How Green Was My Valley (1941): A Review (Review #275)

HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY (1941)

A Welsh Eulogy...

How Green Was My Valley is a nostalgic look at a lost world, where the traditions of yesterday were erased by the cruel realities of a changing world. The film is one bathed in that nostalgia, where the memories of youth are looked back on in wonder. 

Huw Morgan (Roddy McDowall, with voice-over narration by an uncredited Irving Pichel), recalls his early years.  He is the youngest child of the Morgan family, a loving group of proud Welsh miners.  His father Gwillym (Donald Crisp) and mother Beth (Sara Allgood) watch over their five adult sons, Huw, and their daughter Angharad (Maureen O'Hara). 

Life is pretty set for the Morgan family: the men except for the child Huw, go to the mines, the women care for the men and keep house, and after work there's time with the family.  Gwillym is the unquestioned head of the house, but Beth is the heart.  One of the Morgan boys, Ivor (Patric Knowles), takes a wife, Bronwyn (Anna Lee), with whom Huw has fallen slightly in love with.  Their marriage is performed by minister Mr. Gruffyd (Walter Pidgeon).  While nothing is overtly spoken, Angharad and Mr. Gruffyd have fallen in love themselves.

Things go as they have always gone in Wales until the mining company reduces wages.  While Mr. Morgan is upset, he has faith that the company owners are humans just like him and thus doesn't see anything nefarious in their actions.  However, his sons do, and dare to question their father, especially on the matter of unionizing the miners.  Mr. Morgan does not care for unions though he cares deeply about his sons and his fellow miners, and is ostracized for his stand against the union and the strike.

While he bears things as best he can even his own sons leaving home over this, Beth won't.  She calls out the villagers, including her own sons, for behaving so shamefully.  However, she and Huw suffer injuries in a snowstorm, and once recovered, the villagers return to the Morgan home, offering gifts as tokens of forgiveness.

Eventually, the strike is over, but things are now completely different.  Finding themselves out of work, two of the Morgan boys do the unthinkable: they leave the valley for America.  The owner's son asks for Angharad's hand, to which she reluctantly accepts.  Huw goes to a National School, where Beth is displeased to learn he's learning useless things like Latin rather than Welsh or even English, but being from the valley is beaten up.  Ivor is killed in a mining accident, leaving a widow and yet-unborn child.  Despite his education, Huw would rather be at the mines with his father and brothers.  While Mr. Morgan does not like it, he relents.

Two more sons, despairing over lower wages, head off to Australia and New Zealand.  Angharad, who had to go to South Africa with her husband, has returned to the valley, but as a woman of the company cannot go to either her family or Mr. Gruffyd.  The suggestion of something between them forces Mr. Gruffyd to leave the valley, but not before condemning the villagers for their behavior.  Finally, there is another accident at the mines, and we end How Green Was My Valley with the now-adult Huw in voice-over recalling his family as it was.

Voice-over is something I'm not particularly fond of, but John Ford knows how to handle it.  Here, it isn't an issue because it is not used that often and because we know it is the adult Huw's reminiscences.  Moreover, the voice-over doesn't tell us what will happen but only what he felt at the time of the events.  It fills in information for us as opposed to trying to explain everything to us.  Here, as well as in such films as Blade Runner and Sunset Boulevard, we can see the effective use of voice-over, and filmmakers would be wise to study the proper use of it. 

It would also serve filmmakers to study how effective Ford's directing was.  For the first fifteen or twenty minutes of How Green Was My Valley, there is very little in form of dialogue.  Instead, the story is carried with Huw's voice-over, the actual actions of the villagers, a lot of Welsh singing, and Alfred Newman's beautiful and nostalgic score.  What is incredible is that a lot of the story is told without characters having to go on about anything. 

Take the scene where Angharad and Mr. Gruffyd first take note of each other.  Just with their expressions, their eyes, and James B. Clark's editing, we get so much subtext into their internal emotions.  Same goes for when Huw first lays eyes on Bronwyn: while a bit later we do hear him tells us that was the first time he fell in love, just by how McDowall looks at Lee we know he's been struck with innocent love, while Bronwyn looks on him kindly, but obviously not the same way she would look at Ivor. 

In many scenes, such as when the Morgan boys dare to question their father's wisdom, it is just how Ford positions his actors, along with how Arthur Miller's cinematography places shadows to create menace or joy depending on the situation, we see how so much is spoken with just the visuals.

A fine example of this is when one compares Ivor and Bronwyn's wedding to Angharad's.  In the former, there was joy, complete with apparently the entire village joining together in song as they cheer on the happy couple.  There was a real sense of oneness within the community.  Angharad's, on the other hand, was a somber affair, almost like a funeral, and when Mr. Morgan calls for song, the melody is gentle and sad.  We need only see O'Hara's expression, and Pidgeon in the background as he watches her ride away, to know all that needs to be known.

The performances were all-around brilliant.  O'Hara expressed so much with how she looked or didn't look when she turned away, into the conflicted emotions of Angharad.  Crisp as the stoic patriarch showed a man of principles and values, who accepts the changing times with the same stoicism but whom we know has a breaking heart over the loss of his world and his sons.  Pidgeon has one great moment where in remarkably eloquent words he tells the villagers how wrong they were wrapping themselves in Christian cloak to justify their gossip and most unChristian behavior.

We finally go to "Master" Roddy McDowall as he is billed.  In his first American film, McDowall's Huw is a bright and eager young man, truly unaware of the monumental changes going on around him.  For a good part of How Green Was My Valley he is an invalid, having suffered weakness of his legs when he and Beth fall into a frozen river.  There's a beautiful scene between them when she finally has the strength to go downstairs to see him, and it is beautiful and effective because it is underplayed and isn't built up to a big moment.  He has such a beautiful, expressive face, whether it's facing his first day at a brutal school, trying to act manly in front of his widowed sister-in-law, or trying to understand why Mr. Gruffyd has to leave. 

