Top 5 Big Daddies

Does anyone else think of their fathers in terms of movie stars? Maybe it's because the first movie I remember seeing with my dad was Escape from Alcatraz (1979), but I always felt that my dad had a Clint Eastwood vibe to him. Eastwood was lean, quiet, and direct. His eloquence came from action.

He seemed to be a man raised from the earth, who sought out justice- or at least his idea of it. That is my dad. I mean, my dad never shot up Mexican towns (that were actually in Italy), snarled a catch-phrase while pulling out a handgun, or drove a pick-up truck with an orangutan. But he did give hell to sports teams on the TV, come up with a quick a speech before a spanking, and his pick-up truck usually had four kids in the back. Whatever the reason, I can't help but think of my dad when I watch a movie with Clint Eastwood.

In honor of Father's Day, here are my Top 5 cinematic fathers to compare your dads to:

Home from the Hill (1960)

Would you be surprised if I told you that Vincente Minnelli directed an East Texas melodrama exploring the nature of father-son relationships and the expectations of masculinity? That doesn't have any musical numbers? Well he did. Home from the Hill is the story of the Hunnicutt family: big-booted, woman-chasing patriarch, Captain Wade (the always watchable Robert Mitchum); long-suffering turned to ice-queen mother, Hannah (the also always watchable Eleanor Parker); conflicted son, Theron (the always tanned George Hamilton); and illegitimate son, Rafe (the always- well whatever George Peppard always is.) The plot is pure Texas mythology with wild pig hunts, barbecues, and squalid affairs making life on the prairie a hoot and a holler.

In another director's hands, this film could be all about how a boy becomes a man under the watchful eye of his father. But Minnelli doesn't buy that idea at face value. Theron is more sensitive than his dad and questions the manly shadow he's expected to cast alongside his legendary father's. Mitchum without doing or saying anything exudes the kind of easy masculinity that so many of us sons can never achieve- and watching Hamilton's slight build try to fit in his boots is uncomfortable- as it should be.

Minnelli's genius ability to compose space that reflects character and theme is on full display here. Mitchum's den holds all the accouterments of the world's most exciting man- stifling all who enter. Theron's more studious space is a counterpoint to the boarshead and bear rugs just downstairs. Minnelli expertly makes these personal spaces speak volumes about their inhabitants- and their incongruity- their separateness existing beneath the same roof.

The exquisite balance between performance and filmwork makes Home worth coming back to.

And the barbecue will make you super hungry!




Big Fish (2003)

There is nothing more enchanting than a good story teller, and Tim Burton has woven some doozies in his time. With Big Fish, Burton tosses away the cartoon-ish trappings of his film work and tells the story of a man who has spent a lifetime telling tall tales and his son who is desperate to believe them.
Ed Bloom (Albert Finney) loves to tell a good story- his favorite repeatable yarn dealing with a giant fish in the local lake that he has been having run-ins with his whole life. Ed is also dying. His only son Will (Billy Crudup) and his pregnant bride (Marion Cotillard) come to help Will's mom (Jessica Lange) take care of Ed as he weakens. Everyone loves Ed and his stories, his eyes wickedly glinting at his new daughter-in-law as she sits on his bed. Who wouldn't wickedly glint at Marion Cotillard?

But Will is tired of the stories. Will wants to know his father- the real man- not the folk tale legend (played as a youth by Ewan McGregor) who met giants, discovered hidden towns that didn't wear shoes, faced- off with a witch (Helen Bonham Carter), wooed the girl of his dreams with a football field of daffodils, and finally caught that old monster fish in the lake.

But what if we are the stories we tell? What if the truth is there- and the story leads us to the discovery of that truth in a way that simply flipping through a photo album or answering questions about dusty papers can't? Perhaps a life well-lived is a story well-told.

Just the cast list is reason enough to see this movie. They are all gems. But Burton really makes a unique film in the context of the rest of his canon. He does an amazing job of weaving in the fantastic without making it overwhelm the simple story of a son re-connecting with his father. He innately understands that the joys of the imagination are not just for children. It is the most adult movie he's ever made- and I challenge anyone not to cry at the end.

Tree of Life (2011)

I know that this movie is one of those love it or hate it situations- but I love it... most of it. Director Terrence Malick tends to infuriate some with his specialized way of filming his stories. But I have always been drawn to his use of image over dialogue. And Tree of Life is no exception. The timeline for Tree is malleable and flips back-and-forth from modern day to 1950's Texas to the beginning of the universe to death. That's a lot to cover- and quite honestly, I could have done without the Discovery Channel-esque "How the World Began" section. But Malick uses the story of Jack (dependably moody Sean Penn), a man haunted by the suicide of his brother and his relationship with his father (Brad Pitt) to visually explore the things that we take and those that are given to us throughout our mortal journeys.

