Kathleen Turner Overdrive

Film: Body Heat
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

There was a time when Kathleen Turner was pure sex on wheels. There was a time when every straight male over the age of 15 would pant like a puppy when Kathleen Turner walked across a movie screen. That time was the 1980s, and never has a movie shown this with more detail and with more emphasis than Lawrence Kasdan-written and directed Body Heat.

Body Heat is a film noir, and except for the very end, it follows all of the conventions of the genre. This means crime, murder, extortion, dangerous women, and sex. However, since Body Heat was made in 1981, the sex no longer has to be implied. This means a lot of nude time with stars Kathleen Turner and William Hurt. You can decide for yourself if this is a good thing or a bad thing. However, as I said previously, in the 1980s, Kathleen Turner was hot monkey sex incarnate, so we’re going to consider this not a good thing, but a really, really good thing.

We first meet lawyer Ned Racine (Hurt) as he is essentially forced to take a plea deal from the judge overseeing his current case. It’s evident that Racine is exactly the sort of shifty, no-account lawyer that is a stereotype in films like this one. It’s not that Racine is specifically a bad lawyer, it’s more that he’s always looking for a chance to make a big score. Because of this, he tends to walk the line between legitimate lawyer and crooked bastard.

Despite these tendencies, Racine is good friends with assistant prosecutor Peter Lowenstein (Ted Danson), and the two trade insults and jokes in a diner near the courthouse, and trade quips with the staff at the diner about the lousy air conditioning in the brutal Florida heat. That night, Racine encounters Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner). She’s rich and lonely, and the two flirt a bit with each other, but she leaves.

They run into each other again in a bar in her town. He’s gone looking for her, and finds her, and they flirt again. She talks about her wind chimes and he says he’d like to see them (and quite a bit more, naturally), and she invites him to the house, then asks him to leave. He does, but the desire is just too strong, and he uses a lawn chair to smash his way back into the house, and we get round one of their frequent, rabid sexy time.

Matty confesses to Racine that she is dissatisfied with her husband, Edmund (Richard Crenna). He’s an investor in a variety of local projects, and there’s a strong indication that much of his money comes from places on the wrong side of the legal barrier. Edmund is locked up in a number of deals with some very dangerous people, which doesn’t really bother him. Why? Because he is also very dangerous people. Racine bumps into the couple on accident at a restaurant, and he and Matty bluff their way through how they know each other, and Edmund invites the lawyer to come sit with them. They do, and it soon becomes evident that Edmund is a very dangerous man who might actually want his wife to have an affair if only so that he could have the pleasure of killing the guy with his bare hands.

Eventually, Matty and Racine decide that what would be the best for them is to have Edmund completely out of the picture. They’re caught in flagrante fellatio by Matty’s niece at one point, but this doesn’t stop their desire to whack Edmund and be together with all of his money. Matty suggests tweaking his will so that she’ll get more, but Racine declines, saying that if he does the work, it will only cause suspicion, and that if anything happens to his will before Edmund is killed, it will raise a lot of eyebrows.

In shades of Double Indemnity, the murder goes off. Racine has met with an old client named Teddy Lewis (Mickey Rourke) who has done time for arson. Teddy has rigged up a device for him. Racine places the device in one of Edmund’s properties, dumps the body, and sets off the explosive, burning the place down. For a few days, all is well.

And then the complications start. Edmund’s body was found without his glasses, and he was obsessive about them. Racine gets a call from a Miami law firm about the new will he drew up (even though he really didn’t) and the problems that there might be with it. More and more, Matty seems to be doing everything she can to get him implicated in her husband’s death, but Racine can’t stop going to see her. Evidently, the sex is just too damn good (and it does definitely have that appearance, just for the record).

I won’t spoil this, except to say that the film takes some license with the end of the traditional noir, or at least the noirs of the late 1940s. This is not necessarily a bad thing unless you are a purist, which I am really not. The plot takes a number of vicious turns, and at the end, the turns get faster and faster, and harder and harder to keep up with. But in every case, it’s completely compelling.

One of the more interesting stories going on is the relationship between Ned Racine and his friends, Peter Lowenstein and police sergeant Oscar Grace (J.A. Preston). As the evidence in the case begins to mount up, they keep returning to the conclusion that Racine must be involved in the murder somehow, but both do everything they can to look for a possible way that he could maintain his innocence.

