Author: Marc Sanders

GONE BABY GONE

By Marc S. Sanders

Ben Affleck’s directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, is crime drama mystery thriller that never offers easy answers and concludes with great debate.  You’ll ask yourself if right decisions were made.  You will argue with your best friend or significant other about the endings.  What’s undeniable though is that the film, adapted from Dennis Lehane’s novel, is full of an array of characters, most operating with the best of intentions, and yet they wind up doing everything wrong or against their sworn principles.  In order to work the problem, these people will have to betray themselves. 

One of Affleck’s many best decisions was casting his brother Casey Affleck in the lead role of private detective Patrick Kenzie.  With his girlfriend, Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), they specialize in tracking down missing persons in and around the Southeastern Boston area.  The brothers’ pairing is especially effective as Boston, Massachusetts is where they were born and raised.  They know this setting intimately. Unpolished multi-floored tenement neighborhoods near seedy watering holes are where the crimes of Gone Baby Gone occur.  Casey can ensure that his character, Patrick, can speak the slang, use the thick dialect, and feel comfortable amid a crowded and overpopulated area. As director, Ben ensures the setting is captured in great detail from Red Sox caps to beat up cars and dirty unkept apartments and secret hang outs.

In the middle of the night a little girl has gone missing and her deadbeat, drug addicted, careless mother Helene (Amy Ryan) is unmotivated to offer the police much to go on. Helene’s brother and sister-in-law (Titus Weliver, Amy Madigan) take it upon themselves to hire Patrick and Angie to find their niece.  The only leads that Patrick, Angie and the police (Ed Harris, John Ashton and occasionally Morgan Freeman) have to go on are Helene’s contacts within the drug peddling underground.  Someone within that community might have taken the girl or know someone who did.

Gone Baby Gone may feel like a Law & Order episode where red herrings are offered early and then dismissed for the actual truth.  However, Lehane’s story twists much deeper beneath the surface.  Not one character is wasted in this film.  Each serves a purpose to how and why this crime ever occurred.  Mysteries get resolved but the answers are not simple because they are multi-layered with many different people spinning twice as many plates.

Ben Affleck seems nothing like an amateur director here.  He does not always rely on dialogue to describe a scenario because he films quite a bit of a disheveled room or kitchen, or an outdoor area.  A daylight scene will take place in a darkly lit bar where only people need to hide from their troubles on an ordinary workday, or maybe they are in there to suppress something uglier.

The cast is outstanding.  While the characters belonging to Freeman, Harris and Ashton seem familiar from much of their other career films, they look like they lived within this environment of three-story houses bordering the harbor, across town from Fenway.  You believe these guys know every alleyway, street corner or contact among the city’s small-time deadbeats. 

Amy Ryan was nominated, and perhaps should have won, for her trashy Bostonian performance as Helene, the missing girl’s mother.  This actress is buried so deep in this role, from her worn out facial features to her New England dialect that blends so well.  She is completely believable, which is why you would not be able to stand sharing the same space with her.

Titus Welliver dons a thick, wide Irish mustache.  I read he had to keep it because he was shooting his HBO series, Deadwood, at the same time.  Nonetheless, it builds his character into the blue-collar working man whose greatest achievement is getting out of the life of small-time crime in order to put food on the table, while his sister could not.  His wife played by the great Amy Madigan, an actress that does not get enough coverage, is perfect.  Just her facial expressions with a pale, freckled complexion, tight chin and pinched lips show her biting her tongue while in the same room as her loser sister-in-law.  It sickens her that a sweet little girl like her niece is missing.  Everything is read on her face.  I know Madigan best as Kevin Costner’s midwestern cheerful wife in Field Of Dreams.  She played this role almost two decades later and she absolutely hides herself.  You forget you are watching her.  An outstanding character actress.  (I’m glad she’s getting new recognition with 2025’s hit horror movie Weapons.)

Michelle Monaghan as the girlfriend Angie is the sidekick to Casey Affleck’s Patrick.  Yet, she makes the horror of this movie convincingly real.  Early on, Angie is reluctant to accept the case because she doesn’t “want to find a kid in a dumpster.”  Now this isn’t some Dirty Harry or Lethal Weapon cop showcase.  It’s not glamourized with Hannibal Lecter glee.  This has not become much further materialized.  I don’t want to see a horrifying outcome for a child either, but Ben Affleck’s direction does not make any promises.  There are some repulsive, scary people in this world, right outside the front doors where people listen to the game on the radio and kids play stickball in the street.  Monaghan seems like that young woman who came from another place in the country with a fine upbringing and fell in love with Affleck’s character. With her brains, instincts and empathy, Angie took up the cause as a fellow crusader.  None of this is spelled out in the film and I have not read Lehane’s books, but I can see it in Michelle Monaghan’s performance.

Casey Affleck is a perfect surprise.  He dons the appearance of a thin, shrimpy kind of kid (supposedly age 31), and yet no matter who he is coming face to face with he never shows any sort of apprehension.  I truly believe that Patrick is not afraid of his work or the people he has to confront while trying to solve his various mysteries.  If a large gun is introduced into a scene, Patrick’s reaction is an act of “whoa, what’s this?”  Another character in another film would tighten up and hold their breath, or they would knock the weapon out of the way for an action scene.  Patrick has put this kind of act on before to outlast a situation.  Angie has definitely seen it before. 

Casey Affleck is great at just listening.  Shortly after he accepts the case, Patrick and Angie are in one of these darkened bars trying to collect information.  Ben Affleck shoots his camera above Casey sitting in a booth with a beer.  The actor keeps his head tilted as if he is listening to nothing spewing from a possible lead sitting across the table.  When a gun is pulled though, Casey stands three feet taller than his posture implies and controls the scene.  That is Dennis Lehane’s character Patrick Kensie completely defined because Casey Affleck has a full understanding of this guy.  Someone like Patrick knew that if he was going to take this kind occupation on full time, he had better be aware he would not survive on brawn that he cannot show.  It’s a confidence that has to come through. 

Gone Baby Gone is a gripping and engaging thriller shown with varying degrees of light and perfect cinematography to offer genuine on-site locations of Boston and the surrounding areas.  Ben Affleck chose not to compromise any of his set pieces.  With handheld cameras, when a missing person’s search is happening, it feels like a documentary of procedure is being shown. 

The various directions and endings are entirely unexpected and yet very, very plausible.  This is a smart, sensational crime drama that deserves a resurgence of attention nearly twenty years after its release.

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

By Marc S. Sanders

What is Stanley Kubrick attempting to demonstrate with A Clockwork Orange, arguably the most controversial and shocking film of his career?  The film is considered an almost precise adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ novel.  I never read the book, but the sources I found on Wikipedia and IMDb are consistent with their claims.  Kubick’s vision is never not odd or strange.  It’s almost always repulsive and I have to believe the director is proud of the finished accomplishments left in every caption and scene.  Yet even Kubrick was disgusted by some copycat attempts that spawned from what the story’s protagonist troublemaker executes within this context.  Regrettably, in 2025, it would be easier to ask what did you expect Mr. Kubrick?

