100 YEARS OF TARZAN MOVIES

          There's never been a Tarzan movie accurate to the books. One of the most recognizable characters ever created. And with more film incarnations than perhaps any other literary character with the possible exceptions of Sherlock Holmes and Frankenstein's monster. Yet for one hundred years (the book was published in 1912), none of the movies have ever gotten it right.
          The first one, Tarzan of the Apes (1919), even screws up the writer's name in the film's opening image. His name was Edgar Rice Burroughs, not Edgar Rice Burrough. (The film has the possessive apostrophe inside the "s" when it needs to be outside.)
          All other sources wrongly declare the first movie Tarzan to be Elmo Lincoln. But nope, not true. It's actually Gordon Griffith, the actor who plays Tarzan as a boy.
          According to edgarriceburroughs.com, ERB, who wrote for 39 years until his death at age 74, spawned with his imagination 60 films and 250 television episodes. That would naturally include other characters, primarily John Carter and David Innes. The site also displays a quote from the great Ray Bradbury: "Edgar Rice Burroughs was, and is, the most influential writer, bar none, of our century."
          Still, never an accurate Tarzan movie. Some, almost close. Most, nowhere near.
          That's not even including the Disney Tarzan. Which to the purist perspective is awful because they get so many things wrong. It always comes down to the big question: Why? Why change anything? Come up with your own dang story! Don't give Tarzan dreadlocks. Don't make Tarzan small. Don't make Tarzan slide around like a skatepunk. Sheeta is the name for leopards, and Sabor is the name for lionesses. Separate, not interchangeable. Jane Porter has blonde hair, and there are black people in Africa.
          But they never get it right.
          "Me Tarzan, you Jane" is never a thing written in the books or said in the films. Just as Humphrey Bogart never says, "Play it again, Sam," in Casablanca, Johnny Weissmuller never says the former misattributed quote.
          It is of course an outrageously ridiculous and racist premise that a rich white English baby wouldn't just crumple up from snakes, insects, and malaria in the first forty-eight hours. Nahh, this baby doesn't even need shoes--although if he was dancing around in Buckingham Palace he sure would.
          Tarzans Gene Pollar, P. Dempsey Tabler, and James H. Pierce (who married Burroughs' daughter Joan) are real head-scratchers. Because of each man being physically in every respect not at all one bit like Tarzan, just makes ya wonder.
          Originally Burroughs himself wanted Olympic decathlete Herman Brix (who later changed his name to Bruce Bennett) to play the Lord of the Jungle. After an injury posed a setback for Brix, MGM went with champion Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller.
          Burroughs later produced his own film version of Tarzan with Bennett starring. Bennett does a great job in Tarzan and the Green Goddess (1936), looking very much the part as described in the books. But the story is inexplicably set in...Guatemala. And yet we see footage of a rhinoceros and some lions. In Guatemala.
          The same exact African animal stock footage gets used and re-used in Tarzan movies over and over, just like their rubber crocodile.
          In the '60s TV series, Ron Ely was a blonde, short-haired Tarzan for the Civil Rights era. In the '80s, Miles O'Keefe has a bit part as the ape-man in the Bo Derek vehicle, and Christopher Lambert is lithe and says, "Oo, oo."
          In the one from a few years ago Alexander Skarsgaard does a credible job, except for being blonde and wearing little pants instead of the requisite loin cloth.
          The Filmation cartoon series "Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle" compares pretty well with the movie competition, actually.
          Overall, a few of the Weissmuller movies are probably the ones most worth watching for sheer Golden Age movie charm. But even after a hundred years, it's never been properly done.



Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT

"TEN COMMANDMENTS" MOVIE HEAVEN

          Starring the great Yul Brynner as Rameses, Pharaoh of Egypt, and also starring Charlton Heston as the Hebrew slave, Moses, Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956) plays like pure movie paradise.
          Featuring an all-star cast plucked from the cinematic firmament: Edward G. Robinson, Anne Baxter, Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price, John Derek, Yvonne De Carlo, John Carradine, and many more.
          From the man who got Bible movies down to a science, The Ten Commandments is Cecil B. DeMille's story of Moses, religiously played by a gentile. Set in the days when slaves were all just clean, decent white folks and Pharaoh was a stern but kindly old British guy, the music is so huge, the narration so epic, the majesty of DeMille's creation really raked in the moolah.
          Some of DeMille's shots, particularly those depicting long lines of human toil, call to mind the work of Soviet Union filmmaking genius Sergei Eisenstein's masterpiece Ivan the Terrible, they're that good. Most of the movie, however, is overshadowed by hyper-use of color.
          He'd made the film before. DeMille's first version was the black and white silent relic from 1923. So he dug that one up and gussied it with the sparkling technology of the day.
          It wasn't his only collaboration with Heston. He also cast Heston as the ringmaster in a circus.
          Utilizing miracles of movie trickery, 24 frames per second flash and we see the Burning Bush, and get to listen in while it tells Moses what to do. We see the magic staff of Moses turn into a snake that eats other snakes without even developing a lump and having to take a month or so to digest.
          Above all, The Ten Commandments is a story of men. Men in a pants-free world.
          And it is a story of commands, laws bestowed by God Himself to never break, under any circumstances, no matter what. Laws such as, Thou Shalt Not Kill.
          The best part is when Moses lures a bunch of guys into the Red Sea that God opened up and then they all get killed. Plus there's a river that turns into blood, a creeping Death Fog, and even a Pillar of Fire. So there's plenty of something for everyone.
          Anyone watching the movie who questions why God talks to Moses only and can't appear as a governing species of flame-retardant flora for all to witness will be ritualistically flogged.
          Behold, Yvonne De Carlo before she became TV's Mrs. Munster!
          Behold, Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson in the same movie years before they were in Soylent Green, the one where people get turned into crackers!
          Yes, The Ten Commandments. Available online, and wherever shafts of sunlight angle down from gaps in clouds.



Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT

"M*A*S*H" MEDICINAL

          You'd never know it to watch the film, but Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould went behind the director's back and tried to get him fired because they thought he was crazy, and they didn't want this crazy man to ruin their film careers.
          The director with the supposedly questionable mental health was Robert Altman. What made the stars think the director was crazy was the totally innovative way that he filmed his outrageous, irreverent, blasphemous, hilarious anti-authoritarian masterpiece, M*A*S*H (1970).
          Writer Ring Lardner, Jr., rightly recognized the quality of the book by Richard Hooker. From his interest, and his screenplay, the project came into the hands of Altman, who then proceeded to film an improvisation of that screenplay. Which infuriated Lardner. It's this improv-style which was so original that cast members literally feared for Altman's sanity, and mostly for their careers.
          But the end result proved that Altman's method was totally right. Everyone knew their characters so well from the script that they were able to discard it and give a freer, more natural expression with no one ever knowing exactly what Altman was filming or keeping. People talk over each other. There's a general murmur of background noise. The result is a non-linear counterculture victory, a slam-dunk against blind conformity for the ages.
          The time, 1951. The place, Korea. (Set in Korea, yes, but the subtext at times was the military action taking place in Vietnam.) At the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, two indispensable military surgeons retain their sanity, in the midst of so much opposite, with a stringent regimen of martinis, nurses, golf, bathrobes, Hawaiian shirts and poker. The surgeons are captains Hawkeye Pierce (Sutherland) and "Trapper" John McIntyre (Gould). When they're not sewing up kids sent back from the front line, they're taking apart a couple of majors who take themselves too seriously.
          Because theirs is a corrupting influence, the brilliant surgeons relentlessly ride the village idiot, Frank Burns (Duvall), who unforgivably reads aloud from the Bible right in front of decent people trying to get loaded.
          Burns' attractive yet hopelessly square fraulein friend Margaret Houlihan (Kellerman) sees beady eye-to beady eye with him at all times mid-goosestep, which is just the sort of thing to put Hawkeye right off his dinner. Bummer, too, because he otherwise would have invited her back to his tent, and she "might possibly have come."
          Twentieth Century Fox studio heads had zero idea the hit on their hands. No awareness at all. They were ready to scrap it. Until, that is, they saw the reaction from a preview audience. The audience didn't just love it, they went totally crazy for it! So then the studio scrambled to start taking credit.
          The film, which launched several acting careers and spawned into one of the best shows ever on TV, even won an Academy Award. And the Oscar went to...Ring Lardner, Jr.
          For the script they eventually didn't even use.



