News You Can Bruise for 2015 August

Sumana was gone for most of the month, and I discovered how easy it is to get to Film Forum from the library to see a movie after work. And when Sumana was around we saw a bunch of movies together, and the upshot is that I've now seen every movie ever made and there are no more movies. Here's just a sampling of the films I saw in July.

• Young Mr. Lincoln (1939): Very hagiographic about Lincoln personally but unsparing about everything surrounding Lincoln, especially antebellum American society and politics. One of the lesser John Ford films I saw finished this month, if only because the competition's so stiff. In particular, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance does all the political stuff much better. Not bad though.
• The Grapes of Wrath (1940): Really good and super liberal. None of the "this is all in the past, you can relax now" we saw with Border Incident. Even the unbelievable ending, tacked on by the producer to forestall a socialist revolution, is downright pinko by today's degraded standards. I'd like to give special attention to John Carradine, who turns in a really good performance as a man of God who's lost his connection.
• Judge Priest (1934): I walked out of this movie after ten minutes because of the super-racist comedy. If this was a Serious Film I would deal with the racism, but this was supposed to be my lighthearted Grapes of Wrath chaser, so screw this movie. Also, is this guy a judge or a priest? Make up your mind! Negative one-and-a-half stars.
• Inside Out (2015): I love movies that posit weird theories of consciousness, and this one kinda mashes up Multiple Drafts with traditional theater-of-the-mind. Great stuff. It's a kids movie that's more mature than most movies for adults: not only is there no villain, the protagonists are also the antagonists. You could sit around and analyze the world of this movie for hours (I've done it; it's fun), but then there's this bit of IMDB trivia, which undermines most of the speculation you might do:

  When asked about the genders of the emotions, Pete Docter said, "It was intuitive. It felt to me like Anger's very masculine, I don't know why... with Mom and Dad, we skewed them all male and all female for a quick read, because you have to understand where we are, which is a little phony but hopefully people don't mind!"

  I try hard not to mind, I know this stuff is difficult, but if you're making decisions you consider phony for the sake of a quick read, I don't think you're creating something that can accommodate a nerd's analysis.

• Magic Mike XXL (2015): The bros started out a little bro-y for my tastes but over time their characters got more defined and it turned into a decent road trip/small business movie. I wouldn't watch it on the big screen unless you've got a taste for beefcake.

  I don't really have more to say about the movie but I would like to critique some of the striptease routines. Near the beginning of the movie they're planning all these cheesy soldier/fireman routines, and thankfully they move in a different direction but that makes me think the first Magic Mike must be unbearable, with Matthew McConaughey MCing these guys in Village People outfits. I liked the routines that had an improv element, like Donald Glover's rap or the Kevin Nash painting routine.

  Oh, also, Kevin Nash looks so much like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler (2008) that for the whole movie I thought it was Mickey Rourke, that he'd beefed up for The Wrestler and really liked being that buff and that's his look now. But I guess it's just a common look. I'm not great at this movie-watching stuff.

• Invention For Destruction (1958): a.k.a. "The Fabulous World of Jules Verne", a.k.a. "Vynález zkázy". An utterly Gilliam-tastic film, both in the animation style (a direct inspiration for Gilliam's Monty Python stuff) and in the single overarching aesthetic which requires that every piece of every elaborate set be custom built. Here's Pauline Kael from 1991:

  Zeman employs almost every conceivable trick, combining live action, animation, puppets, and painted sets that are a triumph of sophisticated primitivism. The variety of tricks and superimpositions seems infinite; as soon as you have one effect figured out another image comes on to baffle you.

  It's so fun to watch. The plot is terrible, but I don't care. It was a decent plot when Jules Verne came up with it in 1898. Recommended. I feel like this incredible movie is gonna get lost in this huge list because I don't have much to say about this except "it looks really cool", but it looks really cool.

• Wagon Master (1950): It's rare to see cinematic depictions of Mormons, and although the Mormons in Wagon Master are mostly played like generic movie puritans, there are two big exceptions. First, Ward Bond, who is extraordinarily likable as the tough, self-deprecating Elder Wiggs. Second, the dances. Generic movie puritans would frown at dancing (and everything else), but these Saints have serious happy feet. Still not a lot of Mormon-specific content, but a fun comedic western.

  I have one major complaint: as the tension ratchets up in the third act, our two Gentile protagonists plot together to form a genius plan, but the "plan" is the same as in every other western: get the drop on the bad guys and shoot 'em. Doing a full planning scene for that just got my hopes up.