It’s also worth saying that what happens with about 10 minutes left is inevitable. The last five minutes, however, are not, and it’s these last five minutes that break with noir tradition, and also make the film completely awesome.

Beyond the intricate and excellent plot, the sell here is the sex, and there’s a lot of it. There are quite a few just-above-the-butt-crack/pubic-bone nudity shots of both Hurt and Turner. The Florida summer being what it is in this film, there’s a constant desire on the part of the characters to wear as little clothing as possible as often as possible. This means you can expect to see a lot of skin throughout. Take this as a positive or negative as it (birthday) suits you.

Why to watch Body Heat: A great plot and no answers until the end, with the added bonus of lots and lots of sexy time.
Why not to watch: It messes with the traditional noir formula.

Those Rotten Kids

Films: Tokyo Monogatari (Tokyo Story); Make Way for Tomorrow
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop (Tokyo), DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player (Tomorrow).

Yasujiro Ozu hated moving his camera. By the time he got to Sanma no Aji, he had stopped moving the camera completely, but this was not a huge change from his earlier films. The camera isn’t completely static in Tokyo Monogatari (Tokyo Story, but it’s close.

This can be difficult to deal with for those who expect Japanese cinema to be more or less samurai stories filmed by Kurosawa or modern films about the Yakuza. Ozu directed character-driven, family-oriented dramas of painful choices, broken dreams, and heartache. While these stories do sometimes turn out with a wistful smile at the end, they often shine a painful spotlight on the kind of behavior that we deplore in others and hide in ourselves.

Tokyo Monogatari deals with Shukishi and Tomi Hirayama (Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama, respectively), the parents of a group of adult children. Missing their kids and desiring to see their grandchildren, they hop on a train and heads to Tokyo for a visit.

What they discover is both painful and unsurprising. Their children have their own lives, their own families, and their own concerns. While the kids are happy to see Mom and Dad, they are also put out by the sudden stress on their lives and regular routines. Rather than treat the visit as something special, the kids instead pass their parents off on each other, complain about the amount of money they are having to spend on them, and treat the parents like a great nuisance, confiding in each other that the only wish Mom and Dad would return to their small village in the middle of nowhere.

In fact, only one person is really happy to see them—the daughter-in-law Noriko (Setsuko Hara) who was widowed by World War II. Despite the fact that she really has no blood connection to the family and her husband is dead, she goes out of her way to show her in-laws as much of Tokyo as she can, feeds them as well as she can afford, and takes as much time off work as she is allowed.

Eventually, the kids pack the parents off to a resort, which is much more designed for the younger generation. Mom and Dad return to Tokyo, then split up for a few days. He rejoins some old friends, looking desperately for a place to spend the night away from his kids and out of their hair, while she spends more time with daughter-in-law Noriko, urging her to remarry and pull some happiness out of life. He gets drunk with his old friends, something he evidently did when the kids were young, and when he returns to his daughter’s home, he is shamed for his behavior.

Eventually, to everyone’s relief, it is time for them to go home. They hop a train back home, expecting to visit their youngest son on the way back during a stopover. However, not all goes to plan because Tomi becomes ill during the trip and requires immediate medical care, and the condition quickly becomes serious enough to warrant all of the children attending what is destined to become a deathwatch.

This is a poignant story, one with a great deal of pain and suffering for all involved, and while Ozu’s loyalties are clearly on the side of the parents, he doesn’t spare them or hold them completely innocent. Shukishi complains to his friends that he is ultimately disappointed in his children, that none of them turned out as he would have wished. None is as successful as he would like, and that all of them have grown embittered with age. He comments that all parents, essentially, are disappointed with their children, because the children never turn out exactly as the parents would like—a harsh statement, and possibly a true one.

The children, however, get the bulk of Ozu’s wrath, and except for the youngest child who still lives with the parents, each is shown in turn to be selfish, small-minded, and mean. Rather than honoring their parents in a culture that venerates the venerable, they are shown as petty and ungrateful. The elder two do not recognize this. The sister-in-law sees this, and reacts by treating the visit as something special. The youngest son recognizes his own failure regarding his parents and their expectations, but does nothing to change his ways.

