Tony's Picks - Westerns

I like movies. I like them a lot. I especially like war movies, film noir, and Westerns. If I was to list every Western that I like I would never be able to finish this. These are the Western movies that immediately come to mind as “must see.” Ask me in a month and the list might change [slightly]...

The Wild Bunch [1969] – This is Sam Peckinpah’s masterpiece. Up until the making of this film, no Western had ever been this violent or this bloody. Peckinpah’s vision was to have his audience feel what it was like to be shot. Until then, people got shot, people fell down, and they didn’t bleed very much. One didn’t see many bullet holes in people. Peckinpah’s use of slow motion amplified the effect of what bullets can do to “soft pudgies” once they made impact with human flesh. This is the story of Pike Bishop [William Holden] and his gang of aging outlaws [Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson] looking to make one last big score because they are all looking at the “end of the line.” Deke Thornton [Robert Ryan] is a former member of Bishop’s gang who is “hired” by a railroad boss [under the threat of going back to prison] to kill Pike and his gang. You know that when Bishop utters the line “if they move, kill ‘em”, that it’s “game on.” This movie features several Oscar winners [past and future] – William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Edmund O’Brien, and Ben Johnson. Warren Oates and Robert Ryan weren’t too shabby either. The Wild Bunch is my favorite Western.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid [1969] – Unlike The Wild Bunch, this movie with Paul Newman and Robert Redford is a more light-hearted affair, but it’s just as serious. The theme is similar – two aging outlaws are facing an uncertain future in fast-changing times. Like Pike Bishop and his gang, they too are staring the end of the line dead in the face. After robbing one train too many, Butch and Sundance [together with Katherine Ross] are pursued all the way to Bolivia by a dream team of lawmen [hired by a railroad boss – sound familiar?], whose only mission is to catch and kill Butch and Sundance. This is one of those movies that if I’m channel surfing and come upon this movie, the surfing stops, no matter how many times I’ve seen it. “Who are those guys?”

The Searchers [1956] – John Wayne didn’t think much of Clint Eastwood’s anti-hero Western characters, and yet Ethan Edwards is as big an anti-hero as any portrayed by Eastwood. This is by far [it isn’t even close] the Duke’s best performance. John Ford once remarked “I didn’t know the sonofabitch could act.” Ethan Edwards is a Civil War vet [a Confederate] for whom the war never ended. He would never swear loyalty to the Union. He liked fighting so much that he went to Mexico to fight the French. A racist, unreconstructed rebel, he also thinks the only good Indian is a dead Indian. When Edward’s brother, his sister-in-law and nephew are killed and their daughters Lucy and Debbie are kidnapped by Comanches, Edwards [with his nephew Martin Hawley (Jeffrey Hunter)] goes in search of his nieces. The search takes five years, during which time Lucy is found by dead [and presumably raped by said Comanches], further enraging Edwards. Edwards mutilates the Comanche corpses he finds, gouging out their eyes so their spirits would wander forever in the afterlife. Edwards and Hawley catch up to Debbie [a sixteen-year-old Natalie Wood], who insisted she wanted to remain with her Comanche captors. Edwards thought “better dead than red” and tried to kill Debbie. But ultimately, Edwards and Hawley bring her “home.” The last scene is a poignant one. There seems to be an unspoken agreement between Edwards and all the other characters that although his dirty job is done, he has no place in a world of domesticity. A door literally closes while Edwards walks away.

Unforgiven [1992] – As great Westerns go, this movie deserves every bit of praise showered upon it. Clint Eastwood had the script of this movie in his stack of stuff for years, but he waited until he was old enough to play Will Munny. Character development is deep in this film. The Munny character is a sober, repentant widower with two small children and a drunken, violent outlaw past. Gene Hackman’s sheriff Little Bill Daggett is especially loathsome after he refuses to jail a cowboy who slashed a prostitute’s face. Richard Harris’s “English Bob” is a braggart who wastes no opportunity to trash America and has the conceit to travel with his own biographer. One does not feel sorry for English Bob when Little Bill beats the shit out of him for not surrendering his firearms. The movie’s payoff comes when Munny, after hearing that his partner Ned Logan [Morgan Freeman] is killed by Little Bill, starts to drink. Once he takes that first sip, there’s an “oh shit!” moment and you know that Munny is about to flip a switch.

High Plains Drifter [1973] – Carol and I always referred to this movie as the “Paint the Town Red” movie. There is a bit of the supernatural at play when a stranger with no name enters the mining town of Lago. He’s able to gun down three gunfighters without getting as much as a scratch. He manages to avoid getting shot when a prostitute tries to kill him while he’s taking a bath. He has dreams of the local sheriff and the night he was whipped to death by outlaws while the townspeople of Lago did nothing and watched it happen. Is the stranger the ghost of the dead sheriff? It’s never said, but it’s implied. When the outlaws who killed the town sheriff  are released from prison and return to Lago [by which time all the buildings are painted red] to settle old scores, they kill several of the townspeople, and take the rest to the saloon. The town [which, unknown to everyone, the stranger renamed “Hell”] is set on fire. One by one, the outlaws end up dead. It seemed as if he was both nowhere and everywhere at the same time. The next day, a tombstone with the dead sheriff’s name is placed at his hitherto unmarked grave. The dwarf who made it says he never caught the stranger’s name, but the stranger tells him he already knows it. He rides off into the shimmering desert heat and vanishes. Clint Eastwood made a similar movie [Pale Rider] in 1985. Only in this movie, the stranger is a preacher, but he’s really one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse [Death].

The Outlaw Josey Wales [1976] – Josey Wales [Clint Eastwood] is a Missouri farmer whose home is attacked by pro-Union Kansas militia. They kill his wife and son and burn his house down. Wales joins a Confederate guerilla band. When the Civil War ends, Wales’ band of guerillas are offered amnesty if they surrender and swear loyalty to the Union. Wales refuses. When his band surrenders, they’re quickly massacred, while Wales escapes and becomes a fugitive. Wales is hunted by the Kansas militiamen men and bounty hunters alike. His mission is to kill those who killed his family before they can kill him. When confronted by a bounty hunter we hear the best line of the movie – “Dyin’ ain’t much of a livin’, boy.” When he’s identified by a snake oil salesman [“my God, it’s Josey Wales!”], Wales wastes little time in killing a group of Union soldiers who are dumbstruck by the sight of him [“Are you gonna pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?”]. There’s a predictable but satisfying climax when Wales and the militia commander finally meet. Chief Dan George provides the necessary comic relief to keep things from getting too serious.

Bad Day at Black Rock [1955] – Five Academy Award winners – Spencer Tracy, Ernest Borgnine, Dean Jagger, Walter Brennan, and Lee Marvin. Robert Ryan brings his usual intensity to a cast that [with the exception of Spencer Tracy] has a very dark secret to hide. This film is essentially a crime drama but is considered a neo-Western. Set in a California desert town after the end of World War II, one-armed Spencer Tracy travels to the town of Black Rock, where a train hadn’t stopped in over four years. The townspeople are suspicious of the stranger in their midst and act accordingly. Tracy’s mission – to give a medal awarded to the son of a man named Komoko, but Komoko is dead [the “very dark secret”]. One year before The Searchers, racism is addressed head on.

