Brad's Week in Dork! (11/3/13-11/9/13)

Aren't women just the worst?  I spent most of this week wrapped in the shadowy pleasures of Film Noir and what I pulled away from these dark tales of woe is that a woman will most certainly be my undoing.  That's right, I'm watching you Wife!  Is that a revolver behind your back!?!?  Time to hide under the blankets.  Seriously though, I love watching saps get undone by dames.  Why is that?  I have no idea.  Some form of dominance I'm craving?  Gulp.  Don't like to psychoanalyze myself too much.  Whatever the case, Rita Hayworth can ruin my life anytime.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe continued this week as well.  Thor - The Dark World didn't take over my heart (RDJ still claims that real estate), but as we get deeper & deeper into the comic book mythos I find myself positively giddy for super heroes.  Since we all know what's coming down the pipe, Thor's mid credit tag was no real surprise, but it left me bewildered at the reality of next year's big summer movie.  Also, October might be over, but I'm plugging away at my Reverse-John-Carpenter-A-Thon with his greatest effort, The Thing.  I've seen it a million billion times, but I'm still wildly in awe of its power.  So yeah, maybe not the most packed Week in Dork, but I had a blast.  Need to get some reading done though.  Darwyn Cook's next Parker adaptation is almost here and I'm a few novels behind.

The Big Combo:  "Shoot yourself in the head, you'll make everything a lot simpler."  When Cornel Wilde's investigation into Richard Conte's numbers racket goes cold, he sets his sights on Conte's terrified girlfriend for some sleazy backstory evidence.  Wilde is a bit of a bore as the lead, but Conte's diabolical gangster is deliciously hateful and certainly makes this a must-see noir.  It doesn't hurt that Lee Van Cleef & Earl Holliman chew the scenery from the sidelines as a pair of hitman lovers quick to machine gun dames as they are to choke down salami sandwiches.  The climax apparently apes Casablanca, but it manages to strike a nerve all on its own.  Bullets, bastards, and fog.  Just what you've been craving.

Gilda:  "Women are funny little creatures."  I loved this movie.  Sure, it's a classic - you have to love it. It's one of those films that has lived in the pop culture consciousness for decades, but while the iconography of Rita Hayworth's hair flip appears over and over in critic's top ten lists, the details of the story are left unknown to the mass audience.  Gilda is a brutal, angry film that gleefully depicts the rage of a romance gone sour.  Glenn Ford finds a new life in George Macready's South American casino, but whatever happiness he has, is shattered when Macready's new bride reigns down some serious sexual terror.  I've loved a lot of Femme Fatales in my time (Gloria Graham, Barbara Stanwyck), but none are hotter or as mean-spirited as Rita Hayworth's dance hall moll.  I don't think I will ever really think of Gilda as a noir (the emotionally out-of-place climax stricken it from the genre), but the film has all the hallmark rat-a-tat dialog you come to expect, and it's delivered exceptionally between the battling sexes.

The Asphalt Jungle:  A solid heist flick directed by master filmmaker John Huston.  But if you compare this to The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, or even The Man Who Would Be King than The Asphalt Jungle certainly feels like a lesser entry.  Sterling Hayden is a street level hood looking to make some extra scratch by falling in with a group of thugs committing crimes above their intellect.  It's your typical collection of baddies populated by character gems like Louis Calhern, Sam Jaffe, James Whitmore, Anthony Caruso, and even Special Guest Star Marilyn Monroe.  The scheme would have gone swimmingly if not for the typical double crosses and downright bad luck.  Good, not great.

Thor - The Dark World:  It seems like I'm one of the few folks out there in Internetland that really loved the hell out of the first Thor film - in fact, pre Avengers, I'd say Thor is my favorite of the Marvel Movies.  I love how small it is.  Chris Hemsworth's Asgardian navigating the absurdity of Middle America and falling in love with Natalie Portman's dogooder scientist.  I really appreciate the low stakes of the story.  The world does not necessarily hang in the balance like it does it most tentpole pictures.   But Marvel listens to its audience.  You want more Asgard, you get more Asgard.  Not enough Loki, here's a whole lotta Loki.  The Thor sequel is a lot of fun, but it's also fairly ordinary is this comic book landscape.  The villain is certainly the weakest aspect of the story - The Dark Elves want to bring about absolute darkness using something called The Aether & what ties does it have with The Infinity Gems????  None of that really matters, it's a rather weak McGuffin that puts the God of Thunder back on Earth and in the arms of Portman.  The Dark World offers more of the Nine Realms and hints at the goofier science-fiction that will hopefully dazzle us in next year's Guardians of the Galaxy.  This is a fun sci-fi fantasy adventure in the spirit of Krull.  Is it a Marvel Masterwork? No, but the beauty of their cinematic universe is that not every film has to be The Avengers.  Bring on the talking trees and rocket raccoons.