How Green Was My Valley is a film about family, of a world shifting away from the love that family and community gives to one where the individual is basically left at the whims of fate and uncaring commerce.  It's themes of family, tradition, and the gradual eroding of beauty both of the natural world and of the family, with a nod to how "Christian" people can sometimes obey the letter of the Law but not the spirit of the Law, is played beautifully. 

Yes, it is a film of nostalgia, but it isn't romanticized: the adult Huw understands why things happened, and doesn't shy away from making life in the mines a hard one.

How Green Was My Valley is a beautifully shot, beautifully acted and directed film, recalling a lost world where love was what made one truly wealthy.  How Green Was My Valley is a film that speaks to all of us.

We all can remember how green our own valleys were. 

1942 Best Picture: Mrs. Miniver

DECISION: A+

Best Picture Oscar Retrospective

The Ides of March: A Review (Review #274)

THE IDES OF MARCH

We should know that politics can be a dirty business. The Ides of March somehow doesn't appear to know that. 

Based on the play Farragut North by Beau Willimon (who co-wrote the adaptation with Grant Heslov and director/co-star George Clooney), The Ides of March is suppose to be about the corruption of an idealist into another apparatchik bent on winning at all costs.  The Ides of March becomes instead an an attempt at showing the cold and cruel world of American politics.

Stephen  (avant-garde actor Ryan Gosling) is the idealistic junior campaign manager for Pennsylvania Governor Mike Morris (Clooney).  They are in the midst of the Ohio Democratic primary, and Gov. Morris' inspirational speeches make even Stephen (who despite being merely 30 has worked on many a campaign) believe Morris is "The One". 

Stephen works under veteran campaign manager Paul (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), who is desperate to get the endorsement of former candidate Sen. Thompson (Jeffrey Wright), whose delegates can ensure Morris' nomination.  This does not sit well with Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), who is working for Morris' opponent for the Democratic nomination.  Duffy persuades Stephen to take a meeting, where he offers our idealist a job on his team.  Stephen rejects it, but does not tell Paul about the meeting until after a debate.

Meanwhile, Molly (Evan Rachel Wood), an intern and daughter of the Democratic National Committee head, is flirtatious with Stephen.  Curiously, he and Molly begin a sexual relation, though it's more a friends with benefits scenario.  However, after a tryst Stephen inadvertently picks up Molly's phone, and is shocked to discover it's from Morris.  Why would the Governor call Molly at 2.30 in the morning?  Well, it seems that after Morris won Iowa, a celebration turned into a one-night stand entre Morris et Molly.  To complicate matters, Molly needs $900 for reasons unknown.

Stephen now has three battles to fight: trying to help Molly out of her mess, the Ohio primary, and the inquisitiveness of New York Times reporter Ida (Marisa Tomei), who is threatening to reveal the meeting between Stephen and Duffy.  Paul dumps Stephen from the campaign, but after Duffy rejects Stephen's offer to join his campaign, and Molly's exit, Stephen now will do anything to get back in the game.

I'm not a particularly political person, but The Ides of March isn't a story that is revelatory to the machinations of the political world.   I figure that the presentation of a candidate will always put the best spin on their policies and persona, so why would Morris be any different?  It isn't cynicism on my part, just cautious and cool detachment.  However, The Ides of March asks me to believe a great deal about both the story and the characters that the script simply cannot do. 

For example, it asks me to see Stephen as this idealist who sees in Morris an almost messianic figure whose election will mark, to quote a great speaker, "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal".  However, as portrayed by avant-garde actor Gosling, Stephen never looked or sounded like a True Believer, someone who in his heart saw Morris as an almost Messianic-character.  Instead, avant-garde actor Gosling sounded like an actor delivering dialogue. 

With avant-garde actor Gosling, there isn't a spark, an enthusiasm for Morris.  Instead, there is a coldness, a distance, an aloofness to Stephen's work on Morris' campaign.  Therefore, since I never believed Stephen was a True Believer, I never saw his corruption and downfall to be real.

In The Ides of March, Stephen, for all his high-powered wunderkind persona, actually appeared to be quite dumb. When Molly says that she needs $900, Stephen literally asks her, "$900 for what?"  At that point, I blurted out loud, "Geez, even I know," so how he didn't is beyond me.  It also makes me wonder why he would need to take the Morris campaign petty cash for Molly's needs, since I figure he had some money.  What, he couldn't borrow money from fellow Morris devotee/campaign worker Ben (Max Minghella)? 

When Ida confronts Stephen about his secret meeting with Duffy, Stephen couldn't figure out who had leaked this information, which was strange since I figured out who did it almost instantly.  To misquote Columbo, it's always the one I most suspect.  The 'Deep Throat' to this 'scandal' which really isn't to my mind that big a deal, is so painfully obvious and I'd argue, predictable, that I couldn't believe Stephen wouldn't realize it sooner.

This 'enthusiasm gap' goes with Clooney's performance as Morris as well.  As I heard Morris speak and saw how he spoke, I can't imagine how someone who spoke in platitudes could have inspired such passion and/or devotion among the rank-and-file Democrats.  In truth, I found the character of Governor Morris to be remarkably dispassionate in his speaking, almost as if he has to force himself to say things that sound vaguely 'inspirational', even though they never sounded 'inspirational'.

I can't argue against any of the other performances.  They were efficient, if not inspiring.  Giamatti was still the slightly tense and harried character he was in Cinderella Man, while both Hoffman and Minghella were underused as both actors and characters.  However, nothing beats Tomei in the Underused Division: she was in probably three to four scenes and didn't appear to be anything more than a plot device to get the two 'scandals' (the secret meeting and the Iowa one-night stand) tied together into the plot. 

I won't argue on the technical aspects of The Ides of March with one exception.  Alexandre Desplat is a most curious case as a film score composer: I loved his scores for The Queen and The King's Speech, tolerated his score for Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part 1 & Part 2, but disliked his work for The Ides of March. 

