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> No 5-star classics this month- but six 4-star movies is still a cornucopia of riches. Can’t have everything, all the time. Let’s dive in.
(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 10 films:
THE HUMAN COMEDY (1943) ***+
JOHNNY DANGEROUSLY (1984) **+
THE NUN’S STORY (1959) ****
LAURA (1944) ***+
GABBY GIFFORDS WON’T BACK DOWN (2022) ****
DON’T WORRY DARLING (2022) ****
AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER (2022) ****
BEING MARY TYLER MOORE (2023) ***
CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (2022) ****
C’MON C’MON (2021) ****
– – –
THE HUMAN COMEDY (1943) ***+
> Clarence Brown (INTRUDER IN THE DUST), directed this winsome, occasionally stunning William Saroyan snapshot of small-town America during the great war.
. The story is told by a disembodied voice beyond the grave. It is Ulysses, the family patriarch, telling his family story. In the early part of the film, there scenes of Ulysses as a boy that are about as wistfully resonant as any images put to film, echoing the work of artists like Jean Renoir or Roberto Rossellini. The young child is thrilled by the locomotive that passes nearby daily. He races across the countryside to see it chug by, waving to the conductor and to a black hobo riding the rails. It has an innocence that melts your heart and transports you to a simpler time in American life. I was transfixed.
. Later, we meet his son Homer (Homer and Ulysses? An obvious reference to The Odyssey!), who is an earnest young high school student, very deftly played by Mickey Rooney. THE HUMAN COMEDY is a coming-of-age story that follows a transformational year in Homer’s life. He works after school as a messenger-boy for the local telegraph office. When his older brother (Van Johnson), goes off to war, Homer becomes the man of the house. He is stoked to get his first job, but that enthusiasm dims considerably, when the inevitable death notices begin coming in, and he is forced to be the bearer of bad news. What if a telegram arrives for his family, beginning with the dreaded words: “The U.S. government regrets to inform you…”? It is the ultimate indignity when he is forced to deliver a romantic singing telegram to the girl of his dreams from his bitter rival.
. Homer’s constantly besotted boss is played memorably by Frank (The Wizard of Oz) Morgan, with deep pathos and sympathy. He is a broken man clinging to his job as the only steady touchstone keeping him tethered to life, but constantly putting that job under threat by the prodigious amounts of alcohol he uses to medicate the pain away. Homer is even instructed how to revive him if he falls into an alcoholic stupor at an inopportune time.
. The film veers wildly through pathos into sentimentality. There are moments of corny Americana that are as calculated as anything Frank Capra ever made, but there moments of delicate drama and… human comedy. It deals, sometimes clumsily, with broad, resonant themes of family, romance, religious and moral values, the melting pot of multi-culturalism, and the unifying theme of brotherhood. But it also sometimes veers into a boosterism of patriotism that borders on outright propaganda.
. Saroyan thought he was set to direct his own script, but when the studio realized his version clocked-in at 4 hours, they summarily replaced him. Saroyan responded by reworking the story as a novel, publishing his version just before the film hit the screen. He had the last laugh, when the film which was nominated for several Oscars including Best Actor for Rooney and Best Picture- only came home with one statuette for Best Story, (now Best Original Screenplay) and that went home with Saroyan.
. Uncredited are Robert Mitchum, Barry Nelson, and Ozzy and Harriet’s Don De Fore as three soldiers on leave looking for dates to the movies. They manage to pick up two girls- one of them Homer’s sister played by comely 50’s matriarch Donna Reed.
. This highly-regarded film coulda been a classic. Goodness knows, it contains classic moments. Who knows what might have happened if Saroyan was allowed to make the script he wrote?
– I coulda been 2 hours better.
