Film Review: Zack Snyder's Man of Steel

As far as my history with Superman movies go, once one gets past the 1950's TV show and accompanying big screen serials, which incidentally are great fun, the first two Christopher Reeve ones from 1978 and 1981 are good, solid superhero movies.  1983's third installment was just awful, and it's followup in 1987, The Quest For Peace as it was sub-titled, is just cataclysmically bad.  Then, after a couple of decades relegated to the small screen via Dean Cain and Tom Welling, the 2006 reboot, Superman Returns came around, and was not so much a bad movie, as just utterly forgettable.  Seriously, did that film really happen?  I am willing to bet the creators of this latest version, The Man of Steel, have cleaved it from their memories, and we probably should as well.

Now my personal history with the films of Zack Snyder are a bit more up and down, but consistently so.  I loved his first film, 2004's Dawn of the Dead remake (the best damn remake, retooling, whatever, we have seen in a long long time), then hated his second, the atrociously ridiculous 300 (though some of the director's eye-porn visuals were fun at times), but turned around and loved his third film, 2009's oft-maligned Watchmen (my favourite comicbook adaptation, and a member of my top ten for the year), and again hated his fourth film, Sucker Punch (now I would never knock a bunch of plaid skirted naughty schoolgirls kicking ass, but wow is this film bad).  Pretending that The Owls of Gagoobaly-Gook (or whatever that thing was called), was never even in Snyder's mish-mashed oeuvre (even more forgettable than Superman Returns), the critical algorithms of the director's life work is a clean yes no yes no.  In theory, this should mean I loved Man of Steel, right? Yeah, well, not so much.

Do not get me wrong, Zack Snyder's Man of Steel is a more-than-capable superhero film (produced by Christopher Nolan, giving credit where credit is due), with all the requisite creation story, moral angst, and heroic action sequences and balls-out fight scenes, not to mention one of the most iconic of superhero outfits, and even though it plays at being both something serious and something quaint, it just never reaches the level of darkness of the Wagnerian Dark Knight Trilogy, nor does it manage the old school whimsey of such Marvel movies as Iron Man or The Avengers.  What it does do though, is gives us two hours and twenty-some minutes of solid superheroic fun.  Granted, I have never been the biggest of Superman fans, tending, comicly-speaking, to lean more toward the Mighty Marvel side of things, growing up on a steady diet of Avengers, X-Men, Daredevil, The Defenders, and The Fantastic Four, but there is no denying the inherent heroism in the classic character, and it is this same heroism that Henry Cavill channels in his role as Kal-El/Clark Kent.  Having been born in the Channel Islands, there is probably some joke about the actor channeling the superhero, but we should probably just leave that in the aether where it belongs.

Actually, the British actor, complete with chiseled jaw and abs of (literal?) steel, is perfectly suited for the part, but considering that Supes, originally conceived by teenagers Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1933, and making his debut in DC Comics in 1938, helping to usher in the world of superheroes, has never been the most convoluted of characters - you will never see the depth that ones sees in a Batman or a Spider-Man - his acting prowess is never really brought into question.   Others in the cast, such as Kevin Costner as Kal-El's adoptive Kansan father, Jonathan Kent, Russell Crowe as his Kryptonian dad, Jor-El, and Amy Adams as everyone's favourite investigative reporter, Lois Lane (more modernized than Margot Kidder's version, but still getting in just as much peril), do an equally capable job, but it is really Michael Shannon as General Zod (of course) who steals whatever show there happens to be to steal.  In the end, after Superman does what no other Superman has done before, we are left with a good, if not great, action movie, and a movie that, despite its flaws, will still make you believe a man can really fly.

Maybe We'll See the Ghost of Dean Martin too

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I know, my writing output has already been a little on the weak side these days (quantity, not quality, I hope), and now here I am telling all my loyals that the dry spell will continue.  Sure, I have lots of things planned for the Summer, writing-wise, and I will eventually be getting to them.  In the meantime though, the lovely wife and I will be heading west, to the City of so-called Sin.  That's right, we will be in Vegas soon, and believe it or not, I am not even taking my laptop.  That's right, I am goin' off the grid baby.  Okay, I will have my smart phone with me, I'm not that crazy, but seriously, there will only be one (maybe two) posts in and around these parts over the next week or so.  I will be rounding up the latest Battle Royale (Cagney vs. Edward G., for those who are caught unawares) this weekend, and letting you all in on who comes out on top in that one (tight race right now, get over there and vote - it is right near the top of the damn sidebar for crying out loud) and I will also be posting a review of Man of Steel either Friday or Saturday, but after that, it is off to the lights of the desert for some R&R.  Once I return (after the 21st-ish) I will be posting some rather overdue reviews of such films as The Purge, This is the End, Now You See Me, Before Midnight, and Upstream Color, as well as putting together a brand new Battle Royale, and getting started on a few fun Summer things (more on those later).  Until then...here is a shot from one of my favourite Vegas-set films.  Yeah, that's right.

