"Man on Fire" (2004) - why do I like a roman à clef

I have watched “Man on Fire” (2004) many times. If it is on or I see it available, I will watch it. I think I got some free movies on Vudu once and bought a copy (although I no longer have any idea how to get to that account). I really like this movie.

Denzel Washington is a large part of my enjoyment. In my opinion, he may be our greatest actor*. His portrayal of the tortured warrior, whose heart is broken by a child, and set on a path for vengeance is fantastic. I cry everytime they are reunited at the end. As for the rest of the cast - Dakota Fanning, Chris Walken, and Giancarlo Giannini are superb. The rest of them carry their parts well enough. Mexico City plays a very nice role. When you lay on Tony Scott’s directing + Paul Cameron cinematography + Christian Wagner editing + the sound design, you get a VERY tense and violent thriller. The music cues are really great.

While John Creasy (Denzel’s part) is a trope of story writing, in terms of a roman à clef, the Sanchez brothers (the kidnappers) are based on real people. I am struck that Hollywood can not write a character worse than human beings can produce. These two spent 2 years kidnapping at least 18 people in Mexico City, cutting off their ears, and collecting $40M USD in ransom. They have spent 25 years of their 40 year sentence in prison so far. I think Creasy’s behavior is a reasonable stand in for the approach that the Mexican Federal Police used to apprehend them. As a result, they may be resentenced soon due to the methods used.

*I wish he and Meryl Streep would do more work together.

Their performance in “The Manchurian Candidate” from the same year is the only one I can find. It is blah - and I blame Demme & the screenwriter for that. Like “Man on Fire”, they had an excellent cast, a book and an excellent original film to base it on. And with that, they produced a film which is decidedly lackluster. It is cool that Roger Corman did some acting in it though.

"Cocaine Shark" (2023) - Not since "Suburban Sasquatch" ...

Mark Polonia has made almost 80 films since 1985. That is 2+ per year. There was a 3 year pause in his proliferation after his twin brother & production partner John died in 2008. If you consider that he (they) didn’t really start cranking out this entertainment until 2000 - it is more like 3 per year. If he keeps at it as long as they did, he will pass Richard Thorpe and William Beaudine (credited as directing ~180 each). Wowzers.

His particular craft is low-low budget. Lower than Roger Corman or Lloyd Kaufman even. Polonia’s production values are limited. You get 2 or 3 sets with plenty of establishing shots to fill the transition. You get special effects and creatures which look like they were assembled by a junior high art class. You will see the same actor playing multiple parts, married couples acting together, and a lot of the same names showing up in multiple different releases. You will see the same people + sets in 2 or 4 of these movies in a room; I assume many of them are shot contemporaneously.

What you also get is an earnest piece of entertainment. Polonia (or Corman / Kaufman for that matter) is not trying to impress you with a visual spectacle or award worthy performances. They are making a living and providing work for people telling a story that entertains. And they do that over and over again.

“Cocaine Shark” is marketed as a sci-fi horror film but is more like a double episode of “Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer”. At 70 minutes, it is mostly a tale about an undercover cop infiltrating and trying to disrupt a new drug ring taking over the US from Atlantic City, NJ. A ton of self-referential voice over narration by the ¿main? Character. I think most of the movie is being told as a flashback; it doesn’t really matter. I fast-forwarded through the dramatic scene between ‘Mike Hammer’ and the femme fatale, but the dialog was just what you might think it was if you were to write a scene after reading the Wikipedia article on the character.

There is of course a cocaine shark. Actually, there are three different hybrid, blood crazed creatures who were formed because of their exposure to the designer drug in the movie. None of them look much like the cover art. None of them are really consequential to the story.

One of the things I like to do when I watch these films is to make up famous(ish) actor names for the actors that are there. The first guy you meet is a hybrid of Jon Lovitz+Michael Peña. The ¿main? character is a garage-sale Oscar Issacs. You can play along at home.

