Osage, Can You See

Film: Killers of the Flower Moon
Format: Streaming video from Apple TV on basement television.

My latest quarter in school ended Friday and my grades are due tomorrow, but I finished them this morning. It seemed like a good time to knock out the longest movie on my list, Martin Scorsese’s latest magnum opus Killers of the Flower Moon. I went into this expecting something like a mystery. Turns out that that’s not the case; Killers of the Flower Moon is a gangster movie. It’s just a gangster movie that takes place in 1920s Oklahoma, involves the Osage people, and is about oil. Still, it’s very much a gangster movie.

After World War I, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) shows up in Oklahoma at the behest of his uncle, William King Hale (Robert De Niro). King Hale runs a ranch, aided by Ernest’s brother Byron (Scott Shepherd). The ranch is in Osage country, and in previous years, oil was discovered on Osage land, making the people fabulously wealthy. And this is the problem—the Osage have the oil rights, but because they are native, they don’t have any real power. And so they start dying, and their deaths are not investigated.

Asylum Seeker

Film: Shutter Island
Format: DVD from personal collection on basement television.

It’s worth remembering sometimes that Martin Scorsese finally won a Best Director Oscar for a movie that was a remake. I say this because Shutter Island feels very much like a remake. It’s not; it’s based on a Dennis Lehane novel, but it genuinely feels like a remake of another film. I’ll get to that under a spoiler tag in a bit. I don’t want to spoil this (or the other movie) for anyone who has only seen one of them.

It’s also worth saying that being Martin Scorsese will have some particular perks beyond being an acclaimed film director. For instance, you’ll get your choice of anyone you want to work with. This film features performances by Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Max von Sydow, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson, Elias Koteas, Emily Mortimer, Jackie Earle Haley, Ted Levine, and John Carroll Lynch. It’s one of those movies that makes you wonder why there isn’t an Oscar for best ensemble cast.

I Heard You Paint Houses

Films: The Irishman
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on the new internet machine.

While I’ve never shirked from long movies in the past, I can’t say that I’m always geared up for them. The Irishman is far and away the longest movie on the latest batch of Oscars, so when I had a spare day to watch it, I did. Kind of. I watched about 2 ½ hours of it and finished it up in the morning. Seriously, it’s a long friggin’ movie. It’s also very much a return to Scorsese’s roots, as well as the roots of much of his main cast. It was probably a foregone conclusion that The Irishman would score a slew of nominations, and now that I’ve seen the movie, I can understand why.

This is the story of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a simple Teamster who ran a route delivering meat. Through a series of chance meetings and coincidences, Frank became involved in the Pennsylvania Bufalino crime family headed by Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci). Through additional connections, Frank eventually becomes an enforcer and semi-bodyguard for Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). Frank, we quickly learn, has no qualms about killing, something he learned in Italy in World War II. As it happens, this turns out to be a very useful skill.

Kiss My Grits

Films: Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

When you think of Martin Scorsese, chances are good that you think of his more mob-related movies (Casino, Goodfellas) or his more violent films (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull). I would have never pegged him as the director of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, a film that was eventually turned into a long-running television sit-com. I remember the show; my mom loved it. Naturally, I went into the movie thinking that it was going to be a clear inspiration for a good-natured show that took place in a diner. Well, I was wrong, and in this case, that’s not a bad thing.

What I didn’t know was that Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore was a project that was controlled almost from the start by Ellen Burstyn, who was still riding high from success in The Exorcist. Burstyn hand-picked Scorsese to direct, and Scorsese then surrounding himself with women to act in many important crew roles. The entire point behind the film was to make a film about a realistic woman with realistic problems.

It's in the Way that You Use It

Film: The Color of Money
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on laptop.

When you discuss Oscars, eventually the conversation will get around to people who won a career Oscar in the guise of a competitive one. None may be more clearly a case of this than Paul Newman’s win for The Color of Money. Newman had so definitively deserved an Oscar before 1986, but lost for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Hud, Cool Hand Luke, Absence of Malice and The Verdict and wasn’t nominated for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or The Sting, and so, finally, the Academy gave him one for a 25-years-after-the-fact sequel to The Hustler. Don’t get me wrong; Newman deserved an Oscar in his career, and while The Color of Money is a lesser film in many respects, he’s still worth watching in it. It just seems a shame that he won for something that pales in comparison to so much of his other work. Sad, but true.

Anyway, The Color of Money is a sequel to The Hustler 25 years later. Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) has given up the pool hustling game and now works as a whiskey salesman, something for which he is well suited. He also functions as a stakehorse for Julian (John Turturro), covering his bets and taking the lion’s share of the winnings. One day at one of his stops while flirting with his girlfriend bartender Janelle (Helen Shaver), he watches Julian lose over and over to a new player named Vincent (Tom Cruise). After spending a little time observing both Vincent and his girlfriend Carmen (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), he offers them a proposition. Go out on the road with him for a few weeks, learn how to really hustle pool, and then show up in Atlantic City for a 9-ball tournament and clean up both in terms of winning and in betting.

Original vs. Remake

Film: Cape Fear (1962); Cape Fear (1991)
Format: Video from The Magic Flashdrive (1962), DVD from NetFlix (1991), both on laptop.

When the 1991 version of Cape Fear showed up in the mail from NetFlix, I knew I had the rare opportunity for a perfect double feature. It was only appropriate to begin with the 1962 version of Cape Fear. Sure, it meant that I’d be spending about four hours watching the same basic story twice, but no matter. After all, the NetFlix movie needs to go back, but it only makes sense to see the original before the remake. It would be an interesting opportunity to directly compare and contrast the two films with both fresh in my memory.

The original Cape Fear was evidently a bust in terms of box office, which makes it an interesting choice for a remake. Evidently, it failed so badly that it spelled the end for Gregory Peck’s production company. Since that time, though, it has become something of a classic. It’s an interesting film in the sense that it features the work of high-profile stars Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum, but is essentially a B-movie. I guess that makes it a B-movie with A-list aspirations.

