The Last Picture Show: Director's Cut

"Nothing much has changed."  Well, that's a tag line that sounds promising.  Normally, I would pass on a movie that sounds like the audio-visual version of a sedative, but this film earned eight Academy Award nominations in 1971, winning two, and they are primarily in the acting and directing categories.  I like me some Oscar bait, so let's check this out.

The Last Picture Show is the story of Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), a high school senior in a two-bit Texas town.  The only things to do in town are go to the movie house, play pool, and go to the diner, all of which are owned by Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), the only man in town that seems satisfied with his life.  Everyone else does dumb stuff, like having petty affairs that are common knowledge in such a small town.  Sonny and his best friend, Duane (Jeff Bridges), are still too young to be disillusioned, but even they know that the biggest adventures of their life will come outside of this town.  Still, they try to find what fun they can in this town, and it usually boils down to sex.  In particular, it often comes down to Jacy (Cybill Shepherd), the prettiest and richest girl their age.  Jacy starts the film dating the handsome and popular Duane, but she is interested in expanding her experiences, and tries her best to manipulate any man who looks twice at her, including Sonny.  But this isn't the story of a love triangle.  It's more like "A Year in the Life of..." their small town.  Things change in that year, both big and small, but the big picture stays the same: teenagers will come of age, once again, in this two-bit Texas town.

That is kind of a bland synopsis of the film, isn't it?  I can't help it, this movie does not really have much of a plot.  It's all about the ensemble cast and a subtle sense of sadness that pervades the film.  The cast in this film is pretty impressive.  I wasn't terribly impressed with Timothy Bottoms in the lead role, but there were many strong supporting performances, including four (!) that were nominated for Oscars, and two that won.  Jeff Bridges (who was nominated) is pretty good as the not terribly bright high school alpha male that struggles to maintain his importance out of school.  Ben Johnson won the Best Supporting Actor award playing Sam the Lion based, from what I can tell, largely on a monologue where he reminisces on loves and risks taken and lost, but always worth the effort.  Sure, it was a great speech, and that speech alone separated his character from everyone else in the movie, but I have to admit that I was surprised that his famous role gets so little screen time.  I was impressed with Cybill Shepherd, in her first film role, playing what amounts to a femme fatale in training.  She might be developing into a manipulative bitch here, but her mother (Ellen Burstyn, in an Oscar-nominated role) is the reigning queen of bitchy despair and skepticism.  Cloris Leachman received the Best Supporting Actress award for her portrayal as the love-starved married woman who winds up having an affair with Sonny.  The rest of the cast is recognizable, but their contributions are relatively minor, although, compared to four Oscar-nominated roles, what do you expect?  Randy Quaid made his film debut in this movie; it's hard to picture now, with his near-permanent casting as a drunken uncle, but his character is a rival with Duane for Jacy's affections at one point.  Sam Bottoms, Clu Gulager, and Eileen Brennan all played functional roles to the plot (such as it is), but they get relatively little time to develop on screen.

Since there isn't much of a plot, the strength of this film lies in the small moments of small town life, circa 1951.  Some of those moments ring true today, like when Sonny freezes when confronted with Ruth's (Leachman's) tears; there is little more frightening to a young man than a woman's tears, because his idiotic first instinct is "How'd I break it?"  The same goes for any scene with Sam the Lion; it doesn't matter if he is talking about dreams, love, or how much you disappointed him, he is that rare adult that commands respect from the kids.  Other moments feel appropriate, but seem alien to me.  Maybe I didn't hang out with the right crowd growing up, but the cool, detached and uninterested attitude toward sex from these teens struck me as strange; however, if you're in a small enough town or clique, I suppose eventually everybody who's anybody gets with everybody else who's anybody.  Still, it makes for some unusually unerotic sexual scenes.

Peter Bogdanovich did a very good job directing the actors in this film (in case the four Oscar nominations didn't clue you in), but he was largely responsible for the film's other impressive nominations: Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture.  Even if you are unfamiliar with the influence a director can have on a film, The Last Picture Show looks and feels different from 99% of the movies you will see.  It's a black-and-white movie made in 1971, set in 1951 --- that's an interesting choice, given the tendency for films in the early 50s to brag about their Technicolor picture.  The soundtrack is composed only of ambient sound, so when you hear music, it is because there is a radio nearby; that gives the movie more of a documentary feel to it.  But it doesn't go too far in that direction, since there are some very occasional moments shot from the point-of-view of particular characters.  The dialogue is good, the acting is very natural, but...the lack of a distinct dramatic arc bugs me.  Some of the less typical camera shots lead me to believe that I'm missing the message in this movie, but I couldn't tell you why or what it is.