"Trollhunter" (2010) - The Swedish Chef meets The Blair Witch

I am sorry to Ragnar for my title tagline - I have friends and acquaintances from Sweden, Finland, and Denmark, but I can not place a single person I know who was born in Norway. I only know one Swedish Chef and that is mostly by reputation - but that was good enough for the bit. Jokes are way better when you have to spend 70 words explaining them.

‘In Poland, we don't ask, we do. Why problem make when you no problem have you don't want to make?’ - Piotr, the Polsk bjørnejeger. That should have informed the student film crew when they took off investigating the eponymous Trollhunter. The line where one of them compares themselves to Michael Moore made me laugh. I saw them as more Geraldo Rivera.They were similarly charming and unfortunately got into more trouble than he did interviewing those skinheads.

This movie is fun. The dialogue is dry and funny. The acting is great. Even the cinematography is good for such a low budget, shaky cam,‘found-footage’ piece of work. The action is exciting. The special effects are pretty good. The intent is for it to be dark and frightening, but there are enough bright, colorful scenes to appreciate that contrast. It is ‘scary’, but more in the vein of “Where the Wild Things Are” (2009) than perhaps 20 minutes alone with your thoughts after watching “Make Way for Tomorrow” (1937). It earns the high praise of my pausing the show to refill my water glass and get pretzels.

I think there is only one scientific inaccuracy that I caught. One of the characters gets infected by rabies. I think the progression of the virus typically comes with 30~90 days of an asymptomatic incubation period. This dude was showing signs of infection within a couple of hours. I called bologna on that.

If I could make one edit, I would have trimmed a few minutes off riding in cars looking out the windows. It was not so bad that it took me out of the mood. I was grateful that James Nguyen hadn’t made this. It would have been 30 minutes longer and we would have watched the entire ferry ride in real time.

"No Way Out" (1987) - brilliant if it had been 104 minutes long

Neo-noir or noir-revival. Crime drama or psychological thriller. Whatever. If what it takes to fit these labels is characters making nihilistic moral choices as a result of desperate circumstances - then “No Way Out” (1987) fits right in the zone. It even says so in the title.

We get a gorgeous 32-yo Kevin Costner playing beside 28-yo Sean Young and against Gene Hackman. It is brilliantly performed and super intense. You can see how Costner became a star. This is 2 years after “Fandango” and “Silverado”. It came out at the same time as “The Untouchables” and right before “Bull Durham”. His star-ness was definitely anchored here. Sean Young’s character is more complex than you might want to credit at first - and they were easy to believe.

The only characterization I couldn’t get behind was Will Patton. He was played to be a deviant / sociopath. He did that great. Unfortunately in 1987, they had to out him as homosexual just so we would know how truly awful he was. For the 2023 viewer, this needless bash stood out. There was nothing about his character which appear “gay” and his homosexuality was not relevant to anything - except to tell the audience [now this explains some things]. It made me a little sad.

I read there is an uncredited Brad Pitt as a party guest, but I missed him. Mostly because I was too caught up in the show to watch for people crossing in the background. The cinematography is a tourist reel for Washington DC. Director and Writer earned every penny. It is based on a 1940's book (‘The Big Clock’) which I can’t find, and there were two other movies based on this book that I also can’t find.

If I could do one thing, I would chop out the first and last 5 minutes. Those 10 minutes are a confounding twist that are a distraction from the rest of the story. You don’t need them. You don’t want them. They are meant to be a MacGuffin, but they are whatever you call a MacGuffin that is unnecessary - a MacWHY? That is what I said to the screen during the final scene anyway.

It was a fun ride all the way through - a pre-90’s thriller, when there was still some thrill to the show.

"The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964) - a lush opera

Classified as a musical romantic drama, I would call it an opera. There is NO spoken dialog. The way the characters flow and move, I wondered if the music was diegetic to the scenes. They are certainly singing (even if their sound is voice-overed after the fact) - but it looks to me like they are listening to the same soundtrack as the audience.

