Recent Screenings

Well, art is art, isn't it?

On the other hand, water is water.
And east is east and west is west,
and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce,
they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.

Now, uh... Now you tell me what you know.

Groucho Marx in Animal Crackers

A bit of a dry spell in my ongoing exploration of the cinematic universe. Seems like it's been two months of good but not particularly great films, along with several mediocre efforts, and one genuinely awful excuse of a motion picture. Some notes from the journey . . . .


I Am Legend (2007) - When I was a kid, one of my favorite movies was The Omega Man, based on Richard Matheson's 1954 novel, I Am Legend. Scared the hell out of me in a most delicious way. It was one of those dark, gritty sci-fi films that were so popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Everybody was terrified of overpopulation (the "global warming" of its day) and just becoming aware of our destruction of the environment. Throw in all your revolutions, Vietnam, riots across America, assassinations . . . it all added up to a string of apocalyptic flicks like The Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green and The Omega Man, all of which starred Charlton Heston. (Is it any wonder he became Mr. Gun after surviving all that?!)

When I saw the previews for I Am Legend, also based on Matheson's novel, I wasn't impressed. Just another big, probably awful Hollywood remake of a film I once loved. I mean, come on, the Fresh Prince of Bell Air carrying the whole burden of the end of the world? But a friend of mine highly recommended it (thanks, Paul), and said it had to be seen on a big screen, so La Reina and I headed off to the AMC 17 at some vague Long Island mall to watch the end of the world. A matinee. The day was still bright and sunny. When we came out 2 1/2 hours later, evening had descended, and I was freaking out, because I knew those shrieking, rabid mutants from the film were just waiting to tear us to shreds before we could get to the car. So, yes, it was fun.

The opening sequences take place in the empty streets of New York City, three years after some mysterious and apparently total catastrophe. Grasses and weeds have grown up between rusty, abandoned automobiles, and herds of deer run wild. Will Smith, the lone survivor, and Sam, his faithful dog, are on a hunting party, chasing after the deer in his bright red muscle car. These scenes of the city are stunning, and, as Paul had said, should be seen on a big screen. The whole eerie atmosphere of the film is a cinematic wonder. A little too much CGI at times, especially with the animals and the freaky mutants, but post-Apocalypse New York looks damned impressive.

Of course, it turns out that Will and Sam aren't alone. New York is also home now to "hives" of freaky mutants who only come out at night. (They were vampires in the original novel - here they're more like zombies crossed with rabid wolves.) Now, coward that I am, I would hit the road, head out west some place where these "night-seekers" wouldn't have anywhere to hide in large bunches during the day, and try to make my stand there, but not Robert Neville (Will Smith). Neville is a military scientist who tried to stop the mystery virus from spreading in its early stages, and, now that everybody's dead, is still working on a cure. He's obsessed. Conducting experiments, making reports, keeping himself in shape to fight the mutants. For fun, he's going through every single DVD at a local rental place. (He's up to the 'G's, so he hasn't gotten to The Omega Man.)

Even Charlton Heston had mutants he could converse with. The ones here just shriek, so Will Smith just has Sam and some mannequins he can talk to. As the film progresses, you realize how much the loneliness is getting to him. Through a series of flashbacks (and some taped news shows that Neville watches over breakfast), we slowly learn how this dreadful situation came about. It's all handled fairly well, though I love a good catastrophic viral mystery and could've used a little more of the back story. And I was wrong about Smith - I'm not sure who else could carry this film on his shoulders the way he does. It's impressive work. Though some credit has to go to Abby, the German shepherd playing Sam. Damn fine canine acting.

There are some problems with the movie. You will wonder afterwards about some plot holes and implausible turns. And I know one sci-fi fan who didn't like the ending. But if you don't take the movie too seriously (I mean, it's only the end of the world), and don't expect too much, it's a pretty good ride that has a power of its own. I always respect a film that lingers afterwards, and this one has a certain dreadful sadness that carried over to the next morning, despite a dose of Marx Brothers and a night of sleep. And 24 hours later, as the sun vanished and evening opened up its wicked maw, I was still waiting for the mutants to come.

