Month: March 2020

Closing out the Classic Movie Project

~ Liam ~ 2 Comments

Eight months ago I set out to fill in the gaps in my Classic Movie watching experience.  I ended up watching 93 movies considered to be all-time greats by various sources.

Defining “classic” is a challenge when it comes to movie.  Does it mean “old” or does it mean “great.” I decided it means both “old and great” but I still needed a cut-off date.  Finally I settled on 1974, which is just one year after I was born. But also a time when the old Hollywood studio system was all but kaput, New Hollywood was at its peak, and in the coming year, Jaws would launch the era of the blockbuster.

I still have many movies I can watch (or rewatch) in the future, so I always welcome suggestions in the comments. You can also check out my complete list of Every Movie I’ve Ever Watched for links to more reviews and ratings.

Superlatives

Favorite Movie: Lifeboat (it may help that this was the only movie I saw at a cinema)
Least Favorite Movie: Top Hat
Biggest Surprises: The Great Dictator, Playtime, and The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Biggest Disappointments: Harvey, Fred Astaire movies, all the toxic masculinity in New Wave/New Hollywood movies
Director Discoveries: Leo McCarey, Billy Wilder, and Jacques Tati

All the Classic Movies I Watched

Classic Movie Review: The Godfather, Part II (1974)

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Title: The Godfather, Part II
Release Date: December 20, 1974
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Production Company: Paramount Pictures | The Coppola Company
Summary/Review:

The follow-up to The Godfather features two intertwining stories of the Corleone family.  The first is a prequel about Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) from around 1901 to 1923.  As a boy, Vito witnesses his family murdered by a Sicilian Mafia don and flees to the United States (with some great scenes on shipboard and at Ellis Island). Establishing himself in New York’s Lower East Side, Vito takes on an extortionist who exploits the poor immigrants and becomes a trusted member of the community of whom the people can ask favors.

The other storyline picks up after The Godfather in 1958 when Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) has moved the family to Nevada, but has yet to legitimatize their business.  After an assassination attempt, Michael travels to Florida, New York, and Cuba (just as the revolution is brewing) to try to firm up his business partnerships and track down his rivals.  The movie depicts Michael in a downward spiral as he’s unable to maintain the closeness of the family the way his father did as he pursues a more capitalist course.  As a result his relationships with his wife, Kay (Diane Keaton), and brother, Fredo (John Cazale) begin to unravel.

De Niro does a great job of channeling Marlon Brando while looking a lot like Al Pacino.  Meanwhile, Pacino gets a lot of time for serious brooding.  Some good performances also come from newcomers Lee Strasberg as Hyman Roth, Michael’s main antagonist, and Michael V. Gazzo as Frank Pentangeli, a Corleone family caporegime who remains in New York and represents the family’s old ways.  I also like that Bruno Kirby – of future City Slickers and When Harry Met Sally fame – plays a younger version of Vito’s friend Clemenza. Women characters are once again treated as non-entities in the “manly-man” movie.

I like how historical events such as Estes Kefauver’s Senate investigations into organized crime and the Cuban revolution are worked into the story.  The sets and costumes of early-20th century New York and the 1950s mid-century modern are also really well-done.

Many people consider The Godfather, Part II to be better than the original, but I don’t see it.  There are a lot of interesting parts, but the movie is very episodic and just doesn’t flow into a cohesive story the way the first one does.  There are a lot of parallels between the two movies. Whereas the first movie starts at a wedding, the second features a first communion party early on.  This communion party shows how Michael has lost touch with his Italian heritage by forging partnerships with WASPy people in Nevada, but it’s not as good at establishing characters as the wedding.  Similarly, the climax of the movie features simultaneous “hits” and deaths, but it feels like a pale imitation of the christening scene in The Godfather.

It’s still a good movie but not one that will make my all-time favorites list.

Rating: ***

Movie Review: Clue (1985)

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Title: Clue
Release Date: December 13, 1985
Director: Jonathan Lynn
Production Company: Guber-Peters Company | PolyGram Filmed Entertainment | Debra Hill Productions
Summary/Review:

We played a game of Clue and then decided to watch the movie Clue.  The things you do while in isolation.  I saw this movie in the theater back when it first came out.  The gimmick at the time as that there were three different endings released to different movie theaters.  I saw ending C.  By the time it made it to video and television broadcasts (and now on streaming) all three endings are played back to back.