In a dystopian future of England, young Alex (age 17, but 15 in the book) relishes on walking the streets each night, accompanied by his three droog companions, committing the worst atrocities imaginable.  They beat up a homeless beggar, engage in gang brawling, and brutalize and rape a wealthy couple in their own home to the celebrated tune of Singin’ In The Rain.  I’m curious how reminiscent A Clockwork Orange is to people who only wish to watch the cheerful and innocent fare of Gene Kelley.  Is their subconscious intruded by Malcolm McDowell as naughty boy Alex with the one eyelash, bowler hat, protective jock strap and erection mask?

Mayhem is the specialty of Alex and his degenerate friends.  However, Alex who is the leader of the pack is challenged to uphold his command on the gang of four, and once the others betray him, the poor boy is sentenced to a militaristic, concentrated prison where he must don an academy uniform while studying the gospel of the Bible.  

What happens though if the student sees himself more as the Roman with the harsh whip, and less as the savior willing to die for our sins?  Are people like Alex only inherently wicked, vile, and perverted?  Can nothing change their insatiable appetites for harm and evil doing?

I thought about One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest while watching A Clockwork Orange.  McMurphy fakes an impression of insanity to be institutionalized. He operates under the presumption the circumstances will be more accommodating than a jail cell.  Alex campaigns to be a guinea pig for a new kind of therapy believed to eliminate all temptations of violence and cruel sexual escapades. This could be a means to free him from a forty-year prison sentence. I never believed he wanted to be liberated from his appetite of rape, torture and murder, though.

Following an abundance of sickening, visual exposition, Stanley Kubrick is ready to test some possible outcomes by forcefully prying open the subject’s eyes to witness footage of violence, extreme rape, harsh pornography, and Nazi propaganda.  Will this overexposure repulse Alex away from being the monster he used to be?

I’m not sure A Clockwork Orange provides any definitive answers but the weirdness of this off scale and ugly England is nothing but apparent.  Nothing is normal looking or relatable in this film.  Everything from the colors to the costume wear to the slang verbiage of the dialogue and even the furniture is completely twisted.  Kubrick would offer a similar approach in The Shining. No director is louder and more offensive with colors in a film. A green bedroom ceiling or a blue typewriter or even a glass of milk and stark white sexually posed mannequins used as furniture pieces in a hangout joint are so much more than discomforting.

Even the infamous rape scene is uncharacteristically done.  The Droogs happily sing while brutalizing this couple.  Before Alex commits his “push in, push out” he scissors the woman’s red jumpsuit around her individual breasts before cutting her out of the fabric to be entirely nude.  I’ve seen plenty of staged rape scenes but then there is what Kubrick envisions. Not to mention, how notoriously redundant he is with repetitively shooting his scenes over and over again. Kubrick is an auteur filmmaker but his desire for perfection in his shots are as twisted as many of his films.

A woman is brutally killed by being pummeled with a sculpture of a penis/taint/anus piece. (I don’t know what else you call this!) A typical baseball bat, stick or hammer is not the bludgeoning weapon of choice. Stanley Kubrick wants to ensure this perverted item of art owned by a wealthy woman is used to commit the crime. A mix of sinful natures ranging from sexual to violent.

Why go to all of these lengths to be so unusual?

A Clockwork Orange is deliberately shocking and thus everything on display is disorienting.  With all the movies and TV shows I’ve watched, on top of some of the most unusual fetishistic material I’ve witnessed, I imagine I’m like most viewers where I’ve grown accustomed to the violent and sexual debauchery on display.  I’ve seen so much I am practically desensitized to it all.  When I read about another school shooting in the news, regrettably and with sick sarcasm, I’ll think to myself, “Huh!  Must be a Tuesday.”  It feels so wrong but there is truth in this ongoing epidemic. Stanley Kubrick, back in the early 1970s, had to work that much harder to grab the attention of the viewer.  Nothing can prepare you for an initial viewing of A Clockwork Orange. Back in 1971, I’d argue no one was prepared for this film’s content. It’s a pioneering document of extreme violence and sexual perversion. Filmmakers, like Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, and Brian DePalma hereafter would push their own limits while bridging these activities with the natures of their challenged characters.

Is there a confidence to seeing if a heathen like Alex can be cured of his original nature? Can he be returned to a society where his once menacing threat is nonexistent?  Plus, can Alex live a peaceful and nurturing life?

Alex is not the only villain to this piece.  While we do not get to know his parents well enough, how sadistic are the individuals behind his therapy process? Alex’ “recovery” becomes politicized and treated like scientific doctrine at the expense of his own humiliation. He is used to prove a point by beating him up publicly and forcing him to lick the bottom of a man’s shoe and exposing him to a naked woman, as well. Those that he encounters again, like former victims and fellow Droogs, following his therapy are not perfectly complimented to this new Alex. Scenarios that re-introduce him to society imply that Alex’ conditioning process might have overlooked what was to come following his release. Were they truly “healing” their patient?

A Clockwork Orange is never a refreshing film.  It’s always alarming right down to its final frame.  The picture certainly does not endorse the merits of psychotherapy or psychological reform.  Maybe, that’s why I believe that anyone specializing in the field of mental health should watch the picture. See what works and what doesn’t. Kubrick is uncompromising with getting his cast to do what he wants, no matter how off putting the material is. If anything, I wonder if this movie is more relevant today. Can anyone who traps themselves in an impersonal and isolated environment of social media influence attain the capability to shed their destructive proclivities for a natural desire to live, care and cherish fellow human beings?

Like most of Kubrick’s films, A Clockwork Orange is not an easy watch.  I know a friend who describes the movie as a comedy.  I know what she’s talking about and why. Still, how can anyone allow themselves to guffaw at someone who is an agent of death, torture, destruction and chaos? 

I don’t know what else I can say about A Clockwork Orange.  I do not recall asking so many questions in one review as I demonstrate here. Watch the film on mute or with Alex’ voiceover against an assortment of classical music as Kubrick intends simply because Alex’ only friend, only ally, is “Ludwig.”  No matter how you observe the piece, it is likely your jaw will drop, and your eyes will wince.  You will cringe and you will unquestionably test your tolerance.  You may just turn the movie off.

Regardless of how you respond to the picture, be assured that Stanley Kubrick successfully completed what he set out to do.

BLOW OUT

By Marc S. Sanders

Brian DePalma’s Blow Out is an inventive approach to the political conspiracy thriller.  In 1981, following a mask of innocence the United States lost with the assassination of President Kennedy, later his brother Bobby, plus the drunken, liable carelessness of their brother Ted, and then finally the Watergate scandal, DePalma capitalized on newsworthy incidents to make a paranoid thriller of present day while incorporating what he likely knows much about which is sound effects editing.  Despite the cheesy music soundtrack that is highly intrusive and poorly composed, Blow Out is a good blend of hysteria and suspense.

John Travolta plays Jack Terry, a Philadelphia sound effects recording artist for b-grade schlock horror movies.  One night, while out in a park trying to pick up sounds of outdoor nature, he witnesses a car suffer a blown-out tire and crash into a nearby river.  Jack is able to rescue a woman named Sally (Nancy Allen) but cannot save the Pennsylvania governor who was driving the car.

As he is about to leave the hospital, he is specifically instructed to never speak to Sally nor acknowledge to anyone about any of his own involvement in this incident.  However, Jack cannot help but recount the sequence of events in his head and as new details come to light, he knows that there is a cover up at play.