No Country for Old Men [2007] – Joel and Ethan Coen make a lot of off-the-wall movies, but this neo-Western [their first] isn’t one of them. Set in West Texas, this is a story about what NOT to do if you see a drug deal gone bad. Leave the investigating to the professionals. If you don’t, a psychopathic hitman with a birth control haircut will come after you and probably kill you for inconveniencing him. This psychopath will be like Robocop. If he gets hurt, he’ll shake it off like a minor inconvenience and keep coming for you. He’ll kill you, he’ll kill your wife, and he’ll kill anybody who tries to help you. Running away to Mexico won’t help you. If you’re a county sheriff and this happens in your jurisdiction, take one look at this carnage and ride off into the sunset of retirement.

Hell or High Water [2016] – Like No Country for Old Men, this is another neo-Western set in West Texas. The film is an advertisement for avoiding reverse mortgages. A family is about to lose its ranch due to foreclosure. Toby Howard [Chris Pine] and his ex-con brother Tanner [Ben Foster] have other ideas. To save their ranch, they rob banks all over West Texas. They launder their stolen money through an Indian casino in Oklahoma. They have the casino convert their winnings into a check made out to the bank that has the reverse mortgage on the ranch, making the money untraceable. Marcus Hamilton [Jeff Bridges] and Alberto Parker [Gil Birmingham] are the two Texas Rangers who are after the Howard brothers. Hamilton, who is constantly making Indian jokes at Parker’s expense, is close to retirement. But he and Parker figure out how Howards’ methods and their next target. Margaret Bowman steals the show with her portrayal as a very salty waitress in a restaurant that serves only T-bone steaks. Parker doesn’t survive the movie, nor does Tanner Howard. Toby Howard pays off the reverse mortgage and puts the ranch into a trust for his two sons. The ranch has oil under it, and it makes the trust a fortune. Ironically, Toby uses the same bank that tried to screw his mother out of the ranch to administer the trust, and the huge monthly checks that are deposited into it. Afraid to lose Toby’s business, the bank doesn’t cooperate with law enforcement to solve the Howards’ crimes, so they get away with it.

Hud [1963] – If a honey badger took human form, it would be Paul Newman’s Hud. He didn’t give a shit about anybody except himself. In his mind, rules that he doesn’t like don’t apply to him. He’ll screw anything that walks or crawls, especially if they’re already married. The Bannons have a housekeeper named Alma [Patricia Neal]. Hud’s nephew Lonnie also lives at the Bannon house. He practically worships his uncle Hud. Hud’s father Homer Bannon [Melvin Douglas] doesn’t like him very much. He blames Hud for his older brother’s death. Hud is highly annoyed with his father. Hud wants to lease parts of the ranch to oilmen to bring some much-needed cashflow into the ranch, but Homer wants nothing to do with oil. It’s a constant struggle between a man’s disappointment with his son, and a son’s constant anger at his father because Homer hates him. Things come to a head when their entire cattle herd has to be slaughtered because some of the cattle purchased by Homer have foot-in-mouth disease. A drunken Hud tries to rape Alma [saved by Lonnie]. Homer dies shortly thereafter, Alma leaves the Bannons for parts unknown, and Lonnie gets over his Hud hero worship. Lonnie leaves the Bannon ranch. One assumes Hud leases the ranch to the oilmen but that is never revealed.

The Long Riders [1980] – Four sets of brother actors [David, Keith and Robert Carradine, James and Stacy Keach, Dennis and Randy Quaid, Christopher and Nicholas Guest] star in this excellent movie from director Walter Hill that tells the story of the James-Younger Gang. You get the sense of the close-knit community of family, neighbors, and strangers who just hate banks that will go the extra mile to protect their local folk heroes. The outlaws are presented as family men. Jesse James has a moral code, booting Ed Miller from the gang after he kills a bank teller in a robbery. Before their last job, he got his nose out of joint because the rest of his gang were entertained at a brothel while he stayed at home with his wife. The Pinkertons who are trying to apprehend them were depicted as trigger-happy incompetents. The real Belle Starr was an outlaw, but Hill turns her into a prostitute. There’s a great knife fight between Cole Younger and Cherokee Sam Starr.[Younger wins]. The climax is an ambush scene in Northfield, Minnesota that pays homage to Sam Peckinpah. He would be proud. The post-Northfield downward spiral is completed after Bob Ford shoots Jesse James in the back. Frank James surrenders to the Pinkertons to bury his brother. Fade to black…As a bonus, Ry Cooder created a superb soundtrack which I highly recommend.

The Shootist [1976] – I have a soft spot for this one because it’s John Wayne’s last movie, and it’s a good one. It’s not great, but it’s good. J.B. Books is an ageing gunfighter who has many kills to his credit. He lives by a simple creed - “I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, I won’t be laid-a-hand on. I don’t do these things to other people and I require the same of them.” It’s the beginning of the twentieth century [January 1901]. He’s dying and wants to see a doctor he knows [James Stewart]  in Carson City, Nevada for a second opinion. The doctor confirms Books’ original diagnosis. He gives him six weeks, maybe two months left to live, and that it will be painful at the very end. Knowing this, Books plans ahead for his own death. He doesn’t want to die a bedridden, agonizing death – he wants to go out in a blaze of glory. Until that time comes, he rents a room from Bond Rogers [Lauren Bacall]. Her impressionable son Gillom [Ron Howard] takes a liking to Books, who teaches him how to shoot. Meanwhile, two crooks try to kill him so they could gain notoriety for being the guys who killed J.B. Books [he kills them instead]. An old flame tries to marry Books, only for him to find out she wants stories of his exploits so she can “be somebody.” After ordering his own tombstone from the local undertaker [John Carradine], he invites three men to have a drink with him at the local saloon on January 29th, his birthday. One man [Richard Boone] has a longtime grudge against him. The other two [Hugh O’Brian and Bill McKinney] are eager to earn fame by killing the famous gunfighter. In the end, Books and his guests have their shootout. Books’ “guests” all die, Books is shot in the back by the bartender and subsequently dies, and Gillom kills the bartender. Given that John Wayne died of cancer three years after this movie, one can’t help but think this film is art imitating real life. The Duke wasn’t dying yet, but The Shootist is a very poignant elegy.

Trilogies

Fort Apache [1948] / She Wore a Yellow Ribbon [1949] / Rio Grande [1950] - John Ford’s Cavalry Trilogy. If you don’t like these, you’re unAmerican.

A Fistful of Dollars [1964] / For a Few Dollars More [1965] / The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly [1966] – What is understood need not be discussed. Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western trilogy that made Clint Eastwood a star. Any questions?

Lords of Chaos - a synopsis

It was Friday night, and I was zoning out watching videos on YouTube.  It’s my version of going to the “nothing box” region of my brain.  I forget which video I was watching but I noticed on the side where they have links to other videos on the side, and there was something about the band Mayhem. The name rang a bell and then it occurred to me that I wrote about them before [https://tonysmusicroom.blogspot.com/2011/08/strange-things-in-norway.html]. 

Eleven years ago I saw a documentary about anti-Christian activity in Norway called Until the Light Takes Us. The topic was Norwegian Black Metal, and within the story were tales of extreme aesthetics, church burnings, and murder. The film focused on two men - Gylve Nagell [aka Fenriz] of the band Darkthrone, and Varg Vikernes of Burzum, who was also the bassist for Mayhem. While Nagell’s interest was only in the music, Vikernes had an extreme Norwegian nativist political and religious [pagan] agenda.  The interviews with Vikernes for this film were conducted while he was serving his prison sentence for the murder of Øystein Aarseth.  Lords of Chaos is the dramatization of Aarseth’s life.

