Sergio Sollima is only the third most famous of all the Sergios who made Westerns in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s. You already know Sergio Leone, and you may even know Sergio Corbucci. There’s also Sergio Martino, Sergio Garrone, and Sergio Bergonzelli, but I don’t have room to write a book here! Sergio Sollima is a clever, versatile director who built sociopolitical concerns into his enormously entertaining filmography. He is maybe best regarded for his terrific crime films, including REVOLVER and VIOLENT CITY — both amazing places to start. He’s not the most prolific of “spaghetti” Western directors. In fact, Sollima only made three Westerns, all in the span of three consecutive years – THE BIG GUNDOWN, FACE TO FACE, and RUN, MAN, RUN! —but they are more than enough to place him among the exalted ranks of Leone and Corbucci. All three of Sollima’s Westerns starred the Cuban-born Tomás Milián, who played the same role in two of them.
In THE BIG GUNDOWN and its sort-of-sequel RUN, MAN, RUN!, Tomás Milián plays the crafty, unruly bandit Cuchillo. In THE BIG GUNDOWN, Cuchillo spends the first several scenes entirely unseen, only discussed. He’s wanted for the rape and murder of a young girl, and it’s his bad luck that the lethal Jonathan Corbett is the mercenary hired to find and destroy him. Now I happened to have seen RUN, MAN, RUN! first, out of chronological order, so I knew going into it that Cuchillo may not be guilty of these crimes, but for most of THE BIG GUNDOWN, you are to assume he’s the bad guy. And that makes things complicated, because he’s so comical, funny and annoyingly likable. Cuchillo is a thief and a scoundrel, and he isn’t always too polite to women, but he wouldn’t do something quite so horrific as the act of which he’s been accused.
One of many interesting elements of THE BIG GUNDOWN is that you don’t know that Cuchillo is innocent for most of the movie, which gives the majority of the scenes some mighty fascinating tension. Cuchillo is a raging trickster and a puckish anarchist, a Bugs Bunny or a Daffy Duck, enjoyable and infuriating – and it’s frustrating to like him so much, if he is in fact the kind of man who the senator claims he is. Contrast this situation to what goes on in THE GOOD, THE BAD, & THE UGLY, where a hangman rattles off a list of all the crimes of which Tuco, Eli Wallach’s character, has been accused, including “raping a virgin of the White race, and statuatory rape of a minor of the Black race.” In Leone’s world, the way these offenses are added to a checklist is played — literally — as gallows humor. Leone isn’t interested in exploring these accusations, preferring the punchline to the possible pathology. In Sollima’s world, we still have the charming and devious Mexican bandit character, but not only is he more overtly interested in pursuing women throughout the course of the movie (Leone’s film runs almost three hours but has little time for female characters), but unlike Tuco, Cuchillo is definitively exonerated of egregious sexual misconduct. Considering they were both released within a year of each other, it’s fascinating to ponder the parallels and variations between THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY and THE BIG GUNDOWN. Most obviously, these two wonderful films share a wonderful lead actor.
THE BIG GUNDOWN is primarily built around its marquee star, Lee Van Cleef, best known for his role as “Angel-Eyes” (THE BAD) in Leone’s THE GOOD THE BAD & THE UGLY. This movie was made soon after that one. Sollima wrote it with Sergio Donati, who wrote for Leone (ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST) among many others. Here Van Cleef, as Jonathan Corbett, is playing a more heroic character than he did in THE GOOD THE BAD & THE UGLY – but for much of the film we can’t quite tell for sure. Corbett can be pretty nasty, as seen in the introductory scene where he calmly toys with three wanted men he’s got cornered – we know he’s bad; we just figure he’s better than the man he’s tracking. Once Corbett sets out on Cuchillo’s trail, the movie becomes the same kind of Tom & Jerry cat-and-mouse game Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach played out in THE GOOD THE BAD & THE UGLY – only even more satirical and way more sociopolitically engaged. There’s a scene where the two gunmen arrive at a ranch presided over by a beautiful woman who is surrounded by big beefy henchmen, and the subtext is practically exploding out of everybody’s ears. It’s hilarious and awesome.
There is currently a version of THE BIG GUNDOWN up on YouTube, but the complete Italian cut of the film is what you want to see, and on the biggest screen possible, which is what I got to do in 2012 thanks to the “spaghetti” Western series at Film Forum. It’s obviously one of the greats in the genre, having influenced everything from THREE AMIGOS! (in the form of the fancy-pants Teutonic killer with the monocle who haunts Corbett)to INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (Tarantino used parts of EnnioMorricone’s typically wonderful score). It’s also, not for nothing, one of the most straight-up entertaining movies I’ve ever seen. Ever! No exaggeration. Instantly one of my favorite movies of all time. And it’ll probably be one of yours too, maybe even as soon as you hear the rousing Ennio Morricone theme song.
If you want to know something about me, I originally saw BRING IT ON in the theater — with my mom. We both enjoyed it but probably for different reasons. Something for everybody, I guess; you know how it is.
