6/30/2008
The Eagle Has Landed (1976) 8/10
In the final days of World War II, an unlikely plan to kidnap Winston Churchill seems as if it might succeed. Directed by John Sturges.
I believe this is what is meant by a “corker.” What a cast of characters! What a delightful assortment of oddities and quirks, and what an adventure!
The oddest thing about The Eagle Has Landed is that our “heroes” are all Nazis or Nazi collaborators. Tom Mankiewicz’s screenplay goes to great lengths to give most of them motivations that are palatable to the audience; Col. Steiner (Michael Caine), for example, is court-marshalled for attempting to help a Jewish woman escape being transported to a concentration camp. But Himmler (Donald Pleasance) has given the highest authority to this kidnapping plot, and so Col. Radl (Robert Duvall) gets Steiner and his men—crack paratroopers—released.
The fact remains, you’re rooting for Nazis. It’s “safe” to do so because you know their plot fails and the war is essentially already lost, and because there is virtually no Nazism per se in the film (except for a brief remark about the “order” that England lacks). It’s pretty much World War II as convenient backdrop for an adventure story.
And it really is a terrific adventure, with a little humor, a little slapstick, a lot of action, and a touch of romance. Donald Sutherland, as an Irishman working to defeat England to further the cause of a united Ireland, is terrific. He arrives in a small village, where Churchill is scheduled to vacation, in advance of the paratroopers; befriending locals, learning the lay of the land, and preparing for the attack. Meanwhile, he gets into fights, falls for a local girl, and does a generally poor job of maintaining a low profile. He’s certainly the best part of the movie.
(And by the way, this movie passes Mo’s Movie Measure: The interaction of local women is crucial, even though most of the characters are men.)
You can already tell it’s a kickass cast, and I didn’t even mention Jean Marsh, Larry Hagman, Treat Williams, or Jenny Agutter. The movie looks good (production design by Bond veteran Peter Murton) and moves beautifully.
The primary downside is the accents, many of which swallow the German names so badly that I had to use the IMDb to figure out who was who.
There’s less to say about this film because it’s fundamentally meaningless; it’s meant only for fun, and it provides fun. It’s one of those movie that makes the rounds on television, and it’s worth catching.
6/23/2008
The Apartment (1960) 10/10
Insurance actuary C.C. “Bud” Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a bachelor who allows managers to use his apartment for their adulterous trysts, hoping that he’ll curry favor and earn a promotion. He has a crush on elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), but his ambitions and his relationship hopes may be in conflict. Directed by Billy Wilder.
The worst thing about The Apartment is that it is categorized as a “romantic comedy,” and while technically there is both comedy and romance, it is so far from that genre as to confuse the viewer who might be expecting something more along the lines of, I dunno, Notting Hill. The Apartment is best appreciated as a dark story—with comedic moments and a touching romance—about ambition, compromise, and treating people as less than people.
The first time I saw it, I had rom-com expectations, and I couldn’t get comfortable with the darkness. What is this movie? You want to stick it in a genre, but it doesn’t fit. So the second time I saw it, I knew it would be dark, and I let go of even thinking of it as a comedy. Definitely a not-comedy with funny scenes, but it’s not sorrow or angst that makes it not-comedy, it’s hatefulness, disregard for human decency, and a system working to crush the relative goodness of Baxter and Fran.
Again, when I first saw the movie I thought of Bud Baxter as a nebbish, and again, this is because a nebbishy, put-upon character is a cliché in such movies, and Lemmon’s character fits into the slot where such a nebbish would be. I hate those characters in films; I hate cringing, it’s one of the reasons I don’t watch many comedies.
But I saw a brief summary of the film somewhere that referred to Baxter as “ambitious.” Not put-upon, not abused by his higher-ups. “Ambitious.” And that made me rethink the film quite a lot. When I saw it again, I saw that Baxter isn’t abused by his bosses, although they take advantage of him and treat him like crap, he tolerates it willingly, not because he doesn’t know how to say no (nebbish) but because it will help him achieve his goals (ambitious). The minute the abusive managers can no longer help him, Baxter is entirely able to, and in fact delighted to, say no.
