re grating. If the movie was about a bunch of lies, and nothing we saw was true, than it basically wasn’t about anything. So what’s the point?
The Usual Suspects is helped by its great acting. Spacey, Byrne and Kevin Pollak are their dependable selves. Particularly enjoyable are Benicio del Toro (as the rambunctious and vaguely foreign Fenster) and Stephen Baldwin (most recently seen in SyFy original Sharks in Venice and a recent religious website, Restoring Stephen Baldwin, asking people to donate money to him). Everyone in the film does good work, but its twist is ultimately a betrayal to its audience, not some brilliant artistic maneuver. C.
Stagecoach (1939)
Director: John Ford
Starring: John Wayne, Claire Trevor, John Carradine, Thomas Mitchell
Academy Awards: Won (Supporting Actor – Mitchell, Music – Scoring). Nominated (Art Direction, Cinematography – Black and White, Director, Film Editing, Picture)
Despite my love of Westerns, I’m not overly familiar with either John Wayne or legendary director John Ford. Stagecoach serves as a great introduction to both, featuring Wayne in his breakout role and the first “talkie” Western Ford had directed.
John Wayne truly does have an unmistakable screen presence. In Stagecoach, he plays the Ringo Kid, a notorious gunman. He’s gentlemanly and likable, but we get the sense that he could become deadly if provoked. Though Stagecoach was released in 1939, it’s not a dopey old-time Western with a bunch of cowboys singing as they ride along. Stagecoach foreshadows the bleakness of the later spaghetti Westerns, with characters both killing and getting killed while fighting for their lives against Indian tribes pursuing their stagecoach through the desert.
Stagecoach features a strong ensemble cast. In addition to Wayne, Claire Trevor, Andy Devine, John Carradine, Donald Meek and Thomas Mitchell all make significant contributions. Mitchell, in particular, is rapidly becoming one of my favorite actors. In 1939 alone, he appeared in this film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Only Angels Have Wings, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Gone with the Wind. In Stagecoach, his constantly drunk Doc Boone is terrific, especially one scene where he’s forced to sober up as quickly as possible so he can deliver the baby of one of the passengers. He won an Academy Award for supporting actor for the performance, one that contributes equally with Wayne’s in making this a classic Western. B+.
Yojimbo (1961)
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Toshiro Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Eijiro Tono
Academy Awards: Nominated (Costume Design – Black and White)
Yojimbo is another Kurosawa masterpiece again featuring his frequent collaborator, Toshiro Mifune. Mifune plays a samurai without a master, who happens to wander into a small town. The town has been ravaged by two warring gangs of criminals, and Mifune sees an opportunity in this situation. He spends the film playing each group against the other, never revealing his true intentions or allegiances.
Sergio Leone lifted the plot and many of the film’s shots for his A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and watching Mifune play the nameless samurai in Yojimbo, you can see where Eastwood drew inspiration for his “Man with No Name” character. Like the “Man with No Name”, Mifune keeps no true alliances, he’s always one step ahead of his adversaries, and we get the idea that he might be a bit more compassionate and good than he lets on. Like Eastwood’s character, however, Mifune also has the capacity for revenge and vengeance, as he shows in the film’s finale. The nameless samurai is one of the most badass characters in the movies; smart, funny, and essentially invulnerable. A.
Crazy Heart (2009)
Director: Scott Cooper
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Colin Ferrell
Academy Awards: Won (Original Song, Actor – Bridges), Nominated (Supporting Actress – Gyllenhaal)
In Crazy Heart, Jeff Bridges plays washed-up country star boozebag Bad Blake, and as the film opens we find that he has been reduced to playing his music in bowling alleys and sleeping with geriatric groupies after the gigs. He eventually meets a Santa Fe writer, played by Gyllenhaal, and the film from that point follows Bridges as he tries to put his life back together.
The ending of Crazy Heart is a bit too tidy for Bridges, who proves himself to be a perennial fuck-up throughout the course of the film. It’s forgivable, however, because Bridges is so strong in the role. He proved he can play a listless dirtbag in The Big Lebowski, but Crazy Heart sees him playing a dirtbag in transition, trying desperately to sober up and fly straight.
Perhaps what I liked the most about Crazy Heart was the mythology and aura surrounding the new song Bridges writes in the film (in real life, “The Weary Kind” by Ryan Bingham, which won an Oscar). He plays a bar of it here and there and the other characters who hear it are mesmerized by its power and beauty. It becomes a hit for his protégé, Tommy Sweet (Ferrell), and it was a nice touch that this song was built up as a beautiful, larger than life force without actually playing it and ruining that mystique. B+.
John Lacey
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