Film Review: M. Night Shyamalan's After Earth

With the director's last few films, M. Night Shyamalan has more than proven that he is an atrocious storyteller and just a god-awful filmmaker.  Sure, once upon a time, the director had a few films ranging from okay-but-overrated (The Sixth Sense), surprisingly enjoyable (Signs), and even kind of good (Unbreakable), but with each subsequent film, from The Village to Lady in the Water to The Happening to The Last Airbender, Shyamalan has managed to do the seemingly impossible - make a even worse movie than the last one.  After seeing The Village, and its array of preposterous narrative and ridiculous acting, one would have thought it near impossible to make a film that was worse than this.  With Lady in the Water, Shyamalan proved those naysayers wrong.  After the nonsensical bunk that was that film, the guy actually proved us wrong again with The Happening (Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel run from the wind...and actually outrun it!!??), and, with The Last Airbender, one of the epic crash-and-burns of modern cinema, on a par with monstrosities like Waterworld and Battlefield Earth, the so-called filmmaker proved us wrong once again.  Wow!  I must admit that in a warped kind of way, that is a pretty impressive feat indeed.  But the question remains, has he proven us wrong again?  Has he made a film even worse than The Last Airbender?  It seems highly unlikely that such a thing would be possible, but if anyone could pull off such a feat, it would be M. Night Shyamalan.

In a weird way, I now look forward, ofttimes with a giddy demeanor, to each of the director's films being worse than the last.  I think I would be doubly disappointed if he were to actually pull off a good film again.  I would be more upset with that outcome than with  having to sit through yet another atrocious M. Night Shyamalan train wreck of a movie.  Well, I am here to tell you that even though he did not pull off the seemingly impossible again - After Earth is not as terrible as The Last Airbender (what the hell could be!?) - I am not doubly disappointed, for this film is just godawful bad.  The best you are going to get out of this critic is the following statement: "After Earth is not the worst movie ever made."  Let's just leave it at that, shall we.  When you keep setting the bar so high (or so low, if you will), it will just naturally become more difficult over time to sustain such a level of, let us say, consistent descendent filmmaking behaviour.  But enough of this ripping apart on the director's past foibles and failures (not unlike beating that old dead horse we've heard tell about), for this is a time to be ripping apart the director's latest creation - even if, according to some people, it isn't the worst movie ever made.

After Earth.  What can one say about After Earth?  Without getting too mired down in such adjectives as terrible, horrible, ridiculous, ludicrous, or even godawful (my favourite), one can surely discuss how this story, about a military father and his less-than-militaristic son, both of Earth lineage, living on a somewhat distant planet, a thousand years or so after Earth became inhabitable, who crash land on, you guessed it, the aforementioned uninhabitable planet Earth.  This father and son duo, in a blatant nepotistic vanity piece, are played by Will Smith and son Jaden.  Now Columbia Pictures really knows how to sell such a film.  Never even mentioning Shyamalan, aside from a the briefest of small type print, in the trailer, and instead opting to highlight the Smith father and son team, those put off by the ever-declining quality of M. Night's oeuvre, may still actually go and see the damn movie - even if it still looks the steaming pile of batshitcrazy psycho baboon feces that it is.  Oh, have I not mentioned the batshitcrazy psycho baboons yet?  My bad.  You see, apparently (and this is said in dialogue), all the creatures of this futuristic killer Earth have evolved over these last thousand years to hate humans. How this came about without any humans being on the planet over these same thousand years, I am still not sure, but stupidity of narrative aside, what brings this film down most is the godawful (oh, I used that word) boredom that comes with having to sit through the damn dreck.

Though he is often considered something of a great actor by many, my thoughts on Will Smith tend to lean more toward the mediocre side of things.  Granted, I like the guy when he is doing comedy - his true calling I think - but when it comes to drama, the schtick just gets too thick for me to enjoy.  This is no different in After Earth, as both pére and fils Smith are far more serious about their circumstances than anyone could possibly be while watching their quite ludicrous (another word I said I would put aside) predicament.   Far more serious than the film actually deserves.  Then again, no matter how pedestrian I happen to find papa Smith's acting, it is nothing compared to the atrocious acting that Jaden shows here.  Seriously, as the fourteen year old actor ran around Killer Earth, trying to evade those batshitcrazy psycho baboons, some pretty fucking shitty-assed weather patterns, and a space spider-thingee who's sole purpose is to hunt and eat Jaden, tracking him by the fear he puts off, I kept hoping the baboons or the weather or the goddamn space spider-thingee would finally put an end to his miserable, bawl-baby character.  But alas, this is a Smith/Smith project, so nothing bad can really happen, right?  Whatever the case, this inane family therapy session - even M. Night should have bailed on this one - turned into the dumbest of sci-fi snooze-fests, is one to be avoided like the proverbial plague of batshitcrazy psycho baboons.

Forces of Geek "A History of Sci-Fi Cinema" - Pt IX

The fine folks over at Forces of Geek have allowed me the space and time to ramble on about the history of science fiction cinema.  These bi-weekly columns, will make an attempt, however feeble, at discussing the history of this often chided cinematic genre.  From its birth to the latest CGI box office hits, I will take a look at the films that have filled the genre, as well as their literary influences and TV offshoots.  In this episode, my ninth in the series, I take a look at the year 1954, a year that gave us an iconic creature from an equally iconic lagoon, a cheesy Disney-ized Jules Verne adaptation, and Mr. Big.