Which paints him in a different light, no? He’s a decent guy, who cares about people, but he is climbing up the ladder, corporate-wise, and he is okay with compromising himself to do so.
The managers are slimey sons-of-bitches, beautifully portrayed by Ray Walston (whose skull you kind of want to crush), Fred MacMurray (who’s more a punch in the face and then stab in the gut sort), and others. MacLaine is a vision, delicate, vulnerable, honest, and Lemmon gives a nuanced performance of a man trying to be true to himself and discovering how complex that can be. Both deserved their Oscar nominations.
There is a lot going on here about American business. Baxter really cares about insurance; he thinks and communicates in actuarial numbers. The higher you go up the management ladder, the less people care, but the product is significant, the numbers are significant. Look at how that changes: By the time of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), no one in the company knows what their product even is. And yes, How to Succeed… is significantly more comedic, but it’s also more cynical. In the seven years between the two films, the notion of a corporate “home” became darker and darker.
The underlying message seems to be that the purpose of rising up the corporate ladder is to crush others, and Baxter has to choose whether or not to be crushed, and whether or not to crush Fran and anyone else who happens to be in the way. What’s interesting, and what makes the performance so great, is that you aren’t really all that sure what his choice will be, even though he’s a lovable guy.
6/10/2008
It has been said that movies and literature go together like bananas and sardines1; that banana/sardine synergy is the subject of this week’s Tuesday Trivia quiz. Your task is to identify an actor who has appeared in adaptations of the work of all three listed authors; for example, if I gave you Tom Robbins, William Gibson, and William Shakespeare, you might answer Keanu Reeves (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Johnny Mnemonic, and Much Ado About Nothing or My Own Private Idaho). For extra credit: one of the actors I have in mind also appears in the work of a fourth (unnamed) author (who should be very familiar to Deborah’s readers).
Get it? Got it. Good.
- Dashiell Hammett, Somerset Maugham, Fyodor Dostoevsky
[solved by Maurinsky, comment #6]
- Jane Austen, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Leo Tolstoy
[solved by Melville, comment #1]
- Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton, Lawrence Sterne
[solved by Hogan, comment #3]
- Charles Dodgson, Ernest Hemingway, John O’Hara
[solved by Melville, comment #8]
- Steven King, Graham Greene, Raymond Chandler
[solved by Hogan, comment #10]
- Philip K. Dick, Robert Howard, August Strindberg
[solved by Melville, comment #2]
- Samuel Clemens, William Thackeray, John Steinbeck
[solved by Melville, comment #13]
Note: I have one person in mind for each of these, but if you identify someone else who qualifies you will of course get full credit (and the question will remain open).
1I just said it, so it has in fact been said.
6/9/2008
The Savages (2007) 8/10
John Savage (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his sister Wendy (Laura Linney) are faced with placing their estranged father (Philip Bosco) in a nursing home.
You might have to talk yourself into seeing this one, because the description sounds relentlessly sad. The previews tried to overcome this by showing funny lines and painting it as a family comedy. But The Savages is neither relentlessly sad nor a family comedy. Instead it is a human story about flawed, struggling people with a surprising naturalism to their relationships. For several days after seeing it, I felt John and Wendy as if I knew them. Over a course of days, I gained understanding about their flaws and their behaviors, just as I do with people I know, when I mull over the things they do and say.
Particularly striking is the way that John and Wendy interact like siblings; a little dependent, a little defensive, a little loving, and very, very familiar.