The Thing:  "It's weird and pissed off, whatever it is."  I watch this film at least once a year, and will mostly likely do so until the day I die.  It is absolutely my favorite monster movie, and still ranks as my third favorite film of all time.  A shapeshifting E.T. is awoken from a centuries long slumber by a group of half-baked & totally cracked pirate scientists morally led by Kurt Russell's helicopter badass.  Half the film's fun certainly comes from Rob Bottin's still stunning makeup effects, but this film deserves its place among the All Time Greats because of the terrifying paranoia carefully cooked by filmmaker John Carpenter.  I can forgive a thousand Ghosts of Mars thanks to to power evoked by this not-so-simple monster mash.

The Visitor:  "Aren't you a cripple molester?"  Yep.  This is a weird flick.  And in that weird way only the Italians can produce.  I dare you to watch the Alamo Drafthouse trailer and tell me differently.  The film has something to do with an evil alien child, her mother, an evil cult led by Mel Ferar, and a good cult led by Franco Nero.  John Huston's Jerzy is the heroic babysitter of the piece while Lance Henriksen is the demonic stepfather commanding a murder of pigeons.  Glenn Ford stops by for a couple of scenes as a doomed detective, and Sam Peckinpah lends his face, but not his voice as the abortionist ex-husband.  The plot is secondary, but that's what you want when the visuals are so beautifully absurd.  What's it all about?  Who cares?  The style is the substance.  And I need this on blu ray now.

The Misfits:  "If it wasn't for all the nervous people in the world, we'd still all be eating each other."  The final film for both Clark Gable & Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller's The Misfits as realized by John Huston is Film Noir smashed into the dying Western that's preparing for the modern morality of the 1960s.  Monroe is a seemingly naive divorcee but reveals that Femme Fatale heart as she storms through the lives of Gable, Eli Wallach, and Montgomery Clift.  This trilogy of man is a real sorry lot, a group of studs desperately trying to stay outta wages and hold on to their irrelevant cowboy lifestyle.  At times, Monroe's performance borders on the shrill (please stop screaming), but more often than not she proves an actual talent and not just that pretty face from The Seven Year Itch.  I imagine, if given the opportunity, Monroe could have matured into a bevy of meaty roles.  Again, similar to Gilda, The Misfits feels like a story that wanted to take you down a much darker path than its actual conclusion allows.  The venom being fired from the characters is just too dang heated to result in a "happy" ending.

The Central Park Five:  I don't even know where to begin.  This doc will set your blood to boil.  In 1989 five black youths were arrested, bullied into five separate & wildly different confessions, and convicted of the rape of a young New York jogger.  It took 13 years for the truth to finally be revealed, but by that time lives had already been ruined.  Who do you blame?  The cops?  Certainly.  The Media?  Yeah, them too.  Mayor Ed Koch?  Yep, F that guy.  To hear Koch openly dismiss the concept of "Innocent Until Proven Guilty" on the air is mind numbingly enraging.  I'd love to think that something like this couldn't happen today, but you know that's a falsity.  The Central Park Five is a great reminder of the casual evil committed by us all every time we nod our heads to the nightly news.

--Brad

Matt’s Week in Dork! (11/3/13-11/9/13)

    As the year draws to a close, I’m trying to see some of the various movies I missed for whatever reason.  But, as each one kind of sucks, I’ve also been descending more and more into my obsession with old films.

The Big Combo:  Rough, tough, and mean.  The Big Combo has the requisite cracking Noir dialog, ugly brutality, and dripping (though obscured) sexuality.  It even features gay hitmen (though it never comes out and says as much, it’s quite clear) played by Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman.  Cornell Wilde is the sucker.  Richard Conte is the smarmy villain.  Great stuff.

    On Sunday night, as I was recovering from HestFest, Brad and I went out to the Alamo Drafthouse to see Gilda.

Gilda:  My second viewing of Gilda, no doubt effected by seeing it on the big screen, made me enjoy it much more than my first time ‘round.  The dialog is awesome, with Glenn Ford so amazingly hateful and cruel.  Rita Hayworth is obviously gorgeous, but she’s also delightfully nasty.  And their constant war of words, looks, and implications is a joy to watch.  Unfortunately, the last third of the film, though it features some cool scenes, goes way off the reservation, dropping the overall quality of the film.  It feels like studio interference.  Still, a good movie.

Doctor Who: Survival:  And I’m done.  Gah.  The final story of the classic Doctor Who series is one of the better of the Sylvester McCoy era (even though it features The Master).  But that still only puts it up there as a mid-level arc.  I completely understand why the show was cancelled, and why its popularity had slumped.  From the last season of Colin Baker to the end, there are few rays of light.  This one features horse mounted cat people and some listless British youth.  It’s also quite short, being only three episodes long.  So, it doesn’t outstay its welcome.  For the last couple years, I’ve been on a quest to rewatch Doctor Who from beginning to end, in as close to order as I could do (what with the gaps and with stories being released after I’d passed that point), and it’s been fun.  But I’ll admit, the last four years of the show are, for the most part, really awful.  And I’m more and more convinced that many of the worst aspects of the new series were birthed during this time.

