Change Your Image
Bill Slocum
Reviews
Barcelona (1994)
Great characters, great scenery, great lines
There are people in this world who think "Barcelona" is just a film about soft-living, navel-gazing preppies with perfect hair and term-paper vocabularies. These are the same people who like Vinyl Hampton music.
What's not to love about this sensitive, off-kilter love story about a young, too-earnest salesman Ted and his sly, disruptive Ugly American cousin-with-issues Fred? Nothing. The film grabs you from their first bickering exchange in Ted's apartment building, and never lets go, not because of fast-paced editing or shiny visuals (though the film doesn't drag and Barcelona at night is a wonder) but because of the clever dialogue. Whit Stillman makes films for people who love to read, yet they are not stilted exercises in "Masterpiece Theater"-style draftsmanship but laugh-out-loud exchanges of opinion between engaging people who just happen to see the world in sometimes very/ sometimes slightly different ways. It's like "Friends" if that cast suddenly grew brains. Give this movie five minutes, and it will suck you in like a vacuum.
Ultimately, what grabs me is how the film is so chock full of life, of people who haven't got much of a clue about life winging it and hazarding the consequences. I remember those days. Ted pledges to date "only plain or even homely women" because he thinks beauty obscures the true essence of love. Fred tells people his cousin is into the Marquis de Sade and leather underwear because he thinks it makes Ted more interesting to the ladies than the Bible-reading goody-goody Ted really is.
Actually, Fred may be on to something. It seems to help Ted in meeting his dream woman Montserrat. Ted and Montserrat are an odd couple. He wrestles earnestly with his religion and believes in salesmanship as a means of understanding life, while she is a free-living, free-loving Spaniard who thinks leaving her native land for America will condemn her future children to a life of hamburger-eating zombiedom.
I was in Barcelona in 1981 myself and saw first-hand how beautiful and magical the place truly is. I also saw the anti-Americanism and anti-"OTAN"ism prevalent there. Stillman isn't overselling the negative attitudes many in Spain and throughout Europe had of the United States during those critical days of the Cold War. It's a good thing they got that out of their system, huh? The movie could have been heavy-handed in this way, but never allows itself to be, not with all those funny ant analogies. Ramon, the left-wing writer who fingers Fred for being a member of the CIA (or the AFL-CIA, as Ramon is convinced the labor union and the intelligence agency are somehow connected), is not stupid or mean, but just like Ted and Fred, a little too caught up in his own ideas of how things are, or as Ted puts it in a moment of truth at the hospital, another person given to filtering reality through his own colossal egotism.
Whit Stillman seems to be averaging two films a decade now, and it's a shame. He and Chris Eigeman need to make more movies together. I never get tired of Eigeman's snarky charm, or Stillman's ability to create films equally rich in one-liners and in context. "Barcelona" was the finest of Stillman's three efforts, with the best story and backdrop, but the earlier "Metropolitan" was not far behind. "Last Days of Disco," the most recent Stillman film, wasn't as good as the first two, but is engaging and absorbing enough on its own terms. If you haven't seen any of them, start with this one.
[The DVD contains several interesting deleted scenes and an alternative ending which might have made the film a bit darker but wouldn't have disrupted anything essential. Still, it's hard to argue with an ending that has Montserrat bite into an authentic American hamburger and pronounce it "incredible." At least unless you're a vegetarian, in which case Fred would probably say that's your problem.]
Caddyshack (1980)
Good, but no classic
It's funny how it works out. When the Brits come up with a story about class conflict and the virtues of staying true to oneself, they come up with "Great Expectations." Instead, we come up with this.
I like "Caddyshack," sometimes quite a bit. But I don't love it, and that puts me in the minority. It's a film that has improved with age, not so much because the years have revealed hidden layers but because its fans tend to amplify every minor joke in it to the point of a cultural touchstone. A writer at ESPN.com, The Sports Guy, has a Mecca-like attraction to the film, and actually excerpted a series of "Caddyshack" quotes to help preview the NFL 2002 season. And made it into a two-parter, to boot. I love the Sports Guy; I just wish the film bothered to displaythat same level of ingeniousness.