This is perhaps the first, but not the last, movie based upon a board game.  A comedy that parodies ensemble murder mystery movies while bringing in elements from the board game is a good premise. The movie has become a cult classic among Millenials, but I’m surprised at just how few laughs there are, especially considering the stellar cast.  The movie features Eileen Brennan, Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean, Martin Mull, and Lesley Ann Warren. but only Curry gets some truly funny moments.  And most of those are held until the end(s) of the movie when he’s revealing whodunnit.

Knives Out did it all much better.

Rating: **

Classic Movie Review: Chinatown (1974)

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Title: Chinatown
Release Date: June 20, 1974
Director: Roman Polanski
Production Company: Penthouse | Long Road Productions | Robert Evans Company
Summary/Review:

I watched this movie with some reluctance as I find Jack Nicholson overrated in that he always plays some variation of the same wiseass character.  I also think Faye Dunaway is not a good actor at all.  But more seriously, this movie is directed by someone who would go on to be a notorious child rapist.  With those reservations in mind, I gave Chinatown the benefit of the doubt.

Much as The Godfather put a New Hollywood spin on the gangster movie, Chinatown attempts to reinvent the film noir detective story.  Nicholson portrays a Los Angeles private detective, Jake Gittes, in the 1930s who typically investigates infidelity cases.  The case he takes as this movie starts is another cheating husband case but leads into a scandal involving the construction of a new aqueduct and the accumulation of land alongside it that will become more valuable when it can be irrigated.

Gittes investigates Evelyn Cross Mulwray (Dunaway), the spouse of LA’s water department engineer, and her father, Noah Cross (John Huston), who was the former business partner at a private water company. Only a small part of this movie, at the end, takes place in the neighborhood of Chinatown in Los Angeles.  Instead “Chinatown” is used as a metaphor for the unsolvable mess of a situation that Gittes finds himself trying to unravel.  It’s kind of racist since it’s an all-white cast involved in this mess (the treatment of Asian characters in the movie is stereotypical as well).

I guess Chinatown was a pithier title than Los Angeles Water Rights Scandals, but I found myself deeply intrigued in the subterfuge around bringing water to the city in a desert. The movie is based loosely on the historical California water wars, although they took place 1-2 decades before the movie is set.  A nice touch is that frequent motif of water and the sound of water throughout the movie.

Chinatown is a pretty good movie but I wouldn’t rank it among the all-time greats.

Rating: ***

Classic Movie Review: Tokyo Story (1953)

~ Liam ~ 4 Comments

Title: Tokyo Story
Release Date: November 3, 1953
Director: Yasujirō Ozu
Production Company: Shochiku
Summary/Review:

Drawing inspiration from Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow, Tokyo Story is a moving film about an elderly couple and their adult children.  Shūkichi (Chishū Ryū) and Tomi (Chieko Higashiyama) live in the Hiroshima Prefecture of southwest Japan with their youngest daughter, a schoolteacher named Kyōko (Kyōko Kagawa).  The travel by train to Tokyo for the first time in their lives to visit some of their other children.

Their son Kōichi (So Yamamura) is busy with caring for patients in his pediatric practice and their daughter Shige (Haruko Sugimura) is preoccupied with her hair salon.  Their grandchildren show no interest in spending time with them.  Only Noriko (Setsuko Hara), the widow of their middle son who died in World War II service, shows interest in them and takes a day off from her office job to take them sightseeing in Tokyo.

The children decide to ship their parents off to a spa, but the lively atmosphere there does not agree with them and Tomi begins to show signs of illness.  Unprepared for their parents’ unexpected return, the couple have to spend the night separated. Shūkichi reunites with friends he grew up with and spends the night drinking while Tomi forms a stronger bond with the kindly Noriko. They decide to go home early, planning a whistle-stop visit with their youngest son Keizō (Shirō Ōsaka) in Osaka, but end up staying longer as Tomi’s health deteriorates.

Shūkichi and Tomi finally return home, but Tomi falls into a coma.  The children reluctantly travel to their parents’ home for one last family reunion, although Keizō fails to arrive before his mother’s death.  Kōichi, Shige, and Keizō leave immediately after the funeral, still selfish and indifferent to their father. Kyōko is angered at her siblings, and Shūkichi thanks Noriko for treating him better than his own family.