M*A*S*H
Starring Donald Sutherland,
Elliott Gould,
Sally Kellerman,
Robert Duvall,
Tom Skerrit,
Gary Burghoff,
Roger Bowen,
Jo Ann Pflug
Directed by Robert Altman
Written by Ring Lardner, Jr.
Based on the book by Richard Hooker
Runtime 116 minutes


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT

ORIGINAL "VILLAGE" DAMNED GOOD

                    One fine day in a rural English village, without any warning, all the animals and people suddenly collapse. The farmer in his tractor, slumped over the wheel, spins in slow wide circles till the tractor hits a tree. And even then he doesn't budge. No one does. Not even George Sanders, who had starred in a string of B-grade amateur detective flicks a generation earlier before passing the baton to his younger brother.
          After a couple hours of utter insensibility, Sanders manages to haul his genteel carcass up from the floor, rather as though he'd just been sleeping one off curled up with the dog. "What an extraordinary thing to do," he says, trying to cover up to his wife who caught him fair and square.
          Soon, however, the whole village learns that everyone there went lights out at the same time and stayed that way for a few hours. What an extraordinary thing indeed. Gradually, they also learn something further: all the women of child-bearing age have now become pregnant. Some of whom, presumably just like George Sanders' wife, have never had sex in their lives.
          All the babies gestate at an accelerated rate, each one a marvel of development. When they are born, all have blonde hair, arresting eyes, and are uniformly in possession of remarkable intelligence. Intellectual powers so vast, these kids can make people do things without ever saying a word.
          Whenever someone tries to hurt them, they know it in advance. They don't have to say a thing. Those who would try to hurt them cannot help but stop. And receive a stringent lesson in the only thing that matters to Midwich's most gifted young minds: the only thing they want is to be left alone.
          Village of the Damned (1960) is a gem of a picture with a story which may seem familiar even to those who've never seen it. Rod Serling sure did. One of the most famous episodes of The Twilight Zone, "It's a Good Life," stars Billy Mumy as a creepy kid who can read people's minds and do anything he wants.
          Serling's take focuses on the problems of an "overly permissive" society allowing children to run rampant. But the original film from which he was so permissively allowed to directly lift comes from a different place entirely. The director, Wolf Rilla, was born in Berlin. When Adolf Hitler was suckering Germany, Rilla's father, who was Jewish, moved the family to England. So the real problem in the story isn't young people on the brink of peace, love, and rock n' roll. The real problem is blonde inhuman aliens who think that they're superior.
          Re-made not as well in 1995 by John Carpenter, and re-made even more not as well as a television series in 2017, Village of the Damned inexorably demands to be seen, heard, and obeyed.



VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED
Starring George Sanders,
Barbara Shelley,
Michael Gwynn,
Laurence Naismith,
Martin Stephens
Directed by Wolf Rilla
Written by Stirling Silliphant, Wolf Rilla, Ronald Kinnoch
Based on the novel by John Wyndham



Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT









       

"ANGEL HEART" UNBEATABLE

          From 32 years ago, a movie set 32 years prior.
          Angel Heart (1987) stars Mickey Rourke as New York gumshoe Harry Angel in the wild and wooly world of 1955. Tasked by enigmatic client Louis Cyphre (De Niro) to find once-famous crooner Johnny Favorite, Angel sniffs around the city until the trail he picks up leads him down to New Orleans.
          There he seeks a Margaret Krusemark (Rampling) and meets beautiful young Evangeline Proudfoot (Bonet), whose mother, she recalls, once knew Johnny Favorite. Though Krusemark and Proudfoot move in different circles, they share a common interest in what Angel sees as voodoo mumbo jumbo. Oddly enough, everywhere he goes, people wind up dead. And the deeper Angel goes, the more Angel wants out.
          Excellently shot, featuring standout performances, Angel Heart exudes black Gothic mystery. It's got sex, it's got sax, and it's jam-packed with violence back when Rourke first turned heads as an actor invoking comparisons with James Dean and Marlon Brando.
          Rourke recently revealed that during shooting De Niro did not want to talk with or in any way associate with Rourke. Clearly this was simply partly of De Niro's professional process in preparation for the role, but not all actors appreciate this sort of thing, and Rourke seems to have taken offense at De Niro's method. Yet to watch the film, you'd never know it.
          Hell of a story, too. Complete with original use of elements from Greek Tragedy.
          Lisa Bonet has said that Bill Cosby--she played a daughter on his popular TV show at that time--was livid with rage with her for her part in the film, which includes a racy sex scene.
          A Faustian tale draped in Spanish moss, and well worth tracking down.


ANGEL HEART
Starring Mickey Rourke,
Robert De Niro,
Lisa Bonet,
Charlotte Rampling,
Directed by Alan Parker
Written and directed by Alan Parker
Based on the novel by William Hjortsberg
Runtime 113 minutes



Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT

WHY SCORSESE AND COPPOLA ARE RIGHT

          Martin Scorsese, director of Raging Bull and Goodfellas, when asked what he thinks of Marvel movies, responded that they aren't cinema. Several days later, Francis Ford Coppola, director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, went even further, adding that the Marvel product is actually even despicable.
          They're right.
          The reason for that is the same reason that artificially colored and flavored kiddie breakfast cereal, although it sells quite well, is in no way to be considered cuisine. They're right for the same reason that we (to date) don't place Daredevil issue number 47 alongside To Kill a Mockingbird as an example of great literature.
          What we've got here is a case of the emperor wearing no clothes.
          The qualitative aspect associated with the word "cinema" is central to the "not cinema" assertion. Quality exceeds quantity. Nor does the box-office ever have anything to do with quality. One Marvel movie director, James Gunn, in defense of what he does, has stated that when Scorsese and Coppola were starting out, "many of our grandfathers" rejected what these new guys were doing. But he offers zero specificity, and the generalized comparison he imagines is inaccurate, anyway.
          In terms of culture, what we've been getting for a long time is plain old ripped off. We would all do well to remember that the Motion Picture Association of America has never been headed by the artist with the best film talent. In fact, it's a political appointment. So perhaps it's no coincidence that the spigot through which film must pass, particularly all this century so far, has produced consistently infantilizing fare. Not in keeping with the spirit of the original comics, either. Spider-Man was always Stan Lee's favorite. But the movies reduce him at the expense of elevating the fabulously rich Tony Stark whose only power is having money that he inherited. It is also worth noting that in the Marvel movie universe, there is no such thing as Due Process of law.
          Has there ever been a good superhero movie? Sure, you bet. The first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve, the first Batman with Michael Keaton. Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man, Christian Bale as the Dark Knight. Are any of these movies as important in film as Citizen Kane? No, they're not. That's because filmmaking geniuses like Orson Welles, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese, while not an absolute rarity, do not comprise the norm.
          Scorsese equated Marvel movies with theme parks. Fair assessment. After all, the number one name in theme parks owns Marvel movies. Are Marvel movies about "human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being"? No, and Scorsese justly calls it. Marvel movies are highly episodic vehicles for special effects, with uniform appearance and suspect content comparable to a fast food cheeseburger. Fast food cheeseburgers make a lot of money, but that doesn't make them filet mignon.
          Those who get all gooey over Marvel movies, in looking for heroics, should look no further than Coppola himself. Cinema-sense tingling, he detected trouble in the Twitterverse--which, by the way, is a cheeseburger all its own--and, donning his nanotech Despica-suit, flew into action, blasting away in defense of Scorsese.
          "Watch out for the infantilizing ray!" Scorsese called out, swiftly casting a power-shield spell.
          But Coppola was already swinging his mighty movie camera, the one that only he can pick up and which always returns to his waiting hand.
          Then Stanley Kubrick swung down on his magic lasso while Alfred Hitchcock used his amazing film reel power to cartwheel into the fray like a one-man radial arm saw, and the forces of the Twitterverse retreated.
          "We've done it," said David Lean, only now materializing. "We defeated the Schlockites."
          "Yes," Elia-Man concurred in his spectacular Kazan-mobile. "But...for how long?"



Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT

"RIGHT ONE" RIGHT ON

          Q: What do you get when you cross a story about a boy being bullied with a story about young love, plus a third one about real life as a vampire?
          A: You get Swedish triple threat Let the Right One In (2008).
          Thorough, detailed, subtle, complex, this highly original and satisfying film is so terrific, it was re-made in America as Let Me In (2010), starring Chloe Grace Moretz. But it's nowhere near as good at all. First because it's a ripoff, and second because the original has the writer of the novel also writing the screenplay. Plus the casting is off. More on that in a moment.
          Upshot: Twelve year-old Oskar (Hedebrant) gets picked on by three kids at school. At the apartment complex where he lives with his mother, sometimes Oskar fantasizes about fighting back. One night when he thinks he's alone he finds the new neighbor kid from the next apartment watching him. This kid, Eli (Leandersson), also twelve, is full of all sorts of surprises, one them being related to gender. And this is why Moretz is a poor choice for the re-make. Lina Leandersson, on the other hand, is the perfect choice, to some extent due to at that time slightly more androgynous facial features crucial to the role.
          So whereas Let the Right One In has cinematic teeth, Let Me In merely bites.
          For most of the movie the viewer knows more than most of the characters. For example, that they're in a vampire story. A fact, by the way, explicitly revealed in all the marketing. It is, however, a vampire movie which shows no fangs, nor any bats, and not one castle. There is an unexplained supernatural element, yes, yet nothing to do with crucifixes or garlic.
          Eli has a guardian, Hakan (Ragnar), whose grim task it is to procure fresh human blood so that Eli can eat. These scenes comprise a big chunk of the film's considerable charm. Largely this is due to the innovative clinical approach taken, but also because of the difficulty Hakan finds in accomplishing his goal without getting accidentally interrupted.
          Contrasted against this graphic aspect, the pure clean innocence of the smitten youngsters who experience isolation for different reasons. As they grow closer, Eli counsels Oskar that when the bullies try to hit him, he must hit back harder than he ever dared. And if after that they still don't stop, then she'll step in and help.
          "I can," she assures.
          Quiet, simple, dark, and beautiful, Let the Right One In is a polished little gem of a movie in a class by itself.


LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
Starring Kare Hedebrant,
Lina Leandersson,
Per Ragnar,
Peter Carlberg,
Ika Nord
Directed by Tomas Alfredson
Written by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Based on th novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Runtime 114 minutes


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT

"JOKER" ACTOR ACES ROLE

          Joaquin Phoenix proves himself yet again the real acting deal.
          Sometimes one actor's portrayal of a character is sufficient reason to watch a film. This is one of those times.
          If only it hadn't been so hyperly hyped. Industry decision-makers wrongly think overhyping forces "a too big to fail" situation. They hyped Aquaman for a full year before it rightly tanked the opening weekend. What they need to do is underhype, so they don't create a "too big to succeed."
          That said, the story never really needed to have anything to do with a comic book villain. In fact, it would be better served as a film about a mentally ill person, and let that suffice without having anything to do with Batman at all. Reason being: Infantilization? We don't need no stinkin' infantilization.
          Ah, but then if there's no built-in market, it's only a work of art. Kind of like Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy (1982), the main movie on the coattails of which Joker blithely rides.
          Upshot: Back in the early-'80s, Arthur Fleck (Phoenix), clown, gets picked on. He lives with his mom, he's skinny, he wants to be funny, but isn't. The most interesting thing about him is a mental condition where he laughs uncontrollably in stressful situations. After living out a scene from the Charles Bronson movie Death Wish (1974), in full post-work makeup, Fleck finds himself a Guy Fawkes-like figure, an inspiration to the majority poor tired of the deplorable privileged. Meanwhile, all Fleck really wants is to be funny and loved as a guest on his favorite TV show.
          While the lead portrayal absolutely excels, the story overall leaves much to be desired. For example, no talk show--especially one that's supposed to be "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson"--has ever, would ever, could ever do anything like what we're intended to accept in Joker. Also, at this time there weren't always cameras everywhere recording everything for there to be a video sent to fake Johnny, so no, we can't accept that the show would randomly display Fleck flailing at a club. That's a dumb and distracting mistake, and it's not the only one in the movie.
          Yet in spite of all that, Phoenix's unforgettable performance rises beyond the otherwise forgettable occasion. He's in every scene. And he's highly watchable because he lost 45 pounds and all of his sanity for the role. In terms of interior life onscreen, wow, what a lesson in the art of acting. Talk about being to one's insane role committed, J.P.'s so right up there at Heath Ledger's Joker-level, why, it's positively crazy.
          Could this Fleck guy ever possibly become Batman's arch-nemesis? Nope, no way. Nothing about this character allows for his ever masterminding a crime. Nor is there any of the "indiscriminate violence" which audiences may wrongly expect. Probably that was just a marketing ploy.
          But hey, it's still an interesting movie.