His Cross to Bear

Film: The Last Temptation of Christ
Format: Streaming video from Hoopla Digital on The Nook.

I’d never seen The Last Temptation of Christ until now, but I certainly remember when it was released because of the controversy surrounding it. Had I been in my more religious phase when the film came out, I may well have been offended by it, too. As it happens, the film came out in 1988 when I was still a believer but had lost interest with religion as organized practice. The controversy surrounding this film was substantial, and now that I’ve seen it, I understand why. I think it’s silly that it was controversial, but I get why it bent a lot of people out of shape.

There’s no good way to really explain The Last Temptation of Christ. It follows the basic Christ story but it gets there by some very strange routes. For the true believer, even the opening of the film, which features Jesus (Willem Dafoe) building crosses for the Romans to crucify Jews, doesn’t just border on blasphemous, it crosses the line completely. Even more, it features a Judas (Harvey Keitel) as a man dedicated to fighting the Romans and who wants Jesus to help him overthrown the foreign yoke.

Greed is Great

Film: The Wolf of Wall Street
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

I knew when The Wolf of Wall Street showed up in the mail from NetFlix I was going to have a difficult time watching it. This has nothing to do with it being a movie I didn’t want to watch. Actually, the opposite is true; I tend to like Scorsese and I tend to like Leonard DiCaprio. No, the issue here was that I knew going in that there’s a lot of sex and drugs in ths film, which means that I can’t watch when my kids are around. Through no planning on my end, I got the house to myself for a chunk of time today, and I took the opportunity to watch.

My guess, as happens with films like this one is that most of my readers have already seen this, which means a short recap so as not to bore anyone. This is the story of Jordan Belfort (DiCaprio), a Wall Street trader with a fortune in the bank and a serious lack of control over his various appetites—that’s the sex and drugs from the previous paragraph. We see his rise and fall as a trader twice. It’s the second rise, filled as it is with shady dealings, cheating, massive amounts of drugs (seriously, Tony Montana doesn’t do this much blow) and wanton sex with virtually anything that moves, that takes up the bulk of the film.

Learning Experience

Film: Mean Streets
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

If someone told me that he or she thought Martin Scorsese is the greatest living film director, I’d be hard pressed to disagree. He may or may not be my choice, depending on the day and my mood, but he certainly wouldn’t be a bad choice for that honor. The thing about great directors, though, is they all started somewhere, and their beginnings aren’t always what we might hope. Such is the case with Scorsese and his film Mean Streets.

Charlie (Harvey Keitel) is a low-ranking member of a mob family in New York. The bulk of his job is collecting on debts for his uncle. His personal time is spent watching out for his friend Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro) and spending time with his girlfriend Teresa (Amy Robinson), Johnny Boy’s cousin. Johnny Boy is a punk and a small-time gambler who owes money to virtually every loan shark in the area. He’s also out of control of his emotions and actions most of the time. Teresa is an epileptic, which makes her something of a pariah, meaning that Charlie needs to keep their relationship quiet, since his uncle and other members of the mob don’t like her around.

Fables of the Reconstruction

Film: The Age of Innocence
Format: DVD from Schmaling Memorial Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.

I can’t know what was going on in Martin Scorsese’s mind when it came to directing The Age of Innocence, based on a novel by Edith Wharton. I imagine, though, that his decision was made in part as a way to earn something like greater credibility. He certainly had a good deal of credibility before 1993, but it would be easy to pigeonhole his career as a director who made a very specific type of film. Even in his non-gangster pictures, many of his characters act like gangsters. The Age of Innocence is a complete break with the sort of films Scoresese was known for. I wonder what others thought when he was working on it. Would it come out as a Reconstruction Era Taxi Driver?

It didn’t, of course. The Age of Innocence is, as far as I can tell, faithful to Wharton’s novel. If Scorsese was looking for respect, or wanted to offer proof that his skill as a director wasn’t limited to people trying to kill each other and criminal acts, this was the perfect vehicle him.

Ten Count

Film: Raging Bull
Format: DVD from personal collection on kick-ass portable DVD player.

My original plan today was to knock out two films--Raging Bull and Million Dollar Baby, but I’ve discovered exactly why the person who gave me MDB gave it to me: it doesn’t work. So I’m stuck with just Raging Bull on the day. Fortunately, there’s enough film here that it can handle being reviewed on its own. I’ve seen most of this movie before, but never all at once and never in order.

But first, a story. More than a year ago, on a podcast concerning the film Bronson, James Blake Ewing of Cinema Sights compared that film to Raging Bull, saying that the Bronson character reminded him in many ways of Jake LaMotta. In his mind, the difference was that Raging Bull has more interesting characters around the main character. Having now seen this film in full and front to back, I’m not so sure I agree. LaMotta’s brother is interesting, but I don’t give a rat’s about anyone else, except LaMotta himself, and even there not for the reasons you might think.

Dealt a Bad Hand

Film: Casino
Format: DVD from NetFlix on Sue’s Mother’s Day present.

My most recent memory of Casino before tonight is when my podcasting partner Nick Jobe at Random Ramblings of a Demented Doorknob watched it some time ago. I remember it distinctly because Nick didn’t exactly hate the film, but he did find it dull. I’d have loved to have been able to help Nick out, but I hadn’t seen the film before tonight. I liked this film quite a bit more than Nick did, although I understand why he felt lost in it.

Casino is the story of how the Midwest mob showed up in Las Vegas, sort of. It’s a lot more about a guy who made really good choices except for the few times that he really didn’t and the consequences that had for him. It opens with a car bomb placed in the vehicle of one of our narrators. Sam “Ace” Rothstein (Robert De Niro) is one of the truly great handicappers, always making a killing on any sporting event. The Midwestern families decide that that makes him the best person to run a new casino in Las Vegas.

Refugees

Film: Kundun
Format: DVD from Schmaling Memorial Library through interlibrary loan on kick-ass DVD player.