I don’t spend a lot of time talking about cheerleading movies on this site. It is not what one could call my métier. As a human male with working parts, I certainly do appreciate the image of the all-American cheerleader, but I tend to prefer movies about monsters, werewolves, and fists being thrown, which is why I loved BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER so much. Chocolate, meet peanut butter.
BRING IT ON arrived towards the end of a still relatively recent era in American movies, the late 1990s, where multiplexes were flooded with films about high school. Some of them were DOA — dated on arrival — but BRING IT ON was one of the best-made of them, so I imagine it still holds up. The director was Peyton Reed, making his first feature after plenty of TV comedy including the influential Upright Citizens Brigade show. That’s a more anarchic pedigree than most teen movies had at the time. The script by Jessica Bendiger is pretty sharp to begin with — it has great character names, one of my favorite aspects of good comedy scripts.
Kirsten Dunst, two years before SPIDER-MAN, played Torrance Shipman, team captain of the Toros, the team’s cheerleading squad. Dunst is pretty mopey in the SPIDER-MAN movies but I imagine her performance in BRING IT ON is what got her that part: She’s determined, energetic, and smiles in several different ways in this movie. BUFFY‘s Eliza Dushku provides a nice, sarcastic balance as Missy Pantone, a new student who reluctantly becomes an important member of the team, and Jesse Bradford has never been as likable anywhere as he was here, as Missy’s brother and Torrance’s love interest. Then again, I’m endeared to almost anybody in a Clash T-shirt. Gabrielle Union is the best part of the movie by far, as Isis, the leader of a rival cheerleading squad (the Compton Clovers, brilliant name) who accuses the Toros of lifting their routines. It turns out to be true, but it was Torrance’s predecessor who did the dirty deed. Without belaboring the obvious, because the movie doesn’t either, it’s refreshing to see a teen movie that goes in on the issue of race and white America’s cultural appropriation of blackness. BRING IT ON was also ahead of the curve on gender issues and homosexuality, as two of the Toros are guys, one straight and one gay. If any of this were foregrounded too much, the movie could have been insufferable, but the writing, direction, and actors all play everything with a winning lightness of touch.
All of that is true, but what’s truly impressive about BRING IT ON is Peyton Reed’s control over the film’s tone. The movie has a sweet, believable teen romance and a slightly more steely but still charming series of competition sequences building up towards its climax, yet it still manages to include things that could sink a different movie, like a bikini car wash scene and a truly astounding cameo by Ian Roberts of the Upright Citizens Brigade as Sparky Polastri, a choreographer who the Toros bring in as a specialist to help them develop new moves. I would put this cameo up with Sam Kinison’s in BACK TO SCHOOL in the realm of hysterically bizarro outsized characters that somehow manage not to run away with the movie. I’d definitely see an entire movie about this guy, though I applaud the filmmakers’ restraint in using him sparingly.
So while BRING IT ON is not normally my kind of movie, it ends up being a movie I feel kindly towards. It doesn’t shy away from the question of sex appeal but it takes a playful approach. It’s savvier and snappier than most high school movies, and lighter and funnier than most sports movies. Of course I’m way more interested in the Gabrielle Union character than the Kirsten Dunst character, but this is a Hollywood movie after all. Until somebody lets me write my own, I’ll take cultural transgression in any dosage I can get it.
1976’s BREAKING POINT falls within the Bob Clark filmography during the period after BLACK CHRISTMAS and before PORKY’S. BREAKING POINT can be loosely considered as one of those urban vigilante thrillers that were so popular in the mid- to late-1970s, exemplified by DEATH WISH and the like. In the tradition of those cheaper action titles, BREAKING POINT is rather crude and choppy. I can’t find much online about the history behind this movie, but even though it was distributed by 20th Century Fox, it feels like it was made on the quick and on the cheap, most likely to capitalize on the popularity of the genre.
You wouldn’t recognize anyone in BREAKING POINT except Robert Culp, as a frustrated and rather ineffectual cop, and Bo Svenson as the lead character, a karate instructor who interrupts a violent crime, feels compelled to report it to the police, and is then targeted by the mob. He’s pretty dour and humorless in this movie, but Svenson is a really underrated presence in action movies. He’s a humongous Swede, looking not unlike a super-sized Steve McQueen, who took over the role of Buford Pusser from Joe Don Baker in the sequel to WALKING TALL (and its eventual TV series treatment), and played in a ton of B-list action movies. Naturally, he’s a favorite of Quentin Tarantino, who cast him in KILL BILL and INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS.
As I said, Svenson’s character in BREAKING POINT, Mike McBain (that name is SO 1970s) is a fairly dour guy. He seems warm enough to his wife and stepson, to his assistant at his dojo, and even to the ex-husband who’s still in the picture, but when any of them press him as to why he seems so dead-set on endangering them all by testifying against the mob enforcers he identified, he barks out in anger that it’s something he has to do, and that’s that. Eventually, the mobsters, who have major real-estate deals in development, become weirdly obsessed with making McBain pay for his interference, and begin a ridiculously over-zealous campaign of revenge.
They set the ex-husband on fire, shoot another friend to death, and stalk McBain’s assistant in horror-movie masks, in a creepy scene drawing upon Clark’s experience in horror flicks. (Unfortunately, this scene culminates in the kind of sexual assault that was disturbingly common in movies of this type.) Even relocating his family under witness protection can’t keep these thugs away from his loved ones, so McBain eventually has to get on his shit-kicking boots.
