Category: Genre

SAINT MAUD (2019, United Kingdom)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Rose Glass
Cast: Morfydd Clark, Jennifer Ehle, Lily Frazer
My Rating: 8/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 93% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A pious nurse becomes dangerously obsessed with saving the soul of her dying patient.


This is a review where the less I say about the plot, the better, so this will be a short one.

What happens when a horror movie that’s 84 minutes long is virtually all build-up to a shocking payoff in the last 10 minutes?  You divide audiences and critics, that’s what happens.  The handy-dandy Rotten Tomatoes website gives Saint Maud a hefty 93% critics score…but manages a substandard 65% from audiences.

I get it.  This film is an exercise in tone and mood.  In a word, it’s unsettling.  Look at it in hindsight and not much happens.  But this is one of those films where the destination isn’t really the point…it’s the journey.

Maud (Morfydd Clark) is a private nurse to a terminal cancer victim, Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), who used to be a famous choreographer until she fell ill in her prime.  Maud seems timid and competent, but she is a recent convert to Catholicism and has taken its teachings perhaps a little too much to heart.  For example, when she prays in front of her makeshift altar at home to pray, she sprinkles unpopped popcorn kernels in front of her before she kneels.  This is based on fact: there is an outdated practice called Corporal Mortification where devout Christians would inflict self-harm while praying.  The sight of her knees settling on those kernels made me wince.  And I won’t even mention what she does to the insoles of her shoes.  She also experiences sporadic moments of religious ecstasy (what the filmmakers refer to as “Godgasms”, though that term is never mentioned in the film).  These mini-epiphanies have a disturbing tendency to end just as Maud’s face seems to stretch beyond any human capability.  Creepy.

(A brief prologue also insinuates that something horrific may have happened in Maud’s previous posting, but it’s left mostly in the background.  Mostly.)

Maud is taken with Amanda, perhaps physically, but mostly with the idea that she can help save Amanda’s soul.  Staring death in the face, Amanda has little time for religion, but she humors Maud’s prayers before meals and even seems to experience a tiny bit of religious ecstasy along with Maud.  But beneath everything is this undercurrent of dread or foreboding.  Director Rose Glass is an expert at framing simple scenes in a way that conveys much more than what is visible to the eye.  Lights flicker.  There are subtle focus racks reminiscent of Vertigo.  Occasional voiceovers give a glimpse into Maud’s mind about her faith in God and her doubts.

I could say more about the plot, but I think that would detract from the experience of watching the film.  The tension and suspense leading up to the film’s climactic outburst are expertly sustained.  …and that one single cockroach is creeeepy…

No doubt some viewers will walk away from Saint Maud feeling the same way the Rotten Tomatoes voters felt.  I can’t think of anything that might change your mind if that’s the case.  This movie is a master class in generating a suspenseful atmosphere on a budget.  There are some obvious visual effects, but they are used sparingly and effectively.  There are stretches where we are led to believe, due to years of conditioning from previous films, that something super scary is about to happen…and then it doesn’t.  This happens a lot.  But I don’t think that’s a bad thing.  When done right, suspense in a film is a welcome experience.  To have a film where the entire movie is constructed out of suspense is a minor miracle.

Watch this one with the lights out and the doors unlocked.  I double-dog dare you.

LIGHTYEAR

By Marc S. Sanders

It’s kind of neat to see the evolution of a classic film character when you are a fully aware adult.  In 1995, I had no idea what the term Pixar meant, or knew the impact it would have with the Disney brand as a whole or on the cinematic landscape.  Pixar is now as pioneering as Skywalker Sound or Industrial Light and Magic.  There’s Pixar, and then there’s everything else.  Back in ’95, I was age 23, and my intuition never perked up that I was watching a touchstone character like Buzz Lightyear who would become as grand today as Batman and Elvis turned out to be in an ever-changing pop culture lexicon. Buzz Lightyear is by far one of the company’s most inventive creations.

Jump to nearly thirty years later, with four Toy Story adventures, and endless amounts of merchandising the Space Ranger has been primed for a more personal adventure beyond the imagination of a young child possessing an action figure in his playroom.  Lightyear tells of the adventure that leant to merchandising of the toy depicted in the Toy Story fictional world.  (Try not to think too hardly on that description.)

