R.I.P. Carrie Fisher: Postcards From The Edge Had So Much Potential!

The Good: Good performances, Some wonderful lines (both funny and dramatic), Good direction
The Bad: Glosses over much of the complexity of recovery and narcissism
The Basics: The moments of insight and wit make Postcards From The Edge a worthwhile film to watch, even if it is not nearly as complex in its resolution as the set-up indicates it might be.


When news broke that actress Carrie Fisher had suffered a heart attack on December 23, my heart sunk. 2016 has been a brutal year for deaths of beloved celebrities, writers, musical artists, and actors and while I joined my voice to wish for the best for Carrie Fisher and her speedy recovery, I had no reason to believe that 2016 would alter its momentum and Fisher would recover from her good health. So, when I awoke yesterday to the news that Fisher had died, I was very sad, but not surprised. The days between the two major news stories gave me time to consider what I would write as a tribute to Carrie Fisher.

Like most people, my first and enduring encounter with Carrie Fisher came from her iconic portrayal of the strong-willed Princess Leia Organa in the Star Wars Saga (reviewed here!). Fisher also delivers brilliantly the lines that help create my favorite moment in When Harry Met Sally . . . (reviewed here!) and that got me thinking about how much I came to enjoy watching interviews with Fisher over the years for her candid nature and wry wit. So, when Fisher was hospitalized, it occurred to me that the greatest tribute to Carrie Fisher I could provide would be in reviewing something new (to me) that illustrated Fisher's humor, honesty, and creative skill. For that, I decided it was time to watch Postcards From The Edge.

Postcards From The Edge was released cinematically when I was a teenager, shortly after I had discovered and become obsessed with Star Trek and was fully immersed in that culture. Ironically, a film that addressed in a straightforward manner mental illness probably would have served me better at that time in my life, but Carrie Fisher's cinematic adaptation of her own novel on the subject of substance abuse and living in the shadow of parental pressures is worthwhile and smart. This review is of Postcards From The Edge, which Fisher loosely based upon some of her own life experiences; while some might belabor making the connections between the art and the reality, I am opting for a pure review of the film as it stands on its own.

Actress Suzanne Vale is working on the set of a film, where she is having a rough time of getting through her lines because she is high and the director she is working with tries to avoid cuts in his shots. Shortly thereafter, Vale is unresponsive in bed with Jack Faulkner, who rushes her to the hospital. After her stomach is pumped and she regains consciousness, Vale has to confront her drug abuse. Her celebrity mother comes to visit her in rehab, whose narcissistic tendencies make it difficult for Suzanne to confront her issues. Coming out of rehab, Vale discovers that it is hard for her to get work again because of her history with drugs.

Vale is given the chance to act again if she stays with "a responsible party" during the shoot. Drug tested on the set, Vale is forced to live under her mother's roof where she is subjected to her mother's expectations and pressures. Doris (Vale's mother), puts Suzanne on display and pressures her to perform publicly at a party she throws for her daughter and it becomes clear that Doris is trying to remain relevant and active through Suzanne. Returning to the set the next day, Vale gets a lot of notes on her performance and overhears people talking about her physique, which make it tough for her to give a good performance. After her second day of work, she runs into Faulkner, who starts to pursue her. When Faulkner visits Vale's home, Doris hits on him, but Vale willingly gets into a relationship with him. But, when she learns that Faulkner is sleeping around and she tires of her mother's drinking around her, Vale begins to fight for her own identity and stand up for her own hopes and dreams.

Postcards From The Edge is tough to discuss without some references to Carrie Fisher because Meryl Streep's portrayal of Suzanne Vale so perfectly captures some of the cadences of Carrie Fisher as to make it painfully obvious that the character, or Streep's performance, is based upon her. Streep adapts a speech pattern virtually identical to Carrie Fisher's in many of Vale's most potent deliveries of irony and exasperation. Streep makes Vale accessible and interesting, even as viewers become more and more frustrated with the environment she is in and the people who surround her.

When Vale starts to realize that Doris is her "x-factor" that brings her the stress that begins to make her tempted to use drugs and alcohol, Streep is able to break out and make Vale seem vital in a way that the first half of the movie does not. When Vale asserts herself, Postcards From The Edge starts to take on a richness and level of intrigue that turns the uncomfortable comedy into a potent drama. Streep succeeds more as Vale when she can be heard - there are a number of scenes where she and Shirley MacLaine talk over one another - and Postcards From The Edge works best when it is focused on her.

It is not long into Postcards From The Edge that it becomes obvious that Suzanne Vale is struggling under the yolk of pressure and expectations from her narcissistic mother, Doris. Doris hijacks the party thrown in Suzanne's honor and flirts with Faulkner in a troubling way. Postcards From The Edge does an excellent job of creating a narcissistic character in the form of Doris Mann, but glosses over the complexity of confronting and surviving toxic people in order to deliver a "feel good" ending.

