Saturday, October 26, 2019

"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





Monday, October 21, 2019

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




Monday, October 14, 2019

"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


Monday, October 7, 2019

"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