Obligatory U2 Reference

Film: Sunday Bloody Sunday
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on laptop.

I’ve liked a good amount of John Schlesinger’s work in the past, so I went into Sunday Bloody Sunday interested in what I might be getting. This is also a highly acclaimed film and wound up on four of my Oscar lists. That’s often a good sign.

I think Sunday Bloody Sunday is a good movie. It might well be a great movie. But it’s not one that I ended up liking very much. It’s daring for its time (although far less so now) and beautifully filmed, and I don’t really have anything specific to say against it. But something about it rubs me the wrong way. There’s something about this film that I really don’t like. It might be the characters themselves. It might be that I think I’ve decided I don’t like Glenda Jackson much even if she was the only thing I liked at all in A Touch of Class. Ultimately, I think it’s that there’s a lot going on here that feels really unnecessary. The film feels messy to me, and not in a good way.

Unitarian YHWH

Film: Oh, God!
Format: HBO Go on rockin’ flatscreen.

When you are making a movie that has God as a character, it’s an important casting decision, and an easy one to screw up. Morgan Freeman, for instance, was an inspired decision. I’ve got to hand it to the makers of Oh, God! as well, because in 1977, I’m not sure there was a better choice to play the role of God than George Burns. Actually, the casting is really nicely done all the way around here, even if it seems strange at first blush in a few places.

Oh, God! is a high concept film. I love summarizing these because they’re so short and convenient in summary. God decides that the world needs to be made more aware of his presence, so he appears to the assistant manager of a grocery store in Tarzana, CA. It’s a pretty fun high concept, even for an apostate like me.

Every Breath You Take

Film: Julie
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

You know that scene in a cheesy thriller where our heroes are in an airplane and the pilot has become incapacitated and someone else has to land the plane? That trope started with Julie from 1956, so it gets the credit or the blame, as you see fit. Evidently, it’s pretty accurate in terms of the technical method of having a non-pilot land a large plane. I realize that in this case I’m giving away the ending of the film, but Julie stars Doris Day, and you didn’t think that a film studio was going to kill off Doris Day, did you?

Julie kind of wants (and by “kind of” I mean “desperately”) to be a film noir with a female protagonist. It succeeds in this for the first two acts and then jumps right out the window with our airborne drama. Ah, but I’m ahead of myself. It’s important to know, though, that Julie is very much a film of two halves.

The Girl Can't Help It

Film: Rambling Rose
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

Movies can show us things both terrible and beautiful. When we’re given something awful to see, at least in my opinion, the context matters. I love horror movies, for instance, but I’m not a fan of gratuitous gore. Use well, gore can really add to a movie. Used poorly, it’s there for cheap shocks and fan service. Rambling Rose is not a horror movie, but the analogy still holds. Within the first half hour or so of the film, a minor is sexually abused, and the film doesn’t really seem to care much or think that it’s a real issue.

I don’t want to start a rant here, but this is something that really bears talking about. I’m not a fan of seeing the sexual abuse—or any abuse—of children in a film. However, there are times when it is legitimate for the story, and as unpleasant and terrible as it is, I understand why it is a part of some films. To me, it ranks as one of the worst things a human being can do, but it’s also a sad fact of reality that it happens. Depending on the film, that can be a real place to go. When it’s trivialized or, as happens in the case of Rambling Rose shown as something akin to a positive, I mentally and emotionally shut down in terms of the rest of the film.

Editing 101

Film: 21 Grams
Format: Streaming video from Hoopla Digital on The Nook.

The movie 21 Grams gets its name from the apocryphal story that the human body loses 21 grams at the moment of death, making some believe that this is the weight of the soul. There are a bunch of bad assumptions and fallacies at play here, but I’m not going to go into that, because that’s not the point. It’s worth mentioning, though, because it gives us a pretty pretentious title for the film, and that’s a theme that’s probably going to be explore pretty thoroughly in the next few paragraphs.

21 Grams was the middle of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s informal trilogy, smack in the middle of Amores Perros and Babel. As the middle film, it tells a smaller story (like Perros) but attempts to tell it in a grander, sweeping style (like Babel). Because of this, I’m not sure it works at either of these two things.

Gender Blender

Film: Victor/Victoria
Format: DVD from Manhattan Elwood Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

Before I get into discussing Victor Victoria, I should comment on Julie Andrews, the film’s star. I’m not a huge fan of Mary Poppins and my hatred for The Sound of Music is the stuff of legends, but I won’t put any of that at the feet of Julie Andrews. Even if those two roles are glurgey and saccharine, I can’t fault the woman herself. The reason for that is that she also did Victor/Victoria, which demonstrates that Julie Andrews is the definition of an entertainer. Holy crap, but the woman is good.

That’s a good thing, because the premise of Victor Victoria is the sort of thing that beggars belief. It’s not that the basic premise of the film is impossible; it’s that the basic premise of the film is impossible with Julia Andrews as the star. Then again, the film also goes out of its way to work against that premise as much as possible, so the whole thing works out.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 1940

The Contenders:

John Ford: The Grapes of Wrath (winner)
Sam Wood: Kitty Foyle
William Wyler: The Letter
George Cukor: The Philadelphia Story
Alfred Hitchcock: Rebecca