Movies to Knock Off The List, pt. 2

The horror... The horror. I'm a die hard fan of Bela Lugosi's iconic performance as the prince of the night, so it's taken me a long bloody time to get around to actually watching this thing. The first word that I'd use to describe it is... British. Undeniably British. I spent almost half the movie trying to decide if I was watching a bunch of stuffy Brits trying to be actors or a bunch of actors successfully (and brilliantly) becoming stuffy Brits. Either way, this movie has much less atmosphere than its forebears, going instead for more visceral horror (by the day's standards, at least) and vividly colorful compositions (thanks, Technicolor!). The scary bits are surrounded on all sides by languorous minutes of conversation between our leads, all of which is delivered either mechanically or overly melodramatically (depending on the situation) by the actors. The Count's first moments on screen were an incredible disappointment: he appears in heavy shadow at the top of a staircase to heavy fanfare on the score, only to walk briskly down to the waiting Harker and deliver his few lines as if he were trying to get past them as quickly as he could. Worse, he didn't even sound too menacing; his voice wasn't as deep as it would grow to be, and I couldn't detect much of any accent as he spoke- bizarrely, he sounded... American. But at the very least, the filmmakers know they have a piss-poor gentleman vampire on their hands, and so he only has one speaking scene. In fact, they are straying as far from that as possible, and the remainder of the film made up for his disappointing entrance. This Dracula is either a monolithic shape that fills a doorway or a snarling fanatic with fangs, flinging his foes across floors or bolting violently from danger. While Lugosi was a plotting prince, Lee is a wild animal; this is a Dracula that gets his hair mussed. On the other side of things, Peter Cushing plays a far more formidable Van Helsing that we've yet seen- decisive, intelligent, as fleet of foot as the speedy Count, and far younger than most interpretations have him. This Van Helsing is so effective that he actually gets into a physical confrontation with Dracula- and WINS. On the supporting side, it was great to see Michael Gough as a young man (I'm used to seeing him only from the Batman films), though he never really changes his inflictions or expressions throughout the film unless something really horrible happens (in which case he goes a little overboard). As for the rest, Harker is a stereotype, Lucy is a joke (red hair and pigtails? What is she, a Wendy's model?), Mina is kind of flat, and all of the other vampires (all of whom are women) are buxom, over-the-top... well, vamps. The horror is actually somewhat effective, as the low budget ensures that we get the stripped-down ugliness of the violence; In particular, the stakings have a sort of bleak matter-of-fact-ness that makes them more disturbing to watch. It's just too bad that the blood is way too damn red to believably be blood. By far, however, this Dracula movie has the best action of any that I've seen; the chases, in particular, are exhilarating, and it actually climaxes in a fight between Van Helsing and Dracula that's so good that they used it as the prologue for the following film. It's not the same as the '31 classic- hell, it's exactly the opposite, truth be told- but Horror of Dracula is an effective film with its own merits, its own weaknesses, and, beneath it all, its own style.

