Yowza, Yowza, Yowza

Film: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

I’ve been looking forward to rewatching They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? for some time. This is one of my favorite movies of the 1960s and, for my money, contains one of the single greatest cinematic moments of its decade. I liked this movie a lot going into it, and I like it just as much now that I’ve watched it again. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? holds the record for the most Oscar nominations (9) without being nominated for Best Picture. It won’t be a shock by the end of this review that I think that was a miss and it should’ve been in contention for that award.

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? concerns a dance marathon set during the Great Depression. The idea of a dance marathon is simple: take a bunch of couples and make them dance until there’s only one couple left. For this particular competition, the couples must be in constant motion with both knees off the ground constantly, except for ten minutes every two hours. It’s not long before all of our competitors are in such a state of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion that they are capable of anything, particularly as the crowd who comes to watch them grows as the competition goes on.

Never Judge a Film by its Title

Film: Ragtime
Format: DVD from Kankakee Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

Every now and then I get reminded of something that I should remember more often. You should never judge what a movie is going to be about before you actually watch the movie. I figured that a movie called Ragtime would be a drama that centered on people playing ragtime music. I expected something akin to a Scott Joplin soundtrack and a movie that took place in dance halls and the like. That’s not what this is about, although there is a character who plays a little ragtime piano. This is far more about race and class than it is about anything else.

It’s also one of those films that has a bunch of characters who all interact with each other on different levels and in different ways. Very oddly, some of the main characters are never named and are referred to in the credits only has Father (James Olson), Mother (Mary Steenburgen), and Younger Brother (Brad Dourif). As is often the case with a film like this, it’s easier to talk about each story individually than to go with a chronological blow-by-blow.

Coming Out of the Closet

Film: Monsters, Inc.
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

Monsters, Inc. is what turned me into a Pixar believer. When Toy Story was released, I didn’t have kids and both A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2 came out when my oldest daughter was just a baby. But with Monsters, Inc., Gail was three and old enough to see it and get it. So not only did this make me a Pixar believer, it was also my first Pixar film. I’ll just say it here: I think this is about as close to a perfect family film as exists. If you prefer to read angry rants, I’m not going to be complying this time. This is going to be 800-1000 words of me gushing.

For the two people who still haven’t seen it, Monsters, Inc. posits the idea that the monster in the closet in the room of a little kid is a real thing. in fact, there’s an entire monster world that has an industry that depends on the nighttime fears of children. Monsters come out of children’s closets to scare them, because the noise of the screams of frightened children is then used by the monsters as energy. Our main characters are James P. “Sully” Sullivan (John Goodman), the top scarer for Monsters, Incorporated and his work partner and roommate Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal). Sully is a big, furry blue and purple monster with horns who is great at scaring kids when on the clock and easygoing otherwise. Mike, a green sphere with arms and legs and a single eye is a little more intense and sometimes lost in his own delusions of grandeur.

All the Feels

Film: Il Postino (The Postman)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

What makes you tear up while watching a film? For many people, it’s the sad stuff. For me, sad things don’t always do it to me. Certain moments seem to overload the emotional centers of my brain, though. The ending of Cinema Paradiso does it, for instance. So do the last few frames of Monsters, Inc. And, it turns out, the last 15 minutes or so of Il Postino (The Postman) do it as well. I cried like a little baby, leaking out of both sides of both eyes. Things that are overwhelmingly emotional—any emotion, it seems—are what does this to me.

Before we get into the movie itself, someone needs to explain how this works for me. Il Postino was filmed in Italian with portions in Spanish. It was nominated for Best Picture for 1995, but somehow wasn’t nominated for Best Foreign Language Feature. So it’s one of the five best years of 1995, but not one of the five best non-English films of 1995? If you needed a reason why I do the weekly Oscar posts, it’s because there are too many situations where the Academy seems to be made of mildly stupid children that need to be corrected by someone. In this case, if this happened because Italy decided that a different film was worth entering (which is evidently the case), the fault belongs to them.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1990

The Contenders:

Awakenings
Dances with Wolves (winner)
Goodfellas
The Grifters
Reversal of Fortune

Fourth Wall? What's That?

Film: The Love Parade
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

Maurice Chevalier was involved, nay instrumental, in one of the weirdest sub-genres of film in history. This is the (I think) third musical I’ve seen where he plays essentially a dress soldier, the sort who looks good in a uniform but has never been (and never will be ) involved in combat. His entire reason for existence is not conquest on the battlefield, but conquest in the bedroom. I realize this came before The Smiling Lieutenant, but that’s where my thoughts went with The Love Parade, but this is a far better film than the fluff of Lubitsch’s film the next year.

Really, though, The Love Parade is what is described in the previous paragraph. Count Alfred Renard (Chevalier) is a part of the ambassador entourage to Paris of the fictional country of Sylvania. He is recalled to his country because of one too many scandals involving the high ranking women of Paris. While in Paris he has acquired a series of belt notches, an outrageous French accent, and a servant named Jacques (Lupino Lane) who has a reputation among the servant class much like Alfred does among the nobility. Jacques persuades Alfred to take him back to Sylvania with him, and off they go to Alfred’s home and what will likely be an unpleasant meeting with his queen.

I'm Not Half the Man I Used to Be

Film: The Men
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

When a movie is about to go off streaming on NetFlix, I go into a little bit of panic mode. In most cases, the movies that vanish are available on disc, but having less to worry about in the queue is a good thing. Typically, this happens at the end of the month. In the case of The Men, I got a bonus day. But it was today or stick it back in the queue for this one, so it was time to pull the trigger on it.

I knew nothing about this film going in except that it was the debut film for Marlon Brando and that it was very short. So it was surprising to discover that this was not (as the NetFlix summary suggests) a film about a man recovering from “physical and emotional wounds,” but about men who became paraplegics during World War II. This sort of heavy material is always unexpected by me in a film of this vintage. I’m not sure why this is, since this comes a good four years after The Best Years of Our Lives, which didn’t pull its punches much in a lot of respects either.