Aarseth narrates the entire film.  He starts in 1987, where he describes Norway as a very rich and religious country in Northern Europe, which is grey, boring, and has a high suicide rate.  He shows his own life with his typical Norwegian family, complete with a Volvo parked in the driveway. He doesn’t see himself as a typical teenager. Rather, he was born into the world to bring chaos, suffering and death.  The film is his story, which he says “will end badly.” But first we see him and two other boys playing music in his parents basement. He assumed the name Euronymous. The bass player was Necrobutcher, and the drummer was Manheim. Together they were Mayhem. Life was easy – having fun, getting drunk, and playing loud and hard music. This starts off as a typical rebellious teenager story. Mayhem was “world-famous, all-over Oslo.” Then Manheim quit – enter the new drummer Jan Axel, who went by the name “Hellhammer” [isn’t that a great name for a drummer?]. Mayhem had the best drummer in Norway, a mad, kick-ass bass player, and Euronymous had a “new guitar sound that would change the world forever.” Euronymous called his creation Norwegian Black Metal. But they needed a singer.  Enter Pelle Ohlin, aka Dead.

The package Dead sent to Mayhem included not only his audition tape, but a dead rat that he had crucified. The band listened to the tape and were overwhelmed by what they heard. Dead would be the perfect singer for Mayhem. After Dead moved to Norway the band relocated to a farmhouse in Kraktorp. They worked on their music for a year, but something was wrong.  Dead was a very dark and depressed guy.  As a child he had been beaten up so badly by a bully that he “died for a moment,” a moment that came to define his existence [hence the name “Dead”]. He introduced Euronymous to “corpse paint.” He would bury his stage clothes for a day before he would wear them. He would cut himself on-stage. That band displayed severed pig heads on sticks next to their stage.  At some point during the shows, Dead would throw a pig’s head into the audience.  After one show they were eating at a local kabob, where a kid from Bergen named Kristian Vikernes introduced himself to Euronymous.  Euronymous noticed a Scorpions patch on his denim jacket and dismissed Kristian as a “poser.”

One day Dead was at home alone. He was sitting upstairs alone with his thoughts. The he got up, found a knife and cut his arms as if to kill himself. He didn’t slit his wrists – he cut very deep gouges into both arms. As he saw the blood squirting out both arms he cut his own throat. While he bled to death, he heard a phone message from his dad that he was accepted to university, and he began to write a suicide note-

“Excuse all the blood
Let the party begin”

When he finished writing, he found a shotgun, put it to his head and finished what he started. Bleeding out from the gouges on both arms and his neck weren’t quick enough for him. This is very graphic stuff. Euronymous arrived and found the front door locked, so he found a ladder. He climbed on the roof and broke in through a window, where he found Dead’s lifeless body. At first Euronymous didn’t appear to be the least bit startled about what he found, but after he went downstairs he questioned why Dead killed himself. He called the emergency number, and after the operator asked him the nature of the emergency, he hung up the phone, got into his dad’s Volvo and drove to a nearby gas station. We purchased a disposable camera, went back to the house and started taking pictures. When he finished he called Necrobutcher to tell him “Pelle’s not home.”  Necrobutcher asked if he went back to Sweden, Euronymous responded “he blew his head off.” 

“This is the one. This will make us famous. Mayhem will be the band with the singer who blew his head off. We should say I ate a piece of his brain, too.”  He reached into his pocket and pulled out necklaces for his bandmates. From then on, every member of Mayhem was supposed to wear them. When Euronymous told his bandmates that the necklaces’ charms were bone fragments from Dead, Necrobutcher threw his back at Euronymous [Note - Euronymous later reveled they were chicken bones]. That was just a little too “sick.”  Euronymous told Necrobutcher it was supposed to let people know how disturbed they are, how “hardcore” they are. Euronymous said that if he didn’t do what he said, he was fired. Necrobutcher refused, Euronymous fired him, and Necrobutcher walked away. Euronymous had “gone too far.”  Later, Euronymous confessed he had to move out of the house because he couldn’t “deal with it.”

The next chapter of Euronymous life began with the opening of his record store, Helvete [Norwegian for “Hell”]. Helvete was to be a place for him and “the Black Circle” a “temple for evil, chaos and black metal.” Helvete was the clubhouse.  The Black Circle included not only members of Mayhem, but also Bård Guldvik "Faust" Eithun of the band Emperor and  Fenriz of Darkthrone.  It was at Helvete that Kristian Vikernes, no longer a Scorpions fan, reintroduced himself to Euronymous.  He handed him a demo tape of his own “band,” Burzum [Vikernes played all the instruments]. Vikernes joined the Black Circle and went by the name Varg because he didn’t want to associate himself with Christianity. He, like Euronymous professed to be, was anti-Christian because he saw Norway as a dictatorship of “the church.”  To prove his point, Varg burned down a Stave church.  While the Black Circle talked about doing such things, Varg was actually doing them. 

Euronymous lamented after that church fire, everything within the Black Circle became a competition.  One night while visiting his parents in Lillehammer, Faust went to a bar. Faust made eye contact with someone. That someone followed him out of the bar and propositioned him for sex. Faust stabbed him to death. After telling the rest of the Black Circle what he did, he, Euronymous and Varg celebrated by torching another church.  Things were spiraling out of control.  Euronymous got nervous –

“All of this became bigger than we expected. Our fucked-up fantasies have turned  into an even more fucked-up reality. This is not what I signed up for. I wanted out but I couldn’t find the fucking door.  All this evil and dark crap was supposed to be

fun. I was sick and tired of everything going to shit.”

Nervousness turned into paranoia when Varg went to the press to brag about what he and the Black Circle had done.  Euronymous wasn’t keen on Varg’s idea to go public.  Varg told him the police would have to let him go because they couldn’t prove anything to which Varg confessed. He was right. The police arrested him but had to let him go because of lack of evidence. Euronymous felt his grip on the Black Circle slipping away.  To compound things, Euronymous lost Helvete.  His dad stopped paying the rent. He vowed he would torture Varg and then kill him, perhaps make a snuff film of him doing it.  That was a big mistake because that word got back to Varg.

Varg told Euronymous he wanted out of the Black Circle. Euronymous drew up a contract to make it all legal and mailed it to Varg in Bergen.  Instead of signing the contract and mailing it back to Varg, Varg traveled back to Oslo to finish his business with Euronymous in person. That wasn’t his motivation – he wanted to kill Euronymous before Euronymous could do the same to him.  After he shows up at Euronymous’s apartment, Varg stabs Euronymous.  Euronymous escaped the apartment, but Varg followed him to the stairwell outside the apartment and finished the job. Before he died, Euronymous asked Varg why he’s doing this.  Varg said “because you were going to kill me.”  Euronymous said “you’re my friend. I just talk. You know I just talk,” to which Varg responded “exactly. You’re an embarrassment. That’s all you do is talk. That’s why you’re going to die.” Varg stabbed him thirty-five times [yeah, I counted]. Euronymous did say at the very beginning that the story would end badly.

 The movie ends with scenes from the aftermath of Euronymous’s murder.  Cops collecting evidence from the crime scene.  Faust is arrested, Varg is arrested, there’s pictures of Euronymous’s sobbing girlfriend, of makeshift memorials outside Euronymous’s apartment, then suddenly there’s Euronymous’s disembodied voice for one last narration -

“No! Fuck! Stop this sentimental shit. Stop! There’s nothing sad about my death or my life. I’m Euronymous, founder of Mayhem, the most infamous Black Metal band in the world. I had my own record store. I had my own record label. I created a whole musical genre, true Norwegian Black Metal, and I created Mayhem. What the fuck have you done lately? Poser.”

