Archive for May, 2010

| by Justin Thomas |

Somehow the marketing plan for Sneakers didn’t include “starring Academy Award nominated…” or ”starring Academy Award winning…” even though either at the time would have applied to seven of the performers. The tagline – we could tell you what it’s about but then, of course, we’d have to kill you – playfully establishes what Sneakers will be, which is an enjoyable two hours. In this case, an enjoyable two hours is enough because it’s all Sneakers wants to be.

The story? I can’t tell you (please see above). What I can say is it’s a caper movie that adds something to each and every scene and sequence. There’s suspense: while in Cosmo’s office, Bishop is told to hurry because a security force armed with shotguns is racing to the room he must cross at no faster than two inches per second, which is hardly fast. There’s humor: Crease and Whistler have a ton of fun helping Bishop through a conversation with Janek’s mistress once they realize Bishop will be okay. There’s care from everyone involved: from the intricate script to the direction to the performances.

The sequence explaining what Janek’s little black box does best illustrates how Sneakers wraps it all together. It uses suspense as Whistler attempts to figure out how it works while Bishop uses Scrabble tiles to figure out what it means, then it adds just a dash of humor in one unscrambling of the words before it finishes with the heavy, “there isn’t a government on this planet that wouldn’t kill us all for that thing.” It’s a complex sequence executed to perfection providing all the information necessary to explain the MacGuffin and why so many people want it. That formula (suspense, humor, care) is all over the movie and the formula makes the movie.

The cast: Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, David Strathairn, Dan Aykroyd, River Phoenix, Mary McDonnell, Ben Kingsley and James Earl Jones. Read that list again. Each one of them at one point in their career prepared a speech to accept an Academy Award. How does a cast like that get together and have the film work? Based on Sneakers the necessary element would be fun. They’re taking it seriously, but the familiarity of their interaction and enthusiasm with which they deliver their performances indicate they had a lot of fun. More fun than anyone should have at work.

Memorial Day Weekend means the blockbuster season is underway and will soon kick into overdrive. Many times the movies released during the summer want nothing more than to be cinematic Big Macs or Whoppers. Enjoyable at the time even though they might not sit well immediately after consumption with no concern whether time forgets them. Sneakers doesn’t want to be an “important” piece of art. It wants to be enjoyable, succeeds at every level and still works eighteen years later. Save a few bucks and a weekend of indigestion by skipping one of the fast food movies of Summer 2010 to watch Sneakers, which was a fast food movie in 1992 that still doesn’t upset the stomach.

| by Allan Stackhouse |

Come with me, if you will, through the dimensional portal of the Arrowhead Project, featured in The Mist. The alternate reality I take you through is strikingly familiar. The South still loses the Civil War. The events of December 8, 1980, outside the Dakota still occur. The number of licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop continues to be a mystery. The only change in our alternate reality happens in The Mist.

The Mist in this alternate reality in which we find ourselves is nearly the same as the version in the previous reality. The supporting characters still turn in solid, professional performances, which is a defining characteristic of director Frank Darabont’s films. Marcia Gay Harden still plays Mrs. Carmody over-the-top, which is probably the only way for a character to go Old Testament. The themes and punch-in-the-face conclusion are identical, which allows The Mist to still be more than just a monster movie. The only difference between The Mist in this alternate reality is what happens in the loading dock sequence. It isn’t shown.

In the film, David, Ollie, Jim, Myron and Norm walk from the store to the loading dock to fix the generator, and the next time we see them, Norm is gone, blood is splattered on the survivors and they must report what happened during the attack. We in the audience are as in the dark as the people in the grocery store and our imaginations, just like those belonging to the people in the store, start to race. What could have done that? What really happened to Norm? What is that piece of flesh left behind? What does it mean? How are they going to get out of there?

Our minds start to go, imagining a million different things at a million miles per second, no audience member imagining exactly the same thing as another audience member. Our fears are specific to each of us, making them even more terrifying. Norton decides he doesn’t buy it, with which we may or may not agree, but we understand his decision to leave and get help. It’s still out there. How will Norton survive when Norm didn’t? We shift to the edge of our seats not knowing anything other than what we see in our minds.

The rope sequence, when the Biker splits, is even more harrowing. Now we’re seeing more than we saw before, and our fears, our own fears, are out of control, but we still haven’t seen it. Why can’t we just see it? What are they up against? How can they hope to survive something so unknown? Then, when the locust slams into the window with that boom, we jump, just a little higher than we did in the previous reality, because our imaginations have really got us worked up.