Buzz Lightyear (Chris Evans) is the eminent Space Ranger of Star Command, out to explore strange new worlds and seek out new life and– STOP! That’s another franchise.  When Captain Lightyear comes upon an unchartered planet, complications in unexpected science fiction adventure ensue.  Buzz and the small colony living on his global spaceship are marooned on this planet with no immediate solution for getting off and returning to Earth, 4.2 billion light years away.  Buzz makes it his mission to uncover a new kind of resource fuel that will eventually help the colony make its eventual return home.  Yet, with each experimental try, the minutes he spends in his super speed orbits around the planet equate to years for the colony who have set up habitation below.  His comrades on the ground below continue to age while Buzz does not.

I needed help with this picture.  My wife had to explain the staple lesson that usually comes with each Pixar film that I just didn’t catch while watching Lightyear.  I don’t think I’m spoiling anything, but the film reminds us to accept the hand dealt to us and appreciate what has come even if we never expected or planned on the circumstances in the first place.  It’s a good lesson.  I guess I just wish Lightyear made it a little clearer.  There’s a lot of mud on the windshield that I needed to wipe away before I realized what the message was about.

Maybe I was not fair with this film.  Tim Allen was not invited back to lend his recognizable voiceover to the character.  I guess Pixar is insistent that he’s reserved only for the toy version of the character.  Chris Evans is fine, mind you, and he doesn’t overdo it.  Yet, I could not help but think Tim Allen would have been just as capable and even more entitled to voice the role yet again.

Perhaps I was thinking that if Pixar wanted to go in another animated direction with the character, it just seemed completely fruitless.  How different could Lightyear be from the Toy Story films if the animated design is pretty similar in every frame?  Honestly, it doesn’t look like a new kind of device.  So that was a problem for me, as well.  It wasn’t inventive enough.  Maybe it’s time for a live action version of the space traveler.  Imagine Chris Evans wearing a live action and tactile version of the famous astronaut costume with the colorful buttons.  I still say that could work, and it’s what Disney/Pixar should have considered.

Maybe I’m getting bored with the time travel motif.  Isn’t everyone doing that these days?  Doesn’t it also seem like all our heroes are meeting their future selves and struggling to understand their current predicament?  Lightyear hinges on these story developments, and when the moments arrive my eyes rolled in the back of my head.  Time travel stories are very tricky for me to appreciate.  Often, the narrative paints itself into a corner, unable to explain itself back correctly.  Only two films that come to mind have worked their way out of it almost seamlessly – Back To The Future and 12 Monkeys.

So, while I love the lesson that Lightyear offers, the standard carbon copy plot outline left me unfocused at times.

The voiceover cast is well done with Keke Palmer, Taika Waititi and James Brolin.  The animation is gorgeous, most especially when Buzz is piloting his super jet around the planet’s sun. The atmosphere of the planet is fun when it becomes a nuisance with giant flying insects and vines that come alive to entangle the characters at any given moment.

Science Fiction can go to infinity and beyond with the directions it can take.  There is absolutely no limit.  With today’s technology in filmmaking and the endless resources that Disney provides, why didn’t the filmmakers try a little harder with Lightyear? Again, a live action interpretation would have allowed it to stand apart from the character’s prior Toy adventures, and some different avenues in space exploration would have opened a leaner and more entertaining story.  If Star Trek can do it, Lightyear can do it too.

I think Pixar tried to go the route of Christopher Nolan, by way of Interstellar.  However, Lightyear is designed for people of all ages where the brain of the show is in reminding us how to carry ourselves through life, and not to uncover the twists that a brilliant filmmaker like Nolan has become recognized for.  I didn’t want to resolve a puzzle in fictional science.  Lightyear is trying too hard to be to be brainy and thus we get distracted from its “The More You Know” lesson in self-effacement.

SORRY TO BOTHER YOU (2018)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Boots Riley
Cast: LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Jermaine Fowler, Omari Hardwick
My Rating: 6/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 93% Certified Fresh

PLOT: In an alternate present-day version of Oakland, telemarketer Cassius Green discovers a magical key to professional success, propelling him into a universe of greed.


[Author’s Note: In my mind, it’s virtually impossible to discuss Sorry to Bother You without making comparisons to Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us.  But I will give it the old college try…]


Boots Riley’s directorial debut, Sorry to Bother You, has been described by Riley himself as an absurdist dark comedy combined with magical realism and science fiction.  Talk about your genre mashups.  While other directors have proven this kind of filmmaking is not only possible but profitable (Being John Malkovich [1999], Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [2004]), Riley’s film feels like he bit off a little more than he could chew.  After it was over, instead of feeling like I had seen something groundbreaking and provocative, I felt like I had just sat through an ambitious student film.  At some point, it lost its way.