What really grabbed me about this movie was Malick's use of the tactile. Closeups on young Jack's hands tracing his brother's hand on the other side of the window or how a father touches a son's head. The film is so beautiful in how it communicates this human contact in a simple, connective way. It shows deep bonding without a lot of "I love you, kiddo" dialogue.

Pitt is very much responsible for the success of that image of a father and sons. The way Pitt touches his children is so tender and natural- it brought tears to my eyes. I at once felt the warm joy of those touches- while simultaneously running through my memories for the times my dad tousled my hair. Pitt is a father of- God I've lost count of the number of his brood- but he was clearly able to tap into that feeling of elation and pride of being with his kids. It radiates from him in the scenes with his cinematic sons like a soft light. It's magical.

The film won the Palm d'Or at Cannes and was nominated for three Oscars including Best Director and Best Picture, so clearly CGI dinosaurs notwithstanding, the film struck a chord. The image of the neighborhood children running through the mist of an insecticide truck in the twilight is durable marking our childhoods as moments of wonder shrouded by hindsight.

Bicycle Thieves (1948)

I love the post-war neorealism film genre. The almost gothic look of these films shot in the rubble of war-torn Europe made a profound setting for stories of survival and change. Like flowers sprouting out of decimated churches and homes, the characters in these movies were survivors learning how to get along in a world that had gone mad- and was now trying to right itself. Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves is a perfect example of the best this genre has to offer.

Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani) is desperate to find work to support his family in post-WWII Rome. He finally is able to get work as a poster paster (say that five times fast) but he needs a bike to be able to get around town quickly. His wife Maria (Lianella Carell) pawns her dowry (Sheets. You could pawn sheets.) so that Antonio can get a bike and start making money. But no sooner does he start work, then someone steals his bike- and Antonio and his young son Bruno (Enzo Staiola in his film debut) begin a desperate hunt all over Rome for the thief and the bike.

The relationship between these two is central to the film. As the father struggles to do whatever it takes to survive, he also has to teach his son the difference between right and wrong. Some of those choices are reflected in little Bruno's eyes as he watches his father grapple with a new, lawless world. Is it better to steal than starve? Is there anything thicker than blood? Can a father lose his son's love and respect?

The realistic shooting style was all the rage in Europe- as much a product of necessity as artistic style- and De Sica perfectly captures a sense of the real Roman streets and people at the time.

There is no attempt made to clean-up dirty faces or knees- or to pretty up the buildings ravaged by war. De Sica shoots Rome as it was- poverty-stricken, proud, and struggling to find a new identity. The fresh and spontaneous performances from mostly non-actors are all superb in drawing us into a filmed reality. It was a reality that most modern audiences probably can't imagine. But thanks to directors like De Sica, we have movies to remind us.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

There are moments when I wish I could be in the pitch meetings for famous movies.

Some pitch guy: So we've had mega blockbuster success with Indiana Jones. We had him search for the Ark of the Covenant and fight Nazis, and then we sent him to India to find some magic rocks and fight an Indian cult-


George Lucas (eating a burrito): I still don't know what we were smoking on that one.

Steven Spielberg: Ssh, George! And stop eating. Continue pitch guy.

Some pitch guy: So for this next movie why don't we have Indy fight the Nazis again- but this time he does it with... his Dad!


George and Steven: No.

Some pitch guy: But he's looking for the Holy Grail.

George and Steven: No.

Some pitch guy: But what if the dad is played by Sean Connery?

George and Steven: Brilliant!

Steven: Great idea, George!


George: Thanks, Steven! Glad we thought of it. Pitch guy, I need 24 chalupas. Do a Taco Bell run.

Keeping a successful franchise going isn't as easy as our current Marvel Universe makes it seem- but the Indiana Jones movies have always been great fun to watch (with the exception of number four. I pretend number four never happened). In the third entry, The Last Crusade, Indy (Harrison Ford, of course) is busy teaching college when he is informed that his father (the afore-mentioned Connery) has disappeared while searching for the Holy Grail. So Indy slaps on his fedora and bullwhip and goes out to rescue him. Along the way he runs into the Third Reich again, and literally, Hitler.

The movie is full of the biblical lore, beautiful period design, exotic locales, and non-stop action that made the previous movies so successful. But what sets this one apart is the interaction between the two Joneses.

Ford and Connery while playing two people often at odds with each other, seem to be having a blast. The relationship they create is funnily combative with just the right amount of treacle- enough to not make either of these guy's guys gag. Both of them are such big stars that they could eat up all the screenspace- but they don't. They share the film with what looks like pleasure, creating a father-son relationship that highlights what each can learn from the other. And can't we all benefit from being tied to our dads in a fiery castle every now and then?