Trouble getting the shark to work in Jaws might be the happiest accident in the history of cinema. Spielberg had to find a way to tell the story and, by being unable to get the shark on screen, used the audience’s imagination to do the work. A shark generated by computers, precise in detail to every fold in its skin visible only at four hundred percent magnification, wouldn’t have done what not seeing the shark did. In our alternate reality, The Mist knows this lesson and uses it well. In the previous reality, The Mist defined and diminished the fear by showing the monster.

The butterfly effect of this change in our alternate reality? Thomas Jane wins the Best Actor award in 2039 for his performance as Walter Eckland in a remake of Father Goose because its director couldn’t sleep for months after watching The Mist as a young boy in 2007 and became a lifelong fan of the actor. In the previous reality Shia LeBeouf gets the part and wins the award.

Let’s not go back through the dimensional portal, okay?

Thirst is another marvelous film by director, writer, and emerging South Korean auteur Park Chan-Wook. His body of work became well-known as writer/director of 2003′s Oldboy. Everything from the direction to the color to the transitions were absolutely stunning. His films maintain a sense of style where quality is not sacrificed for the sake of other frivolous elements. Since Oldboy, Park has released four films, Thirst, the latest, does not fail to deliver.

Vampires are the subject with a horrific/beautiful/violent twist that only Park knows how to deliver. While the film does touch on elements of seduction and a slew of other traditional vampire themes, he does not let them overtake his main story. Thirst follows the life, death, and blood-transfused resurrection of Priest Sang-hyeon, played expertly by Kang-ho Song, notably remembered from another Korean smash hit, The Host. His performance there as a bumbling hero in mourning provided a stark contrast to the depths of darkness and violence he reaches in Thirst.

While not being overly obvious, haunting contrasts were present throughout the film, adding to the experience of watching the dark events of the character’s human lives and their lives as vampires. The scene in which Sang-hyeon and Tae-ju fight in the basement is one of many scenes with a striking contrast. Tae-ju wore a short, satin, blue night gown over her pale skin. The darkness of her hair stands out over the bluish darkness that makes up the majority of the frame. The brick red air duct in the ceiling balanced by the bright, harshly lit room combined with the movement of these battling characters made a scene that I cannot get out of my head.

Her new-found condition as a vampire makes Tae-ju miss the sunlight and brings her to the idea to paint the interior of their home bright white. The result is similar to a modern day insane asylum but the bluish-violet hue from the home’s lights make it appear almost alien spacecraft-like. In this scene, Lady Ra, Tae-ju’s adoptive mother, signals to the three guests of the home that Tae-ju and Sang-hyeon murdered her son. Upon this discovery, Sang-hyeon quietly leaves the room to draw the shades in the rest of the house. Tae-ju draws the shades of the main room while delivering a morbid speech that will be the last thing her guests hear before she kills them. In one blow, she hits a man so hard that his head snaps back and swings back up instantly. While even most modern day horror films would not spend a lot of effort in a scene not involving an exploding body part or spurting blood, the special effects department made the man’s head look as if it actually had been punched so hard to fly back up after making contact with his back. They need to be applauded.

The story takes many captivating turns; one of the best of which appears at the end. Sang-hyeon takes Tae-ju to the middle of nowhere. He breaks the key in the ignition, just as dawn’s deadly rays approach. Tae-ju, not willing to accept death as punishment for murdering so many innocent people, empties the trunk and pushes Sang-hyeon and herself into the trunk. Sang-hyeon kicks it open and fights Tae-ju for it until finally hurling it far into the ocean. These actions, while only adding up to a few minutes, make up a scene that make Park Chan-Wook the auteur he is becoming: characters who make human choices (none of that Hollywood stuff), beautiful contrasts, and innovative action sequences.

Park Chan-Wook wastes no time with the lore and mythology of vampires. The journey he takes his viewers on has the foundation of an original and captivating story while having beautiful scenes of violence. I believe he is worthy of attention and respect for being able to jump into totally different subject matters and creating films that are original and memorable.

| by Justin Thomas |

“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve.”

The line guides both Stand By Me, the Rob Reiner film, and The Body, the Stephen King novella from which it’s adapted. They tell different stories to get there – Stand By Me uses it as its conclusion while The Body uses it much earlier – but both fulfill the promise of it by following four boys while they follow the train tracks to find the body of Ray Brower.

Gordie is vastly different in Stand By Me because he loses much more with the death of his brother, Denny. Being ten years older didn’t mean Gordie and Denny were strangers to one another, and the few scenes with Denny show Gordie loves him and Gordie needs him. He was just as invisible to his parents before the death, but Denny did for Gordie what his parents were too messed up to do. Having his Yankee cap stolen shows how Denny’s death weighs on him months later.