Cassius Green (LaKeith Stanfield) is an underachiever with an improbably gorgeous girlfriend named Detroit (Tessa Thompson), a performance artist who specializes in the kind of art that involves water balloons, spent bullet casings, and recitations from The Last Dragon (1985).  All righty, then.  Cassius is hired as a telemarketer at a company where the fact that he falsified his résumé and brought in fake trophies shows initiative.  On his first day on the job, the film shows flashes of promise.  As he makes the calls, his workstation magically drops into the homes of the people he’s calling, a perfect representation of the intrusion these callers make.  After repeated failures, an old-timer named Langston (an underused Danny Glover) gives him a tip: Use your white voice.  “I’m not talking about Will Smith-white.  That’s just proper.”  Now THAT’S funny.

So Cassius starts using a white voice (overdubbed by David Cross) on his calls, and wouldn’t you know it, he becomes the highest-selling telemarketer on the sales floor.  This is not fantasy, as far as I’m concerned.  I recently watched a documentary where a Latino man submitted hundreds of résumés while job hunting with no responses.  In desperation, he changed his name on his résumé from “Jose” to “Joseph.”  Presto…the calls started rolling in.  True story.

Anyway, Cassius gets a promotion and is moved upstairs to be a “Power Caller.”  Meanwhile, the other telemarketers organize and strike for better wages, so Cassius is derided as a scab every time he comes to work.  But then he discovers what he’s actually selling as a Power Caller.  It has something to do with a company called WorryFree, a system whereby workers sign a lifetime contract to live and work in a single communal location with no paychecks.  One of their slogans is, “If you worked here, you’d be home now!”

WorryFree is run by Steve Lift, played by Armie Hammer at his smarmy best.  In the movie’s most pointed satirical moment, Lift invites Cassius to a party where he goads Cassius into rapping for his party guests.  “Come on, you’re from Oakland, I refuse to believe you don’t know how to rap!”  Cassius tries some feeble rhymes, and then he realizes exactly what Lift and his party guests want to hear.  His solution is controversial, provocative, and hilarious.  I won’t spoil it for you…it’s the high point of the film.

Meanwhile, there are other scenes involving the strike, the strikers, an underground movement called Left Eye, a Claymation sequence, horses, and a nearly-naked Detroit wearing a costume that looks inspired by Janet Jackson’s infamous Rolling Stone cover shoot.  It’s all a little haphazard and cluttered and unfocused.

I believe this movie has a point.  I think it comes closest to MAKING its point when it deals specifically with how the telemarketing company and Steve Lift plan to transform their workforce to increase profits, and with how Cassius deals with the conflict between his steadily increasing paychecks and his moral conscience.  But in between those scenes are myriad other plotlines and side notes that were merely distracting rather than world-building.  (For example, did we really need those scenes where Detroit may or may not get involved with another man?  Was it necessary for Steve Lift’s party to devolve into an Eyes Wide Shut situation?  And in the name of M. Night Shyamalan…was that ending really necessary?)

Sorry to Bother You seems to have struck a chord with many viewers.  I am not one of them.  After it was over, I found it impossible not to compare it to other recent films like Get Out, Us, or even BlacKkKlansman.  Those films found their through lines, made their points, AND were also massively entertaining.  Sorry to Bother You feels like it fell short of the finish line with those goals in sight.

THE NAKED CITY (1948)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Jules Dassin
Cast: Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart, Don Taylor
My Rating: 7/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 85%

PLOT: In almost documentary-like fashion, New York City cops investigate the brutal murder of a young woman.


It’s that narration.

If The Naked City hadn’t included that cockamamie narration, I might have given it a “9” instead of a “7.”  Here is a police procedural ahead of its time, a pre-television-era herald of popular entertainments from Dragnet to Law and Order to CSI.  The story is absorbing and engaging from beginning to end, even if some of the acting is not especially Oscar-worthy.  There are enough twists and turns in the search for a cold-blooded killer – or killers – to keep your attention all the way through.  And over it all, intruding where it’s not wanted, is a Disney-esque narration from the film’s producer, Mark Hellinger, who also produced a superior prison film a year earlier, Brute Force (1947), also directed by Jules Dassin.

Imagine a scene where foot-weary detectives are pounding the streets, making inquiries at jewelry stores, hairdressers, pawnshops, looking for leads.  As we watch the scene progress, we hear the narrator: “Are your feet tired, detective?  Not to worry, only 400 more jewelry shops to go.”