Read my column, "1954: The Year of the Big Bugs, the Black Lagoon, and a Big-Ass Lizard Called Godzilla," at Forces of Geek.

 For links to all the parts in this series, go here, and scroll down to the Forces of Geek section.

Guest Review: Carter Liotta Looks at Val Lewton - Part II

The following is the second in a series of guest reviews by my good friend, Carter Liotta.  Mild mannered eye doctor during the day, and ravenous cinephile at night, Liotta, whose writing, digital videos and pithiness can be found at his delightfully droll Wordpress sight, takes a look at the works of legendary film producer Val Lewton.  We here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World (which means, me) are glad to have him aboard.  Enjoy.

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I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

Two months before Cat People opened in 1942, the cameras had started to roll on producer Val Lewton’s second film. RKO Pictures had tested and approved the title I Walked with a Zombie, and now wanted a movie based on the title.

Zombie is a movie loved by most critics in spite of its failures and gaping plot holes. It works because it is about mood and atmosphere rather than horror itself. It’s about voodoo, mental illness and alcoholism. It may even be about zombies. Like many Lewton films, it’s never quite made clear.

Most of all, I Walked with a Zombie is an exercise in misdirection, including the title itself. Audiences expecting to see hordes of brain-eating zombies on the march have an entirely different experience.

The film begins with two figures walking distantly on a beach. It’s not clear who these people are, and the film never returns to this scene to let us know definitively. A voice-over from Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) explains in a wistful tone that “I walked with a zombie last night.” It’s the same tone in which Meryl Streep says “I once had a farm in Africa.” It promptly defuses any notion that walking with a zombie is anything other than a calm, etherial experience.

Connell, a Canadian, has been recruited as a private nurse to the ailing wife of a sugar baron named Paul Holland (Tom Conway). Holland lives on the fictitious West Indian isle of Saint Sebastian, where the black population was brought in chains generations ago and now practices Haitian voodoo.

Once on the island, Betsy learns that her charge is “a mental case.” Taken by fever, Mrs. Holland is now nonverbal and detached from the world except to sleepwalk or be guided by the sane. Concurrently, there is an unspoken, hard-boiled tension between Paul and his alcoholic younger half-brother Wesley Rand (James Ellison), the result of a love triangle with Jessica prior to her becoming a vegetable.

Betsy decides to find a cure for Jessica, and is told by the two white medical experts on the island, including the brothers’ own mother (Edith Barrett), that it’s hopeless. At night, however, Betsy hears voodoo drums, and realizes that voodoo medicine may be able to break Mrs. Holland’s trance.

And so, Zombie is a movie of opposites: white people and black people, Canada and the Caribbean, medicine and voodoo, living and dead. Rather than being contrasted, the lines are blurred so that the audience does not have a good sense of right and wrong and how to judge the situation.

Adding to this disorientation are the sets, which seem to move in subtle ways. Does Betsy’s room look out upon the courtyard? The sugar fields? Paul Holland’s living room? Does Mrs. Holland live in a tower? Under a tower? In a room beside the tower? Moreover, why do seemingly important plot devices end up meaning nothing? Is it that a bad B-Movie was careless with the script and the shooting? Or are we being told that realities are far less explainable than what simple plot devices normally allow?

For a 1943 movie, I Walked with a Zombie is remarkably modern in its portrayal of its black characters, the history of island slavery, and even in its respect toward voodoo. It is surprising, given the films exploitative title, that it fails to exploit such low-hanging fruit. Lewton became fascinated by Hatian culture while working on the piece, and spent a percentage of his paltry budget hiring genuine voodoo drummers and a Hatian cultural and voodoo expert named LeRoy Antoine as a technical adviser.  It is quite possible that the relationship between Lewton and Antoine allowed a black perspective into the writing, rather than it being a white man’s perception of slavery and voodoo.

Mark Robson, in The Celluloid Muse, noted that Lewton was a difficult man with whom to work. He wasted time and seldom could accomplish anything without the pressure of a deadline. When his employees went home at night, his insomnia would keep him up, rewriting the script and mulling over new ideas.  Lewton encouraged extensive collaboration, but then made the end result deeply personal.

Hired to write the script was Curt Siodmark, whose work writing horror pictures for Universal monster movies was well known. Lewton’s plan had always been to throw away the Universal formula, and eventually he threw away Siodmark, himself, replacing him with screenwriter Ardel Wray.  As in many Lewton films, Val Lewton re-wrote the final draft of the script, but never took writing credit.

And so, we’re never sure whether the forces that lead to discord and death are spiritual or human, or whether the moon reflecting upon the water is beautiful, or whether it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies and is the glitter of putrescence.  What’s beautiful and benign can seem eerie, and those things that cause us great concern can, in the end, be benign.

