Lance's Werthwhile Movie 2018 Movie Countdown

It's that time of year again when I look back at the movies I saw this year that made me all fuzzy, fractured, or freaked out.

Here (in no particular order) are the movies that made me squeee in 2018:

La Habanera (1937)/All That Heaven Allows (1955)/Written on the Wind (1956)

I went on a Douglass Sirk-et this year. Sirk is the Master of Melodrama! The Titan of Technicolor! The Sultan of Soap Opera! I hadn't seen two of his biggest films, Heaven and Wind, and they not only didn't disappoint, they enchanted me. So I jumped at the chance to see one of his very early Austrian works, La Habanera. Once you get past the fact that everyone's speaking German in Puerto Rico, this film proves that Sirk had an early affinity for the decadence of melodrama on film.

Shoeshine (1946)

I'm a hug fan of Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948). In particular, his postwar verite style really strikes a chord with me both visually and dramatically. When you're literally shooting your movie in the ruins of a war-torn city, it adds a little something' somethin'. It really works in Shoeshine. Two young Roman boys get by the only way they know how- shining shoes and dealing in contraband. It's a De Sica film, so they get caught and wind-up in a juvenile facility that mixes Lord of the Flies with Orange is the New Black. The film is tragic, and beautiful, showing the tenderness between young men who have nothing but each other... and a horse.

Three Identical Strangers (2018)

This documentary about three triplets who were separated at birth might actually be my favorite film of the year. (No, it's not you Roma (2018).) Director Tim Wardle expertly unspools this story in such a way that around every corner is a new, shocking surprise. I literally yelled at the screen when I saw it. Look for this one to give Won't You Be My Neighbor (2018) a run for its money for Best Documentary at this year's Oscars.

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

Spencer Tracy, Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Richard Widmark, Maximillian Schell, and even a pre-Trek William Shatner and a pre-Hogan's Heroes Werner Klemperer. Now THAT'S a cast. I'd heard about Stanley Kramer's Oscar-winning drama about the infamous Nuremberg Trials, but the three hour running time often kept me from slipping it into my DVD player. I'm glad I finally did. The performances are a primer in film acting and the concentration camp footage wrenching. Before this film, the footage (some of which was shot by director George Stevens) had never been shown in public. The message of questioning what we are told to do when we know it is wrong resonates across 57 years so clearly. It makes this movie feel less like a history lesson and more like a warning.

God's Own Country (2017)

While everyone was falling over themselves about Call Me By Your Name (2017) this English gay indie gave me all the feels that were missing for me in Name. You can read all about my dirty thoughts here.

What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

Director Taika Waititi hit a home run last year with Thor: Ragnarok (2017). But three years earlier he  directed, wrote, and starred in a real comic gem. What We Do is a mockumentary about a group of vampires living in New Zealand. The Real World meets Twilight as these roommates deal with girlfriends, chore wheels, and being undead. It's a bloodsucking hoot- and will soon be an FX TV show.

The future's so bright for Taika, he'd better wear shades.

Ex Machina (2014)

Ex Machina does what sci-fi does better than any other genre- expose our humanity (or lack thereof) through the lens of the machines we create. Caleb (the pleasingly pale Domhall Gleason) is a hotshot programmer who wins the chance to visit the wilderness compound of tech guru and self-imposed hermit Nathan (furry Oscar Isaac). Caleb is humbled to be tasked by this genius to help test his latest cyborg, Ava (the partially there Alicia Vikander.)

But he quickly discovers that he is just another one of the guinea pigs in Nathan's heartless experiment. The visual effects for Ava are perfection. But their Oscar-winning wizardry does not detract from the compelling performances and the harrowing story of a world perhaps not so far away from the technology-obsessed time we currently text in.

The Shape of Water (2017)

I've gotten a lot of flack from people I respect on this Oscar-winning movie. I stand by my original blog post. Shape of Water is beautiful to look at and is a loving opus to classic movies,  re-transmitting their power to stir our imaginations to a new generation. Add in uncharacteristic performances from Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, and Richard Jenkins and you have a film that I think is better than Call Me By Your Name... but maybe not Get Out (2017). I loved it. So there.

The Thin Red Line (1998)

Terrence Malik isn't so much of a film director, as a film poet. What he has done in each of his cinematic creations is transmit feelings and emotions not necessarily through a tight plot line, but through powerful, fragmented imagery.

The complicated and conflicted realities of the Vietnam War seem to be tailor-made for the Malik treatment: the loyalty of a commander to his men, the natural beauty of the country, the desire to help human beings, the urge to rip their bodies apart with machine guns, the fear of dying, and the power of hope- no matter how futile.