Some films I find difficult for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they are difficult because they are poorly made or badly plotted. In the case of Kundun, the reason for its difficulty for me is much more nuanced and complex. This film is expertly made and gorgeously filmed. The problem I find here is one of focus and direction rather than skill or quality or even subject matter. There are simply things going on here passed off as historical truth that I cannot get my mind around.

Kundun is essentially the history of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th (and current) Dalai Lama, secular and spiritual leader of Tibet, who has ruled in exile for more than a half century. Such a history is naturally of considerable interest. But, and this is where I will probably take heat from others, this history is enmeshed with spiritual, religious, and otherworldly portents and signs of significance.

“Of course,” you say. “This is, after all, the story of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. It is only natural that there a spiritual side to this story.”

And with that I agree. I don’t have a problem with the idea that the film would naturally explore the spiritual side of Tibet and of Tenzin Gyatso. Where the problem comes in for me is that this film is less an exploration of the history of his finding, teaching, coronation, and flight from Tibet in front of the People’s Army of China and more a strict beatification of the man himself. Watch this movie and take it at face value, and you have no option but to simply believe that the man is divine.

I don’t want to take away from the more technical aspects of the film, which are as good as they get. The cinematography here is absolutely sublime. Additionally, the color and pageantry and spectacle of the various ceremonies and aspects of Tibetan life. Additionally, Scorsese was able to bring out professional-level performances from a non-professional cast, a number of whom are actually related to the Dalai Lama. On a technical level, this film is as good as it gets.

But again, I am continually drawn back to the idea that to accept this film and story as it is told, I must accept most of the tenets of Gelug Buddhism, which I frankly do not. I do not accept that Tenzin Gyatso is the reborn spirit of the previous 13 Dalai Lamas. I do not believe in the signs and portents that are given here, or that the Dalai Lama has the ability to foresee the future, as he is seen doing multiple times in the course of this film. I simply do not believe this, and thus I do not believe in the veracity of the film put before me.

Let me put it another way. A few months ago, I watched the entirety of the three-season television show Avatar: The Last Airbender. It’s evident that a great deal of that show was borrowed from the life of the current Dalai Lama. The determination of his identity by choosing items from his past life, the spiritual connections, even the name Gyatso appears in the show as one of the Avatar’s teachers. And for Avatar, I buy it. I buy it because it is inherently a fantasy, something that does not purport itself to be a reflection of the real world in any way. It is a fantasy world complete with (essentially) magic and spirits and an entire, populated spirit world.

Not so for Kundun, which purports to be a part of the real world, mystic signs and portents, supernatural powers, rebirth, and all.

And so I find myself relatively conflicted on this film. On the one hand, it is an expertly made film by one of the greatest working filmmakers today. It is a difficult film to dislike because of the care and skill with which it has been made. On the other hand, the premise is something I find ludicrous on its face. I do not ascribe magical powers or divinity to any man, no matter how impressive.

This is not a knock against the Dalai Lama himself. He seems by all accounts to be an impressive and decent human being, a man who has sacrificed much for his beliefs, and who is willing to do anything for the betterment of his people. I respect that and admire that. But it still doesn’t make him a mystical figure, and there’s simply no getting around that.

I will say, though, that I did appreciate that at least the spirituality here is something other than what is traditionally hammered at us. The fact that at the very least I could get away from the strict Western view of religion—particularly as practiced by many of the most rabid supporters—was a welcome relief.

Why to watch Kundun: A tale of modern spirituality that differs greatly from most Western stories attributing everything to Christian teaching.
Why not to watch: As usual, spirituality offers no explanations other than itself.

Stripped Gears

Film: Hugo
Format: The Glen Theater.

Martin Scorsese loves movies. I don’t mean that he’s into them as a director and thus has a deep respect for them. I mean that Martin Scorsese is a movie geek as much or more than anyone who keeps a movie blog. If Scorsese were not a director of film, he’d be a critic, or a teacher, or a faceless blogger dutifully worshipping at the altar of cinema like so many of the rest of us. It’s one of the reasons that Scorsese movies tend to be well reviewed; he knows what movie geeks want to see, and makes references to things that movie geeks will get.

So Hugo comes as no surprise. While some maybe prone to calling this a love letter to film, it is not; it is, in fact, an explicit missive to film. It is passionate and romantic, and at least tries to be dangerous. And it succeeds at times. And the rest of the time, it is little more than a pretty picture book without a ton of substance. It’s a fluffy pastry of a film, delicious going down, but ultimately not that filling, and prone to giving the person who ingests it a touch of indigestion.

Anyway, we have a young boy named Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), who lives inside the walls at the train station in Paris (the station that is now the Musee D’Orsay, if memory serves). Hugo’s father (Jude Law) was a clockmaker killed in a fire. His uncle tended the clocks at the train station and took Hugo on when the father died, and then essentially abandoned the boy. So Hugo lives on, tending the clocks and scavenging food, ever watchful of the station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), who loves nothing more than turning orphans in to the police.

Hugo has a secret. He is the possessor of an automaton that he is trying to fix. To do so, he steals parts from a toymaker located inside the train station. The toymaker (Ben Kingsley) catches Hugo one day, and takes the boy’s notebook. He has a strange and terrible reaction to the intricate drawings in the book, and threatens to burn it, causing a great deal of strife to Hugo. We are also introduced to the toymaker’s goddaughter Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), who is disturbingly precocious. She takes an immediate shine to Hugo, because there is great mystery around the boy, and she is attracted to this.

From here, the film is essentially a series of Dickensian coincidences. Isabelle’s godfather is connected to Hugo and to the automaton, and to virtually everyone else in the city of Paris by the end of the movie. And there is joy and redemption had by all by the time the curtain closes.

It’s a pretty film. I won’t fault it there. It is a truly extraordinary thing to look at on the screen. Many times, the shots look like paintings, and Scorsese is an old enough hand now that moving his camera perfectly is a matter of due course and a lot of planning. The close-up shots are radiant and beautiful, and used perfectly. I can find no fault here.