The change strengthens the relationship between Gordie and Chris and what they’ll do for one another as they grow. Chris takes the place of Denny; he becomes a sort of brother and parent rolled up in the form of a best friend. When the computer screen shows the line, Gordie means Chris, Vern and Teddy, but in the movie, it’s just a little bit more about Chris. Gordie is the only one of the four in The Body to survive past early adulthood, but in the movie, the death is reserved for Chris.

Gordie is not handled better in The Body, only differently. In the novella the relationship between Gordie and Denny is more similar to Gordie’s relationship with his parents, and it makes writing a place where he can get what his real family can’t provide. Writing is the place he runs to, and even the act of writing is a struggle for him as he feels committing an idea to paper somehow cheapens it. In the novella he achieves less of a change while the movie makes the story his life-changing moment, which could be why Gordie is the one who pulls the gun on Ace in a departure from the novella.

Both versions of Gordie work. Stand By Me makes the connection between Gordie and Chris stronger to one another than to the other boys without completely giving up on Vern and Teddy. Chris and Gordie stay together longer in the novella, but eventually, Chris will disappear from Gordie’s life just as Vern and Teddy disappear. It’s a significant shift in the character and the story it tells, a necessary shift to tell the different story, but the same result is achieved by both stories.

Ace’s gang gets much more attention in Stand By Me mostly to prevent the final confrontation showing up out of nowhere. Here is the gang, here they are being awful, showing they aren’t going to amount to much, and while the boys continue hiking the tracks, Ace will drive out to the body when he’s moved to do so. It’s necessary early and often in the movie while the novella can leave it until just before the two groups meet up with one another. Showing the gang so frequently in Stand By Me does double duty to add weight to what’s at stake for Chris. If he fails to find a place where no one knows him, where he allows his friends to drag him down, he’ll run the risk of becoming Ace. It’s not what he wants but he feels, and it’s confirmed by the story about the milk money, he’ll never get his fair shake and he’ll never amount to anything.

There are other differences and the changes might have been made in the interest of time. Stand By Me clocks in at 88 minutes, and it’s a brisk 88 minutes. Even “The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan,” which is the longest stretch of them pausing to do anything, doesn’t feel long. It’s handled efficiently. The “Stud City” story is cut as it’s unnecessary without Gordie imagining Denny in the closet. Gordie being cheated by the grocer is cut as more mileage is gained by making him think about Denny. Dibs on the body, which Gordie, Chris, Vern and Teddy lament having lost in The Body, and which Gordie again claims they had when Ace beats him, is ditched in Stand By Me. Ray Brower could have been one of their own, and because they don’t want to achieve fame on the kid’s death they decide to care anonymously for his body. It’s a change that helps sell the importance of friendships at the age of twelve based on the story Stand By Me wants to tell to get there.

It’s not a question as to whether Stand By Me is better than “The Body” or vice versa. Changes made for Stand By Me keep the integrity of the story and the story’s theme while accounting for the differences in storytelling technique between movies and prose. There isn’t a wasted moment in the movie, not a single out-of-place character, scene or beat, and it’s proof making a movie work is more important than being a slave to every single element of a source.

| by Justin Thomas |

Writing might be a lonely job but Grady Tripp makes it fun to watch in Wonder Boys. It’s partially due to his wardrobe but mostly because he’s so lost in what he’s doing he doesn’t question his book as it climbs north of two thousand pages; he just sits down, puts another sheet of paper in the typewriter and goes. Before he benefits from a gust of wind, he benefits from Hannah saying it reads as though he didn’t make choices. Zombieland suffers from similar problems. Three of its ideas are interesting, but their inclusion feels more like a reluctance to cut good ideas than do what’s necessary to make certain they work.

Zombieland has a fun set piece for its final sequence. Who can’t get just a little jazzed watching Woody Harrelson blast away at zombies while riding a roller coaster? Regardless of how implausible – and borderline stupid – some of the choices are, they’re fun. It’s how they got there I question. Wichita, played by Emma Stone, takes her figurative younger sibling Little Rock, played by Abigail Breslin, so she can be a kid, but it happens immediately after they’ve found a safe and secure place to stay. The girls were too intelligent during the movie to make such an incredibly stupid move based on the reasons given by the movie: we’ll go get ourselves killed because my little sis wants to remember a fun part of her life. It would work earlier and better if the reasons were more effectively sold; however, including the amusement park at the end completely sacrifices the intelligence of the girls for the sake of a fun set piece.