Thin Red Line is my favorite Vietnam war film with perhaps the exception of Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987). The uber-talented cast under the guidance of this exceptional director brings the emotions of Vietnam to vivid life- not to shock us- but to allow us to experience them.

Coco (2017)

This one goes under the category of Films That Make Lance Bawl Like a Baby. Sure the animation that takes inspiration from Dia de Muertos and Mexican culture and art is ravishing. But it's the heart of this movie that stays with you. I challenge anyone to listen to little Miguel sing the song "Remember Me" to his failing great grandmother without getting misty. We all have family members that have passed on- and Coco reminds us that passing on what made them special is the only way to keep them with us.

Black Panther (2018)

I'm tired of the super hero genre. The stories all sound the same to me. The various origin stories that always portray conflicted heroes coming from a place of otherness while the supermodel bodies and faces of the heroes themselves make it impossible for me to relate. More things blow-up than you can keep track of. Superheroes save the entire planet, proudly standing over the unknown number of bodies of citizens who were vaporized without so much as a screen credit. And somehow I'm supposed to feel safer after this.

So imagine my shock when I watched Black Panther with utter and complete enjoyment. Maybe it's the amazing African-inspired styling of the costumes, set, and gadgets. Maybe it's the amazing black faces that we rarely see in such numbers unless we're watching a slavery epic.

Maybe it's the equal-pairing of women and men in this world- both sexes given the ability to rule and kick-ass. Maybe it's Michale B. Jordan's half-naked body. Whatever, it is- Black Panther feels fresh in a genre that needed a real shake-up. I suspect Black Panther will give A Star is Born (2018) some heavy competition at this year's Oscar's.
Wakanda forever indeed!

To all my readers and friends- may 2019 give you all the movie thrills you desire!

The Dietrich Effect

Dear LWM readers, I have a confession to make.

I've been cheating.

Yes, it's true. I have been cheating on my movie idol Joan Crawford with another movie idol. I've tried to keep my thoughts centered on Crawford's shoulders and eyebrows, but I have become obsessed with another set of eyebrows. And those pencil-thin works of art belong to none other than teutonic sex goddess, Marlene Dietrich.

Dietrich has always been one of my favorites. Her ability to draw focus by simply raising an eyebrow or blowing an erotic puff of smoke, her nonchalant accent both murdering and sensualizing her English dialogue, the distinctive angles of that camera-loving face- the Dietrich cinematic mystique is enthralling. I recently got the new box-set of her work with director Josef von Sternberg, and I've found my movie thoughts engrossed with the career of this tempestuous force of the silver screen.

The new box set contains Dietrich's earliest Hollywood product, and it's really interesting to watch how her acting style changed over time. In her first American film Morocco (1930) (The Blue Angel (1930) although shot first, wasn't released in America until after Morocco) Dietrich is still finding her way both in acting and with the English language. Legend has it that von Sternberg literally had her count moments and steps in between actions and dialogue. Her eye movements, her gestures, her dialogue- everything was planned out. Yet somehow her performance is electric with an intense freshness thanks to Dietrich's aggressively laissez faire screen presence and visible lust for that thing called movie stardom. Her musical numbers, in particular, flash and the famous tux kissing scene helped create the any-sexual persona that would dominate the rest of her career.

By the time Dietrich starred in her final film with von Sternberg, The Devil is a Woman (1935), her performance has gone from planned to crafted. She no longer has that bit of uncertainty counting beats. Every eyebrow motion and purse of the lips is part of the confetti-covered artwork that von Sternberg is making. It's beautiful to watch- but that spark of the unknown- the sexy danger of what Dietrich might do feels lost amongst the mantillas and masks. Von Sternberg's Galatea has become a statue again- an exquisite statue- but a statue nonetheless.

After Dietrich ended her artistic partnership with von Sternberg the debate heated up as to whether Dietrich needed von Sternberg, or von Sternberg needed Dietrich. The easy answer is Dietrich did just fine without von Sternberg. True she was probably never photographed as sumptuously as she was in Shanghai Express (1932) and The Scarlet Empress (1934), but from an acting perspective, her later works show a relaxed quality that von Sternberg's compulsively controlled direction didn't nurture. In Destry Rides Again (1939), A Foreign Affair(1948), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Touch of Evil (1958), and Judgement at Nuremberg (1961), Dietrich proved she didn't need von Sternberg to create an indelible acting performance.

Even in slighter faire like Tay Garnett's Seven Sinners (1940), Dietrich is so devil-may-care as the Sadie Thompson-esque Bijou, she brings a wickedly romantic sparkle out of the normally frontier-y John Wayne. Dietrich was the essential secret ingredient no matter who directed her.

Now if only there were a movie with Dietrich and Crawford in it...

