Blood is Thinner than Water

Films: Avalon
Format: Movies! Channel on rockin’ flatscreen.

I find slice of life movies difficult to review. They’re difficult because in many cases, they don’t really go anywhere. We get a chunk of somebody’s life, or several somebodies’ lives. And then it ends. I realize that this is certainly a lot closer to the way the real world works. We don’t all have storylines with a beginning, middle, and end. But movies do. That’s one of the things that’s great about them. So, when I get a movie that just takes a chunk out of a life and puts it on the screen, I feel like I don’t get a complete story. This is exactly the case with Avalon.

Like a handful of other Barry Levinson films, Avalon is at least semi-autobiographical. In this case, it’s more about Levinson’s family and less about his own personal experience. It appears to be more or less the story of his grandfather and his life in Baltimore starting in around 1914. Using his grandfather’s experience and the experience of his family, Levinson is more or less recounting the story of the Polish Jewish immigrant experience in the United States from around the start of World War I.

Shake Your Booty

Film: Wag the Dog
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

In the movie Angel Heart, Robert De Niro essentially plays Satan. He’s also played a laundry list of thugs, hitmen, and mob bosses. I bring that up, because it’s entirely possible that he has never played a darker character than he does in Wag the Dog. That this film is a comedy only enhances De Niro’s genial evil in it. If that sounds like I’m complaining, I apologize. The fact that De Niro’s character is so likable and amiable makes it easy to ignore the fact that he is also terrifying. Once it’s realized exactly how scary he is, the fact that he seems so decent only makes him more evil.

Wag the Dog is a political drama/comedy that is also one of those great examples of life imitating art. In the film, the sitting president is implicated in a sex scandal a couple of weeks before his potential re-election. This causes his team to go into overdrive to create a different news story to take the media feeding frenzy off the sex scandal. Wag the Dog was well into production when the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal broke, and when that scandal was followed in short order by the bombing of a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory, well, it was hard to prevent comparisons.

Viva, Las Vegas

Film: Bugsy
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

With a biopic, particularly one of a shadow figure like Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, the main question to ask is how true to history it actually is. With Bugsy, I honestly have no idea, but I’m also not sure I really care. Ostensibly, this film is about Benny Siegel, but in reality, it’s about the birth of Las Vegas as a desert Mecca. Vegas as a resort was Siegel’s brainchild, and more or less, this is what the film shows. That this is ultimately a tragic story is both the point and beside the point.

What I find particularly interesting here is the name of the film. The nickname of Bugsy was used only by people who had some distance between themselves and Siegel, at least according to the film. If we take the screenplay as gospel, Ben Siegel hated the name and wasn’t above violence for those who used it in his presence.

Three Minutes to Wapner

Film: Rain Man
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

It’s a cliché that the best way for an actor to win an Oscar is to play a character who is badly broken either mentally, physically, or emotionally but still accessible as a person and a character by the audience. To quote Robert Downey, Jr. in Tropic Thunder, you never go full retard. I can think of no better example of this than Dustin Hoffman’s Oscar-winning performance in Rain Man. The film was a phenomenon and is still a cultural touchstone in a number of ways. Despite the fact that I’d only seen it once before today and my wife had only seen it once, too, it’s one of the most frequently referenced films in my house. “I’m an excellent driver,” is a common phrase, and anyone using the word “definitely” can rightly expect to have “not my underwear” quoted as a follow-up.

Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) is a somewhat shady businessman dealing in exotic cars. He’s playing fast and loose with his customers and the EPA. He owes a great deal of money, can’t get his vehicles through their emissions checks, and is behind on a loan. When the news of the death of his estranged father arrives, it’s something of a mixed blessing. After all, Sanford Babbitt had millions, and Charlie is the only likely inheritor.

Myth Representation

Film: The Natural
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

The American people once upon a time had a fascination with the game of baseball. Some of that remains, but a lot has faded in the last few decades. There’s still a relationship there, though unlike that with any other sport. This is due to baseball’s history, which is much longer as a consecutive thing than other sports (barring lockouts and strikes) and in part because of baseball’s pastoral nature. Even in this day of steroid abuse and multi-multi million dollar contracts, there’s a connection between baseball today and the game of nearly a century ago.