If those aren't enough father figures for you, check out the Charlie Chaplin silent classic The Kid (1921) at The Film Forum this Sunday.

Happy Father's Day, Pops.

In Theaters Now Review!: The Witness

In a world where there are whole channels dedicated to murder cases and at any particular moment there is a Law & Order on some channel somewhere, you would think that the murder documentary genre might feel a bit stale. The Witness (2015) proves that there is always a new angle- one that comes from deep personal experience.
The Witness is a documentary about the infamous 1964 murder of Kew Gardens resident Kitty Genovese. But this is more than just a re-hashing of that evening's horrific events. The documentary is shot from the perspective of Kitty's younger brother Bill.

Through his own interviews, archive video and photos, and some beautiful animation from Moth Collective, Bill explores the confusing details of the case, unraveling public and personal myths as he meets with surviving witnesses discovering hidden details not just about the murder, but about his beloved sister. The truth is elusive- but the burden that he and his family have carried for fifty years compels Bill to seek it out. The dramatic arc is skillfully directed by James D. Solomon, providing twists and turns, and an emotional catharsis as satisfying as anything you'd see on L&OSVU.

It's a small independent documentary, so try to find it at an arthouse near you.

Confessions of a Teenage Heartthrob

Tab Hunter was a movie star.

"Who?" you ask. "Tab Hunter? What movies was he in?"

He was in Damn Yankees (1958), and Polyester (1981) and... uhm... well... uhm...



The new documentary on Netflix Tab Hunter Confidential is a good reminder that not all movie stars of the 1950's were in movies that we remember.

Tab Hunter (nee Arthur Kelm) was a young, blonde California he-god who in 1950 strolled onto the Warner Brothers lot and for the next ten  years or so was one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood. There wasn't a girl's bedroom (and some boys) that didn't have a picture of the grinning sun-kissed boy on their walls. His image was breathtaking. The wide shining smile and the large blue eyes were truly unique- able to project that special brand of Fifties wholesomeness that the era thrived on.

He starred in countless films playing soldiers, sailors, and boys next door, but was never able to land in the kind of movies that would make him a serious actor like contemporaries James Dean or Rock Hudson. That didn't matter to the public. They didn't need him to be serious. They wanted him to smile tenderly and sing goofy love songs in their ears.

When Hunter moved to television he played more complex parts- but those roles are mostly lost to the tapeless ether. He would re-emerge in 1981 in the retro-fetish universe of John Waters. It was a brief resurgence, ending with Hunter giving up acting altogether to relax with his beloved horses on his California ranch.

Hunter in Confidential takes us through the evolution from young man to pin-up, to actor, to has-been, to nostalgia favorite, personally spilling the beans on his life and career. He gets the big shocking news out of the way in the first moments. Hunter is a homosexual. Closeted, Hunter was unable to be the person he wanted to be- but that didn't stop him from having relationships with figure skaters, ballet dancers, and perhaps most infamously, with rising star at the time, Anthony Perkins.

Hunter is reluctant to discuss his gay life. Perhaps being naturally shy, or just holding on to his PR training that would never allow him to discuss such things, Hunter relates the love stories of a couple beaux but in such a matter-of-fact way, that he appears emotionally disconnected from his past loves- and his gayness. 

While he admits his affair with Perkins, he doesn't open up about what that meant for him emotionally. To be head-over-heels in love with a beautiful, sensitive star like Perkins, and not be able to tell anyone- not be able to fully live a life together. To have to go on a PR double-date with aspiring starlets so that you can go out with your lover.  To be told you are forbidden to see him again because it would ruin both of your careers. 

There is an emotionally intimate story here- but either the passage of time, intense privacy, or residual shame prevent Hunter from fully opening up about it. 

I applaud Hunter's strength to tell his story the way he wanted to. There is a difference between mere confession and embracing our rich gay history. It is times like now that we need LGBT stories not to be simply told but to be celebrated.

Movies Uber Alles

You know those weekends when the movies you watch just happen to go together? Well I had one of those weekends last weekend when I wound-up watching not one- but two German foreign films from the early '80's. So grab your currywurst and sauerkraut and read on!






Kamikaze '89 (1982)

Director/actor Rainer Werner Fassbinder is weird. If I hadn't known that after watching his uber gay sailor fetish flick Querelle (1982), Vulture.com told me Kamikaze '89 was the weirdest movie I could see. To top off this weird cinema-streudel, Fassbinder died a month before the film was released. So that's all I needed to know to hightail it to BAM and check out what all the schadenfreude was about.