That’s an hour into the movie, but it’s well worth waiting for, if you like this sort of thing. For starters, these bad guys are no match for Bo Svenson. He’s well over six feet tall, and the size of a bookcase – one in which all the books are Sonny Liston autobiographies. By contrast, the villains are so non-descript that I didn’t even notice that the soft-spoken “don” was supposed to be stereotypically Italian until the movie was half over. And here’s how his henchmen look:
It hardly seems fair. But let’s face it, we’ve seen plenty of movies where the puny nerds triumph over the dumb jock. Let’s not pretend that none of us secretly enjoy seeing annoying little pricks get stuffed into the locker.
And that’s exactly the kind of grace with which McBain goes about his mob-stomping rampage. After clubbing one thug to death in a bathroom, he lifts the guy up by his pants, in the most titanic cinematic wedgie I may have ever seen, and dumps the corpse on the toilet. Then, to give the jerk that much extra ignobility in death, he pantses the corpse and drapes his lifeless hand over his lifeless crotch.
The final showdown surpasses that momentous confrontation with even more lumbering force. In a brief setpiece that erases all of the similarities you may have been trying to draw between Bo Svenson and Woody Allen, McBain takes out one henchman by using a massive block of timber like a javelin.
Oh snap!
But it gets better.
Instead of shooting it out with the main villain, McBain comes at him with a bulldozer, driving straight into the guy’s office. Not even the guy’s pet lizard (a ‘70s villain shorthand) is spared. McBain drives the house, with the guy in it, over a ridge and into a ravine. Where it explodes. Duh. He watches the debris burn. And the movie’s over.
And that’s the ‘70s, dude.
I’m not arguing for BREAKING POINT as a lost classic, or even a must-see. It’s not. It’s a frequently dull, often sloppy, and absolutely generic movie that doesn’t rate higher than serviceable until its final third, where Bo Svenson finally goes apeshit. But that part is really fun to watch, and beyond that, it’s profoundly interesting to me that the same director who made this movie also made PORKY’S, A CHRISTMAS STORY, BABY GENIUSES, and something called KARATE DOG. That’s the kind of bizarre versatility that I can totally get behind.
Daily Grindhouse would be pretty much my favorite website even if I weren’t writing for them, but since I am, here’s a collection of all my work so far. It’s some of my very best stuff. Enjoy!
Make Daily Grindhouse your daily destination for genre movie news, reviews, and interviews — there’s a ton of truly great content over there, beyond just the parts with my name on ’em.
And follow me on Twitter for updates!: @jonnyabomb
If one were to step back and truly consider the unceasing patchwork of entertainment news clobbering our eyes, ears and minds twenty-four-hours-a-day, it would serve as a disturbing reminder of how little has changed since Bill Hicks prowled comedy stages, serving as a lonely voice of sanity out amongst the wilderness of institutionalized idiocy.
I’ve written about Bill Hicks once before. I was impressed by David Letterman’s 2009 tribute to Hicks, where he brought on Bill’s mother and personally apologized to her for the infamous incident where Hicks was kept off The Late Show due to Hicks’s propensity for inflammatory material. I thought it was a classy move on Letterman’s part – if belated, since Hicks died in 1994 of pancreatic cancer. I then went on to describe why I believe that Hicks’ brand of inflammatory material would have been necessary to broadcast, as it still is, because I think Hicks’ perspective, and those like his, demand to be heard.
Television, today more than ever, is absolutely flooded with mediocrity and moronity. Since television is only ever a reflection of what the American people are most concerned with at the time, that is a disturbing statement. It’s not a crime to enjoy turn-your-brain-off entertainment – but it IS a crime when the balances are off so badly. Mediocrity is rewarded and morons are everywhere, and even though we’re in the future, nothing’s changed. Some of the same exact same morons are still prominent, in fact!
It’s almost eerie that so many of Bill Hicks’ favorite targets back in the late 1980s and early 1980s are either still lingering, or have made their moronic return. The Bush family and the Iraq War are in sequels. Billy Ray Cyrus has returned with an even more ridiculous haircut, in a new role as world’s creepiest stage dad, pimping out his daughter to the world. The most recent Doritos ad, which was a huge hit at the SuperBowl, was the most-watched ad of all time. The New Kids On The Block are back on tour, clearly not recognizing the obvious irony in their name (or the obvious double-entendre in the name of their tour). And creepy Jay Leno and his gargantuan head are still clogging up the late-night comedy world, an unkillable milquetoast cockroach with a face the size of a parade float and a frame of reference the size of a peanut.
Watching the Bill Hicks concert film Sane Man, I was filled with growing irritation.
That’s not true. Watching Sane Man, I was laughing constantly.
It’s only afterward that the irritation struck, when I realized that all of the aforementioned morons are happily moving into advanced age with ever-thickening wallets, while Bill Hicks was struck down in his prime by an insidious disease. So many people have nothing useful or interesting to say; meanwhile, Bill Hicks was only getting started on expanding our brains and enlightening our perspectives. It’s just plain not fair.