This movie is absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking.  Like Ozu’s later film Floating Weeds, it features his trademark style of fixing the camera in a low position without any pans, zooms, or tracking shots (I believe the camera moves once in the entire movie) while cutting to different angles.  This movie also makes me realize that I’m enamored with Japanese domestic architecture.  It’s a great work of film art that touches on family, cultural changes in modern Japan, and the lingering after effects of the war.

Rating: ****

Podcasts of the Week Ending March 28

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BackStory :: Fighting Jane Crow: The Multifaceted Life and Legacy of Pauli Murray

The life and legacy of an overlooked 20th-century figure in civil rights, women’s equality, and gender identity.  We all need to learn more about Pauli Murray’s efforts to fight injustice and promote equality.

Decoder Ring :: Rubber Duckie

The history of the iconic bath toy.

Throughline :: American Socialist

My mother always likes to refer to herself as being “to the left of Eugene Debs.”  This podcast breaks down the history of the prominent socialist who found success as a presidential candidate and activist over 100 years ago.

Throughline :: 1918 Flu

102 years a deadly influenza pandemic spread through the world killing millions.  The 1918 flu is brought up as the most recent parallel to the current COVID-19 pandemic. This podcast traces the history of the 1918 flu and most importantly offers striking differences between the flu and the current crisis.

Running Tally of Podcast of the Week Appearances in 2020

Movie Reviews: Frozen II (2019)

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Title: Frozen II
Release Date: November 22, 2019
Director: Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee
Production Company: Walt Disney Pictures | Walt Disney Animation Studios
Summary/Review:

The sequel to 2013’s extremely-popular Frozen, picks up some loose threads from its predecessor such as Anna and Elsa’s parents’ story and the origin of Elsa’s powers.  Elsa (Idina Menzel) is now comfortable with her magic, but uncertain if ruling as Queen of Arendelle is her destiny.  Anna (Kristen Bell) remains so concerned for Elsa’s well-being that she ignores her own pursuits.  Meanwhile, Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) just wants to find the right opportunity to propose marriage to Anna.  And the sentient snowman Olaf (Josh Gad) is learning about the world much like a child. He is also once again the movie’s comedy MVP with his many whimsical quips.

Wisely, though, Frozen II is a stand-alone story that is more of a true fantasy adventure than its fairy tale predecessor.  When the elemental spirits of Air, Water, Fire, and Earth drive the people of Arendelle from their city, Elsa, Anna, Kristoff, Olaf, and the reindeer Sven must travel north to an Enchanted Forest that has been trapped in mists since the time of Elsa and Anna’s grandfather. There they meet the Northuldra, a people inspired by the Sámi, much as Arendelle is a fictionalized Norwegian town.  Together they must work to solve the mystery of the elemental spirits before they are all destroyed.

The movie is a great adventure, with good subplots for all the lead characters.  The animation is absolutely gorgeous especially the depictions of the autumnal Enchanted Forest.  The music is good in that it serves the movie, although I don’t think anything stands on its own the way it did in Frozen.  At least I haven’t heard thousands of kids singing “Into the Unknown” the way they did “Let it Go.”  My favorite song is Anna’s “The Next Right Thing,” because it’s lyrics offer a great philosophy and it’s performed in one the movie’s most emotionally powerful scenes.  At the other end of the spectrum is Kristoff’s power ballad “Lost in the Woods” which is filmed as if Kristoff and a group of reindeer were in a 1990s boy band music video.  I’m not sure if I was supposed to be laughing.

Frozen II falls short of being as good as the original, but it is good enough to justify existence as much more than just a cash grab.  It’s definitely worth watching if enjoy emotionally-packed fantasy adventure with musical interludes.

Rating: ***1/2

Classic Movie Review: The Conversation (1974)

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Title: The Conversation
Release Date: April 7, 1974
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Production Company: The Directors Company
Summary/Review:

Gene Hackman portrays Harry Caul, a surveillance expert for hire in San Francisco.  The movie begins with his team recording the conversation of a young couple, Ann (Cindy Williams) and Mark (Frederic Forrest) as they stroll through Union Square during lunch hour.  They talk as if they have something to hide but their actual conversation appears innocuous.  As Caul edits and replays the conversation he starts to hear different things (not unlike Blowup where enlarging a photograph reveals tantalizing details).  Caul faces a moral quandary when he believes that if he delivers the recording to his client it could lead to the Ann and Mark’s murder.