Blow Up operates like a how-to kind of picture.  The expertise of a sound effects recording artist is demonstrated as Jack replays every sound that his equipment picked up. Later he’s able to manufacture his own film by assembling a series of published photographs that also captured the crash.  Sync up the sounds with the sights and a new theory surfaces.  Other mysteries change the course of the riddle through dialogue.  This character has to work by himself using the skills he’s acquired to learn the truth.  He hardly has anyone to commiserate with.

John Travolta is convincing within this occupation that’s not as common as a cop or a private eye.  I like how I can pick up how he uses his recording equipment and even the minute details like labeling what he has preserved within his inventory.

It took a little bit of patience to get used to Nancy Allen’s damsel in distress who plays it up like Judy Holliday or Jean Hagen with the squeaky, dingbat voice.  When we first meet her, she is in an intoxicated stupor that goes on a little too long. Nevertheless, I came around because the tension of the film builds quite well.

John Lithgow is the sadistic adversary – a serial killer and assassin rolled into one.  He’s got the weird, unwelcome appearance like any bad guy in a Hitchcock film.

DePalma is known for his split screen cuts that he offered in Carrie and later in Mission: Impossible.  More well known is his reliance on bringing a character in zoom close up, while in the same frame, another object will be zoomed out at a distance.   During an outdoor evening in the park, an owl hoots and stares us down while John Travolta is far in the background standing on a bridge. Within this same moment, DePalma does it again with a toad ribbiting up close with the actor again positioned out. It’s a disorienting approach that works well at maintaining the perplexity of his story.

I think the final act of Blow Out falls apart a bit.  Travolta is on the heels of rescuing Sally by rampaging his jeep through a crowded parade.  The scene is shot so aggressively that it was hard for me to believe he would survive much less not run down a cop, spectator, or the entire marching band.  DePalma could have tightened this up a bit.

Blow Out ends on a bleak irony that’s quite surprising and definitely against formula.  There’s a running gag for Jack and a film director as they edit a silly problematic issue for a new slasher flick.  I guessed early on how this was going to resolve itself.  Though I was right, I didn’t expect how the conclusion arrived at my predication.  

As well, there are some notable questions left unanswered.  I had to roll back and see if I missed something.  I didn’t.  DePalma’s script neglects some key points with unfinished resolutions. So, I was not entirely satisfied. Still, the how-to procedures along with the pursuit of the truth, while also evading demise, are very engaging.

When I conduct workshops on playwriting, I always recommend keeping up with the news.  An unending wealth of ideas are there to be discovered.  As a sincere compliment to Brian DePalma, it could not be more apparent where his creativity took off with this film.  As a skilled and educated filmmaker, he also writes what he knows.  

Blow Out is very close to being a smart nail biter that echoes the sad truths of political rule breaking by means of savage crime. I wish modern films would be as risky today.  There are so few of these kinds of thrillers being made anymore.

À NOUS LA LIBERTÉ (1931)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: René Clair
CAST: Henri Marchand, Raymond Cordy, Paul Ollivier, Germaine Aussey
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 100% Fresh

PLOT: A convict escapes prison and becomes a wealthy industrialist, but his life of leisure is threatened when his former cellmate turns up unexpectedly.


À nous la liberté (rough translation: “freedom for all”) is a charming, if slight, romantic farce from celebrated French director René Clair, who would later make his mark in Hollywood films with I Married a Witch (1942) and And Then There Were None (1945) before returning to French cinema for the rest of his career.  It won’t go down as my favorite French film, or classic film, or anything like that, but as a snippet of cinema’s early years, along with some mildly scandalous history of its own, it’s worth a look for cineastes.

Louis and Émile are cellmates in a French prison.  Their daily routines are marked by hours and hours of assembling children’s toys on an assembly line that looks and feels a lot like the one from Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) or even that one at a chocolate factory in a famous episode of I Love Lucy – but we’ll come back to that.  They sing, too, while toiling.  There’s a LOT of singing in À nous la liberté, not all of it clearly motivated, but serving as a kind of punctuation mark or accent piece to various scenes.

Émile and Louis attempt to escape their prison, but through no one’s fault, only Louis gets away, while Émile remains behind.  After some amusing episodes involving Louis trying to blend unobtrusively back into society, he lands a job hawking phonographs to pedestrians for a department store.  He gets so good at it that eventually he’s running the store…and eventually, improbably, he becomes the owner of the factory that BUILDS the phonographs, making him rich beyond his wildest dreams.

Trouble arrives in paradise when Louis’ cellmate, Émile, unexpectedly shows up, recently released from prison.  But he’s not looking for a job or to “touch” an old wealthy friend.  He’s in love with a girl who works at Louis’ factory, and getting a job there is the easiest way to stay close to her.  (I don’t THINK her name is ever said aloud, but she’s listed on IMDb as “Maud”, so that’s what I’ll call her.)  If Émile’s behavior sounds mildly stalker-y, well, it is, but what are you gonna do, love is love, and I’m sure I could dig up a modern rom-com or two that feature stalking as a romantic element.  Somehow.

Plus, there’s this whole ironic subtext that shows how the assembly lines at Louis’ phonograph factories are no different from the assembly lines at the prison.  The movie is not subtle about their similarities, but how could it be?  This fluffy material is corny as all hell, but the movie never gets too schmaltzy.  And if you think you know how the romantic subplot plays out in a romantic comedy from the 1930s, check your assumptions.

The centerpiece of the film is an assembly line sequence at the phonograph factory, a scene that has been imitated many times.  More modern movies and TV shows may have improved it, but having seen this movie, it’s clear where their inspiration came from.  In fact, the most interesting backstory of À nous la liberté is the fact that, after Charlie Chaplin released Modern Times in 1936, the producers of the French film sued Chaplin for plagiarism.  Both films feature bumbling but charming protagonists who wind up working on, and screwing up, assembly lines, and both films were making a point about the increased mechanization and dehumanization of the labor force.  After dragging on for ten years, Chaplin ultimately settled (without admitting guilt), but remained friends with René Clair for years afterward.

Having seen both films now, my opinion is that the similarities between the two films are purely incidental.  You might as well say that Star Wars plagiarized Star Trek because they both have “Star” in the title.  Modern Times is funnier and faster-paced, while the most farcical scenes in À nous la liberté are played, not for laughs, but smiles, if that makes sense.  It does to me, so I’m sticking with it.

It’s also interesting to observe how Clair used sound in this film from sound’s early years.  As I said before, there’s a lot of singing, but scenes with dialogue are few and far between.  Ambient sound is almost non-existent.  Where you might expect to hear lots of noises – scenes on the assembly line, for example – we only hear background score.  It’s almost startling when one scene plays street noises during an outdoor shot.  It’s almost as if Clair – like Chaplin – was reluctant to completely abandon silent storytelling in favor of this new sonic “trend.”  As a result, while it’s not a laugh riot, the film does have a quaint likability that is hard for me to describe.

À nous la liberté is an interesting peek backwards in time to when many of the film tropes we take for granted today were shiny and new.  It didn’t get me all “riled up” at an emotional level, but it wasn’t a waste of time.  And, like I said, there are one or two surprises story-wise.  That’s never a bad thing.

WALTZING WITH BRANDO

By Marc S. Sanders

You think you know someone, but then you learn a whole other side about the person.