Sadly, I can find fault elsewhere. Let’s start with the running time. Hugo clocks in at a touch over two hours, but it feels like 150 minutes. This is in no small part because of the ending, which goes on and on. The film appears to end multiple times, with each ending simply summing up and resolving on of the major plot points one at a time.

However, all of this can be forgiven. So too can the fairly wooden performances. This will catch me hell from those more prone to buying the hype. But that can also be forgiven. What can’t is the fact that for a film that has all of the earmarks of a story swimming in magic and childlike wonder and magical realism,Hugo never strays far from bare, coincidence-laden reality. There are moments of magical realism here and there—the floating images from the toymaker’s trunk, for instance—but they never really go anywhere. I should have been almost overwhelmed by a sort of steampunk fantasy, but was instead placed in a world that was intricate, but nonetheless mundane.

Beyond this, there is a sense that Scorsese’s love letter to film is both too obscure and too constant for anyone but the biggest of film nerd to truly find captivating. We’re given glimpses into the world of silent films as the kids pour over a book on early film history. We see a dazzling display of clips from La Voyage Dans la Lune and a dozen others. I recognized Pandora’s Box, The Great Train Robbery, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Intolerance, The General and a few others. But anyone who is a big enough geek to spot these films would also be geek enough to know that the film that is so central to the narrative--La Voyage Dans la Lune predates almost all of these films, but is somehow encountered last in the book the kids read.

I appreciate what Scorsese is doing here. But in that theater today, I was probably the only one who had seen many of those films referenced. And based on the reaction afterwards of my extended family (we took up two rows of seats), not a single person in my group had the intention of seeking those films out, or was aware that many of them (especially La Voyage) could be found online.

Hugo tries hard to be sweet, but is ultimately misguided. So much time is spent on minor characters—a pseudo love story between railroad station regulars Frances de la Tour and Richard Griffiths—that the main thrust of the story gets bogged down.

Don’t get me wrong; this film will get some love come Oscar time, and people will sing its praises. But many who sing its praises won’t really know why, and many of them will do so for the wrong reasons.

Why to watch Hugo: Because it’s Scorsese.
Why not to watch: For a film that should be warm and inviting, it’s a bit cold and unwelcoming.

Me and Howard Hughes

Film: The Aviator
Format: DVDs from DeKalb Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Twenty years ago, the actor most frequent thought of in combination with Martin Scorsese was Robert Di Niro. These days, Leonardo DiCaprio would be just as accurate an answer. DiCaprio has made at least four major films with Scorsese, each one garnering a ton of critical acclaim. Similarly, Scorsese seems to have mellowed in some ways. While The Departed seemed like a trip back to his roots, he has branched out in terms of theme and subject in his films. A good example of this is his biopic of Howard Hughes, The Aviator.

While the film begins with Hughes’s mother bathing him and telling him about the dangers of cholera and typhoid, most of the film concerns the man’s life from the late 1920s through the middle and end of the 1940s. In short, these are the years of Hughes’s greatest productivity, innovation, and notoriety, and the beginnings of his eventual decline into paranoia, OCD, and compulsive behavior.

Hughes (DiCaprio) inherits Hughes Tool Co., netting him a massive fortune, which he uses to finance his own entry into the motion picture industry. His first movie, Hell’s Angels, took three years and close to $4 million to produce, and lost money despite being a hit. During this time, he hires Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly, who reminds us every now and then that he can be an excellent dramatic actor) to run Hughes Tool, and Dietrich eventually acts as Hughes’s go-to for virtually everything in his life.

Much of the film concerns the many loves of Howard Hughes, including (but hardly limited to) Katherine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett), Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale), and a 15-year-old high school student named Faith Domergue (Kelli Garner). But despite all of the women, the first and only true love of Howard Hughes was flight. During the course of the film, Hughes sets an airspeed record and pushes the limits of aviation in a number of ways.

But this isn’t what made Hughes interesting. What did was his crippling mental and emotional problems. We get small hints of these early on, but they become progressively more pronounced and severe as the film continues. Hughes was a germophobe, and this is portrayed in painstaking and poignant detail in the film—washing his hands until they bleed, standing in a public restroom until someone else opens the door for fear of touching the handle. Hughes’s OCD and cleanliness tendencies threaten to cripple him completely. What we see in the film is not the kooky nuttiness that we might think such problems might cause. We don’t see the “Oh, I’m a bit OCD” behavior that most of us exhibit a little of—fixing our CD collection when one is out of order. At one point, Hughes spends nearly three months in a projection room, stripped naked, urinating in empty milk bottles. He effectively quarantines himself for fear of illness.

What’s also fascinating is the enemies he makes and battles through the course of the film. Most notable is Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin), Chairman of Pan Am and rival of Hughes’s own TWA. Trippe, along with Maine Senator Owen Brewster (Alan Alda), attempt to wrest a monopoly on international flight for Pan Am, and see Hughes’s innovations in aeronautics as a major roadblock. They play on his crippling fears to attempt to cow him into submission and force him to sell off TWA to avoid embarrassing investigations into his—quite frankly bizarre, even by wealthy eccentric standards—personal life. What’s shocking here (and this is closely based on the history) is that despite his enormous wealth, Hughes came out of his battles against Pan Am and the Senate looking much like the wronged everyman in battle with titanic corporate and government forces arrayed against him.

In short, The Aviator is a portrait of a brilliant, tenacious, and deeply flawed human being. It’s a masterful performance by DiCaprio, who is able to capture both facets of this man, both the incredible genius and charisma as well as the legendary mental and emotional instability. As Hughes, DiCaprio frequently repeats sentences over and over, unable to let the particular phrase go. DiCaprio is assisted greatly here by his entire supporting cast, notable Blanchett, who won a well-deserved Oscar for her portrayal of Hepburn.