Postcards From The Edge does a rare thing in confronting familial alcoholism and substance abuse and creates a vivid portrait of a horrible narcissist . . . but to get the film into a hundred minute run time and be easily classifiable, the movie creates a situation that is complex and realistic, but then resolves it remarkably simplistically. That makes Postcards From The Edge a bit less satisfying than it ought to be, especially given how good all of the performances are and how decent the characters are when they are allowed to breathe and develop.

Perhaps that is the most fitting epitaph for Carrie Fisher, who railed against having to look a specific way in order to appear in the newest Star Wars films; she worked in an industry that values style over substance and Fisher had a mind for complexity and realism where consumers buy into flash and simplicity. The sad truth is that Carrie Fisher might well have been better as a writer and human being than she was ever allowed to be as a performer and she (and her audience) deserved better.

For other 2016 tribute reviews, please check out my reviews of:
Blackstar - David Bowie
Mother's Day - Garry Marshall
Strangers - Merle Haggard
Firefly Soundtrack - Ron Glass

6/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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As Bad As It Was Rumored To Be: Superman IV: The Quest For Peace Finishes The Saga Poorly.

The Good: Moments of concept, The acting is not homogenously bad
The Bad: Atrocious special effects, No real character development, Plot takes a pathetic turn, Some gut-wrenchingly bad acting, Daily Planet buy-out subplot, Time spent maintaining the Clark Kent/Superman conceit.
The Basics: After a decent start, Superman IV: The Quest For Peace falls completely apart, earning its status as one of the worst films of all time.


Sometimes, a good concept is just ahead of its time. Sometimes, however, a concept is just plain bad. I sat down to Superman IV: The Quest For Peace after hearing for years just how terrible a film it was. But when the movie began, I quickly began to construct in my head a positive review of the movie. After all, there was a greater sense of the entire world almost immediately presented (Superman is not simply an alien refugee who has adopted American culture – he helps the Russians, Chinese, and others in the film) and the basic concept of the movie is not a bad one.

Superman IV: The Quest For Peace is not, as some would like to call it, homogenously bad. In fact, even with its ridiculous sense of idealism and public service messages early in the movie – save the family farms, subway travel is safe and reliable, mega corporations buying out independent newspapers is bad news - Superman IV: The Quest For Peace has its moments. But, just like Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (reviewed here!) is fine up until the first explicit mention of god, the moment the movie shifts from Superman succumbing to peer pressure from a child to end the nuclear arms race to Lex Luthor’s plot to create Nuclear Man, Superman IV: The Quest For Peace takes a downturn into absolutely horrible.

Opening in space, Superman rescues some cosmonauts from an out of orbit satellite. Back on Earth, Clark Kent has to sell the Kent family farm, but insists on selling it to someone who wants a family farm. Lex Luthor, still in prison, is rescued by his dimwitted nephew, Lenny. With the nuclear arms race between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. heating up, a child writes to Superman to ask him to do away with all of the world’s nuclear weapons. Superman has to seriously think about that and in his time of deliberations, Clark Kent is hit on by the newspaper’s new owner’s daughter and Superman reveals himself once again to Lois Lane (and wipes her memory clean again).

But Superman’s good deed of ridding the world of nuclear weapons only creates a market opportunity for Lex Luthor, who starts selling weapons to the three biggest buyers on the planet. At the same time, he creates a villain based on Superman’s genetic material who is powered by the sun (and in a terrifically cheesy special effect, born in it) whom he intends to use to dispatch Superman once and for all. But, despite a prolonged fight on the moon, Nuclear Man and Superman fight to an obvious resolution and Superman does not fundamentally change.

Superman IV: The Quest For Peace succeeds for a few moments when it dares to ask the question of what limits a super hero ought to impose on the world that depends upon them. For sure, Superman’s life would be a lot easier if he did not have to constantly worry about how he might save the world from a nuclear missile barrage from any one hostile nation against any of the others. But, his moralizing leads him to question how much influence over the lives of the humans he ought exert. That can be a very compelling character conflict, but in Superman IV: The Quest For Peace it is not. Ultimately, Superman just succumbs to a child’s annoying pleas and the media backlash against him to make the decision.

Even so, Superman IV: The Quest For Peace manages to have Superman deliver a fine speech to the U.N. on why he is deciding to act before the movie becomes fully unhinged. And the film does come unhinged then. From the ridiculous net in space special effect to the terrible performance by Mark Pillow as Nuclear Man to the prolonged WWF-style fight on the moon between Nuclear Man and Superman, Superman IV: The Quest For Peace just becomes unmentionably bad. And while some might belabor the special effects (wires pulling flying characters, like Nuclear Man as he flies through the floors of the Daily Planet Building, remaining visible), I just see that as the fetid icing on the rancid cake. The film is pretty lousy without taking into account the special effects.