Leaving the characters almost as ill defined as the beasts trying to eat them works in Zombieland. Don’t ask me how, but it does. They’re so ill defined they can’t be troubled with names. The one attempt at defining Tallahassee, Woody Harrelson’s character, feels out of place both in the movie and with him specifically. We don’t need to know about his dog or his son; all we need to know about Mr. Tallahassee Post-Apocalypse is he knows where this is going, a place where he’ll live in a world without Twinkies but he’s going to find some before they’re gone. The idea of having two flashbacks, one about the dog and another about his son, would work if getting deeper into the characters was something Zombieland wanted to do. It is an interesting way to show something that is unnecessary.

The Bill Murray cameo. Nothing about it went beyond, “Holy cow, we’ve got Bill Murray! Let’s just run with it and see where it goes.” It doesn’t go anywhere, and it feels like it’s a much longer sequence than it is. His presence adds nothing to the story and gets maybe a laugh or two, the biggest of which is the Purell line, but they didn’t need Bill Murray for that. Another interesting idea, but was it the right idea for Zombieland?

Zombieland is a fun collection of set pieces loosely strung together and if “It’s just a zombie movie” still works then none of the issues sink it. Zombie moves can no longer fall back on “It’s just a zombie movie” because the genre also includes Shaun of the Dead, which is a near perfect movie regardless of the various genres applied to it. Shaun sets the standard for zombie movies and changes the game by proving a zombie movie can and should first be a good movie. Zombieland could have made different choices and, while it wouldn’t be the same movie, it might be a better movie.

| by Justin Thomas |

There are reasons to applaud the Don Simpson/Bruckheimer duo and Jerry Bruckheimer productions. Some movies do nothing more than provide a fun two-hour roller coaster, maybe those were once called B Movies, and those movies generally hit that particular mark. They achieve perfection infrequently, add to the language of cinema even more infrequently and, at times, appear as though getting the biggest audience possible is worth being brainless. One or two of those movies aren’t entirely brainless, and when one elevates itself above the dreck (oftentimes a fun dreck), it’s even more frustrating to watch Crimson Tide lose its mind like Crimson Tide loses its mind.

So help me, I found interesting ideas in Crimson Tide as Ramsey and Hunter do everything possible to accomplish their mission. What does a first strike nuclear attack mean? How will a crew behave when their actions will destroy all life on Earth? What does it mean to have something other than the Soviet Union in control of a nuclear arsenal, which today is even more thought provoking? What does it mean for a captain and his executive officer when they’re the ones pushing the button and can’t agree when to do so?

It’s all framed within the concept of duty. For Captain Ramsey, it’s to launch the first-strike and keep his country safe. For XO Hunter, it’s to get confirmation they should start the nuclear holocaust. This concept of duty will cause Ramsey to completely break with procedure, which should be as important as launching the nukes when it’s a matter of launching them, and it will cause Hunter to lead a mutiny. They’ll have to convince members of the crew to side with them for reasons understandable to both sides. They’re both working to be certain the job they were tasked with gets accomplished, and at their court martial the Navy rules they were both right in doing what they did but went about it the wrong way. There is no clear cut bad guy. Ramsey is gruff and we’re supposed to side with the more thoughtful Hunter, but there is nothing in Ramsey’s actions to say he isn’t also in the right. That drama, in addition to the looming start of nuclear war while set on a submarine, makes for an intense movie.

Why was the racial bit at the end necessary? As they’re waiting for confirmation to start WWIII, guns drawn, Ramsey decides to make certain Hunter knows the Lipizzaner Stallions are all white. Why? At no point before did Ramsey give any indication race was going to be an issue. He was acting on duty, one he thought worth the atrocious results of achieving it. Completely misusing race undermines everything that went before it and the justness of Ramsey’s cause. With all the drama, why did race have to be added where not only unnecessary but not true to the character? Want to know how inconsequential it was to the movie as a whole? Twice after the court martial, when the message finally comes through and again, they slip into their captain/XO relationship, which is what it was for the entire movie outside of those few lines. Duty, not race, for all but two minutes.

Make no mistake: there’s a lot in Crimson Tide that reeks of Simpson/Bruckheimer. The Roll Tide sequence in the rain is so over-the-top-tingly-in-the-spine-inducing there’s no way it wasn’t written with anything other than “let’s write a cool sequence where the audience will think riding off to start WWIII is cool ‘cause they’re doing their duty.” That had to be the conversation; it’s so blatant, and it achieves what it sets out to do. Want hip? Hire a well-known writer/director and get him to load Silver Surfer and Star Trek references into the script and hope like Hell they work in context, which they do. Slow down the camera at just the right moments to beat the audience over the head with how much it weighs on the crew, which works. Add race into the mix at the end to show just how evil Ramsey is because he’s white and the Hunter is black. That’s where Crimson Tide goes completely insane and nearly destroys a fun movie that had, to that point, showed more brain than brawn.