The Other Side of the Other Side

No Hollywood auteur casts a longer shadow than the late, great director/actor/writer Orson Welles. His movies are spoken of with a reverence that borders on the obnoxious. His larger than life persona (and waistline) became the stuff of late-night talkshow and wine commercial legend. But during his lifetime, Welles' movie-making career suffered from extended bouts of un-studio cinematic ventures that ended in box office failure. "When's he gonna top Citizen Kane?" echoed through the head offices of Hollywood until he became a misunderstood genius who couldn't secure a sheckle to create his art.

By the end of his life, Welles failed to finish several movies- one of which was The Other Side of the Wind which was in production/legal purgatory from 1970 to well past the maestro's death in 1985.  But thanks to Netflix's deep pockets and urge to be taken seriously as a film studio, a team of editors using Welles' scripts and editing notes was able to put together the Welles film that almost wasn't over 40 years years after it was started.

Wind takes place on the final night of the life of  revered/despised director Jake Hannaford (a thinly-veiled version of Welles played with gruff relish by director and Welles pal John Huston.) Hannaford's latest movie is in big trouble, and the desert screening party that is planned to help him get the movie some much-needed buzz (and funding) quickly devolves into a drunken morass full of cameras, critics, directors, dummies, and midgets.

Intertwined with the party dementia, the film-within-a-film unspools in a riot of '70's counter-culture color and quick takes. Seemingly without plot, a nude-most-of-the-time woman (Welles muse Oja Kodar) is followed by a not-nude-enough  man (Robert Random) through a variety of abandoned MGM sets. (One of them is the train set Fred Astaire reminisces in front of in That's Entertainment! (1974).) The movie screening concludes at a drive-in movie theater where Hannaford leaves the assembled Hollywood menagerie to drive into the sunrise for the last time.

If this plot summary sounds befuddling, don't worry! Along with the film, Netflix has produced a documentary about the making of Wind called They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018). Filled with footage of Welles and many of those who worked on the film, I found that They'll Love Me helped turn Wind from a middling experimental film into a fascinating peek inside the impish mind of Welles.

What immediately made my little film nerd antennae jump while watching Wind was seeing wunderkind filmmaker and cineaste Peter Bogdanovich playing wunderkind filmmaker and cineaste Brooks Otterlake. Otterlake is a preening sycophant who loves to show off by doing imitations of his favorite Hollywood idols and yes-anding and speaking for Hannaford at every opportunity. So basically, Bogdanovich isn't acting. Welles was filming their friendship.

So why then, does the relationship between acolyte and mentor in the film combust in an outburst of spite and cruelty? The dynamic of the student that becomes too much like the teacher for the teacher's liking is not new in storytelling- but Welles is either prescient or sending Bogdanovich a message. In They'll Love Me, Bogdanovich cries as he speaks about the very public break between him and Welles that happened a couple years after the filming of Wind. Bogdanovich blames Welles' belittling of him on The Tonight Show with new friend Burt Reynolds cackling along. Other theories abound, but either way, art became life.

Welles is no more kind to Bogdanovich's then girlfriend Cybill Shepherd. Despite the fact that Welles was living in Bogdanovich's house with Shepherd, in Wind he gives Hannaford a young, blond, dim-witted girlfriend allegedly to express his opinion of Bogdanovich's younger movie star paramour. Even for the mercurial Welles, it's a mean touch to a movie whose fictional characters are all unflattering stand-ins for a coterie of Hollywood notables- a who's who of people Welles felt betrayed him. At it's heart, Wind is an arsenic-laced break-up letter to Hollywood signed, "Fuck you, Orson. P.S. Fuck you some more."

From that perspective- it makes Wind worth watching.

Farewell Film Scribe: RIP William Goldman

Screenwriters in Hollywood are often not given the props they so richly deserve. So when a screenwriter earns the status of being "talked about", you know that screenwriter is a major talent. William Goldman is one of those screenwriters. His resume is a list of must-sees: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Papillon  (1973), The Stepford Wives (1975), All the President's Men (1976), Marathon Man (1976), Magic (1978), The Princess Bride (1987), and Misery (1990). His talents were so respected that even if he wasn't involved in a project, directors cut out entire scenes from "finished" movies based on one phonecall from Goldman.
William Goldman passed away last night at the age of 87.
Perhaps he can give God some re-writes for our current situation...

What the Hell Happened to Horror?

Sometimes I'm accused of being a bit of a cinematic stick in the mud. "Oh, Lance. You don't like anything made after 1968- or that doesn't have Joan Crawford in it." Not true. I can enjoy modern movies especially when they give me an opportunity to talk about how current films relate to the movies that came before them (see Get Out (2017)). Recently I was excited to see two very much  buzzed aboot horror movies: A Quiet Place (2018) and Hereditary (2018).