It stars Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon, Marc Michel, and Ellen Farner. I almost watched it about 100 times simply for Ms. Deneuve - but now that I have seen it, I would watch it 99 more. I want to go find more projects with Anne Vernon in them. She was my favorite.

This is set in France during the Algerian War. That is the catalyst that tears these lovers apart. In spite of everything being sung-through and the score doing some of the lifting for the character’s moods or feelings, I found the acting to be compelling and naturalistic. Teen lovers act like teen lovers. The unrequited beauty acts like a jilted young adult. The windowed mother acts like a parent with a breadth of concern for herself and the well being of her daughter. Even the attractive interloper is easy to understand. The timing of their relationships is contrived, but it doesn’t feel rushed or weird. That is unusual for cinematic drama (although maybe not for mid-60’s French cinema).

In addition to all that, especially when you think of 1960's film, the sets, lighting, and cinematography is GORGEOUS. It is a work of visual art from top to bottom. A friend of mine described it as lush. I think he misspelled it: LUSH!!

Sherlock Jr (1924) - a perfect movie

I went down the rabbit trail of silent era comedies this week. This church is held up by the three pillars of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd (Their characters I have respectively titled as the Hapless, the Scamp, and the Buffon). Having watched several different works of art from these three, I think they should be considered required viewing and study for film making, stunt design, and comedy writing.

I think calling Keaton “hapless” is close - but not quite on the nose. He has an insane amount of luck, but just not when it comes to getting ahead in life. Chaplin's character is a homeless tramp, but he is more of a hilarious mischievous small-time criminal. And Lloyd, whether playing ‘Luckless Luke’ or ‘Harold’ with glasses has a graduate degree in clowning. They are all supreme stunt coordinators and performers.

I tried to make a critical comparison of the three, but I just don’t have it in me. They are all different and each very good. Keaton was my favorite. I did find a Chaplin movie called “One A.M” (1916) in which he plays a different persona than the Tramp. I believe he titled that character “the Inebriate” - it is 25 minutes of a well-to-do Chaplin trying to make it upstairs to sleep it off. It is very funny.

I will make this declaration - “Sherlock Jr” (1924) may be a perfect movie.

Buster Keaton plays an employee at a movie theater who gets into a bit of conflict with a cad who is trying to steal his girl. In the end all is set right. From top to bottom, you are looking at a hilarious character, a series of “dialogue” jokes with double meanings and wickedly clever puns, stunts that would make the “Fast and Furious” or “Mission Impossible” teams have to think hard, and visual effects that are really astounding (even without remembering this is from 100 years ago). Keaton takes you on this ride and makes you laugh and gasp and shake your head in disbelief. There are scenes in here that left me surprised he ever walked again. He uses very few inter-titles. He has mastered 'show, don't tell'.

I highly recommend it.

List of movies I watched - I laughed out loud during every one of them:

• "Sherlock Jr" (1924) - Keaton
• "One A.M' (1916) - Chaplin
• "Safety Last" (1923) - Lloyd
• "Neighbors" (1920) - Keaton
• "The Railrodder" (1965) - Keaton
• thanks Shaun - this is his LAST silent film ... and while not as fun as his much earlier work, it was a good example. He made one more after this just before he died of lung cancer.
• "Making a Living" (1914) - Chaplin
• "Lonesome Luke, Messenger" (1917) - Lloyd
• "City Lights" (1931) - Chaplin
• "Never Weaken" (1921) - Lloyd

"Un flic" (1972) - double meaning if you speak French and American slang

Google Plot summary: ¿A movie about a Paris police chief whose life investigating violent crimes has left him despondent. After beginning an affair with a beautiful but cold woman named Cathy, he befriends her boyfriend, Simon, a local nightclub owner?

Uh yeah - that is not really what this movie is about. This is a heist film - more akin to “The Thomas Crowne Affair” (1968)/(1999),  “Heist” (2001), or “The Score” (2001). Except: a) the focus is on the policeman rather than the criminals b) it doesn’t have a happy ending c) no one wins.