But no one wise ever said the universe was fair. All we can do is keep Hicks’ work fresh in our memory, and luckily, there’s plenty of it available.
Sane Man is a concert film from 1989. It’s basically a rudimentary VHS recording of a typical Hicks performance, live, in front of a typical nightclub audience (with some amazing mullets), for a truly impressive length of time. I generally listen to Hicks’ CDs on repeat, so what struck me about watching him on screen for nearly two hours straight was his amazing confidence in front of a crowd. Hicks owned that stage. He clearly had absolute conviction that his words were worth hearing. (If he felt any personal reservations, it sure didn’t show.) His words were worth hearing, as always, but it’s nice to see that he seemed to know that too. If you like neurotic comedians, this ain’t your guy.
Sane Man probably isn’t my favorite Bill Hicks performance I’ve ever seen – for one thing the dated video elements and imperfect recording make it tiring to watch after a while. Also, a lot of the material Hicks performs here will be very familiar to diehard fans — a lot of it appeared in slightly different form on his albums — although it is a treat to see him act out his Jimi Hendrix routine. And this isn’t one for mixed company – Hicks gets particularly vulgar at a couple moments (understandable considering the fact that he’s playing to a drunken audience.) Personally, I never get tired of hearing any of Hicks’ bits and I’m not offended by his bluer material, so predictably, I loved Sane Man. I just wouldn’t recommend it as someone’s first exposure to Hicks’ brilliance. Start with any of the albums instead – they’re all still in print and available in most any music store that has a comedy section. Look for them (and more information) at the official website.
What I love about Bill Hicks is that, while his anger and disappointment were palpable, it was always clear that he was an optimist at heart. He wasn’t bitter about how things were; he just wanted things to be better. Bill Hicks left this earth too soon, but he left plenty of peerless comedy and immortal inspiration behind. He is as alive as ever, on his albums and videos.
Hear them.
And if you want to read more about Bill Hicks, I recommend tracking down Cynthia True’s terrific biography, American Scream, or this collection of Bill’s writings.
BROTHERS is a movie that has kind of slipped through the cracks. It showed up towards the end of 2009, but not in enough time for me to see it for my Best-Of list. It’s been nominated for some awards already, but not enough to make people feel like they ought to go out and see it. It’s got some actors who people like, but it looks like a downer. It doesn’t look like fun.
Well yeah, it isn’t much fun. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t any good. That doesn’t mean it isn’t even a little but important. It sure does have the pedigree: Jim Sheridan, the Irish director who showed his skill at creating detailed, likable characters in 2002’s IN AMERICA, directed from a script by David Benioff, the big-name Hollywood screenwriter who showed a similar skill in his script for 25th HOUR. The trio of lead characters, played by Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal, and the astounding-in-this-movie Tobey Maguire, are convincing and heartbreaking. They’re aided by ace supporting performances by reliable actors such as Sam Shepard and Clifton Collins Jr., and by two of the best performances I’ve seen from little children since, well, IN AMERICA. The two little girls who play Maguire’s daughters are deeply affecting. Also due for mention is Frederick Elmes, the hall of fame cinematographer who has worked with David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, Ang Lee, and Charlie Kaufman, who shot the movie with understatement and grace. The movie was shot largely in New Mexico, and it shows. This doesn’t look like L.A. This looks like elsewhere in America, the parts of America where you find the people who actually have to fight our wars for us.
That’s what this movie did for me, by the way. It made me think about those people, who need to be thought about. Whatever else minor flaws keep it from being considered a quote-unquote great film, BROTHERS is expert at detailing the realities of post-traumatic stress disorder. I left BROTHERScrushed and thoroughly sad – this movie is about something that is really happening right now to people our age and younger, who are sent overseas to kill and to take bullets and to watch their fellows die, only to return home without any kind of adequate psychological counseling.
BROTHERS is a wartime movie, and that’s the real reason for its lack of box-office and cultural heat. People just aren’t interested in seeing this kind of story at the movies. That’s starting to bother me. There’s a massive disconnect between the America whose sons and daughters are sent overseas to fight and die, and the other America, which I fully admit to being a part of, whose lives are affected more by the recession or any number of concerns other than the war in the Middle East. Unless we personally know someone in the military, unless we’re the type of person who follows and cares about the news, some of us are not forced to think much about the fact that we are actually at war. We might be unemployed and stressed about that, but we don’t have to worry about the physical safety of our friends and family, or just as much at-risk, the psychological toll of their experiences.
So instead we go to see a movie like AVATAR for a fourth or fifth time, which surely isn’t wrong, but then again, if we have that kind of free time, maybe it is somewhat wrong to ignore a movie that might make us think about something that matters. (I’m only singling AVATAR out here because it’s become the most popular movie of all time as all of this other stuff is happening in the world.) As I have written already elsewhere, AVATAR is fun but meaningless; it is the ultimate movie of the moment expressly because it is about escaping reality – both in the way that Jake Sully escapes his wheelchair to become a nine-foot-tall forest god, and in the way that literally the act of watching the movie in those 3-D glasses is an escape. It’s a video game movie. It’s a luxury. The very fact that I can post these thoughts on the internet, and any number of AVATAR fans are free to potentially comment on the many reasons why I’m wrong, is a luxury. We’re very lucky to be able to sit at our computers and argue over and read about escapist movies. But just recognize that it’s a distraction, ultimately meaningless comparatively. AVATAR isn’t about anything but coolness. There’s a place for that, to be sure, especially for those people who actually need a little escape. But it’s not the only movie out there. That’s all I’m saying.