The film also notably won Oscars for art direction and cinematography, and it deserved both. To achieve the look he was going for, Scorsese digitally recreated the film to look as if it had been filmed with the processes available at the time each scene was taking place. The color frequently looks off—and this is intentional, because it is intended to (for instance) duplicate the two-strip Technicolor process, which made greens look a bit bluish. It’s subtle, but it adds a fascinating element to an already fascinating film.

I’ll say this now—if I wasn’t a fan of Leonardo DiCaprio, I would be after watching this film, because it might be the best one of his career. If I wasn’t already a huge fan of Scorsese, this is the sort of film that would put him in my top five directors. I’ve complained recently about films that run too long for their subject, but The Aviator reminds me that no really great film is ever too long. This one has a running time of just under three hours, and it doesn’t feel like it. It could have run another hour, and I wouldn’t have noticed or complained.

Why to watch The Aviator: One of the best biopics ever made.
Why not to watch: Insanity can be very disturbing.

Unpredictability

Film: The Departed
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.


There’s a trend in Hollywood to remake anything and everything. This is news to no one, of course. Many of these films are remakes of Asian titles. This is particularly true when it comes to horror movies, but it happens other places as well. Of the non-Asian remakes of Asian films, none climbed so far as Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, a remake of Infernal Affairs from Hong Kong.

For a film that runs a good two-and-a-half hours, The Departed has a remarkably simple plot. We have Irish mob in Boston. We have a kid who grows up in the mob and joins the state police specifically to act as a mole for the mob boss. At the same time, we have another potential officer who leaves the academy specifically so he can act as a mole for the state police in the criminal organization. The two moles hide from each other and hunt for each other. Essentially, that’s it.

Okay, it’s more complicated than that. Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) runs much of the crime in Boston. He recruits a young boy named Colin Sullivan (eventually played by Matt Damon) who grows up to join the police academy. Colin has all of the outward appearances of being a cop’s cop—his record is completely spotless. But, of course, he’s working for Frank Costello, alerting Frank to raids, problems, and issues within the Massachusetts State Police so that Frank can act accordingly.

Simultaneously, we are introduced to Billy Costigan (Leonardo Dicaprio), who is also in training for the state police and at the academy. He’s pulled aside as his training nears completion, he’s pulled into an office to meet with a couple of the higher ups: Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) and the surprisingly antagonistic and foul-mouthed Sergeant Dignam (Mark Wahlberg). They want to bust Costigan out of the academy, arrest him for a crime, throw him in prison for a few months, and then release him in the hopes that he can work his way up into Costello’s organization. So perhaps, honestly, it’s not that much more complicated than I had originally thought.

We get a little bit of complication in the person of Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), who becomes Sullivan’s girlfriend and Costigan’s court-appointed psychiatrist, creating a further connection between the two men. They run in circles around each other for the whole movie, Sullivan attempting to keep his true identity as Costello’s mole silent and put on a good show for everyone else while also trying to find the mole in Costello’s organization while Costigan reports to Queenan on the sly, participates in a variety of crimes, and hunts for the identity of Costello’s man in the state police office. They come close to bumping into each other a few times, but everyone is keeping quiet about the moles everywhere.

They also come close to bumping into each other when Costigan makes a play (successfully, mind you) for Madolyn’s affections despite her having moved in with Sullivan. This is one of those spots where I take issue with a film like this. Madolyn has just moved in with the man she claims she has a serious relationship with, and she hops right into bed with the first attractive, troubled guy she can find. I have trouble buying that.

Anyway, this is not a film that really needs more plot than already outlined here. The story, the thing that is interesting to watch, is the actions and reactions of the two men as they attempt to con people with their real identities and still perform their jobs like part of the team.

The other reason to watch is for the astonishingly good cast. In addition to the actors mentioned above, Alec Baldwin plays Captain Ellerby, a by-the-book cop who comes across as both a blowhard and a straight shooter. His role is vaguely comedic, but it serves as an important part of the film in creating the cop world. He’s a bureaucrat and a politician, but a good one, and he comes across as being completely believable.

That said, it’s Nicholson that puts butts in the seats, and he does not disappoint. The man is a true master of his craft, indicating vast amounts of information with a hand gesture. He’s unpredictable and dangerous, and with Nicholson playing the part, he is realistic as a crime boss who appears to thrive on personal chaos and the pursuit of fleshly sins and concerns. With a quick smile, Nicholson is capable of disarming anyone…or freaking them the hell out. He does both a lot in this film, sometimes within a single scene.

Ultimately, this is an excellent film. It just seems so wrong to say that Martin Scorsese has anything to do with anything like a remake.

Why to watch The Departed: Casts like this happen about once every 5 years.
Why not to watch: Scorsese doing remakes? That seems so wrong.

Pallies

Film: Goodfellas
Format: DVD from NetFlix on big ol’ television

Certain movies become iconic almost immediately. They do something a new way, or touch a particular nerve. Whatever the reason, whatever the film, it immediately becomes recognizable and influences a dozen other films. It gets parodied, refined, copied, tweaked, and twisted. In the past two decades, perhaps nothing exemplifies this like Bullet Time from The Matrix. Another film that had this much of an impact is Scorsese’s Goodfellas. People can talk about The Godfather movies as being the greatest Mafia films ever made, and they well may be. But for my money, nothing did more for the allure and appeal of wiseguy culture than Goodfellas. Scarface is a bigger favorite in some communities, but it’s more drug culture than wiseguys.

This is the story—the Hollywoodized true story—of gangster Henry Hill (played by Ray Liotta), who joined up while still a kid. He worked his way up through the ranks, starting by parking cars and selling heisted cigarettes on street corners all the way up to major heists, drug trafficking, and performing hits on people as needed. Along the way, he works with Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro), who is loved because he is generous with the vast amount of money he steals, and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), who is completely out of his mind.