Because of this unique relationship between America and baseball, it’s no surprise that the game frequently takes on a mythic significance in film. And thus it’s no surprise that a film like The Natural ascribes a mythic significance to the game using story that borrows lightly from the story of Percival in the Arthurian tradition and heavily from The Odyssey. In the world of the film, baseball is writ large. A hit is not merely a hit, but a stroke of power. A home run is an achievement of legend. If this makes it sound like The Natural is a bit overblown and takes itself a bit seriously, well, that’s exactly the case. Those truly immersed in the game, who take hot stove time seriously and count days to spring training will not find this odd. Everyone else may be put out by the film’s need to blow the impact of a simple game completely out of proportion.

Historical (In)Accuracy

Film: Good Morning, Vietnam
Format: DVD from NetFlix on kick-ass portable DVD player.

When looking at a film like Good Morning, Vietnam, you have a few options. You can assume that Hollywood played with it a little, but that it’s basically accurate. You’d be wrong to do that, but you could do it. You could also get really bent out of shape that there’s little similarity to the Adrian Cronauer depicted in the film and the real guy—a life-long Republican who worked within the guidelines of military edicts for his entire career. Or, and this is recommended, you can forget about historical accuracy and look at this simply as a movie and judge it on that basis. That’s the best idea because there’s nothing in this film that complies with history.

Adrian Cronauer (Robin Williams) is brought to Vietnam to help build the morale of the troops as a radio performer. He’s been called in from Crete mainly because he’s very good at what he does; he’s funny and the troops seem to like his brand of humor and his taste in music. He’s greeted at the airport by Edward Montesque Garlick (Forest Whitaker), who is a bit of a nerd and worried about getting into trouble, but also sees problems in the army around him. We’re also quickly introduced to Marty Lee Dreiwitz (Robert Wuhl), who thinks he’s funny and isn’t (a statement true of both the character and of Robert Wuhl himself). On the “bad guys” side, we have Lieutenant Steve Hauk (Bruno Kirby) who is supremely unfunny and a martinet and Sergeant Major Dickerson (J.T. Walsh) who has a massive stick up his back porch. These two take an immediate dislike to Cronauer and do everything they can to keep him off the air, morale be damned.

Cronauer is immediately fascinated by Vietnamese women, and focuses on one in particular, who refuses to talk to him. As a method of getting to know her, he takes over her English language class and, as a precursor to getting the girl, meets up with her brother, Tuan (Tung Thanh Tran). Tuan doesn’t trust Cronauer, but over time learns to, and eventually arranges a meeting between the American and his sister, Trinh (Chintara Sukapatana).

Much of the time is spent in Jimmy Wah’s, a local bar/restaurant run by the eponymous owner (Cu Ba Nguyen), who is flamingly and overtly gay and has a fetish for Walter Brennan. As the film progresses, the relationship between Cronauer and Tuan takes a darker turn. Tuan, for instance, pulls Cronauer out of Jimmy Wah’s moments before the place explodes, and Tuan also seems to be able to move through Viet Cong territory with relative ease.

The film essentially becomes a battle between the disc jockeys—Cronauer in particular but also the other working stiffs in the unit—and those more dedicated to living by the book. This includes Hauk and Dickerson mainly, but also includes the Army censors (Dan and Don Stanton who look so much alike that it almost seems like a camera trick instead of identical twins). Cronauer clashes with the brass on a near-daily basis, which leads to his being pulled from the air and replaced by the supremely, dreadfully unfunny Hauk in one of the film’s best moments.

Good Morning, Vietnam isn’t quite sure of what it wants to be. Is it a comedy about dealing with the brass and people without a sense of humor? Yes, it is in part, and these sequences tend to be the strongest in the film. Is it a drama about relationships, racism, and nationalism? Yes, it’s that too, especially as we delve into the relationship between Cronauer and Tuan and Cronauer and Trinh. Is it about inefficiency and stubbornness, and playing things too close to the book instead of living? Yes to that as well. Because it is all of these things, it’s also none of these things completely, and as much as the film tries desperately to gel into a unified, complete story, it never really does.

It’s still a strong performance from Williams. The best scenes in the movie are those in which he is able to improvise and work with a very loose script and material he’s been given as a starting point. His radio rants are staggering and manic, offering glimpses of comedic genius, improvisational skill, and excellent timing. Similarly, his immediate responses to jabs from his superiors are funny and delivered perfectly. It’s elsewhere the film seems to break down. Williams can certainly pull off relationships in film, but here, it doesn’t seem to work as well as the straight comedy does.