The foremost thing I have to say about The Manchurian Candidate is that it is, at times, a surreal film. This is meant, however, on multiple levels. While there are parts of the film (the dream sequences, particularly) where cross-cutting and juxtaposition create an uneven and jarring reality completely intentionally, it is the moments of lucidity that I often found most bizarre (particularly the ones involving Janet Leigh). Apart from this, however, the Manchurian Candidate is an intriguing, if overly long, political thriller that, while it takes far too much time to explain its premise and is often overly blunt in its portrayals, still manages to involve the viewer right up until the emotional and thought-provoking ending. In the film, Frank Sinatra is Korean vet Ben Marco, who is having nightmares about the days he and his platoon went M.I.A. While he claims to remember that a fellow soldier, Raymond Shaw, fought off an enemy troops and saved the surviving men, his dreams are telling him that they were captured and brainwashed, and that Shaw had been programmed to kill two of his own men. Desperate to discover what happened to him and his platoon, Ben tries to get in contact with Shaw to see what may have been done to him... and to try to discover who is behind the whole cover-up. Frank Sinatra as Ben Marco doesn't give a bad performance, exactly... it just wasn't all that great. We see Marco as a military man, whose whole life revolves around being in the service, but beyond that nugget of information, we've got nothin' on him (well, he is a smoker, but then again, wasn't everybody in the sixties?). Sinatra makes the role believable- as in, you don't say "Wow, that guy is a lousy actor" during the film- but he never really pops as a character of his own; he's just... a guy. We get exactly the opposite problem with Raymond Shaw, as played by Lawrence Harvey: at first, Shaw comes off as a stereotypical snobby asshole, complete with a British accent that is never explained, and for the first half of the film, it is hard to feel much but disdain for the guy. However, halfway through the movie, the character actually starts to develop, as we see that Raymond isn't a jerk entirely by choice- he's been forced to give up everything he loves by his controlling mother, and it's his lack of freedom that turned him into the man he is. As the film goes on, his character garners more and more pathos, until, at the climax of the film, we truly feel deeply for Raymond and the tragedy that his life was forced into becoming. Though Raymond is molded into the shape of a monster by the evil Communists (and what a mustache-twirling bunch they are), we soon see that the real monster of the story is Mrs. Iselin (played by Angela Lansbury), the wife of (and brains behind) the oafish Senator Iselin and ruthlessly domineering mother of Raymond. This woman has to be the most despicable character I've yet seen on film (at least, she was to me)- we see that through her insatiable political ambition and her manipulative force of will, she had broken down Raymond's will long before the Commies ever got their hands on him. The irony and hypocrisy of the character just makes her loathsome to my tastes, and it doesn't help that Lansbury gives a dead-on portrayal of a shark in mother's clothing. Also in this film is Janet Leigh as Eugenie Rose Chaney, a character that serves NO PURPOSE WHATSOEVER save as a sounding board for Sinatra. Literally, there is ONE SCENE in which the two meet and have a conversation, which ends with her giving him her ADDRESS and PHONE NUMBER, and then after that, she's an expositional tool, nothing more. THAT, my friends, is just sloppy writing. In fact, quite a few moments struck me as being poorly written, whether it was because the dialogue just didn't sound natural, or because there was too much of a reliance on coincidence to move the plot forward (the bartender says the EXACT WORDS that start Raymond's trance? Jocelyn Jordan just HAPPENS to wear a red queen costume to the Iselin party?), but at the same time, there are some good, solidly written moments, too- which leads me to believe that the book is much, much better, and the movie just applied some standard Hollywood conventions to shorten the narrative to feature length. The shot compositions are great, I will say, and the lighting, as well; there's a dark, shadowy tone to certain parts of the film that really jumped out at me. The editing was phenomenal, particularly during the climax, and also in the aforementioned dream sequences, which jump between hallucination and reality so quickly sometimes that it's hard to sort out which is which, while at the same time presenting a cohesive, comprehensible scene. While it has a few problems on the scripting side of things, the Manchurian Candidate is nevertheless an intricate, suspenseful thriller that gets more and more arresting as it goes on, culminating in a fantastic conclusion that will leave you thinking about it long after it's over. Sure, the Communist themes are now dated and somewhat antiquated, there's real power in its message about the loss of freedom, the manipulation of the masses, and the theft of one man's soul.

I'll be sure to rate this one once I have some idea what the f$#% it's all about. You see, I know the premise, and I know it's surreal, and I've already seen the damn thing, but I just honestly don't know how I'm supposed to react to the any of it. I am utterly perplexed. And not in a good way. I just wish the subtitles could keep up with the bloody dialogue!!!