My 800th Post or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Become a Kubrick Completist + A Few Other Cinema-Related Ramblings

With the clicking of the publish button in my Blogger editor, I officially hand the world, the 800th post here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.  So here it is kids.  What d'ya think?  Not impressed yet?  Yeah, neither am I.  In reality, this 800th post hoopla (at least in my mind there is hoopla, but you just wait for the 1000th post, and see what shenanigans happen then), this posting of no real circumstance, is merely just an excuse for me to ramble on  about things I have not rambled on about in previous posts.  So, with that in mind, please allow me to ramble.

First off, as you may have noticed from my not-so-clever title appropriation of Sir Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (really, how many times have I used that in a post title?  This is the third that I can think of, off hand), I have now finally become what one would call a Stanley Kubrick Completist.  I might just put that on a business card ya know.  I am not really sure why it took me so damn long to accomplish this feat.  Kubrick has been my favourite director for quite some time now, and he is the only filmmaker to make my 100 Favourite Films list five times (2001, Clockwork, Killing, Paths of Glory & Lolita), but for some reason, the title of completist has alluded me until just a few days ago.   I have taken to watching and rewatching all the Kubrick's up on the big screen here at the arthouse cinema I run with my lovely wife.  In the last few years, I have seen on that aforementioned big screen, 2001: A Space Odyssey (the first film I owned on DVD and the first I owned on Blu-ray), A Clockwork Orange (having already seen that on 35mm twice in my life), Lolita (the titillation of toenail painting made widescreen), The Killing and The Killer's Kiss (in a blu-ray double feature one morning), and for just the first time this past year, Spartacus (the only Kubrick I am not totally pleased with - sorry Stanley).  I plan on seeing all the Kubrick's this way.   Eyes Wide Shut is next on the docket.

Anyway, this all brings us to a few days ago and me finally sitting down and watching the new(ish) Kino blu-ray of Fear and Desire, the auteur's first feature film.  Again, I am not sure what took me so long, since I have had the damn blu-ray sitting beside the blu-ray player for months now.  Sheeesh.  But I did finally sit down and screen the thing, and even though Kubrick would later claim to hate the film, calling it amateurish (amateur for Kubrick is still better than the so-called pinnacle of many another director), I quite enjoyed the film.  You can see and feel the ideas that would later come to be known as Kubrickian.  With this film, I also watched Kubrick's three early doc shorts - Day of the Fight, Flying Padre and The Seafarers, from 1951, 51 and 53, respectively.  So, in other words, I am now a Stanley Kubrick Completist.  So there!

Now, in other news.  There are a pair of projects that I spouted off about back around the beginning of the year, that have yet to come to fruition.  The first is a thing I am calling, The Great Re-Casting (though a better name may be forthcoming).  It is an alternate cinematic history thing, where I take an established modern day movie, and recast it using (mostly) pre-1965 actors and writers and directors and such.  The first one I did was for a blogathon last year.  I took Pulp Fiction and recast it as several different films - from a pre-code gangster film to a Busby Berkeley musical to a western, a film noir, a screwball comedy, a Universal horror film, a swashbuckling epic, a melodrama where all the roles are gender-reversed, and even a cartoon short.  This piece was one of my favourite things to write, and maybe one of my best and most creative, if I do say so myself.  The whole shebang can be seen right here.  My goal is to do four of these per year, so I suppose I should get to work, huh?   Percolatin' in the ole noggin right now are alt-cin-histories on Dazed and Confused, Back to the Future, The Breakfast Club, Jurassic Park, and The Avengers.  Up first though (hopefully by the end of June) will be Star Wars, where we go back to Von Stroheim's silent debacle original version, as well as John Ford's 1940 war film remake, both of which inspired Kurosawa which in turn inspired Lucas.  There will also be a French New Wave one.  Come on, who would not want to see Belmondo, Leaud, and Karina as Han, Luke, and Leia!?  It will all be quite intricate.  To quote John Hammond, we've spared no expense.

My other long-gestating idea is a series on Ingmar Bergman.  It is titled The Bergman Files, and is actually going to be me becoming a Bergman completist.  There we go with that again.  My plan is to watch all the Bergman's I have yet to see, and go back and rewatch those I have, and white a piece on each and every one of them - even the shorts and commercials and docs and yeah, everything.  This project will probably take about three years to complete - if I ever get started on the damn thing.   And speaking of long-range projects, many of you are probably wondering just what happened with My Quest to See the 1000 Greatest Films.  Well, the quest has been completed and I am at work on a book detailing said quest.  It will be part film journal, part film history, and part me rambling on and on and on.  You know, like how I am doing right now.  Anyway, said book will (hopefully) be on bookshelves sometime in 2014.  Wish me luck on the publication end of the whole thing.  Oh, and yeah, I have another project going right now as well.  It is a series of pieces on the Astaire/Rogers musicals.  I have already published the first two - Flying Down to Rio and The Gay Divorcee - and Roberta will be coming in a week or two, followed by the rest throughout the Summer.  Lots of stuff ahead.