I know, I know, nitpicking a Simpson/Bruckheimer seems like a waste of time, but Crimson Tide had too much going for it for the descent into stupidity to be included.

| by Justin Thomas |

A Google search on Samuel L. Jackson returns about 5.9 million results, which is one result for every movie he’s appeared in over the past 30 years. That might be a slight exaggeration, but ninety films since 1981 have featured some sort of appearance by him, and ninety films in thirty years is a lot of work. There are leading roles, bit parts and an uncredited narration so it’s not as though he’s been the key performer in all of them, they all weren’t “Sam Jackson movies,” but come on, who else could have done that uncredited narration in Inglourious Basterds? Brad Garrett? I don’t think so.

What is it about him that’s so damn compelling? Is it the eyes, which can simultaneously show laughter and vengeance better than anyone working? Is it the smile, which always seems genuine regardless of what’s causing it? Is it because he’s so reliable, which is to say he never appears to be phoning it in? Or is it just that we love Samuel L. Jackson for reasons unknown to us? How would one go about trying to unlock the mystery of Samuel L. Jackson?

Watch all the movies and watch them in order. It’s the only way to do it, and if he’s been cast in ninety films over thirty years, people put him in movies for a reason. Maybe the journey will return a result, or maybe the journey will be the reward. I have no idea what to expect as I’ve only seen fifteen.

Ragtime gets more out of Milos Forman than it does Sam Jackson. A tremendous number of storylines unfold, there’s a lot going on, but Forman somehow wrangles each one of them just enough to tell all that is absolutely necessary about each. It’s a deft juggling act.

An example is the Tateh storyline. He’s introduced by happenstance, Evelyn is stopped in traffic and Tateh gets her to sit for one of the silhouettes, but then his story starts. He catches his wife sleeping with another man. He throws her out. Later we see him on his new road where, for the first time in his life, he meets with success when he sells one of his flip books to a toy store. In a nice bit of visual story telling, we know it’s his first real paycheck when he sits and eats a lot of ice cream with his daughter. Then Tateh disappears. For a long time. When he comes back into the story it’s as a film director screaming at Evelyn on a beach. How did he get there? From the start of his story we know it’s from hard work and determination, the specifics are unnecessary, and it’s enough to give us what we need to know. Everything with Tateh is earned in limited screen time, and it’s a good lesson in economical storytelling.

The Tateh is one storyline of least five that all factor into getting from the opening shot to the final shot. Drop one and the movie loses its depth; put additional focus on any of them and the movie would get bogged down. Midway through the movie I realized I had no idea where it was going not because it’s a mess but only because the information I needed had not yet been given to me. The conclusions to the stories are unexpected and earned, and Ragtime benefits from it.

Performances. James Olson as Father is key. He gives the impression he’ll be one dimensional at the beginning: the formal, religious, my-word-is-the-final-word head of a household. Mother pushes back and Olson plays Father not as a man forced to do things because of outside influences but as a man with natural curiosity as to whether his world views are correct. Father starts closed minded, but he doesn’t finish that way and Olson pulls it off well.

More performances. It’s the final role for James Cagney who didn’t have one between Ragtime and 1961’s One, Two, Three. He provides weight to his scenes and his final decision as to what to do with Coalhouse is cold. Ragtime features another debut, from dependable Jeff Daniels, who should just have the adjective capitalized and added to his name.

That other performance. Sam Jackson. It’s a forgettable character mostly because the movie is full of so many unforgettable characters. Seen today, it’s interesting how the rest of his roles affect my opinion of his first because no one threatens another man with words and a gun quite like Sam Jackson. I spoiled it. His big scene is him screaming at another man while threatening the man with a gun. And he’s awesome.

Ragtime didn’t help me get closer to an answer as to why Samuel L. Jackson rules but it did show me a well-made movie I missed.

Answer: None of them were directed by Billy Wilder.

There’s something unsettling about how completely Billy Wilder disappeared after 1981’s Buddy Buddy. The movies he made after The Apartment certainly weren’t of the order of what came before it, but the first half of his career contains more great movies than many other people direct in an entire career. Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Sunset Blvd., Ace in the Hole, Stalag 17, Sabrina, Some Like it Hot, and The Apartment. Those are not schmuck movies. Statues were award to some of those movies, and some of them received multiple statues. They appear on several all-time lists. Wilder consistently had it.