JOKER
Starring Joaquin Phoenix,
Robert De Niro,
Zazie Beetz,
Francis Conroy
Directed by Todd Phillips
Written by Todd Phillips, Scott Silver
Based on characters created by Bob Kane
Runtime 122 minutes

"NOSFERATU" INFECTIOUS

          F.W. Murnau's 1922 German Expressionist vision of Dracula casts an indelible portrait of the vampire.
          Featuring the enigmatic Max Schreck as Count Orlok, Nosferatu excels in spite of Murnau's inability to secure the rights to Bram Stoker's novel.
          Murnau's "Symphony of Horror," with a screenplay freely adapted by Henrik Galeen, concerns the Great Plague of Wisborg in 1838--or rather, its cause: Nosferatu, a pestilential Son of Belial with "a name like the sound of the death bird at midnight."
          Industrious young real estate agent Hutter believes he stands to make a healthy commission delivering in person papers drawn up for the Transylvanian Count's purchase of a "handsome, deserted house" in Wisborg. Hutter's boss, Knock--who acts like the character Renfield in the novel--pointedly neglects to mention that he's sending Hutter on an errand to a highly unusual client with long claws, rat-like teeth, and an appetite for human blood obtained directly from the source. Like a juice-box.
          Hutter has a wife, Ellen, whose neck the Count immediately covets. She, meanwhile, has a mystical connection through sleep and dream with Hutter and the Count far away in the Carpathians.
          In 1922, black and white was not exactly black and white. It was actually common practice to use a colored filter over the camera lens. A blue filter, for example, indicates outdoor nighttime shots. Particularly in the restored Kino edition, astoundingly clean and clear frames repeatedly please the eye.
          This is because it's Expressionist. Due to WWI, German filmmakers were cut off from the world in terms of the still-emerging art and the business associated with it. The striking visuals--stylized sets, unconventional camera angles, and exceptional use of shadows--plus extreme subject matter (such as vampires) speaking to the present and the eternal in the higher language of the figurative, still provide the stock for the cinematic soup of the world.
          Werner Herzog re-made the classic in 1979 with Klaus Kinski as Orlok, and in most ways it's the better version. That same year, Stephen King's made-for-TV 'Salem's Lot was filmed in Ferndale, California, with a non-vocal vampire looking like a dead-ringer for Orlok. (For that matter, so does Freddy Kruger in silhouette, who also operates in the dream realm.)
          Another goodie is Shadow of the Vampire (2000), which stars John Malkovich as Murnau and Willem Dafoe as, not the actor Max Schreck, but as an actual vampire that Murnau was somehow able to procure.
          The first vampire movie got it right. The Count is supposed to be repellent. That's in keeping with the novel, and that's what works best. Not a suave dude, but a repugnant figure. Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Frank Langella, and Gary Oldman all bring their own fantastic interpretation, but it is Max Schreck who casts the longest vampire shadow.
          Seek Nosferatu wherever fine films are found--and preferably do so by train.

"AMERICAN PSYCHO" FLAWED MASTERPIECE

          Nine years after the publication of Bret Easton Ellis' banned book comes this blackly comic wry satire featuring one of the best performances by one of film's finest actors.
          Christian Bale stars as Patrick Bateman, an investment banker at the firm of Pierce and Pierce. Just as Bateman's name suggests Norman Bates from Psycho, so too does the name of the firm broadly hint at the investment banker's homicidal interests.
          What makes American Psycho (2000) a masterpiece is tying together rapacious hollow greed, white male privilege, empty consumerism, and wounded narcissism with mental imbalance and murder. That, plus a razor-sharp dead-on performance by Bale.
          However, the ending falls apart like over-boiled chicken. Falls apart so bad, it's enough to drive a person crazy.
          The story wouldn't have any of the impact if Bateman was a plumber. But this is a movie with something to say. Which also seems to be pretty much why the book got banned.
          So many great images, so many great moments. Bale captures Bateman's lifeless eyes just right. Everything he does is selfish, everything he says, artificial. He has no tastes of his own, but rather only rattles off critiques from other sources used like weapons against people in lieu of conversation.
          He's not really human, he's not really there, and he's not really different from any of the others.
          When the story starts (set in 1987), we have no way of knowing whether Bateman has killed anyone yet. We see him kill a transient here, a prostitute there. He tells us in Voice Over all about the designer toiletries he uses and various lotions he applies to keep his skin soft.
          Then we see another guy at the firm who has the same haircut as Bateman, and wears the same style suit and eyeglasses, but whose business card is just a little bit better than Bateman's.
          Big mistake for that guy.
          And ultimately a big mistake for the filmmaker. Writer-director Mary Harron in an interview with Charlie Rose admitted she made a mistake with the film's ending by creating too much ambiguity. This ambiguity is the film's fatal flaw. The viewer is left wondering if Bateman ever even killed anyone. Was it all merely his violent imagination or delusions?
          Well, no. And that's where Harron regrets the ambiguity. Patrick Bateman definitely does commit the murders. (Except maybe for a few, not to quibble.) Yet the film makes a better double-feature with Wall Street or The Wolf of Wall Street than Psycho. This is because, even though Bateman quotes serial killer Ed Gein, the real-life inspiration for Robert Bloch's novel later to become the Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece, that fact is in service of the larger issues concerning who and what gets called success.
          Also starring Josh Lucas as one of Bateman's silky Pierce and Pierce frenemies, Jared Leto as the guy whose business card is better than Bateman's, Reese Witherspoon as Bateman's clueless fiancée, and Willem Dafoe as the friendly neighborhood detective who would like to ask Mr. Bateman a few questions.

"L'HOMME QUI RIT" CARVES MOVIE MARK

          Excellent production value highlights this faithful adaptation of Victor Hugo's 1869 novel.
          The title means "The Man Who Laughs"--and this is the name of the first film version of the story, from 1928, starring Conrad Veidt in the role of a traveling freak show performer whose face was horrifically carved into a huge permanent smile when he was a young boy by a so-called "doctor" of child-stealing Gypsies.
          The real name of The Man Who Laughs is Gwynplaine (Grondin). Abandoned as a child one night in a snowstorm, he saves a blind girl yet younger than himself, and the two are taken in by the gruff, bear-like Ursus (Depardieu) who travels in his tiny caravan around the countryside with a wolf for a companion as he sells potions and performs little stage productions. In the book, which provides seemingly extraneous details which help set the stage for the main storyline, it takes a long time to finally get where the story properly starts, which is with the abandonment of young Gwynplaine.
          The main thing the 2012 version gets wrong is softening Gwynplaine's disfigurement and playing up all his other attributes to the point where he basically could have been played by Johnny Depp as a sort of heartthrob-type version of the character. But the best version of the role by far is Veidt's interpretation.
          Remaining intentionally vague to preserve the experience, suffice to say Gwynplaine learns a secret about himself that changes his life, and the second half of the story takes a wildly different turn.
          One thing happens in this movie that we almost never see in any film: The events take place in England, but all of the characters speak French. In a world where comic book Norse gods owned by the Disney corporation all speak in prestige British dialect, what a welcome change to hear members of Parliament speaking French.
          The most unbelievable aspect of the story, almost unforgivably so, is Gwynplaine's inexplicable desire for a Platonic relationship with Dea (Theret). Where others despise him on sight, the beautiful young blind woman loves Gwynplaine because she sees his soul. And she's all totally into it. But no, instead Gwynplaine says, "I can never make you happy." And that's probably true, but it's not because of his face.
          Starring also Emmanuelle Seigner (aka Mrs. Roman Polanski) as a duchess interested in The Man Who Laughs. A scene in L'Homme Qui Rit calls to mind another from Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers. The former is visually and thematically in keeping with the latter because it depicts a lifeless waltz danced by the rich. For that matter, moments later we see a reference to Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bete, specifically the white fluttering curtains in the castle hall.
          In particular the end of the highly literate 2012 version is faithful to Hugo's vision. This fact, coupled with the excellent look of the film, effective use of music and overall artistry, raise it to the same level of the 1928 original.
          It is worth noting that Veidt's portrayal of Gwynplaine is unforgettable, so influential it served as the inspiration for Batman-creator Bob Kane's villainous character, the Joker. Jack Nicholson plays the Joker in the 1989 Batman the same way Cesar Romero did in the mid-'60s TV show, smiling and hoo-hooing underneath a painted-on smile. What's more interesting is a frown or a scowl beneath the fake permanent smile. We do get this with the superior portrayal by Heath Ledger in his final film role. And it would appear this is repeated with the new film, Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix. But no one has ever matched the performance by Conrad Veidt.
          Note: A French version of the story filmed in 1971 does exist, but it looks and sounds like a home movie, so foolish, its only merit is in, ironically, providing the reason for derisive laughter.
          Seek the 2012 melodrama masterpiece wherever fine films are found.