I think it has to do with the fact that like most of The Ides of March, it was remarkably predictable and self-important: on opening the film with drumming I wrote 'Oh, drumbeat signals importance of film', and when we hear a solitary trumpet I wrote 'Horn solo signals this is Important Moment in Important Film'.  I'm never a fan of scores that call attention to themselves, and are clichéd; seriously, military-style instrumentation for a political film?

I digress slightly to say that The Ides of March at one point comes dangerously close to farce.  When Stephen confronts Morris with all that he knows, avant-garde actor Gosling looked slightly possessed, his eyes expressing not rage or anger or hurt but a near-demonic, almost psychotic look.

The Ides of March is the type of film that thinks its saying great and profound things when in reality it doesn't say anything we don't already know: politics corrupts even the most seemingly incorruptible, and does it is a remarkably predictable way. 

I never believed Stephen was a man corrupted by a desire to win even if Morris' election would be good for the nation: a suggestion of how to ensure kids get free college in exchange for mandatory two-year service either via military or community service, only made me wonder whether this would constitute 'involuntary servitude' prohibited by the 13th Amendment if it were 'mandatory' but now I digress. I never believed Morris to be some sort of inspirational character I would follow into the Gates of Hell. 

Ostensibly about Stephen's fall from grace, The Ides of March is really about how a grown man could be both so foolish in how he handles just about everything he's involved with and still be considered a political genius. 

There is no need to beware this Ides of March.  However, it's time has come and gone.

DECISION: C-

Grand Hotel (1932): A Review

GRAND HOTEL (1932)

Who Wants To Be Alone...

Grand Hotel is not in the pantheon of great films. Even among its fellow Best Picture winners, it's an oddity: it's the only film as of this date to win Best Picture without being nominated in any other category. It is however, a brilliant example of an all-star cast in a lavish setting making things greatly entertaining.

We have a galaxy of stars in Grand Hotel with all their stories interconnected into one grand story. 

The picture begins with grand credits introducing all our players: Grusinskaya, the dancer (Greta Garbo), The Baron Felix von Geigern (John Barrymore), General Director Preysing the Industrialist (Wallace Berry), Otto Kringelein the Accountant (Lionel Barrymore), Flaemmchen the Stenographer (Joan Crawford), as well as Doctor Otternschlag (Lewis Stone), and Senf the porter (Jean Hersholt).

In quick order we're introduced to the various situations the various characters are in: Senf is waiting for his wife to deliver a baby, Kringlein is living it up at the Berlin Grand Hotel because he is dying of an unnamed disease, Preysing must get a contract from Manchester or will face financial ruin, and Grusinskaya's maid Suzette (Rafaela Ottiano) tells the concert promoter and manager that she cannot dance due to an intense melancholy that overwhelms our temperamental diva.  We end this montage with Doctor Otternschlag musing to himself how at Grand Hotel "People come and go, nothing ever happens".

Of course, we know this is nonsense, for a great deal is going on.  The Baron has fallen on hard times, and has resorted to theft.  Who has expensive jewels? The dancer.  Preysing needs a stenographer, and enters Miss Flaemm (Crawford), who piques the Baron's erotic interest but who is rebuffed by Flaemmchen at first.  Kringlein used to work for Preysing, and The Baron takes a liking to the meek accountant. 

Just as the Baron is about to get away with Madame's pearls, Madame returns after having fled the theater and causing a panic among her entourage.  Grusinskaya tells them, "I want to be alone".  In the depths of her melancholia related not just to her fading career but her lost czarist lover, she is about to do something desperate.  The Baron risks danger by coming out of the shadows to tell her she has much to live for, and that he is in love with her.

Having men come out of the shadows doesn't faze Grusinskaya: she tells him its happened before, and they spend a beautiful night together.  Kringlein has been living it up as well, but knows his time is growing shorter.  With the dancer now passionately in love with the Baron, Grusinskaya can dance again.  She tells the Baron that they can go together to Italy, vacation there, continue their romance.  The Baron agrees, but rejects her offer of money.

Preysing tries to bluff his way to convince investors into a merger by telling them the Manchester deal has gone through even though he knows it hasn't.  After getting them to sign the merger agreement, Presying must now go to England to secure the deal.  Flaemmchen leaves the all-day conference for a date with the Baron, and while waiting, keeps Kringelein company.  Preysing now barges in, demanding Flaemmchen return for more business, primarily of the monkey kind, and assaults Kringelein.  The Baron comes to his defense.

It is now seven p.m.  Presying gets Flaemmchen a room adjoining his, but while she agrees to go to England with him, she plays things to her advantage without actually giving him much if anything that was tawdry.  Grusinskaya has already left to dance like she's never danced before, and Kringelein has beginner's luck in a poker game organized by the Baron.  The Baron comes close to stealing from him, having already rejected Kringelien's offer for money, but in the end cannot go through with it. 

There is one mark who hasn't been tapped and who would be easy to steal from.  Preysing catches the Baron in the act, and after an altercation clubs the Baron to death with the phone.  Flaemmchen enters, is horrified at the sight, and flees to Kringelein, who calls the police.  In the end, Grusinskaya leaves for Italy, being kept deliberately in the dark about the Baron's fate, Preysing is arrested for murder, and Flaemmchen, having seen the kindness of Kringelein, goes with him to Paris, in the hopes of finding a doctor who could treat his illness.  They will stay at the Grand Hotel, Kringelein noting that there is always a Grand Hotel somewhere.  Oh, yes, Senf finds he has a new son. 

At the end, permanent Berlin Grand Hotel resident Dr. Otternshlag comments, "Grand Hotel.  People coming and going.  Nothing ever happens". 