Here’s the Joe Bob Briggs review of Lords of Chaos - 3 dead bodies, four gallons blood, eight naked breasts, three burned-out churches, shotgun fu, knife fu, one dead guy narrating the film.

A bit of the movie was sensationalized for dramatic effect, but more or less this film was accurate.

 

Alfred Hitchcock 1940-1976 – Tony’s Picks

Don’t let the dates mislead you.  Alfred Hitchcock lived much longer than the 36 years indicated in the title.  1940 was the year of Alfred Hitchcock’s first movie made in the United States.  Before he came to this country at the behest of producer David O. Selznick, he made forty-six movies for British cinema [only two of which I have seen – [39 Steps (1935) and Sabotage (1936)].  After his arrival in the United States in 1939, he made twenty-nine feature length movies [only three of which I haven’t seen – Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), The Paradine Case (1947), and Under Capricorn (1949)].  I have these films broken out into three categories – 1. Must See; 2. Good, but not essential; 3. See Once, then Never Again.

1.     Must See

Rebecca [1940] – “Plain” and socially unexperienced Joan Fontaine meets and falls in love with rich, suave and debonair Laurence Olivier.  They marry, but Fontaine finds that she’s competing for Olivier’s affections [so she thinks] not only with the ghost of Olivier’s first wife [Rebecca, whom you never see], but also Olivier’s formidable housekeeper, Judith Anderson.  Anderson was close to Rebecca and was determined to keep her memory alive.  She was truly scary.  This was the only movie Hitchcock made that won the Academy Award^© for Best Picture.

Foreign Correspondent [1940] – The year is 1939.  Hitler has annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia. The war drums are beating.  Joel McCrea is an American reporter who is sent overseas by his editor to cover the crisis in Europe.  McCrea’s first assignment is to cover Herbert Marshall, who is the leader of a fictitious Universal Peace Party that is trying to prevent World War II.  He meets a Dutch diplomat named Van Meer, who is the guest of honor at an event hosted by Marshall’s character.  Van Meer doesn’t show for the event – he went to Amsterdam for a conference.  But McCrea does meet the daughter of Marshall’s character, played by Laraine Day.  Things get in a twist when “Van Meer” is assassinated right in front of McCrea after he tracked him down in Amsterdam.

Suspicion [1941] – Unlike her character in Rebecca, Joan Fontaine is the daughter of a wealthy father.  She’s part of a family used to having money.  She meets playboy Cary Grant on a train.  He charms her into eloping.  She isn’t a ravishing beauty, she feared she’d spend her life as a spinster, so getting married to Cary Grant was an easy sell.  It isn’t until after the honeymoon that Fontaine finds out her husband is allergic to work, gambles a lot, and lives on other peoples’ money.  After Grant’s character is fired from a job for embezzlement, Fontaine’s character suspects her husband is trying to kill her for insurance money.  Until this movie, Cary Grant was renowned for being in comedies, but here he gets the opportunity to play a fairly dark character.

Shadow of a Doubt [1943] – Charlie Newton [Teresa Wright] is a bored teenager living in Santa Rosa, California.  Nothing exciting happens in her life except whenever her namesake uncle Charlie [Joseph Cotten] visits.  Suddenly, Charlie’s wish to alleviate her boredom is granted when Uncle Charles shows up [unannounced] to pay a visit.  What Charlie doesn’t know is that her uncle Charles is on the run.  Charlie finds out that her uncle is suspected of murder.  Not to give away everything between here and the end of the movie, there are two attempted murders and a death on a train.

Spellbound [1945] – Ingrid Bergman is a psychiatrist who works at an insane asylum.  Gregory Peck is the new director of the asylum as the old director is forced into retirement.  Only Peck isn’t really a doctor, plus he doesn’t know who he really is.  Of course, a murder is involved.  Once Peck is exposed as an imposter, he goes to Rochester with Dr. Ingrid to see her old mentor in order to try to recover Peck’s memory.  Of special note, there’s a surreal Gregory Peck dream sequence conceived by Salvador Dali.  The movie is very good, and Dali’s dream sequence pushes it over the cliff [pun intended once you see the movie].

Notorious [1946] – Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains.  What could go wrong?  Nothing does in this movie.  Ingrid Bergman is a German émigré whose father was convicted for being a Nazi spy.  Cary Grant is a US spy trying to recruit Ingrid Bergman to get information about her father’s associates who fled to Brazil after World War II.  Claude Rains is one of the associates who always had a crush on Ingrid Bergman.  Rains and Bergman get married, despite Rains’ mother’s protestations.  Claude Rains’ suspicious mother looks a lot like Anthony Hopkins.

Strangers on a Train [1951] – Farley Granger is a tennis pro who wants a divorce from his promiscuous wife so he can marry someone else.  She doesn’t want a divorce.  Robert Walker is a spoiled psychopath who wants to murder his father.  They meet on a train and as they get to know each other, Walker suggests they “swap murders” – that he kill Granger’s wife and that Granger kill Walker’s father.  Walker does his bit, but when Granger doesn’t return the favor, Walker tries to frame Granger for his wife’s murder.  The story climaxes on an out-of-control carousel ride.

Dial M for Murder [1954] – Ray Milland suspects his wife Grace Kelly is cheating on him [he’s right].  He had a plan to kill her – he even had an alibi.  He didn’t count on Grace surviving the attack.  This is one of several movies where Grace Kelly had a very annoying fake British accent.  I think because she said “oh, Tony…” with that bad accent so many times that I was rooting for Ray Milland to succeed.  Oh well…

Rear Window [1954] – Jeff Jeffries [James Stewart] is a professional photographer laid up with a broken leg.  He gives voyeurism new meaning because the only way he can pass the time is to watch his neighbors across the courtyard from his own apartment through his rear window [hence the name].  Lisa Fremont [Grace Kelly] is his girlfriend, who luckily doesn’t have a bad British accent.  As Jeffries people-watches, he notices the bedridden wife of a traveling salesman [Raymond Burr] goes missing.  He also sees the salesman cleaning off a knife and a hacksaw…

The Man Who Knew Too Much [1956] – Dr. Ben McKenna [James Stewart] is on vacation in Morocco with his wife, popular singer Jo Conway [Doris Day], and their son Hank. They meet a Frenchman named Louis Bernard.  Bernard invited the McKennas to dinner, only to be blown off by Bernard at the restaurant when Bernard meets some stranger.  The McKennas went to a Moroccan market in Marrakesh, only to find a man with a knife in his back being chased by the police.  The guy who was stabbed in the back turns out to be Bernard [a French intelligence agent] in disguise.  Before he dies, he tells Dr. McKenna about a foreign dignitary who is to be assassinated in London.  Young Hank is kidnapped by the group of assassins.  The McKennas go to Scotland Yard.  All roads lead to a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, where the dignitary in question is the target.  Doris Day sings Que Sera, Sera, for about three minutes too long.

Vertigo [1958] – The movie gets its name from James Stewart’s character, a San Francisco cop named Scottie Ferguson who developed a severe fear of heights [and the resulting case of vertigo thereof]. This movie is quite creepy in that James Stewart’s character finds a woman [Kim Novak] who is a dead-ringer for another woman whom Stewart’s character desired while he was shadowing her for a client.  To prove her “love” for Ferguson, she changes her wardrobe and her hair to look exactly like the woman over whom he obsessed.  It’s almost as if Ferguson not only has a fear of heights and vertigo, he also has necrophilia.