BROTHERS forced me to think about something other than my own life. I haven’t been exactly the same since I saw it. It somehow changed my thinking, just the tiniest bit. If that isn’t an important movie, I don’t know what is.
You can still see BROTHERStheatrically in many cities, I think. If you have the time, give it a chance. Don’t let me make it sound like homework – it’s not in the least bit boring. When I call BROTHERS a good movie, that doesn’t mean “good for you” – it really means “good movie.”
BIG FAN clinched its spot on my Favorite Movies Of 2009 list, instantaneously, the day I saw it. This is the movie written and directed by Robert Siegel, whose work was most recently seen in theaters as the writer of THE WRESTLER.
BIG FAN stars the brilliant stand-up comedian Patton Oswalt as Paul Aufiero, Staten Island’s biggest New York Giants fan. He lives with his mother and spends his days tailgating Giants games with his best and only friend (played by Kevin Corrigan of so many movies, from GOODFELLAS and PINEAPPLE EXPRESS), and his every night calling in to the Sports Dogg talk radio show. One of Paul’s favorite topics to rave about is Giants star Quantrell Bishop (played by Jon Hamm, but not the one you’re thinking about), and one night he actually runs into his hero. Things do not go well.
I’m sure that part of my love for this movie comes from my own history – I grew up in the tri-state area and this movie expertly captures sights, sounds, and people that are remarkably familiar – but I wouldn’t respond to it so strongly if it wasn’t so good at drawing those environments. Beyond the obsessed, belligerent sports fans without much else to distract them, there are the decent Italian mothers burdened with difficult adult sons, the hometown lawyers (like Paul’s older brother) who aren’t as smart as their degrees and nice suburban houses lead them to believe, the housewives (like Paul’s sister-in-law) whose cartoonish makeup and absurd cleavage don’t lend them an ounce of class, and the law officers who see patterns and are annoyed by them, but resigned to them.
I’m making a point of this stuff, but a strength of Siegel’s work as writer and director is that he doesn’t underline anything to make a point. BIG FAN is rich in finely-observed detail, but it is admirably subtle about its approach. When you hear that Patton Oswalt, one of the funniest people in the world at the moment, is playing in a movie that could easily be described (and frequently has been by critics) as a non-sexual version of TAXI DRIVER — Paul loves Quantrell a bit differently than Travis Bickle loves Betsy and Iris — you couldn’t be blamed for expecting a comedy. But that’s not what this is.
While the movie is consistently fascinating and absorbing, I didn’t find it funny for a moment. While Patton Oswalt is a hilarious comedian everywhere else he goes, here he completely disappears into his role, committing fully to a disturbingly sympathetic portrayal of a very sad yet strangely fulfilled life. It’s one of the best sustained feats of acting I’ve seen all year. Everyone in the movie, in fact, is ideally suited to the movie’s gray tapestry, whether they’re more unfamiliar, unpretty faces, or if they’re recognizable and reliable character actors, such as Kevin Corrigan, or the perfectly-cast cameo by the not-to-be-revealed-by-me actor who plays Paul’s on-air nemesis Philadelphia Phil.
BIG FAN is bound to be overlooked, because it’s probably not what you’d expect when you hear that Patton Oswalt has his first lead role, and if you don’t know who Patton Oswalt is, his performance might feel too real and then the movie will probably feel more depressing than its premise might lead you to believe. I write this piece with the express purpose of keeping this humble and unflashy but great feature from being overlooked. For me, it was one of the most eagerly awaited movies of the year, and it did not disappoint.
Between THE WRESTLER and BIG FAN, Robert Siegel has staked a very specific claim as a chronicler of untold sports stories that could just as easily have been comedies, about tragic, optimistic characters who are far from the mainstream and far more interesting than the typical subjects of sports movies because of it. THE WRESTLER was about a big man who feels small, and BIG FAN is about a small man who feels big. Neither character is entirely right about himself, but neither of them is entirely wrong either. The disconnect is where the truly interesting stuff happens.
You know why this is showing up here now. This is here because, try as I might, there was no way I was going to be able to let 2012 pass without any comment on THE DARK KNIGHT RISES. That will be up soon enough.
But first, my thoughts on 2008’s THE DARK KNIGHT, since it was one of the first movies I ever wrote about online. As far as the public record is concerned, I never have gotten around to writing anything about 2005’s BATMAN BEGINS, though maybe I should.
What follows is a condensed version of two separate posts I wrote on the same movie — you’ll see as you read it how, even in 2008, I was trepidatious about voicing any reservations about such a critical and popular prize-hog. As some have since found out the hard way, my initial instincts weren’t too far off the mark.
People were in a frenzy over these movies before they even arrived in theaters. And then things got even worse.