Good Morning, Vietnam also seems to mark a slow slide into sentimentality for Williams, comedic films that seem to have a moral message that never quite pans out or that comes out not as heartwarming and real but as sap and cheese. It was a long, slow slide through films like Dead Poets Society, Awakenings, Hook, Toys, and Jack, finally culminating in the diabetes-inducing Patch Adams that marked a frequently unfunny, unentertaining slide in the man’s career. That he’s broken out of this in the main is a good thing. And while his performance here is a strong one, there’s no mistaking that his dozen-year, face-first slide into sappy sentimentality started here.

Watch the movie for him, for Forest Whitaker, and for Bruno Kirby. Williams is at his comedic best here, at least in the moments he is allowed to be funny. When the relationships shows up, fast forward, or go make yourself a sandwich.

Why to watch Good Morning, Vietnam: When over-the-top Robin Williams works, it really works.
Why not to watch: History is tossed out the window for dubious dramatic effect.

All Good Things Must Come to an End

Film: Diner
Format: DVD from personal collection on big ol’ television.

There are movies that define a generation. Movies like Star Wars, for instance, are defining of the late 1970s. It’s impossible for me to think of the 1970s, particularly the year after the film came out without immediately referencing that film. More to the point, some films become the definition of a particular year or set of years. It’s difficult to think of 1962 (impossible for me since that’s several years before I was born) without American Graffiti being a part of the mix. That year is immortalized in that film.

The heart of the Ike years, 1959, is most indelibly represented on film in the movie Diner. Again, before my time. However, if you listen to people talk about the simpler time of the ‘50s, you’ll usually hear that things were a lot better back then. People were respectful and the world wasn’t so crazy. Diner makes something of a different case. There’s not a lot of innocence here, although the pranks pulled and the hijinks gotten up to are perhaps tame by current standards.

One of the selling points of a movie like Diner is the cast because the cast is as good as it gets. The film centers on a Baltimore diner that is also the center of the world of a group of friends. This group includes Eddie Simmons (Steve Guttenberg), who is allegedly getting married on New Year’s Eve. He’s not sure he wants to, and he’s seriously hedging his bets on the marriage thing. His fiancée needs to pass a test on her knowledge of the Baltimore Colts.

Part of his reticence comes from the marriage of his friend “Shrevie” Schreiber (Daniel Stern), who is married to Beth (Ellen Barkin). When asked about whether he likes his marriage, he can’t answer. He clearly loves Beth, but says that now that they are married, and no longer have to discuss sex or the wedding plans, they have nothing to talk about.

Also hanging around the diner are “Boogie” Sheftell (Mickey Rourke), who has a serious gambling problem and takes ridiculous bets to cover his other ridiculous losing bets as well as an insatiable appetite for the ladies; Fenwick (Kevin Bacon), who drifts around despite his obvious intelligence; Billy Howard (Tim Daly), who has opted for graduate school and a degree in business despite his pregnant girlfriend; and Modell (Paul Reiser), the group’s doubting Thomas.

The six, all young and dependent on each other for their mutual society and company and sanity, spend as much time as they can in the local diner making fun of each other, cracking jokes, and avoiding the necessity of really growing up.

That’s really what this film is—it’s a bildungsroman on a grand scale, covering the lives of half a dozen young men at a critical time in their own lives and a critical time in the life of the world. The year was the height of the Cold War, of course, although none of this figures in Diner, because this isn’t a movie about world shaking events—it’s about nothing more than becoming an adult.

Change is inevitable, and because of it, difficult. When we find a place in our life that is comfortable, we want things to stay the way they are, but they never can. There’s no doubt that I would love to return in my own life to an easier time without mortgage payments, car payments, and a job that frequently takes up parts of my weekends. But that’s not reality, and eventually, we have to grow up and move on.

“…you always have the guys at the diner,” Eddie says. But it isn’t true. It can’t be. And that’s the point.

Why to watch Diner: A remarkable cast in its prime and a story anyone older than 21 can buy into.
Why not to watch: What happened to Steve Guttenberg and Mickey Rourke, and to some extent Daniel Stern, after this film.