My big problem with this film is that it is clearly aimed at a target audience that I don't belong to, and the subtle filmmaking makes it difficult for me, as an outsider, to decipher what message is being delivered here.  Why is the closing of the town's only movie theater the basis for the film's title?  I'm not sure, but it seems to connect to the general sense of loss that is pervasive throughout the film.  Maybe it's mourning the loss of larger-than-life men, like Sam the Lion (what an awesome name!) and John Wayne, both in daily life and in the escapism of film.  Maybe this is a love letter to an innocent way of life that died out as the post-Depression generation came of age.  Whatever it is, it is frustrating for me to try and fail to understand the point of the film.  The performances are good, but without that subtext, I was only truly impressed with Johnson and Shepherd's work.  I liked the direction in general, but it didn't give me a payoff I could appreciate.  Despite that, there were several inconsequential moments that I was disproportionately amused by:

• Every time Sonny or Duane drove their truck, Hank Williams was on their radio.  Of course he was.  It's Texas.
• How easily a beer bottle was broken over Sonny's head.  Either they make better bottles now, or that boy has a metal plate in his head.
• When Jacy offers to shake hands with a handsome rich boy, he reaches his hand for her and, instead of shaking her hand, gropes her crotch and then kisses her on the mouth.  The stones on that guy...!  Even better, that's is about all he does in the whole movie.
• I just can't get over Randy Quaid, looking like this, having even a fictional chance with Cybill Shepherd, when she looked like this.

Randy Quaid, Tiger Beat "Dream Hunk" of 1971

So, despite the good acting and the interesting direction, I'm going to knock this movie down a few notches for being too subtle with the point of the movie for me to fully grasp it.  And if there isn't a deeper meaning behind this film, then I guess I think the plot just stinks.

Of course, not everyone agrees with me...

Independence Day

There are movies, and then there are films.  The difference can be subtle.  Sometimes, all it takes to move from traditional popcorn fodder to artistic statement is a single performance.  Other times, it requires a hefty dose of Jeff Goldblum and exploding the living hell out of America's landmarks.  Roland Emmerich has never directed a subtle movie (aside from Godzilla (1998) of course), so guess which route he took?

Independence Day answers the question of whether humanity is the only intelligent life in the universe.  The answer is "No, and where do you get off calling humanity 'intelligent'?"  So, yes, Elliot, there are aliens, and of course the aliens want to kill us.  Do you blame them?  Look how well we take care of things; America is now surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and the Gulf of Inkwell.  Actually, this movie takes a much more intimate look at how Earthlings (by which, I of course mean Americans) might handle a hostile alien invasion.  Maybe, if all of America were wusses like Arizona, we would just pass a ridiculous law or two.  Luckily, the other forty-eight states (I'll be dead and buried before I recognize Mizzoura) play for keeps.  When aliens come into our atmosphere and blow all the major cities in the world to hell, that just makes us mad.  Well, it makes us panic and despair first, but after our greatest president gives a speech to a bunch of semi-professional pilots, we are ready to kick butts and mispronounce names.  All we need is a hero and a nerd to lead us to victory.  As far as heroes go, it's hard to top mid-90's Will Smith.  The man has charm, talent, and is fun to watch.  As far as nerds go, Anthony Edwards must have been busy.  Still, Jeff Goldblum is a respectable substitute.  Like many mid-90's movies, it turns out that the cure to everything is computer knowledge, so getting a cable repairman/Mensa member to go into space and launch a computer virus into the alien spaceship network sounds waaaaay too easy.  And it is.  But this isn't a movie that ever tried to be smart, so just be happy it's loud and dumb and never gets pretentious.

Is there more to the movie than that?  Of course there is.  This is a big, blockbuster film, so it has an enormous supporting cast.  In the apolitcal and non-military side of things, we have Judd Hirsch playing the broadest Jewish stereotype I have ever seen outside of Seinfeld.  It works, if only because Hirsch is funny, but damn, he is kind of offensive.  Harvey Fierstein plays an obviously heterosexual man at the cable company and Randy Quaid is a drunk pilot (with something to prove to the aliens) with James Duval as his frustrated son.  Randy is drunk in this movie, which is what I expect from all of his roles, but Duval manages to exude frustration, tenderness, and the slightest hint of acting talent in his supporting role (which is surprising, since he stars in my Most Hated Movie, The Doom Generation).