Part of my problem is I'm rooting too much for Ted Knight, even though I know I'm not supposed to. Everyone else acts so reflexively cynical, but Judge Smails has an endearing innocence about him. Just check out that way he laughs. When he holes that putt with Billy Baru, I just want to leap out of my seat and holler, until I realize what happens next. Knight's performance is great because he lets you in.
Bill Murray and Rodney Dangerfield are good, and that's all. They have funny lines, and fun characters, but either they or the script kind of leave them in neutral much of the time. Dangerfield's Czervik kind of grates, while Murray's Carl Spackler just makes me think of Brian Wilson after a while, and his failure to interact with anyone else in the case kind of leaves him lost in space.
I like Chevy Chase in this movie, more than a little. This and "Funny Farm" were the only two films of his I've seen where he bothered to actually play a character, and Ty Webb is an interesting one. Of the privileged class yet endearingly an outsider, Ty seems entangled by his circumstances (the writer didn't pull his name out of a phone book), and wanting something more, something real, something he knows is not his to get: "Danny, I'm a vegg." The way he looks at Cindy Morgan's Lacey Underall and says "Let's pretend for a moment we're two real human beings," is almost heartbreaking when you really notice it. On the pure funny side, well, you have his putting ("na-na-na-na") and his evening drop-by at Carl's bachelor pad. Plus he gets all the best lines ("That's what they said about Son of Sam.")
But there's so much dead space in this one, too much gratuitious nonsense. The whole Danny Noonan thing is wasted, and it's only the main plot. His girlfriend's annoying, Brian Doyle-Murray should have stayed behind the typewriter, and the whole slobs-vs-snobs thing feels too tacked on and manipulatively rigged. When the caddies crash the pool, you are supposed to root for them, and want to, but they are just too obnoxious. People who love "Caddyshack," absolutely love it, are the same kind of people who think it's funny to stick their chewing gum in someone else's catheter.
Anyone else notice the horn on Al Czervik's boat makes the same sound as the one in his car?
Halloween II (1981)
The film that made the franchise, but whose the real killer?
"Halloween II" is stupid but fun. There's no getting around what the film is at heart, an teen exploitation film now older than its intended audience was back in 1981, and showing it. Back in 1981, the deal was you walked in, told the ticket girl you were older than you looked, plunked down your $3.50, and got to see some nudity and gore served up with a smattering of suspense and lots of red dye #2. Telling people you saw the film later on, the one with the needle in the eye that was so much gorier than the original "Halloween," bestowed upon you the same bragging rights you might get riding the steepest rollercoaster at Great Adventure or Playland. Now however, the film feels tired, lame, a trifle slow afoot, much like its villain.
Still, I've watched this movie a dozen times, and like it. Maybe it comes from the same ugly part of me that enjoys "Pac-Man Fever" and Charo episodes of "The Love Boat." But it seems to me "Halloween II" is genuinely entertaining, that it continues to be popular with so many people, never mind its predecessor, because it inspires some moments of real dread and plays to some elemental fears, what Dr. Loomis calls "the darkness inside all of us." I still remember how I soaked up every inch of the big screen searching the tree-lined shadows and darkened hospital corridors for the man in the mask. Donald Pleasance has fun with his role, and makes a vivid, offhandedly dynamic impression amid an otherwise droopy cast. There's a couple of effective scenes near the beginning involving Michael, especially one where a teenager, listening to a radio bulletin about the first batch of murders, suddenly hears a sound in the next room and wheels around in a state of compelling fright. The look on her face, as they say in the commercial, is priceless, and still gets to me. Of course, walking into the room right after is probably not a good idea, but they all do that in these types of movies, don't they?