Or another scene where a detective looks wearily through a window at the city laid out below, pondering where to go for the next clue.  Cue the narrator: “There’s your city, Halloran.  Take a good look.  Jean Dexter is dead, and the answer must be somewhere down there…”

I hated the narration in this movie.  It reduced what I was watching to the level of one of those Disney animated shorts where Goofy is playing some kind of sport and the narrator describes the action while Goofy screws it up spectacularly.  Another example, as morning comes to the city: “The city is quiet now, but soon it will be pounding with activity.  This time yesterday, Jean Dexter was just another pretty girl, but now she’s the marmalade on 10,000 pieces of toast.”  Give me a break.  I fully understand how future TV shows made use of this kind of narration, but not to this degree.  It made a crime story sound like an industrial video.

So let us stipulate that I hated the narration.  The rest of this review will discuss the film as if the narration didn’t exist.  It’s best for you, it’s best for me…it’s best for us.

The Naked City opens with the murder of a young woman, Jean Dexter.  The rest of the movie details the police investigation and search for her killer.  In broad strokes, that’s pretty much it.  In its own way, it reminded me a little bit of All the President’s Men (1976) in that we’re focused exclusively on the process of investigation with very little cutting away to other participants.  The lead figures are a very Oyrish Lieutenant Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) and the dependable Halloran (Don Taylor).  The chief suspect is Frank Niles (an impossibly young Howard Duff, whom you may recall as Ted Kramer’s attorney in Kramer vs. Kramer [1979]).  Niles raises so many red flags that I started to think he was an obvious red herring.  Under questioning, he lies and lies and lies again, even “forgetting” to tell the police he’s engaged to the dead woman’s best friend.  Can this guy be for real?  We have seen so many criminals in so many TV shows and movies who are so much better at lying to the police…but he’s so bad at it that he must be innocent by default, right?

The investigation continues.  Clues and leads are chased down.  Another murder occurs.  False confessions are heard and dismissed.  The dead girl’s parents come down to the mortuary to identify the body.  (That particular scene was notable for being filmed at an actual New York City mortuary, a first for its time.  In fact, the vast majority of The Naked City was filmed on location in the Big Apple, one of the first major Hollywood productions to do so.  It’s hard to conceive of now, but this caused a minor sensation upon the movie’s release.)

While the mystery of the murder is the real meat of the story, I got the impression that the goal of the film was to bring these mundane police procedures to the masses, to show audiences that, while you work and eat and play and raise your families and go to baseball games, the good guys are on the case whenever something goes wrong.  And this is what they do for just one murder case.  In a city like New York, who knows how many murder cases are being worked on at once?  As the closing narration famously says, “There are eight million stories in the naked city.  This has been one of them.”  (Okay, that’s the one bright spot in the narration, let us never speak of it again.)

I can even draw a direct line between The Naked City and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).  In The Naked City, Halloran uncovers a possible connection between the second murder victim and the prime suspect in the first murder.  (It’s complicated.)  He gets permission from Muldoon to chase it down, despite how unpromising it is.  As he’s following his nose, Muldoon chases down a lead of his own, getting closer to the true mastermind behind this case.  In this way, there is a direct parallel in The Silence of the Lambs where Crawford takes a task force to a suspect’s house while Clarice follows a nearly invisible trail to Jame Gumb’s doorstep.

Everything comes to a head with a foot chase that leads to the Williamsburg Bridge, scenes that must have been a little mind-blowing for 1948 audiences as the camera seemingly defies gravity, climbing higher and higher into the scaffolding with the fleeing suspect.  (It should also be noted that the film perhaps romanticizes inner city life to a degree…as the suspect flees across the bridge, he breaks up a group of children skipping rope on the footpath.  Not the kind of thing I’d expect to see today, for sure.)

The Naked City is about as good as crime dramas in the ‘40s could get without resorting to the darkness and shadows of film noir.  This is, after all, a film about the good guys, not the bad.  Watching cops interrogate witnesses and compare notes about stolen jewelry isn’t quite as “sexy” as watching Bogie draw down on some hoodlums, but hey, that’s the kind of thing that really happens in the big bad city.

LA STRADA (1954, Italy)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Federico Fellini
Cast: Anthony Quinn, Giulietta Masina, Richard Basehart
My Rating: 8/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 98% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A child-like woman is sold to a traveling entertainer, consequently enduring physical and emotional pain along the way.


Fellini’s La strada, the very first film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, is widely considered to be one of the greatest movies of all time, a touchstone of the Italian neo-realist movement that grew out of Bicycle Thieves (1948) and Umberto D. (1952).  Ask anyone who knows me, and they’ll tell you that, while I appreciate these kinds of films, they are not exactly my bread and butter.  There are some Italian movies that I will probably never watch, and I am quite sure I won’t miss them.  However, I am happy I finally sat and watched La strada.

