Week 8 (Part 1): America(n) Hustle[r]

I've learned in this project that Best Picture nominees in the 1960's were somewhat dominated by in-depth, deeply masculine, single-character studies. Lawrence of Arabia (and its treatment of the titular T.E. Lawrence) is the most obvious example, but here are two others:

• America, America (Nominated 1963)
• The Hustler (Nominated 1961)

America, America is a three-hour epic about a young Greek boy who flees oppression in Turkish Anatolia in the late 19th century. His goal is to eventually reach the United States and send back for his family. It is based on the book of the same title by Elia Kazan, who also directed several much more well known movies, such as A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and Gentleman's Agreement. I found it to be educational on the rarely covered topic of the Hamidian massacres, and a very impressive performance by the main lead, Stathis Giallelis, who was basically never heard from again. The film is strongest in its final act, when the main character, Stavros, finally finds passage on a ship to the United States (in "third class") and develops a bond with a young Armenian who eventually makes a sacrifice in order for Stavros to secure admission to Ellis Island. 

America, America - Stavros comforts his friend

The film is beautifully shot, partly on location in Greece and Turkey. On the downside, it was much longer and more sprawling than necessary. The story is partially Barry Lyndon (never quite finding one's place among higher society) and partially The Godfather Part II (leaving a violent situation to reinvent oneself in the U.S.), but I'm not sure if those two things married here as harmoniously as they could have. It smacks of  being intensely personal to Kazan, and so I suspect that made it harder to edit down.

It's a fine film, though it didn't really stand any real chance to win Best Picture against the incredible and timeless West Side Story in 1961. I gave America, America a 6.1.

Our next film is The Hustler, which features one of Paul Newman's most famous roles. He plays a pool shark named "Fast" Eddie Felson, who follows the familiar, masculine trope of being both immensely talented and deeply flawed/self-destructive. For a movie about pool, it takes a surprisingly dark turn in the third act when Felson's love interest is driven to suicide. Only after that (for some reason) does Felson have the wherewithal to beat his arch-nemesis Minnesota Fats in a rematch of many, many, many hours of Nine Ball. Newman and Piper Laurie are great in the starring roles, and Jackie Gleason absolutely dominates his limited screen time as Minnesota Fats. Not to be outdone, George C. Scott works very well as the ruthless and manipulating professional gambler who bankrolls Felson for part of the film.

The movie would be too overly melodramatic if not for its utterly captivating treatment and depiction of the game of billiards. Unlike other games/sports, there really hasn't been any other notable movie since The Hustler (and The Color of Money does not count) to try covering the same subject. That says something.

Movies about bar games, and that star Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason, are immensely rewatchable. Tom Jones was the 1963 Best Picture winner, and I'll be interested to see if it's better. I gave The Hustler a score of 8.2.

Week 7: Time Lapse

Today I will discuss two films that were released nearly 80 years apart:

• It Happened One Night (Won 1934)
• Her (Nominated 2013)

One of the most interesting things about It Happened One Night is its age. Movies from the 1990's are "dated," and yet they are a full generation newer than movies from the 1970's (which are "old"), and yet those are a whole generation newer than movies from the 1950's (which are "really old"), which in turn are a generation newer than movies from the mid-1930's. When this movie was released, Clark Gable was a spritely 33, while Gregory Peck was still a teenager, Marlon Brando, Jack Lemmon and Paul Newman were all about 10 years old, and Debbie Reynolds was an infant.

And yet the movie holds up ridiculously well. All modern, romantic comedies are basically modified versions of this film, which swept all of the major awards at the 1934 Oscars (Picture, Director, Writing, Actor, Actress -- there were no awards for supporting roles until 1936). The writing is air-tight and funny. I found myself rooting for Gable's and Claudette Colbert's characters to end up together, which they do.

Here's a scene from It Happened One Night where Gable and Colbert must pretend to be a quarreling married couple to avoid revealing that Colbert's character is actually a famous, missing heiress:

I have yet to see any other movie nominated in 1934. There were 12 nominees, only one of which (The Thin Man) I had even heard of before beginning this project. It Happened One Night is the only romantic comedy I'm aware of to have ever won the Big One, and for being an emblematic and entertaining film, I give it a 7.5.

Let's fast forward a better part of a century to Her, nominated in 2013 and directed by Spike Jonze. It stars Joaquin Phoenix, who appears in this movie to be wearing the same, high-waisted pants as his character Freddy Quell in The Master, and Scarlett Johansson as the voice of the computer Samantha, with whom Phoenix falls in love. Samantha The Computer eventually, however, realizes that humans are stupid and abandons Phoenix to exist among other computers, and I can only assume that they eventually take over the world, a-la Skynet or The Matrix. 