Here's a theory: "Halloween" was the better movie, but "Halloween II" made the franchise. A lot of the things we associate with "Halloween" came not from the first movie but here, such as the effective theme music (heard less substantially and much less suspensefully in the original), the notion of Michael as something other than human, the molasses-methodical nature of Michael's killing spree, the connection with Laurie, Dr. Loomis's signature trenchcoat, his insistence he shot Michael six times...
Something about that Dr. Loomis guy bugs me. They say Halloween II is different because Michael kills more people, 12, as opposed to just five in the first one. But when you really look at it, Dr. Loomis is the real culprit. You have that poor Ben Tramer, nothing to do with Michael, whose bad luck it was to be walking down the street when Dr. Loomis's blood was up, and who was killed only because he got drunk, walked too slow, and chose to wear the wrong mask (which was nothing like Michael's, by the by, not that Dr. Kevorkian could be bothered to notice). Later Dr. Loomis forces a federal marshal to turn around (at gunpoint, no less), thus sealing another innocent's fate. Of course, there's Michael himself, roasted like a briquette in one of the worst breaches of the doctor-patient relationship in the annals of psychology. In fact, this may be a controversial comment, but if Dr. Loomis had simply waited for Laurie to get hers in the opening scene, the Haddonfield Memorial Hospital team might still be with us today. Alright, so Budd would have still been with us, too. But did we have to lose Nurse Karen? And Jill? Now, there was a hottie who did not deserve to die.
I can't give this movie so much as a passing grade, but I probably will watch it again before I watch "Citizen Kane" or "Chariots Of Fire," which won the Oscar for Best Picture the year Halloween II came out. So who am I to call Michael crazy?
Hallelujah (1929)
A milestone set to music
Did you ever notice that early sound pictures somehow seem older than late silent films? Maybe it's because the pacing is off. Everyone in the industry was just getting the rhythm of motion pictures right in silent form when somebody stuck sound into the mix. It was one thing to act on stage, but film work requires different timing, more natural projection, and (especially in the early days) the ability to get one's performance across a set of very unsophisticated cameras and microphones. Most early talkie actors had little experience and no clear idea what they were supposed to do, because it wasn't something anyone had much practice in.
Of course, "Halleujah's" actors had even more of a problem in that sense, because if there weren't many talkies in the first place, there were that many less featuring black actors. And "Halleujah" is all black actors. Was this maybe the first "Blaxplotation" film? Could be. One thing's certain: You won't find nothing white on that screen but cotton, and that's quite something for 1929.
Also quite something is Nina Mae McKinney, one lovely bundle of chocolatey sweetness, as she is introduced while we see her jitterbugging on a dock in a short skirt with a lucky 7 dice motif. The wrong woman to flash your wad at, as in money. Those eyes, that smile... She's Halle Berry for the Hays Code days, and she is quite special to watch, a bad girl with ragged streaks of gold running through a conniving heart. If it hadn't been for the time, and had she been given the chance to develop and work off the rougher edges of her craft, she could have wound up as celebrated as Garbo, instead of a brief if captivating film-history footnote.
The rest of the cast is good if not as arresting, and the film captures a very authentic feeling right from the get-go that draws you in and keeps you there, even after the story starts to drag a bit in the second half. Yes, there's a lot of things that will bother the politically correct, the first word in the script is "Mammy," the three little brothers can't afford clothes without patches but still wear tap shoes, and there's scant King's English to be heard. But understanding the times it was made, its hard not to relate to this very human story of redemption and forgiveness.
Was "Hallelujah" a particularly religious film? I don't know. Most every person embracing religion seems to be made out to be either a sap or a hypocrite, and Zeke in preacher mode is right enough unbearable. But there is a real spiritual dimension to this film, that of finding strength and determination in a world of misery and woe. There's also some eerie, arresting scenes: Chick whaling on Hot Shot when he tries to stand in the way of her "path to glory;" the ride of doomed brother Spunk through the red-light district of the town; and the baptism sequence with the high wails of the congregation set against the hushed majesty of a bucolic forest. Much good music, too, not helped by a scratchy soundtrack, but spellbinding all the same. Worth watching and listening to.
