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> Time marches on, relentlessly, doesn’t it? 2023?! What happened to 2003? Well, here they are: the films of March 2023. Don’t blink, or another decade will pass you by…
(All films are rated on a 5-star basis and must be over a decade old to get 5 stars.)
Titles in PURPLE have been expanded for Flix Pix columns
> This month I review the following 9 films:
CARNAL KNOWLEDGE (1971) *****
BABYLON (2022) ****
NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA (1971) ***+
TALL STORY (1960) **+
LIGHTYEAR (2022) ***
BLONDE (2022) **
WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD? (1932) **
THE WOMAN KING (2022) ****
ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED (2022) ****
– – –
CARNAL KNOWLEDGE (1971) *****
> I remembered this sharp satire of male sexuality as a classic comedy, a judgement that was verified not more than a minute or two into the opening credits.
. There is nothing special about the sequence- just white lettering on a black background. It’s the soundtrack that announces the brilliance to come. Before you even see: “Directed by Mike Nichols”, the dialogue you are hearing tells you everything about the next 90 minutes: that you are about to see a painfully funny film that veers a little too close to reality for comfort. That brilliant, witty, effortlessly revealing dialogue was written by the great Jules Feiffer, and it hits the bullseye again and again and again, in a savage take-down of institutionalized misogyny, machismo, and gender entitlement.
. That first conversation we eavesdrop on, is between Art Garfunkle as ‘Sandy’ and Jack Nicholson as his best friend ‘Jonathan’. They are two college roommates coming of age together in the late 40’s. (Unconvincingly, because both actors are too old.) They are candidly discussing their frustrated male urges, and the exchange is hilarious- in a very painful way. Ouch, that stings!
. The film unfolds in three parts, with large gaps of time between. The first act introduces Candace Bergen as ‘Susan’, the fetching virgin one marries and the other woos. Oh yes, there is betrayal here, and jealousy and devotion and disillusionment and every other shade of human experience that can be ignited by the male/female dynamic. Along the way, the breezy recklessness of act one gives way to the sad dysfunction of the third act, and the comedy reveals itself as a kind of tragedy- a very black comedy in any case.
. Sandy is a sweet schlub, understandably transfixed by ravishing blonde Susan. But his mate Johnathan is a snake, oozing sticky charm meant to ensnare any ripe young coed who may cross his path with his irresistible swaggering braggadocio. The man’s a skirt chaser alright, and in addition to that curve-revealing cardigan, Susan is wearing a skirt. Jonathan is the proverbial male dog- an animal that thinks with its dick and uses its head to scout out places to put it.
. But all this may just be about to change in part two, when he meets older sexpot ‘Bobbie’, played with or without clothing by a stunning Ann-Margaret. Jonathan decides that for the first time in his life, his habitual lust has given way to love, and as much as he cringes at the thought, he begins his first stab at monogamy- a journey that like it or not, may lead him down the aisle with the woman he both loves and hates, for her emotional neediness. (And she is a mess. A beautiful mess!)
. In part three, Sandy is feeling stuck in a comfortable but boring marriage that makes him restless to cross over to Jonathan’s side of the street, and take a mistress if he can. Things come to a head in a horrible and perfect scene where Jonathan shows Sandy and his much younger date ‘Jennifer” (a silent, disapproving Carol Kane), a slideshow he calls “Ball-busters on Parade”, featuring all the women he’s bedded in his carnal career. (Was that a quick glimpse of Susan? How’d that get in there?) Hopeless. The man is a hopeless beast. Is Jules Feiffer saying men are like ultra-horny zebras, completely unable to change their stripes? And it all leads to that notorious scene with Jonathan entertaining his usual prostitute (a savvy, roleplaying Rita Moreno), that landed the film in hot water with the law. It’s not nearly as graphic as it seemed to me as an impressionable youth, but it’s clear what’s going on: Successful but lonely Jonathan has been so emasculated by his own warped sexuality that he can’t get excited anymore unless his partner is constantly reassuring him that he is a strong, powerful, desirable, macho man. Is CARNAL KNOWLEDGE a cynical film? Ya think?