Similar to Jonze's underrated Being John Malkovich, this movie is an exploration of human nature against a vaguely science-fiction-ish backdrop. I wish, however, that the film had more of Jonze's trademark, off-kilter wit, which it does only in disparate instances, such as this hilarious scene where Phoenix's character is simultaneously talking to Samantha The Computer and playing a futuristic video game:

(Note -- This game apparently runs on the same hardware that John Anderton uses to watch home movies in Minority Report. See here.)

I give Jonez and Her lots of credit for at least being interesting, and it has now become my favorite of all the quite-weak nominees from 2013. Score: 7.4.

Week 6 (Part 3): The Longest Day

The Longest Day was nominated for Best Picture in 1962. It stars everyone and covers almost every conceivable aspect of the World War 2 Normandy landings. I do mean that everyone is in this movie. John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Robert Wagner, Richard Burton, Henry Fonda, Sean Connery, and many others. Richard Beymer plays a paratrooper in his best role other than Tony in West Side Story (and, much later, Twin Peaks). Many of the roles are basically cameos. Henry Fonda is on-screen for about 2 minutes. Same for Sean Connery and Richard Burton. The movie is shot and edited in the style of a docu-drama, with helpful signposts and subtitles, and it covers American, British, German, French, and other perspectives on the topic of D-Day.

I started this 3-hour film half expecting to be drowning in patriotic bombast, but was pleasantly surprised to see that the film, instead, giddily spends more time diving headlong into strategic minutae than forcing the audience to weep for fallen Allied heroes. Because it's an ensemble cast, the star of the film is really the invasion itself and the insane number of details and decisions that worked in concert to make it happen. There are entire scenes, for example, dedicated to French civilians listening to BBC radio for coded messages regarding the invasion:

History has developed alongside pop culture in such a way that our idea of D-Day revolves mostly around Utah Beach. But again, this film really covers the gamut. There is significant screen-time dedicated to the British Army's landing on Sword Beach:

Because I am an adult living in the year 2015, I necessarily must compare The Longest Day to Saving Private Ryan. The latter is also about D-Day, although it's less about the invasion itself and more about the horror of war, heroism, etc., and in case there was any doubt, there is a requisite, closing scene involving characters talking to headstones at Arlington, you know, just to remind us how we are supposed to feel. The Longest Day, on the other hand, is actually much closer to Twelve O'Clock High, or even Dr. Strangelove, in that it serves equal helpings of inspiration, detail, and humor. 

This is not to say it's a slapstick comedy. One of the more powerful moments of the film comes late in the invasion, when several engineers successively die attempting to clear a key barricade using Bangalore torpedoes. But instead of ending with Robert Mitchum's character standing over the grave of a dead engineer and mourning the boys, The Longest Day simply continues and allows the audience to react however they want.

If this film has any downfall, it's that it is almost overwhelmingly comprehensive. Still, for the subject matter at hand, I far prefer this manner of filming and style of delivery to forced, Spielbergian sobriety. The Longest Day probably could have won Best Picture in 1962 if not for the totally unfair circumstance of being up against Lawrence of Arabia, which many would justifiably argue is the best film ever made.

I gave The Longest Day a score of 8.4.

Week 6 (Part 2): Italian Moms

Let's talk about two great films, which have a lot in common, especially on the topic of romance and Italian moms:

• Marty (Won 1955)
• Moonstruck (Nominated 1987)

Before this project, I always knew Marty as the answer to the question in Quiz Show that John Turturro's character is supposed to pretend not to know when he throws the game. I wish I could find a clip of that scene, but the dialogue will have to suffice:

Dan Enright: Now the last category is movies. We're gonna ask you what won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1955. You don't know it. You answer "On the Waterfront."

Herb Stempel: Oh, no. Oh, no. Don't, don't do that. Not "Marty." I saw "Marty" three times. The Best Picture from two years ago, and I don't know it?

Enright: Someone of your intellect, and it's such a simple question. Don't you see the drama of that?

Stempel: Drama?

Enright: Herb, don't do this to yourself.

Stempel: Please, let me lose on a physics question, not "Marty," Dan. Don't do this to me. It's too humiliating.

Enright: For 70 grand, Herb, you can afford to be humiliated.

This supposedly happened in real life, too! And having finally seen it, I know why Herb Stempel loved this film. Marty stars Ernest Borgnine as a butcher from a heavily Italian Bronx neighborhood and who's in the advancing stages of bachelorhood, much to the chagrin of his overbearing mother, extended family and friends. The movie takes place over the course of what appears to be two days, and the romance between the homely Marty and Betsy Blair's also somewhat homely character, Clara, develops in one evening. In the background is a lot of wonderfully vintage New York and/or Italian paraphernalia, e.g., milkshakes at Howard Johnson's, eating a gigantic plate of spaghetti at home, living with one's in-laws, having enormous houses in the middle of New York City, A&P grocery stores, etc.