Casualties of War (1989)
Flawed treatment gathers steam in second half
Released at the end of a decade of big Vietnam films like "Apocalypse Now," "Full Metal Jacket," and "Born On The Fourth Of July," "Casualties of War" occupies a smaller and more intimate space, almost resembling a TV movie apart from the cussing. Based on a short non-fiction account by New Yorker writer Daniel Lang, the minor-key treatment kind of works in the picture's favor, putting character before spectacle.
What doesn't work in the film's favor is surprising. Brian De Palma's a great director of suspense and action, but he stumbles early here, with a silly sequence where a trapped soldier is menaced by a Viet Cong soldier crawling slowly through a tunnel. It's a VC tunnel, so why is Charlie crawling? Just walk over and stab the guy, right? But here, and a little later with the fate of Brownie, De Palma telegraphs his punches in ham-fisted style, and the picture drags. And what's the use of hiring the greatest actor of his generation if he can't give a decent performance? Sean Penn's mannerisms are off-putting throughout. If you're going to do De Niro, okay, but at least choose whether it's going to be the guy from "Taxi Driver" or "Midnight Run."
On the other hand, Michael J. Fox is actually very good, overcoming his callow 80s cut-off-tie image with a performance of hidden depth and complexity. How do you deal with a group of fellow soldiers who set out to perform a despicable act, but whom you are bound by trust and duty? How far do you push to see justice is served, when you don't know if it can do any good?
The film gathers force and mission in the second half, with a powerful climax to the kidnapping segment and then a gripping, satisfying search for justice that features maybe the best use of a shovel in cinema history. The dialogue sometimes ODs on steroids("What happened in the field stays in the field"; "Oh, you think this is over?") and there are some awkward visual metaphors, but it holds together for repeat viewings well. I like the confrontations with Capt. Hill (Dale Dye from "Saving Private Ryan") especially.
Some liberties were taken with the book: There's no Brownie in the Lang account, nor Hatch. Diaz isn't an unwilling cherry, and he has a cousin who is in on the rape, too. Eriksson didn't try to lead the kidnap victim to safety in an unguarded moment, and Sgt. Meserve didn't save his life (he saved someone else's immediately after his crime, for which he was nominated for the Bronze Star.)
The bookend sections are weak, particularly the ending, which is so lame it makes sense the screenwriter all but disowned the work after De Palma rejected a tougher conclusion. But "Casualties" is a strong movie all the same, about more than just a war. How do we hold onto a code of morality in a world of chaos and random violence?
As Eriksson says, both in the movie and the book: "We all figured we might be dead in the next minute, so what difference did it make what we did? But the longer I was over there, the more I became convinced it was the other way around that counted - that because we might not be around much longer, we had to take extra care how we behaved."
Ocean's Eleven (1960)
Slow fizz
Heist movies are by nature slow, but the pace on this one is positively glacial. Frank Sinatra is Danny Ocean, ringleader for a squad of paratroopers who figure on striking it rich by hitting five big Las Vegas casinos on New Year's Eve.
It's a great concept, and using it as an excuse for a Rat Pack summit meeting promises a lot. Those guys had talent to burn, and charisma, too. Unfortunately, "Ocean's Eleven" never really delivers. Sure, it's amusing in parts, but never funny enough to qualify as a comedy. It's too logically challenged to work as a caper flick. Worst of all, the film builds no real suspense for most of its two-plus hours of running time. As many folks have said already, it just took too long getting started. Obviously, "Ocean's Seven" would have been a better idea, focusing on three casinos, or even just one or two.