For some reason, while many people seemed to be comparatively lukewarm on BATMAN BEGINS (I loved it, by the way), there are many who seem to take THE DARK KNIGHT and THE DARK KNIGHT RISES even more seriously than they do those two presidential elections that happened in 2008 and 2012. Let’s put it this way: I’ve never met an “undecided voter” when it comes to Nolan-Batman fans.
Maybe it’s fitting that fearsome madness should erupt around a character who primarily exists as a storytelling prism by which to examine madness and fear. But he’s also a character whose best stories involve conquering those twin demons, and that, I think, is why he means so much to so many of us.
So these are my opinions about some Batman movies. That’s all they are. You can agree or you can disagree. I’m sure I’ll hear about it either way.
Starring Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, and Tommy “Tiny” Lister.
About THEDARK KNIGHT, an ocean has been said. My pontifications may be just another drop in that ocean, but it’s a pretty damn sincere drop. I love Batman. Have done ever since I was shinbone-high. This is a character close to my heart, so what the hell, here it is, my two cents on THE DARK KNIGHT:
Mostly, I totally loved it. There were a lot of great moments, and when I say great, I mean astounding. I can’t recommend strongly enough that this one be seen on IMAX, where the full-screen city establishing shots and most of the action sequences reclaim that overused word “awesome”. And hard as it is to do nowadays, ideally one should go in knowing as little about the plot as possible, because this movie has the power of surprise. I did as good a job as I could do of blocking out such knowledge prior to the fact, but it wasn’t easy. The pre-release thunder was deafening.
And it’s great.
But it’s not perfect.
It comes so close. THE DARK KNIGHT is the most like Icarus of all superhero films; it just almost touches the sun.
We all know by now what’s so incredible and superlative and timeless about this movie – Heath Ledger’s uniquely intense and committed portrayal of the Joker, about which I can write absolutely nothing that hasn’t already been said by more influential writers; the portrayal of Batman by Christian Bale, just as good yet way underrated by comparison; Wally Pfister’s crystal clear cinematography, even more breathtaking when seen on IMAX screens; the deceptively simple, sharp production design by Nathan Crowley; the fantastic score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard — a marvel of simplicity with its ominous theme for the lead character (that cresting wave of just two notes) and its even more ominous theme for his nemesis (that dirge of just ONE note) — and of course, the overall vision of Christopher Nolan, a director uncommonly interested in big ideas and engaging the widest possible audience with them.
By all rights this should be my favorite comic book movie ever, and in many of its many incredible moments, it almost seizes that title. But the flaws hold it back, for me. They are sizable flaws or I would not have honed in on them. There are three in total.
1. Two-Face coming up out of nearly nowhere.
Everybody noticed this problem; that’s how you know it’s a problem. The movie did a great job setting up valiant district-attorney Harvey Dent’s rise and fall, but then abruptly fast-forwarded him into the murderous Two-Face in the third act and [spoiler] killed him off. Why? Because somebody had to die. SOMEBODY had to pay for [spoiler] what happened to Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Obviously there was initially a plan to keep the Joker in these movies, so when real life events cruelly made that impossible, it was apparently deemed necessary by the powers that be (whether they be the Nolans or the higher-ups) that the other major villain had to die. This is part of the weird, hypocritically-puritanical morality of big-budget Hollywood movies. For some reason, the vast majority of these major comic book movies don’t seem to be narratively satisfied until they have blood; until they kill off a villain at the end. The Jack Nicholson Joker, the Danny DeVito Penguin, the Willem Dafoe Green Goblin, the James Franco Green Goblin, the Alfred Molina Doctor Octopus, and so on — all killed off, even at the weighty expense of the merchandising opportunities of the future.
So now this new Batman franchise has the terrible conundrum of having killed off a well-developed villain character onscreen, when the remaining well-developed villain character survives onscreen but has been tragically lost offscreen. (Don’t get me started on how awful that situation is.) And now the fans are heatedly debating which villain from the fifty-years-stale rogues gallery should be dusted off for the inevitable sequel.
My humble suggestion?
Forget Catwoman.
Forget the Riddler.
Forget the Penguin.
PLEASE forget the Penguin.
Forget them all, and let the Nolans create an entirely new villain. You know they can do it. They made Ra’s Al Ghul compelling, and who besides the most devoted fans and the working comics folk remembered him before BATMAN BEGINS? A new villain is the answer. The most important character in this series has always been Batman, and the first two movies have been built around him. The next one should follow suit.
2. The vacuum where a love interest should be.
The other major problem with THE DARK KNIGHT, and I hate to say it because I really have liked her in other movies, is Maggie Gyllenhaal. The character is what it needs to be, but the performance is a dead zone. If the smart, sarcastic, lively Maggie Gyllenhaal from STRANGER THAN FICTION had shown up for THE DARK KNIGHT, than there wouldn’t be a problem. But here she seemed entirely disengaged, apathetic, bored. I didn’t believe for a minute that both Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent would be so into this dull woman, and I didn’t feel her loss to be as tragic as it very much needed to be. On a narrative level, this movie needs the audience to fall in love with Rachel Dawes so that when we lose her, we understand why it sends Batman on the path he takes at the end. In that role, neither actress who’s played it has cut the mustard.