Grand Hotel is if nothing else, lavish to a T, a grand spectacle of sights and sounds.  Director Edmund Goulding manages to not only keep things flowing at a remarkably good pace but also has some great technical flourishes in the film.  The opening in the hotel lobby flows smoothly, allowing us to see nearly all the characters and introduce them and their stories. 

There is also a great interplay between John Barrymore and Crawford as he attempts to charm her and she puts him in his place.  As they lean over the balcony overlooking the lobby, he tells her something along the lines of how she thinks the staff would react if one of them jumped onto their desk from their height.  She tells him she doesn't know, so why doesn't he jump and find out.

Goulding also got some absolutely wonderful performances out of his all-star cast.  As stated, Grand Hotel received only one Oscar nomination, for Best Picture, but what is truly incredible is that none of the actors received nominations for some truly wonderful work.  Chief among them was Lionel Barrymore's dying clerk Kringelein.  His performance is one of true heartbreak for a meek and mild man embracing life just as death is embracing him.  We care about him and his plight, making his happy ending all the more tender. 

Following Lionel Barrymore right behind him is Crawford as the stenographer.  She makes Flaemmchen both a woman of the world not above using her considerable charms to move ahead but also vulnerable, aware of what is expected but still optimistic.  Her last scenes with Lionel show us the vulnerability behind her as well as how she has grown to care for Kringelein.  Both know that she's not in love with him, but they love each other nonetheless.  Beery's German accent isn't excessive or exaggerated, and his performance is also first-rate: the industrialist you love to hate.

The central role, the one that ties all the stories together, is that of the Baron, and John Barrymore makes the Baron a character of great tragedy.  Despite himself, the Baron is simply too good a person to take advantage of people: not the ballet dancer he's fallen madly in love with, not the shrewd stenographer he flirts with, not the meek accountant who sees the Baron as his friend.  All we need to know about the Baron is from how he describes himself to Grusinskaya, "I'm the prodigal son.  The black sheep of a white flock.  I shall die on the gallows".  There is a fatalism to him, a belief that despite his low position, he is still a baron, and that his nobleness (and noblesse oblige) cannot allow him to truly take advantage of someone he cares for as he does for Kringelein and Grusinskaya. 

Finally, we go to Garbo.  At first,  I was disappointed in what I thought was a very mannered and over-the-top performance as the Grand Diva.  Upon a second look, I changed my view entirely.  Grusinskaya was suppose to be over-the-top, a woman on the verge of a grand emotional crisis, worrying about a fading career and still mourning the death of her great love, the Grand Duke Sergei.  Garbo has beautiful love scenes with John Barrymore (William H. Daniels' cinematography photographing these two simply beautiful people in all their grand glory and beauty), but at the end, when she blissfully goes off to the train station unaware her new love is, like her old love, also dead, there is a genuine heartbreak to her sense of joy. 

Besides, who in the end can argue against Garbo's performance when she delivers that immortal line,

"I want to be alone"

in her luxurious Swedish accent.  Here, she communicates this unbearable sense of being forever forlorn, to where nothing will ease her sadness.  "I just want to be alone", she says, not caring about her career or life.  In fairness, Garbo may appear exaggerated by today's standards, but her performance does move one on an emotional level, a woman who yearns to love and be loved but always finds loss rather than love at the end.

There are also some technical aspects in Grand Hotel that add to the lavishness of the production.  Chief among them is Cedric Gibbons' art direction, where the Art Deco design of the lobby echoes the luxury and decadence of Weimar-era Berlin.   Adrian's costumes from the Baron's simple cat-burglar frock to Grusinskaya's elaborate ballet costume should also have received some recognition, as well as William Drake's adaption of his play based on Vicki Baum's novel Menschen im Hotel.

One flaw in Grand Hotel is that Blanche Sewell's editing made some visible mistakes such as the jump between John Barrymore and Joan Crawford appeared to make them move to the same positions twice.  On the positive side is that these mistakes, while quite visible to the naked eye, are soon forgotten when one continues to be swept up in the interlocking stories and lavish setting.

Grand Hotel is a luxurious picture where star power is in full force.  Combining the talents of Garbo, both Barrymores, Crawford, and Beery was a stroke of genius, making the film more lavish and highly entertaining.  There is also some genuinely good acting in Grand Hotel, particularly Lionel Barrymore and Crawford.  Grand Hotel set the standard of what an all-star production should look like, and films ranging from The V.I.P.s to Airport and The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno owe it a debt of gratitude. 

As for Garbo's request, it cannot be granted.  As long as her image is up on the screen, she'll never be alone.

DECISION: A-

1933 Best Picture: Cavalcade

Best Picture Oscar Retrospective

50/50: A Review

50/50

Yes We Cancer...

In 50/50, screenwriter Will Reiser uses his own experience and brings laughter to what could be a depressing subject: a young man facing a deadly disease.  50/50 also benefits from one of the best performances by one of our best actors working today.

Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is basically a good guy who doesn't drink or smoke but who has a questionable girlfriend, Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard).  He has a best friend, Kyle (Seth Rogen), who works with him at a National Public Radio station in Seattle, which I imagine would make them the cool guys, at least in Seattle.  However, Adam has been having back pain for some time, so he goes to the doctor.  Once he hears the word 'cancer', everything else goes basically unheard.

The reactions among his family and friends reflects their persona: Kyle freaks out but tries to find ways of using this for his top priority (schtupping girls), Rachael gives the appearance of being supportive but can't hide her desire to bail out of this relationship with this as her ticket, and Adam's mother Diane (Anjelica Huston) keeps trying to find a way to attempt to bear over her child. 

Adam just wants to get over this disease.  He has on this journey three more people: fellow chemo patients Alan (Phillip Baker Hall) and Mitch (Matt Frewer), and his recommended counselor Katherine (Anna Kendrick).  Alan is a bit of a grump, Mitch isn't, and Katherine is literally a novice at this: Adam is her third patient in her dissertation/training.