Where it lacks for scale and ambition, Marty compensates with pace and tight, witty writing. It is the absolute perfect length for its genre at 90 minutes. It's brilliantly written and simple. Many scenes involve lines of dialogue that are cleverly repeated by one or more characters (a technique now frequently used by the Coen Brothers). Borgnine and Blair are both wonderful as leads, and Marty's cast of friends and family are all funny and believable. 

I give Marty an 8.6, one of the highest scores yet in this project among films that I had not yet seen.

Fast forward more than 30 years to Moonstruck, nominated in 1987. A very entertaining film on many levels, it stars Cher in one of her small handful of meaningful roles, and a young Nicolas Cage doing very Cagey things (before they would come to be known as Cagey).

Like Marty, Moonstruck is a story of love between two "outcasts" with the Italian family dynamic jutting sharply out of the background. Like Marty, there is a lot of dialogue that takes place within enormous New York  brownstone homes and over pasta. Like Marty, the main character's mother (here, the fantastic Olympia Dukakis) occupies a lot of screen time. Unlike Marty, it takes place in Brooklyn and not the Bronx, but I think the 30+ year difference may have something to do with that.

Olympia Dukakis + Pasta

Ernest Borgnine + Pasta

Moonstruck is a little funnier than Marty, but it's also not quite as cohesive. There are sub-plots, mostly involving Cher's character's parents, that periodically kill the momentum of the film. And I'm not sure that I really saw a lot of chemistry between Cher and Cage. Probably his fault more than hers. Overall, I give Moonstruck a rating fitting for a very good film: 7.6. And I will leave you with this, because this is one of the rare moments in this project (especially since I've already seen Leaving Las Vegas and do not plan to watch it again) in which we get to honor Nicolas Cage:

Week 6 (Part 1): Cheeky Britons

Note: I'm watching movies faster than I can write about them here on the 'Net, but I will try to do better. In this post, we will discuss:

• Sense and Sensibility (nominated 1995)
• Four Weddings and a Funeral (nominated 1994)
• The Crying Game (nominated 1992)

Sense and Sensibility was nominated for Best Picture in 1995. Not the best year ever. It's an adaptation of the Jane Austen novel and stars Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet as the Dashwood sisters. (To a complete, drooling literature idiot like myself, and especially from the film-viewer perspective, it is barely distinguishable from the various iterations of Pride and Prejudice.) More interestingly, it's the first movie directed by Ang Lee to have really garnered a mainstream audience. It's therefore very well crafted and acted, if not particularly interesting. Though not my favorite role of hers (that would be The Remains of the Day), Thompson is still the highlight of the film. Score: 5.5.

Cheeky Briton Hugh Grant occupies a modicum of on-screen time in Sense and Sensibility, but let's go back in time one year and talk briefly about Four Weddings and a Funeral, which was nominated in 1994. This a cute film that unfortunately centers on a totally unbelievable and unlikable quasi-cum-actual romance between Hugh and Andie MacDowell. That part of the movie is very conventional and soul-sucking, but the supporting roles and story lines are much better -- because they are quirkier, Britisher, and more interesting. For example, Simon Callow (who was also outstanding in A Room With a View) is great as the flamboyant partner of John Hannah's character. When Callow's character dies, Hannah's character delivers a euology, and it is one of the most romantic, sad film moments that I have ever seen:

It's worth noting that this was the last movie I needed to watch in order to have completed the full slate of 1994 Best Picture nominees. There's a lot to say about 1994, and I will do so later. But as to Four Weddings and a Funeral, on the strength of the eulogy scene alone, I bumped the score up to 5.9.

Let's go back even further in time for a moment and talk about The Crying Game, nominated in 1992. This movie is somewhat of a puzzler. It may be among the first widely recognized and acclaimed films to explore the topic of gender identity (and no, Tootsie does NOT count). At the very least, it is certainly the only film to simultaneously address both the ethnonationalist conflict in Northern Ireland and gender identity. Jaye Davidson, whom I knew growing up as the villain from Stargate, plays the girlfriend of Forest Whitaker's character and who eventually becomes the love interest of Stephen Rea's character. It's a solid film, worth watching with an open mind, but it will not blow you away. Score: 5.8.

2014 Oscar Nominations

Today, the 2014 Oscar nominees were announced, and my list of films grew by 8. The following are nominated for Best Picture:

• American Sniper
• Whiplash
• Selma
• Birdman
• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• The Imitation Game
• The Theory of Everything
• Boyhood

I have not yet seen American Sniper, Whiplash, or Selma. 