A fun game might be to go year by year, see what movies were made by someone other than Billy Wilder, and stack them up against movies he made. Or it might not be fun and wind up being a colossal waste of time. Who knows. 1982 was the first year of his retirement and an enormously popular movie from that year is An Officer and a Gentleman. How does that movie compare to Double Indemnity?

The biggest misstep in An Officer and a Gentleman is how ham-handed it is in telling its story. We immediately know Zack Mayo is going to be a loner not because Richard Gere was cast in the role (although that helps) but because his old man tells him, “I don’t have time for this daddy stuff because that’s not who I am.” Then we get scenes of him as a child, alone in the streets, getting the tar beat out of him. At no point during these scenes did I wonder whether we’ll eventually see Zack becoming a team player and finding some sort of family to love. After tough-as-nails Drill Sergeant Emil Foley berates the officer candidates and singles out Zack as the baddest of the bunch, thus identifying Zack as the one he’ll eventually love, Foley tells the candidates about how he’s there to weed out the group and leave the million dollar training for only those who are worth it, so we’ll get the dramatic failure of candidates other than Zack before the credits roll. Foley trains candidates in the martial arts, which we also see Zack using outside a bar, so there’s no point in wondering whether Zack and Foley will wind up fighting each other down the line.

The central idea is handled even worse. Foley tells us what the movie will be about by warning the candidates about the “Puget Sound Debs” who, in a desire to marry an officer, will get pregnant… in almost as many words. So forget how difficult officer candidate school is and the drama inherent in going through that; the movie is going to be about women who “forget” their birth control to manipulate naval aviators into marrying them.

From this, we get scenes of Zack and his best bud Sid wondering whether the girls really do that. Later, we see two Puget Sound Debs asking each other whether they’d ever do it (honest-to-goodness “would you ever do that?”). Sid’s girlfriend? She eventually winds up late one month and has Sid offer to marry her, which she declines because she wants an aviator and he’s dropped out. Wow. Didn’t see that one coming. Actually, I did because not one exchange in the entire movie was handled with anything other than a sledgehammer to the audience’s head: this is what the movie’s about and we’ll remind you, at many steps along the way, because you aren’t smart enough to remember.

Double Indemnity doesn’t hide what it’s about, either, but it’s handled better. The movie is straightforward in that it’s going to be an insurance scam, perfect crime type of deal. Phyllis does everything but tell Walter she wants to purchase accident insurance to make some dough when she kills her husband; Walter immediately sniffs it out and marches away from her and the problems she’s certain to bring. Once he decides to go forward with it he spells out, precisely, how it’s going to happen, and it’s precisely what happens up until Jackson talks to him at the back of the train.

Wilder doesn’t hide what the characters are going to do, but he adds a layer of suspense to practically every scene. The characters and the spiraling out of control of the plan are squirm inducing. The car won’t start after they’ve dumped the body. Phyllis stands behind the door and Keyes walks right to it, and they’re sunk if Keyes sees her. Neff looks like he might get through it in Keyes’ office until the flash of recognition washes over Jackson’s face and Neff has to hope the Medford Man can’t remember their earlier meeting. Neff, Phyllis and Keyes are in the same room together while the company starts to sniff around for the very plot Neff and Phyllis executed. Wilder executes textbook suspense in Double Indemnity and winds up with a towering movie because of it.

“Hey, dope, An Officer and a Gentleman is a love story and not a suspense movie,” would be a natural response to a comparison between it and Double Indemnity, and it’d be right. An Officer and a Gentleman isn’t a suspense movie but it needs something other than on-the-nose execution of its story to be anything other than a lowest-common denominator movie.

Whether Wilder could have improved An Officer and a Gentleman isn’t the point. What Wilder added to Double Indemnity illustrates what’s missing in An Officer and a Gentleman and is a reason why the former is more worthy of note than the latter.

 | by Justin Thomas |

Sweet Smell of Success somehow manages to be a good movie without a single thing done getting “blowed up real good.” Its story is populated with richly drawn characters. It moves from point to point logically, without a single cheat, to arrive at its brutal conclusion. The dialogue is memorable. It would certainly be better with a half-dozen explosions and hundreds of unidentified bad guys getting killed by a lone action hero, but until someone decides to improve it with a remake, we’ll have to get by with what’s there. What is there are smart characters, incredibly rich dialogue, an authentic representation of the period and an example of how to make a movie well.

It’s worth closely watching how much Sidney Falco pays attention to everything happening around him. J.J.’s given him a simple task – to break up the romance between Dallas, a two-bit banjo player, and J.J.’s dopey kid sister, Susan – but it won’t be as simple as that. It will involve getting a cigarette girl her job back through the assistance of a columnist who will help her out if she “gets acquainted” with him. The columnist Otis Elwell is involved only because another columnist, Leo Bartha, has refused to be blackmailed by Sidney through use of the very same cigarette girl. The key moment through the entire sequence is when Leo tells off Sidney by saying precisely what Leo thinks of J.J.:

“Tell him that like yourself, he’s got the scruples of a guinea pig and the morals of a gangster.”