As Adam continues his treatment, he gains a dog and loses a bitch (Rachael), with Kyle's help finds the joys of medicinal marijuana and new meaning to the term 'sympathy sex', and comes to find that chemotherapy hasn't worked, so now it's time for surgery.  With all this coming on him, his big wish is to do something he's never done: drive.  He also finally opens up to a possible relationship with Katherine, ever bumbling yet perky.

After watching 50/50, I get the sense that people may be either put off by the subject or be oversold on the idea that this is a real howler of a comedy.  Certainly when Rogen is involved both as actor and producer, you can expect the film to have a healthy dose of both raunchy and odes to pot.  There were moments of laughter (most coming from Kyle's efforts to get Adam to see the benefits of using cancer to get laid), but on the whole I didn't laugh as much as I'd been led to believe.

My problem with 50/50 came mostly from Kendrick's Katherine.  Is it me, or is it a bit of a cliché to have the ever pretty, ever eager, ever spunky yet mostly inept counselor bumble her way into being a romantic character for our hero?  I just could never accept that someone this clueless and bubbly could ever seriously be training to deal with people battling potentially fatal diseases. A 'comedic' sign of how unaware she was is that not only had she never heard of Doogie Howser, M.D., but actually thought he was a real doctor. 

One figures that young trainees, even ones as bubbly as Katherine, would have some tact, some intelligence in how to handle situations fraught with pain both physical and emotional.  However, as directed by Jonathan Levine with Reiser's screenplay, Katherine comes off with as much ability to help anyone as a ditsy cheerleader.

Then again, I have never been taken by the charm of Anna Kendrick, so there's that too.

That aspect: the perky little girl who falls in love or at least like with her patient, just never worked for me.  I kept thinking that in 50/50 her purpose really wasn't to try and help Adam get some handle on his illness but to give him a chance to have some romantic angle in the film.  I also note that for most of 50/50, Adam remains pretty much the same: a smart fellow ready with a quick quip for almost every situation.  It really isn't until he learns that the chemo hasn't worked and will have to go to surgery that he shows an emotion besides remarkable aloofness, even calmness, towards everything.

However, once we see just how serious the situation has truly become, once we get to how Adam finally wants to put away all the chaos and nonsense this disease has brought on him that we get an emotional core to 50/50.

Adam doesn't just want to drive a car for the first time the night before surgery, he wants to knowingly drive it wrong, as if by forcing others out of the way he can gain some control where he has none.

It's at this scene in particular that we see 50/50 to be a strong film about loss: of control, of friends, of any certainties that come with life, even one as young as Adam's.  When he shaves his head rather than lose his hair to the chemo, it's an effort to gain some control over the disease.  It's only when after all the treatment and whatever sex he can wrangle out of it that he finds it wasn't enough, Adam finally allows himself a moment of anger, a scream over how everything he's done hasn't helped, and the prospect that he may yet die despite having done everything he could.

Gordon-Levitt in 50/50 makes a strong case for an Oscar nomination if I had anything to say about it.  Adam continues to be himself, trying to keep things gong for him, but finding that he can only do so much.  Rogen, also, continues to be  Rogenesque (a slacker who likes pot and broads, presumably in that order), but credit should be given in that near the end of 50/50, Adam discovers that in his own way, he has been trying to be as supportive and as caring a friend as he is able to be. 

One almost feels for Howard in that here she again is called to play a terrible person, but she does it so well.  Huston maintains the balance of Adam's mother being both difficult to be around and truly loving.  As for Kendrick, again I fail to find her charms, or why so many genuinely love her as a performer.

My caveat about 50/50 is that it is not as funny as one might be led to believe.  Its humor does ease some of the edges of being a story about cancer.  The film maintains a good balance between being delicate with the subject matter and being more of a slacker/stoner romp.  Minus the romantic angle and Kendrick's bubbly shtick, 50/50 has the odds in its favor of being a good film.

DECISION: B-

Killer Elite: A Review

KILLER ELITE

In the interest of full disclosure I will go on record saying that I do enjoy Jason Statham films.  Killer Elite, in that regard, is a success: you get a lot of action scenes, culminating in one where he's fighting while tied to a chair.  In terms of a good movie, Killer Elite is not a success. 

Danny (Statham) and his mentor Hunter (Robert DeNiro) are trained assassins.  In 1980 they make a hit on a Mexican target, but Danny encounters an unexpected complication: a child, and this is just too much for him.  He declares this is his last job.

A year later, Danny is in Australia, with a girlfriend, Anne (Yvonne Strahovski), when he gets a letter.  Hunter has been taken hostage by an Arab sheikh after Hunter took, then reneged, on a job.  In exchange for Hunter, Danny must now avenge the sheikh's sons by killing members of a secret military group who killed their sons; he must get them to confess on tape and record their deaths for confirmation.

It's unfortunate that this secret society is The Feather Men, their killing having a light touch.  All these current and former military elites have as their unofficial head Spike (Clive Owen), who is paranoid but realizes that someone is tracking them down.  Then it becomes a game of cat and mouse, though we don't really know which is which.  Danny succeeds in killing the men, but a threat against Anne signals that Danny has one more person to kill.  This gives Spike a chance to get rid of his nemesis.

Killer Elite tauts itself as based on a true story (based on the book The Feather Men by Sir Ranulph Fiennes), and even tells us in the end that both the existence of The Feather Men is officially denied and that the whereabouts of Danny remain unknown.  If the events depicted are true, then reality is a wild and at times confusing thing.  A lot of times, Killer Elite almost played like an unintended farce.  The film kept reminding me of the cartoon Spy vs. Spy, where one group was trying to outdo the other and bungling their tasks often. 

Take for example when Spike sees who is following and targeting his group.  He then starts following Danny, who is supposed to be following Spike.  A lot of Killer Elite is like this: you get a plan to terminate someone but then the one pursuing becomes the one pursued and sometimes the other person is the one getting bumped off. 