JOHNNY DANGEROUSLY (1984) **+
This occasionally fun send-up of gangster movies promises more than it delivers. Amy Heckerling directed this silly spoof that wallows and revels in hackneyed clichés. A bright-eyed Michael Keaton plays ambitious young Johnny Kelly, who has each foot planted in a different world. At home, he plays the dutiful son, caring for his ailing mother, played by a somewhat annoying Maureen Stapleton, and looking out for his sexually frustrated younger brother Tommy, played by Griffin Dunne. But at work, he is gradually becoming respected gangster “Johnny Dangerously”, working as fixer for powerful local crime boss Jocko Dundee (a slimy Peter Boyle), and forming a rivalry with Jocko’s muscleman Danny Vermin, (such subtlety!), played with venomous bile by Joe Piscopo. In a perfect and calculated irony, Johnny uses his ill-gotten gains to put his younger brother through law school- a move that backfires when Tommy rises to be an ambitious district attorney, a criminal’s natural adversary, and a target for Piscopo’s sneering Vermin. There are certainly fun moments here, but the targets are so broad, it was like Heckerling shooting fish in a barrel. Entertaining in parts, thanks to a game cast trying its best to entertain, but ultimately,JOHNNY DANGEROUSLY is as flat as the pre-Galileo earth.
THE NUN’S STORY (1959) ****
> This Fred Zinnemann film could have been subtitled: “To Be Or Not To Be? (a Nun)”, as ultimately, that’s what this earnest spiritual drama was about.
. After devoting herself to the discipline of the nunnery, can Belgian waif Gabrielle van der Mal live the life it demands of her? Convinced it is her calling, Gabrielle takes her vows and becomes “Sister Luke”. (Is that lovely Audrey Hepburn under that penguin suit? It is!) After being born into money and high society to a respected surgeon (a loving Dean Jagger), Gabrielle may just be too strong-willed to follow the prime directive from the holy order: “OBEY WITHOUT QUESTION”.
. There is an extended section in the early part of the film where Gabrielle learns the ropes- the rituals, rules and cadence of live in a cloistered nunnery, that is quite fascinating. There is a lot to it. (They’ve had a long time to codify practices!) It is her dream to train in medicine and go to Africa as a missionary, ministering to the underserved natives. But first: Sister Luke must be broken and made to heel, like a wild horse tamed.
. Finally, she is sent to the front lines in the Belgian Congo, as a nurse working in a remote clinic with respected doctor, the tough as nails Peter Finch. But her devotion to the cloistered life is severely tested by the brutality of the Nazi regime. How can she stay neutral in the face of such blind, vicious aggression? She can’t. A fraught choice must be made: acceptance or resistance? It is a battle between her faith and her conscience. Bravely, Sister Luke chooses resistance.
. Good film! Dense. Detailed. Well researched. But it seemed like the movie ended at the most interesting juncture of the story.
– If any film deserved a sequel, THE NUN”S STORY was it.
LAURA (1944) ***+
Dana Andrews nails the fedora-capped, trenchcoat wearing world-weary gumshoe, in this highly respected film noir mystery from Otto Preminger. Detective McPherson’s beat is Manhattan, and when a beautiful woman with powerful connection is brutally murdered in her swank Madison Avenue apartment, he is sent to investigate. The victim: Laura of course. We see it in the opening scene. The body is comely Gene Tierney, so it’s a good thing there are many flashbacks to come. Among the suspects, Laura’s leech of a fiancé- a suave, urbane Vincent Price, and her dapper gossip columnist friend, a fussy, prissy Clifton Webb- in retrospect- obvious shorthand for gay. The more he digs into the case, the more obsessed McPherson becomes- almost as though he were falling in love with a dead woman. But (as there always is in a whodunnit), there is more to this case than meets the eye- even a sharp, perceptive eye, like McPherson’s. The late great movieman Roger Ebert called it “contrived, artificial, (and) mannered”, but he loved it anyway. I agree with his characterizations, but these flaws are often present in genre films- certainly in noir. In this case, they held me at bay, limiting my buy-in to a film often considered a 5-star classic. The dialogue was often too precious for me. (Again, very common for noir.) I found Tierney pretty enough, but empty and vapid- certainly not the alluring fireball everyone else in the film described her as. A major miscast. The big surprise that comes about two-thirds of the way through is certainly a nifty twist, but the conclusion was too forced, and the dialogue too ornate and flowery to ring true. The best thing about LAURA is not Laura. It is McPherson. The film may not be a classic in my eyes, but the character is.