Later in the same sequence, Sidney gives the same line to Otis to confirm to him that Sidney and J.J. are on the outs. Otis knows Sidney and J.J. are close and it’s up to Sidney to prove otherwise. Because he paid attention to Leo, Sidney knows exactly how to frame the rest of the exchange. That line helps seal the deal.

None of it would happen if Sidney weren’t listening, avidly, to everything. If he didn’t know the cigarette girl needed help he’d have nothing to hold over her. If he didn’t know Otis wanted a good, bad and available reason to print something to hurt J.J., Sidney would have nothing to offer. If Leo hadn’t hit Sidney, Sidney wouldn’t have the line to give Otis. There’s no indication in any of it Sidney behaved to simply further the plot or adhere to how his arc had been mapped out during the writing sessions. He’s a smart character and Tony Curtis pulls off the role so perfectly after 10 minutes I stopped thinking about how Tony Curtis shouldn’t be playing someone like Sidney Falco and just watched the show.

The dialogue is why the “Memorable Quotes” portion of IMDb exists. I don’t know how a movie character can define integrity as “a pocket full of firecrackers waiting for a match” and have it work, but it does here. Boring dialogue is, well, boring, and on-the-nose dialogue will sink an aspiring screenwriter quicker than the Andrea Doria, but Sweet Smell of Success is practically a “how-to write dialogue that doesn’t suck” blueprint. All one needs to do is listen.

Here’s a boring exchange:

“Don’t fail me again, Sidney,” J.J. says.
“I’ll make it happen this time,” Sidney replies.

Snoozeville. Here’s how it works in the movie:

“Don’t be a two-time loser, Sidney,” J.J. says.
“The cat’s in the bag and the bag’s in the river,” Sidney replies.

Not Snoozeville. Another one:

“J.J. is going to be upset,” Mary says.
“J.J. is always upset,” Sidney replies.

But it’s better like this:

“If it’s true, J.J.’s going to hit the ceiling,” Mary says.
“Can it be news to you that J.J.’s ceiling needs a new plaster job every six weeks,” Sidney replies.

“I don’t know how I’m going to get out of this one,” becomes “Watch me run a 50-yard dash with my legs cut off.”

One more for the road: “You failed and I’m done with you” becomes “You’re dead, son, get yourself buried.”

Do I truly believe anyone in the 1950s talked like that? No more than I believe everyone walked around spouting the white bread/goody goody/borderline McCarthyism lines used in Leave it to Beaver. How people talked probably lands somewhere in the middle, which is to say neither is “real” and neither provides a “realistic” snapshot of that time period. The dialogue in the movie isn’t real but it feels authentic, and its authenticity assists in building the setting. It’s great to watch and a great learning tool.

Sweet Smell of Success doesn’t appear in the IMDb Top 250 or on either the AFI 100 Years… 100 Movies and its 10th Anniversary Edition. Why it fails mention in any of those lists is something I don’t understand but might attribute to it being a movie many haven’t seen. It needs to be seen by anyone who loves movies and anyone who wants to find a way to write better movies.

| by Justin Thomas |

Posit: Avatar is the most-amazing special effects movie of all time even if the story was thin and unoriginal, the characters were cardboard and it descended into the obligatory Act III CGI battle.
Consequence: I’ve seen it three times but have only been able to stay awake through it once.
Result: A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.

Rules need to be established to discuss movies, particularly the big tent pole movies, made after May 25th, 1977, because what we’re using isn’t working.

Before that date dreaming it didn’t necessarily mean it could be made into a movie because technology couldn’t produce an effect able to maintain the suspension of disbelief. After that date the limits on stories and characters, and the worlds in which they exist, started to drop away. Sometimes, mostly before 1993, concessions would still need to be made: sure, the effect looked “good” but they weren’t precisely the director’s vision. After 1993 the boundaries were pushed away more than ever before and we’re nearing the point where anything brainstormed can be produced, marketed and distributed to an audience as a movie.

When a production can put on screen anything a writer or director can think how are we to determine what makes a movie good? Execution of a well-written story and well-developed characters worked before Star Wars so my recommendation is we stick with that. How does Avatar stack up against a special effect without a story being a pretty boring thing?