But why?  La strada is not a happy movie by any stretch of the imagination.  It tells the story of a vaudevillian strongman, Zampanò (Anthony Quinn), who entertains street crowds by stretching a chain across his chest muscles until it breaks.  When the movie opens, he is paying the mother of a large family 10,000 lire for Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina), a child-like woman with a hugely expressive face.  For that princely sum, she will leave her family forever and learn a trade as Zampanò’s assistant.

They hit the road.  Zampanò is not a very nice man.  He teaches Gelsomina the basics but refuses to let her learn any more than is necessary.  When they eat dinner at a restaurant, he picks up a local floozy and ditches Gelsomina for the night.  When she tries to run away, he runs after her and beats her.  When they take up with a traveling circus, he refuses to let her perform with anyone else but him.  Gelsomina despairs of her existence, but she has convinced herself she can’t leave because she can’t think of anywhere else to go.

In a traveling circus, Gelsomina meets a carefree acrobat/clown known only as The Fool (Richard Basehart).  The Fool lives up to his name: performing dangerous high-wire acts and recklessly teasing Zampanò for no apparent reason, even heckling Zampanò during his act.  This is not a smart man, but he manages to steal a quiet moment with Gelsomina where, in his own way, he tries to let her know that her life has a purpose because EVERYTHING has a purpose, even a pebble he picks up off the ground.  “I don’t know what this pebble’s purpose is, but it must have one, because if this pebble has no purpose, then everything is pointless.  Even the stars!”

Examine that statement closely enough and it’s not quite as life-affirming as it seems, but it lights a spark in Gelsomina’s otherwise bleak existence.  From then on, she holds fast to that conversation, referring back to it when new hardships or doubts arise.  Meanwhile, Zampanò remains as cold and ruthless as ever, even trying to steal from a convent.

And then something unexpected happens that seems as if it will finally break Zampanò’s hold on Gelsomina, but no.  Gelsomina clings to the belief that her purpose is to be with Zampanò, no matter what happens or how miserable she might become.

…so, yeah, this isn’t exactly a happy film.  This is not the kind of movie I would normally seek out.  But in its bleakness, it achieves a kind of aching beauty, like Atonement (2007) or The Remains of the Day (1993).

A lot of that beauty is achieved through the must-see performance by Giulietta Masina as Gelsomina.  It’s clear that Gelsomina is stuck in a woman’s body but with the emotional maturity of a child.  Is she developmentally disabled?  The movie never makes it clear.  Perhaps she simply chose to retain her innocence while the rest of the world moved on around her.  In that way, she becomes almost like a character in a fairy tale.  I found myself wondering if the movie would have played the same had Gelsomina been a child rather than a grown woman.  It might have played a lot like the sequence in Pinocchio (1940) when he is captured by Stromboli and forced to perform for street crowds.

Masina’s performance as Gelsomina would be the single best reason I can think of to recommend this movie to anyone who might not otherwise watch it.  Her face and eyes light up like candles on a birthday cake when she smiles.  When she frowns, she puts clown makeup to shame.  And when she dons clown makeup herself and dances and plays the trombone, you can’t help but grin a little.  When she weeps because she can’t see The Fool anymore, she sounds like a little girl who’s lost a pet.  It’s one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen.

That performance is key to the movie.  Zampanò’s cruelty and dismissive nature masks his own fear of Gelsomina’s innocence.  He keeps her down because he doesn’t dare allow himself to believe he might be in the wrong.  Watching the movie, we allow ourselves to hope that perhaps Zampanò will reach a turning point where he throws himself at Gelsomina’s feet, begging forgiveness for his terrible behavior and past misdeeds.  But will it happen in time to make a difference?

On the Criterion Blu-ray of La strada, director Martin Scorsese states in an interview that, if you’ve never seen a Fellini film in your life, you could watch La strada and 8 ½ (1963) and you’d know all there is to know about Fellini and his films.  I’m certainly no Fellini expert, but that sounds accurate to me.  La strada contains all the seeds – the score, the performances, the circus theme – that come to fruition in 8 ½.  But La strada is the more accessible of those two films, in my opinion.  If you’re going to start somewhere, start here.

THE LAST WALTZ (1978)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: The Band, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Ringo Starr, Dr. John, Van Morrison, Ronnie Hawkins, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Wood
My Rating: 8/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 98% Certified Fresh

PLOT: In 1976, American rockers The Band performed their last concert ever with an unforgettable guest list.  Director Martin Scorsese filmed it, and the rest is history.