L'HOMME QUI RIT
Starring Gerard Depardieu,
Marc-Andre Grondin,
Emmanuelle Seigner,
Christa Theret,
Romain Morelli,
Fanie Zanini
Directed by Jean-Pierre Ameris
Written by Jean-Pierre Ameris, Guillaume Laurant
Based on the novel by Victor Hugo
Runtime 95 minutes

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO TRY TO RUIN "FRANKENSTEIN"

          In the late-1920s, Carl Laemmle Jr., the head of production at Universal pictures, requested horror as a genre on which to focus, resulting in a string of classics--most notably, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Invisible Man. Some of the films deserve their fame more than others; all, however, share in common a degree of gravity, strong emotional truth fantastically presented.
          After 1936, however, when the tenure of Laemmle Jr. ended, something horrific occurred. Somebody else at the desk a few years later figured those old horror movies might just hold a little more blood for the squeezing. So, with nary an intent to appreciate the genre, a second cycle of Universal horror flicks got cranked out, riding on the success of the first.
          Like a kid smashing together a toy in each fist, Universal came up with Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Then it was the House of movies--House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula. By 1948 this schlock degenerated into the Abbott and Costello series billed as hilarious spoofs, yet holding genuine thrills and chills.
          Nothing could be further from the truth.
          What Abbott and Costello do for classic Universal monsters is right up there with what they did for religion with the lost film Abbott and Costello Meet Moses. In that one, Charlton Heston, playing Moses, pops up from behind a crate, causing the short fat one, Lou Costello as Wilbur, to point and stammer ineffectually, finally frantically calling out for the taller one, Bud Abbott as Chick, who comes over and says, "What's the matter with you? Get back to work!" Then when Chick leaves, Moses appears behind another crate, scaring Wilbur a second time, and the whole bit gets repeated again.
          Billed as a hilarious spoof of Biblical movies, while also providing genuine spiritual thrills, what this lost film did was make people hate Moses.
          Same sort of thing with the not lost stuff.
          One movie in history truly is hilarious and also pays legitimate homage to the Universal classics, Young Frankenstein (1974), produced by Twentieth Century Fox.
          The original films already have problems enough. For one thing, why is Frankenstein's monster so symmetrical? To indicate the haphazard collection of robbed separate parts stitched together, everything should be wrongly proportioned. Why does Dracula have a tiny little coffin for a potato bug? Vampires can't handle the shape of the cross, but there are cross-shapes all over the floors and the walls of Dracula's castle. Why?
          When Lon Chaney Jr. turns into the Wolf Man, he's wearing a white tank top t-shirt. But then in the next scene he's wearing a dark long-sleeved button-down shirt. NO WAY!
          The better werewolf movie--and it's a mystery why we rarely see any mention of it--is the earlier film Werewolf of London (1935), starring Henry Hull. More to say about that film another time.
          The Mummy is basically a cheap Dracula re-make. Both of those movies start with the best scenes, then taper off for the bulk of the picture. A lot of drawing room nonsense, not enough action.
          Yet these are the films that we love, despite House of Abbott Meets Costello. The classics open magnificently with great use of silence broken only by lovely old crackles and pops in the film, like a favorite vinyl LP. The films have their flaws, yes. They're not like the books, no. But one thing's for sure: They make Abbott and Costello look like crud.

Screwing up the title of my article is inexcusable.

"Try to Run Franke"?

Holy shit. All they had to do was simply cut and paste. 

So yeah, this is why I don't let them run my articles anymore. Wasn't their first time screwing up one of my titles, either. They've even managed to get my name wrong in a couple issues. And never had the character to print a correction, much less apologize for their errors.

Then to cap it all off, they never once paid me for my work anywhere near on time. Always took them about four months--literally four months--before they finally met their responsibilities. Even at the vastly reduced rate which I allowed, like charity. 

I helped them out for a long time, and I was the best part of that paper, I promise you.

Never again.

"LAST WALTZ" FIRST-RATE

          Martin Scorsese's 1978 film of The Band's final concert.
          Featuring an all-star lineup with performances by Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Dr. John, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, Ron Wood, The Band, and more, The Last Waltz is more than a concert. It's a celebration.
          At the time it was celebrating having, as guitarist Robbie Robertson states, "been together 16 years on the road." More specifically, not doing that anymore. But the statement is misleading. The title of The Band's 1968 seminal album Music From Big Pink refers to a house in New York state where they holed up writing music and developing their mystique, so it's not like they were constantly on the road.
          Still, Robertson had had his fill. Indeed, no one on the planet expected The Rolling Stones or anyone else to play for 50 or 60 years.
          It begins at the end, with Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, and Robertson playing the perhaps prophetically titled "Don't Do It." For those unfamiliar with The Band, in the early-'60s they played for Ronnie Hawkins as The Hawks. By the mid-'60s, Bob Dylan saw them perform and was so impressed that he started playing electric guitar and changed his sound to folk-rock. Around this time The Hawks took a name change. They tried calling themselves The Crackers. They tried calling themselves The Honkies. But the only name that stuck was The Band--as in Bob Dylan and The Band.
          Their most famous song is "The Weight," the one with the line, "Take a load off, Annie..."
          In between songs we get little stories and insights from the members recalling the early days and difficult conditions therein.
          Prior to the 1978 movie release, Martin Scorsese's most famous films were Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), both starring Robert De Niro. This year marks the release of Scorsese's latest collaboration with the legendary actor in The Irishman, as well as a Bob Dylan documentary on Netflix, Rolling Thunder Revue.
          The 11/25/76 concert which took place at the Winterland in San Francisco boasts unforgettable performances in a time-capsule of musicianship. No AutoTune, no lip-syncing, no synchronized dancing, just a wide variety of real music from actual musicians.
          Ten years after the concert, keyboardist Manuel took his life. In 1992 surviving members got together again with Bob Dylan for an evening, but the 1976 event remains the last performance.
          Available wherever fine films are found.



Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

"SiCKO" POTENT

          Michael Moore's healthcare industry documentary graphically illustrates the stark division between the United States and the rest of the Western world.
          In 2007, when the film was released, 250 million Americans had healthcare, and 50 million Americans had no healthcare coverage at all. But even the insured generally had a hard time getting the healthcare they required.
          In almost any other country, healthcare works. But not in America. And the reason for that is healthcare insurance companies. What the film makes clear: Healthcare is not a privilege, it's a right.
          The film shows a guy whose granddaughter was going to get an implant in one ear only, because he was told that's all his healthcare would cover...until he wrote his insurance company a letter apprising them of Michael Moore's new documentary. Whereupon he soon got a phone call from the health insurance company which did an about-face and now said, yes, no problem, the granddaughter would be covered for implants in both ears, after all.
          Elsewhere the film focuses on cases of uninsured sick people taken away from the hospital by cab and abandoned in the street. "Who are we?" Moore asks. "Is this what we've become? A nation that dumps its own citizens like so much garbage on the side of the curb because they can't pay their hospital bills?"
          Based on a wide variety of cases explored, one finishes the film feeling that the healthcare system has less of an interest in helping sick people become well, and more of an interest in making profit.
          "Looking back," says the guy whose job used to be trying to deny people the healthcare they paid for, "did I do harm to people's lives? Yeah, hell yeah."
          The film throws light on a "plan hatched between Nixon and Edgar Kaiser" wherein "patients were given less and less care."
          Healthcare industry contributions to the US Congress purchased a bill that lets drug companies charge whatever they want. No matter how exorbitant. For his complicity in the Prescription Drug Act of 2003, Bush was given almost $900,000.
          You don't have to bring your checkbook to the hospital for healthcare anywhere else in the Western world. Socialized systems in the US include police, firefighters, teachers, and postal workers. But nothing for the quality healthcare that everyone else gets.
          In United Kingdom, for example, healthcare is considered national insurance. There is no bill to pay. Giving birth? Zero charge. Heart attack? Zero charge. But everything would change in the UK if the healthcare system was purchased by lobbyists like we have here.
          Fact: the man behind the web's biggest anti-Michael Moore website had to shut it down because he couldn't afford to keep it going due to his wife's healthcare costs. So Michael Moore wrote him an anonymous check for $12,000 to cover his wife's healthcare costs. And because of Michael Moore's money, the Michael Moore-hater's wife got better.
          The fascinating film freely available online.


Stewart Kirby writes for 
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

"METAL" RESOUNDS

          The 1981 film inspired by the adult sci-fi, horror, and fantasy magazine Heavy Metal, featuring a string of animated stories shown to a girl in a barn by a glowing green orb calling itself the Loknar.
          Bolstered by great songs from Cheap Trick, Sammy Hagar, Journey, and others, the cult classic reflects the magazine's futuristic-soft porn ethos. It's not an American invention, actually. Heavy Metal, first published in 1977, was the US version of a French magazine first published in 1973 called Metal Hurlant.
          Like the French animated masterpiece Fantastic Planet (1973), the strong suit of Heavy Metal is sheer imagination, with the additional benefit of humor thoroughly marbled, plus varying degrees of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll.
          One story, "Den", has a geeky kid named Dan earnestly attesting that when a weird glowing green meteor landed on his lawn, he was transported to another world where he became a muscular bald dude named Den. As voiced by John Candy, the affirmation, "I wasn't about to go around with my dork hanging out," greatly entertains and typifies much of the film's irreverent stoner tone.
          The hand-drawn animation appears flat compared to many computer-generated images, yet it's a cinematic breath of fresh air to see the variety and unique style that current Disney re-makes so woefully lack. Indeed, CG effects defeat the purpose of animation. That purpose is not to replicate reality, but rather to improve upon it with a vision which we call artistic. Bugs Bunny, for example, doesn't look like a real rabbit. Intentionally so. And that intention would be lost in a CG product of a regular old rabbit hopping around.
          Furthermore, Disney's decision to shove decades of differently animated movies into one ill-advised uniform CG shellac negates art. Because Disney bought ABC, Marvel, and Star Wars, everything they do is automatically and undeservedly too big to fail, but none of it's any good.
          Better off watching Heavy Metal, even though it has ten different directors and ten different writers. For additional animated kicks, check out the sword and sorcery action of Fire and Ice (1983), featuring the art of the great Frank Frazetta.


HEAVY METAL
Starring (the voices of)
John Candy,
Harold Ramis,
Eugene Levy,
John Vernon,
Douglas Kenney
Runtime 86 minutes


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

"SHANE" STAKES WESTERN CLAIM

          A simple yet effective sun god myth set in the Old West.
          Alan Ladd stars as the title character, a lone stranger with a mysterious past who decides to help hard-working homesteader Joe Starett (Heflin), a man who wants to protect his wife and young son from a greedy land-grabber trying to terrorize the family into abandoning their home.
          With the Grand Tetons as a spectacular backdrop, Shane (1953) benefits from fantastic photography of wide and windy open spaces. It's a story about courage, family, and friendship from the man who would later direct James Dean's final picture, Giant (1956) and several other movie classics. It's a story about honor, keeping one's word, and doing the right thing in a hard and unjust world.
          Quoth glistening Heflin to glistening Ladd whilst shoving in conjoined might against a stubborn stump: "Sometimes there ain't nothin' will do but your own sweat and muscle." Oh gosh, yeah!
          Soaring music, gigantic sky, an uncomplicated story thoroughly worked, girded by themes of love and freedom. Kinda gets ya right here.
          Partly what makes the film work so well is Ladd's cinematic radiance of clean decency. Not seeming a tough guy but rather a "golden angel of the gun" who puts up more of a fight than the terrorizers bargained for helps the movie enormously.
          The bad guys wind up getting a dark angel of their own--Jack Palance, in a career-defining role--who threatens to pull Shane back into the gunfighting he deplores.
          Clint Eastwood stars in the Shane re-make he directed, 1985's Pale Rider. That film has some good scenes, but it's not as memorable as the source material, even with Eastwood, because the original clearly defines the lead characters. Wah-hahh.
          As a subplot, we also see a certain attraction between Joe's wife Marion (Arthur) and Shane. (In this respect, Shane does double-duty, bearing aspects comparable with both Lancelot the Supposedly Chaste and Arthur the Secret Sun God.) Also, we see the hero-worship of Joe and Marion's little towhead boy, Joey, for quick-on-the-draw Shane.
          Featuring Elisha Cook Jr. as the diminutive yet determined fellow homesteader who stands up to the doers of evil as best he can.
          The fights are great--except for the times we see stunt doubles, of course. But, what the hey.
          The Western classic freely available online.


SHANE
Starring Alan Ladd,
Van Heflin,
Jean Arthur,
Jack Palance,
Elisha Cook Jr.
Brandon De Wilde
Directed by George Stevens
Written by A.B. Guthrie Jr, Jack Sher
Based on the novel by Jack Schaefer
Runtime 118 minutes

Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE


         