It makes one wonder exactly how expert these Feather Men are: for all their contacts and inside sources and great training they can't seem to put together the connection between the two men getting killed or this outsider doing the killing.  In fact, whenever Spike meets with the Feather Men, they look and act like the neighborhood association discussing how high the hedges should be allowed to grow.   Even worse, Danny and his crew don't appear to either know or realize that a cabal of ex-military elites would be after them.

Statham does what he does best: squint, gives us a mean face, and fight.  In fact, Jason Statham is so cool that when his partner is attempting to escape a group of bees or hornets, Statham just waves them away, continuing to stare out at the man foolish enough to try to take him on. Owen is someone who appears to want to go into action films but can't seem to convince audiences that he can be an action star (examples: King Arthur, Shoot 'Em Up, The International, Killer Elite).  I think he can be one, and he certainly is a good actor. 

I don't blame him, but Matt Sherring's script that gave him nothing to build on.  Both Statham and Owen are shown to have private lives, but nothing ever comes from it.  Early in Killer Elite, we hear Spike's wife hounding him and a baby crying, but after that scene, we never hear from them again.  Did he send them away?  Did she leave him?  Does he care?  Do we?

Likewise, Anne is just there to give Danny a sense of having some emotional attachment.  From time to time, we wander into flashbacks of their life together in Australia, but it isn't until the third act that she even becomes remotely connected to the plot.  Danny takes Anne to Paris for his one last, last hit, without telling her anything, in order to have Hunter protect her while he takes care of business.  Naturally, she's oblivious to most of what's going on: she knows something is up, but being a hit man never enters her mind. 

In regards to DeNiro, he's there just as what is called a plot device.  In the nearly two hours of Killer Elite, he probably isn't in the movie for more than half an hour at the most: in the beginning, a couple of times in the middle, and in the end.  For the most part, his role appeared almost incidental.  I suspect he had a good time.

One thing that was an endless bother to me was the score by Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek.  It's amazing that two people could make music that was so loud and overbearing that it hit the viewer over the head and ears so often that it became endlessly frustrating to enjoy.

Killer Elite is pretty much a low-rent action film though there were some good action moments.  The plot is trying too hard to be complex and only ends up being really convoluted with betrayals and chasing and trying to figure out exactly who or what The Agent (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) is.  A little more streamlining in the story to where it becomes a game of outwitting would have served the story better. 

On the whole, Killer Elite actually manages to not make the best use of Jason Statham, which is amazing given how Statham's main talents are in scowling and growling.

DECISION: D+

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930): A Review (Review #270)

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930)

War Is Truly Hell...

Many World War I veterans were still very much alive when All Quiet on the Western Front, the adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's novel was released, and I even suspect that the imagery of the battle scenes must have given more than a few fighting men nightmares.  For those who did not fight, All Quiet On the Western Front might have put a damper on their belief that 'the war to end all wars' was worth all the blood and treasure spilled over it.  All Quiet on the Western Front is a harrowing depiction of the brutality war inflicts on both body and soul, a tale not of courage won but innocence lost.

Paul Baumer (Lew Ayres), a high school student, is swept up by war fever when his native Germany enters the First World War.  With dreams of glory and a desire to fight for the fatherland, he and his classmates eagerly go from school to enlist.  He and his friends go for basic training, where their former mailman Himmelstoss (John Wray) has turned into a short-tempered bully.  There are some hijinks involving Himmelstoss, but then they are deemed ready to go into the front lines.

At arriving at the front, the group are surprised by conditions: no food and bombed-out buildings for shelter.  Under the watchful eye of Katczinsky or Kat (Louis Wolheim), they are given a simple assignment: put up wire across the trench-covered land.  It isn't long before the bombs start falling, and the boys soon find themselves in the middle of a living nightmare.  One of their friends, Behn (Walter Browne Rogers) is the first casualty, but it won't be the last.

As the war drags on, more of Paul's friends suffer terribly.  Some die, some lose their limbs.  The conditions are terrible: a lot of waiting to begin fighting while in their rat-infested trench holes, with little to no food to eat; they try to live as best they can.  They see battles that cost so much but gain either side so little.  They see men blown to bits.  They see their friends suffer physical and emotional agony, and they even see the 'enemy' suffer physical and emotional agony.  And still, the war drags on.

Paul, now having evolved from a naive innocent boy to a battle-hardened man and enduring a truly awful and tragic experience in No Man's Land, near the end of the film finds time with his friends for a frolic with beautiful French girls, and then a leave back home, where his ill mother (Beryl Mercer) frets over him, and his father and the elder Baumer's friends insist that he 'push on to Paris'.

Paul goes back to his school, and in a brutally honest speech condemns the professor's mania for war and his encouragement for children to follow in Paul's steps.  "It's dirty and painful to die for your country," he angrily tells them, "When it comes to dying for your country, it's better not to die at all!"  Upset by all he sees and hears around him, he goes back to the front, to his good friend Kat, and to a final tragedy.

It is now nearly one hundred years since the First World War ended, but All Quiet on the Western Front is representative of all conflict, of the physical and emotional toll the act of killing a man and seeing men, especially friends, killed takes on an individual.  Through Paul's eyes and experiences, we see just how awful, how terrible, battle can be.

Despite the years between the film's release and today, All Quiet on the Western Front continues to be a brutal and tragic experience because director Lewis Milestone never shrinks from making the war brutal and tragic.  In one battle in what appear to be endless battles where no side ever clearly wins, we see a man putting his hands on a barbed-wire fence to try and climb over it.  A bomb falls, and when the smoke clears, only hands are left, holding on to the fence.  The constant barrage of battle sequences (no pun intended) doesn't numb you to the war, but puts you right there, suffering the boredom, the fear, and the pain of fighting.   Milestone doesn't give us any chance to leave, so we must face the fighting and the dying just like all the other boys.