I mean, 16 years on the road, the numbers start to scare ya. I mean, I couldn’t live with 20 years on the road. I don’t think I could even discuss it.
– Robbie Robertson, vocals and lead guitar, The Band


Martin Scorsese’s film of The Last Waltz, the Band’s epic final concert in 1976, is a curious exploration of the highs and lows of what it means to be a rock star.  Or not just a rock star, but one of the stars of a touring band, one of those perpetually traveling bands like The Grateful Dead or Phish or, God help us, The Rolling Stones.  In their performances, you can clearly see the heedless joy with which every musician plays their part, whether it’s a rockin’ guitar solo or a yell during the refrain or a keyboardist getting lost in his own world for a minute or two.  There are smiles and grins and humble bows to the cheering audience in the dark.

But Scorsese makes an important choice with The Last Waltz not to show just the highs of live performance.  With intercut interviews, filmed some months after the concert itself, we get quiet, introspective feedback from band members who clearly love performing, but who recognize just how much touring has taken from them.  They have no desire to follow in the footsteps of predecessors who paid the ultimate price for fame.  “You can press your luck,” says Robbie Robertson at one point.  “The road has taken a lot of great ones.  Hank Williams.  Buddy Holly.  Otis Redding.  Janis.  Jimi Hendrix.  Elvis.  It’s a goddamn impossible way of life.”  Here is a man who has decided it’s time to end the show before it jumps the ultimate shark.

In this way, The Last Waltz becomes more than just a concert film or a pretentious exercise in cinéma verité.  It clearly presents both sides and asks the viewer: how much would you give to achieve the fame and fortune of a rock star?  Certainly, the highs are deliriously addictive.  But in their interviews, members of The Band seem diffident or downright dismissive of their fame and fortune.  One band member is happier when they’re OUT of the spotlight.  “And as soon as company came, of course, you know, we’d start having fun.  And you know what happens when you have too much fun.”

But in focusing on their interviews, I don’t want to give the impression that The Last Waltz is anything but entertaining from beginning to end.  Let’s be honest: the concert footage is what’s going to amaze you at the outset.


Scorsese sets the tone right at the start with a title card in huge letters: THIS FILM SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD.  The ensuing concert footage proves his point.  Especially on the newest Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection, the music coming out of the speakers is crisp and clean and begs to be blasted.  One number in particular, “Mystery Train”, is a pounding rockabilly song that felt and sounded most like I was really there.  The other guest performers do their part.  Muddy Waters gives a lesson on where the blues came from, putting pretenders to shame.  Joni Mitchell brings a more delicate touch with a heartfelt ballad about a wanderer who is imprisoned by the white lines on the road.  Van Morrison, whom I’ve never seen in any concert footage anywhere else, gives a damn good impression of Joe Cocker in his tight flared bellbottoms and low-cut T-shirt over his ample stomach – an image I would never have connected to Morrison.

I could go on, but you get the picture.  On the basis of the music and the performances alone, The Last Waltz is easily in my top three favorite concert films of all time, with first and second place rounded out by Monterey Pop and Gimme Shelter, respectively.  (For the record, I have never really cared for Woodstock…go figure.)  Combine that stirring music with the inside information from the interviews, and you’ve got a movie that captures a moment in time, a so-called “end of an era.”  Punk and disco are right around the corner.  Did The Band know it?  Watching it this time around, I couldn’t help but think of the ending of Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, with the gang walking to their certain doom because the world is changing, and they know they can’t change with it.  The Last Waltz isn’t quite that gloomy, of course.  But the sentiment is there.

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ANIMAL HOUSE

By Marc S. Sanders

When a film opens with two students walking across a college campus as the classical horn music of proud alumni accompany them, and then one of the students stops to pull up his fly, you know you are probably in for a contrast of ideals.

Animal House set a new standard in comedy featuring a John Belushi whose expressions and improvisations appeared too fast for the camera to catch everything he’s doing. The script never gave him much dialogue because his routines of smashing beer bottles, smashing guitars, smashing beer cans and just getting smashed merited no dialogue. He might have looked like a dirty slob, but he was a craftsman of facial expressions.

Every scene of Animal House plays like an episode of an ongoing sitcom; a raunchy one at that. A dead horse, a pledge ceremony, a toga party, a sabotaged parade, and a food fight. Each topic is the title of a sitcom’s various episodes.

John Landis directed the snobs vs slobs script co-written by Harold Ramis, and 40 years later the material still holds up. Then again, 40 years later, I wonder if this film would even get made. I’d rather not dwell on that.

What I do know is that this movie is still funny. Outrageously funny.