North by Northwest [1959] – My favorite Hitchcock movie.  Cary Grant is Roger Thornhill, an advertising executive bachelor who lives with his mother.  Thornhill is mistaken for a secret agent named George Kaplan.  He’s kidnapped by henchmen employed by a convincingly-menacing James Mason.  He breaks free from his kidnappers, gets drunk, and gets arrested for drunk driving on purpose.  Then he’s framed for murdering a UN diplomat, escapes on a train where he meets Eva Marie Saint.  Then he gets buzzed by a crop duster, nearly run over by a gas tanker, supposedly shot to death at the Mount Rushmore visitor center, and has a climactic encounter with another Mason henchman [Martin Landau] on Mount Rushmore itself.  But there is a happy ending… I can’t make up my mind who is a hotter Hitchcock blonde – Kim Novak or Eva Marie Saint? [My friend Tom would say Janet Leigh]

Psycho [1960] – What can be said about this movie that many people don’t already know?  Janet Leigh, the shower scene, the murder weapon that is never seen to touch Janet Leigh, Martin Balsam falling down a stair case after he gets sliced and diced, and an insane Norman Bates [Anthony Perkins] who keeps his dead mother upstairs.  Then there’s the music…

The Birds [1963] – This movie was my introduction to Alfred Hitchcock, thanks to my mom. Mom was kinda weird.  She let me see this and The Godfather when I was little, but wouldn’t take me to see The Exorcist. To this day I still get a little suspicious whenever I see a large group of birds in one place.  This is the last great Hitchcock movie. Two more words – Tippi Hedren.  ‘Nuff said…

2.     Good, But not Essential;

Saboteur [1942] – Factory worker Barry Kane [Robert Cummings] is suspected of committing sabotage at a Southern California aircraft manufacturing plant.  The fire at the plant kills a co-worker, so Kane is also suspected of murder.  Like OJ Simpson, Kane’s efforts to find the “real killer” take him to a ranch in California’s High Desert.  Kane finds the ranch owner supports the real saboteur(s), and after his niece tries to take Kane to the police, Kane kidnaps her instead. After he convinces her of his innocence, they somehow foil plots to blow up Boulder Dam and the launching of a new US Navy ship in New York.  By the way, they did find the real killer, unlike OJ.

Stage Fright [1950] – Jane Wyman is an aspiring actress and student at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts [RADA].  A fellow student [Richard Todd] comes to Wyman for help.  He tells Wyman of a flashback that his lover [Marlene Dietrich] confessed to killing her husband.  Not everything is as it seems while various and sundry people try to clear their names.  This one is worth the time because of Marlene Dietrich, but the story is really good.

I Confess [1953] – This one was made before Montgomery Clift started mumbling his lines in movies.  Clift is a priest accused of murder.  He can’t reveal the real murderer because that person made a confession to Clift’s character.  Clift is tried and acquitted, but still remains under suspicion from the locals.  Clift is attacked by a crowd, but he escapes being killed by them when the killer’s wife reveals the true murderer.

To Catch a Thief [1955] – Cary Grant is a retired jewel thief.  He’s living in comfortable retirement on the French Riviera.  Lots of jewels belonging to Riviera vacationers turn up missing.  Many think Cary Grant did it [he didn’t].  Grace Kelly is a nouveau rich bitch with that lousy, cringe worthy British accent again.

The Trouble with Harry [1955] – Of all the Hitchcock movies I’ve seen, this one is by far the most bizarre.  It’s a black comedy. The “Harry” in question is a corpse.  The story takes place in a small New England village.  “Harry” keeps popping up in scene after scene, even though he’s dead.  He’s buried four times.  Nobody seems to think it’s odd there’s a dead body out in public.  Even stranger, nobody thinks to call the police to report a dead body.  Very strange…

Torn Curtain [1966] – Paul Newman is a rocket scientist and physicist.  Julie Andrews is his assistant [and fiancée].  They’re traveling to a conference in Copenhagen, where he gets a note to pick up a certain book.  Abruptly, Newman tells Andrews he has to fly to Stockholm immediately, but he really flies to East Berlin.  Unbeknownst to Newman, Andrews follows him to East Berlin, where she discovers he’s “defecting” to East Germany.  What is really happening is that Newman is freelancing his own spy thriller in order for the East Germans to give up their secrets concerning missile defense.  Strange casting, but the movie is “ok”.

Topaz [1969] – Another Cold War drama, this time it takes place during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The American CIA is trying to find out about Soviet missiles in Cuba, while simultaneously trying to uncover a Soviet mole within NATO [who happens to be French].  Once you get past seeing ‘Dean Wormer’ [John Vernon] playing a Cuban who is close to Fidel Castro, it’s still a pretty good movie.  For me, this was Hitchcock’s last really good movie.

3.     See Once, then Never Again

Marnie [1964] – Tippi Hedren is a kleptomaniac with mommy issues.  Sean Connery is slumming between James Bond movies.  That’s all you really need to know.  Tippi is nice to look at, but her looks can’t save this movie.

Lifeboat [1944] – A U-Boat sinks a passenger vessel.  The movie is set entirely in the lifeboat.  By the way, the U-Boat captain is also in the lifeboat.  A lot of professional critics love it.  I’m not a professional critic and I don’t love this one.

Rope [1948] – As with Lifeboat, this movie is set in one location – the apartment of two guys who think they are intellectually superior to the rest of their fellow humans.  The plot is about how these two clowns commit what they think is the “perfect murder”.  The movie begins with the two strangling a former Harvard classmate, then hiding his corpse in a large chest that serves as a MacGuffin for the movie. There’s a party at the apartment later that day, and the chest with the corpse served as a serving table for the party.  James Stewart’s character, the murderers’ prep-school housemaster, is the one who put the ideas of Nietzsche’s Übermensch in their heads in the first place.  He finds redemption at the end of the movie [somewhat] by solving the “perfect murder” and renouncing his previous thoughts of one group of people having “superiority” over another.

The Wrong Man [1956] – This one is painful to watch.  It’s filmed as a docudrama.  Henry Fonda is a jazz musician who is arrested, tried but later exonerated for a crime [armed robbery] he didn’t commit.  We the audience know that he didn’t do it.  Henry Fonda’s character seems like he’s more inconvenienced than pissed off that he’s wrongly accused.  Vera Miles plays his wife.  Her character’s slow descent into clinical depression is what makes this movie hard to watch.  This film showed that police procedurals really weren’t part of Hitchcock’s skill set.

Frenzy [1972] – A serial killer in London who sometimes passes himself off as an RAF officer.  Pretty dull.

Family Plot [1976] – Hitchcock’s last movie.  Two plotlines weave together.  One plotline involves a fake psychic and her taxicab boyfriend who is trying to find the missing heir to a fortune of a rich old woman.  The other plotline involves a couple of jewel thieves, one of whom turns out to be the missing heir the old woman hired the fake psychic to find.  This movie is kinda goofy and entertaining, but you aren’t missing anything.