Coppola made this movie as a personal project in-between The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II. The story reflects the increasing mistrust of government and Big Business the grew in the turbulent late 60s and early 70s, and inadvertently reflected the Watergate scandal that unfolded in 1974.  There are some great scenes of Caul and other surveillance experts at a trade show and party that show the surprisingly sophisticated technology of the era. Harrison Ford has a good small part as a snarky assistant to Caul’s client.  The movie is a slow-burn thriller with a fair amount of ambiguity and a surprising twist.

Rating: ***

Movie Review: The Great Mouse Detective (1986)

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Title: The Great Mouse Detective
Release Date: July 2, 1986
Director: Ron Clements, Burny Mattinson, Dave Michener, and John Musker
Production Company: Walt Disney Pictures | Walt Disney Feature Animation | Silver Screen Partners II
Summary/Review:

Adapted from Basil of Baker Street by Eve Titus, itself a pastiche on Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, The Great Mouse Detective is a classic mystery in Victorian London starring mice and rats. There’s the great detective, Basil (Barrie Ingham), his new acquaintance-cum-sidekick, Major Dr. David Q. Dawson (Val Bettin), coming together to help an adorable young Scottish mouse, Olivia (Susanne Pollatschek).  Her father, the toymaker Hiram Flaversham (Alan Young), is abducted by the evil Professor Ratigan (Vincent Price, who steals the movie as well) and forced to work on his evil plan.

The movie is delightful with a lot of imagination and Rube Goldberg devices. I can’t help but wonder what this movie would’ve been like if it had been made a couple of years later in the Disney Renaissance era and given the tender-loving care it deserved.  New Disney CEO Michael Eisner cut the films budget and sped up the release date.  He also renamed the movie because he thought “Basil” sounds too British. Disney animators famously circulated a memo illustrating the bland and generic nature of the new title by renaming Walt Disney animated classics.  It may be past time for a Basil of Baker Street movie reboot (but not a “live action” version please!)

Rating: ***

Classic Movie Review: The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)

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Title: The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Release Date: June 26, 1973
Director: Peter Yates
Production Company: Paramount Pictures
Summary/Review:

Long before The Departed and several adaptations of Denis Lehane novels made the Boston Crime Movie a cliche, there was The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Unlike most of the movies that I watched for this classic movie project this is not one that’s considered one of the great movies of all time, but I put it on my list because it’s considered one of the great Boston movies of all time.  Having watched it, I think it deserves much wider recognition because it is a powerful, well-acted, well-paced, and well-scripted film.

Unlike more recent Boston Crime Movies, The Friends of Eddie Coyle emphasizes the mundanity of life in the mob.  Doing mob work is work and for Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum) it is  – literally and figuratively – a dead end job.  Sorry for the spoiler, but it’s clear from the beginning that Eddie is not much longer for this world, although you do pull for him to some how get out his situation.

Eddie’s job is to get guns for a gang of bank robbers who need fresh weapons for each heist.  He buys them from gun runner Jackie Brown (Steven Keats).  Coyle is also facing a prison sentence for getting caught in New Hampshire with a truck full of stolen liquor and refusing to squeal on who he was working for, the bartender/mob boss Dillon (Peter Boyle).  He asks ATF agent Dave Foley (Richard Jordan) for help with a recommendation to the judge, but Foley expects him to turn informer in return.

At first the movie seems disjointed, with scenes of Eddie, Jackie, Dillon, and Dave going about their business intercut with bank robberies.  But it all comes together brilliantly in the end. As I noted above, this movie emphasizes the mundane, everyday aspects of organized crime.  There’s no glamour here, and there’s actually only a handful of scenes of violence.  But the movie does offer terrific acting, especially Mitchum, who pretty much lives in his role as Eddie.

For Boston lovers, there are a lot of great location shots including familiar spots like City Hall Plaza and the old Boston Garden, where Eddie waxes poetically over Bobby Orr in the most Boston scene ever caught on film.  There are also scenes shot in a no longer extant Back Bay bar that is a platonic ideal of the men’s bars that no longer exist.  And although I can’t confirm, I’m almost certain there’s a scene in the late, lamented Doyle’s Cafe.  Much of the film is set in the suburbs at places like Houghton’s Pond and shopping centers with parking lots filled with big cars and flashy signs.

Bostonian or not, this is a film worth watching.

Rating: ****1/2