Then there is this ditty I posted on Facebook back on February 27th:  Here are 51 randomly selected films, of varying degrees of popularity and cinematic impact, that I have never seen, but that I will finally watch in 2013, in no particular order.....South Pacific, Bus Stop, Peyton Place, Westworld, Down Argentine Way, Cavalcade, Wings, Sergeant York, The Bellboy, The Big Knife, The Sun Also Rises, Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), The Robe, The Fury, Patton, Death Race 2000, Zardoz, The Brother From Another Planet, Lady of Burlesque, The Sea Hawk, Royal Wedding, The Snake Pit, Battle Royale, One-Eyed Jacks, The Jazz Singer, Murder My Sweet, The Song of Bernadette, Knife in the Water, Red Dust, The Great Ziegfeld, The Life of Emile Zola, Tron, THX-1138, The Longest Day, Around the World in 80 Days, Hello Dolly, Akira, McLintock, Kitty Foyle, the original Imitation of Life, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, The Fly (1958), The Omega Man, Night Nurse, Flesh and the Devil, The Shooting, Wilder's The Front Page, Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, Our Man Flint and Showgirls.  Since making this rather bold announcement just over three months ago, I have watched exactly four of these films - Akira, Bus Stop, Westworld, and Tron.  Again, perhaps I best be getting my butt in gear and do the things I say I am going to do.  Hell, another seven of these are sitting in various forms of home entertainment, at home as I type these very words.

As always, my Battle Royale is still ongoing (and the latest one can be found conveniently near the top of the sidebar) and my bi-weekly pieces on sci-fi cinema can be found over at Forces of Geek.  An occasional ten best list can also be found at Anomalous Material, though not as frequently as in the past.  10 Best Motorcycle Movies is on the horizon for there.  There will also be some more Retro Reviews coming soon, and of course, new reviews will still keep coming at a steady rate.  Coming soon are reviews of Shane Carruth's stunning Upstream Color, and Abbas Kiarostami's latest, Like Someone in Love, as well as Linklater's Before Midnight, and Susanne Bier's Love is All You Need.  Maybe a mainstream review or two, as well.    Oh yeah, and don't forget to be back for post #1000, coming on or about May 3, 2014.  How's that for a bold prediction!?  But I am sure you will be along for the ride in the meantime.  At least ya better be.  See ya in the funny papers.  I will leave you with a picture of Ingmar Bergman and Bruce the Shark from Jaws.  Why?  Well, why the hell not!? 

Battle Royale #15: Battle of the Tough Guys

Welcome to the fifteenth Battle Royale here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.   It is an ongoing series that will pit two classic cinematic greats against each other - and you can vote for who is the greater by clicking your choice over in the poll at the top of the sidebar. 

Okay, perhaps using the term tough guys to describe this round's combatants is a bit unfair.  Perhaps it lowers what these two men did in their cinematic careers, to a mere one-dimensional stereotype.  These were more than mere one-dimensional tough guys - much much more.  Edward G. Robinson spoke seven languages, collected art - he even ran an art gallery with Vincent Price for a while - and was a man of great sophistication and taste.  James Cagney, meanwhile, no matter how many thugs and gangsters he would play, always considered himself to be a song and dance man - and even Oscar thought so, since his one and only Best Actor Academy Award was given to him for playing just that, song and dance man extraordinaire, George M. Cohan in 1942's Yankee Doodle Dandy.  Sure, both men grew up on the Lower East Side (Robinson was born in Romania but moved to NYC when he was nine), so they did have a childhood that would likely grow a tough guy or two, but these men were more than just their filmed image - more than just tough guys.  But hey, this is the Battle of the Tough Guys, so let us move on with that in mind.

Both men made their screen breakthroughs in 1931 playing gangsters - Robinson in Little Caesar and Cagney in Public Enemy - and would go onto long and storied careers playing both thugs and gangsters (ie, those aforementioned tough guys) as well as brave and loyal heroes.  Cagney's work in such varied offerings as The Mayor of Hell and White Heat to Man of a Thousand Faces and even A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Robisnon's performances in equally varied films like Tiger Shark and Key Largo to Double Indemnity and Soylent Green, make these two actors Hollywood legends (no doubt about that), but still, it is their tough guy image, their gangster roles, their hoods-with-heart (and sometimes no heart) that these great actors will best be remembered.  It is Robinson asking, "Is this the end of Rico?" and it is Cagney yelling "Made it Ma! Top of the World!"  And now it is your turn to tell the world which one of these Hollywood Tough Guys has made it.  Just go on over to the poll, positioned conveniently near the top of the sidebar, as cast your vote.  And remember, you can spout off all ya want in the comments section of this post (and please do, we like that), but your vote will only be counted if you go to the poll and make your decision.  And also, tell all your friends to vote, so we can get that vote total up to the triple digits.  Voting runs through Midnight EST on the night of Thursday, June 13th, just a little over two weeks from the starting gate, NOW EXTENDED UNTIL THURSDAY, JUNE 20TH AT MIDNIGHT, and the results will be announced and posted the following day.

Film Review: Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby

I can honestly say that I enjoyed Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby as much as I enjoyed Fitzgerald's original novel.  I suppose now would be as good a time as any to let it be known that I really am not much of a fan of Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby.  Granted, the 1922 classic novel is better than 99% of what passes as literature these days, and therefore could be considered a comparative masterpiece, but I just never got what all the hoopla was about.  Yes, it is a moderately entertaining work of fiction - good, but by no means as great as everyone seems to believe it to be - and I suppose belongs in the literary canon, but really, it is not all that people.  And to top things off, the one thing I most liked about the book is something that Luhrmann's adaptation rips to shreds, but more on that in a bit.  Let us first discuss the enigma that is a Baz Luhrmann picture.