It’s a beautifully realized story in no small part because it is such a human story, a story of everyday tragedy that plays itself out daily around the world. It is the pedestrian nature of the conflict here that strangely makes it so compelling; it is fascinating to watch if for no other reason than that it is so easily recognizable and so easy to place oneself in either the role of parent or child.

It’s no secret that a great deal of Ozu’s text for this film came from Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow, a critically acclaimed commercial flop. McCarey’s contract with the studio was not renewed on account of this film, partly because the film tanked at the box office and partly because McCarey refused to change his original, downer ending for something more feel-good and Hollywood approved. This demand to stay real was a good choice, because it’s the tearjerker ending that makes the film worth the 90 minutes or so of its running time. A cheap happy ending would spoil what would otherwise be a masterful achievement. Because McCarey stayed true to the ending he wanted, this is a film that really demands to be watched.

If anything, Ozu softened McCarey’s story of Bark and Lucy Cooper (Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi, respectively). The parents call a meeting of their offspring in the old family house; four out of the five show up, the fifth staying home because she lives all the way across the country. Bark tells the kids that the bank is foreclosing on the house. He’s been out of work for years and they simply haven’t been able to keep up on the payments. The deadline for them leaving is a few days, and the time has come to make a decision for what to do.

Put on the spot like this, the kids show their true colors. None of them are willing to take the parents in. One says she’ll try to convince her husband to agree to the folks moving in, but it will take her at least three months to get him to agree. In the meantime, Lucy moves in with son George (the always-reliable Thomas Mitchell) and Bark moves in with daughter Cora (Elisabeth Risdon).

Immediately, it becomes evident that these arrangements will not work out. Bark and Lucy attempt to make the best of things, but the children and the in-laws become so wrapped up in their own affairs and lives that the parents become nothing more than a problem to be dealt with. The most moving scene of this part comes when Bark calls Lucy during a bridge night at George’s apartment. She speaks to him on the phone, initially annoying the guests, but it soon becomes evident that her plight is serious enough—separated from her husband by hundreds of miles, unable to go anywhere else—that it quickly becomes a scene of painful voyeurism as the guests suspend their game and listen in on her half of the conversation. George and his wife Anita (Fay Bainter), who is teaching the bridge lesson are at first shamed by her, and then shamed by their own treatment of her.

Eventually, it is determined that Bark would be better in California because of his health, and George and especially Anita attempt to maneuver Lucy to a home for old women. Lucy, defiant and determined to make her own choices, tells her son she’d prefer to move to the home, but that he can never tell Bark about it. Bark, despite his age, will look for work in California, and send for her when he finds it, but it’s evident that with his age and the Depression happening, he’ll never find work again, and the two will likely be apart forever.

As a last dash hope, the two spend a final day together in New York, reliving the times of their honeymoon, and depending (successfully) on the kindness of strangers, who treat the sweet old couple with far more kindness than their own children do. And that’s sort of the point of the movie, after all.

To make this point, Make Way for Tomorrow goes to some extremes. George and Anita have a lavish apartment and a servant, but can’t spare enough to help Bark and Lucy stay together, and none of the other kids is willing to throw in, either. Splitting them up is probably the cruelest fate either one can suffer, and it happens here without a second thought. It’s easy to overlook in the moment, such is the power of the story and McCarey’s direction, but in retrospect, it’s pretty heavy-handed and more than a little maudlin at times.

It also features some of the worst rear projection shots ever made in Hollywood history. I realize that there was a Depression going on, but certainly they could have sprung for putting our characters in a real park for a 30 second walk instead of plopping them in front of an out of focus and faded New York street scene and then had them walk in place. It’s ludicrously bad, and wouldn’t fool anyone. Fortunately, this is a short scene, and the couple quickly moves to a lavish hotel, which is more than just a backdrop.

This is a sad film, and the relationship between Bark and Lucy is tender and sweet. It’s easy to feel bad for them because they are so sympathetic, and because their children are so reprehensible. It works, at times in spite of itself, if only for the guilt or potential guilt it induces.

Why to watch Tokyo Monogatari: A poignant story of endearing oldsters and their selfish children.
Why not to watch: It’s slow getting there.

Why to watch Make Way for Tomorrow: Another poignant story of endearing oldsters and their selfish children.
Why not to watch: Even more maudlin than you might expect at times.