GABBY GIFFORDS WON’T BACK DOWN (2022) ****
Good thing too! What a bad example she would be setting if she let a little thing like a bullet to the head silence her important voice. This biography of the former congresswoman and current gun control advocate, could hardly have landed a more receptive audience. I have always adored this spunky, spirit, who has been struggling to overcome the physical disabilities caused by the 2011 assassination attempt that left her partially paralyzed and struggling with aphasia, making it a constant challenge to express herself. There at her side, her steadfast husband- former astronaut Mark Kelly. They are a great team, squarely taking on the excessive gun culture of this depraved country, in the face of a death lobby that sees gun ownership as a near religion. It’s a story of wrenching violence, cowardly political terrorism and a dogged commitment to recovery. Excellent stuff and a fine portrait of a fine woman.
DON’T WORRY DARLING (2022) ****
> Olivia Wilde directed this wildly stylish whatthefuck with self-assurance and zeal.
. It’s a drama. It’s a mystery. It’s a social satire. It’s a sci-fi crime flick. It’s a high-gloss, high-concept treat from a director who clearly knows what she’s doing.
. Florence Pugh and Harry Styles are Alice and Jack- a happy ‘50’s couple who live the perfect life, in the perfect community, where everything is… perfect. The wives are perfectly happy to enjoy the hedonist joys of domestic bliss, while their perfect husbands are perfectly stoked to work for a mysterious tech company doing top secret work, for a company run by a mysterious charismatic, almost cultlike leader who seems to hold some Svengali-like power over his employees. Welcome to the company town of “Victory”, where things are, well… too good to be true. (The shadow of THE STEPFORD WIVES looms large over this movie.) It’s a bright, polished gem- carefully laid out cul-de-sacs of complacency, surrounded by dry desert.
. But Alice begins to experience strange glitches at the seams of her life. In all this idealized perfection- something just ain’t right. While the surface sheen of Victory glimmers, something nasty lies just below the surface.
. Chris Pine is plays the, manipulative mastermind with sinister malevolence. Styles is good, but it is really Pugh’s movie. We see the façade unravel from her increasingly desperate POV, as her sanity begins to become imperiled. Is she crazy, or is everyone else in denial?
. Wilde does an extraordinary job world-building the town of Victory and the lives of its inhabitants. The design, art direction, camerawork and editing all dazzle. The payoff may not be all that original, but I was so busy having fun with the central mystery that I didn’t spend much time forecasting it.
. There was an unfortunate tabloid controversy about the making of this film that appeared to have been started by rabid (probably jealous) Styles fans and spread to rightwing blather outlets. Wilde was attacked from all sides, and then, defended by the entire cast and crew who said that the whole brouhaha was 100% bullshit. Thankfully, the bluster and bile turned out to be a tempest in a teapot. What matters is not social media narratives, what matters is the film Wilde made.
– And for all the noise and fury, DON’T WORRY DARLING is an absolute treat.
AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER (2022) ****
> Okay. I watched it.
. Kinda felt I had to, considering its inclusion in the Oscar’s Best Picture category. Didn’t think I’d like it. I am such a fucking dilettante I didn’t want to enjoy this big brash fantasy sequel from the prodigious imagination of James Cameron. After all, apart from the obvious eye-candy inherent in every frame, I wasn’t that enamored of the original. But almost against my will, I was wildly entertained by this installment of James Cameron’s labored eco-fable
. The plot hardly matters. It almost feels like it could have been written by A.I. What matters is the color, the action, the extraordinary imagination that vividly brings the imaginary offworld of Pandora to life.
. Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña are back from the original, as is nasty villain Stephen Lang, and even Sigourney Weaver, playing a different character than the one who died at the end of the original AVATAR- a part she must have had a ball with. It is not every day that a 73-year-old actress is hired to play a petulant teenager! And under all that motion-capture, she is awfully good. Kate Winslet appears as well, as a new addition to the series cast of characters.
. There is some serviceable acting, under those blue CGI faces. But it was the action and the environments that really enthralled me. Cameron really knows how to orchestrate complex action sequences. This first sequel of many to the groundbreaking 2001 original is certainly a blockbuster, fueled by violence and the thirst for revenge- hardly my favorite drivers of a film, but they work here. Again, we get a labored environmental allegory wrapped in an eye-popping package.
. THE WAY OF WATER is just not that different than the original. But with the focus on family and the expansion of Pandora’s shimmering, exotic world, I enjoyed it more than the first chapter. I was surprised how fast the 3+ hour running time flew by. Cameron always gives us something to look at, if maybe less to think about. So much color in such a black-and-white world: Good vs. Evil, Right vs. Wrong, Exploitation vs. Sustainability…
– James Cameron vs. The Human Bladder!
BEING MARY TYLER MOORE (2023) ***
I had forgotten how adorable Mary Tyler Moore was on The Dick Van Dyke Show. What an imp! I was just a young kid when M.T.M. became America’s sweetheart, but I had a childhood crush on her, no doubt. No wonder! This HBO documentary reflects on her place in the woman’s movement, her role in the changing face of television, and the deep impact she had on American women of the time. She was definitely a pioneer- part of redefining society’s idea of a woman’s role in the world, and that’s all for the better. The document contained a lot of interesting stuff I didn’t know about the cultural moment she reflected and embodied, but though she was an interesting woman, MTM was not as dynamic a woman offscreen as she was on. Things grew repetitive by the end, at which point the profile began to feel a bit padded. Three stars anyway, for her considerable and undeniable charm.
CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (2022) ****
> On the bizzarro-meter, this David Cronenberg nightmare falls between Guy Maddin’s THE FORBIDDEN ROOM and David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD.
. The only other film I could liken it to more directly would be NAKED LUNCH. No wonder that the only comparable film would be another fever dream by the same pleasantly insane director.
. This singular film (the second Cronenberg made with this exact same title. He must be enamored of it.), is a mash up of fantasy, sci-fi, drama, and Cronenberg’s own brand of visceral horror. A twisted rumination on the future of evolution, CRIMES OF THE FUTURE is a strikingly original and audacious film.
. Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux play an artistic partnership that produces truly bizarre performance art of this imagined future: live surgery for the gawking masses! Viggo is Saul Tenser, a man on the cutting-edge of evolution- in more ways than one. His body is morphing, changing from deep within, growing new organs of mysterious function. Saul has become a celebrity. Fascinated biological voyeurs flock to see his lovely assistant carve out the new arrivals incubating in his body. But Saul is not alone. Living in a synthetic environment is causing genetic shifts in the populace. To some, it’s a beautiful thing; to others, a dire threat. A shadowy cabal hopes to capitalize on Saul’s notoriety and manipulate him for their own murky purposes.
. Poor Saul suffers for his art. A lot. He has a hard time with things most people take for granted, using contraptions that seem to meld technology with crustation exoskeletons, to help him swallow his food and sleep- the armature of nightmares. They look like medical devices designed by Guillermo Del Toro or ALIEN’s H. L. Geiger. So creepy!
. When the film finally reveals its themes, they don’t fall far from the X-MEN mythology. What happens to society when some people begin to evolve to a point where they can’t be thought of as quite “human”? Does the transformation create a divide between old school homo sapiens and freshly evolving mutants? What then?