Easily described as "not for everyone," the strange and unusual oeuvre that is that of Baz Luhrmann's, is most definitely an acquired taste - and a taste that not everyone will acquire, or even wants to acquire.  Starting his directorial career in 1992, with the bizarro rom-com, Strictly Ballroom, the Aussie auteur followed this up with what this critic considers the best damn adaptation of Romeo and Juliet yet put on film.   Modernizing the style, music and clothes, but keeping Shakespeare's words, Luhrmann's fast-paced, ultra-hip (probably too hip for many purists, as well as many of the more jaded critical set) cinematic spectacle was a big hit (Luhrmann took home Best Director at the Baftas) and gave the public the biggest taste of the director's style yet.  Then came Moulin Rouge in 2001, and Luhrmann took his unique style and exploded it upon the screen.  Moulin Rouge was, and still is, the director's most successful film (nominated for eight Academy Awards, and taking home two Oscars, for, no surprise, Art Direction and Costume Design), and is the best (or wost, depending on your opinion of Mr. Luhrmann and his directorial bent) example of the auteur's distinctive style, and what best makes the man as loved or as hated as he is.

Cut to twelve years later, and kind of tip-toeing past the mildly enjoyable but not greatly enjoyable 2008 film, Australia (the director's one film that seemed to have brought both Luhrmann-lovers and haters together in a common disdain), and here is Luhrmann taking on one of the most beloved books in American literary history (yeah, yeah, we already went over my thoughts on that).  Toning down his usual style (there is not near as much oomph as Moulin Rouge had), we still get what makes Luhrmann so visually transfixing, but we get it inside a film that just isn't all that interesting.  To quote a fellow critical compatriot, Christopher Orr of The Atlantic, said of the film, "When it's entertaining it's not Gatsby, and when it's Gatsby it's not entertaining."   Visually stunning at times, the film just falls flat in everything outside of this stunningness.  Let's face facts, Leo DiCaprio, a capable actor at best, is miscast as Jay Gatsby, while Tobey Maguire as narrator Nick Carraway, is as plainly vanilla as he always is, and Carey Mulligan, easily the most talented of the bunch, is just not right for the part of Daisy Buchanan.  Joel Edgerton is the only one with the right stuff to pull of his performance as Tom, Daisy's philandering hubby.   But it is Mulligan's portrayal of the iconic Daisy, or more appropriately, Luhrmann's narrative rendition of Daisy, that brings us to the part that I am most disturbed with.  

In Fitzgerald's novel, Daisy is a shallow party girl who wants nothing more than to have fun, ultimately at the tragic expense of those who are misguided enough to believe her love for them is real.  In Luhrmann's movie, since the director is so gung-ho about tragic romance,we get a Daisy who does seem to love and have deeper feelings, and when we get to the end, and are left with Maguire speaking Fitzgerald's words on how "Tom and Daisy are capable only of cruelty and destruction; they are kept safe from the consequences of their actions by their fortress of wealth and privilege," a passage that is probably the crux of Fitzgerald's indictment on the societal woes of his time, ends up not making any sense whatsoever in the context of Luhrmann's film.  Yeah, yeah, sure, it's fun to look at and all, but even the tepid waters of Fitzgerald's overrated classic, seem teaming with sharks when compared to Luhrmann's effort here.  The director's unique style could make him something akin to the Busby Berkeley of his day, if only he would stick to the musical genre (a remake of The Golddiggers of 1933 maybe?) and leave things like this (overrated yes, but still with some deeper meanings and ideas) to others.  "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."  This final line of the novel, spoken here by the aforementioned Mr. Vanilla, is something Luhrmann takes, and flies with - only he has no idea what it even means.

Film Review: Gilles Bourdos' Renoir

I do not trust the cinematic taste of anyone who does not include Jean Renoir in their list of the greatest directors.  The cinematic equivalent of Proust in literature or Dylan in music, Renoir modernized film, and helped give birth to a new sensibility in moviemaking.  Known as the patron saint of the French Nouvelle vague, or New Wave if you will, and one of the biggest influences on Italian Neo-Realism, Renoir made everything after him, from Godard and Truffaut to Visconti and Fellini to Scorsese and Resnais, possible.  Granted, there were other contemporaries of Renoir of equal stature and influence - Welles, Lang, Chaplin, Lubitsch and Hitchcock come immediately to mind - but to say Renoir changed the way modern film was made, or at the very least was one of modern cinema's most influential entities, is not just mere hyperbole, it is ground-in-truth fact - and anyone who says otherwise just ain't copacetic in my book.  But then, I am not here to wag on and on about my love and respect for M. Renoir, but instead, to discuss a new biopic about, not just Renoir the younger, but of his father, Pierre-Auguste, as well.