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.

I've Had Worse

Film: Bad Day at Black Rock
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.


Bad Day at Black Rock is a difficult film to get a handle on in terms of classification. It has elements of film noir, for instance, in its sudden bursts of violence, hidden crimes, and a man who will stop at nothing to uncover the truth. It also has elements of the Western, as a stranger rides (a train) into town and takes on all comers in his battle for justice as well as a number of other Western tropes. And yet, set in the mid-1940s, it is also a modern film, shot in brilliant color. It stars Spencer Tracy—a major star from the classy studio at MGM—but the short running time, lurid title, and criminal elements mark it as a B-picture. But it’s also a message picture. Like I said, difficult to classify.

We start with a train rushing through the desert. The train stops at the flyspeck town of Black Rock. Calling it a flyspeck is being generous. There are maybe a dozen buildings here, a one-horse town where the horse is really just a miniature pony and rented from the next nearest community. This is the first time in four years (remember that) that the train has stopped here, and off steps John J. Macreedy (Spencer Tracy), a one-armed war veteran.

He is immediately regarded with suspicion by everyone in town. Initially, he is hassled by the obsequious stationmaster, then by a couple of cowboys named Coley (Ernest Borgnine) and Hector (Lee Marvin). At the local hotel, he’s told by Pete (John Ericson) that there are no rooms available despite the hotel being completely empty. Macreedy takes a room anyway, takes a bath, and is confronted by Hector again, who complains to all who will hear him that this stranger is too easy to push around—he just gives in.

We learn quickly that the town is run by a local bully named Reno Smith (Robert Ryan), who joins in on the hassling of Macreedy. Unwilling to give in, Macreedy rents the Jeep at the local gas station, run by Pete’s sister Liz (Anne Francis), who is evidently the only woman in town. Liz seems to have something going on with Smith, who is unhappy that she gave him the Jeep. The source of the tension is that Macreedy is looking for a Japanese American named Kamoko, who has a farm out in a place called Adobe Flat. He drives out, and discovers that the well is working, but the house has been burned to the ground. On the way back, he is run off the road by Coley, but he returns to town safely.

We learn a few important things here. First, we discover that Kamoko came to Black Rock a few months before Pearl Harbor, which was four years ago (as in, the last time the train stopped at Black Rock). He has disappeared since. We learn that the local sheriff (Dean Jagger) is a drunk and a pushover. The local doctor/vet/mortician (Walter Brennan) has some backbone and doesn’t knuckle under to Reno Smith, but he’s also apathetic and doesn’t care too much. Importantly, we discover that Macreedy lost the use of his left arm in Italy during the war, and that he was saved by Kamoko’s son, who died in the process. He’s in town to give the medal to the boy’s father.

What actually happened isn’t that hard to discover, and we as the audience have figured out the sad fate of Kamoko (aside from the actual details) long before this is revealed to us. It’s evident pretty quickly that the town has something to hide, and that almost everyone is in on it. Pete refuses to put through calls to the state police, and the stationmaster refuses to send a telegram for Macreedy, bringing it to Smith instead. We know instinctively that Smith and his gang of goons did something very bad to Kamoko because Kamoko committed the sin of being Japanese, and have ever since quashed any rumor or talk about that event. It’s also evident that something similar is planned for the friendless Macreedy, who is stranded in this town until the train arrives the next morning.

The story, then, is one of the first to seriously tackle some ideas of racism. Certainly there were others before this, but none brought it this far into the open. It doesn’t address the idea of the actual internment camps for Japanese Americans, but does pay a great deal of respect to the idea that many Japanese Americans fought bravely in World War II and deserve the thanks of the country. It deals openly with the bigotry of these small town thugs and bullies, for which it should be commended.

The film is helped greatly by some truly stellar performances. While Anne Francis gets third billing, she’s only in a couple of scenes. The rest of the cast is male, making this a very strange town—a movie town in which there are essentially no women and absolutely no families or children. So, while Anne Francis is fine, she doesn’t really carry the movie (and near the end, she runs so completely like a girl that it looks fake). Spencer Tracy is as good as he ever is, and really acts like a man who has gotten used to the idea of having only one functioning arm. As he often was, he is outspoken, firm, and a powerful onscreen presence. Robert Ryan is menacing and cool, a villain who chats amiably with his intended victim, giving him a disturbing and creepy vibe.