RECOMMENDED, especially for fans of those 1960s/70s sci-films, and for New Yorkers. Should really be seen on a big screen, but should hold up fairly well on DVD.


Animal Crackers (1931) - Most cinephiles say Duck Soup is the greatest Marx Brothers movie, and I'm not about to argue with them. How can one argue against Duck Soup?! But I've always been a little partial to Animal Crackers, the Marx Brothers' second film, based on their Broadway show written by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind.

Perhaps because they had performed this material on stage so often, the brothers seem perfectly at ease with the fast-paced insanity that ensues when Captain Spaulding (Groucho) returns from an African expedition to a party given in his honor. Don't watch it while you're tired, because this baby moves at 90 miles an hour. Mathematical research has proven that the first 2/3 of Animal Crackers contains the greatest ratio of brilliant wit per minute than any other motion picture. At times, the hilarious and intelligent lines are spilling out so fast that you have to stop and rewind the DVD. (Okay, not "rewind." Whatever one does to a DVD to make it go backwards.)

There are numerous classic lines and routines: "I shot an elephant in my pajamas;" the seven-cent nickel; "I see figgers, strange figgers, weird figgers;" and "Signor Ravelli's first selection will be 'Somewhere My Love Lies Sleeping' with a male chorus." The list goes on and on. (For a good laugh, check out the Memorable Quotes at IMDB.)

More than any other Marx Brothers' film, Animal Crackers achieves a perfect balance between the potent combination of intelligent wit, physical slapstick, surrealism, and poetry that Groucho, Chico and Harpo brought to the screen. The action slows down (to normal) later in the film, with some musical interludes that include Chico's hilarious routine at the piano and Harpo's turn at the harp, but you almost need the breather after the first furious 2/3. All in all, if I had to show one Marx Brothers' film to someone who wanted to know what they were all about, this might be my choice. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.


Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006) - Directed by Steven Shainberg, starring Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr.

Perhaps the most pleasant surprise out of my recent screenings. Strange, poetic, and intelligently done, Fur imagines the crucial turning point in the life of photographer Diane Arbus. Daughter of wealthy New York furriers, Arbus begins the film as a 1950's housewife and capable assistant to her husband Allan, a commercial photographer. Her desire to break out of her staid, bourgeois environment and follow a creative path of her own coincides with the arrival of a mysterious, partially masked stranger who moves upstairs in the same building.

Arbus seems both frightened and intrigued by the new neighbor, and the film unfolds at times with the suspense of a horror movie before settling into a strange, lovely space somewhere between Cocteau's La Belle et la bête, Alice in Wonderland, and the off-kilter atmosphere of Arbus' own weirdly beautiful photography. Robert Downey Jr. delivers what may be his best performance ever as Leonard, the mysterious neighbor who's stricken with an unusual condition. Kidman does equally well as Arbus, restrained but yearning to break free, in love with her husband but driven by her creative inner life. The relationship between Leonard and Diane is rather bizarre, funny, and ultimately transformational.

Steven Shainberg directed the well-regarded,"quirkily erotic" Secretary, but Fur seems like a more mature, artistically assured work. Though it tips over a bit into sentimentality at the very end, this is a special and quietly powerful film. Strange, slyly funny, freaky, darkly delightful and ultimately touching. RECOMMENDED.

I Walked With a Zombie (1943) - Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre turned into an atmospheric 1940's zombie film. What more do you want? Directed by Jacques Tourneur, who also gave us one of the greatest film noirs of all time - Out of the Past - and the original Cat People. Delicious black and white photography by J. Roy Hunt, wit lots of crisp shadows, and light cutting harshly through slats of venetian blinds. Curt Siodmak, the screenwriter, also wrote The Wolf Man, The Beast with Five Fingers, and Earth versus the Flying Saucers. Frances Dee plays the heorine. A fun B-movie with some artistic touches, it's worth the 77 minutes of your time. Hell, it's Jane Eyre as a zombie flick! What more do you want?!