"THIEF OF BAGDAD" REWARDING FANTASY

         His place in movie history is as unforgettable and influential as it is unique. His name was Sabu Dastagir, but in film he was known simply as Sabu. Born in 1924 in Mysore, India (according to IMDb), the son of an elephant driver was spotted by a British film crew and whisked away to start a new life at age 9 as an actor. His first movie was Elephant Boy (1937), produced by Alexander Korda, with whom Sabu was placed under exclusive contract.
          The Thief of Bagdad (1940) is probably Korda's finest film, the other likely contender being 1942's The Jungle Book, in which Sabu stars as the best Mowgli of them all. Korda's Bagdad shares the same title as the stunning 1924 predecessor starring the athletic Douglas Fairbanks, and presents an equally fantastic tale of the Arabian Nights.
          The Miklos Rozsa music (he also co-wrote the screenplay), spectacular Technicolor, and iconic performances not only by the great Sabu but also by the great Conrad Veidt and more all contribute to the top-tier family fare. Veidt plays Jaffar, an evil magician who advises the earnest young Prince Ahmad (Justin) to travel outside the royal palace incognito among his subjects the better to learn their hearts. And the Prince listens.
          Big mistake.
          The magician's name, the name of the character Abu (whom Sabu plays), and numerous other aspects including a childlike sultan with "the greatest collection of toys in the world" may prove recognizable to audiences familiar with the 1992 Disney cartoon Aladdin, currently in theaters as a re-make, part of a live-action/CGI trend Disney is undergoing. Disney seems to have appropriated much of Thief into the 1992 cartoon with no visible credit given to the 1940 source material. For that matter, in Faust (1926), the title character is presented to a princess in the guise of a fabulous elephant-riding prince by, not s genie, but rather the Devil. Compare the procession scene in both films to appreciate the uncanny resemblance.
          The 1940 gem unfolds in medias res, in the middle of things, beginning with a blind beggar aided by a remarkable dog. Remaining intentionally vague to preserve the experience, suffice to say The Thief of Bagdad is packed with magic, adventure, and romance, including the biggest and most authentic genie ever, magnificently played by Rex Ingram. Also starring the always lovely June Duprez as the Princess.
          In 1944 twenty year-old Sabu enlisted in the Army Air Force and earned WWII distinction in combat as a tail gunner. Despite his real-life heroics, in the tradition of many a child actor, Sabu's film career steadily waned the further he moved from youth.
          Check out the sometimes imitated but never duplicated feel-good fantasy freely available online.

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD
Starring Sabu,
John Justin,
Conrad Veidt,
June Duprez,
Rex Ingram
Directed by Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan
Written by Miles Malleson, Lajos Biro, Miklos Rozsa
Runtime 106 minutes


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

"JAWS" GUTSY

          Talkin' 'bout sharkin'.
          Based on Peter Benchley's 1974 bestseller, Steven Spielberg's smash hit Jaws (1975) defined the summer blockbuster. What Hitchcock did for the bathroom shower, Spielberg did for oceans, rivers, and swimming pools.
          At the time that Spielberg directed the movie he was only 27, yet International Movie Database lists 17 prior directorial credits. Episodes of TV shows, mostly, including "Night Gallery" and "Columbo".
          It's the story of a small island community dependent on summer tourism. When a young woman is killed by a Great White shark, the town mayor tries to keep the situation quiet. But when more attacks occur, the town hires a salty old sea dog named Quint (Shaw) to find the shark and kill it.
          At the center of the action is the town's new police chief, Brody (Scheider), who is himself a sort of fish out of water, wanting to do the right thing, but not really knowing how. His sympathies lie with Hooper (Dreyfuss), the college boy sent by the Oceanographic Institute to determine the species and size of the rogue shark.
          As a backdrop to the story, the so-called Generation Gap. Almost all of the authority figures can't really be trusted, the exception being Brody. In a sense the film crests a cultural wave. Post-Watergate, audiences had an appetite for suspicion toward the mainstream, even disdain. When Brody and Hooper accompany Quint on his little boat, the conflict between young Hooper and old Quint sustains interest until such times as the shark appears.
          Robert Shaw, the hit-man who fights Sean Connery in From Russia, With Love, and the mob boss Paul Newman and Robert Redford take on in The Sting, also happened to be an award-winning playwright.
          For filmmaking purposes, much of the action with the shark needed to be set during the daytime, and occur in ways that would affect audiences at the expense of accuracy. As an unintended consequence, people started trying to get back at sharks. Many a Great White was killed worldwide directly because of Jaws.
          One of the things that makes the film so effective was the unreliability of the mechanical shark. Because of difficulties making it properly operate, Spielberg often had to find new ways to shoot scenes which actually increased suspense.
          And then there's the music. In 1974, Spielberg approached one John Williams to write the music for his film The Sugarland Express, and then the next year they had the huge hit with Jaws. To this day, the simple notes indicating the shark moving in the water are instantly recognizable even to people who've never seen the movie.
          Some movies crush beer cans with their bare hands, while others do the same to Styrofoam cups. Jaws crushes kegs. With teeth.
          Hunt down the summer movie wherever fine films are found.


JAWS
Starring Robert Shaw,
Roy Scheider,
Richard Dreyfuss,
Lorraine Gary,
Murray Hamilton
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Written by Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb
Based on the novel by Peter Benchley
Runtime 124 minutes


Stewart Kirby writes for 
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

"HELP!" CULT FAVORITE

          In their second film (and their first in color), Beatles John, Paul, and George must protect Ringo from a cult trying to sacrifice him.
          But it isn't all just laughs. There's great music, too, including the title song, "Ticket to Ride," "You're Gonna Lose That Girl," and many more.
          Directed by Richard Lester, who directed the Beatles in A Hard Day's Night (1964), Help! (1965) is 92 minutes of the lads from Liverpool larking cartoonishly about. It's not as good as A Hard Day's Night, but it's the next best thing.
          We never find out exactly where the cult comes from. We can see that the leader is a middle-aged Anglo who talks like he wants people to think he's from India, but that's about all we get. Stranger still, no reason is ever given why or how Ringo got the cult's sacrificial ring in the first place.
          That's because it's a totally nonsensical story, which is exactly the way the Beatles truly lived, always being chased around and doing silly things.
          Using the fantastic wealth and influence at their disposal as a result of their amazing rock n' roll success, the Fab Four get scientists to try to help them remove the ring from Ringo's finger. In this process, Paul is accidentally shrunk down small enough to stand inside an ashtray.
          Two years later, Magical Mystery Tour (1967) pushed the psychedelic envelope for the Beatles, but it makes a much better album than it does a film.
          Yellow Submarine (1968) would at first seem to take the progression of lighthearted surrealism in Beatles films to the next level by making them literally a cartoon. But the actors providing the voices in that movie aren't the Beatles (who appear only for a moment at the very end), so that's a major letdown.
          Richard Lester went on to direct two of the greatest swashbucklers: The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974). Look for character actor Roy Kinnear in both of Lester's Beatle movies, plus both of the Musketeers.
          Filmed in the sun-drenched beaches of the Bahamas, the snowy slopes of Austria, and additional fine locations, Help! isn't just the best comedy-adventure-musical starring the Beatles to ever be released in 1965, it's also the only one!
          Freely available online.


HELP!
Starring John Lennon,
Paul McCartney,
George Harrison,
Ringo Starr,
Leo McKern,
Eleanor Bron,
Victor Spinetti,
Roy Kinnear
Directed by Richard Lester
Written by Marc Behm, Charles Wood
Runtime 92 minutes