For one thing, Superman IV: The Quest For Peace wastes an inordinate amount of time on a scene wherein Superman and Clark Kent are expected to be at the same place at the same time. While Superman IV: The Quest For Peace does not make the audience groan by using the time travel card (based on the resolution to Superman - reviewed here! – Superman could technically go back in time and if he did that, he could theoretically go to dinner with Lois and Lacy as Clark and then again as Superman, occupying the same time and place in two bodies, one who was older and had already experienced the events), the audience groans and then spends several more minutes bored as the contrivance of Superman leaving Lois and Clark leaving Lacy happens back and forth as he juggles . . . for no particular reason than neither Clark nor Superman finds a way to decline coming to the dinner in the first place.

Christopher Reeve is frequently overshadowed for non-fighting screentime in Superman IV: The Quest For Peace by Margot Kidder. Even so, Kidder seems to be going through the motions as Lois Lane in Superman IV: The Quest For Peace and she is herself undermined on-screen by the way director Sidney J. Furie focuses on Mariel Hemmingway’s Lacy at every possible opportunity. Gene Hackman’s return to the franchise as Lex Luthor is not worth noting, nor is Jon Cryer’s appearance as Lenny.

In short, Superman IV: The Quest For Peace is a lackluster continuation of the franchise that nearly buried it. If only the makers of Batman & Robin (reviewed here!) had learned from the Superman franchise’s errors!


For other films with Jim Broadbent, be sure to check out my takes on:
Cloud Atlas
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 2
Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince
Inkheart
Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull
The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe
Nicholas Nickleby
Gangs Of New York
Bridget Jones’s Diary
Smilla’s Sense Of Snow
Blackadder’s Christmas Carol
Brazil

1.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all my film reviews!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Despite The Cheesiness, Superman II Is Still Fun.

The Good: Decent general plot, Moments of Lois Lane’s character.
The Bad: Entirely campy, Lex Luthor’s character/dialogue, Utterly cheesy special effects, Craptastic background acting.
The Basics: More fun than truly substantial on the character front, Superman II might hold up poorly over time, but it still entertains.


As audiences flock to Man Of Steel (reviewed here!) this weekend, I am enjoying a retro-Superman weekend. Taking in the films of Christopher Reeve and revisiting movies that I only vaguely recall from my childhood now on DVD. Today, it’s Superman II, a film I have not seen since I was about ten years old.

Superman II is a fun movie, but it is a great example of superhero camp as opposed to truly compelling cinematography. In fact, watching Superman II now, it is hard not to look at the hokey idealism of Superman in Superman II and feel like it was acting as a distraction from the political and social disillusionment that followed Watergate and the Iran Hostage Crisis. Superman appears as an absolute good who is an ideal that is virtually impossible not to idolize. That type of monolithic good hero lacks complexity and Superman II runs with it, as opposed to challenging the archetype.

Following a fast-forwarded version of Superman (reviewed here!), Clark Kent arrives at work at The Daily Planet where he learns that French terrorists have seized the Eifel Tower and are threatening to blow it up with an atomic bomb. When he learns that Lois Lane has gone to France to get the story, he transforms into Superman and rescues her. In disposing of the atomic bomb in space, he inadvertently releases the Kryptonian prisoners from the phantom zone, General Zod, Ursa, and Non. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor plans his escape from prison and he believes he has found Superman’s weakness based on how he flies north whenever one of the major powers tries to track him. When the Kryptonians destroy the American lunar lander on the moon and they head to Earth where General Zod plans to rule over all humanity.

When Lois and Clark are sent to Niagara Falls to investigate a honeymoon swindle, Lex Luthor makes his escape and arrives at Superman’s Fortress Of Solitude. Lois becomes convinced that Clark Kent is Superman and she throws herself into the river above the Falls to test that theory. By not turning into Superman to rescue her, she comes to doubt her theory. As Lois launches into a pity party for herself, the Kryptonians start to explore “Planet Houston” and Lois discovers the truth about Clark Kent. While Lois and Superman get to know one another better, Zod and his people take East Houston, Idaho and get their message out beyond the tiny town when the military tries to stop the Kryptonians. After Superman gives up his powers to be with Lois, Zod makes his move and takes the White House. With Earth surrendering before Zod, Clark Kent must get his powers back and thwart the three Kryptonians without losing his identity and integrity.

What works in Superman II is Lois Lane’s character. Lane starts out the film as the classic female damsel in distress character and she evolves into a woman hurt by how the man she idolizes ignores her and then develops into an actualized heroine who is willing to stand up for herself. After Superman gives up her powers, Lois actually kicks some ass (or tries) and that is a nice change for the supporting character who is usually relegated to screaming in the background. And the moments where Clark Kent actually is focused on as an actualized character, Superman II is actually compelling. Clark Kent wants to be able to stop fighting and fall in love, but the world needs Superman. Despite the shallowness of Lois Lane at some moments, she is mostly an interesting character in Superman II and the resolution of her character through a somewhat artificial Mcguffin is disappointing.

The redeeming quality of the villain in Superman II is that General Zod is smart enough to exploit Superman’s compassion for humanity as a weakness. Both Zod and Ursa have no problem with using Superman’s love of humans and Lois Lane against him. Otherwise, Zod is just a monolithic villain who wants to rule the world . . . for no particularly compelling reason other than the fact that he is the most powerful man on the planet at this point. Lex Luthor is predictably treacherous, but presented in Superman II as a ridiculous villain, just as he was in Superman. Criminals usually do not go around touting that they are criminals and Luthor in these movies is more silly than superior.

The real problem, more than the writing and the lack of realistic character development that goes deeper than the idealism of Superman is that the acting in both the foreground and the background. The extras cast in Superman II are among the worst in any film ever. The hammy deliveries and overacting is just gut-wrenchingly bad. Gene Hackman is also uncharacteristically bad as Lex Luthor. For a guy getting top billing, he seems not to care so much and in one of the climactic scenes opposite Terence Stamp’s Zod, Hackman slips into a ridiculous Irish accent that is utterly inconsistent with the rest of the movie. Why director Richard Lester did not demand another take is utterly baffling.

Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder have decent on-screen chemistry as Clark Kent/Superman and Lois Lane. Reeve is good at playing the duality of the nervous Clark Kent and the strong and unyielding Superman. Margot Kidder displays decent emotional range as Lois and while the ending to the film might not be in any way superlative, Kidder sells the resolution in a way that a lesser performer might not be able to.

While not, perhaps, part of the pantheon of great superhero movies or even particularly wonderful films, Superman II has its moments of nostalgic charm, if nothing else.

For other Superman works, please visit my reviews of:
Superman Returns
Man Of Steel: The Prequel
The Death Of Superman
World Without Superman
Superman: Sacrifice
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies
Superman/Batman: Supergirl
Brainiac

4.5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Birth Of The Legend: Superman Starts The Cinematic Franchise Well!

The Good: Character, Acting, Decent plot progression, Idealistic morality
The Bad: Obvious dialectic that “reads” as false, Incredible problematic ending, Much of the editing
The Basics: The definitive cinematic enterprise for the Superman franchise, the 1978 Superman (recut on DVD) stands up remarkably well.


When it comes to superheroes, I don’t know that I was ever a big fan of Superman. Superman represents an ultimate good, a surprisingly monolithic character who becomes almost all-powerful and there is very little one can do with a character like that. So, it is probably no surprise why it has taken me so many years to go back and watch Superman a film I last saw decades ago as a child and have never had the interest in watching again. However, in the lead-up to Man Of Steel (reviewed here!), I figured I would give Superman - and its three sequels – a viewing. That starts, obviously enough, with Superman, a straightforward origin story as direct as the title character.

I was pleasantly surprised by how good Superman actually was, though it is quite far from being a flawless film. I think the biggest surprise for me was how much time Superman spends on backstory and creating a larger story that works to flesh out the universe Superman will occupy. For all the legendary qualities of Christopher Reeve as Superman, it is astonishing how much of the film does not include him. It is almost 52 minutes into Superman when Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent makes his appearance. As well, I cannot think of a classic film that spend as much time laying the framework for the sequel as Superman does. That said, I enjoyed the Director’s Cut of Superman and actually found the full build-up to the revelation of the hero to be very satisfying.

On the distant planet of Krypton, Jor-El is part of the governing body that condemns three violent criminals to the dreaded Phantom Zone, where they will not be able to harm anyone. While Jor-El frequently disagrees with the council, he goes along with sentencing the three criminals. Jor-El, however, defies the council and allocates power to launch a vessel to send his infant child off-planet before Krypton is destroyed by the local star exploding and engulfing the planet. The child crashes near Smallville, in Kansas, where he is found by the Kents, an older couple who is astonished when the child, who appears to be a toddler, is able to lift the truck when it falls off the jack. Ma and Pa Kent raise Clark as their own son, raised to be humble and good. When he is in high school, Pa dies of a heart attack and Clark goes into seclusion in Antarctica where he accidentally creates a fortress of ice and crystal using a piece of his homeworld (kryptonite).

After assimilating the knowledge of his destroyed homeworld, Clark leaves his Fortress Of Solitude for Metropolis, where he gets a job with the newspaper The Daily Planet. There, he meets Lois Lane, a spunky reporter. After subtly thwarting a mugger, Clark Kent decides to fight crime seriously as his alter-ego, Superman. In addition to rescuing Lois Lane from a helicopter accident, Superman (as she eventually names him) stops petty criminals, rescues cats, and saves the President when his airplane has a mechanical malfunction. While Superman begins his ascent into the public consciousness and forms a bond with Lois Lane, under Metropolis, Lex Luthor hatches a vile scheme to make most of California’s desert into valuable real estate by reshaping the West Coast using a guided missile attack!

The first thing that struck me about Superman, after the long build-up that actually made Jor-El and interesting and vital character and did not neglect the early years of Clark Kent’s life, was how much humor Clark Kent is able to infuse into the movie. Christopher Reeve is remarkably funny as Clark Kent in both a physical comedy way and in the delivery of his naïve and idealistic lines. While Lois Lane has a running joke about misspelling words, it is Reeve and co-star Jackie Cooper (The Daily Planet editor Perry White) who have to deliver the punchlines and they are actually very funny with their deliveries.

The problem, though, with a monolithic good character is that they have to have a villain who raises their stature through their own evil motivations. Lex Luthor is the villain of Superman, but he is written with all the subtlety of a gorilla and little of the intelligence one expects from Lex Luthor. Luthor’s scheme is a surprisingly good one: he wants to use test missiles to blow up the San Andreas Fault to sink the most valuable real estate in the world into the ocean to make the worthless desert of eastern California (which he has bought up dirt cheap) the most valuable commercial property as a result. But how Lex Luthor refers to himself as a villain seriously undermines his own credibility. As Quark on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine notes in one episode, people who are involved in extralegal operations do not call themselves nefarious.

Moreover, there is no clear (in story) reason why Lex Luthor would tolerate his bumbling, idiotic sidekick, Otis. Otis is there for obvious comic relief and as a means to have Lex Luthor deliver exposition for his plans in advance of his confrontation with Superman, but smart people tend to surround themselves with smart, capable people who have the skills that they lack, but need. Lex Luthor does not need an idiotic lackey, he needs a highly functional assistant to has intelligence, but not ambition. Otis is anything but that. While Ned Beatty, who played utterly serious and functional on Homicide: Life On The Street (reviewed here!) exceptionally well, pulls off dumb and goofy in Superman it does not make his character of Otis any better.

While Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman lend instant credibility and stature to the film, much of the film rests on the acting strength of Christopher Reeve, Margo Kidder, and Jeff East. Jeff East plays the young Clark Kent and he does a masterful job of making Kal-El seem human and willing and eager to learn the morals of Ma and Pa Kent. East has the task of selling the idea that Clark Kent’s time in Smallville, Kansas formed him into a functional adult who would still have an idealism and goodness to him that came out even in his mundane identity of Clark Kent. East sells Kent as deeply human and tremendously good, having a difficult time understanding why he must limit himself to “pass.” He sets up Christopher Reeve with a strong foundation.

Reeve bursts onto the screen with a goofiness and physical presence that is disarming. He spouts off some of the most idealistic dialogue of all time and makes it seem like it is coming from a real person, which is quite a feat. He also holds his own as Superman, embodying a man with a physical power and sense of invincibility, without arrogance, that is exceptional. He and Margot Kidder have great on-screen chemistry and they make a charming screen couple.

While Richard Donner’s direction is fine and the long movie moves along at a pace that is reasonable, the editing by Stuart Baird is hardly extraordinary. There are any number of obvious and awkward cuts that pull momentum and undermine the flow of the film. I was impressed, however, how the miniature effects held up surprisingly well and how, for a wholesome film with a monolithic good protagonist, Superman still managed to engage.

For other live-action DC superhero works, please check out my reviews of:
The Dark Knight Trilogy
Green Lantern
Jonah Hex
Watchmen
Superman Returns
Catwoman
Batman & Robin
Supergirl
Wonder Woman

7/10

For other film reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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A Perfect Family Saga Of Weird Timelessness: The Royal Tenenbaums Stands Up!

The Good: GREAT characters, Acting, Mood, Plot, Production design, Soundtrack
The Bad: Nothing comes to mind . . .
The Basics: An amazing piece of drama, the Tenenbaum family stands on the brink of destruction until Royal returns to try to gain redemption in The Royal Tenenbaums.


I've had a thing about Ben Stiller for a while; I watch every movie with him I can and I end up disappointed. Mystery Men, Zoolander (reviewed here!), and whatever else I've seen him in. I repress the memories. I write reviews, then repress it. The Royal Tenenbaums changes all of that. It figures: all he had to do was take a dramatic role and he works perfectly!

The Royal Tenenbaums is a character study of a strange upper class American family. The film revolves around Royal Tenenbaum, a disbarred lawyer who abandoned his children twenty-two years ago. His children were all geniuses: Chas who is an international finance master, Margot who is a brilliant playwright who has stopped producing, and Richie who was an amazing and famous tennis player. Richie's friend, Eli, is a novelist who is also a drug addict. Royal's wife, from whom he has been separated is Ethel, is a psychologist who is being courted by her accountant, Henry Sherman. When Chas, widowered for a year, has a nervous breakdown, the Tenenbaums come back together in Ethel's house. It is at this time that Royal claims he is dying and moves in as well hoping to reconcile with his family. In the course of the film, it quickly becomes clear that Royal is a liar, Eli is horribly drugged, Chas needs help and Richie is in love with Margot. And Margot's husband, Raleigh has no chance with her.

The Royal Tenenbaums is a family saga about one of the oddest upper class families ever conceived. Written by director Wes Anderson and actor Owen Wilson, this film is like a "Magnolia" Light, with less torment or less obvious torment. Presented as if it were a novel, The Royal Tenenbaums periodically presents chapter openings and then continues with the characters actually progressing from the way the scene is set up on the page.

The magic of this film is that it has the feel of a novel. It has the complexities, the lines that we want to come back to again and again. Moreover, the sets are so richly colored and decorated it's visually impressive: beautiful to the eye. The incredible thing about the writing is that it has all of the pauses of paragraph breaks throughout the film. So, there are moments when the viewer comes in on the reaction to startling information being revealed and it works perfectly to have these shots that establish the scenes, then move. Perfect.

Add to that, the musical direction is amazing. The themes seem almost constant and when "Ruby Tuesday" belts out after a moment of profound revelation, the emotions in the viewer just burst over with Richie. All of the music is great and perfectly timed.

The characters are all intriguing. Chas is amazing in his wounded sensibilities, hurt and protective. He makes so much sense in lieu of his wife's death. But all of the other characters are equally intriguing. Margot's strange backstory is hilarious and Richie's life is just plain understandably tormented. So sad, but so wonderful to watch. Eli . . . Eli is just the strangest freak to grace the screen since Edward Scissorhands (though not in the same way).

What the viewer gets is a complex drama about how people interact and what binds individuals - especially in a family - again. Royal's quest for redemption from his family is complicated several times, yet still her perseveres.

What makes the film rewatchable often is the acting. The acting here is wonderful. Gene Hackman is great as Royal. He makes Royal horrible in his simplistic selfishness. He plays Royal different from every other villain he has ever created. He embodies the worst in fatherly neglect and he does it with a sense of humor.

Gwyneth Paltrow, Anjelica Huston and Owen Wilson are each great as Margot, Ethel, and Eli. But Luke Wilson plays a mature and complex role in Richie. He is a sensible character and Wilson plays the part with serious determination that illustrate his potential as a great drama actor.

But Ben Stiller does it here. He acts as Chas. He ACTS! Here he's not Ben Stiller playing Ben Stiller as Zoolander, here he's Ben Stiller playing Chas Tenenbaum. There's no hint of Stiller's ego and repetitive humor scheme here. He gets into the part of a paranoid businessman in a red workout suit. This is the role he deserves an award for.

That's not to say the film doesn't have humor. It's funny in a lot of places, but it's also horribly sad and wrenching. It may take a few viewings to understand all of the different elements - just as a great book may require more readings - but heck, who wouldn't want to see a well stylized film about a brother with an Oedipal Complex, a father in search of redemption and a paranoid man in a workout suit with children in identical outfits rushing around trying to save themselves. It's a lot of fun, but it requires initial patience. It's worth it, though.

A great cast, intriguing characters and amazing direction make this film a must see.

For other works with Bill Murray, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Zombieland
Get Smart
Charlie's Angels
Cradle Will Rock

10/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2002 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Prelude To NYPD Blue; I Bet Steven Bochco Loves The French Connection!

The Good: Decent enough plot, Great DVD bonus features
The Bad: No real character development, Plot intensive, Moments of predictability
The Basics: A disappointing Best Picture winner, The French Connection divorces character from plot to make a police story that makes little overall sense.


I've heard it said of such things as director's cuts to movies that whatever version one sees first is the version they are most likely to enjoy. I mention this at the outset to my review of The French Connection not because there is a director's cut, but rather because it is a very typical cop drama and in watching it, I kept finding myself thinking "This is a lot like NYPD Blue." I love NYPD Blue and because I was so attached to that long-running show, much of The French Connection underwhelmed me or seemed predictable to me.