. All these accomplished actors absolutely shine in every scene. Nicholson is as good as he’s ever been, but the real revelation here is Art Garfunkle. He keeps up with the great iconic scenery-chewer in every frame, beautifully embodying the insecure American male, struggling to navigate the swiftly changing cultural landscape of the battleground between the sexes once women’s lib hits. He’s trying to be more evolved, (what we now would call “woke”), but the persistent old boy’s network sets a very bad example. Ann-Margaret is spectacular here, well-deserving of the Oscar nomination here fierce, naked performance earned. (My own inner male animal was awakened by Ann-Margaret when I was only about 7-years old, when I saw her at the beginning of BYE BYE BIRDIE, lying on her bed singing while shimmying into a pair of sheer pantyhose. Good gracious, young Kevin!)
– CARNAL KNOWLEDGE hurts like hell, but that’s genius for you.
BABYLON (2022) ****
> I am ambivalent at best, on director Damien Chazelle.
. I was impressed by FIRST MAN and extremely gripped by WHIPLASH. I never saw his musical debut GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH, but if it was as godawful as Unfortunately, nothing seems able to clear my palate of the bad taste left by the abysmal pabulum of LA LA LAND. What a stinker that was! The good news: BABYLON was almost good enough to ease the trauma of that threatened Best Picture winner.
. One look at the trailer and you can see this is going to be a wild ride: excess, depravity, debauchery and unchecked decadence in the heyday of old Hollywood, just as the silent era is giving way to the talkies, featuring the likes of Brad Pitt, Flea, Lukas Haas, Katherine Waterson, Tobey McGuire, Jean Smart, Eric Roberts, Max Minghella from The Handmaid’s Tale, filmmaker Spike Jonze, and SNL cutie Chloe Fineman, playing fictional versions of studio royalty like Irving Thalberg, Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst, Louella Parsons, and James Wong Howe. Yow, that’s a lt!
. BABYLON is an ensemble piece, but it’s really Margot Robbie’s movie, and she carries it off effortlessly, playing ambitious dreamer Nellie LaRoy. Nellie is a tough street urchin and unapologetic hedonist, convinced she was born a star, and that now, it was high time for the rest of the world to find out. Nellie hooks up with understandably smitten Mexican worker Manny (well-played by Diego Calva), just as they both arrive at the right orgy at the right time, in a mansion that could have been Douglas Fairbank’s notorious Pickfair Estate, where many such unbridled revels were thrown. Manny gradually becomes an indispensable studio fixer and rises to the director’s chair, and for a while, Nellie becomes a kind of Clara Bow “It girl”. She has the uncanny ability to weep on command for the thirsty camera (“One tear or two? Right eye or left?”), quickly rising to be the star she never doubted she was. But she is at heart a wild and reckless soul, like a wild mare who will not be tamed, sowing the seeds of her own professional destruction. There are several subplots from Pitt’s mash-up of an alcohol-drenched post-peak Douglas Fairbanks/John Gilbert/Rudolph Valentino, to a cross-dressing “Oriental” chanteuse and a Louis Armstrong avatar who is too light-skinned for the rest of the group, making them look like an integrated band on film- something that would never fly in southern theaters. In the ultimate act of cultural debasement- he is forced to wear blackface “for the lighting”. His unspeakable fury is beautifully expressed through his music.
. Yep, there is a lot here. At 3-hours and nine-minutes, it is all over the map. A garish homage to movies and moviemaking, it’s comedy, drama, satire, and ultimately, tragedy. And sometimes, it is just too much. I could have completely done without the Anna May Wong sub-plot. (Her song about her love for her girl’s pussy was completely useless.) Her character was so under-written, she only seemed to exist to provide a sympathetic ear for Pitt’s increasingly disillusioned has-been. She had no story arch whatsoever. While potent, the subplot about her Black jazz counterpart seemed tacked on, as an afterthought. I really didn’t need to see a girl peeing on an obvious placeholder for Fatty, or watch Nellie projective vomit on assembled party guests. And I really, really didn’t need to see a close-up of an elephant anus opening up and dousing bystanders with copious amounts of pachyderm diarrhea. Chazelle shows absolutely no restraint whatsoever in these sequences, and his film suffers for it, careening from inspiration to crude banality and back.