CODE OF SILENCE

By Marc S. Sanders

I must admit I have not watched many Chuck Norris movies. Just a handful here or there like The Delta Force, but on my radar to catch was always the cop thriller from 1985, Code Of Silence. I always intended to watch it someday as the film is highly endorsed by Siskel & Ebert. As well, it’s directed by Andrew Davis, the skilled filmmaker who would go on to direct The Fugitive and Under Siege.

Code Of Silence works in two ways; two stories that live up to the title. Norris is a Chicago cop named Eddie Cusack who heads a squad of under covers within the city. The film opens with what is supposed to be a well-planned drug bust that goes wrong when the one mob faction is overrun by another mob. Cusack’s informant as well as others turn up dead just before his band were to move in with arrests. Nearby, two of Cusack’s men come upon a young, unarmed man. The rookie officer witnesses the elder officer accidentally shoot the kid, and afterwards he plants a pistol in his hand to make it look like self-defense.

Now Cusack has to contend with a mob war in the streets where a boss’ daughter (Molly Kagan) is the only survivor of an attack and he must protect her. While at the same time he has to deal with his squad turning on him because he knows what the elder cop really did. The code of silence motif is expected to be honored in both camps. Personal vendettas and violations of police policy need to remain quieted.

The film belongs to Norris exclusively. Andrew Davis allows some of the action star’s kickboxing skills to work their way into the movie, and it all becomes a sidestep dance routine really. It always amuses me in these action pictures where the star will take on twenty guys at once yet he fights one or only two of them at a time. The other eighteen or nineteen thugs wait their turn. Why not just have all of them tackle Norris all together? No. Then we wouldn’t get his outstretched 360-degree roundhouse kicks in the air.

There’s also an unnecessary cop robot contraption that Norris pilots for the climactic action packed ending. This thing looks a rejected auditioner for the role of Johnny 5 in Short Circuit. The robot must have been too tall for the part and rather clunky. It has no relevance to either storyline and was obviously inserted for fun, campy violence of fireballs and explosions in the necessary old, abandoned warehouse where all of these actioners have to take place.

Fortunately, Code Of Silence has good story material to work with, and some thrilling stunt work including Chuck Norris pursuing a bad guy on top of a moving elevated train that makes its way with an eventual leap into the river. From what I could tell, that was really Mr. Norris himself in that whole scene. Good footage here.

Andrew Davis relies on what would become regular side characters that appear in many of his other films including Ron Dean and Joseph Kosala. They always make for good cop antagonists within the Chicago settings of his films. Norris is also good in a quiet Clint Eastwood kind of manner as he holds his own beliefs against the rest of his department who support the elder cop.

I like the conflicts that happen on both sides of the law in Code Of Silence. Sure, it’s got some silliness to it with the kickboxing and the gigantic, cop robot that shamelessly waddles along, but the two stories hold up by keeping me engaged of their outcomes.

Code Of Silence is a pretty effective thriller.

CLERKS

By Marc S. Sanders

Did Kevin Smith know he’d create a lasting cultural phenomenon when he recruited his neighborhood friends to depict the mundane life of a convenience store clerk (Dante) and video store clerk (Randall)? How could he? He made this very shoestring budgeted movie by maxing out his credit cards. He’s on a short list of entrepreneurs who went all in. Bravo!

Clerks is a film that doesn’t seem to say much, but actually says a lot by the time it’s finished. Smith wrote a script where Dante mulls over how hard it is to move on, to change and accept the fact that even his ex-girlfriend moved on to get married, while he’s nothing but number 37 on his current girlfriend’s oral conquests. It’s a challenge as he and Randall debate over the accomplishments of Star Wars films. Then there are the eccentric customers like Smith’s friend Walt Flanigan (of Comic Book Men) as a guy looking for the perfect dozen eggs, or another one offended by the harsh language of a couple of bored clerks.

On paper, this all looks ordinary and boring. Yet, that’s the point. It’s fair to say we have all experienced the boredom of work with no definitive vision of a future. So, we complain about how we are not supposed to be there on our day off, or that the most important, immediate need is participating in a Saturday afternoon hockey game. Since we gotta work, we’ll compromise. If we can’t leave work, we will move the game to the roof of the store.

Two legendary cinematic characters also debuted, Jay & Silent Bob (Jason Mewes & Smith). They just lean against a wall, smoke and do not much else. Still, they offer atmosphere. There’s always loiterers mulling around a 7-11 or Circle K. They have stories as well, but we will likely never know. They just cross our paths as we pick up a soda. Smith wrote these guys as anybody we’d recognize and who we’re familiar with.