Hill’s life is in and out of prison, playing fast and loose not only with the law, but with the people he works for, Paul Cicero (Paul Sorvino) in particular. He cheats on his wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco) with a series of mistresses, deals vast amounts of cocaine, and ends up turning state’s evidence.

The movie is filled with iconic, memorable scenes. De Niro, naturally gets top billing. Liotta plays the film’s main narrator and main character. For all this, the truly iconic scenes all belong to Joe Pesci, who makes this film his, and picked up an Oscar for his troubles. Hell of a role, that—in many ways, it made Pesci who he became in the years following this film. The scenes with the kid Spider (Michael Imperioli), the “Am I a clown? Do I amuse you?” sequence, the dinner with his mother…this is Pesci’s film in every scene he’s in it.

For the time in which it was made, Goodfellas runs as close as it can to keeping an R rating without going beyond. According to legend, Scorsese had to remove 10 frames of blood to keep the R rating and avoid the dreaded NC-17.

For all the hype of this film, for all of the people who love it, it’s surprisingly intense. Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about the film, at least if you ask me, is how callously it treats the life and death of characters throughout. I suppose if I think about it long enough, it really isn’t surprising that guys who spend their whole lives perpetrating one crime after another wouldn’t be so terribly torn up about whacking someone who gets in their way, but it happens so quickly, so calmly, and with so little fanfare or problem afterwards that it’s like someone taking off a shirt or changing his socks. Frankly, I think this might be part of the appeal of the film, and for all of its moral shock value, I think it’s part of the reason that the film appeals to me as well.

I’m not going to say too much more about Goodfellas. You’ve seen it and were shocked and repulsed by it, you’ve seen it and loved it and don’t need to read my yammering about it, or you haven’t seen it and should. You fall into one of those three categories. Pick yours.

For what it’s worth, the best two parodies of this film are from Spielberg’s Animaniacs television show and the HBO sketch comedy series Mr. Show, which is where I got the name of this particular blog entry. Additionally, the vastly underrated My Blue Heaven with Steve Martin and Rick Moranis is based very loosely on Hill’s experience in witness protection. It’s funny, it’s sweet, and it’s worth a watch, too. In fact, it would make an oddly fitting and yet incredibly weird double feature.

Why to watch Goodfellas: The most complete wiseguy film ever made.
Why not to watch: It’s more violent than you remember.

A Master of Comedy and Another Master

Films: The Bank Dick, The King of Comedy
Format: DVDs from Rockford Public Library on laptop (Bank) and big ol’ television (King).

W.C. Fields is one of those actors of whom everyone has heard and can picture in their mind’s eye—straw boater, white gloves and a cane, bulbous nose bright red from too much booze, gravelly voice. A sizable selection of people who could pick Fields out of a crowd would also know of his predilection for drinking too much (at least in character) and his hatred of, in no particular order, women, children, and animals. Sadly, though, most people have probably not seen one of his films.

In The Bank Dick, Fields plays Egbert Souse (pronounced soo-SAY) essentially the quintessential Fields character—a drunk loser whose family hates him. He’s a disappointment to everyone who comes in contact with him except for his local saloon keeper, Joe (Shemp Howard!). Egbert reads detective magazines, drinks, smokes, and tries to support his family by thinking up slogans in contests. His wife Agatha (Cora Witherspoon) is a shrill nag, his mother-in-law (Jesse Ralph) detests him, his older daughter Myrtle (Una Merkel) is embarrassed by him, and his younger daughter Elise (Evelyn del Rio) frequently attempts to do him physical harm. In short, if you’ve ever seen anything Rodney Dangerfield starred in, you’ve met this character before, since it becomes immediately evident that Fields is who Dangerfield based his screen persona on.

The early part of the film is there simply to give Fields something to do until the plot starts working. He does a lot of mild slapstick, reacting not in the exaggerated way that might be expected but with what looks like real annoyance. He goofs around on the set of a film for a bit, leaves, and accidentally manages to capture a thief who has just run off with $25,000 from the local bank.

As a reward for his “heroics,” Egbert is given a new position at the bank, that of the bank’s private detective, or as the bank president says in the underground argot, the bank dick. On his first day on the job, Egbert encounters a con man in the local saloon. The con man is selling shares in a mine for ten cents apiece. Egbert convinces one of the bank employees, Og Ogglesby who also happens to be his potential son-in-law, to embezzle $500 from the bank until his bonus comes in to invest in the scheme.

Trouble arises when, just after the sale of phony mine shares is complete, a bank examiner (the wonderfully named J. Pinkerton Snoopington) arrives to go over the bank’s books. Much of the rest of the film concerns Egbert doing his best to keep the examiner away from those all-important books until Og’s bonus comes in. Of course, this is a comedy, so no one is going to end up in jail, but poor Og can’t even manage to stay conscious when the bank examiner is around, since the sight of the man makes him faint.

Essentially, the film isn’t much in the way of plot, but it really isn’t intended to be. It’s existence is nothing more than a vehicle for the continued and constant antics of Fields, who is a true master of comedic timing, diction, and attitude. Everything the man does in this film is funny—some of it is broadly funny and quite a bit of it is subtle. He’s the master of the double take, and does these throughout the film, always to good effect. He’s also got a great cast to work with here. Everyone in the picture is just believable enough in their role to make the film work. The whole thing ends with a ridiculous high-speed car chase that is a masterwork of stunts and comedy.

If you’d rather see a more modern version of this film, you can watch Dangerfield’s Easy Money, and while it’s plenty funny, it doesn’t have the same energy as this one. Fields should be better known today, and films like this one should show up on television a lot more often than they do. This is grand stuff.

When it comes to Martin Scorsese, the question isn’t whether or not he can direct, but whether or not he can direct comedy. He tries to answer that question with The King of Comedy, and he chooses as his comedic muse…Robert De Niro? Seems like an odd choice. Of course, in the years since this film was made, De Niro has done a number of comedy films, not the least of which are Meet the Parents and Analyze This. Before this, not so much.