I only know Marlon Brando from his achievements in The Godfather, Superman, A Streetcar Named Desire and On The Waterfront.  There’s also his final picture, The Score, with his Vito Corleone counterpart, Robert DeNiro.  I’ve seen him spoofed on Saturday Night Live and know that he’s even poked fun at himself in a film like The Freshman.  He was notoriously and proudly quirky.  I guess Brando was so content to appear odd to everyone else beyond the island of Tahiti, which became his escape to paradise, away from autograph hounds, environmental abuse and Hollywood barbarianism.  Brando simply endured his greatness as one of the most incredible movie actors ever to subsidize how he really wanted to live in utopian isolation.

Billy Zane seamlessly inhabits the persona and physical appearance of Marlon Brando in Waltzing With Brando.  The film presents a slice of the actor’s uncompromised efforts to build an ecological home, and maybe a hotel, on an uninhabited island next to Tahiti.  To bring this idea to fruition, Brando recruits a young, undaring Los Angeles architect named Bernie Judge (Jon Heder) to helm the project.  This will be an undertaking that Bernie could never expect and can hardly circumvent around impossible challenges in the face of proven scientific engineering, chemistry, and physics.  Brando seems to have an answer for everything though.

By breaking the fourth wall to speak to the viewer along with voiceover narration, Heder is charming about his unexpected adventures.  The white-collar shirt and necktie of city life is abandoned for shorts and conch shell necklaces.  Actually, as Brando demonstrates its better and less inhibited to just be nude like the rest of the cheerful islanders.  Despite his reservations, Bernie gets more and more accustomed to Brando’s perceptions but still he has to find ways to be practical to complete this unconscionable project.

Drinking water is needed.  Marlon’s answer is to filter it from his own urine.  Electricity needs to be installed on the island.  Though, is Marlon truly serious when he suggests that energy stem from a power source like electric eels?  Bernie soon learns that there will never be a client as unpredictable as Marlon Brando.  Money is not an obstacle he cares about.  Oscar trophies serve a menial, floor level purpose that is only a little more useful than resting on a mantle.  An upcoming gangster movie is not really his thing.  A paradise devoid of man-made contamination and pesky societal intrusions is where his focus lies.

Watching Bernie Judge struggle with being away from his wife and daughter, while working with islanders to start at the basics like building an airplane landing strip first, I was reminded of The Brutalist, the fictional period piece that centered on building a grand, outrageously expensive structure within a mountaintop.  That film watched its architect wither away into haunting madness.  The Mosquito Coast with Harrison Ford also came to mind.  Thankfully, Waltzing With Brando does not take these directions.  I know nothing about architecture or engineering or practically any kind of science.  Yet, I know that whatever Marlon Brando conjures up seems unheard of and impossible.  Brando’s friend, Bernie Judge, did not allow these considerations to stop him though.  Why shouldn’t we explore our ideal paradise no matter how exuberant it seems? (Mosquitos are also a problem to deal with and Brando frowns on using pesticides.  Hmm. What can be done?)

Still, we have to be realistic.  Richard Dreyfuss plays Brando’s money manager and represents the challenge of making resources obtainable.  Brando has to go back to work.  Judge needs more and more funds for material and labor.  He takes daring personal risks.  Even the banker does.  Utopia is expensive and never merciful. 

Director Bill Fishman wrote and adapted Bernard Judge’s biographical tales of his encounters with Marlon Brando.  His film is lighthearted, hardly stressful in any kind of dramatic weight.  Perhaps that is because Bernie Judge did not respond to Brando’s ideas with frustration like The Brutalist would have you believe.  While I was not entirely fond of the voiceover narration because I did not recognize its necessity, Jon Heder is magnetically likable.  He’s a cheerful friend telling a bedtime story that took place in a small corner of the world.  Most people never explored these crystal waters and white sands traversed only by Marlon Brando and the native islanders.  This is a civilization unaware of the burden of conflict and pressure. 

Billy Zane does not go over the top with his portrayal of Marlon Brando.  The more subtle and aloof he is in each scene, the more convinced and accustomed I became to his peculiarities.  With Fishman’s script, Zane delivers a handful of dynamics to Brando.  Early in the film, Brando tells Judge that his desire is to live in this Tahitian paradise forever.  He knows however that he must continue to make movies to eventually fund this lifestyle permanently.  Later in the film, it is easy to surmise why Brando feels that way.  While filming The Last Tango In Paradise, he is trapped in a phone booth where his fan base recognizes him.  It’s one of the few times when Billy Zane performs on Marlon Brando’s genuine discomfort, and it is terribly unsettling.  It’s awkwardly ironic that the most famous actor in the world is out of his element among a worldwide community of followers and devotees begging for pictures and autographs.

Like Marlon Brando and an eventual Bernie Judge, Waltzing With Brando wants you to leave the theater with a smirk on your face.  An attempt at achieving the impossible with absolute content does not have to be a miserable journey.  An effort to find ways to overcome challenges can deliver lifelong friendships and personal experiences that belong only to you.  Bernie Judge learned this through his friendship with Marlon Brando.

Waltzing With Brando is a thankfully rewarding experience, a brush with perfect happiness.

NOTE: Stay through the end credits because this “Marlon Brando” has a few treats in store for you.

TRUE LIES

By Marc S. Sanders

James Cameron’s True Lies never had to be believable.  It only had to be fun, and it is fun for the first act and most of the third act.  Too bad the sitcom like, chauvinistic second act pretty much overthrows the whole picture.

When you watch an Arnold Schwarzenegger pic, you have to take it with a boulder of salt.  Throughout his career, he’s been pregnant (never saw Junior), he’s begged God to give him the strength to fight Satan (I’m being honest here. It happened in End Of Days), he’s been tossed out of a plane at thirty thousand feet with no parachute and lands safely in a dumpster (Eraser) and his twin brother has been Danny DeVito.  (Do I really need to share the title of that movie?) In True Lies, I have to accept the fact that the muscular body builder with an Austrian accent, and pretty good line delivery, convinces his wife and daughter, played by Jamie Lee Curtis and Eliza Dushku, that he’s simply a boring computer salesman.  It’s shocking, utterly shocking, to realize that he is actually a clandestine spy, and his family is completely unaware.  See if Bruce Willis or Harrison Ford or Mel Gibson were in this role, then I’d buy it.  Tom Arnold might have been a good pick, but James Cameron settled to make Roseanne’s ex-husband Schwarzenegger’s secondary partner with some comedy bits. He might be the best part of the movie.

A brilliant 007 inspired opening gets this adventure started off with a literal bang at a black-tie affair at a wintery German mansion. Harry Tasker (Schwarzenegger) infiltrates the party along with support from his partner Albert (Tom Arnold) who hides in a tech equipped van that’s close by.  Harry does the tango with Tia Carrere, which is charming and something new for the Terminator.  The outcome of this shoot ’em up episode puts these super spies on the trail of an Arab terrorist who has the capability of unleashing a nuclear arsenal on the United States.  When Harry is not chasing this guy on horseback and up high-rise elevators, with the equine in tow, he and Albert report to an eye patch played by Charlton Heston.  

Somehow, I sleepwalked into another movie, though.  Harry has not been the model family man and when he tries to make amends, he inadvertently hears his wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) chatting with a sleezy car salesman (Bill Paxton).  Now all of the spy department’s resources change course to surveille Helen and this moron she’s been talking to because this is the episode with the misunderstanding.  James Cameron’s script makes very poor efforts to achieve sitcom level comedy.  A laugh track couldn’t even save this tripe.