Yes the Cop does have an affair with Cathy under the nose of her boyfriend Simon - but Simon & Cathy are manipulating him while they stage their caper. The cop is brutal in his pursuit of the criminal gang. There is a great female actor playing a transvestite homosexual man who is a snitch. The cop is cruel to her, taking her information and resenting / abusing her for it. The cop is indeed despondent, but his response is not depression. It is anger and violence. 

The movie includes several action sequences including a 20+ minute sequence cut in real time of the main crime that is riveting. I squirmed in my chair. I am pretty sure Chrysler corporation sponsored the film - so many Dodge cars on the streets of France.

I watched because it stars Catherine Deneuve (hubba hubba), and I thought it was cool to see Richard Crenna & Michael Conrad in a French film. Crenna sounds like he read the lines in ADR. I am pretty sure someone else was speaking for Conrad. You can watch it with or without subtitles - there really is not much dialogue.

This was the last movie directed by Jean-Pierre Melville before he died the following year. Melville is supposedly the spiritual father of French New Wave art film. While I am not sure what that means - this picture is dramatic, exciting, and tragic. The scenes, characters, and editing are great. I can understand how it would influence other filmmakers. It is a great piece of storytelling.

"Repeat Performance" (1947) - être noir ou juste noir et blanc

 

This is supposedly categorized as noir, but I think it is missing some key components. There is a crime, but it lacks the cynical attitudes and motivations. There are aspects of the lighting style which are in the neighborhood of noir, but it is more about the dramatic effect of the set design. I guess there is a femme fatale (maybe two of them), but she is an antagonist to the heroine more than a key element. You could have swapped them out for any number of alternatives. I don’t think this is noir - just black and white.

This movie is a fantasy film similar to the Frank Capra flick. It is about doing the year 1946 over. There is a very short, narrated voice over when the time jump happens that tells the audience - Joan Leslie is the only one who will know. She is second billed, but this movie is ALL her.  She is attempting to avoid the tragic circumstances of the previous year - and makes a very believable case for what a human person would do in that situation. Her husband is a lush and distraught over his professional failure and so he drinks, is abusive, and has an affair.

If there is one thing that didn’t make sense to me is what either Joan Leslie or Virginia Field saw in him. Ms Field is a female cad, but a successful and driven professional … so I never quite understood why she would want that sot in the first place. Joan's loyalty made some sense, but she could clearly do better.

Natalie Shafer is here. At 47 years old she looks gorgeous. She was 64 on “Giligan’s Island” (13 years older than Jim Backus - and supposedly concerned enough about that to make demands on how she was lit & shot). It is not much of a part - she is playing a dramatic version of Lovey Howell. Tim Conway is supposedly also in this movie, but he would have been ~13, so while I looked for him, I don’t think I recognized him.

There was a remake of this thing made for NBC in 1989 - I found a Spanish dubbed version on YouTube (“Regresar al Pasado”). It is not as good as the original, but it is faithful to the story & characters. Even in Spanish at 2x playback it made me remember when we used to have TV movies like this. It stars one of the great [Ladies of the 80’s] Connie Sellecca. If we had Mount Rushmore for 80~90’s leading ladies; well … I can’t see her bumping off Anne Archer, Bonnie Bedelia, Kathleen Turner or Angela Bassett, but she would be in the conversation. Tourists would argue with each other at the gift shop about her being overlooked.

"Rain" (1932) - 80~90 years too soon

What happens when you take a top glamor star of depression era cinema, and put her in an unglamorous role with deep moral themes about religious hypocrisy? You get a critical & financial bomb at the box office.  If your audience came in hoping to escape from their dire circumstances - and you give them a slow burning conflict of mores on opposite sides of the spectrum, they are not going to dig it. The critics will say the characters are ‘satisfactory’ or that the star is out of her depth. 