. Kristen Stewart has a small, nervous role, that doesn’t amount to much, but she seems well-cast in it, tapping into her latent strangeness. The score was written by the great composer Howard Shore, so the film really has a pedigree, Still, as much or more than any film I have ever seen CRIMES OF THE FUTURE is not for everyone. Most filmgoers, I suspect, will have no fucking idea what to make of it! I’m not sure I do. At one point, I burst out laughing, then wondered if my mirthful outburst was appropriate. Was that supposed to be so funny? I suspect Cronenberg would not care whether audiences laugh or gasp, as long as he elicits strong feelings in them, which this film is absolutely guaranteed to do.
. I tried (and failed), to get my homie interested in this film, asking: “Just how big are your balls?” They have to be mammoth bowling balls to watch this visceral film! So, ask yourself (regardless of gender): DO YOU HAVE THE TESTICULAR FORTITUDE TO WATCH THIS FILM?
– It would be wise to ask yourself this question before you hit “play” on CRIMES OF THE FUTURE.
C’MON C’MON (2021) ****
> Watch the trailer and you will expect a formula film about an adult bonding with a precocious child.
. Watch the film, and what you get is… a formula film about an adult bonding with a precocious child. Good thing it’s a good formula film about an adult bonding with a precocious child, or C’MON C’MON would be just too saccharine to stomach. But Mike Mills is a good filmmaker. I have seen, and enjoyed all his previous films- THUMBSUCKER, BEGINNERS, and 20th CENTURY WOMEN. So, it should come as no surprise that as far as films about an adult bonding with a precocious child, it’s one of the very good ones.
. In the central role- Joaquin Phoenix, one of the great living film actors. And he is largely responsible for making this such a watchable film. His face is so alive at any given moment, his thought process playing clearly across it like the headlines of a newspaper. (I can hardly wait to see what he does with NAPOLEON!) Still, as good as Phoenix is, this film would never have worked without a wonderful performance by the child actor. And 11-year-old Woody Norman is as good as any child has ever been in any movie. His performance compares favorably with Anna Paquin in THE PIANO, and is a far more natural, believable and nuanced performance than Tatum O’Neal gave in PAPER MOON, and they both won Best Supporting Actress for that.
. The story itself, is somewhat pedestrian. It’s certainly not anything we have not seen before: emotionally stunted adult is put in care of a lively, energetic child who is a real handful, and in the process, grows as a human being.
. Phoenix is Johnny, a reticent radio journalist with a narrow focus. Johnny and his crew travel across America interviewing children about their lives and the world they live in, and about what they imagine for their joint futures. After the long, slow, wrenching death of their mother, he is somewhat estranged from his sister, who is married to a man with serious mental health struggles. When his condition forces her to rush to his side, she is stuck with the question of what to do with her son Jesse, who just may be on the Autism spectrum. She reluctantly turns to Johnny for help, and he reluctantly agrees.
. It’s a sentimental but heartfelt story about love, compassion, pain and redemption, with one foot planted in real life and one in Hollywood storytelling. The actors generate sympathy and real emotion. Their struggles seem very human and universal. Johnny’s interviews with the kids are wonderous, and so very real. I don’t think these kids were scripted. Having worked with children for decades, their responses felt very genuine to me- and they are precious, insightful, alarming and sometimes, heartbreaking.
. The black-and-white cinematography dazzles- something one doesn’t expect in a film about interior human relations. It’s gorgeous, but one wonders why. What was director Mills trying to say, with the choice to drain the world of all color? Aha! Perhaps he was trying to point out that everything, interior and exterior, comes in shades of gray. There really is no stark polarization of perception.
– We are, each of us, our own shade of gray.
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> The most memorable film of June 2023? CRIMES OF THE FUTURE, hands-down. What a mind-bending trip that was! For now: Viva Cinema, criminals and artists!
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