Taking place during the horrors of World World I, though far removed from the front lines, Gilles Bourdos' Renoir, is actually the story of Andrée Heuschling (later Catherine Hessling) who was the beautiful young model of pere Renoir and the later wife of, and actress for, the younger Renoir, and how she was the bridge between generations of great artistic men.  The reason I went all gaga over our intrepid filmmaker in my opening paragraph is due to the fact that I really do not have all that much to say about the film itself.   Neither a great work of art nor a trainwreck of a movie, Bourdos' film is highlighted merely by the look of the film - it's visual cadence, if you will.  Dressed up to look somewhat like an impressionist painting, the film has an inherent beauty in its palette, even if it does not manage to sweep us away with its narrative or acting.  Sure, Michel Bouquet, Claude Chabrol's go-to guy back in the day, does a fine piece of acting as the great impressionist painter, but the other two leads, Vincent Rottiers and Christa Theret, as future director and flame-haired muse, respectively, are painfully boring in the roles.  Mainly just able to look pretty, which for anyone who has ever seen a picture of Jean Renoir knows, that has never really been the case, these two just swoon about in and out of the aforementioned painterly cinematography of Mark Lee Ping Bin of The Flowers of Shanghai and In the Mood For Love fame (he shared credit with Christopher Doyle on the latter).

Never much of a fan of biopics, especially biopics of favourite directors - and yes, I realize this is not technically a biopic of Jean Renoir, the filmmaker, as the film ends a good five years before the great man ever even steps behind a camera, but it is close enough to count here - the film was destined to not exactly float my so-called boat - and float it, it did not.  Better than Richard Linklater's feeble Me and Orson Welles (though the central performance there, by British actor Christian McKay, is dead on perfect) or the equally feeble, though again, well acted, My Week with Marilyn or last year's doubly feeble Hitchcock, Renoir nonetheless never impresses enough to be called something spectacular.  As I said, not a bad film, but certainly nothing great either, and outside of the visual aspects of the film, this film never catches fire as damn well it should.  And, in the end, a mediocre movie is oft times a worse travesty than making a truly terrible picture.  At least when legendary auteur du affreux Ed Wood made one of his monstrosities, there was love behind them - even if it was a tilted, cock-eyed kind of love - but when one makes a middle-of-the-road thing, much like Bourdos has done here, that love seems to be on a break from the relationship.  If anything, this film has made me want to go and rewatch all of Renoir's oeuvre - not that such a thing would take much of a push - or maybe check out pere Renoir's work at the closest museum.

Film Review: Danny Boyle's Trance

Trance, Danny Boyle's tenth film as director, is one of those movies where you are never quite sure who to trust and who not to trust, even after the end credits roll.  To some, judging from initial reaction to the film, this style of storytelling can be quite annoying, but to this critic, it is almost like that proverbial manna from the proverbial heavens.  Of course, judging from reactions to all of Boyle's oeuvre, the director is one of those people who can be quite annoying to many as well.  On this, I am apt to at least partially agree - god, the overzealous award-baiting of the ultimately mediocre Slumdog Millionaire is enough to rile any critical feathers - but when Boyle is on, he is fucking on - and with Trance, he is fucking on as all hell.

With a marketing campaign that relies heavily on those who liked Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, and 28 Days Later (the only three of Boyle's films mentioned in the trailer), while ignoring the director's big Oscar winning film, the aforementioned over-praised mainstreamy Slumdog, Trance is the kind of film that flies under the radar, only to be thought of as a sort of cult classic a decade or two down the line.  Okay, maybe it won't get the cult status that something like 28 Days or Trainspotting have gotten (Trance, though quite enjoyable, is still not on the level of those films), but the movie does have that kind of vibe.  Unsure of who is doing what to whom, and who is playing whom, Boyle's tale of art thieves, the amnesiac man who holds the secret of where the stolen art is, and the psychotherapist/hypnotist who can bring it all out in bloody, gory, and surprising time, is a thoroughly intriguing film, from innocent start to batshitcrazy finale.

Helping to make this film as intriguing as it happens to be (Boyle's auteurist's touch does do visual wonders though) is the cast.  Led by James McAvoy as our intrepid amnesiac antagonist, Rosario Dawson as the hypnotist with a secret, and French bad boy Vincent Cassel as the art thief with the most charmingly dangerous attitude, the film, and in turn, it's characters, play fast and loud with the rules of narrative storytelling, and even though it is nothing ground-breaking and/or Earth-shattering, it is easily one of the most intriguing, one of the most multi-leveled films of this year.  And then, when we get to the end - that aforementioned batshitcrazy finale - and we find out who is who and what is what, and who did what to whom - and granted, Trance may not be as convoluted as say, The Big Sleep, or something akin to that - those of us who are not annoyed by such cinematic antics, are left with a feeling of giddy inclusion with the characters we have just come to love and hate and love and hate all over again.  It really is a fun and twisty ride.

Forces of Geek "A History of Sci-Fi Cinema" - Pt VIII

The fine folks over at Forces of Geek have allowed me the space and time to ramble on about the history of science fiction cinema.  These bi-weekly columns, will make an attempt, however feeble, at discussing the history of this often chided cinematic genre.  From its birth to the latest CGI box office hits, I will take a look at the films that have filled the genre, as well as their literary influences and TV offshoots.  In this episode, my eighth in the series, I take a look at the year 1953, a year with some of the very best sci-fi films, and one of the very very worst films, of any genre and of any time, ever made.