Haven’t seen because they’re Nearly Impossible to Find:

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) – Ok, I lied.  This one is On Demand…

The Paradine Case (1947) – But this one isn’t…

Under Capricorn (1949) – And neither is this one…

Murder on the Orient Express [2017]

I’ve seen three different adaptations of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, and I read the book.  The first time I saw it was in the mid-1970s.  Albert Finney played Hercule Poirot, the retired Belgian police officer who is dubbed by Christie as “the world’s greatest detective”.  The next time was in 2010.  ITV produced a series spanning 24 years [1989-2013] called Agatha Christie’s Poirot.  It was shown weekly on PBS’s Masterpiece Theater.  If it wasn’t there, you could catch an episode on the A&E Network.  During that time, David Suchet was Poirot – Agatha Christie’s family wanted him to play Poirot, and for them [and me], Suchet is the quintessential Poirot.  He inhabited the role, or probably more correctly, the role inhabited him.  In 2010 ITV finally got around to doing their version of Murder on the Orient Express.  If you haven’t seen it, get it.  Last week I saw the latest version, with Sir Kenneth Branagh as Poirot.

If you have read all the Christie works that feature Hercule Poirot, or if you were like me and took the shortcut by watching the ITV series, you already know “whodunnit”.  When I learned there would be a new Murder on the Orient Express movie coming out this year, I had only one concern.  Could Branagh pull off a convincing Poirot?  I first saw him in Henry V, then other Shakespeare works Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet.  He was quite convincing as Reinhardt Heydrich, the mastermind of the Holocaust in HBO’s Conspiracy.  But could he make Poirot his own, knowing that David Suchet is the gold standard?  I’m happy to say the answer to that question is a resounding YES – he’s pretty good.  Instead of Suchet’s “fussy” Poirot, Branagh’s Poirot has a very acute case of OCD.  But like Suchet’s Poirot, Branagh’s Poirot tosses out the stinging one-liners with incredible ease.

There aren’t many differences between the latest Murder on the Orient Express and those that came before.  There are minor tweaks to some of the characters.  Instead of the story originating in Syria, this one begins in Jerusalem, where Poirot was called to solve a theft from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  Once he solved this case he went to Istanbul to get some rest.  Here the story begins the familiar narrative.  The identities of some characters [but not very many] are changed.  The Swedish Greta Ohlsson [played in 1974 by Ingrid Bergman] is now Hispanic Pilar Estravados [Penélope Cruz].  The characters of Colonel Arbuthnott [Sean Connery] and Dr. Constantine [George Coulouris] are combined into a single character, Dr. Arbuthnot [Leslie Odom, Jr].  Cyrus Bethman Hardman [Colin Blakely] is now Gerhardt Hardman [Willem Dafoe].  The Italian chauffeur Antonio Foscarelli is now Cuban chauffeur Biniamino Marquez.  While the identities of some characters changed, their roles in the story remain essentially unchanged.  The location for the Daisy Armstrong kidnapping/murder was changed from Long Island to New Jersey.

Critics of the movie lament there were few surprises in this latest version of the Christie story.  One can take just so many poetic licenses without betraying the Christie faithful.  Another critic moaned that the movie was too Poirot-centric, but that misses the point entirely.  Christie’s Poirot stories were written from Poirot’s point of view.  The only person whose mind will be blown away by the solution of the crime is that person who has never heard of the story.  The attraction of the movie is the cast.  One look at Johnny Depp and you know he is the movie’s designated mort.  Josh Gad as Hector MacQueen is especially slimy.  Michelle Pfeiffer as Caroline Hubbard nearly steals the show.  

For the outdoor scenes I’m sure plenty of CGI was used, but it wasn’t CGI-overkill.  Instead of the train being stopped by a mere snowdrift, the train is almost derailed and thrown off a bridge by an avalanche.  The climactic scene where Poirot reveals his two theories about “whodunnit” wasn’t in the dining car, but at a railroad tunnel entrance.  There is but one twist to the narrative and that comes at the very end.  When Poirot leaves the train in Yugoslavia to tell the authorities of his investigation of the murder and his conclusions, he is met by someone who tells him that he is needed in Egypt to solve a murder there.  Death on the Nile will be a sequel.  One thing is certain – Kenneth Branagh is a better Poirot than either Albert Finney or Peter Ustinov [who played Poirot in Death on the Nile].  He’s still got some catching up to David Suchet, however.

In short, it’s a fun movie and I liked it, even if it is a remake.  Go see it.

Hitman's Bodyguard - a short review

After another TDY and yet another mind-numbing test flight of Global Hawk with a new sensor [and the buffoonery that went with it], some much-needed comic relief was in order.  We saw Atomic Blonde last week [I highly recommend it - she fights better than James Bond], so we had to see something else.  Tom already saw Wonder Woman [his two-word review – “it rocks!”], and I’m still trying to talk She Who Must Be Obeyed into going to see Dark Tower.  Most of what was available for our viewing pleasure is horse squeeze [The Big Sick?  It’s a chick flick.  Annabelle: Creation?  It’s a sequel.  The Emoji Movie?  Please…Dunkirk?  Seen it.].  But one thing caught my eye – Hitman’s Bodyguard.  It has Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds.  What could go wrong?  The answer is…nothing!

Since Pulp Fiction, you pretty much know what you’re going to get with Samuel L. Jackson, except when he’s asking “what’s in YOUR wallet?” Ever since then, it has become a drinking game for some – how many times does he say “motherfucker” in a movie.  He’s made it his own artform – obscenity is his true medium.  There’s a video collage of him on YouTube called Every Samuel L. Jackson "Motherf*cker"...Ever [here’s the link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0LBi1MHoaU].  I just got back to the hotel after watching Hitman’s Bodyguard - the clip needs to be updated.  Ryan Reynolds hadn’t really achieved true stardom until Deadpool.  In Hitman’s Bodyguard he’s the same character as Deadpool, except without the costume.

Rather than give the story away, here’s my Joe Bob Briggs review of the movie:

45 dead bodies [that’s where I lost count];

8 explosions [or was it nine?];

22 “motherfuckers” [17 from SLJ, 3 from Salma Hayek, 5 from Ryan Reynolds];

Zero naked breasts;

Two gallons of blood:

Nail-gun Fu;

Chain Fu;

Pen-through-the-hand Fu;

One ass-kicking female Interpol agent [Elodie Yung];

Three lessons on romance from Samuel L. Jackson;

One scene of Salma Hayek’s ass in a tight pair of jeans;

Gary Oldman as a homicidal Belarusian president on trial for crimes against humanity;

A twenty-minute chase scene in Amsterdam including cars, trucks, motorcycles, and boats;

I loved the movie.  Everything you expect from Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds, and more.  This movie is laugh-out-loud, blow Pepsi through your nose funny. 

Dunkirk - a review

A couple of years ago on a TDY to some faraway land [I think it was Hawaii], a friend and I watched a movie about Dunkirk that was made in 1958.  As with the movie that I saw last night, the movie was simply titled Dunkirk.  It was a very good, very effective portrayal of the chaos, desperation, and uncharacteristic [for the British] improvisation that was Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force [BEF] from Northern Europe in 1940.  The story’s focus is split in two – the first is one the homefront.  The British government kept the British public in the dark on the progress [or lack thereof] of the British war effort.  There was also a sense of complacency in Britain about the war, because they had been at war for eight months [the so-called “Phoney War’] where nothing really happened in Europe.  When the government starts to “requisition” private watercraft for an operation the on which the government won’t comment, that feeling of complacency starts to change.   During this part of the film. you get the figurative “big picture” about how and why things are going to Hell in a hurry. 