I am also beginning to think that the best thing a director can do for their film is set it in New York City in order to get nominated and win the Best Picture Oscar. The French Connection won the Best Picture and while it is a very standard and obvious cop drama, it is remarkably dated. There are, for example, elements of blacksploitation films in some of the movie's earliest moments which have the cops chasing black men through the hood and shaking down predominantly black joints to clean them up. Still, I can see its influences and it is clear that it was a predecessor to my beloved NYPD Blue. The differences, though, make all the difference. While the protagonist of the television show, Andy Sipowicz, is a man plagued with demons, the protagonist in The French Connection just seems problematically incompetent.

Doyle is a New York City detective who is working the streets with his partner, Buddy. After a series of disappointing raids which net no real perps, Doyle and Buddy learn that the City is in the middle of a narcotics dry spell and that they expect will soon be broken. Doyle sees this as a great opportunity to nail the drug suppliers bringing heroin into the City. Learning that there is a supplier from France, Doyle and Buddy begin an investigation in earnest. When the dealer in Marseilles visits Brooklyn, the opportunity to bust the entire ring seems to have come.

But the dealers are not as incompetent as Doyle and while Doyle tries to tail the lead suspect, he is "made" and this puts him, his partner, and the investigation in peril. While the American buyers get skittish because of the obvious police dragnet being lowered on them, the French become more ballsy; looking to eliminate the police, starting with Doyle.

First, I have to ask, what the heck is it about movies in the 1970s and blood?! Blood in The French Connection., which is rated "R," probably because half a dozen people get shot in graphically bloody ways and the sheer amount of drug paraphernalia featured in the film, looks more like pizza sauce and it undermines the emotional resonance of some key moments when the effects look so fake. Did the subway police officer get shot or just have an accident at lunch? If you blink, you might be asking yourself that very question!

The French Connection seems campy by today's standards for other reasons as well; it utilizes far too many of the obvious conceits of a police drama. There is a car chase, though it is completely redundant because the viewer has just sat through ten minutes of Doyle chasing a subway with a car he borrowed from a citizen on the street. There are reversals and early in the movie it is no surprise at all that Doyle is pumping a police informant (or undercover cop) for information during the raid on a bar. What is surprising is just how bad the cops seem to be at their jobs in this. Doyle fails far more often than he succeeds and when he tries to tail suspicious characters, he always sticks out like a sore thumb. In fact, The French Connection would be a clever satire of police incompetence, were it not for the resolution to the movie. Instead, it stands as a strangely droll film where even with detectives who play one bad hunch after another, they still manage to stumble upon the result they are looking for.

The thing is, Doyle is hardly an empathetic character and while something like NYPD Blue is character-driven, The French Connection is exceedingly plot-driven. Doyle is not very good at his job, yet he still plays the generic cop hunches which allow him to find the extremely unlikely results that are more plot-convenient than the result of his great policework. The film is hard to care about because the results to not track with the efforts expended. Doyle fails to adequately track every perp he is after, yet he manages to come out with the desired results as if he had been the best detective ever.

The somewhat nonsensical nature of the plot and character elements can be seen in the movie in performances like that of Roy Scheider. Scheider plays the supporting role of Buddy and he actually looks bored through most of the film. As for the performance of leading man Gene Hackman, he is very hard to judge as Doyle. He plays Doyle with a steely disposition and obsessive facade that has become cliche. He is the generic pulp fiction police detective and he is somewhat monolithic in his performance. Doyle never seems human; he is all work and despite an early scene where he is frisky with a woman (and his handcuffs), Hackman plays Doyle with the monotony of a man who is all-business.

On DVD, The French Connection comes as a two-disc special edition that has two commentary tracks. The one with director William Friedkin is goes through the entire film and is focused on the technical aspects of making the movie, while Hackman and Scheider pop up only for a few scenes to talk about their memories of being onset. As well as having the original theatrical trailer, The French Connection has an additional disc with a documentary on the making of the movie, a BBC documentary and seven deleted scenes, which do not make the film substantially better. And there is a trailer for the sequel, which actually made my stomach turn a bit (just to think that they made a sequel to this).

In short, The French Connection is a dated, often-campy police drama which might have been seminal to paving the way to other works, but much of what came after succeeded at being more enduring than this actually is.

[As a winner of the Best Picture Oscar, this is part of my Best Picture Project available here! Please check it out!]

For other movies with police work, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
Angel Eyes
Columbiana
In The Heat Of The Night

4/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Unforgiven Is An Average Western Revenge Story.

The Good: Decent acting, Decent plot development
The Bad: Very average plot and character arcs, Light on DVD bonus features.
The Basics: An average film and an average Western, Unforgiven is entertaining, but is not extraordinary, even on DVD.