But the film really belongs to three other men: Walter Brennan, Ernest Borgnine, and Lee Marvin. Brennan is full of country wisdom and great lines, and plays the role of the town mortician to its fullest. He’s a truly memorable character, dispensing his ideas throughout and is the only person to stand beside Macreedy through most of the film. Borgnine, as an oafish bully who looks to push everyone around based on his size and muscle, is threatening and vicious. But it’s Lee Marvin who really works this film like he’s playing an instrument. He is a coiled spring of menace, laconic, mean, and deadly. Of anyone, his shadow looms the largest over this film—even more so than Robert Ryan’s main villain character.

If I have a complaint, it’s that the film is too short. The ending is great. It’s inventive, creative, and interesting. I could have stood another 20 minutes easily.

Why to watch Bad Day at Black Rock: An impeccable cast and a few surprises.
Why not to watch: Too difficult to classify.

Deja Viewing

Film: Groundhog Day
Format: DVD from personal collection on kick-ass portable DVD player.


Early in the film Groundhog Day, weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) asks a couple of drunks in a bowling alley how they would react if every day was exactly the same and nothing they did mattered or changed anything. It’s a real question in this film because this is the story of Phil Connors doing exactly that.

The film takes place, naturally enough, on Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, PA, the “weather capital of the world,” called such because it is the home of Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog that determines whether or not we will have an early spring or six more weeks of winter. This year, allegedly, there was no shadow, which means an early spring. That’s great, except that it also means that all of this snow (we got dumped on like much of the country) will melt quickly, which causes its own problems.

Regardless, Phil Connors is a weatherman in Pittsburgh and has journeyed to the little town to get footage of the festival. Accompanying him are his cameraman, Larry (Chris Elliott) and his new producer, Rita (Andie MacDowell). Phil is a bastard, a prima donna, and unpleasant to everyone he thinks beneath him, which is essentially everyone. When a blizzard hits on the way back to Pittsburgh and the trio is stranded in Punxsutawney for another night, strange things start happening to Phil. He wakes up, and it’s Groundhog Day all over again. For him, the calendar has stopped, and he is forced to relive the same day over and over again.

We aren’t told how many Groundhog Days Phil has to live through. There are more than 30 different days in the movie, but certainly it numbers into the tens of thousands at the very least, based on the skills that Phil has by the end of the film (he can, for instance, play the piano as if he had practiced for years despite starting the film with no skills at all).

Slowly, as Phil starts to go through the same day again and again, we begin to understand the rhythm of this particular day, and we see Phil starting to learn everything that is going on around him. He learns what happens to other people on this day, and starts to develop a sort of relationship with the town and the people around him, knowing what is going to happen before it does.

This movie is smart for a number of reasons. One of the main reasons is that Phil behaves exactly as many of us would. Initially confused by the repeat day, Phil starts to figure out that every day begins as a clean slate, which means he has unlimited freedom to act exactly as he wishes. He uses this freedom to explore his darker side initially, stealing money from an armored truck, finding out everything he can about attractive women one “day” and bedding them the next, and baiting the local cops into hunting him down and throwing him in jail only to discover every morning that he begins once again back in his bed and breakfast room with the same day looming over him.

It also heads into very dark territory in that Phil becomes so distraught over his situation and his unchanging day that he begins killing himself in various methods. He is, in short order, killed in a car accident, electrocuted, run over by a truck, and smashed on impact after a long fall. These are fun scenes despite what is happening, none so entertaining as his kidnapping of the groundhog, a high-speed chase with the rodent at the wheel of the truck, and a drive off a cliff into a quarry. Despite all of these attempts on his own life, Phil once again awakens every morning at 6:00 to the sound of Sonny and Cher singing “I’ve Got You, Babe” and the comment that once again it is Groundhog Day on the radio.

It’s in the third act that Phil discovers what he should really be doing with his time. After wasting a great deal of this sort of eternal experience, Phil begins to finally improve himself. He sets his sights on Rita and fails miserably to win her. The reason is subtle—he’s trying too hard to appear like the man he thinks Rita wants instead of actually becoming the man that she deserves. At times, this is almost painful. He gets close to Rita, knowing that when the morning comes she’ll have forgotten everything and thus he must make her love him immediately. When he gets close one night, he spends the next night trying to duplicate exactly what happened before, moving from position to position in a snowbank to find exactly where he was previously to make her react the same way, and he can’t quite do it. And so the third act of the film is all about Phil overcoming this existential burden of endless time and realizing that with so much time on his hands, he can become anything he’d like, including the man who deserves a woman like Rita.