The second focus is on a squad of British troops lead by Cpl. Tubby Binns as they try everything they know to outwit and evade the Germans as they make their way through enemy-held territory to rejoin the BEF in northern France.  You had the sense the Germans were breathing down their necks at every opportunity.  This culminated in a very ballsy move by Binns and his troops to move right through a German camp, using the noise from a German air raid to cover their movements to avoid detection by the Germans they were trying to evade.  By the movie’s end, Binns and his troops make it back to Britain, and the split on the homefront between those who know there’s a real a war and those who think the war is a fake has disappeared.

About eighteen months ago I heard there was going to be a new movie about Dunkirk, and that it was going to be filmed in IMAX format.  Given the nature of the 1958 movie, one that I thought would be hard to top, and the technology available to tell the story again, I had very high expectations.  I had similar expectations for Pearl Harbor sixteen years ago.  Those expectations were dashed when that movie turned out to be a chick flick, and when Alec Baldwin was cast to play Jimmy Doolittle. Luckily, the new movie Dunkirk is no chick flick.

The story of the movie has a promising beginning.  British Tommies are fighting their way through the streets of Dunkirk when they are bombarded with German propaganda leaflets.  The leaflets are very simple and very effective.  They depict the disposition of German forces against the British – a sea of red in northern France, Belgium and Holland [the Germans] and a small pocket of white on the English Channel coast around the small town of Dunkirk [the British, labeled “you”].  We see the Tommies evading German sniper fire to just barely make it to the safety of the French lines, and then make it to the beach, where we see British troops patiently queueing up to wait their turn to get off the beach.   But what is missing is context, the “how did we get in this mess” part.  There is no sense that the German Wermacht is handing the Allies their collective ass in a rout.  The only sense of menace one gets is from the Luftwaffe.  The “oh shit” factor comes from the Stukas.  The movie easily captures the essence of that terror weapon from that time.  Sitting in the theater, you feel like those screaming Stukas are coming for you.

Scale.  The thing that was missing from this movie was “scale”.  Kenneth Branaugh’s character rightly stated there were almost 400,000 men stranded on the beaches of Dunkirk.  But when you look at the shots of the beach, there’s lots of open sand.  Two weeks ago, I saw more people at Pensacola Beach to watch the Blue Angels perform than what I saw in the movie last night.  In the 1958 movie, the soldiers are packed into and around Dunkirk like proverbial sardines.  To provide a more recent example, Atonement captured more feel of how cramped, chaotic, grim and desperate Dunkirk was in a single, five-minute take than the new Dunkirk movie did in almost two hours. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QijbOCvunfU

Dunkirk Scene from Atonement

This movie was filmed in IMAX.  The pictures are bigger, the resolution of the pictures is crisper, and the sound is better.  You can literally hear the bullets whizzing around you as the Tommies are trying to avoid being killed by the unseen Germans.  You get the sense the British are in trouble, but not that they are desperate.  The aerial sequences are outstanding.  You’re in the cockpits with the RAF as they try to keep the Luftwaffe away from the beaches.  When the bullets from the German aircraft hit the Spitfires, you can almost feel it.  There were only a handful of British aircraft portrayed in the movie, giving one the sense of a very few against the entire Luftwaffe.  Perhaps that was the intent, because from the vantage point of the ground pounders, “where was the Air Force?”  That question was asked in this movie, and it was asked in the 1958 movie.  Most of the air-to-air fighting was done away from the beaches. 

To imagine the scale of Operation Dynamo, hundreds of thousands of Allied troops were trapped in a very small pocket of land about the size of Hong Kong waiting to either be rescued by the British or captured by the Germans.   Almost 700 ships of all kinds [some were just pleasure boats, not ships] were needed to evacuate such an enormous mass of humanity.  That wasn’t really depicted in the new movie.  When the “cavalry” finally does appear and Kenneth Branaugh says he can see “home”, it’s underwhelming.

Claustrophobia.  The claustrophobia you sense in the new movie is more on a micro level rather than a macro level.  It comes on the ships once the troops were evacuated.  One gets the sense that the thing that will kill the evacuees would be drowning below decks on the ships that get attacked by the Luftwaffe and the U-Boats.  You’re in the cockpit of one RAF pilot who had to ditch his Spitfire.  The water is rushing in but the pilot can’t get out because his canopy is jammed.  But fear not – without giving away too much of the plot, this guy lives.

There are two enemies in this movie – the Germans and the English Channel.  The Channel is ever-present, but one never really gets the sense that the Germans are closing in, tightening the noose around the BEF with each passing hour.  In the 1958 movie, you saw Germans.  You saw their faces, your heard their voices, you felt the approach of their tanks outside of Dunkirk.  The new movie doesn’t have that.  You don’t see any Germans at all until the last frames of the movie.

Shell shock – Cillian Murphy is a British private who is rescued [by one of the civilian boats requisitioned by the Royal Navy] from the remnants of a sunken ship.  Not only has he been chased out of France by the Germans, he nearly died after a U-Boat sank the ship that got him out of France.  He’s seen a lot of bad stuff, he’s been “in the shit”, and he’s seen enough. He doesn’t make any bones about wanting to go home.  But when he found out the boat he was on is going in the opposite direction, he freaks, with some unfortunate consequences.  When he asks the boat captain why he, a civilian, is doing such a thing to deliberately go into harm’s way, the boat captain has the best line in the movie - “Men my age dictate this war, why should we not fight it?”

Conclusion.  The new version of Dunkirk proves to me that “newer” doesn’t always mean “better.”  This movie has been hailed by some critics as a “masterpiece.”  The bar for such a distinction must be pretty low these days.  I’ve seen masterpieces, and Dunkirk [2017] is not one of them.  It isn’t crap either.  For me it is a case of missed opportunities and heightened expectations.  While Dunkirk is not a masterpiece, it isn’t crap either.  It is a good movie that could have been great.  Save your money and wait for pay per view.

Love & Mercy

The movie begins with an extreme close-up of an ear – Brian Wilson’s ear. This is the ear that Bob Dylan’s says ought to be donated to the Smithsonian after Brian Wilson passes on. Then there’s a young Brian Wilson [Paul Dano], contemplating the source of his musical inspiration. Full of self-doubt, he asks himself “what if I lose it and never get it back?” Was Brian Wilson’s battle with mental illness the spark that spurred him to make his “pocket symphonies to God”? Did his illness enable him to hear sounds in his head that only he could understand and translate into music? Do you have to be crazy to create good art?

One Sunday morning in August, Carol and I were watching CBS Sunday Morning. About halfway through the program, there was a blurb about Brian Wilson. This program doesn’t have musicians I like unless they have something new to sell, and this time it was no different. Except that instead of one new thing to sell, there were two. The first thing was Brian’s new album, No Pier Pressure. The second was a movie about Brian Wilson’s life, titled Love & Mercy. Since then, I’ve been on the lookout for theaters where it might be showing. I went to Newport News, Virginia for a week on business. The closest showing was in Washington DC. Then I took my son Greg back to college in Colorado. The movie wasn’t there. Then I was in Baltimore for two weeks – still no joy. Then last weekend while searching through the newest releases on Pay Per View, there it was. Finally!