Interesting side note...I am reasonably sure that Randy Quaid wasn't even cast in this film.  He just showed up, drunk as a Senator, and wouldn't leave.  He had some story about being abducted by aliens, and the filmmakers decided "Why not?"  The rest is history.  "Uh, Brian, if that's the case, why isn't his character named Randy?"  Because he was drunk for a solid week.  He might not respond to the name Russell at first, but it only takes four or five tries to convince him of his new identity.

And then there's Jeff Goldblum as a genius/cable repairman.  He has always had a unique speech cadence, but this is the movie that makes it his calling card.  Like Christopher Walken before him, Goldblum is able to channel awkwardness in such an unexpected way that the rest of the cast simply has to bow down before him. This is also the movie script that took his vocal mannerisms and gave him a script just as ludicrous.  Whenever he has an epiphany, he speaks his train of thought out loud and it is beyond believable.  But that's how this movie works.  It takes a decent idea, makes it overblown to the point of being absolutely terrible, and keeps going until it becomes ironic.  This is the epitome of so-bad-it's-good movie making, and Goldblum's character is the best illustration of this.

The President of the United States is Bill Pullman, with a First Lady (Mary McDonnell) that seems to want him to learn to lie better than he does.  Hmm.  He has a capable adviser and a former wife of Goldblum on his staff, Margaret Colin.  Robert Loggia also serves as a military advisor, as does Adam Baldwin (to a lesser extent), but they basically just grimace and shoot things in the movie.  Will Smith is a fighter pilot with Vivica A. Fox as his stripper girlfriend.  He is buddies with another pilot, Harry Connick, Jr., who is less talented (as a pilot) and used as alien cannon-fodder/don't-ask-don't-tell jokes.  Brent Spiner also makes an appearance as a scientist that is clearly not as intelligent as Goldblum's cable repairman.  How embarrassing.

This is not a smart movie.  It is big, loud, and stupid.  The characters are shallow, the dialogue is full of cliche one-liners ("Now that's what I call a close encounter").  You don't care when somebody dies in the movie; this is basically a disaster flick, so that stuff happens sometimes.  This movie is all about the spectacle.  Want to blow up the White House?  Done.  You want Will Smith to punch out an alien?  No problem.  How about an embattled president giving the best damn speech any president has ever given, where he calls for international cooperation in front of an exclusively American audience?  We can make that happen.

I will give Roland Emmerich credit where it's due --- this is a big movie, filled with big moments.  The fact that those moments are effective (or, at least, cool looking) shows the success of this movie.  Emmerich's other films are just as stupid as this, but they lose momentum by the final act.  The pacing in Independence Day is pretty good, with a nice build-up and then waves of action from there on out.  The acting and script are definitely second to the big dumb stuff, but that's okay.  Sometimes, details like characterization get in the way and force movies to spend less time on blowing up the White House.  And we wouldn't want that, would we?

In a way, the silly things are what makes this such an enjoyable movie for me.  It's easy to go back to the special effects blockbusters of years past and be unimpressed; the effects are dated, the characters are cliche, and the personal style of the cast is questionable, at best.  Independence Day still stands up because it is not so serious.  The fact that the dialogue and plot are bad enough for even dramatic characters to be kind of funny defies the odds and enhances that attitude.  This may be a disaster movie, but it's a fun movie, too.  Is this an artistic film?  God, no.  It is the kind of big, dumb action movie that Hollywood loves to make, but rarely completely succeeds with.  And if that doesn't make you feel patriotic, I don't know what will.

Clash of the Titans (2010)

Judging from the title, you might think that this would be a movie about the Greco-Roman gods battling their parents, the Titans.  You might think that this film would feature epic battles and deal with the Freudian ideas of how children must usurp their parents in order to come into their own.  You might be a big, stupid moron.