It’s saying a lot to call this Bill Murray’s best film, but it ranks in his top several. His portrayal of Phil Connors is flawless for many reasons. First among these is that Phil Connors grows more than any Murray character; he begins the film as a truly loathsome human being, self-centered, arrogant, stupid, annoying, and mean. As the film progresses, he becomes first pitiful and pitiable, and eventually becomes someone to be admired and someone for whom we as the audience will legitimately hope to see succeed.

The film is also helped by excellent performances from the rest of the cast. Specifically worth mentioning are Chris Elliott, Andie MacDowell, and Stephen Tobolowsky as Ned Ryerson, a former high school mate of Phil turned annoying insurance salesman.

I like this film for a lot of reasons. It’s a great comedy and has several really funny moments. I like that many of these bits of comedy are also very dark. Groundhog Day goes to some very dark places in the middle, and this is a good thing. All comedy starts and ends on someone’s pain—without pain of some sort, there is no real comedy, and Phil’s pain is very real and thus very funny. This is a deep an interesting film worthy of watching more than once—and I’m not being cute by saying that about a film that is essentially the same thing over and over again.

At its heart, this is a movie of great spirituality, either religiously or secularly, depending on your point of view. It’s a good enough film to handle both religion and lack of same, and still handle the idea of personal worth and improvement for its own sake.

Why to watch Groundhog Day: A completely original comedy.
Why not to watch: Déjà vu all over again and again and again.

Say it Five Times Fast

Film: Candyman
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

Of all genres, slasher movies are perhaps the most maligned, especially those that deal with the unstoppable killer with supernatural power. They tend to be formulaic, silly, and substitute nastiness and gore for actual scares. It’s just the way it is with slasher films. No respect for the genre, and most of that lack of respect is entirely deserved, because really, most of them kind of suck.

What this means is that when a slasher movie is actually good, it’s something special. It takes a confluence of a number of things to make a supernatural slasher film into something special, which is exactly why there are so few of them on The List. Candyman is exactly this sort of film—it goes into some interesting places, does things in risky ways, and succeeds on almost every front.

Success number one is using a Clive Barker story as a base. Barker is an interesting author and isn’t afraid to really go for it when it comes to including both the sort of gore that the slash-punks love with the sort of creepy vibe and pushes into true horror that generally doesn’t come across in movies.

Success number two comes from basing the film off a relatively well known urban legend. The legend is, naturally, of the Candyman, who can be summoned by saying his name five times while looking in a mirror, according to the legend, which we see played out with a couple of high school kids named Clara (Marianna Elliott) and Billy (Ted Raimi). Pre-getting busy, Billy says the name four times, Clara says it a fifth, and she is ripped apart by the Candyman. How? Well, according to the legend, the Candyman has a hook for a hand.

We get this introduction because a couple of Ph.D. candidates are investigating urban legends for their thesis (although it probably should be their dissertation). Regardless, Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) and Bernadette “Bernie” Walsh (Kasi Lemmons) are on the trail of any urban legends they can find, and the Candyman seems to be the most promising. Helen has a mildly adversarial relationship with her husband Trevor (Xander Berkeley), who teaches that University of Illinois-Chicago. They learn that the Candyman is being held responsible for deaths in the Cabrini Green neighborhood of Chicago. (If you’re not in the know, Cabrini was the most notorious neighborhood around.)

They discover some interesting things in Cabrini. The first is that the way the apartments were made in a way that it’s possible to break in from one apartment to the next through the medicine cabinets in the bathroom. While investigating the apartment of a murdered woman, they find that the next door apartment is vacant and contains a shrine of sorts to the Candyman, complete with altar laden with candy and razorblade-filled chocolates. They also meet Anne-Marie McCoy (Vanessa Williams), who lives next door to the murdered woman’s apartment. Like the others in the projects, she holds the Candyman responsible.