Ratatouille (2007) - Disney family film about rat infestations. Politically correct message about respecting those who are . . . uh . . . different. For some reason, though, the image of hundreds of rodents in a kitchen, climbing around on the food, just didn't seem that cute to me. Animation's good, everything else standard or clichéd. Set in Paris but might as well have been in Cleveland for the lack of any French flavor beyond a few long-exhausted stereotypes. (How about some nice French chanson, for one thing?) The Disney bean-counters probably thought rats would seem more palatable if they came from Paris. I prefer my rats mean and nasty and eating Ernest Borgnine alive.

Frances Dee, star of I Walked With a Zombie. She was married to actor Joel McCrea for 57 years.

Flightplan (2005) - You're better off canceling this flight and taking the train - like the one in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938), which Flightplan greedily rips off without bothering to acknowledge. Jodie, Jodie, Jodie. Didn't you bother reading the script before you signed on to this project? Did anyone bother reading this script? Wasn't there one person among the film crew or within Touchstone Pictures who could see that this was an impossibly dumb plot? A $55,000,000 budget and nobody in Los Angeles could do better than this?

Too bad, because the first 30 minutes show some promise. A cool, mysterious atmosphere in a foreign setting, with some appropriately moody music. And Jodie's a good actress. But then, you know, there had to be a story at some point. Jodie's husband dies and she has to take his body back to the U.S. Somehow, on the long flight, her daughter disappears. That part's fine - not new, but not necessarily stupid. The plot, however, gets sillier and sillier as the film progresses, and after a while you want to smack Jodie Foster for her character and her acting and getting into this dumb movie to begin with. It's like she's trying to be the new Sandra Bullock or something. Sean Bean is the only actor in the film who manages to impress, maintaining a dignity on-screen than seems disproportionate to the ridiculousness of what's going on around him. And by the end, it has become stunningly ridiculous. Then you really want to start smacking people, particularly the screenwriter.

But as bad as the script was for Flightplan, it pales in comparison to . . . .


The Fountainhead (1949) - Directed by King Vidor, starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. One of the most dreadful films I've ever seen. Still not sure why I bothered sitting through it all, except for some morbid fascination in watching an actor I like (Cooper) struggle through a train wreck of a movie. (The train, evidently, loaded down with animal waste product.) Plus, at some point, I realized I wanted to write about this travesty, so I felt obliged to actually watch the damn thing. La Reina and I grew giddy with laughter as the movie progressed. By the end, we were almost disoriented.

The blame rests entirely on Ayn Rand's relentlessly preachy, pretentious, joyless, and ridiculous script, maybe the worst screenplay ever written for a major Hollywood motion picture. She makes Michael Moore and Oliver Stone look like Masters of Subtlety. Poor Gary Cooper. As architect Howard Roark, he struggles to turn her didactic twaddle into human dialogue, but the film is a fiasco from start to finish. A two-hour sermon that defeats all of the actors, who sound stiff (Cooper) or overact (everyone else) in order to compensate for the silly words they're forced to speak. At one point, it felt like watching a bad foreign film dubbed into English. There are a few moments of camp pleasure - Patricia Neal ogling Gary Cooper's power-drill (start at 1:00) - but they're few and far between. The best part of the movie is the cinematography. I suppose if you're a King Vidor fanatic, and a completist, you might have to watch this. Otherwise, as New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote at the time of the film's release : "'The Fountainhead' is a picture which you don't have to see to disbelieve."

[I stole "twaddle" from Crowther's original review. Great word, twaddle.]

Crazy About You, Baby

"When I think of the glory days of American film, at its speediest and most velvety, I think of Barbara Stanwyck." Anthony Lane

Barbara Stanwyck was born in Brooklyn, New York, 100 years ago this July, and Anthony Lane has penned a substantial homage to her in the April 30,2007 issue of The New Yorker: "Lady Be Good: A centenary season of Barbara Stanwyck." I highly recommend the article.

Back in 2001, La Reina and I started an ongoing movie marathon; we've watched over 1,000 films since then, many of them classics from the 1930s to 1950s . The two biggest discoveries for us among the great Hollywood actors have been William Holden and Barbara Stanwyck. They were names we knew, but at the beginning of the 21st century, they just didn't have the same reputation as Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, Katherine Hepburn, etc. I hope Lane's major article, and the retrospective of Stanwyck's career currently taking place at the Brooklyn Academy of Music cinema, will help return her to the Hollywood Pantheon, because I believe she was something special.