It took me a long, LONG time to get around to this one, but I'm glad I finally did. I have been raised for the most part on newer zombie horror flicks- Resident Evil, the remake of Dawn of the Dead- so I initially found it extremely difficult to get into the far more subdued Night of the Living Dead. Recently, however, I forced myself to still still and pay attention, and I found that the movie gets better as it goes. The film starts as sort of a tame, Frankenstein-ish, spooky black-and-white flick with nary any blood to be found, but as the film goes on, it gets progressively grittier and gorier, and by the end we might as well be watching a documentary. The zombies, of course, are nowhere near as vivid or graphic as their modern-day counterparts, but what they lack in countenance, they more than make up for in ferocity- having never seen the original, I had believed that the creatures ("ghouls" as they are referred to in the film) would be slow, cumbersome, and easily avoided (Shaun of the Dead being my primary source of information on the subject), but, contrary to popular belief, these things can be quick when they want to be, and they can be overpoweringly savage. Of course, most viewers these days understand the social and political undertones of the film- the black man (Ben) vs. the white man (Harry) and the disagreements and paranoia that tears the survivors apart when they should be working together (very Cold War) which has a ring of a modern-day Lord of the Flies to it. While the acting is far from Oscar-worthy, it isn't all that terrible, either. Judith O'Dea as Barbra is, well, just there for most of the film, serving only to scream in terror at the beginning and the end of the film, but this, at least, she does well. Having seen the remake of this first, I expected more from her character, but her tragic end perfectly demonstrates the horror of being attacked by those you once loved. Duane Jones as Ben, by contrast, is the most well-played and well-rounded character in the movie, but I like that, even though he's the closest thing we get to a hero, he's still stubborn, temperamental, and ultimately fallible. Karl Hardman as Harry, on the other hand, is a jerk and a coward (who doesn't think of himself as a jerk and a coward), but he's not really a bad person- he's just trying to protect himself and his family. Of the others in the film, there's really not much to say; they're all cardboard and lifeless (either literally or figuratively). Partially inspired by my favorite novel (I Am Legend), Night features some similar 50-60's era "scientific explanations" for the sudden outbreak of carnivorous cadavers (a space probe, recently sent to Venus, exploded while approaching Earth, unleashing- gasp!- RADIATION!!!), but the tale sticks mercifully close to the claustrophobic house our heroes inhabit, which, though it may have been a budget compromise, makes the horror of the situation more immediate. And by not doing the kind of orchestral or dramatic build-up we expect when watching a horror flick, the scares catch us completely off-guard, and they seem all the more real for doing so. Sure, it's got some logical inconsistencies- if Harry and co. were in the house first, why didn't they try to find food or a radio before locking themselves downstairs?- but let's face it, Night of the Living Dead is a classic, without which the horror genre as a whole would be a vastly different place, and we would be the worse for it. Definitely worth the watch.

I hear amazing things about this movie all the time. People- a LOT of people- seem to consider this the be-all, end-all of cinema, like they think that DeNiro and Scorsese crafted the celluloid Holy Grail with this flick. I've been hearing this kind of stuff since I was in high school, and it just seemed to grow more pronounced as I got older; over time, my estimation of the film had risen preemptively, and even though I never saw it myself, I knew I would appreciate it when I did- after all, with so many people vouching for it, it had to be something I could dig into, right? Well, that made it all the more surprising when I found I had an extremely hard time just getting through the thing. It's set in a world that's a cesspool of corruption and vice, featuring a main character, Travis Bickle, who is quite literally insane (or possibly just greatly maladjusted)- who can't seem to function on either side of society's social scale, and ultimately goes down a self-destructive path of violence and carnage out of sheer nihilism. Frankly, from start to finish, the movie just... bothered me. It's an intensely uncomfortable viewing experience, even when nothing much is really happening, because the film builds up this powerful feeling of repressed aggression and paranoid anxiety that is never given any sort of release. It has racial and sexual overtones that are dealt with in a frank and polarizing way, and the world that Scorsese created just absolutely filled me with loathing. And then, as always seems to happen these days, I finally got the bigger picture AFTER the movie ended. We can sympathize with Bickle, despite his actions and his obvious psychosis, because the world he lives in is so horrible; when Bickle says that he just wants to do something about all the terrible things going on around him, we can