That's one of the elements of All Quiet on the Western Front that makes it such a tragic yet brilliant film: all the combatants look so terribly young.  It seems so tragic and unfair to see such young men die.  In the middle of the film, one of Paul's classmates, Franz Kemmerick (Ben Alexander) has found himself an amputee, with no use for the beautiful boots he had since training.  He allows Paul to give them to another friend, and in short order we see the boots be worn by yet two more men who die in quick succession.  It's almost as if those boots were cursed, but in reality it is the unfair game of chance that decides who lives and who dies.

Perhaps the most brutal scene in All Quiet on the Western Front is when Paul is trapped between the two armies.  To say any more about this sequence would be to give away far too much.  However, every time I watch this particular scene, I always break down in tears.

It is a brutal and painful and agonizing scene in a film full of brutal and painful and agonizing scenes.  Paul's words become the prayer of all humanity, and at one point in this scene, when we are forced almost against our will to confront our common humanity, it becomes beyond unbearable.

It would be highly tempting to cover our eyes or turn our gaze at this point, or in many in All Quiet on the Western Front, but we cannot.  The production quality is too good, and George Abbott, Maxwell Anderson, and Del Andrews' script rings true to how war can destroy bodies and wreck the humanity and innocence in every man.

Another brilliant aspect of All Quiet on the Western Front are the performances.  Even now, it boggles the mind how Lew Ayres did not receive a Best Actor nomination for his performance as Paul Baumer.  Ayres, with his eager young face, shows Paul's shift from innocent to a man who was slowly devoured by war.  His scene in No Man's Land, the one that always makes me break down in tears, is powerful due in part to Ayres' performance, mixing a rage with a bitter regret.  Wolheim, as the cynical but caring Kat, brings a certain wisdom mixed with a genuine concern for his charges.  There are actually moments of levity, and those are due to Slim Summerville's Tjaden, who is almost always hungry and not particularly bright. 

Though it may be my imagination, it is interesting and a brilliant move by Milestone to have all these characters sound thoroughly American, despite the fact that they are playing Germans.  I like to think that be having all the soldiers sound just like our doughboys, we see that the differences between men are really superficial and irrelevant when we see the common humanity in all of us.  It makes us realize that while Germany was the 'enemy', the Germans, along with the Austro-Hungarians and Turks, were and are no different from the British or Americans: both have families, friends, dreams of their own.  The fact that we face the similarities between combatants but fail to appreciate them and instead kill our fellow man for trivial reasons is one part of why All Quiet on the Western Front still has the power it has.

It's when we get an overt mention of how countries get into war that All Quiet on the Western Front becomes a bit too heavy-handed in its anti-war message.  Our soldiers, after having the first decent meal they've had in months, speculate about why countries go to war.  Their conclusion is that those in power, like the Kaiser, need a war to show how great they are.  Generals need war too, to keep their positions.  There's a mention of how 'manufacturers' need a war, for profits.

After the First World War, the idea that the war came about because of the 'merchants of death' (war profiteers) was in vogue.  I suspect that this scene was a nod to this philosophy that the Great War was caused by greed and greed alone.  I find that wars are complex matters and that this scene makes it rather simplistic.

However, on the whole, that is a minor flaw in an altogther brilliant and heartbreaking film.  At the end of All Quiet on the Western Front, we see all our boys, looking back at us, quietly, with death as their reward.  The film quotes the opening of the novel,

"This story is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it.  It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war..."

When I reflect on the end of All Quiet on the Western Front, I think that the haunting final image does indeed launch an accusation: it condemns us the living for allowing such horror, such evil, such terror, to have ever been caused.  The dead, now silent, turn to us and metaphorically ask, 'why are we here and you there'?  They speak to us from beyond, in their silence asking us and warning us that their fate may end up being our own, or that of our children. 

Until men "beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift sword against nation, and never again will they learn war" (Isaiah  2:4)...

All Quiet on the Western Front is a truly great, haunting, serious film, one that long after the last veteran of "The Great War" is a dusty memory, will continue to speak to us about how hideous war is. 

DECISION: A+

1931 Best Picture: Cimarron

Best Picture Oscar Retrospective 

Your Highness: A Review

YOUR HIGHNESS

Medieval High Times...

Put it down to my naiveté or a remarkably sheltered life, but until I had it brought to my attention I never got the pun of the title Your Highness.  That's just not the way my mind is trained. 

Curiously, after watching Your Highness, it really isn't that much of a pun between the addressing of royalty and the smoking of marijuana since I don't remember there being all that much pot-smoking in the film.  Now, I have to confess I am not acquainted with the comedic genius of Danny McBride, but if Your Highness is representative of his work, the term 'genius' has received a major downgrade. 

In a far-off kingdom, you have two brothers; the elder, Fabious (James Franco), is your great warrior, rescuing damsels and defending the realm.  The younger, Thadious (McBride), has never been on a quest, bungles his only known effort at diplomacy with the Dwarf Kingdom, and has only pot smoking, wenching, and masturbation as interests.  For some reason, Thad is jealous of Fab. 

On his latest quest, Fab has defeated the evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux) and rescued the beautiful maiden Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel).  Both are madly in love with each other, while Thad only has his jester, Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker).  On the wedding day which a grumpy Thad, dressed like a fat Falco in the Rock Me Amadeus video, has skipped despite Fab having begged him to be best man, who shows up but Leezar, who spirits our maiden away to put back in his tower.  The virgin must be made pregnant by Leezar in order to conceive a dragon that will help him conquer the kingdom.

Well, it's off on another quest, but Thad's first, which he doesn't like one bit.  First stop: the Wize Wizard, which I take was a spoof of Yoda from Star Wars.  He tells them they can only defeat Leezar with the Blade of Unicorn, which is hidden within an elaborate labyrinth to which the Wizard gives them an enchanted compass, and then gets Fab to give him a hand job.  However, there is treachery afoot: Fab's loyal knights turn out to be not so loyal: his main knight Boremont (Damian Lewis), and I digress to wonder if 'Boremont' was a spoof of 'Boromir' from The Lord of the Rings, and their servant Julie (Toby Jones) are in league with Leezar.  They have orders to capture Fab and kill everyone else.  However, our brothers escape.