Why do these comic book movies have so much trouble finding an equally compelling female lead? Strong man need strong woman. Would we care as much about STAR WARS if Carrie Fisher didn’t bring cojones to Princess Leia? I don’t think so. Don’t cram a love story into my Batman movie if you can’t make me care about the lady involved.
Without that, no, you don’t have the greatest comic book movie ever. You have a very good comic book movie, but not The Greatest-Ever Comic Book Movie. That’s hopefully still to come.
Do I have a suggestion? Yes. Just off the top of my head: Michelle Monaghan continues to strike me as an easy answer to a whole lot of problems.
3. The mumbo-jumbo.
This is a tough argument to make, because it’s one of the things I appreciate so much about the Nolan approach to these movies. These are films built to house expansive ideas, about fear and heroism and governance. I respect that. It’s a far nobler thing, in every way, than the standard overheated empty-headed blockbuster. In a world of TRANSFORMERS movies, I can’t believe I’m about to complain about a movie being too smart.
But it gets to be a little much, I think. For my tastes, anyway. There’s SO much talk, so much speechifying. It’s not as if the terrific action scenes don’t make up for it, of course, but I feel like the movie is weighted down with a lot of weighty talk. Nowhere is this clearer than the prison barge scene, where the Joker threatens to blow up one of two ferries, one carrying civilians and one carrying inmates. After several fraught moments of dramatic pauses and much debate, the inmates make the first move to act — but properly. This is all very well-written and I do get what Nolan is trying to do — to portray the city of Gotham and its people as much as their caped protector. But, to me, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a long, very talky sequence in the middle of what, at its core, had better be an action movie.
In this movie, everybody’s got a whole lot to say about masks and capes and chaos and order and family and legacy — does anybody else feel like they’re auditing an undergraduate lecture in moral philosophy being given a guy in a Batman costume, or is it just me?
In light of these three not-minor complaints, I quietly suggest that this DARK KNIGHT is not exactly the perfect movie I heard tell of before I went in to see it, that best-of-year, best-of-decade, flawless masterpiece to be raved over for the last couple weeks and onwards until eternity. It’s a strong B-plus. It’s a flickering A-minus. There’s just a little bit of all-the-way excellence missing there. However: I do still feel that if we are yet to see a perfect Batman movie, Chris Nolan will be the one to deliver it. This time around though, my eyes, mind, and butt, and the A-plus grade of the movie itself, coulda used about twenty minutes shorn from the run-time.
And I’m going to stop there for now, because we’re on the internet after all. Here on the internet, people get threatened with death, or worse, for writing less offensive sentiments than the simply suggestion that THE DARK KNIGHT may not actually be the be-all and end-all of superhero movies.
Trust me when I say that I do not fear death, but nor do I much see the need to, before my time, invite death over for a chat about politics.
BLACK DEATH is a few different kinds of the best kind of movie. It’s a movie that constantly surprises. Just when you think it’s one thing, it becomes another. It’s relatively short and simple, but just try to predict where it goes. More profoundly, it’s a movie that is brave and willing to challenge its audience. If you let it, it will make you think — maybe even make you reconsider what you think you believe, if only briefly. But last and best of all, BLACK DEATH is a true horror movie. Director Christopher Smith has already amassed an impressive curriculum vitae of creature features and creepfests (read my reviews of CREEP, SEVERANCE, and TRIANGLE!), but BLACK DEATHis next-level shit. It’s a movie that is viscerally unnerving and intellectually disturbing. It’s a canny, vital, destined-to-be-overlooked piece of work.
BLACK DEATHtakes place in 1348,at a time in real human history when the Black Death plague was decimating half the population of Europe. In one monastery, a young monk named Osmund (Eddie Redmayne) is carrying on a secret affair with a sweet young woman named Averill (Kimberley Nixon) while carrying all the guilt and shame that this crisis of faith might bring. Osmund sends Averill away in an attempt to protect her from the plague, and he prays for a sign to give him some reason to leave and follow her.
As if on cue, an intense knight named Ulric (Sean Bean) arrives at the monastery, with a papal sanction to investigate rumors of a wicked necromancer who rules a distant marshland village and defies all civilized religion by bringing the dead back to life. Osmund volunteers to serve as guide to Ulric and his men, in the hopes that he can slip away from them and rejoin Averill. Of course, things don’t go as planned, and Osmund is drawn deeper into the violent outside world of Ulric’s warlike nature, along with the upsetting sights that are encountered along the way. By the time the small group of warriors and their monk guide arrive at the remote village of the necromancer, Osmund will see some things that will challenge everything he knows.
I spent more time than usual on the setup because I’m so impressed with it – credit to screenwriter Dario Poloni – BLACK DEATH starts out as a period men-on-a-mission flick, like last year’s CENTURION, but quickly descends into the nightmarish scenario of a ’70s film such as THE WICKER MAN. Sure enough, THE WICKER MAN was a point of reference for Christopher Smith and his crew, but I’d argue that BLACK DEATH is the better movie, eve,n than that long-acknowledged classic of British cult cinema: THE WICKER MAN has that horrific and haunting ending, but what precedes it is not nearly as memorable. By comparison, BLACK DEATHis the more consistent (and consistently enjoyable) film, and the reason for that is the excellent character work done by Poloni and Smith and a thoroughly terrific cast.