Bill Paxton is a great actor, but he accepted a terrible, unfunny role as he ironically pretends to impress Helen by actual being a spy.  Ha!!!! Go figure!!!!

Jamie Lee Curtis is a great actor too, but she agreed to play one of the dumbest women to ever grace a screen.  She believes this moron’s lies as easily as she believes the one and only Arnold Schwarzenegger is just a computer nerd.

One of the most intolerable scenes I can ever think of occurs after Harry learns what is really going on. He gladly continues to play one over on his neglected and unhappy wife by believing he’ll give her a fun adventure he thinks she deserves.  Helen is convinced that she must abide by the wishes of a clandestine government group who apprehends her.  She arrives at a dark hotel room with Harry sitting in the shadows, mere feet away, and convinces his wife to do a striptease dance in front of a stranger.  This routine goes on for the longest five minutes.  It’s not funny.  It’s not sexy.  It’s eerie and perverted with sick narrow mindedness. 

At the risk of getting political and prudish, Jamie Lee Curtis has always been one of the most outspoken celebrities for equal treatment between men and women and has ostracized those in positions of power who work towards their own self advantage.  Yet here she allows herself to be objectified by James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger to be a punchline for male chauvinistic pranks.  If this scene ended with Curtis breaking Schwarzenegger’s nose with a karate chop while holding him at gunpoint, then this becomes something else.  That’s a no, however.  Instead, she is a scantily clad victim of sexual deviants, and she never stands up for herself, or exudes any kind of pride.  I recall in 1994 not liking this sequence.  Over thirty years later, well after the tides of the Me-Too movement have passed, I still hate this material.  With all of the high-flying stunts and action thrown in to other parts of the movie, it is this scene that stays with me.

Once this stupid story detour is over with a cast of actors enhancing its inanity, do I sleepwalk my way back into the movie I was watching before.  Whattya know?  The Arab terrorist who has not been discussed for the last forty-five minutes, still exists. So, while being held captive, this becomes an opportune time for the unhappy couple to sort through their baggage.

True Lies starts out so fun and when the action is turned on, James Cameron and his team are offering some solid footage.  Helicopters, limos, and missiles fly over a bridge running from the Florida Keys.  Then it is ridiculous silliness with a fighter jet piloted by Schwarzenegger who uses the entire cache of weapons to wipe out the one bad guy while trying to rescue his daughter who his hanging from a crane high in the skies over Miami.  Some say the slapstick of The Three Stooges is a demonstration in violence.  I ask if those critics have seen True Lies because the mayhem is absolutely bonkers. 

I can’t endorse this movie because I think it is one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s worst films.  It’s also one of James Cameron’s most awful efforts.  The action is marvelously over the top, but the characters are reprehensibly idiotic and the film gets hijacked by a whole other storyline that is neither funny nor worth caring about.  There are so many better options to select from this writer/director, and this entire cast. 

With an absence of untruth, I am being forthright by declaring that True Lies belongs back within the scummy cauldron from it was stirred up from.

WINGS (1927)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: William A. Wellman
CAST: Clara Bow, Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers, Richard Arlen, Gary Cooper
MY RATING: 10/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 94% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Two young men, one rich, one middle class, who are in love with the same woman, become fighter pilots in World War I.


Not long ago, I purchased a copy of the 1927 classic Wings, based mostly on the favorable review by my friend and colleague, Marc Sanders.  I was more or less aware of its place in cinema history: the very first winner of the Best Picture Oscar, essentially the birthplace of Gary Cooper’s career (despite appearing in the film for just over 2 minutes), legendary aerial footage, and so on.  But I never felt compelled to seek it out.

Having finally watched it, I am very glad I did, and you should, too.  Wings is pure entertainment from start to finish.  Unexpectedly engrossing, captivating, thrilling, the whole enchilada.  High melodrama, comedy (borderline slapstick, what are you gonna do, it was 1927), romance, comic misunderstandings – and some not-so-comic – and eye-popping aerial footage, true to its reputation.  A neat camera move gliding over several cabaret tables even showcases director William A. Wellman’s desire to push the boundaries of what was possible with the massive cameras of his day.  I once wrote that Sunrise (1927) was my favorite silent film of all time.  If I ever make another 100-Favorite-Films list, Wings and Sunrise are going to have to duke it out…

Wings sets a surprisingly modern tone from the start.  In the very first sequences of the film, Jack Powell (Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers) does not “ham it up” like some of the more typical Hollywood actors of that era.  Obviously, his mannerisms are exaggerated, but there is a restraint to his face and body that seems at odds (in a good way) with nearly everyone else in the film…except Gary Cooper, who, if he underplayed his role any further, would have become a still painting.  That restraint is also evident in Jack’s foil/nemesis, David Armstrong (Richard Arlen), the rich aristocrat to contrast Jack’s more humble background.  This moderation lends a very contemporary feel to a movie that’s nearly a century old – quite a feat.

In sharp contrast to the two male leads, the fabled Clara Bow plays her role, Mary Preston, with complete abandon.  She never truly overacts, exactly, but she throws herself into her supporting role with abandon.  Mary is hopelessly infatuated with Jack, who is actually in love with the debonair Sylvia Lewis (Jobyna Ralston), who is already involved with David, though they haven’t made anything official.  (If Facebook had been a thing back then, their relationship status would have been “It’s Complicated”.)  So, when Jack makes eyes at Sylvia, poor Mary is in the background as her hopeful smile deteriorates into sobs.  She may not be subtle, but Clara Bow makes sure you know EXACTLY what is on Mary’s mind at any given moment.

In the middle of this would-be soap opera, World War I intervenes.  Jack and David both enlist to become aviators.  A crucial scene shows Jack asking for Sylvia’s picture to keep as a good luck charm, a picture that has already been signed over to David.  Then, as he says his farewells to the lovelorn Mary, she offers him her picture.  How this scene plays out, and how it comes to bear much later, is one of the high points of the film’s ground-based drama.

But the real marquee attraction Wings comes during the aerial training and combat scenes.  Watching this movie, you understand why modern filmmakers today strive for realism as much as possible.  Ron Howard wanted to show weightless environments for Apollo 13, so sets were constructed inside a military jet tanker that flew parabolic arcs to simulate weightlessness…for real.  The makers of Top Gun: Maverick wanted to draw audiences into the film, so they had their actors train for weeks and months so they could be filmed inside the actual cockpits of F-18 fighters as they performed simulated combat maneuvers…for real.  Those filmmakers knew what had already been demonstrated decades earlier by Wings: nothing beats reality.

(Almost nothing…Ready Player One was pretty damn cool…BUT I DIGRESS…)

For Wings, director Wellman, a combat pilot himself during the war, knew that the best way to grab the audience by the lapels would be to get his actors up in the air for real.  To put it very briefly, he got his two lead actors to become certified pilots, got them into the air with small cameras strapped to the front of their planes, and had them act, fly their own planes, and be their own camera operators, all at the same time, while other stunt pilots flew around them, sometimes in VERY close quarters, simulating aerial combat.