I liked Dean Martin in this one a lot. His performance of the terrif "Ain't That A Kick In The Head" is a real charmer, and he fills out some other scenes nicely. But most of the gang is strictly surplus cargo. And Sinatra, well, he's great in a lot of movies, lending them the right mixture of vulnerability, range, and surprising self-effacement, but here he plays that same smug, hepcat hard guy that dragged down his Tony Rome movies and other lesser vehicles. Sure, the Chairman was cool and looks swell in those sharkskin suits, but I didn't like his character, and when he's the central figure, that ties down everything else from the get-go.
"Ocean's Eleven" is one of two '60s films I'd call "Happening pictures," the other being "Casino Royale," where the big reason for its existence seems to be simply to bring a lot of show biz talent in one place and let all else take care of itself. "Ocean's" works better than it otherwise would only because of nostalgia, for its view of the old pre-theme-park Vegas and a time when men were men and preferred unfiltered cigarettes and dames who blended well with the wallpaper. "Casino" was just stupid from the start, but "Ocean's Eleven" had a chance to be more, if the screenwriters plotted it out better, developed some focus, and crafted characters you could care about.
One dynamite thing in the film everyone notes is the ending. There's two, and they are both good, the resolution of the story (alright, the writers had one inspired moment) and the final shot of the characters walking out with the names on the marquee behind them. That last shot has been recreated many times, from "Buckaroo Banzai" to Quentin Tarantino, but never surpassed. It's one moment of style that has some substance to it. Too bad substance is something the rest of the film is so desperately wanting.
L.A. Confidential (1997)
This is how to adapt a novel
This is one great movie, rightly deserving its laurels on this site, but the real appreciation of the art behind it is possible only after reading the book. James Ellroy's novel has lots of color and verve, but O.D.'s on tough-guy bravado and runs off on some loopy tangents (like one that can be best described as Walt Disney meets Charles Manson) the film does well to barely hint at or leave alone entirely.
Both book and movie benefit from roundelaying off the same three characters, Bud White, Ed Exley, and Jack Vincennes, and much of the great dialogue in the screenplay is lifted right off the page. Ellroy has a gift for white-hot dialogue, and Curtis Hanson and Brian Helgelund preserve the best of it for the viewer.
What the movie has over the book is focus. Every scene in the movie pops on its own while feeding directly into the next. The novel is dragged down by an array of ancillary characters, most distinguishable only by their level of moral decay, who fly in and out with their side stories so fast its hard to keep track, and harder to care. There's such a thing as too much sleaze. A good example is Jack Vincennes. In the book, he is nicknamed "Trashcan" and is so deeply into porn and narcotics his turnaround seems almost suspect until its too late. In the movie, Kevin Spacey transforms him into a wonderful Dean Martin devil-may-care concoction who scoots through the muck without getting his toes wet, until he makes the mistake of reconnecting with humanity. He sort of does that in the book, too, but in a less convincing way.
Here's what else the movie has that the book doesn't: Rollo Tomassi, the Victory Motel finale, the good-cop bad-cop showdown with the D.A., the poor wanna-be film actor Matt Reynolds whose scene with Vincennes ("When I came to Hollywood, this isn't what I imagined") is one of many that gives the film real heart. It also has some amazing set designs, riveting acting, Kay Starr, and Frank Sinatra.
If you liked the movie, read the novel. It's not boring, and Ellroy knows how to write ("My Dark Places," a memoir of his tough adolescence, is one of the best books I've ever read.) You will gallop through "L.A. Confidential's" 500 pages like Bud White chasing down a wife beater. But mostly I think you'll come away impressed as I was over just how good an adaption can be. It's true in general the book is better than the movie, but this is the exception that not only proves the rule, but shows other screenwriters and directors how it can be done.
The Guns of Navarone (1961)
Every bit as good as you remembered...