Unfortunately my initial excitement turned to true horror.

Before I go negative- let me talk about what I liked. Quiet Place has a deafening premise! The idea of how you re-think your life based on how much sound you make is fascinating. Be quiet or die. I'm pretty sure I would have been a goner in the first wave of this extraterrestrial invasion. And John Krasinski spent a good deal of time behind the camera, but I'm all for every minute he spends in front of it... preferably nude.

Hereditary contains the exceptional acting wiles of Toni Collette, who I could watch paint miniature houses for hours. And Alex Wolff is a cutie... as long as he washes his hair. Both films use some fascinating non-traditional casting with two Millies- Millicent Simonds (Quiet Place) and Milly Shapiro (Hereditary) both depicting young ladies that don't look like one of the Fanning sisters. That's what I liked. Now on to what chaps my film snob hide- and yes, there will be spoilers.

As much as I loved the premise for Quiet Place, the execution of this end-of-the-world/monster survival flick is as messy as the monsters' faces. Can we start with one of the first and most obvious head-slappers? How can you pull a nail out of a step with a laundry bag when the nail is turned upside down? Aside from being a violation of the simple, physical laws of how nails are put into stairs, it is amazingly clumsy foreshadowing. Gee, I wonder if someone's going to step on that at some point- perhaps at a hugely inconvenient moment- like going into labor.

If you can build a sound-proof room to safeguard your newborn, why not do the whole house in newspaper and Hearos ear plugs? Or at the very least, use the room as a place to communicate with each other- like a DIY Big Brother Diary Room.

Then of course there's all the difficulties of grain elevators, busted water pipes, and a hearing aid that only screeches feedback when the script deems it necessary- which is apparently not when it could save your father. How many ridiculous complications does this family have to endure beyond being hunted by these terrifying creatures? As much as the scriptwriters (hint: director and star Krasinski is one of them) wants.

There is also a big missed opportunity to allude to the abortion debate. A horror movie like Rosemary's Baby (1968) can successfully weave the controversial topic into a film without being preachy- making a statement within an unexpected format.

For Quiet Place, we never hear anyone question the sanity of giving birth to a child that will scream and make noise constantly- endangering the whole family. Wouldn't it be wiser to not give birth to the monster magnet in the first place? At a time when the future of Roe v. Wade is in question, I think this movie missed an amazing opportunity to be part of the cultural conversation.

Hereditary starts off in the creepy vein of modern atmospheric chillers like It Follows (2014), The Boy (2016), and A Ghost Story (2017), but quickly devolves into a supernatural stew that takes ingredients from successful films without creating anything unique of its own. Pacing is key for this genre- and while a slow-paced horror film like The Shining (1980) or A Ghost Story can overcome their plot speed with shocking revelations, Hereditary luxuriates in taking its time- to a brutal point.

By the time we discover what the F is going on thanks to Grandma's box (not sure I still fully know), we've already moved on to the more attention-worthy topics of "Did I remember to call my mom on her birthday?" or "Would Alex look better with or without that mole?"

Arbitrary plot points abound here as well. It's not enough that little Charlie's windpipe is closing up due to her brother's negligence in watching her and what she sticks in her mouth, but she has to have her head knocked off when said brother dodges an animal carcass in the road as he races to the hospital and Charlie unluckily happens to have her head hanging out the window to get more air and says hello to a telephone pole. It's shocking- and then you have to laugh. It's just too much.

The plot suffers from the same problem. Is this movie about a haunting (Poltergeist (1982)?) A satanic cult (Rosemary's Baby?) Creepy possessions where people can contort their bodies and climb walls (Exorcist (1973) meets The Ring (2002)?) It is all of these things- and that's way too many familiar ingredients to create anything unique.

The final line of the movie isn't even original. The old, naked people chanting "Hail Paimon!" are way too close to the geriatrics chanting "Hail Satan" at the end of Rosemary's Baby. With a droning, atmospheric soundtrack that resembles those of Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind (The Shining) and John Carpenter, Hereditary doesn't as much use horror films of the past as inspiration, but as a blueprint.

So what do I think is wrong with these two very popular horror movies? They don't trust their premises and are working too hard to add extraneous details. They have a case of the "Horror Cutes."

Simplicity is an underrated virtue in horror films and I think both of these properties could have benefited from a vicious red pencil that would make the writers and directors distill these stories into tighter, more focused projects that transcend (or at least creatively re-imagine) the bells and whistles we've seen before. Don't worry about the next jump scare- or poster-worthy visual. Boil your story down to the bones.

I wonder if I should go see The Nun (2018) or just watch Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970).