Kudos to Kevin Smith for following through with Clerks. This doesn’t look like much of anything, but it’s everything.

MISS SLOANE

By Marc S. Sanders

Jessica Chastain is an aggressive actress. The talent is on par with Meryl Streep or Katherine Hepburn for sure, and the Oscar trophy she won earlier this year is evident of that. Actually, she’s worthy of more than just one. My question, though, is if she is too aggressive. Films like Zero Dark Thirty, Molly’s Game, and Miss Sloane, put her in characters that never stop to react and smell the roses. That wears me out. Could you just slow down Jessica, so I can take this all in, please? You’re talking faster than I can think.

In Miss Sloane, Chastain portrays an impenetrable lobbyist. Nothing gets past this woman and despite her shortcomings, nothing will harm her either. Elizabeth Sloane will always be one step ahead of the game. This is a fierce chess player in the political arena. She’s omnipotent and admits to hardly ever sleeping. Maybe the pill popping helps with that. Like the Faye Dunaway character from Network, she also has no time for personal relationships or sensitive sex. So, she’s a high paying client for a male escort who will wait for her to come home to satisfy her fix.

Elizabeth is first employed with a wealthy private law firm who wants her to head up a bill in favor of the gun lobby. She declines, walks out the door with one long speech, a way over the top laugh (this is where there’s too much Jessica in my morning coffee) and over half her staff. She goes to the other side of the aisle to lobby aggressively against the gun bill.

From there it’s one aggressive maneuver after another and Elizabeth more than proves that she’s got the balls for this game. Only thing is, as Elizabeth proceeds to countermeasure and attack from her side, is she losing sight of the subject at play? Will her soul swim to the surface showing any sense of morality?

The film begins where Elizabeth is being questioned at a hearing headed by a state Senator (John Lithgow, always a pleasure to see). Then it moves on to show us how Elizabeth finds herself at that hearing.

Miss Sloane has no limits to what she’ll do to protect the integrity of a client’s argument for the bill even if it means embarrassing a traitorous teammate, putting another teammate in an unwelcome limelight of political journalism or maybe even employing a cockroach of the sort to use as a listening device. Miss Sloane won’t hesitate to take risks for the lobby she’s been hired to pursue, even if it risks someone’s life or their reputation.

A twist presents itself at the end and yeah, it could work assuming you believe Elizabeth Sloane, the brilliant lobbyist, can telegraph about fifty different actions that could take place amounting to that one moment. The math adds up, but were the numbers fudged to allow the arithmetic to work? That’s why a film like Miss Sloane is hard for me to swallow.

Does this woman have ESP? The final card she plays would require not only her own personal endurance, but that of a colleague as well. A lot of factors all have to be in sync to make this story work out the way it does. So my suspension of disbelief was really tested with this film.

I go back to Jessica Chastain. Zero Dark Thirty remains my favorite of hers. She was a great underdog against a male oriented governing body in the pursuit of Bin Laden. After that, Miss Sloane released a few years later and Chastain got bit by the Aaron Sorkin bug, I think. Endless talking works as an intellect that’s hard to challenge. Problem is, I’m the viewer and I’m wondering for the first thirty minutes what in the hell you’re talking about. Miss Sloane isn’t an Aaron Sorkin film, but Jessica Chastain will have you convinced she wants it to be.

Fortunately, writer Jonathan Perera with director John Madden ease up on the brakes allowing much more realistic and human characters to invade the film including Lithgow, Alison Pill and an especially riveting performance from Gugu Mbatha-Raw (recently seen by me with a subpar script called The Whole Truth) who becomes Elizabeth’s trusted sidekick both behind and in front of the cameras for political jockeying. This is an actress ready for some lead roles.

I described Miss Sloane as omnipotent earlier and that’s a problem for the first act of the film. This character never shuts up early on. There’s next to no impact on anyone around her. She just talks and talks and talks and she convinces me that she’s the smartest one in the room, but she also makes me want to turn the movie off. The film saves itself with the able supporting cast eventually.

To watch Miss Sloane is not to take any position on gun lobbying especially seriously. I’m not sure the filmmakers have a stance to play. I’m not sure the filmmakers know whether to even regard the titled character as a hero or villain. Actually, I just think the purpose of the film is to show corner cutting and how aggressive a made-up lobbyist can actually be, devoid of any determining factors. We are privileged to see how far a woman with stiletto heels, a cinched up red head ponytail and a tight business suit will go to win at any cost. It’s intriguing, but I guess I just felt unfulfilled by the end. It was all there. It just seemed to work itself all out too conveniently by the end.