Fab is more determined to rescue Belladonna, while Thad just wants to get laid, get high, and get home.  They are caught by what I've dubbed Cannibal Amazons in Thunderdome (which would make a great title for a B-Picture I think), and in the games they are rescued by Isabel (Natalie Portman), who is on her own quest.  Thad, not experienced with quests, reveals too much, and wouldn't you know it: she takes the compass.

At this point in Your Highness, note that we now have about three quests: to find the compass, then to find the labyrinth, then to find the Blade of Unicorn, and that's all BEFORE we get to the main quest: the rescue of Belladonna.  In short order, Fab's captured, Thad reluctantly goes with Isabel to find the labyrinth, find the Blade of Unicorn, at at this point, Thadious now turns heroic: leading the rescue and defeat of Leezar.

Far be it for me to offer advise to a comedic genius like McBride, but if you are going to spoof the sword & sorcery film, you do so by mocking the conventions of the genre while playing it perfectly straight.  Instead, McBride's script (co-written by Ben Best) decided that the best thing to do was to throw in as many vulgar words as they could get away with, put in a lot of sexual jokes and innuendos, and overplay everything.

That's one of the biggest problems with Your Highness: we know they're overplaying things but worse we know that they know they're overplaying everything.  There has to be some suspension of disbelief in any film, more so in a spoof because a spoof is being played strictly for laughs.  However, you have to ground it in some sort of reality. 

While you can let the audience in on the joke, you can't let your characters in on it because then you're telling everyone watching that you're not really watching a movie, just a bunch of guys fooling around.  This is why there is no point in going over the performances: everyone here is so wildly over-the-top because they think that by showing how broad they can be they can show how clever they THINK they are. 

A lot of the script either doesn't make any sense or never bothers to set up the situations.  We don't really get Thadious' anger or sense of injury towards Fabious especially given that Thadious doesn't care to do the things Fabious does or that he would, being the younger brother, ever inherit the throne.  On the issue of age, while watching Your Highness it's almost impossible to imagine that Fabious is the older of the brothers because McBride looks older than Franco (McBride is three years older than Franco). 

Part of it is due to facial hair: people with beards/mustaches tend to look older than clean-shaven men.  Therefore, one can't be blamed if one thinks that Thadious is the elder (in fact, it might have been funnier if it had been made that way), but I digress.

Going along with the character of Thadious, he is a thoroughly unsympathetic character: whiny, mean, horny, insensitive, vulgar, self-absorbed, lazy.  That being the case, we never get a chance to either sympathize or more importantly, root for him.  We don't care if he succeeds because he is never motivated to.  That makes his quick change at the labyrinth even more bizarre: we just know that he's decided to rescue Fabious.  We don't see anything in his character throughout Your Highness and especially in the labyrinth that would have him go through such a radical transformation, so it's not believable. 

However, we never get a sense that Fabious is fabulous either.  Fabious never comes across as noble and/or heroic, he just comes across as incredibly naive if not downright stupid (how else would he not realize the Wize Wizard had been using him as a sex toy).

I'd say there are a lot of convenient and illogical character turns in Your Highness.  Why Thadious decided to be heroic, we never learned.  How Boremont ever came to be in league with the Dark Lord Leezar or how long he'd been in his service, we never learned.  How Boremont and Julie came to find them again, we never learned (in fact, they had disappeared for so long in the film I truly had wondered if the script had forgotten they were even in the film anymore). 

Instead of keeping a tighter focus on the main quest and how the formerly-noble nights were attempting to block them from their goals, we get a long and rather pointless sequence in the 'land of Manateetee', which only served to introduce Isabel into the plot and which frankly could have been cut without affecting the story itself.

As a side note, 'Manateetee' and 'Fabious' shows that Your Highness was either written by teenage boys or those who think like them.

There is nothing in Your Highness that is clever or original or even fun, even though McBride, Best, and director David Gordon Green obviously thought there was.  One gets the feeling that Your Highness must have been fun to make, but it is not fun to watch. 

I came up with a different scenario while watching the film: have Fabious be fabulous, Thadious be lazy, but have Leezar trap Fabious (perhaps he needs a knight noble and true for some nefarious plot).  This would force Thadious to go rescue his brother (or else lose his digs).  At least now Thad has a motivation.  He, along with Fabious' men, go to Isengard...I mean, the Tower of Disorder, where Fabious discovers Belladonna, falls in love, and mucks up every effort to escape, and are being followed by a stranger.  Courtney discovers the traitor, and while he and Thadious make their escape are rescued by Isabel, who has her own score to settle with Leezar (maybe put the noble nights under an evil spell with Isabel protecting Courtney, who in turn protects the bumbling Thadious). 

Now, the three of them go on their quest...and cut out the penis jokes.  

Again, you mock the conventions of a genre, not create a film that makes you look like 15-year-old boys who divide their time between smoking weed and playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Your Highness is not funny because, oddly enough, it doesn't take the premise seriously.  In Your Highness, everyone is acting like they're overacting, so you can never even try to get into the spirit of things because if they aren't going to bother to even try to take this seriously, why should you.

I conclude with this.  I know of a lot of comedians who have been granted the title of 'genius': Aziz Ansari, Russell Brand, Dane Cook, and Danny McBride.  Granted, my definition of 'comedic genius' runs to the likes of Jack Benny, Lucille Ball, Richard Pryor, and George Carlin.

Now, with the exception of Cook I've never seen any of their actual stand-up, and with the exception of Cook and now McBride I've only seen their movies.  Given that, I fear for the future of comedy.  Maybe all these guys really are funny and talented.  In the case of Your Highness and Danny McBride, I don't hold out much hope. 

DECISION: F