Love & Mercy [the title of a song from Brian Wilson's first solo album] is a well-done movie about the struggles of Beach Boy mastermind Brian Wilson. Brian Wilson’s struggles with drugs and mental illness are well-documented. Some of the episodes that happened are such that the phrase “the truth is stranger than fiction” comes to mind. Unlike most musical biopics, this movie looks at two specific periods of Brian Wilson’s life – the 1960s and the 1980s. Instead of running completely through one period and then on to the other, the film volleys between the two eras. Paul Dano is the young Brian Wilson, who is quite convincing. John Cusack is the 1980s version of Brian Wilson. For the first time in I don’t know how long, John Cusack acts in this movie. He’s playing someone else instead of John Cusack. Dano and Cusack don’t look remotely like each other, but that’s a small complaint. Dano plays the childlike innocence angle very well, who had the determination to be better than the Beatles, but who is also full of self-doubt. Dano’s Wilson is the one that descends into the madness. Cusack’s Wilson is the one who hasn’t quite escaped the madness, but he’s getting there.
 
Brian Wilson was once asked about the stories told in Love & Mercy and he gave a one-word answer – “accurate.” Having read most of what there is to read about Brian Wilson’s story, I can’t argue with his assessment. The touchstones are there – the nervous breakdown on the airplane, the cause of Brian’s deafness in his right ear [supposedly], the piano in the sandbox, the tent in the living room, the painstaking recording process during the Pet Sounds sessions, the craziness that was the SMiLE sessions [especially the Mrs O’Leary’s Cow session]. There was Brian’s paranoia [thinking his house was bugged by both Phil Spector and his father]. There’s the drive to create an entire album that was greater than The Beatles’ Rubber Soul. The arguments with Mike Love over lyrics and the direction of the band are front and center.

We see a Brian Wilson who is most comfortable in a recording studio. He revels in the tedium of recording take after take of little bits of music to make sure it’s perfect. Mike Love doesn’t like it. He’s the only one of the other Beach Boys to argue with Brian about the direction of the band. He complains there aren’t any hits on Pet Sounds, and even the happy songs are sad. He also complains none of the other Beach Boys actually played on Pet Sounds [Ed. Note – except for the odd guitar part or percussion bit, that criticism is true]. Brian says there’s so much stuff that he needs to get out, but Mike criticizes that as “selfish” and having let the band down. There’s a part where Brian is in his swimming pool while Mike and the other Beach Boys argue about direction. As Brian’s paranoia grows, we notice that’s he’s literally in the deep end of the pool, as well as metaphorically. The studio musicians [“The Wrecking Crew”] like working for Brian. Drummer Hal Blaine tells Brian that of all the musicians they’ve worked with, he’s the best, but that’s small consolation for Brian.

A telling point in the “young” Brian Wilson’s story comes in either late 1966 or early 1967. He’s having dinner with his wife and friends. After the ‘commercial flop’ that was Pet Sounds, the song Good Vibrations was a #1 single. His father Murry had been telling him that he had passed his peak, that he was a “has been.” But Brian made Good Vibrations his way [the fragmented same way he made Pet Sounds], and it was a chart topper during the era of The Beatles. In what should have been a moment of triumph [an “I told you so” moment, if you will], he had a panic attack during dinner. All he could hear was the constant chatter of his dinner guests, and the clinking of silverware on plates that grew louder and louder until he could take it no longer. Afterwards, he has a meeting with the rest of the band in his swimming pool. As if to make the point absolutely clear, Brian is in the deep end [as in “going off the deep end…”].

The first time we see the 1980s Brian Wilson is in a Cadillac dealership. A shoeless Brian [he didn't want to get sand in the car] is sitting in a car on the showroom floor when he’s approached by Melinda Ledbetter [Elizabeth Banks]. She gets in the car and Brian starts talking in non sequiturs [including his jogging habits a little bit about his brother having recently died]. Soon Brian is joined by Dr. Eugene Landy and two minions. Then Landy lets slip to Elizabeth that she was talking to Brian Wilson. She knew the name – many in Southern California knew the name. Instead of giving her his phone number he handed her a piece of paper with three words on it: Lonely, Scared, Frightened. She asked him if he really stayed in bed for two years, and he said “no, it was more like three.” She was intrigued by his honesty. As she gets to know Brian, she finds that Brian is practically a prisoner in his own home. She also finds that Landy prescribes copious amounts of psychotropic drugs [the wrong ones, it turns out] in order to keep Brian under his control.

There are two villains in the movie – Brian’s father Murry and Dr. Eugene Landy. Both figures have “asshole” written all over them. A strange bit of the story involves the dynamic between Brian and Murry. Murry was a bit of a domineering control freak. Brian fired Murray as their manager [which Murry never hesitates to re-hash time and again], but yet he still wanted his father’s approval when he played his new songs to Murry. Brian asked Murry his opinion of a new song called God Only Knows. Murry didn’t like it. He thought it was “wishy washy.” During a recording session, Murry brought an acetate of a new group he was producing called the Sunrays. He thought they were the next big thing, and the Beach Boys should be more like them because they’re “has-beens.” The final betrayal by Murray when he sold the Beach Boys catalog from under them comes at the same time that SMiLE collapsed [Ed. Note – the sale actually happened in 1969; SMiLE collapsed in May 1967].

Landy is played by Paul Giamatti. Landy is Brian’s psychiatrist, nutritionist, legal guardian and overall gatekeeper/warden. He also has an explosive temper. He has total control over all of Brian’s affairs. The operative word here is control. After Brian and Melinda start dating, he asks Melinda to visit him in his office. Here he tells Melinda what she’s “getting into” – that Brian is a paranoid schizophrenic who needs to be controlled, and that as Brian’s guardian he is the control. He even asks Melinda to telephone him with all the details after every meeting she has with Brian. In his desire for absolute control over all aspects of Brian’s life, he has his ever-present minions go out on double-dates with Brian and Melinda. In one scene, Brian complains about being hungry. Landy tells him he only thinks he’s hungry and he’ll have to wait his turn to be served lunch. Melinda is willing to share, but Landy will have none of it. When Brian grabs Melinda’s hamburger and stuffs half of it in his face, Landy starts screaming at him. When he sensed that Brian and Melinda were getting too close, Landy told Melinda that it’s over between her and Brian. Brian confessed to Melinda that he’s scared of Landy - “He is my legal guardian, he can do things to me.” Cusack is very good at going from being casual about his past to being absolutely terrified of Landy.

Melinda knows that Landy is up to no good, but she needed proof. The housekeeper provided the proof with a copy of a power of attorney, one that Landy has doctored to suit his own ends. Once she had the proof, Melinda made a call to Carl Wilson. The next scene we see is one where Landy goes to the auto dealership where Melinda works. A process server saw Landy there and gave him the “you’ve been served” spiel. Landy exploded in a rage and starts yelling every expletive in the book at the closed door of her office. The more he screams, the more she knows she has won. Then suddenly she opened the door and she just looked at Landy as if to say “go ahead – say that to my face.” Landy went silent and disappeared.

Sometime after Landy disappeared from the scene, we see Brian walking down a street in Beverly Hills. He crosses the street and nearly gets run over by…Melinda! Brian told her Landy was gone and he wanted to go on a drive with her. The last scene shows Brian and Melinda pulled over on some dead-end street. At the end of the dead-end is a freeway where Brian’s childhood home used to be. He wanted Melinda to see it, but he had no idea it was gone. But no matter, Brian is away from the evil Dr. Landy and tells Melinda he wants to be with her. Cue the song Wouldn’t It Be Nice…

The film ends with the real Brian Wilson singing Love & Mercy. He’s married to Melinda, and Eugene Landy is long gone. I love happy endings…