I say - Bpppffftt! If you took that movie and redid it shot for shot today - it would sell. You probably could not fill theater seats with it. We don’t go to see these kinds of movies anymore; however, there are any number of streaming services that could / should reproduce it. It is public domain now, so that door is wide open.

The director did a great job (even if he is uncredited). The story was based on a play - and I would argue that you could almost stage it the same as he shot it.

Joan Crawford was good. The plot summary says she played a prostitute - I am not sure how we know that from the film. She seemed more like a woman who was not in the least bit prim, but I failed to see anything she did or said that implied she was trading herself for money. The so-called supporting cast were good, but the one other actor who made the bill, Walter Huston was a little too much of a stereotype. I think his wife should have been and was, but I thought his portrayal was a bit flat for what that part needed. For example, I sort of guessed how the climax would happen about 5 minutes before we got there, but I don’t think he sold the buildup very well. I was a little confused about what happened until the 3 minutes of wrap-up before the end credits. I can place part of the blame on the sound guy and modern TV speakers. It probably would have been more obvious with a decent sound system. *

This is a pre-code movie, and so I was looking out for what would become code violations. In this case, the most obvious one was when one soldiers slapped Ms. Crawford on the bum as she danced. I happened once - you could not actually see it, but the foley artist earned their pay & Ms. Crawford certainly acted accordingly. I could hear Will Hays sigh and shake his head.

*I think if you can tell what is going on without sound, that is a pretty good director + actor combination. Joan Crawford passed that test with excellent marks. Walter Huston got a C-minus.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 3 (2023) - the olive garden of the MCU

If I had it to do over again, I would have waited for streaming.

A melodrama is constructed for strong emotional appeal. The sensational tug on your inner feely-wheelies takes precedence over the story. There is dialogue which is bombastic and excessively sentimental. Characters are flat as a pancake. The struggle is against some outside force. Music plays a big part in setting the tone and informing the audience.

And THAT is “Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 3” (2023). Sprinkle in some visual spectacle and a dash of camp, and you have the James Gunn space soap opera. Not opera - soap opera. It is a giant, velvet drawstring bag on his MCU legacy. The film has lots of shouting. Lots and lots of it. Lots of spittle. Lots and lots of it. Lots of ‘bum-bum-buuu ummmm’ moments. Lots and lots of it. Lots of tears on top of too much makeup. Lots and lots of it. *sigh*

The action setups were game quests with exposition cut scenes between. Many of the jokes were set up - remind you of the set up 20 minutes later - punchline 20 minutes after that. Some of the jokes were set up and then forgot to hit the punchline entirely. There was interpersonal conflict between main characters, but at this stage in their shared history I would have thought these issues would have been worked through long ago.

If there is one thing that I don’t need in a 150-minute movie, it is 20+ minutes of denouement. Holy moly I was ready for it to wrap up. If there is another thing I don’t need, it is a cast party integrated into the movie. It was a spectacle meant to tell me this party was over. It actually told me that my rear-end was ready to stand. I wonder if there are theaters where the audience joined in. I wish I had.

What did I like?

The little bit that Elizabeth Debiki was on screen. They changed her makeup quite a bit, and made her simper and whimper more, but still a great role. There is an exchange with her and the big bad guy that I thought was brilliantly written. This version of Drax was the Drax from the first 10 minutes of the first film - the one who took everything literally. That was good for some laughter in the theater. The new ship they got was cool even if incomprehensibly complicated. The who’s on first / where’s on third kerfuffle before the final fight could have been great, if they would have skipped the drawn own ‘escalating stakes’ that were resolved as soon as they squeezed in some of the umpteen effects shots they paid for.

This movie is fine. If you are looking for a similar tone to the first two installments, you will be a bit disappointed. There are aspects of those films here but that is not what the movie is.

A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) - I cried and laughed

“A Gentleman in Moscow" is a 2016 book by Amor Towles*. There is also an 8-episode TV series on Paramount+ / Showtime that I have not seen. This write up is about the book.