Here's Lane: "To addicts of old Hollywood, as to pining critics, no actress delivered a more accomplished body of work; to the general public, however, her name is fading into the past. All we have of Stanwyck is a collection of films—but what a collection. . . . Was there any other actress who had appeared both in a silent movie—Broadway Nights — and in “Dynasty”? To raise the stakes a little, was there any other actress who encompassed so many chapters of what we take to be the history of Hollywood?"

Lane's central theme of the article deals with Stanwyck's toughness, both on screen and in real life. Here's a bit of biography from the article:

[Stanwyck's] real name was Ruby Katherine Stevens. The last of five children, she was two years old when her mother, Catherine, died after stepping off a streetcar, falling, and cracking her head on the curb. Her father, a bricklayer named Byron, waited a couple of weeks, long enough to see his wife interred, then took off to work on the Panama Canal. With that, he vanished from history.

Ruby and her brother Byron were taken up by an older sister, Mildred, who shunted them from one foster family to the next. So tough was that upbringing, and such was Stanwyck’s determination not to milk it for sympathy, that, of all the major actresses, she is the hardest to imagine as a child. By the time she arrived in movies, she seemed to know more of the world than anyone around her, enough to make audiences take her on trust.

Mildred was a showgirl, and Ruby liked to follow in her slipstream, picking up the moves. She left school at thirteen, and two years later she was earning her keep in the chorus at the Strand Roof, high above Times Square, shifting soon to a production of “Ziegfeld Follies” at the New Amsterdam.

Stanwyck as a Ziegfeld Girl, early 1920s.

My only criticism of Lane's thoughtful homage is that he goes on too much about her toughness and misses something essential about her screen presence. It's not vulnerability, but something else. Her Brooklyn street smarts mixed with a kind of animal warmth. It flares up in her eyes. Unlike a typical Hollywood "goddess," with ethereal good looks and an unreachable star quality, Stanwyck managed to stay real and human on the screen. She was more three-dimensional: A tough - and in her comedies, fun - Irish girl from Brooklyn. No small feat in the Hollywood star machine.

I also can't think of any other actress who had Stanwyck's range. Katherine Hepburn comes to mind, because they both moved easily between comedy and drama, but it's hard to imagine Connecticut girl Hepburn in film noir classics like Double Indemnity and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. And she certainly couldn't compare with Stanwyck in westerns. In fact, the Brooklyn showgirl was so good at them, that she was inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1973 for "Outstanding Contribution to the West Through Motion Pictures."

Lane talks at length about her variety of roles, and suggests that it may be, ironically, one reason her star has faded: "Stanwyck’s greatest strength, in other words—her range—was also the reason that she is impossible to tie down and tame. No genre was beyond her, and no one movie sums her up."

No, there isn't one movie to sum her up. But I'll offer a few that showcase the special screen presence of one of Hollywood's greatest actresses.

The Essential Stanwyck

The Lady Eve (1941) - Written and Directed by Preston Sturges. With Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn, William Demarest and Eric Blore.

Roger Ebert chose this as one of his 100 Great Movies. I suggest reading his entire review, but here's a taste:

If I were asked to name the single scene in all of romantic comedy that was sexiest and funniest at the same time, I would advise beginning at six seconds past the 20-minute mark in Preston Sturges' "The Lady Eve," and watching as Barbara Stanwyck toys with Henry Fonda's hair in an unbroken shot that lasts three minutes and 51 seconds.

Stanwyck plays an adventuress who has lured a rich but unworldly young bachelor to her cabin on an ocean liner, and is skillfully tantalizing him. She reclines on a chaise. He has landed on the floor next to her. "Hold me tight!'' she says, holding him tight -- allegedly because she has been frightened by a snake. Now begins the unbroken shot. Her right arm cradles his head, and as she talks she toys with his earlobe and runs her fingers through his hair. She teases, kids and flirts with him, and he remains almost paralyzed with shyness and self-consciousness. And at some point during this process, she falls for him. . . .

Although the movie would be inconceivable without Fonda, "The Lady Eve'' is all Stanwyck's; the love, the hurt and the anger of her character provide the motivation for nearly every scene, and what is surprising is how much genuine feeling she finds in the comedy. Watch her eyes as she regards Fonda, in all of their quiet scenes together, and you will see a woman who is amused by a man's boyish shyness and yet aroused by his physical presence. At first she loves the game of seduction, and you can sense her enjoyment of her own powers. Then she is somehow caught up in her own seduction. There has rarely been a woman in a movie who more convincingly desired a man.

Brilliantly written and directed by Sturges, this is one of the greatest comedies of all time. Coburn and Stanwyck as father & daughter card sharks. Henry Fonda as the easy mark - a wealthy but nerdy young man sailing back home after studying snakes in the Amazon. Wickedly funny. And the scene that Ebert describes between Stanwyck and Fonda may be one of my all-time favorites.

Double Indemnity (1944) - Directed by Billy Wilder. Written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler. Starring Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray and E.G. Robinson.

"I'm crazy about you, baby." Fred MacMurray to Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity.

One of the first and best examples of film noir. Also chosen by Ebert for his 100 Great Movies. Read his review. Even in a horrid blonde wig, Stanwyck is the ultimate femme fatale. Her ankle alone is enough to drive insurance salesman Fred MacMurray to murder for her, and, hell, I probably would've done the same. The two come up with a great plan, but E.G. Robinson, as MacMurray's boss at the insurance firm, smells a rat. Superb filmmaking and a great ride.

Ball of Fire (1941) - Directed by Howard Hawks. Written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. Starring Stanwyck, Gary Cooper and S.Z. Sakall.

Sugarpuss O'Shea and the studious professors

Okay, this one's not on Ebert's list of 100 Great Movies, but it is on mine. It's also one of American Film Institutes 100 Greatest Comedies, and Anthony Lane talks about it a lot in his article. Several professors have been living a mostly secluded life in a New York townhouse for the past nine years, working on a major encyclopedia. Professor Bertram Potts, played by Gary Cooper, is in charge of language and grammar, and he's discovered that his section on slang has already gone out of date since the project began. He decides to venture out into the city to copy down the new slang he hears, eventually winding up in a nightclub, where he encounters Sugarpuss O'Shea (Barbara Stanwyck). She happens to be engaged to a mobster who's just been arrested. The police are looking for her, so the mob guys need to hide her away. What better place than among a bunch of nerdy old bookworms?! Except, of course, that one of them happens to be Gary Cooper. Especially fun and funny film for people who take their encyclopedias and word usage seriously. This was Billy Wilder's last screenplay before he began directing his own films, and he and Charles Brackett crafted a gem. Howard Hawks also directed Bringing Up Baby (1938) and His Girl Friday (1940), an amazing hat trick of screwball comedy that has never been equaled.

Here's a great clip from the movie, the scene that Anthony Lane talks about at the opening of his article.

Some Other Great Stanwycks

Meet John Doe (1941) - The second movie Stanywck and Cooper made in 1941, this one a classic directed by Frank Capra. An excellent film about politics and the media.
Christmas in Connecticut (1945) - You don't have to wait until Christmas to watch this delightful comedy. Stanwyck at her most charming. I wrote about it in my Christmas Meme a few months ago.
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) - A brooding and underrated film noir. Kirk Douglas makes his film debut, playing an alcoholic D.A. married to the scheming Stanwyck. Van Helfin and Lizabeth Scott round out the cast.
To Please a Lady (1950) - Clark Gable was the King, the He-Man of He-Men. He's plays a struggling race car driver in this one. Stanwyck plays a journalist. Whatever the King dishes out, Stanwyck gives right back. Not a great film, but it's a lot of fun watching these two work together.
Executive Suite (1954) - William Holden and Barbara Stanwyck are reunited in this excellent big business thriller. The all-star cast also includes Fredric March, June Allyson, Walter Pidgeon, Shelly Winter and Paul Douglas. Directed by Robert Wise, written by Ernest Lehman and produced by John Houseman. An unheralded gem.

Stanwyck in 1937.
In her films, she faced down the schemings of weak men, got a laugh, and vented no pity.
The New Yorker