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

"ROSEMARY'S BABY" JOYOUS OCCASION

          An actor's wife gradually comes to fear that a witches' coven in modern-day 1966 wants her unborn baby for unspeakable Satanic rites.
          Based on Ira Levin's novel, Rosemary's Baby (1968), fantastically directed by Roman Polanski, may well be the most faithful adaptation of a book to film on record. (Helps that Polanski wrote the script.)
          Featuring John Cassavetes as Rosemary's husband Guy Woodburn, the actor willing to do anything to become a big success. Cassavetes, a terrific actor, was unique in that he viewed his film roles as sort of necessary evils to finance what he considered more interesting projects for him to direct (often starring Gena Rowlands), which influenced Martin Scorsese and doubtless countless others.
          The film also boasts music by Christopher Komeda. Even just one piano note struck at the start of the movie conveys the stark mood of a story that sets olde-time horror in the middle of the modern world.
          Mia Farrow, perfectly cast as Rosemary, holds the picture together unforgettably from beginning to end combining charming innocence with a steely core.
         The film is produced by William Castle, known for B-movie horror flicks from ten years prior such as House On Haunted Hill (1959). That one stars Elisha Cook Jr., and in Rosemary's Baby he's the acting landlord who shows the young couple the apartment they will rent in a building with a long dark history, with tenants including two proper Victorian ladies called the Trench Sisters who killed and ate children.
          After the mysterious death of a young woman who was staying with kindly elderly neighbors, those very neighbors, the Castavets, show remarkable enthusiasm for developing a close friendship with the Woodhouses. Regarding the subject of Rosemary becoming pregnant, the Castavets seem particularly keen.
          It's one of the best Gothic stories ever written. And in Roman Polanski's hands, the movie becomes a masterpiece. His dream sequences may well be the best in film. Just in the way he does things. In a separate and random example of his filmmaking excellence, about midway through, when Rosemary spots a Nativity scene in a storefront window display, her hand at her mouth reflected in the window for us subtly foreshadows the horror awaiting her.
          An interesting theme running throughout Polanski's work is the extent and the depth of the horror all around, and how one deals with that. Isolated incidents of horror committed by outsiders on the fringe aren't so interesting to Polanski as the realization that horror is the water in which we all swim.


ROSEMARY'S BABY
Starring Mia Farrow,
John Cassavetes,
Ruth Gordon,
Sidney Blackmer,
Charles Grodin
Written and directed by Roman Polanski
Based on the novel by Ira Levin
Runtime 137 minutes


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

THE BIRTH OF FILM

       

          It begins in France with two brothers, whose very name means "light." And depending on how you look at it, film may be said to begin in France perhaps 10,000 years ago or more, as shown on cave walls such as in Lascaux depicting a sort of proto-animation with additional legs on animals apparently to indicate motion.

          Auguste and Louis Lumiere are the shamanic brothers of a century and a quarter ago whose February of 1895 patent registered for the Cinematograph sets the art and business of movies into motion. December 28 of that year marks the first film screening with 10 short films shown to a paying audience in a Paris café.
          The 1996 documentary The Lumiere Brothers' First Films bestows illuminating perspective on the 2-year period (1895-1897) wherein they made the films which form the bedrock of cinema.
          The world's first film is of workers exiting a factory. Women, mostly. Plus two horses, one dog, and a bicyclist.
          Comparable to Twitter today which allows tweets of no more than 164 characters, the Lumiere Brothers' first films are only 50 seconds long. They show crowds and the working class. The brothers film in the street, recording daily life with striking composition and tremendous movement.
          The brothers make the first film, the first re-make, the first home movie, the first comedy, the first commercial. They invent the tracking shot. And diagonal perspective.
          Film's first masterpiece is of a train's arrival. The first cat in film appears as the star of a cat food commercial. "Wild Boys of the Road" shows urchins playing marbles. Everyday people were clearly hyper-conscious of being recorded, and overacted at every opportunity, comparable to the selfie in social media today.
          In the words of narrator Bertrand Tavernier, the brothers were "interested in everything that could be exciting and entertaining." Their films are even Post Modern, referring to films in their films. They have the first film of someone filming, and that guy is protected by a policeman trying to get into the shot.
          An illuminating fact: the men of 1896 look at the camera much more than do the women, and are generally more selfish and less professional.
          Because Auguste and Louis sent operators all over the world, we can see Indo-China opium smokers, Irish firemen, the Pyramids of Egypt and the Sphinx--all priceless documents from the 1890s. They went to Turkey and Japan, Moscow and Berlin. In New York and Chicago, because of the Lumiere Brothers, we can see that literally almost every man has the same mustache!
          Many of the films were lost for a century. Luckily, we can see "The Grotesque Roller-Skater," featuring a fat guy skating. Fortunately also the brothers filmed a tribute to their contemporary, the first great director, French magician George Melies, chiefly notable for his groundbreaking A Trip to the Moon. (Martin Scorsese's Hugo (2011) features Ben Kingsley as Melies in a brilliantly imaginative love-letter to the movies.)
          Long before the Brothers Cohen, Wachowski, or Farrelly, the Lumieres brought the light of cinema to the world. To see the first documents displaying motion, sometimes with accidents, a quick search will reveal the freely available 1996 documentary online.



Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

MPAA DOC RATES FAVORABLY

          The year is 1921. Silent cinema funnyman Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle goes off on a helluva toot in a San Francisco hotel and winds up accused of rape and manslaughter. Hearst newspapers have a field day digging up dirt, and the bad press results in Hollywood trying to save face and protect itself from government intrusion by forming in 1922 the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA).
          The first president of this organization has no experience in film whatsoever. He is, in point of fact, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, one William Hays. The purpose of his post is to provide the appearance of "moral guidance" in the art of cinema. By 1930 he devises a loose code which we know by his name. By 1934 his repressive and arbitrary set of rules becomes strictly enforced.
          Cut to 1966: President Lyndon Johnson's "special consultant" Jack Valenti is appointed head of the MPPDA. He changes the name to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and in 1968 replaces the antiquated and fuzzy Hays Code with the antiquated and fuzzy film rating system which still exists today and is shrouded in mystery.
          In theory, the MPAA exists to avoid government censorship. In reality, the MPAA is headquartered in Washington, D.C. No one ever becomes the head of the MPAA by doing well at movies or having any experience in art. It's always a political appointment, and if this system existed in any other country, people here would call it propaganda. Currently all of this information may freely be found online.
          The MPAA is the only ratings board that does not disclose who its board members are. In crucial respects it bears resemblance to the Electoral College System. Just as the Electoral College System wields true control over Presidential elections--we're not allowed to know the name of each state's electorate whose secret vote secures the Presidency--similarly, true power in film is held, not by artists, but by a secretive organization about which most people have little or no knowledge.
          One documentary on the MPAA does exist. This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006) proves generally revealing. Featuring insightful commentary by several directors (including Kimberly Peirce, John Waters, Matt Stone, and Kevin Smith), Not Yet Rated focuses primarily on the MPAA's edict against sexuality. In particular, scenes depicting female pleasure. Violence against women, however, is routinely considered perfectly acceptable. This may possibly bear a relationship not with so-called Puritan roots, but rather with advertising precepts and the psychology of militarism. In  Europe, we learn, the opposite is true. Whereas European movies depict sexuality comparatively freely, violence in any form, but particularly violence with guns, is considered undesirable.
          Although the 98-minute film, freely available online, is entertaining, informative, and therefore well worth watching, it's far from thorough. It may prove of interest to viewers, for example, to discover that no one seems to know what it was exactly that Valenti did for LBJ. The Texas-born son of Italian immigrants started out in the advertising department of an oil company called Humble Oil. (Humble Oil eventually changed its name to Exxon.) Whatever he did for LBJ, he started that job on Nov. 22, 1963, hours after the assassination of President Kennedy. He was present in the Dallas motorcade, and can be seen in a photograph taken aboard Air Force One when LBJ is being sworn in as JFK's successor.
          When Not Yet Rated was released in 2006, 90% of all US media were owned by a grand total of six corporations. (Apparently that number still holds; in 1983 it was fifty companies.) Anyone interested in the planet's number one form of art and entertainment would be well served to learn a little bit about the highly secretive censorship organization with zero transparency, zero accountability, and ultimate control of the images which program the perceptions of the world.


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE