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Reviews
Hair (1979)
Timing is everything
This smash stage hit took ten years to reach the big screen and that spelled doom -- it died big at the box office. In '79, Vietnam was five years over, the original hippies were pushing middle age and gone mainstream, students had nothing to protest even if they wanted to, disco and punk were the rage. There was no audience for this film. I wore the grooves out of the Broadway cast album as a high school student in the late '60s but had zero interest in seeing the movie when released.
About eight years ago I finally rented the video and was staggered by how fresh and full of life it was. I'm not alone. Bruce Williamson, the former longtime A-list critic for Playboy and current professor of film studies at Columbia University, has for years screened "Hair" for his students and loves the reaction it always gets: the college kids rave and can't believe how, for most of them, they hadn't even known it existed.
In today's suffocating politically correct environment, this movie could never get made. The songs "Sodomy," "I'm Black" and the hilarious "Black Boys/White Boys" would bring more than a few advocacy groups out of the woodwork. The original score spawned an amazing five hit singles with "Hair," "Aquarius," "Good Morning Starshine," "Let the Sunshine In" and "Easy to be Hard" (the last powerfully performed by Cheryl Barnes in the film).
For me the true test of a film is, did I care about anyone? Here, I cared about all of the characters I was supposed to.
I watched the DVD the other day and, as the U.S. readies for battle with Iraq, its anti-war message resonates anew. If there was ever a timely moment to see "Hair," it's now.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
O Wizard, Where Oz Thou?
Okay, why am I the only person to catch this?
The scene with the Klansmen in the woods chanting/singing/marching in formations has been described here and in the media over and over as a Busby Berkeley parody. Wrong-o! It's an homage to the scene in "The Wizard of Oz" where the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion knock out three of the witch's chanting/singing/marching guardsmen, dress up in their uniforms and rescue Dorothy. In "O Brother," the escaped cons knock out three of the Klansmen, disguise themselves in their sheets and rescue the black guitarist from being lynched. Even the way Clooney, Turturro and Blake awkwardly move and tug at their sheets is a precise mimicking of the three characters in "Oz." It's brilliant!
Shouldn't I win some kind of prize?
Chicken Run (2000)
Have you PETA chicken today?
Though entertaining and well-crafted, I was disturbed by this movie's reckless subliminal message to kids: chicken farming is evil, eating eggs is evil, and eating chickens is evil (plus, more obviously, chickens should be set free). PETA's zealous fingerprints are all over this movie! (PETA being People for the Ethical treatment of Animals.) Like most zealots, whose basic premise may be sound -- yes, animals of course should be treated with respect -- over the course of time the zeal for the cause often overwhelms reason and common sense.
If everyone indeed stopped farming chickens and eating them and their eggs, the species would quickly perish. Why? They have no other place in nature. Since before recorded history, chickens have always been bred and raised for their eggs and meat. Anyone ever seen a wild chicken fending for itself out there? Release them all tomorrow into the woods and forests and fields and just see how long they last.
Which the filmmakers seem to recognize at the end, by showing the escaped chickens living happily ever after, not amongst the other creatures of the wild, but in the protection of a former bird sanctuary.
Rosetta (1999)
More Dogme 95 doggerel
If I had known this movie was filmed in the exasperating and quease-inducing Dogme 95 style, I would never have rented it. Nevertheless, I took a dramamine for the seasickness and gave it a shot. I lasted a very, very, very long forty minutes before giving up. It's just boring, pretentious twaddle.
The last French movie I saw was "Romance" and it too was pretty dismal, but at least the camera was steady and not breathing down the necks of the characters all the time. I am baffled at the continuing popularity of Dogme 95 overseas -- it'll catch on in America about the same time as the next big outbreak of leprosy. (It's called Dogme 95 because that's the average number of times the actors are poked in the eye by the camera.)
Mission to Mars (2000)
A Good "Date Movie" in Space
"Mission to Mars" is first and foremost a very touching love story set in space -- but Disney didn't have the courage to promote it for what it was. I think a lot of people just sat there watching and waiting for the usual shtick: a breathless, explosion-laden, lights-flashing outer space thriller with the good guys battling some unstoppable ooze-dripping alien.
If that had been what I was expecting, and I was inflexible, I guess I'd have been disappointed too. My own expectations were completely open, having not seen the trailer or even read the reviews. "Mission" is not without its flaws, but it made me care about the characters and what happened to them. What's more important in a movie than that?
"Mission" has the nerve to feature a romantic zero-gravity dance scene, certainly a sci-fi first. And it works, wonderfully. It's one of the touches that make the later spacewalk scene with the four astronauts not only utterly gripping but more heart-wrenching than anything I've seen in a long time.
Women in Love (1969)
Merchant-Ivory should've taken notes
Recently seeing Oliver Reed in "Gladiator" brought "Women in Love" to mind, though God knows why. Maybe I was impressed by how Reed could keep a straight face while speaking lines like "Let the great whore suckle us until we're fat, and happy, and can suckle no more!" and it made me rue for the days when the man performed his juiciest roles, as in "Women in Love."
Moviegoers who for the last decade have heaped praise on bloodless Merchant-Ivory films such as "Howard's End" should rent "Women" for an idea of how these period pieces can truly resonate. Ken Russell packs more urgency, complexity and real human emotion into any five-minute span of "Women" than Merchant-Ivory ever did in two hours.