De Niro is Rupert Pupkin, a wannabe comic who is desperate for his big break. To get that break, he has his sights set on the Jerry Langford Show. Langford (Jerry Lewis) is the film equivalent of Johnny Carson, and getting on his show is akin to making it in a very big way. The problem is that Pupkin is a nobody, he’ll always be a nobody, and his chance of getting on the show are nil.

So he comes up with a plan. The plan is to kidnap Langford and force himself onto the show. And this is precisely what he does because Langford doesn’t (or can’t) give him what he wants. Rupert lives in the world of the psychotic fan, a world inside his own head where Jerry Langford calls him for advice and where he is the most famous man in the world with the star as his best pal and confidant. He flashes in and out of fantasies interrupted by his mother shouting down into the basement (complete with laughing audience wallpaper) from the top of the stairs. Funny, and at the same time completely pathetic.

For me, the biggest downside to this film is the presence of Sandra Bernhard as psycho stalker fan Masha. I have an intense dislike for Bernhard and always have. She’s like nails on a chalkboard, or Fran Drescher’s voice.

This is a dark film for being essentially a comedy. Pupkin’s world is grim except inside his own head, and Langford’s world, for all the fame and money, isn’t that much better. He craves his privacy, but also seems very lonely, eating dinner alone with only his dog for company. It’s not necessarily that the grass is always greener, it’s more that while everyone wants what Langford has, Langford is the one who seems to understand that it’s not really worth getting.

The revelation here in terms of the cast is Jerry Lewis. He’s definitely an acquired taste, and there are plenty of people in the world who have decided not to acquire the taste. He plays a character here that I think may be much more like his real personality than his stage personality, and thus he’s a lot less zany than he typically comes across on screen. At times, he’s even sedate.

The message of the film, at least the message I got from it, is that there’s a little bit of Rupert Pupkin in all of us. There’s not an average Joe or Jane who hasn’t wondered at least for a few minutes what it would be like to have just a taste of that life of being recognized and beloved by millions of fans. The King of Comedy just takes us into the very sad and very twisted mind of one man who would stop at nothing to get there. Not content to be interviewed by Jerry Langford in his head, he does everything he has to for the reality, if only for a few minutes.

Of course, what the ending doesn't really tell us whether or not what's happening is real or simply another one of Rupert's mental vacations.

Why to watch The Bank Dick: The best work of one of early filmdom’s greatest comedians.
Why not to watch: Crime pays…and it’s funny.

Why to watch The King of Comedy: Blacker than black, incisive comedy.
Why not to watch: Too much reality.

You Watchin' Me? There's No Other Film Here...

Films: Taxi Driver
Format: DVD from Galena Public Library through interlibrary loan projected on screen.


Taxi Driver is one of those quintessential films that people quote whether or not they’ve seen it. “You talkin’ to me?” is right up there with “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse” or “We’ll always have Paris” in terms of legendary quote status. What strikes me, though, is that while this is a great scene in the film, it’s not the one that is the most critical to the change that our antihero Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) goes through.

Bickle starts out as an everyman, someone we are supposed to latch onto and feel for. He’s an average loser, a guy who just wants something to hang onto and give his life meaning. Instead, he sees nothing but crime, cheap thrills, pain, and degradation. The streets are filled with cheap sex and pushers, the filth of the world coming out at night on the streets of New York. At the start of the film, he takes a job as a cabbie because he can’t sleep. He figures if he’s going to be up at night driving around, he may as well get paid for it.

Things change when he encounters Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a worker for the presidential campaign of Senator Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris). While Betsy has an attraction to her co-worker Tom (Albert Brooks), she’s also strangely attracted to the socially maladjusted Bickle, who is secretly hoping that she is what he’s been looking for. Their first and only date goes badly, though, because Bickle doesn’t know how to deal with anyone on a real, personal level. Instead of taking her on an appropriate date, he takes her to a XXX-rated film, and she leaves. In another context, this would be a comedy scene at his expense, but here, it comes across as painful because he doesn’t know how to react.

Instead, Travis becomes more and more interested in cleaning up the streets of New York himself. He buys an arsenal and practices with it. He also encounters Iris (Jodie Foster), a very young prostitute turned out by Sport (Harvey Keitel). Travis feels for the girl and wants to protect her even though she feels that she does not need any protecting.

Taxi Driver turns not on the scenes of Travis learning to use his arsenal of weaponry or on the scenes of him talking to himself in the mirror, but instead on the scenes of him in his apartment watching television. Eventually, disgusted with the entire idea of TV, he slowly pushes the set off its stand and lets it shatter. From this point forward, Travis is completely disconnected with everyone and everything around him.

***HERE THERE BE SPOILERS***

Travis, unable to assassinate Palantine, focuses instead on rescuing Iris from Sport. He undergoes not just a mental transformation, but a physical one as well, giving himself a Mohawk. In the shootout that follows, Travis guns down three men in particularly grisly fashion and is himself shot twice—once in the arm and a grazing wound on his neck. His complete detachment from reality comes when the police burst into the room and watch Travis, out of bullets, put his bloody finger to his head and simulate blowing his own brains out over and over.

Great stuff—but here’s what no one will tell you, but it’s what I think is a real possibility. Travis, according to the letter from the Steensmas, was comatose for at least some time. While he may be out of the coma at the end, I don’t think Travis is back. Rather than returning to his previous world and that final cab ride with Betsy, Travis is still “recovering” somewhere—somewhere the walls are padded and the jackets have buckles that tie the arms behind the back. I have nothing more than a feeling here, but no one goes through what Travis did and walks back to the reality he once had. The clippings and the letter may be real, but Travis’s return to normality is, I think, not. This may get me beaten up by others, but I’m going to stand by it, at least as a possibility.

***THUS ENDETH THE SPOILERS***

Bickle’s question throughout the film is one of fate. Does he control his own destiny or is it controlled by someone or something else? Fellow cab driver Wizard (Peter Boyle) has no control over his destiny, or so he believes. Iris did (she ran away from home), but now doesn’t. Does Travis? He’s not sure himself.