Count Alexander Rostov, a Russian nobleman who, after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, is sentenced to lifelong imprisonment in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel (1). That is as concise a summary as anyone could write. It tells you nothing about this book. This is a study of a character over the course of an adult lifetime. He starts half my age and the story closes as he is nearing my parents’ age. The backdrop is the transition from tsarist to communist Russia, but this is not an allegory on the merits of communism or autocratic rule. This is a story about people. There is a rich collection of supporting and side characters. These are people you know - not the fantasy players in a le Carré novel.

Essentially all of the action takes place inside the walls of a fancy hotel. There were scenes of polite and mannered company. There were scenes of impolite and ill-mannered company. There was love and romance and petty fighting and rotten scheming. Scenes of the divine and mundane. It made me want to listen to Édith Piaf.

85% of the book is a character study. I tried on the characters, wore them like a suit of clothes, and admired ourselves in the mirror. We looked really GOOD. I also had the chance to asked myself "what was I thinking?" 15% of the book is a thrilling adventure. I raced up to it, pushed my way through the queue to get on, tightened in my seat on the way up, and caught my breath as I squealed with joy down the chicane on the backside. I had a BLAST. I also got time to imagine how this ride is a small world.

In terms of language and storytelling, reading it is like looking at those GIANT canvases they have at The Louvre. Maybe “The Appearance of Christ Before the People” by Alexander Ivanov in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow is a more appropriate example.** Like that painting, there is a LOT of detail and imagery. There is metaphor upon metaphor. There is a story and another story in there depending on the sector where you focus. Also like that painting, there is an opportunity for you to put yourself and your friends in if you want.*** It is too big to see all at once - I was down with it.

On a technical note: what is it called when the author tells you to look forward to something coming later? If you were going to say ‘foreshadowing’, that was not what Towles did. Foreshadowing is a literary device which gives the reader a hint. Towles uses the equivalent of a serial trailer that goes ‘Tune in next week, when we see how the Count deals with [this]’. I could not recall having seen that before in literature. He knew just when the reader might ask [Where is this thing going?] or [Could I just get some sense of closure for this person?]. I felt like I was being worked by the storyteller - I was down with that too.

At this point in my consumption of literature, it is not that often that I am taken away by the author of a piece. “A Gentleman in Moscow” did that. I cried and laughed - because I know that relationship and how I acted or wished I had in my life. The story came into my dreams - making me imagine how the people went on outside the novel. I am grateful to my friend for placing the story in front of me - I hope I can return the favor. I don’t want to sully their grace by turning it into a transaction, so I will just say: спасибо и дай бог здоровья

*Amor Towles - Towles surname is from the Old English name Toll; dweller, or collector, at a tollhouse. I read that 6 times before I stopped seeing ‘troll' (I kept saying - he is not that bad looking, that is really mean). Amor is based on a Latin word used in English speaking countries and it means ‘love’. I unpacked his name, because based on his brilliant wordplay, and careful exploration of persons and relationships during/after the Russian Revolution, I assumed he was part of The Diaspora. Maybe I was just placing my hereditament on this Love Troll … and yet … speaking as someone whose names have almost nothing to do with his patrilineage - I guess you never really know.

**In terms of Russian paintings, I am very partial to “Girl with Peaches” by Valentin Serov, but it is only ~3ft square - that just didn’t work with my analogy.  Ivanov’s canvas is huge at 5.4m x 7.5m (17.5ft x 25ft). The Louvre doesn’t have a lot of large format Russian paintings - and it seemed wrong to use a French or Italian artist for this comparison.

***Ivanov put himself and his buddy Nikolai Gogol in that painting. I think it is serendipitous that the picture I chose came from the period of the first half of the Russian Empire - a time after they defeated Napoleon, and before the Crimean war - and well before the Bolsheviks. A time when Russia could afford brilliant painters, musicians, authors, choreographers and thinkers. I hope for Russia that we have that again someday.

(1) https://www.supersummary.com/a-gentleman-in-moscow/summary/