For any boy growing up when I did, back in the late 1970s, it was well understood that "Guns of Navarone" was the sine qua non of adventure films, a movie you called friends about when you saw it listed in next week's TV Guide. It's hard to believe so much time has gone by, both since my boyhood and since the film was made, but "Navarone" still holds up very well, a character-driven film alive with nuance and subtlety. It moves at an assured clip, not rushed or forced, making the viewer follow its story through every agonizing twist and turn.
What makes the film especially good is the crisp dialogue, lines that point up the moral and philosophical argument at the heart of the film and which resonate today as much as then:
Mallory: The only way to win a war is to be just as nasty as the enemy. The one thing that worries me is we're liable to wake up one morning, and find we're even nastier than they are.
Franklin: I can't say that worries me!
Mallory: Well, you're lucky.
Good performances abound, but the best by far is David Niven's Cpl. Miller, a complex character whose smooth front and witty banter conceals much of the conflict of the film. It's he who tangles most often with Gregory Peck's Mallory, and has at least three scenes in the film that are top-rate. We may like Miller because he keeps things humming and provides welcome comic relief, but he's no less the center of the film than Peck or Anthony Quinn, the two well-cast leads whose relationship is enriched, at least from our remove, by the unique vow Stavros has made to Mallory about the unsettled business between them.
The plot is a thing of beauty, moving with all the synchronicity and clever precision of a diabolical cuckoo clock. The special effects have suffered more than a bit from the march of time (though one should remember that was the only part of the film that won an Oscar in 1962). Some process shots are cringe-inducing now. But the pace is still gripping and the payoff spectacular. Here's the film that was the template to every popcorn actioner that came after, its imprint recognizable on everything from the James Bond movies to "Star Wars" to Indiana Jones. That's impressive, but more so is that "Guns" remains as entertaining as any one of them, and more thrilling than most.
All the President's Men (1976)
Somehow it seems thin...
What happened to the rest of the story? The film ends with vigorous denials from the White House that chief of staff Haldeman controlled a secret slush fund, Post editor Ben Bradlee saying he stands by the story, Woodstein learning they went adrift when they assumed CREEP Finance director testified to the Grand Jury about Haldeman's involvement (he had only told the pair he'd have no problem with them writing such a thing, cue Felix Unger here), Woodward telling Deep Throat they will resign if they got it wrong, Deep Throat telling him to get out his pad, the reporters typing away in the background while Nixon is sworn in on TV in the foreground, then a series of chattering newswires (dated before and after August 9, 1974, so pay attention) building to the climax of Nixon's forced resignation. All in about five minutes. The end.
So when did Woodward and Bernstein get back on track and nail the story for good? How did they salvage those Pulitzers from the mess they made? You can read the book if you must know, but don't look for answers in the movie. The producers were running out of time. The movie had already run 150 minutes and the story was barely out of 1972. Much more ground needed to be covered, so they threw together one of the most frustrating "let's-end-this-sucker-now" climaxes ever shot for such a critically-regarded film. It's frustrating, because there seems so much more story left wanting here.
What we do see is good, good enough to whet our appetite for more. The arc of the story is vigorously paced and well-detailed (much of the problem is they ran out of time filming lesser things like Bernstein's visit to the Florida DA's office) and overall offers one of the best depictions of the idealized journalistic lifestyle you'll ever see. Yes, there's too many talking heads, and phone calls, and fluorescent lighting, but that's what it was and it was a hell of a story. Its strong dramatic punch never feels forced or anything other than natural. Every performance seems special in some way, but there's no attention being called to the acting at all, or the sets, or the costumes or music. The quotes are the only thing that really stick with you, which tells you screenwriter William Goldman's approach was properly journalistic in approach as well as content. It's a terrific approach, and it works. But the structure of the story needed more work.
No question this was a tough film to make in 1975, with all the major Watergate figures still alive and hiring lawyers. But if I was Ben Bradlee, I'd send this one back for a rewrite. Not because it's not good, but because it could have been better.