Read my column, "1953: Invaders From Mars, War of the Worlds & One of the Worst Films Ever Made," at Forces of Geek.

Battle Royale #14: Battle of the Laconic Leading Men (The Results)

So, we have a battle of two of the greatest leading men in cinematic history, and can only convince 32 people to decide between them?  Crazy, I tell ya, crazy.  Well, anyway, after our second lowest voter turnout in Battle Royale history, we do have a winner to announce between the battle between laconic leading men, Gary Cooper and Gregory Peck.  And that winner is, with a difference of just two votes, 17 to 15, or 53% to 47% for the stats nerds in the crowd, Mr. Frank James Cooper, better known as Gary Cooper.  Yes folks, it looks like Sergeant York is slightly more popular than Atticus Finch. Lou Gehrig over Captain Ahab.  Jimmy Ringo beaten down by Link Jones.  But yeah, it was pretty damn close - just the way we like it here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World - and therefore, a true battle.  A true Battle Royale.  Then again, the voter turnout would make this an even better thing.  With each Battle Royale, I wish and hope to get those voting numbers into the triple digits, but it has yet to happen.  With a career best of 66 votes (waaay back in Battle Royale #2) and a career low of 28, it just seems like the idea of such an ongoing contest is something unwanted by most people out there.  You would think there would be enough classic cinema fans out there in cyberland to make this kind of thing a big success, but alas, it does not seem to be.  But enough bellyachin', we have another Battle Royale to prepare for in just a few days, and this one is going to be a tough one...a tough guy one in fact.  See ya in a few days with the battlin' combatants - and maybe this time more people will care about the whole shebang.

Guest Review: Carter Liotta Looks at Val Lewton - Part I

The following is the first in a series of guest reviews by my good friend, Carter Liotta.  Mild mannered eye doctor during the day, and ravenous cinephile at night, Liotta, whose writing, digital videos and pithiness can be found at his delightfully droll Wordpress sight, takes a look at the works of legendary film producer Val Lewton.  We here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World (which means, me) are glad to have him aboard.  Enjoy.

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Cat People (1942)

In 1942, the studio heads at RKO gave Val Lewton his first title to turn into a movie,  Cat People.  On a budget of $150,000 and with no-name actors, what could have become a display of sub-par special effects and bad makeup instead was turned into a taut, psychological drama by Lewton and his team.

Written by DeWitt Bodeen, and directed by Jacques Tourneur, Cat People follows the Lewton formula for which his other movies would become known: two scenes of implied, questionable horror, one scene of actual, graphic horror, cut, wrap, print.  Lewton’s sense of terror dealt with the unseen and the unknown – the feeling of being followed, or the sense of being watched, rather than the blood and gore of slasher films, or the terrifying monsters of Universal Studios.  Indeed the first half of Cat People could easily be mistaken for a relationship drama.

We are introduced to Irena (Simone Simon), an immigrant from Serbia, and Oliver (Kent Smith), the architect that meets her at the Central Park Zoo in front of the panther cage and decides to court her.  By the time their first date ends, she has dramatically recounted cultural lore: the village she left behind was filled with Satanists who ran to the hills when King John brought Christianity to Serbia. Allegedly, there are still descendants of these Satanists who, provoked by anger or sex or jealousy, turn into giant panthers.  

Irena believes that she may be one of these “cat people,” but Oliver assures her that the lore is poppycock and marries her.  Fearing demonic transition, Irena refuses to kiss her husband, much less consummate the marriage, and Oliver, thinking that his wife is crazy, seeks advice from a psychiatrist (Tom Conway) as well as his co-worker, Alice (Jane Randolph).  When Irena learns that Oliver is seeking counsel and emotional support from another woman, she begins to spy, and is piqued by jealousy.

It is during the third quarter of the movie that it launches into horror.  Neither Oliver nor Alice believe that Irena can really turn into a cat.  But why does Jane feel she is being stalked?  Did the wind rattle the bushes, or was something there?  Are the shadows in the indoor swimming area a giant cat, or a trick of the eye and reflections of the water?  Moreover, Irena has the keys to the panther cage at the zoo – so if it is a cat, is it the zoo panther, or Irena?

Beyond the obvious plot, are the movie’s subtexts – Irena’s shame of sex and emotion brought on by the religion of her youth, further given life by Simone Simon’s cold, detached performance.

Cat People was lensed by Nicholas Musuranca, who, with Jacques Tourneur went on to make Out of the Past, a noir masterpiece.  Like a great noir, the movie is as much about fog and shadows, sharp angles and high contrast black-and-white, as it is about the actual plot devices.  Cat People is also about sound, be it the clicking of shoes on pavement or the echoing of screams in an indoor pool.  Sound is cheap on a low budget, and John Cass, an A+ Foley artist working for RKO’s B-movie department, provides terrifying ambiance.

Of note: The luxurious apartment in which Irena lives was the mansion set constructed for Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons. Cat People cost $134,000 to make, and grossed $4 million, while Ambersons cost $850,000 and lost $620,000.