. And then, there is the ending. Flash-forward to 1952. Chazelle uses a showing of SINGING IN THE RAIN to bring this unwieldy baby home. Manny is falling asleep, when he suddenly becomes aware of the classic musical’s theme- the same theme as BABYLON: the magic and wonder of the movies at the dawning of the talkies. Chazelle treats us to a brief but potent montage of great shots from a century of movies- even from AVATAR 2: THE WAY OF WATER, released the same year! Stylish. But then, he can’t help revisiting highlights of his own film, lumping BABYLON in with TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Oh pl-ease! Hubris, anyone? It is meant to show Manny’s memories flooding back from the past through the vicarious experience of the silver screen, but it’s an unfortunate juxtaposition. Then, Chazelle deconstructs everything, breaking cinema down to the basic elements of light and color and movement. The film suddenly becomes impressionist and very psychedelic indeed, before reemerging into Manny’s watery eyes.
. BABYLON has a great cast, fabulous costumes, settings and production values, a palpable sense of time and place, a surprise around every corner, and a bunch of useless and objectionable pandering. (Pee! Pop! Vomit!) It’s been called: “overstuffed, insubstantial, manic, debasing and nauseating”, but also: “ambitious, under-rated, glorious and thrilling”.
– Is it all of the above? Yes. Yes it is.
NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA (1971) ***+
> Geez, Russian history can be a downer.
. I enjoyed this long, detailed historical epic about the downfall of Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia, but the closer it got to the final carnage, the more bummed out I was. I knew how fate wrote their story. That does not mean I was eager to see their demise come about. The czar got what was coming to him suppose, considering the endless sufferings he perpetuated on the peasant population. But did his ailing son, German wife and four daughters have to share his brutal fate? The new “people’s regime” must have been eager to sever all ties with its Imperial past, by eliminating every single trace of royal Romanoff blood. It was easier to just butcher ‘em all.
. Penned by the fine wordsmith James Goldman, the script wades into the weeds of history a bit, introducing familiar characters like Stalin and Lenin and Trotsky, and most interestingly, Rasputin- but never loses its bearings. The royal couple are played by Michael Jayston, who seems to grow into the role, and Royal Shakespearian Janet Suzman, who is quite good throughout. The secondary cast includes luminaries like Laurence Oliver, Brian Cox, Ian Holm, Michael Redgrave, and an actor named John McEnery who impressed me so in Franco Zeffirelli’s ROMEO AND JULIET, as a perfectly tempered Mercutio.
. This movie burned through a bunch of directors before settling on Franklin J. Schaffner (THE BEST MAN, PLANET OF THE APES, and PATTON), who handles what could have been an unwieldy mess with restrained finesse. But Schaffner is brutal with us at the climax. He places us directly in the royal family’s shoes, staring at the closed door awaiting their ultimate fate for the longest time. They can only intuit what’s coming. We know. And that wait is excruciating! Time fairly stops- the only sound the increasingly loud ticking of the grandfather clock, marking their final seconds on earth. When history finally bursts through those doors… that’s all she wrote, baby. The film ends as suddenly as the family’s lives did, with bloody bullet holes in the wall. Yikes!
. The way Jayston presents the change that comes over Nicolas between his arrest and his assassination, the pitiable softening the man experiences when he realizes that the choices he’s made have doomed his family, are almost enough to make you forget Nicolas was a ruthless, imperious dictator who wielded power through intimidation and violence- like all the tsars that came before him.
. Most interestingly, in this time of a hot war in Ukraine, it’s fascinating the window this film casts on the Russian way of war. After watching it, I feel as though I understand Putin slightly better. He is acting like all the tsars that came before him, only under a different title. No wonder he’s throwing men into battle bare-fisted, like human meat: that’s all his citizens are to Putin: human meat: peasants, the grist with which he hopes to grind down the world into the shape he imagines it should be. Yevgeny Prigozhin is his Rasputin. And it will end the same way for Putin that it ended for Nicolas and Alexandra and all the despots that came before in the bloody tapestry of Russian history:
– With bloody bullet holes in the wall, or its equivalent.
