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/

Coffee and Cigarettes (2004) - how do YOU watch an anthology?

 

“Coffee and Cigarettes” is an anthology. Anthology is a fancy word for assortment or album or compilation. My favorite synonym is miscellany which means ‘a mixture of things’. That is probably the most appropriate way to describe this film.

So how do you consume a mixture of things that are related in style, but otherwise can be chewed on as separate pieces. Same way you used to listen to a new album, I think. Does anyone listen to albums anymore? I watched it straight through, but I think watching each of the 11 scenes in increments of 7 or 8 minutes probably works as well. If I go back to it, that is what I will do. There are elements of the sets and cinematography tying them together. There are lines of dialog that are unrelated to each other from one scene to the next, but they make a loose repeating pattern as well.

This movie is a compilation of 11 scenes with two or three characters each having a conversation while they smoke and drink coffee. It is black and white. That is it.

I watched it for a several reasons - 

• Roberto Benigni & Steven Wright do a scene which is straight out of Abbott and Costello. Very fun to watch these craftsmen work.

• Spike Lee’s siblings Joie and Cinqué are in it. Cinqué is the only actor that shows up in two different scenes, although he is not playing the same character. I like Spike and his family's acting work.

• Iggy Pop and Tom Waits do a scene together which won an award in Cannes in 1993. I don’t normally think much of film festival awards, but in this case, they knew what they were judging. I will watch just about anything with Iggy Pop or Tom Waits*, but to get them together was a cool thing.

On top of that, I found a younger Cate Blanchette. I guess she appeared ‘twice’ as different characters also, but in her case it was the same scene as she played herself and her cousin. Bill Murray shows up with the Wu Tang Clan; I am not sure how many other times you will get to say that.

The takeaway for me from these pieces of work is the sense that people can hang out and be civil and conversational, even if in cases that didn’t happen for any noble purpose. In some cases, they are thrust upon one another, in some they are making each other squirm, some they are looking out for each other or just sharing 6 minutes of their lives. In all cases, they are being social and communal in a way that people yearn for** and doesn’t happen so much anymore. I should stop watching movies and go talk to people.

* I will also watch just about anything with Henry Rollins. I need to think of a fourth to carve into my Mount Rushmore of people really known as musicians but that show up as compelling actors.

** It is certainly an attractive trope of LOTS of movie and TV - I am looking at you “Friends” and “Cheers” and a jillion other movie or TV set pieces.

Running with the Devil (2019) - Ok folks, let's make a ¿something?

How do you take a 100 minute movie with Nick Cage, Larry Fishburne, Leslie Bibb, and Barry Pepper - as well as Cole Hauser, Adam Goldberg and Peter Facinelli - and somehow make an unwatchable stew of tones and over the top cliches? I think you give it to a TV director, TV writer, and TV editor.

I could not actually finish it. Even for me, that is pretty bad. 

It is a series of scenes that could have been part of a TV-series, but they weren’t. They were just the beats from a TV-series. Maybe it was put together by some people who read the wikipedia article for “Traffic” (2000) - then sketched a storyboard for a telenovela - then remembered they were making a movie and just cut it back down from there. It is like it has been sequentially translated into 2 different languages, each time by someone who wasn’t a native speaker.

Set designs were thrifty, but not too cheap. Cinematography is somehow gray and lurid at the same time. If there was a highlight, it is the music. It was the only thing that informed me of what I was supposed to be feeling or thinking. I would not buy the soundtrack, but I wouldn’t turn it off if it was playing.

Something that made me laugh: when they introduced characters, they freeze frame and spelled out their role on the screen in animated letters next to them. For Fishburne, when he walked into the scene the words “THE MAN” were stenciled on the shot. A stronger case of nominative determinism has never been made.

Lara Croft vs. Tony Stark - a comparison of Earth's mightiest defenders

I watched “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” (2001) recently. It is not nearly the deep exploration of the human psyche I remembered. Maybe that is why I had time to think that her story has a lot of similarities to the MCU Iron Man, just smashed into a single movie. There is not the same degree of character growth for Croft as for Stark, but there is an archetype here that stuck me.

They are both:

• Athletic with distinctly styled dark brown hair

• Exceptionally smart & adventurous

• Utilize clever tools and gadgets

• Snarky / Funny / Patronizing to the people around

• Attended to by an attractive personal assistant

• Rich / Entitled / Play(boy/girl) / Philanthropist-ish

• Compelled to protect the world from BIG evil

• Driven by living up to a relationship with father

In terms of contrasts:

Laura Croft rides a motorcycle, listens to hip-hop and talks with a posh (and yet reed thin) English accent.

Tony Stark was able to build [a hockey puck sized nuclear reactor] in a cave! With a box of scraps! 

(Jeff Bridges is the best)

That sums them up.

I am not sure that there is the same character development for video games as there is for comic books. I suspect LC started as an aesthetic style first, and her persona came in later - probably a lot of it being rounded out as part of the movie making. In contrast - TS has been a character in the making since his origin in the 60’s. 

Regardless, I wonder if this list is what young males dream about being. More likely this is what movie studios, comic book publishers, and video game designers can package that they think that young males should dream about being. That is probably how these archetypes are defined - a smoking hot meatloaf of relatable and unrealistic characteristics with just enough clothes + makeup to get you to think that could really be you (for about 110 minutes anyway).

As an aside - if you decide to gift “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” with a rewatch, let me know what you think about Rachel Weisz’ husband’s accent - it was a real hit and miss thing for me. He had it cranked up an octave to get his ‘Murican on. I think he tried his best, but it is glaringly obvious that after a while they gave up and ADR’d much of his dialogue. If you get confused and end up watching the 2003 “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life” instead - that is Gerry Butler, and he doesn’t bother trying to sound anything but Scottish. Thank goodness.