I've never been much of a fan of Western films, in fact it is almost surprising how much I enjoyed The Adventures Of Brisco County, Jr. (reviewed here!). So, it is only because of my current writing project that I actually sat down and watched Unforgiven. I've generally not been a fan of Westerns because they tend to depict women in a pretty negative light and I tend to find that less-than-entertaining. I'd rather not watch films where women are treated so poorly. I tend to not to be into pretty monolithic character arcs where the villains are villains and the protagonists might have a dark past, but they're working on making right with the world.

Unforgiven is just that type of movie. I thought the movie would be like a Western version of Payback and it largely was. This is a film where the hero, Will, is characterized as a cold-blooded killer in the opening scrawl, but whose first appearance in the movie is anything but. The sheriff, the supposed good guy, is corrupt and there is little moral ambiguity in his brutality. This is very much a typical Western with growling men, women who depend upon them and plenty of gunplay. And it's all right - I might even enjoy watching it again at some point - but Unforgiven seems to trade more on the novelty of Clint Eastwood returning to Western films (and directing it) than anything truly original.

Two years after his wife dies of smallpox, William Munny, is living his life as a reformed killer and hired gun. In Big Whiskey, Wyoming, a pair of cowboys is at the local bordello when one of the men goes psychopathic on his hooker and begins cutting her up. When the local sheriff, Little Bill, demands the brothel's owner be given seven horses from the two men, the women are furious. They put out notice that they will pay $1,000 to anyone who kills the two outlaws who cut up their friend and co-worker. A young wannabe outlaw, The Schofield Kid, arrives at Will's house and convinces him to join him to avenge the wounded prostitute. Will goes south, gets his friend Ned and the two reunite with the nearly-blind Schofield Kid.

In Big Whiskey, Little Bill takes on the famed outlaw English Bob, in the process impressing Bob's biographer, W.W. Beauchamp. While working to build his own house, he learns of the posse gunning for the two cowboys and he decides he must get involved for the good of Big Whiskey. But as Will, Ned and The Schofield Kid close in on their quarries, they come to realize their biggest liabilities might be their own desires to reform or gain notoriety.

Unforgiven is not a bad movie, but it is also in no way an extraordinary film in terms of plot or character development, nor of cinematography. Instead, this is a by-the-numbers revenge tale set in the Old West of the United States where the characters are shady, everyone has a past and virtually everyone has a story that involves a history with gun fighting. Will and Ned are former partners, so when Will realizes he is so out of practice, he immediately looks up Ned to take on the same task of revenge-for-money that he is on. And because it is That Type Of Movie where moral ambiguity reigns and men are generally monolithic, Ned easily takes "an advance" from one of the hookers, despite being married.

The plot is very formulaic and basic; this is a hunt story where the characters hunt for men who have done wrong and, in the process, find themselves hunted by the law themselves. Unforgiven takes time for a pointless divergence with the whole English Bob story and all this does is make absolutely clear that Little Bill, in addition to being as pretty crummy carpenter, is a pretty lousy sheriff. In addition to seeming like the English Bob story just distracts from the main narrative and only serves to introduce Beauchamp and leave him in Little Bill's company, the movie becomes a tough sell for a serious cinephile because it is predictable.

As far as the character work goes, this is another movie where the opening crawl, which establishes key elements of character for William, says far too much. Indeed, it is tough to see why Eastwood bothered with it considering that the rest of the movie is pretty much the unfolding of the character elements which are implied in the first few moments of the movie. The prologue and epilogue are not essential to the film and they largely distract the viewer from actual character development; the viewer just waits for what is implied to be made evident. As a result, Unforgiven is very much like A History Of Violence where other people reveal who the character once was and then they are faced with the dilemma of whether or not to devolve into that character again.

Clint Eastwood is decent as Will and Morgan Freeman is great as Ned, but the performances are well within the presumed range of either performer. Similarly, Gene Hackman plays yet another monolithic villain as sheriff Little Bill. The only one who actually surprised me was Saul Rubinek as Beauchamps. I've seen Rubinek in several other works and he plays the writer with an unassuming quality and a lack of cunning that I've not seen from him in any of his other roles. In other words, he is acting well, as opposed to simply being the product of inspired casting.

On DVD, Unforgiven comes with just the film and the theatrical trailer. The disc is double-sided with the widescreen presentation on one side and the standard presentation on the other.

So, for those looking for a decent, if average, Western revenge tale, Unforgiven has it . . . with little to distinguish it from others in the genre.

[As a winner of the Best Picture Oscar, this is part of my Best Picture Project online here! Please check it out!]

For other revenge movies, please check out my reviews of:
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
The Untouchables
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street

6/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page for an organized list!

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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