I did see The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is easily Wes Anderson's most ambitious film. (For a man who makes movies in the same manner that someone might painstakingly handcraft a diorama, this says a lot.) The style and technique are familiar, and as good as anything Wes Anderson has done. Ralph Fiennes works spectacularly in the slapstick/serious/twee mold, and many Anderson regulars, such as Jason Schwartzmann, Bill Murray, and Owen Wilson, return for entertaining bit parts. 2014 will be known as a year where niche directors' longtime brands were finally rewarded, and if not for the sheer Linklaterness of Boyhood, the Anderon archetype might have finally pulled through for the big win. I give The Grand Budapest Hotel a score of 8.3.

Birdman is also a very good film. The "faux one shot" editing style is a bit of a gimmick, but it does give the movie a unique and immersive perspective. If nothing else, I was glad to see two of my personal favorites Michael Keaton and Ed Norton, not only in a legitimate movie again to begin with, but even on-screen together. Birdman: 8.1.

The Imitation Game, on the other hand, feels like a bit of a reach. The trailers for this movie paint it as a World War 2 epic that also mines the depths of the foundations of computer science. It is neither of those things, and instead gives us mediocre human drama in a vaguely periodic backdrop. The movie works best for about 10 minutes, when Alan Turing and his group have a breakthrough on how to more efficiently define the problem set that the machine must consider, but otherwise, the subject matter is mostly reduced to a prop and a lot of high-level dialogue ("it will work", "no it won't", "yes it will", "i believe in you", "i need more time"). Also, not to stray too far from the strict premise of this Internet Blog, but I've seen at least 5 or 6 better Benedict Cumberbatch performances than this, the first one for which he is nominated. I give this movie a 5.2.

The Theory of Everything is about Stephen Hawking and his life. It is a biopic. It is 2014's My Left Foot. It is very good. It will forever be a great trivia question, as Eddie Redmayne is nominated and may likely win for playing Stephen Hawking, whom Benedict Cumberbatch also played some 10 odd years ago. I gave it a score of 6.5.

Finally, Boyhood, the clear favorite to win Best Picture, is also the movie that I would probably vote for. We all know that it was filmed over 12 years with the same cast, but what's almost more impressive is that other than slightly extending the length of the film, the 12-year premise doesn't dominate the movie or make it any less honest or enjoyable than Linklater's other work. Like Bernie, it's as much about Texas as it is the characters. The film will win Best Picture, Linklater will win Best Director, and Patricia Arquette will win Best Supporting Actress. All are appropriate results. Boyhood: 8.5.

Week 5: Greg Peck

In part 1 of this update, let's talk about a pair of movies starring possibly my all-time favorite actor, Gregory Peck:

• Gentleman's Agreement (Won 1947)
• Twelve O'Clock High (Nominated 1949)

In Gentleman's Agreement, Gregory Peck is a magazine writer and widowed father who is assigned to write an expose about anti-semitism. This movie won Best Picture in 1947. It might be the closest historical precedent to Crash winning in 2005, except, at least this movie has the redeeming factor of Gregory Peck being in it. His performance is as stern and sincere as any of his characters, e.g. Atticus Finch, Captain Ahab; and the supporting cast is just O.K. I found that the film was written so as to be more of a personal journey for the main character than a real exploration of antisemitism. In completing the assignment, Peck's character attempts to put himself in the shoes of a Jew for weeks on end, and in the process briefly alienates his love interest, who is not overtly anti-semitic, but is also not bending over backwards to cure her own prejudices.

I've read that this film was originally supposed to be about homophobia rather than antisemitism. There was probably only so much one could do in 1940's Hollywood. I give Gentleman's Agreement a respectable 6.9.

Gregory Peck was busy in the 1940's. Busy being awesome.

We get more traditional fare in Twelve O'Clock High, which also stars Peck, this time as an Air Force general assigned to a (pre-Normandy) World War 2 bomber outfit that is down on its morale. He's believable as a hard-as-nails military leader who forces his pilots and crewmen to eschew self-pity for brazen pride. Imagine a more redeemable (and slimmer, taller) version of George C. Scott's Patton. 

I loved Twelve O'Clock High for its sheer devotion to the subject matter of tactical bombing. The writing, photography and character development are equal partners with the underlying subject matter. Somehow, the movie maintains pace despite most dialogue and action occurring on the ground. The movie climaxes with a bombing run where original film is married with actual footage from WW2 dogfights, and, somehow, it doesn't seem all that dated, and it is far more exciting than what a movie today is likely to do, i.e., invent some CGI sequences that turn out to look like a video game. Score for this movie: 8.3.