The results are staggering.  There is a visceral mojo to these scenes that cannot be overstated.  Sure, it looks “old” because it’s black and white and grainy, but it is also undeniably real, and when you see long shots of a biplane going into a death spiral after being shot out of the sky, your intellect tells you there’s a real pilot flying a real plane hurtling at high speed towards the real ground, and you either sit back in awe or you lean forward with excitement.  There are a few scenes where real planes crash to the ground in various ways; one of them crashes into the side of a freaking HOUSE…for REAL.  IMDb mentions one staged crash where the plane didn’t do exactly what it was SUPPOSED to do, and the stunt pilot literally broke his neck…but survived and returned to his job six weeks later.  And it was all done in camera with no trickery or fake dummies in the cockpit.  It is literally mindboggling.

However, it should be noted that these accomplishments by themselves would mean very little if they weren’t hitched to a compelling story.  The love story among Jack, David, and Mary is a constant thread through the whole film.  Mary, having volunteered as an ambulance driver in the Army, miraculously finds herself stationed overseas…right next to Jack and David’s unit, wouldn’t you know it!  Contrivances aside, Wings expertly balances the exciting elements with the melodramatic flourishes.  The melodrama comes to a head when Mary finds herself alone in a hotel room with Jack, who is so drunk on champagne he doesn’t recognize her.  (She is dressed as a cabaret dancer, but that’s a long story…)  This movie truly contains the best of both worlds, genre-wise.

This might be crass of me to mention, but I’m going to anyway…Wings is also notable for some of the earliest on-screen nudity (in an AMERICAN film, anyway) that I can recall seeing.  There is a scene in a recruitment office where a line of bare male bums are lined up in the background, awaiting health inspection.  Then later, we see a woman’s bare breasts…just a brief glimpse, but it’s there.  Not only THAT, but during a fancy camera move in a French cabaret, we see a woman caressing another woman’s face…are they a couple?  Scandalous!  Who needs the Hays Code?  Not this guy!

(I could also mention the homo-erotic overtones during a pivotal scene towards the end of the film, but they pretty much speak for themselves [like the volleyball scene in Top Gun], so I’m just gonna move on…)

To sum up: Wings ranks as one of the greatest pure entertainments that Hollywood has ever served up.  Marc mentioned that it perhaps doesn’t get the love it deserves.  He’s probably right.  I’m sure it’s revered among cinephiles, but it is certainly not in the general public consciousness when it comes to silent films.  Regardless, it is exceptionally well-made and uncommonly effective.  If ever an old film deserved to be rediscovered by the general public, Wings is it.

ROCKY III

By Marc S. Sanders

By the time a series of franchise films reaches its third installment there better be something interesting for the characters to encounter.  Otherwise, it is the same old show.  Not many talk about it, but Rocky III actually does have something new to offer even if the story still feels like the same kind of tread.  What’s new?  Mr. T!

In the lexicon of greatest villains of all time Mr. T’s introductory role of Clubber Lang, the fierce boxer who lacks pity for a fool, should be included within these tabulations.  Reader, I challenge you to find him listed anywhere.  I don’t think you’ll be successful.  Not even as a runner up. That is a terrible oversight.

As Rocky III opens with a quick flashback of Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone who also writes and directs) winning the championship away from Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), quick cuts of the hero show him knocking out one fighter after another with debonair ease.  When he’s not boxing, he’s posing for commercials and magazine covers, or he’s riding his custom-designed Italian Stallion Harley with his wife, a glamorous Adrian (Talia Shire) on the back.  Juxtaposed within this montage, played against one of the greatest songs in film history (Eye Of The Tiger by Survivor), is Clubber Lang executing bloodletting beatings on his own opponents.  He’s angry and he threatens to kill Balboa in the ring. Rocky’s mainstay coach Mickey (Burgess Meredith) attends these fights and grows fearful of this new menace.  Clubber will not give up on this campaign until he has his shot in the ring with Rocky.

Rocky III has a glossy finish the first two installments deliberately withheld.  The photography is sharper. Stallone is quite handsome, rich and fit.  Adrian has abandoned the meek bashfulness and nerdy, wing shaped eyeglasses.  Their furnished house sits on a gorgeous estate complete with servants, a golf cart, and a little boy all their own.  The filth-ridden areas of Philly are behind these protagonists.  Welcome to the materialistic and decadent 1980s.  Frankly, I like how nice and put together everything feels in Rocky III.  It truly is a window into what much of the 1980s looked like.  Stallone and Shire’s characters have evolved amidst their wealth, and I continue to like them. 

The one ingredient that carries over is the alcoholic slob, Paulie (Burt Young), whose grumpiness hasn’t changed.  He is a given a substory in the first ten minutes of the film where he shows his resentment for Rock.  Then, the slugger bails him out of the drunk tank, gives him a job, and he only remains through the film for a few laugh bits.

(SPOILER ALERT) Following accepting the challenge to fight Clubber Lang, Rocky loses in terrible defeat just as Mickey suffers what will be a fatal heart attack.  Not only does he lose, but he cannot overcome his sorrow, and fear has intruded upon his psyche.  Apollo volunteers to train Rocky and encourages him to do one last fight against this new opponent, now champion.  Only now, Rocky has to get that “eye of the tiger” back and he needs to move light on his feet like Apollo originally learned.

Everyone in Rocky III has an energy about them.  These actors are used to one another even if Stallone and Weathers were on opposite sides for the last two films.  Stallone’s script experiments with testing his boxing character to lose what he earned organically in his earlier films.  He also sketches the guy with conceited fault ahead of the film’s first fight when he showboats his training and does not take this new fighter seriously enough.  This is good material for a third follow up piece.  It’s certainly more exciting than what Rocky II offered.

However, the film belongs to Mr. T who became a pop culture icon of the 1980s with gold jewelry, the mohawk, a TV action series, cartoons, toys and guest appearances on telethons, Johnny Carson, Diff’rent Strokes and Silver Spoons.  Forty years later, he deserves some recognition for the impact he had on the American psyche.  This guy was a big influencer.  No one has ever replicated what Mr. T delivered.  If you watch Rocky III again, you can’t help but get caught up in how hostile his Clubber Lang is.  I doubt this guy was written this broad or aggressive in Stallone’s script pages.  Clubber Lang is a villain that owns this picture anytime he appears on screen.  Mr. T is not a diverse actor by any stretch but the personality that was introduced here is unforgettable.  During both training and boxing montages, his muscular physicality is an astonishment, and he’s a terrifying new kind of monster with every threat he screams at this cast of likable heroes.  This guy would burn the whole happy village down if given the chance.

I’m also impressed with Talia Shire.  She’s not given much to do here.  For the most part she is sitting in the audience, cheering on Rocky, or watching from the sidelines while he trains.  However, there is one special scene that Stallone wrote for them that turns the tide of this ninety-minute film ahead of the inevitable, pulse racing training montage.  Her scene of truth-hurting candor with Stallone’s character on California shoreline where all of the pain and anguish surfaces is carried by her against Sylvester Stallone, the superstar.  It’s a reminder why the Rocky films were never anything without Adrian.  The love of Rocky’s life has to always be there to rescue the lug from his despair and lack of confidence.  I love this scene.

I would never argue with anyone who said this franchise became a sad joke upon itself by the time Rocky III rolled around.  The formula is very recognizable.  It’s not a tremendous sequel like The Empire Strikes Back, The Godfather Part II, or even Superman II demonstrated ahead of its release.  Yet, there is a vigor to Rocky III, and the highs and lows are told efficiently at a very comfortable pace. 