Success number three comes from giving us some excellent folklore. We learn at a dinner that the legend of the Candyman comes from a story about the son of a slave who became successful. This son became a renowned artist who fell in love with one of his virginal subjects, getting her pregnant. This caused the girl’s father to enact his revenge, cutting off the artist’s right hand with a saw, stripping the man nude and painting him with the honeycomb from a nearby apiary and allowing the bees to sting him to death. Of course, all of this happened on the site of…Cabrini Green.

And now the fun begins. Back near the shrine apartment in a public restroom where another murder occurred, Helen is confronted by a gang of thugs including one who claims to be the Candyman, complete with hook. He assaults Helen, knocking her unconscious, but she is not killed, and identifies her assailant in a police line-up. Of course, now this man is being held responsible for the other Cabrini murders. And it is here that we come to success number four—we meet the real Candyman (Tony Todd), who is one of the most terrifying screen presences ever revealed. He tells Helen that he exists because people believe he exists, and now that a murderer has been uncovered, belief in him is waning. He wants to kill her to restore the belief in him, but it’s also evident that there is some sexual tension between him and Helen. Today, 20 years after this film was made, this sexual tension would almost be expected, but even in the enlightened early ‘90s, there’s something to be said of a filmmaker creating this sort of bond between the snowy-white Virginia Madsen and the very dark Tony Todd.

From this point forward, Helen’s life spirals into a nightmare of reality and unreality as killings start up again, with her pegged as the culprit, more often than not because she’s found holding a weapon at the scene of the crime. Institutionalization follows, as do more visits from the Candyman, more gruesome murders, and a fairly startling conclusion and a more startling second conclusion. Insectophobes should be warned that there are plenty of bees in a scene here, and this is not for the faint of heart.

Success number five? The soundtrack created by Philip Glass. There is a sense of callback to films like The Exorcist with the classic score, and this does as much to set the mood of the film as almost anything else here. Glass was unhappy with how his score was used, essentially waiting nearly a decade before allowing it to be released as a soundtrack. That was a mistake—Glass evidently saw “slasher flick” without seeing the real art behind this one or the fact that it was considerably different than the standard fare.

It’s also worth noting that Virginia Madsen claimed that for several scenes, she had been hypnotized, lending a more surreal quality to these scenes. I have no idea whether or not this is true, but it’s the kind of thing a strange director might do just for the fanboy factor.

Candyman is a surprise because it is so effective. It should just be another crappy low-budget horror movie with oversexed teens being slain during or immediately after sex, and yet it is not. The people here are adults and act like adults. They get involved in something far beyond their ability to cope with, and it pulls them in terrible and permanent ways against their desires and against their better judgment. The film shoots for and hits the gore factor, the easiest level of horror to hit squarely. It aims for terror, the next level, and hits because there are some really non-gory genuine scares here. It also goes for the ultimate—true horror—and is at least partially successful by mixing this sexual tension with grisly deaths and by portraying exactly what will and has happened at the end.

Three last thoughts. Tony Todd should get more work. He sells the film and looms as its largest presence throughout. Second, while I don’t believe in urban myths like this one, I have not said the name while looking in a mirror even once. Why tempt fate? Third and finally, while I know that something has to go to bring new films onto The List, killing off the best representation of a poor stepchild genre is a sad event. This is good enough to stay in the 1001 Movies List, and it should probably still be there.

Why to watch Candyman: A surprisingly effective slasher film that’s more than you’d give it credit for being.
Why not to watch: You have a weak heart.

Month 13 Status Report

This was a good month for milestones on this blog. Early in the month I crossed the point of having fewer than 800 films to go and at the end of the month broke through to having more than 300 films reviewed. Better, fully one-third of what I watched in January was subtitled or silent (or, in the case of Les Vampires, both). I like foreign films often enough, but when I get busy, I find them difficult to watch.

Also important to me is that almost everything I watched in January was new to me--a couple of exceptions, but only one or two. Since one of the main reasons I took this pursuit up was to challenge myself with the new and different, spending most of my last three months or so watching films I'd never seen before is a step toward where I want to be.

As I look forward into February, I expect more of the same, but with fewer films. February gets busy toward the end, so I'll be lucky to hit 20 films total. Look to see one of the longest films left on the list topple in about 10 days, and probably a jaunt back into musicals at least once (I watched none in January).