I said earlier that Bickle is the character we as the audience are supposed to identify with, and this is what makes the film so brilliant. We do identify with Travis Bickle, even up to and including his practicing drawing his guns, talking in the mirror, and even kicking over the television. Most of us, if not all of us, have felt that level of frustration, and have experienced that level of personal impotence at wanting to change our situation and not being able to. Once he starts, we as the audience go along for the ride with him…and then when he appears freshly mohawked and armed to the teeth, it becomes apparent that Travis Bickle has turned a dangerous and scary corner, and is going to a dark place that we, powerless or not, do not want to enter. It’s a wonderful cinematic moment when the character we have come to love and feel sorry for is suddenly the character that we fear.

Why to watch Taxi Driver: Possibly the defining film of the 1970s.
Why not to watch: The last 15 minutes, while inevitable, are shocking and gruesome.

Why I Love Scorsese

Film: Gangs of New York
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on laptop.


Leonardo DiCaprio catches a lot of grief from people who, for whatever reason, don’t like him. Maybe it’s because he’s pretty, maybe in real life he’s a bit of a jerk, or maybe they’re hating the player instead of hating the game. Regardless of the reason, it’s pretty evident to me that DiCaprio has the chops to hang with anyone on the big screen. Dude can act. So too can Daniel Day-Lewis, who’s won two Oscars and been nominated for two others. Put them both together in the same movie, and you could get a variety of things. You might get a clash of egos or you might get Gangs of New York.

Of course, it helps that the supporting cast for this film is fantastic. Cameron Diaz, who has made a career for herself in a lot of fluff films and a few great ones picked a fantastic role for herself this time. John C. Reilly, currently making every comedy possible with Will Farrell, makes a dramatic turn here, and Brendan Gleeson (a personal favorite of mine) turns in his typically stellar work here. Another great performance is produced by Jim Broadbent, who I didn’t recognize under the giant beard and the huge stovepipe hat.

This is the story of a lawless area in New York City in the mid-19th Century. Life around the Five Points is a constant battle between allied gangs looking for control. The two main factions are the natives and the foreigners. The natives are led by Bill “The Butcher” Cutting (Day-Lewis) and his group of American citizens. The foreign contingent is led by “Priest” Vallon (Liam Neeson), who heads up the Dead Rabbits.

In the skirmish that starts the film, Vallon is killed by Cutting, who declares the Dead Rabbits illegal. Cutting takes control of the Five Points, and from this point on, he holds sway with an iron fist, eventually influencing everyone in the city, including the corrupt Tammany Hall machine, led by William Tweed (Broadbent). Vallon’s son is sent off to an orphanage, and emerges 16 years later as Amsterdam (DiCaprio), bent on revenge for his fallen father.

Thrown into this mix is Jenny Everdeane (Diaz), who had a previous relationship with Cutting, who rescued her from the streets. She and Amsterdam have a volatile relationship that culminates in something approaching love tinged with jealousy and anger. Their relationship is an interesting one and helps propel the movie forward. Jenny’s “job” as a bluget (female pickpocket) and a turtledove (thief posing as a maid) informs her character, and creates the first two meetings between the pair. As Amsterdam comments, “It takes a lot of sand to be a turtledove,” and Jenny has the sand.

To get his revenge, Amsterdam essentially works his way into Cutting’s crew, becoming one of Cutting’s most important lieutenants. At the moment of his betrayal, Amsterdam is foiled, setting up the final act of the give and take, push and shove battle between Cutting and Amsterdam.

This is set against the backdrop of the American Civil War. While the Irish are coming off the boat and being immediately conscripted into the Union Army, Cutting and his group are doing what they can to make their arrival painful. As the war heats up and the Union begins the first ever mandatory conscription act, the city heats up to a boiling point that culminates at the same time as the climactic battle for the Five Points.

Gangs of New York was directed by the great Martin Scorsese, who may be the greatest living director in the world today. The film is unquestionably a Scorsese picture. He shies away from nothing, and many points in the film are extremely violent. I don’t mind violence when it makes sense for the film (see yesterday’s travesty for a film in which the violence is completely gratuitous) and for this movie, the violence is essential. It comes in fits and starts, but always makes sense, even when it seems to come from nowhere. For me, the most impressive Scorsese moment comes in the montage of Amsterdam, Cutting, and New York royalty Mr. Schermerhorn (David Hemmings) saying grace simultaneously. The first two are gearing up for battle, the third for Sunday brunch, and with the amens, all hell breaks loose across the city.

Another major selling point is the set. The buildings of the Five Points were built as a real set, and I can only imagine the scale. It’s tremendously big, dilapidated, and impressive. It’s also incredibly claustrophobic, which I imagine is also perfectly realistic. The city of New York depicted in this movie is one filled with people on top of people living in squalor.

This is a remarkable film. Although many criticized it for being uneven in places, I don’t see such unevenness. Instead, I see one of the most masterful performances in the last 20 years in the person of Daniel Day-Lewis. He leaps into this role and grabs it with both hands and his teeth. Scorsese originally planned to make this movie in 1978, and a number of other people were considered for the role. Lewis’s performance is so strong that I cannot picture another person playing this part.

This is not to short the performances of Broadbent, DiCaprio, Diaz, or anyone else. It’s simply Daniel Day-Lewis’s movie through and through. That this film lost all 10 of its Oscar nominations is shocking to me. That Lewis lost is amazing, and that the film lost for Best Picture to Chicago leaves me stunned. Despite its near three-hour running time, at no time does Gangs of New York drag or cause me to lose interest. It is magnificent, and deserves to be seen.

Why to watch Gangs of New York: Daniel Day-Lewis. There, I said it and I’d say it again.
Why not to watch: “Cutting” is not only Bill’s last name, it’s also what he does with very large knives to people.