see where he's coming from, even if we can't make heads or tails of the man himself. It makes the viewer wonder if Bickle is nuts because he was born that way or because he's a product of the nightmarish city that he lives in (which, apparently, is what New York was really like back in those days. Thank God for Rudi Gulianni). Bickle, of course, is played by Robert DeNiro, and as always, DeNiro knocks it out of the park in pulling off the character (though it's weird to see him so young and fresh-faced- I'm used to the older, weather-beaten DeNiro of, say, Goodfellas). In every conversation, you can see Bickle struggling, either avoiding eye contact or holding it for far too long and holding up uncomfortable silences, and it's clear that the man has the interpersonal skills of a chunk of dirt. Completely bereft of a sense of propriety (asking the counter girl at the porn theater concession stand for her name? Big no-no) and completely lacking in knowledge of the world beyond his own experience (he doesn't follow movies, music, politics...), Bickle is completely baffled when a girl he likes is offended by his choice of movies for their first date: namely, the porn he watches because he can't sleep (which he himself has no reaction to). His dark feelings about the people he sees on the streets rings powerfully of film noir; the narrative device of the disjointed Bickle recording his irrational, anti-social thoughts in a notebook has been ripped off quite a bit by some pretty prestigious writers (comic god Alan Moore uses the tactic in his masterpiece, Watchman, and Frank Miller riffs on the obsessive voice-over device for, well, everything he does). His final resolution to arbitrarily choose a meaning for his life- ANY meaning- first leads him to try a political assassination during a rally, and then, failing that, to save an underage prostitute from her pimps... violently. The prostitute, Iris (played by a young, post-Freaky Friday/pre-Clarice Jodie Foster), is an incredibly disturbing, complex, intriguing character who, needless to say, has issues, the surface of which are just barely scratched by the film; Foster plays her well, brushing off the severity of her problems with an adolescent indifference that makes them all the more impacting. Her pseudo-Electra-complex relationship with her scumbag pimp (a young, well-muscled Harvey Keitel) is infuriating to watch, and we do root for Travis to do something to help her... but in the end, his rescue ends up causing her more trauma than ever before, and her ambiguous resolution leaves you wondering if things are truly better for her. Also in the film is Cybill Shepard as Betsy, a political campaign worker whom Bickle idolizes in his mind as a symbol of purity. The character isn't really too well elaborated on, beyond the disclosure that she is just a normal, average person through her at-work banter with friend Tom (Albert Brooks, sporting a hell of an afro for a white guy), and though she does seem to have a deeper personal connection with Bickle than you would think, she can't understand him any more than the audience can, and her rejection of him at the porn theater sparks his initial drive to murder the candidate she is working for. Oh, and Scorsese himself has a part as a homicidal passenger in Travis's cab- and damn, the guy can actually act. The cinematography is gritty and urban, using mainly real lights to illuminate the scenes. The shot compositions are indefinably fascinating- mostly straightforward and realistic, but with the occasional bit of ostentation (such as the overhead shots just following the climax, which have a feeling of newspaper photography or crime scene pictures). The score, though, is kind of annoyingly repetitive, going over the same saxophone piece over and over again. Still, at least the piece is good, setting the mood effectively, and while sometimes the score jumps into melodrama (once again, the moments after the climax), it fits the film like a glove (Bernard Hermann's last work, and you can hear his stamp on the whole movie). The film spirals towards a destructive conclusion that somehow, despite the seeming impossibility of the situation, turns out all right for Travis and Iris, and Bickle goes on with his life unassumingly, his impotent rage and mounting anxiety having been purged... for the moment. After the movie was over, I took a step back from it, trying to see things from a different perspective (what was the director trying to do here? Did he do it? How did it affect you?), and I came to a pretty simple conclusion: yeah, Taxi Driver really is as fantastic a film as they say. It's a movie designed to disturb, to get to you where other movies don't, can't, or won't, and even though I wouldn't want to feel this way too frequently, I have to admit that it succeeds brilliantly. The whole thing feels like a nightmare once it's over, a horrible trip through a harsh and unforgiving land that thankfully dissipates with the breaking dawn. This nightmare was a reality for many, though, and it still is; though the eyes of our imperfect protagonist, we see the most twisted side of the world we live in, and when you realize that this place, this hellhole, makes you sympathize for a psychotic murderer, you have to wonder which is more crazy: the man, or the world he lives in.