TALL STORY (1960) **+
With all the talent that went into this comedy of romantic entrapment, it sure doesn’t show much in the finished film. A box office and critical failure, it nonetheless has its charms- mostly in the painfully earnest comic performances of the two leads- Jane Fonda and Anthony Perkins. Director Joshua Logan had just come off his success with SOUTH PACIFIC, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse were celebrated playwrights, adapting from their own play- and playing supporting roles as well. The cast includes Ray Walston, Tom (BILLY JACK) Laughlin, and Robert Redford appears uncredited in his very first movie. The entire basis of this film is the idea that a woman is nothing without a man, and that it should be every woman’s prime directive to bag a husband. Obviously, we can’t apply today’s mores to yesterday’s culture, but that is not a trope that has aged well, has it? I would bet both testicles that Jane Fonda cringes over having played this anti-feminist character, back it the days when she was thrilled to have any lead. She pretends to be in college because of her overwhelming thirst for knowledge, but states right up front that she is only in college because she is so tall for a woman, that she had to pick a school with a great basketball program to nab herself an equally statuesque trophy husband- hence: TALL STORY. And she has her eye on one dreamboat, star player Perkins doing his best aw shucks boy scout stammer. The mainspring of the plot: a squad from Russia is coming to campus to play their celebrated team, and a mysterious meddler is attempting to bribe goody two-shoes Perkins to throw the game. The shit hits the fan when he is banned from the game for intentionally flunking a test to get off the hot seat. I was quite entertained by the final act, when the ugly mirror to American gender stereotypes gives way to ethical conundrum. Jane Fonda was so lovely in 1960, but it is so painful to hear her speak these offensive lines.
LIGHTYEAR (2022) ***
Pixar pimps off itself, with this TOY STORY offshoot, the animated origin story of pompous space cadet Buzz Lightyear. Titles at the beginning inform us that we are about to see the film that made young master Andy become obsessed with the intrepid spaceman in the original classic. Unfortunately, Tim Allen’s iconic swagger has been replaced by Chris Evans, who’s voice lacks the same colorful swagger that made the character so fun. Evans is not bad, it’s just that Allen was so much better. Also in the vocal cast: Keke Palmer, the nearly ubiquitous Taika Waititi, James Brolin as an older but not wiser Buzz, and Dale Soules (Orange is the New Black), her gravelly voice particularly effective as a geriatric jailbird turned Space Cadet. (“My parole officer’s not gonna like this!”) She may have the best part in the film. This film became a lightning rod for the rabid right because it features, briefly- a happy two mom family and includes (Gasp!) an even briefer same sex smooch. 2022 was the year of the box office dud for both Pixar and Disney, who released STRANGE WORLD to a similar fate. LIGHTYEAR is much maligned, but I found it passably entertaining and occasionally real fun, mostly in the character humor. 3 stars ain’t half bad. You could do considerably worse. (FAST AND FURIOUS 17, anyone?)
BLONDE (2022) **
I’d heard this was crap. It was! Absolute trash. Andrew Dominik has fashioned a nasty, offensive, “fictionalized biography” of the ever-exploited Marilyn Monroe, and swaddled it in beautiful wrapping paper. The production values are first class. The content is lurid, salacious and sometimes very entertaining. A controversial film made from a controversial book by Joyce Carol Oats, it is impossible to know where the true facts about the life of the insecure sex goddess ends and the sensational fiction begins. This makes it useless as a biography. What remains is a fantasy about the secret lives of famous people, including Cuban actress Ana de Armas, giving her all despite the tabloid nature of the material, Bobby Cannavale absolutely nailing an imaginary Joe DiMaggio, Adrien Brody well-cast as Arthur Miller, and Chris Lemmon playing his famous dad Jack. Also present: actors playing Billy Wilder, Edward G. Robinson, Darryl F. Zanuck and Joseph Cotton. Not to mention John F. Kennedy, in one of the scenes that earned the film the most restrictive NC-17 rating, where he all but forces Marilyn to give him head. Yeah, it’s a prestige film, clearly. Forgive the flogging of this dead horse, but an example of just how crass this wanton film is: We hear Marilyn’s inner voice during this painful sequence, asking herself: “Should I spit or should I swallow? What if I vomit all over the president’s bed?” Seems a lot of talent was egregiously squandered here. Ally McBeal regular Julianne Nicholson, for instance, is heartbreakingly effective as Marilyn’s mentally ill mother. If Ana de Arman’s terrific lead performance had not been nominated for an Oscar, I would never have wasted my time on BLONDE. Andrew Dominik has obvious talent in the director’s chair. Let’s hope he starts choosing better material.
WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD? (1932) **
George Cukor directs this old piece of Hollywood hokum. Constance Bennet is very appealing as the spunky waitress who charms a famous customer into giving her a shot at stardom. Naturally, she succeeds after one minor setback and becomes wildly successful, marrying a high society playboy. (This movie may pose as a weepie romance, but it’s obviously a fantasy!) Lowell Sherman is pretty terrific as the alcohol-drenched director who discovered the celebrated star, whose star is sinking as swiftly as hers is rising. (Shades of A STAR IS BORN here, and now that I think about it, BABYLON as well.) Cukor provides several corny, expressionist montages that are pretty cool stuff, in a very retro way. Also present: the ubiquitous black maid from movies of this era: Louise Beavers (IMITATION OF LIFE), doing her usual sympathetic servant- the only scripts that were usually offered her. The ending: abrupt, unmotivated, predictable. Entertaining, but hardly Cukor’s crowning achievement.
THE WOMAN KING (2022) ****
This modest historical epic introduces us to a world we have not seen much of in the movies: Africa during the height of the vile slave trade. It was well received, and some thought, shortchanged in the Oscar department. I really enjoyed it much more than I anticipated. Action films are not my natural turf, and I am so fed up with the violence of the genre. But this is a good one. Director Gina Prince-Bythewood wrote the story with actress Maria Bello, adapting the true story of how the kingdom of Dahomey turned to its powerful, legendary unit of fierce female warriors called the Agojie, to meet the existential challenge brought to their shores by the slaving ships. It’s a story of resistance against powerful odds and unspeakable evil. Alienated STAR WARS stormtrooper John Boyega is very good as the king standing up to the forces of colonialism. His key ally: Viola Davis as General Nanisca whose steady hand trains her elite troops to make the slavers rue the day they set their sights on the proud citizens of Dahomey. Considering the continent-wide genocide the trade caused, this story feels like a fantasy wish-fulfillment: if only every African tribe had been able to put up the same resistance against a foe wielding such technologically superior force! The cast of actresses with difficult to pronounce names is universally good. Being more familiar with her remarkable voice than her face, I did not realize that one of them was Angélique Kidjo, herself born in Benin- the name now used for what was once French Dohomey. The film is bookended by warfare, and though it takes its time building the world and establishing the many characters, you can just feel the triumphant violence of the end coming in every scene. And we are not shortchanged. There is a big, bloody reckoning coming, courtesy Viola Davis’s woman bitterly wronged. She is all bitter vindictiveness, and wields the sword of justice with unparalleled prowess. That woman makes one kickass warrior! I wouldn’t want to tangle with her!
ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED (2022) ****
HBO does it again, bringing us another first-class documentary about the complex world we live in. Their non-fiction output is one of the best reasons to subscribe to the streaming service. This title was widely touted as a frontrunner for the Oscar, but lost out to CNN’s remarkable NAVALNY. I expected the document to be a potent evisceration of the Sackler family’s complicity in creating the ongoing opioid crisis through their promotion of their potent drug Oxycontin- and it was that, but really so much more. This is a profile of fine modern folk artist Nan Goldin and the activism she embraced after becoming addicted to the Sackler poison herself. It seemed long, yet my interest never wavered for a moment. Ms. Goldin placed her entire career as a cutting-edge photographer on the line to embrace activism- a heroic and selfless deed. I was once banned from Facebook for a week, when I sated, directly, that I would like to strangle every corrupt Sackler who created the (understandable) hysteria that makes attempts to get my chronic pain effectively treated appear like an addict begging for enablement. I was speaking figurately of course, but (figuratively) I would love to strangle the life out of those fucking bastards. The damage they did will live on after all of them are long dead. And when that happens, I hope they rot in hell. They suck. The film? Excellence.
*
> A mixed bag this month. Not every film can be a winner. TALL STORY, BLONDE and WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD were pretty bad… But BABYLON, THE WOMAN KING and ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED were pretty damn good- and CARNAL KNOWLEDGE was sheer dynamite! Bye for now, and: Viva Cinema fellow goofballs.
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© Kevin Paul Keelan and lastcre8iveiconoclast, 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kevin Paul Keelan and lastcre8iveiconoclast with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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