Kamikaze opens on a shot of a corpulent and sweaty Polizeilleutnant Jansen (Fassbinder) playing some sort of racket game in the flashing lights of a policeman's disco club. It's 1989 folks, and disco is the music of the masses. That opening shot pretty much sums up the movie- an exhausted, cheap noir set in a future full of junky pieces of the past.

Wolf Gremm shot the film in distressed neighborhoods in Berlin and Dusseldorf reminiscent of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971), used trashy retro costumes including leopard print suits and feather boas that look like they were bought at Screaming Mimi's, and utilized a soundtrack from Tangerine Dream that reminds one of Vangelis' score for Blade Runner (1982).

The slick media offices that should stand in stark contrast to the graffiti-covered slums come off more as abandoned office space that Gremm filled with strange props for the two days that he had access to it. In a sense the film does feel punk, in that you can imagine the cast and crew running through abandoned work complexes one step ahead of the Polizei. But it doesn't feel like there was a conscious choice in the styling of this future world.

The movie looks like it was shot on a ten mark budget with Jansen following strange leads through a world of beat-up Audis, grungy images of American Idol-esque laughing contests, and klunky "Steve Jobs would never approve this" technology. For a film that purports to show a future dominated by an all-powerful media company, the budget makes it look more like the world is run by NY 1. Everytime I saw Fassbinder sweat through a scene, I wished he had directed this film instead of just acting in it. Then there would have been a chance at an interesting, cohesive style.

What does intrigue me about the film is its place alongside other early Eighties films that were focused on futuristic societies. Films like Blade Runner, The Apple (1980), Escape from New York (1981), and Mad Max 2 (1981) each had distinct views of the future- all dystopian. The early Eighties projected its fears about the Reagan Era onto its cinema, and it would appear that trend made it all the way to the art-film scene in Berlin.

Das Boot (1982)

So after watching Fassbinder run through an industrial German ghetto with a leopard-print gun, I came home to find the Netflix DVD of classic German language film, Das Boot waiting for me. The universe was telling me to go full-on Deutschland Eighties with my weekend.
Das Boot is the story of a German U-boat crew hunting Allied freighters in the North Atlantic. Lt. Werner (Herbet Gronemeyer) joins the crew of Captain-Lt. Lehmann-Willenbrock (Jurgen Prochnow- or Duke Leto Atreides to you Dune nerds) aboard Boat U-96 to document the lives of these seafaring heroes. The tense action/drama follows the crew as they attempt to survive the devastating naval battles with Allied destroyers.

Now I know what you're saying. "Who cares if they survived? They're Germans. In World War II. I hope all those Nazi sons-a-bitches made excellent fishfood." It's a tough sell. We don't typically want to watch movies about "the enemy." But like its excellent predecessor All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), this film explores the ugliness of war by showing what it did to the work-a-day German soldiers.

The film opens with the harrowing statistic that out of 40,000 German U-Boat sailors in WWII, 30,000 of them were killed. So right off the bat, we know not to get too attached to the characters we meet. Director Wolfgang Petersen (of The Neverending Story (1984), Air Force One (1997), and Troy (2004) fame) takes great care to separate his characters from the evil shade of Nazism.

In the opening scene the officers in their uniforms drive towards a French whorehouse to celebrate before shipping out. Their car is pissed-on by a line of drunken sailors. Once inside the aforementioned Katze-house, a revered, but dead drunk Captain raises a glass, then roasts Herr Hitler, mocking this apprentice painter's naval genius.

From this scene on, there are very few "uniforms" and next to no symbols of the Nazi party. The uniform for the sailors is flannel and pull-overs, or stripped to their undershirts. The men appear less like evil Nazis, and more like working-class soldiers- going where and doing what they're told.

We also don't see their adversaries, the Allies, except through the lens of binoculars, or as dark shadows cruising over their sub. We are immersed in the world of this submarine. And in this world there are no good guys or bad guys- just a team of men fighting to survive.

The world of the submarine is brilliantly conceived with camera movement that smoothly shoots through the ship like a bullet through a gun muzzle- squeezing past crowded men, equipment, and hanging meats that take up every available piece of space.

The shots are close, with the men's faces  filling the frame- sweating, confident, terrified, joyous, broken. The claustrophobic inside of U-96 becomes our world and we don't care whether these men are the enemy. Their struggle is our struggle. And their tragedies affect us. Das Boot uses cinematic space to envelope us in the world of the "other" and contemplate the filth and despair of war.

Das Boot was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Director. Not sure why one of those nods wasn't for Best Foreign Film, but since I've never heard of the other four nominees, it's hard to say what Oscar was smoking that year. The director's cut that is available is three-and-a-half hours long, but don't be afraid of the length. The time swims by.

Auf wiedersehen for now, faithful readers!