Mmm, mmm... that's good satire. Seriously, if I had known this movie was as funny as it turned out to be, I would have watched it YEARS ago. A blazingly written stab at the heart of the television ratings game, Network is everything an intelligent satire should be: funny, poignantly ironic, and intensely thought-provoking. The story is about one Howard Beale, a network newscaster for a low-ranking station, UBC, who cracks when he learns of his impending dismissal and announces his intended public suicide on the air. The station managers initially try to keep Beale off the air after repeated instances of uncensored rantings, but thanks to the efforts of a ratings-hungry lady programming head (Faye Dunaway) and an ambitious corporate middleman (Robert Duvall), Beale is instead granted a syndicated television show of his own when his anti-establishment ravings prove popular with the viewers. Peter Finch as Howard Beale is wonderfully volatile and quite clearly a nutcase, and even though he has no character arc- he's pretty much crazy for the whole movie, though to different degrees- Finch keeps it from being a one-note perforance, and it's clear to see why he won the Oscar for the part (the one and only actor to receive an Oscar posthumously). William Holden as Beale's best friend and news manager Max Schumacher is, by contrast, calm, earnest, and ultimately the only character who amounts to a decent, individual human being in the story. His unlikely romance with Dunaway's character manages to bring the film down to Earth a bit and ground the story with human interaction, as the satire can get to be somewhat over-the-top at moments, but soon enough the relationship deteriorates into yet another indictment of television and its effects on people. Dunaway's Diana Christensen, the programming executive trying to break through to the popular counterculture, is a cold, hollow character, incapable of feeling anything deep or meaningful, beholden only to the materialistic and the base, and ultimately described by her lover as "television incarnate." It surprised me to see her in such a good role- the only thing I'd seen Dunaway in before was Supergirl- and she pulls it off marvelously; another Oscar well earned. I've never seen Robert Duvall as young as he is playing Frank Hackett, manipulative corporate representative for UBC's owners, and I've also never seen him play such a massive douche bag- a symbol for the ethically bankrupt management of television whose only motivation is the bottom line. Ned Beatty also makes a short, but amusing (and somehow sinister) appearance as the head of the corporation that owns UBC; he's only got one scene, but it perfectly sums up big-business egotism and capitalist philosophy (and appropriately presents it as a convincing ethos for a madman). The film is an ironic one, in that it points out the depravity of a network that irresponsibly presents the ravings of a lunatic to its audience, while at the same time presenting those surprisingly convincing ravings (this IS a hell of a script) to us, the audience. The humor comes in, though, when we see how television bastardizes everything it touches- Beale's famous call-to-arms, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!", is reduced to a popular slogan for the audience to chant at the start of his new program. My favorite scene has to involve the contract negotiation with the Ecumenical Liberation Front, a terrorist sect that films its many terrorist acts, over the production of a weekly hour-long television drama based on their actions; it's so utterly ridiculous, but the whole thing is played completely straight, and it works. When the ending finally comes, it comes from WAY out of left field- literally the last two scenes take things to a greater extreme than you might have imagined possible; but what's great is that it's a natural extension of the themes of the film (NOTHING matters but the ratings), and when it happens, you believe it 100%. What's most interesting about Network is that a lot of the exaggerations of the filmmakers... well, they kind of came true. Television is a powerful tool that's fallen into the wrong hands (and ANY hands are really the wrong hands, in some ways); it's all about chaos- pandering to the lowest common denominator, doing anything to get the ratings- and integrity is now a thing of the past (if it ever was a part of television history). And there really are people who've been raised on nothing but television (more so than when the movie was released, I'd wager), who don't read or really think for themselves because the TV tells them what to think. The problem is, television is only an illusion, it isn't reality; and the greatest irony is that it takes an illusion- a film- to point that out to us.