Sean Bean’s character is the central figure of the film, depending on how you interpret the tale, he’s a determined man of faith or an all-too-recognizable monomaniac. That’s not the first impression, by the way: The first impression he gives is of very traditional heroic iconography. Sean Bean is one of the more famous British actors – we know him best here in the States as Boromir from the LORD OF THE RINGS films, and he’s currently ripping it up in HBO’s Game Of Thrones series. This guy does with a medieval tunic and cloak what Pam Anderson did for red bathing suits (well, not exactly that, but you get my point I hope). You see Sean Bean all duded up in chain mail, and you start getting all optimistic, like BLACK DEATH is going to be a swashbuckling, somewhat smaller-budgeted FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, without all the wizards and little people and pipe-smoking.
The first cue that suggests that this is a much different, far darker scenario is when we start meeting Ulric’s crew. Outside of the dignified and level-headed Wolfstan (John Lynch, the terrific Irish actor from Richard Stanley’s HARDWARE), the men who Ulric commands are mercenaries at best and near-monsters at worst – there’s the vicious and uncouth Mold (Johnny Harris), the way-too-into-his-work and poorly-groomed torturer Dalywag (Andy Nyman), the grim and doom-eyed Griff (Jamie Ballard), the flippant and venal Swire (Emun Elliott, a doughy dead-ringer for Colin Farrell), and the mute, looks-exactly-like-Klaus-Kinski Ivo (Tygo Gernandt). Seriously, I’m not sure where BLACK DEATH’s casting directors dug up a guy who looks that much like Klaus Kinski, but good work by those folks: This is one surly-looking bunch. And these are our heroes.
Add to that mix Eddie Redmayne as the supposedly naïve and unworldly Osmund. Right from the beginning, due to the secret affair, he’s not the innocent all of the other characters would like to think he is. Also, I hope this doesn’t sound mean, but he’s a strikingly odd-looking figure. The performance is terrific, but almost from the start, Osmund, the audience identification figure in BLACK DEATH, isn’t quite right – in a quite perfect way. We don’t really know which way Osmund is going to go, which is why the end of the film is so perfectly unexpected and uniquely unsettling.
I’m deliberately leaving out the last few key characters, including the formidable (and extremely lovely) Carice Van Houten from Paul Verhoeven’s BLACK BOOK and Tim McInnerney (previously from Smith’s own SEVERANCE) as suspicious members of the marsh-bound village that is Ulric and Osmund’s ultimate destination. I don’t want to even identify which characters they play, because the less you know about BLACK DEATH going in, the more power it will have. And I strongly urge you to see it. BLACK DEATHdeserves all kinds of accolades for its convincing production design, atmosphere, and period detail, and its cast is uniformly terrific. Not for a moment do we doubt the realism of the world that Poloni has written and Smith has brought to screen, and that’s exactly what makes it so haunting and impossible to forget.
R.I.P. Leo O’Brien. He played “Richie Green” in THE LAST DRAGON, maybe the best character in the movie. Definitely the one with all the best lines.
I don’t do irony well. I tend to take the movies I like in the spirit they were intended. If a movie feels genuine to me, then my affection for it is genuine. THE LAST DRAGON is a kid’s movie, but one of the few I will still watch from time to time because it’s guaranteed to lift my mood. If I’m being completely honest, I love this movie way more than I love most conventionally accepted “classic films.” Given the choice, I’d opt without hesitation to watch this movie over CITIZEN KANE, CASABLANCA, and even THE GODFATHER. There, it’s out. I said it.
I accept that no one will ever let me call this a good movie, but the rest of the world is going to have to accept my insistence that this is a one-of-a- kind genre occurrence, and for that alone it deserves respect. There aren’t two like it. As the story of young Leroy “Bruce Leroy” Green (Taimak) and his mission to defend popular VJ Laura Charles (Vanity) against evil arcade owner Eddie Arkadian (Chris Murney) and local bully The Shogun Of Harlem (Julius J. Carry III), THE LAST DRAGON stands alone in its genre — it’s the first, last, and only Motown-kung fu-action-romantic-comedy musical. There’s so much genuine goodness about THE LAST DRAGON. It encourages the mild-mannered to stand up for themselves. It teaches kids about Eastern philosophy. It teaches kids about Bruce Lee. It gave early-career employment to legendary character-actors Mike Starr, Chazz Palminteri, and William H. Macy. It has music from Willie Hutch, Stevie Wonder, and Vanity. It has a kid (Leo O’Brien) who’s been tied up by bad guys escaping capture by break-dancing out of the ropes.
This movie is a positive force for the universe. I watch it and I smile. It’s one of my few nostalgic indulgences – but it’s still fun to watch as an adult. I fear the potential remake, despite the involvement of Sam Jackson and the RZA and despite the personal assurance I’ve received from Taimak himself (!). THE LAST DRAGON was lightning in a bottle, and let’s face it, it’s not actually possible to catch lightning in a bottle… unless a genuine miracle is involved.
Demon's Resume 