I saw Rocky III before I saw the prior two films and at age ten, this had my attention from beginning to end. It’s likely when I left the theatre, I wanted to be a boxer and pound someone’s flesh into a bloody pulp amid a cheering crowd.  I recall the whole audience in the theater applauding as soon as Rocky triumphed again.  I also recall the tears and sniffles I heard at the midway point when poor Mickey’s life suddenly ends.  These are beloved characters that we only want to remain happy and healthy.

Rocky III is not accurate to how it really is for professional boxers.  I do not think the well edited cuts of the fights are genuine either.  A lot of the footage looks like an action movie more than a sports picture.  When Clubber Lang swings with a jab, there’s a whooshing sound.  However, Stallone as a writer/director knew how to touch on the melodrama effectively with laughs, sadness, fears and cheers. 

With that amazing Bill Conti soundtrack, Survivor’s rattlesnake opening chords of their Oscar nominated song, Mr. T and, oh yeah, a giant named Hulk Hogan as a beast of a wrestler named Thunderlips, Rocky III is outstanding, pure escapist entertainment.

UNCOMMON VALOR

By Marc S. Sanders

In the decade following the Vietnam War a common denial (or ignorance, maybe) went towards American soldiers who were missing in action.  Many men were theorized to be prisoners of war long after the armed forces left the country, ending a losing battle with record numbers of casualties.  A handful of films of the 1980s brought focus to this topic, as a means for adventurous entertainment.  Chuck Norris had a series of Missing In Action films.  Even light action fare TV shows like The A-Team and Magnum PI brought attention to this issue.  Most predominantly, the possibilities of POWs were ingrained within Sylvester Stallone’s box office bonanza of Rambo pictures.  In 1982, Ted Kotcheff directed the initial entry of that series, First Blood, and he zeroed in much more precisely the following year, with Uncommon Valor.  

Gene Hackman is retired Marine Colonel Jason Rhodes who begins a decade long campaign convincing the U.S. government to seek out those who were left behind and are likely being held as prisoners of war.  His motivation stems from his belief that his son Frank is likely being held captive in a camp located in northern Laos.  

By the time 1983 arrives no action of recovery or rescue is taken.  The Colonel is committed to bearing the responsibility.  He appreciatively accepts financing of his own mission from an oil tycoon (Robert Stack) whose son might be with Frank.  The Colonel also recruits members of Frank’s unit who made it home (Fred Ward, Reb Brown, Randall “Tex” Cobb, Harold Sylvester, and Tim Thomerson). Patrick Swayze is a young guy named Scott who never served in the conflict but is an expert combat and weapons specialist who will get these men retrained for the upcoming rescue.  He also has his own reasons for partaking of this mission. 

Uncommon Valor is sporadic on humor and focused on the adventure and resourcefulness.  The first half provides footage of how the squad gets reacquainted with each other and the jungle elements they left behind in Vietnam.  They practice routines outlined by the Colonel with ground patrols, detonators, hand to hand combat, artillery, sabotage, and chopper rescue.  The second half follows them back into the Asian country where they have to obtain weapons and supplies, while making connections with locals who will escort them through the dense jungle area towards the camp.  

This is a rare occasion where Gene Hackman is not applying much of his acting craft. He is primarily going through motions of Kotcheff’s film direction with a script rumored to be co-written by Wings Hauser (also a producer on the film).  The trauma of the war is primarily carried by Fred Ward who struggles with PTSD long before it became so widely attributed to service men and women after returning from combat.  In First Blood, Stallone offered a much more substantial and convincing demonstration.  Yet, Ward does a serviceable job with a script that never goes terribly deep.

Uncommon Valor is better described as a present-day adventure picture.  It’s never boring.  There are fireball explosions and machine gun shootouts. The action set pieces still hold up with good art designs staged off the Hawaiian Islands in place of a sweltering Vietnam.  The prisoners who are recovered, supposedly held for over a decade, are chilling to look at with obvious malnourishment and dead-blank expressions.

Randall “Tex” Cobb and Reb Brown (the TV movie Captain America) are mostly doing wacky A-Team material here.  Gene Hackman, Fred Ward and Harold Sylvester are the straight characters.  

It’s not as grand as a Rambo film, but Uncommon Valor never lampoons or minimizes what was a horrifying experience for those enlisted soldiers who never came home, while their next of kin never obtained closure.  

For the 1980s, which feels like it had just passed yesterday, it’s fair to say that all those missing in action during that terrible and bloody war are no longer alive over fifty years later.  The opportunity to search and negotiate for their freedom has long expired by now.  While movies like Missing In Action, Rambo and Uncommon Valor focused on fictional triumphs that were never factually replicated, at least these films can serve as reminders for the sacrifices these people served at the behest of their country.  I’m not writing to ease lifelong pains.  All I can do is recognize, remind and be forever grateful.  These movies still serve a purpose beyond the pulpy Saturday afternoon adventures. 

TOOTSIE

By Marc S. Sanders

Tootsie is my favorite comedy of all time.  At age ten I saw it on Christmas Eve with my family and beyond the Star Wars and Rocky films, I had yet to see an audience respond, or more specifically laugh, so uncontrollably for two hours straight.  I might not have recognized all of the innuendo and I was not yet alert to the idea of women feeling belittled while knowing they should be entitled to equal respect, but the performances, especially from Dustin Hoffman were entirely genuine.  Tootsie still remains the only film where I can forget that a man, a not so attractive or sexy man, is convincingly disguising himself as a woman who possesses internal strength and gusto.

Whether directing or acting on screen, Sydney Pollack was not someone well known for overseeing comedy at the time.  Yet, that’s an attribute to the end product of this celebrated movie.  Other than a typical Bill Murray routine in an uncredited role, no one in this picture is waving their hands in the air to insist they’re funny.  The humor of Tootsie bears from true, raw emotion, fear and desperation.  No one is doing Saturday Night Live sketches and building up to the next punchline.  Despite the cross dressing, Tootsie is not even a farce.  A guy gets a job wearing the necessary garb and modifying his verbiage, but only to earn enough money to survive.  However, it also doesn’t help that he’s falling for his co-worker.  

Dustin Hoffman is an actor living in New York City named Michael Dorsey.  He’s a great, learned performer, especially on the stage, who lives with his playwright buddy Jeff (Murray) in a crummy apartment in the meat packing district.  They need to raise enough money to put on Jeff’s play in Syracuse.  

The problem is that Michael can no longer get cast in anything.  Not on stage or even in a commercial.  His agent (Pollack) says it point blank that nobody will hire him.  He’s just too difficult with short bursts of temper and no tolerance for others who work in the field.  

So, Michael surrenders to desperation and puts on the guise of a character actress named Dorothy Michaels.  As quick as she stands up for femininity against a chauvinistic TV director (Dabney Coleman) she is cast on the most watched daytime soap opera.  As long as Michael can perform off and on camera as Dorothy he should be able to earn more than enough money for Jeff’s play.

Complications arise though when he becomes protective of his co-star, Julie (Jessica Lange, in her Oscar winning role), against her unfaithful boyfriend, the TV director.  Julie’s widowed father, Les, is falling for Dorothy though, and then there is Michael’s friend Sandy (Teri Garr) who lost out on the part that he earned, and to keep things maintained has been seduced by Michael into a romantic relationship beyond just their friendship.