For the sake of the argument I’ll concede the CGI and motion capture are the best and most revolutionary at blending live action and special effects in the history of cinema. But what story are these effects and tools telling? Something so rehashed everyone behind Avatar should be thankful Kevin Costner didn’t write He’s So Fine or they’d be in court for subconscious plagiarism. Yet another Chosen One story. A “bad guy” character so ridiculous, over the top and cartoony he might as well have been named Boris Badenov with dialogue so bad it would have been improved by rewriting to, “must get blue Moose and Squirrel out of tree.” A corporate bad guy who decides to walk away from the pursuit of the $20 million per kilo MacGuffin because, well, I don’t know why he walks away or what it does for the story. A character who resents Sully for being the Chosen One for a reason as yet unknown who eventually stops resenting him for it for reasons equally unknown. Deus ex machina. Literally deus.

Those are just some of the issues. There are more. Many more. Apart from the production and character designs as executed by the animation there isn’t a single thing in Avatar that couldn’t be improved upon or isn’t derivative of something done much better before up to and including the weak crutch of “we’re not in Kansas anymore,” which still hasn’t been used as well as it was originally more than seventy years ago. The movie makes me think the culture, language, design and visuals of the world and people received light years more attention than the individual characters telling the story. The result is a big, pretty mess.

It doesn’t need to be that way and the tool that could have made Avatar better is already there in Sully. He’s paraplegic and through the avatar program is given back the ability to walk. In the opening he says something to the effect of once a Marine, always a Marine, and he turns his back on a security force made up of, apparently, a bunch of Marines. He falls in love with someone of another race and will eventually leave his own behind. Everything to add real drama to the story as Sully goes through his changes are there, but all the changes are either underdeveloped or not developed and occur only because it’s the point in the story when it needs to occur.

Sully has lost the use of his legs but he gets to walk again even if it’s in another body. Walking again, according to his voice over in the opening, is something he never anticipates doing because he can’t afford it and it’s a tough economy. He gets to walk again! How can his reaction to that be relegated to a single thirty-second sequence where the best part about it is Sigourney Weaver saying “numb nuts?” How can that not lead to some sort sequence, line or even solitary image of the emotions behind it? It’s the ability to walk against the inability to walk. It’s a big-ticket item but it’s completely abandoned other than serving as a plot device at the end when he can’t walk to his oxygen mask.

Ted Williams, perhaps the greatest pure hitter in the history of baseball, was a Marine, and until his dying day would bellow “are there any Marines in the room” whenever he’d enter one. Being a Marine is a big deal. Forget the Kid; Sully himself says once one, always one. He turns his back on them. He fights against them. He kills them. Where is the conflict with that? If there is no internal conflict, where is the “Well, I gave my life to them but they’re all jerkweeds so they can go fly a kite” lesson learned line? It’s nowhere to be found, and it’s too important at one point in the story to be go abandoned for the rest of it.

He falls in love with Neytiri. He mates with her and, as she says, a Na’vi can mate with only one. His avatar is not real. How can he be okay with it, how can it not do something to him, how can the falseness of how he’s among them and in love with her not be addressed? Forget about it how it could have improved the story, it’s necessary for what happens in the story for it to have some sort of authenticity. And why did they fall in love? Because they spent time with each other and she taught him how to use a bow? It’s the only answer I could come up with as there are no other answers offered by the film itself, and it’s the worst failing among them all.

Sully is a good looking character, but the drama behind earned change is completely lacking. A stronger Sully would have made for a better film, but a Sully as weak as he is undermines everything else and makes all the other problems that much more glaring.

A day will come when a movie does better all the things Avatar does well. A day will come when these visuals look as ridiculous as a Muppet with Frank Oz’s hand shoved up its backside looks today and the technology used to create it looks like an abacus. When that happens, maybe three years or thirty years from now, why will Avatar be praised? It won’t be because everything else in Avatar is mediocre at best.

Here’s the challenge then. When there are no limits to what can be made, films using technology must have a good story at their heart. The goal should be to make a motion capture film not only as good looking as Avatar but as dramatic as Grapes of Wrath. The wonks at Skywalker Ranch, Cameron’s Copacabana at the Top of the World and Robert’s Old Man Peabody Institute for the Cloning of Space Bastards are, right now, pushing the technology forward to the point where a future software application will be able to mimic the voice, mannerisms and look of Humphrey Bogart perfectly and we’ll have ubiquitous marketing campaigns bombarding us with “See the new Bogey movie!” Effects need to be made in service of characters and story, not the other way around, and Avatar keeps us on the slippery slope away from that idea. Sure, it keeps box office records continually rewritten, but it’s also yielding an era of movies more forgettable than any other in the history of the medium as measured by anything other than dollars.