• The Third Man (1949): I believe viewer enjoyment of this movie is highly dominated by not knowing its twist. Unfortunately, even if you don't know the twist going in it's pretty easy to figure it out, and even telling you why this is the case is enough to trigger figuring-it-out, so it's a tricky situation but rather than bemoan "the culture of spoilers" I posit that The Third Man is a fragile movie. Any other movie on this month's list you could have told me how it ends and I'd have enjoyed it just as much (or as little). But you live by the twist, you die by the twist.

  It's not ruined if you know the twist. This is a classic that people watch over and over, and I had a good time even though I went in knowing the twist. The movie looks great. But despite my general pro-spoiler stance I'm not comfortable talking about my major problem with this movie, or even minor stuff like the pacing, because I'm held hostage by this damn twist. I guess that it's own kind of accomplishment.

• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962): Not really fair to call this a 'deconstruction' of the western, but it's definitely John Ford being tired of making these movies and reevaluating exactly what message he's been sending for the past twenty years. In doing so he creates a much more complex story than usual and goes to some uncomfortable places. Great stuff.

  Just when you think you can finally get through an old movie without seeing John Carradine, guess who shows up? No, guess again. John Carradine, you fool! He was the Christopher Lee of his day, or maybe the Nicolas Cage.

  Amazing trivia! Woody Strode, the Dr. Phlox-esque coroner on Psych, is named after the actor who played Pompey in this movie. He was in some other Ford films as well as Spartacus. It's just about the weirdest character naming tribute possible, but there it is.

• The Fifth Element (1997): I was really down on this movie after seeing it because the sci-fi aspects, although beautiful, are entirely superficial. It's cool to see everyday life in the equivalent of the Federation, something that Star Trek never shows you, but it turns out it's very similar to everyday life in 1997 New York. A couple search-and-replace operations on the screenplay, and this whole movie takes place in 1997.

  But then Sumana (who saw The Fifth Element a long time ago), pointed out that Luc Bresson directs action movies, not science fiction. If you're going to direct a by-the-numbers action movie, why not throw in an ancient prophecy and some really cool eyeball kicks and make it sci-fi? Otherwise no one will remember your generic action movie fifteen years later. Your only other hope is to write Laim Neeson's "special set of skills" monologue from Taken (2008)—Bresson also did that movie, so he's playing all the angles.

• Court (2014): The most realistic Indian movie I've ever seen. There are musical numbers, but they're all where you would expect to find musical numbers in real life. I didn't mind the slow pace, but it's not as funny as I'd been led to believe. I don't think it's funny at all unless you're unfamiliar with Indian culture and you turn the culture shock into nervous laughter.

  Sumana did not see the movie, and I don't think she'd like it, but I narrated it to her afterwards and she made two really good points. First, this is a movie like To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) or Gentleman's Agreement (1935) whose goal is to get the audience to sympathize with an oppressed group, but the protagonist is not from that group. He's an outsider, a lawyer or journalist, played by Gregory Peck.

  Second, Sumana explained the ending, which I found totally mysterious. The judge goes on his summer vacation and you see that even outside the courtroom he's passing judgement on people based on ridiculous, outdated precedents. That's who he is. Makes sense.

• Upstream (1927): Upstream Color? More like Upstream Black And White, amirite? This recently rediscovered John Ford film is full of light silliness. It's also got Sammy Cohen, a vaudeville-style actor who would have a lot of stereotypical "Jewish buddy" roles, including Ike Ginsberg, one of the cougar-hunting frat boys in The Cradle Snatchers (1928, previously on Film Roundup). In this film he's in his element as half of vaudeville duo Callahan and Callahan. That's the kind of movie we're talking about.

  But the title's off. Upstream sounds kind of ominous. Like, well, Upstream Color. Our talented accompanists did what they could, composing a theme song for the movie that tries to make it make sense:

  Broadway life is feast or famine
  But if you're like the little salmon
  You'll keep on swimmin' up-streeeeeam!

  But here's the scoop, from the National Film Preservation Society:

  The reason for the film being titled Upstream is no clearer after viewing it... According to Charles G. Clarke the film was known during production as The Public Idol: "The change in title was the result of a curious system that then prevailed. In those days, a film company sold a program of features to the theater owners for a year ahead…. In this case, a film called Upstream was scheduled to be made starring Dolores Del Rio, but for some reason it was not put into production. To make up for the deficiency, the Fox Film Company simply changed the name of The Public Idol to Upstream."

  May curious systems always prevail.

• Ant-Man (2015): There was a lot of Edgar Wright in this, but not nearly enough. The thorax of this movie was a generic superhero movie, and it ain't no accident that this is the first superhero movie to show up in Film Roundup. I don't like 'em and I don't watch 'em. I do like the stories of ordinary losers on the periphery of a superpowered universe (the head of this movie), and I like ridiculous parodies of superhero movies (the abdomen). That's why I saw Ant-Man, and it delivered, just not all the way through.