This film is a remake of the campy 1981 movie of the same name.  Sadly, the stop motion effects of the original are replaced with actual special effects this time around (although the robotic owl from the original makes a cameo).  So, if this movie isn't about battling the Titans of Greek mythology, then what is it about?  The king and queen of Argos decide to topple their ridiculously enormous statue of Zeus, claiming that they need not worship the gods because now is the time of man.  Why anyone would do this when gods are known to walk the earth and smite mortals is beyond me.  Not surprisingly, Zeus (played by Liam Neeson) sends his brother, Hades (Ralph Fiennes), to spread some Hellenic-style smiting across the isle of Argos.  Hades does his damage and threatens to have his pet monster, the kraken, wipe Argos off the map unless Argos' princess is sacrificed to the gods.  Who will save Argos?  That would be Perseus, played by Sam Worthington.  Perseus' family was killed in Hades' attack, but it's all good; Perseus learns that he is a demigod and that Zeus is his father.  Perseus and a band of Argos' best warriors then decide to find a way to kill the kraken.  To do this, the crew must visit some witches, who send them to the underworld to kill (Or is that re-kill?  She's in the underworld already, right?  No!  Must...stop...thinking...) Medusa.  The idea is to cut her head off because any mortal (even a monster) that looks in her eyes will turn to stone.  Along the way, the men team up with a djinn, a warlock-like thing whose skin appears to be made of a cross between granite and tree bark.  They fight several giant scorpions and end up riding the rest across a desert, like camels.  In the end, we get what is promised:

***SPOILER ALERT***

the kraken turns to stone when it sees Medusa's head.  Consider yourself spoiled.

Huh.  How about that?  Yep.  It's a bit of an anticlimax.  You've got to give credit where it's due, though; you learn that Medusa's head can kill the kraken early in the film and it sure does.  Mission accomplished.  Who needs drama, anyway?  The plot fails to follow through with a lot of decent ideas here.  The hero has to kill a huge monster?  Awesome.  Instead of killing the monster just by showing up with the right tool, I would have rather...I don't know...had the monster eat the hero and have the hero cut his way out of the monster's chest?  That would have been cooler.  I would have had the witches be more threatening; they were only a cool-looking nuisance.  The giant scorpions were okay, but I had trouble figuring out who was fighting what scorpion; these were the most confusingly edited action scenes since Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  I pay attention when I watch a movie, and if I can't tell how many giant monsters are in a scene, there's a problem.  The subplot with the sacrifice of Argos' princess could have been decent in a different movie, but it's just filler here.  Of course, I don't envy the writer who has to justify destroying a populated island over sacrificing one person, so I see why they left the subject mostly untouched.

The characters were equally frustrating.  Sam Worthington has yet to prove himself as an actor, despite leading roles in Avatar and Terminator: Salvation.  He plays the same basic character over and over again.  I know, he's not the only actor that does this, but I don't think Randy Quaid is a great example for young actors to strive toward.  Liam Neeson is okay, I guess, as Zeus; it's hard to judge Zeus as a character because the mythological god was all over the place, in terms of logic and attitude.  In this movie, he's alternately a doting father and an attention-starved god.  Ralph Fiennes really irritated me as Hades at first because he whispered all his lines; this served a plot-related purpose, so I'll let it slide this time.  His forehead dandruff was unnecessary, though.  The other gods barely got speaking parts, including Danny Huston as Poseidon.  This movie is all about throwing recognizable actors at you and not giving them time or space to act.  Jason Flemyng is a somewhat effective man-monster who spends most of his time running away from Perseus.  Nicholas Hoult (the weird kid from About a Boy) proves that ugly child actors can actually grow up to be reasonably handsome...and that's about all he does here.  Gemma Arterton pretty much reprises her role from Quantum of Solace as a pretty face with no character.  Mads Mikkelsen is the only standout here, and he just did a decent job as the resident military expert, but somebody had to look good against the cardboard cutouts this script provided. 


And yet...it's a special effects movie.  Do we really watch these with the same expectations as a Charlie Kaufman-scripted film?  The answer is that we should, but we don't.  Sometimes, effects are good and fun enough to let us turn our brains off and bathe in the screen's warm glow.  The effects in Clash of the Titans aren't good enough to make up for its many shortcomings, but they are pretty good.  The character designs on the kraken, the witches, the djinn, and Hades' flying bat creatures are all great.  I don't know how many of the locations were shot in front of a green screen (the movie was allegedly shot mostly in Whales), but the panoramic shots of Pereus and company descending into the underworld were awesome.  The strange thing about the effects is that they don't seem to be enhanced by 3D.  I realize that these 3D parts were thrown in at the last minute after seeing how well Avatar did in theaters, but I expected them to be...well, not crappy.  In fact, the 3D effects were the worst in the film; it seems like they were forced to go 3D, but didn't have the time or budget to do it right, so they just did it fast.

Overall, the plot wasn't great and the actors just showed up.  Neither was terrible, though.  The effects were good enough to make this film visually appealing, but the real star was the character design for the creatures.  Is that enough to recommend a movie?  Tough call.