It is impossible to discuss The Savages without comparing it to You Can Count On Me. Both are movies about the relationship between a brother and sister (both times played by Linney) who have not really grown up. In You Can Count on Me, the Prescott siblings are arrested at the emotional age they were when their parents were killed in a car crash; in The Savages, it’s when they were abandoned by their mother (who went out to dinner and never came back). In both, Linney’s character is acting out her childish neediness by having an affair with a married man. And, too, both are very good movies.
John and Wendy’s names are obviously a reference to Peter Pan, but instead of feeling hammered with the “won’t grow up” theme, I thought about the odd, disconnected parents who thought that was a clever thing to name their kids. The reference is never explictly mentioned on-screen (thank God!). Even the names end up with an additional subtlety, as I noticed that “savage” is something like the opposite of “darling.”
The Savages, as a family, are not clichéd, and sometimes that feels surprising. John is a failure at relationships; he is allowing his long-time girlfriend to return to Poland rather than marry her. He is defensive about his weight, and his house is a mess. Yet he is steady, and thoughtful, and comforting, and Wendy knows she can count on him. Wendy is the flighty, irresponsible one, yet she, too, has a lot more to her than is readily apparent. They are not their character sketches; they are people.
And that’s what I keep coming back to. I could tell you more about the story and the characters, but what I keep coming back to is the people-ness of John and Wendy, and how I felt like I’d spent time with smart, sad, interesting people who I was glad to get to know.
5/26/2008
Iron Man (2008) 7/10
Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) is a boy-genius weapons developer and one of the richest men in the world. In Afghanistan to demonstrate a new missile, he is kidnapped and ordered to build the missile for his kidnappers. With the equipment his captors provide and the assistance of another imprisoned scientist (Shaun Taub), he invents a device to keep the shrapnel in his chest from invading his heart and killing him, and creates an Iron Man suit to effect his escape. Directed by John Favreau.
I could totally review The Apartment, but here I have that rare occasion when I’ve actually gone to a blockbustery movie on a holiday weekend, and okay, not “the” blockbustery movie, but whatever. So I feel obligated to review Iron Man.
There is something about the Iron Man comics that has always been a little stiff, a little stodgy, a little “establishment.” Tony Stark is that rare creature among superheroes; his job is basically not threatened by his secret, nor is his day to day life made particularly more difficult. Okay, sure, heart condition. But the iron suit helps that, it doesn’t cause it. Iron Man comics, even when they were a brand new thing, somehow seemed Old Guard; he’s about America and Industry and he’s got that kind of Bruce Wayne wealth and power and butler and women, and all of that adds up to, “They made a movie? Really? What for?”
On the other side of the equation is Robert Downey, Jr. Hollywood was clamoring to Give That Man a Franchise, which was a damn good idea. Downey is at the peak of his watchability in this film, he is infinitely entertaining to just slap up on the screen and let him do his thing, which Favreau (a talented director who tends towards the very-good-but-not-great) is smart enough to let him do.
Most first superhero movies have 3 parts; the origin, the becoming a hero, and the actual adventure. And most such movies spend too little time on the actual adventure. Iron Man definitely suffers here; the origin in Afghanistan could easily lose twenty percent; the invention of the super-sophisticated suit back home could lose thirty. But for all of those scenes, Downey is on-screen approximately one hundred percent of the time, and every time your mind wanders he pulls you back.
This is a good cast; Terence Howard and Gwyneth Paltrow are both far better than they have the right or reason to be, Jeff Bridges phones it in, but his telephone work is better than most actors live. Shaun Taub is wonderful. But this is a one-man show and the movie would, in a word, stink without Downey.
Everything that isn’t Downey is technology and effects, and they are damn good. The suit both looks like the comic book version and is believable; it blends with the rest of the action, and that’s not easy; we’ve seen plenty of movies screw that up. The script avoids several clichés that had me cringing when I thought I saw them coming; only the villain is cardboard.
There’s an ending that kind of irritated me and charmed me in equal parts, and then a post-credits bonus ending that is delightful. So stick around for the very end.
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