  I should make it clear that there are a ton of CGI ants in this movie, it's not just a metaphor for a guy being really small, so if ants squick you out, give it a pass. I didn't mind. It did make me wonder if doing mo-cap on ants counts as "animal action" for purposes of ASCPA monitoring.

  No idea what was going on in the after-credits scene. Also not really clear on the difference between SHIELD and HYDRA. I was totally on board with Hank Pym's refusal to give shrinking technology to the military-industrial complex. Right on, fight the power, Tony Stark is a fascist. No need to explain anything more. But all the MCU movies have to share a common ideology, so Ant-Man then took pains to explain that the villain was working with HYDRA (bad), not SHIELD (good). It's well established that I won't do the homework to sort this stuff out, so it doesn't matter.

  Bonus: Here are the three superhero movies I would love to see:

  1. Ambush Bug
  2. She-Hulk (probably better as a Netflix series)
  3. Squirrel Girl

  You'd think I'd be excited for the forthcoming Deadpool movie, but Deadpool is too gory for me. I might see it anyway though.

• Baahubali: The Beginning (2015): The best thing about Times Square is that the big movie theaters on 42nd are always showing an Indian movie and a Chinese movie. It's a good way to see foreign blockbusters. Baahubali is very much in the spirit of the East Asian martial arts movies we've been seeing, but it's Indian, so a) everything has to be bigger and b) the martial art in question is "enormous set-piece infantry battles".

  It's got everything I've come to expect from a martial arts movie, good and bad: non-stop action, semi-historical setting, political corruption, bandits, badass women, men creeping on those women, the CGI deaths of adorable megafauna. All that's missing is the burnt village (there was one implicitly, but at least we don't have to see it), and the priest who kicks ass for Lord Shiva. The priests in this movie are kind of craven. It's also got all the good and bad you'd expect from a Lord of the Rings type movie: magic, monarchy, quests, sword duels, horse stunts, a conlang, and a climactic battle against the dark-skinned Other. Plus the costume-change-heavy musical numbers you'd expect (blah) from an Indian movie other than Court.

  It's a huge movie, three hours long. You watch a ninety-minute action movie, then you watch its prequel in a flashback (with some actors playing different roles and some playing 25-years-younger versions of the same roles--very confusing), and then it turns out it's the first part of a two-parter. Stuff that would be CGI in an American movie, they did it for real and filmed it. (A good decision--the CGI isn't great.)

  I don't know if this movie is "good" in any highbrow sense—the plot is a pastiche of myth that gave me the overall impression of watching a big-budget Book of Mormon adaptation—but it's really fun to watch. American studios make this kind of movie all the time and they've got it down to a science. It's safe. I stayed interested in Baahubali because it didn't feel safe. There were a lot of plot twists, all from the same general mythic space, but they kept sticking 'em in and I didn't know which one they would choose next, not like with Ant-Man. Everything was so much bigger than other Indian movies I've seen, I felt at any time the director might lose control, but they pulled it off.

  PS: Instead of the boring MPAA "This trailer has been approved for all audiences" green-screen, sometimes a trailer for an Indian movie will show you a picture of the trailer's censorship certificate. Classy!

• The Brink's Job (1978): Just after finishing the first run of Columbo, Peter Falk answers the question that was on everyone's mind: what if instead of a cop who entraps rich murderers, Columbo was a con who robs rich private security companies? I had to rearrange my whole day to catch this movie at Film Forum, but it was worth it. (It's on DVD, but the DVD costs $20. What is this, 2003?) It's a tense heist film full of slapstick that showcases Falk's ability to do comedy and drama at the same time. And his character is totally Columbo, whether he's baiting his adversaries into underestimating him, wearing shabby clothes he doesn't need to wear, or just doting on his wife. Features a solid supporting cast consisting entirely of "that guy", including Dick Van Dyke Show producer Sheldon Leonard as J. Edgar Hoover. Also features a brief Kevin Smith-esque comic book conversation.

In honor of seeing The Third Man and The Fifth Element in the same month I'd like to announce the Criterion Collection Film Festival. I call it that because I've collected movies that meet a certain criterion. I don't anticipate any trouble. Anyway, here's the lineup!

1. The First Time (2012)
2. The Second Face (1950)
3. The Third Man (1949)
4. The Forth Kind (2009)
5. The Fifth Element (1997)
6. The Sixth Sense (1999) <- Bruce Willis double feature!
7. The Seventh Seal (1957)
8. The Eighth Day (1996)
9. The Ninth Configuration (1980)

Hope to see you there!