With me so far?  I hope so because there’s even more obstacles to overcome.  Tootsie is very economical in its story development, but it’s also a very crowded film.

Don McGuire and Larry Gelbart (TV’s M*A*S*H) wrote this Oscar nominated script with a brilliant collection of characters.  The blessing is while it sounds like farce, Tootsie is never delivered with a slapstick tongue.  In order for the film to work, Dustin Hoffman especially had to portray Michael Dorsey as a guy with natural ticks, motivations and fears.  He accomplishes that because Michael always ensures that Dorothy is as real as she can ever be.  When Dorothy hails a cab or shops for clothes the southern accent must hold while perusing through the city streets in heels.  Michael gets frustrated over what to wear for a dinner visit at Julie’s apartment.  Especially when Julie opens up her heart, Hoffman is precise to make sure Dorothy approaches with a low whispered approach to simply be a consoling girlfriend.  

The comedy arrives when Michael has no other choice but to break this strong powered female persona.  Dorothy will call for a cab but if it just won’t stop, then a deep voiced, bellowing New Yorker will come out of this woman’s mouth with an angry “TAXI!!!”  I like to believe that Sydney Pollack deliberately arranged for Dorothy to yank a Woody Allen lookalike out of a cab that was about to be taken from Dorothy too.  Dustin Hoffman knows Michael Dorsey is such a committed method actor that he has to convince all eight million people in New York he is strong willed Dorothy Michaels – a character actress capable of playing the new Hospital Administrator on Southwest General. 

There are so many fleshed out pairs of relationships in Tootsie – all going beyond the cross dressing of the film’s main character.  All of these people could get along forever if only for the fact that some characters have befriended a man while others truly believe they have made a connection with a woman.  How long can we have it both ways?  The facade has to undo itself, right?  True.  Thankfully it occurs at the end when every single character can have it explained to them all at once.  I’ve never forgotten the roars of laughter from my mom, dad and grandmother as the end of Tootsie arrived.  Well-placed close-up shots of every actor who had a speaking role in this movie is covered (well except for Sydney Pollack as Michael’s agent). On Christmas Eve in 1982, the packed movie house at the Forum Theater on Route 4 in Paramus NJ only amplified the shocking reactions.  Tootsie is a reason why you sit among a crowd at a movie theater.  

This is Dustin Hoffman’s all-time best performance.  He was nominated against fierce competition from Paul Newman in The Verdict, Jack Lemmon in Missing, and Ben Kingsley in Ghandi (who took home the trophy). Michael Dorsey/Dorothy Michaels is a much more challenging role than what Hoffman superbly accomplished in his two Oscar winning roles (Kramer Vs Kramer, Rain Man).  Robin Williams or Tom Hanks could have played Michael Dorsey who invents Dorothy Michaels.  Yet, what Hoffman emotes are the natural tics of a guy who is constantly broke while he charms an array of women at his birthday party, only with the intention of bedding them and hardly ever listening to what these ladies have to say.  When Hoffman puts Michael literally in a pair of woman’s shoes though, he begins to identify the lack of respect that women endure on a daily basis.  

Watch Dustin Hoffman’s body language.  He becomes angered with his agent upon learning that he lost out on a role which somehow leads to a debate about whether a tomato should walk or talk or sit or stand.  That back and forth is outrageously hilarious.  Having seen Tootsie hundreds of times though, I now appreciate how a schleppy looking Michael hustles across the streets of New York, avoiding traffic and then marches down the hallway to his agent’s office.  Hoffman twitches his head and shrugs his shoulders as if he’s prepping to give the agent a piece of his mind.  Hoffman is so absorbed in this guy he’s playing.  I am not recognizing any other kind of Dustin Hoffman that I’ve seen anywhere else.

Sydney Pollack is also attuned to the cutthroat atmosphere of desperate theater folk trying to survive in this concrete jungle.  Tootsie opens with a montage of quick episodes for Michael.  He is leading a workshop while being candidly ugly with his fellow thespian students about how challenging it is to get work.  In between, are auditions that he goes on where there is one reason after another why he can’t land a role.  Michael Dorsey is an incredibly skillful actor, but that means nothing for this role or that role.

On this most recent viewing I caught on to a detail that never occurred to me.  Bill Murray as Jeff, the broke playwright, is snacking on lemons and wincing while he talks to Michael.  Now I don’t know if this is in the script or if this was Pollack or Murray’s idea.  Nevertheless, it’s a brilliant detail.  These guys are so broke that they have resorted to smuggling lemon slices out of the restaurant they work at to live off of.  Another actor or filmmaker would have used an orange or cookies.  Who snacks on lemons?  Only those with nothing else to rely on.  

Makeup bottles with spirit gum, cannisters of fake blood, prosthetic teeth, props and sloppily hung costume wear are all given focus beyond the broad comedic storylines.  Sydney Pollack pans his camera over all of these items with no actors in frame because he wanted to ensure that being an actor or a playwright in New York is nothing glamorous.  It’s a world of unending torment. All of these nuances and details justify the extremes that Michael has to go through to achieve his goal.  

Jessica Lange never plays her role for laughs.  Her portrayal of Julie, the beautiful, blond celebrity of daytime television, is authentic and she inherits a new girlfriend to confide in. Finally, Julie can share what she values and holds dear.  You can’t not fall in love with someone who only treasures the best parts of her young life and yet only seeks a companion to chat with.  A humble celebrity is hard to find and that is one reason Michael falls hard for her.  Lange is outstanding while being so heartfelt.

Teri Garr’s comedy stems from the insecurities of actors.  Sandy is described as someone who wants to commit suicide at a birthday party.  Doing community theater for over thirty years I know precisely who this person is.  I’ve been this person, and I’ve encountered hundreds of these people.  It’s hard to be a big fish in the small pond of community theater.  Imagine trying to hold on to your sanity when you have to compete with all of New York.  Teri Garr was rightly Oscar nominated for what could have been a throwaway part. Like Hoffman she also has these little gestures that suggest her lack of confidence. After she sleeps with Michael and he’s getting ready to leave, Garr peaks at her naked chest hidden underneath the sheets.  It’s as if she’s wondering was I not attractive enough.  She’s hurting. No matter if she just had sex with one of her favorite people, she is still suffering.

Charles Durning is familiar for having the tough guy, intimidating persona because he’s usually so much larger than life.  However, he offers a sweetness to this guy who’s ready for companionship.  You don’t want Michael or Dorothy to let him down.  Les doesn’t deserve to get hurt.

Again, as I described any of these characterizations, none of it is funny.  They are wrapped in sensitivity. There’s a lonely sadness to people like Michael, Jeff, Julie, Sandy and Les.  Yet, when this variety of sorrow and anguish collide, while poor Michael is only trying to make some money, does it all combust in hilariously, unwinnable scenarios of tremendous proportions.

Tootsie is an amazing film.  It is one of the smartest, most insightful scripts ever written and it is blessed with a cast and director who mastered how to live in an unforgiving and unsympathetic industry.  This picture offers lessons in the human spirit while demonstrating the lengths and boundaries that must be broken in order to survive.  By practically not performing as a comedy, it only becomes that much more funnier and wiser.  

Tootsie is a perfect film!