The Virgin Spring:  Stark, beautiful, haunting, disturbing, and maybe a bit challenging.  The Virgin Spring deals with Paganism, Christianity, savagery, and the sublime.  It features one of the most horrendous and squirm-inducing rapes ever put to film.  The cast is excellent.  The cinematography is gorgeous.  A fine film, but not an easy one.

The Purge:  When I talk about ‘what’s wrong with modern horror’ I’m talking about this film.  Or, this film is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about.  Here’s a pretty solid idea for a movie (if 30 years too late to feel relevant); society was on the verge of collapse, due to rampant crime, so a radical change was made, creating a once a year suspension of the law.  For one twelve hour period each year, people can do whatever they want, kill whoever they want.  Reveling in this violence isn’t just accepted, it’s considered a person’s patriotic duty.  OK.  Cool.  This could be the basis of something really good (and was, in a classic Trek episode).  Unfortunately, the script feels like it didn’t get much beyond the rough draft phase.  The characters aren’t even nuanced enough to be one dimensional.  And every time anything is about to happen, you’ll find yourself saying, ‘ah, here’s is the scene where they do this thing.’  Everyone is exceptionally stupid, doing the dumbest thing at the worst time in order to move the plot along.  And that right there is the key problem with most horror films made since the end of the 80s.  Lazy writing has created an industry standard that allows for characters to do whatever the writer needs to get the action going.  X person is perfectly safe, with no danger of ever being hurt whatsoever, as long as they just don’t turn that knob…so, what’s the first thing they do?  Yup.  Turn the knob.  EVERY TIME.  I’m so sick of this bad writing.  So sick of it.  And if that wasn’t enough, the whole film is shot…say it with me…hand held.  Yes, that’s right.  Everyone’s favorite; the shaky cam.  Are you tired of being able to tell what’s going on?  Are you sick of having some frame of reference?  Well, worry no longer, this movie jitters and shakes, while someone having a seizure waves a flashlight, so you’ll have no friggin clue what’s happening.  Yay!

Here comes the suck.

The Magician:  I need to watch this movie again, as I was half passed out during much of it, but the film is certainly odd.  I’m still fairly new to Bergman, having only seen three of his films to date.  And this one feels more like The Seventh Seal than like The Virgin Spring, a bit more surreal and ‘theatric.’  There were some things I liked, and it warrants a second look.  So in a year or so, I think I’ll try watching it again, and see if I like it more then.

World War Z:  I would absolutely hate to think that the collection of morons and twits they assembled in this film might be in some way responsible for saving civilization.  Every stupid-ass choice, dumb decision, and foolish move seems to be the first done.  Bloody idiots.  Getting past the obvious moronic choice of the producers to abandon the book (which probably could have made a compelling basis for a film), and the appalling CGI zombie ant-swarm effects, and the crappy PG-13 pseudo-violence, I can not get past how idiotic everyone is, and how kinda boring the whole thing ends up being.

Renoir:  “He always makes me look like a girl.”  The Great War is raging, and old painter Renoir is hold up in his beautiful rural home, painting and torturing himself over his two sons who are off at war.  It is strange to see the idyllic setting and the sad, out of touch old man, knowing the horrors that were raging.  Family conflicts and old wounds are observed by a new model who arrives at the direction of Renoir’s recently dead wife.  The movie is quiet and quite beautiful, the gorgeous countryside and the stately old home make me wish I’d stuck with painting.

Summer Interlude:  “Nothing means anything in the long run.”  A successful, but aging dancer (they get ‘old’ while still quite young) is haunted by the wonderful and sad memories of a Summer spent on an idyllic island.  Her fickle, petulant younger self had a sweet, but also brutal love affair with a serious young man.  The scenery is amazing, the wistful look back at vacationing drips with nostalgia, the mistakes we make when we’re young, and the regrets we have when we get older.  It’s tragic, sad, and beautiful.

I Married a Witch:  “Did you ever have one of those days when just…nothing seems to go right?”  An odd, madcap comedy.  I can’t say it’s great, but it’s sure weird.  A goofy old warlock and his daughter who were stuck in a tree for a couple centuries get unleashed on the modern world, and hijinks ensue.  Not sure that it deserves a place as a great classic, but it’s a fun, light entertainment.

    Other than doing some more general reading of this and that, that was my week.  Not especially exciting, but not completely unpleasant.  The biggest thing was when I finished the run of classic Doctor Who.  Though the end of the series was pretty bad, thinking back over the whole run reminded me of a lot of the great stuff.

-Matt