Tarasicodissa Reviews

More Dates for Kay (1952)

Hilarious and Horrifying

[1/10 · 25 December 2008]

During the social chaos of the Depression and the War, young people had kinda gotten out of hand. They had to be taught now how to get back in hand.

In early 40's movies remember the fad of making up fake technical jargon ? When you consider all the technical education involved in gearing up an industrial economy for total war and maintaining huge fleets, air forces, and mechanized armies, that fad was what was actually happening. After the war, one of the companies that produced those wartime training films switched over to making films that were intended to be shown in high schools to "gear up" teenagers for peace and domesticity. Teenagers who had seen the Great Depression had to be sold a kind of 50's sitcom world and social order where Dad always wore a suit at home.

Girls had to be taught that their only value was to get and keep a man. "More Dates for Kay" is a brief short about a teenage girl who will bear any task, however menial, lie, manipulate, suck up in an endless quest for more and more dates. No put down, however brusque, stops Kay or causes her to suspect that there is maybe more to life than boys. The film presents Kay's desperate behavior, her total lack of introspection or self-respect, her inability to see any worth in herself without a guy without any criticism, seeing it as perfectly normal. Apparently 50's teenage girls were encouraged to be this man-dependent.

Kay's desperation is unintentionally hilarious but chilling when you look at it. You watch this short aghast at a mentality that would think that this is how girls should be raised.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Slaves of Las Vegas (2001) Season 2, Episode 8

Dominant Women and Weak Men

[7/10 · 26 September 2007]

This episode introduces the most beloved of recurring characters, Lady Heather who runs an S&M establishment. Melinda Clarke is absolutely lovely in the role.

Lady Heather is the only person Grissom has ever encountered who is as astute a judge of character as he. She is the only person who can see through him and deal with him as a true intellectual equal. In fact, in the scene where they have tea, he is distinctly uncomfortable at her ability to penetrate his defenses. She could plow right through them to his heart if she chose to and that visibly scares a man who has built his life around pushing intimacy away.

The dominance theme is continued in the plots which revolve around the attempts of castrated men to revolt against dominant women. From the check cashing place woman owner whose brother and husband foolishly and incompetently attempt to rob her to the house husband tamely tending a baby that he knows isn't his for his corporate careerist "wife" who treats him with undisguised contempt.

Without a Trace: Silent Partner (2002) Season 1, Episode 6

Then Again, It was Probably the Current

[8/10 · 26 September 2007]

The son in law of a crooked, ruthless financier disappears.

The team discovers that Patrick Kent has been living three lives. In one he works for his father in law in New York and puts up with his boozy, daddy's girl wife. In the second he is a whistle blower who realizes that his life is a devil's bargain, who sees the people his father in law has ruined, and secretly passes proof of his father in law's corruption to the government. In the third he is committing bigamy with a kind hearted working class Hispanic single mother in California.

The women in the team resent the lies Patrick has told. The men in the team like and admire him. Jack takes an immediately dislike to the daddy's girl wife. All of the men like Wife #2 a whole lot more than Wife #1. All of them despise the crookedness of the father in law, who we learn later was setting Patrick up all along to be his fall guy. The tension in the father in law relationship is maintained well (he volunteers no information to the FBI team, not even that he was having Patrick tailed. after all, they work for the same government that is trying to put him in jail.).

The conclusion suggests an enjoyable twist.

Cold Case: The Key (2006) Season 4, Episode 7

Annie Wersching Shines in this Episode

[7/10 · 26 September 2007]

It is the height of the sexual revolution and a man bored with his schoolmarm wife pushes her into a 'key party'. Never once did it enter his head that another man might want her. Never once did it enter his head that she might blossom into a babe which she does. Never once did it enter his head that 'open marriage' cuts both ways. Never once did it enter his head that she would get the 'better deal' instead of him.

Annie Wersching does a remarkable transformation here from rejected wife who thinks she has kinda missed out on life by always playing by the rules and doing what was expected of her to 'liberated swinger' and back to responsible mom. Libby Bradley remains profoundly sympathetic throughout because she brings more generosity of heart to this situation than any of the other 'swingers' do. Unlike her husband and unlike her new lover she is a giving person. I am glad to see that Annie Wersching went on from this to "General Hospital" and will be starring in this season of "24".

The story line clearly disapproves of their actions. The fashionable at the time belief that sexual exclusivity in marriage is a 'hangup' which the truly liberated can just outgrow was on a collision course with reality. The authors of the '70's "Open Marriage" book which touted all of this themselves acknowledged in their follow up book that they got buckets of mail from people who tried it and ended up either in divorce court or going back to monogamy. It is massively "too much information" for the children to handle and much damage is done out of sheer carelessness.

Billy Bathgate (1991)

Like a 'Godfather' Movie Centered on Tom Hagen

[6/10 · 19 August 2007]

If there is one thing that strikes you about Billy it is that he is not a killer. He likes the money and the sharp suits and the girls and the party life of being mobbed up. But he doesn't have it in him to look someone in the eye and pull the trigger (Notice how it never occurred to Dutch Schultz to ask Billy to kill Drew. Or even let him in on the plan). Billy is not Henry Hill.

Otto Berman, Schultz's money man, the 'consigliere', in the film immediately recognizes that about Billy and takes him under his wing in a mentoring way. He is constantly risking Schultz's psychotic wrath by protecting Billy, telling him more than Schultz means him to know. In the end he saves Billy's life by getting him out of that steak house when he knows that everyone has turned against them and they are doomed.

This film denies the viewer the vicarious thrill of reveling in mob movie violence on several counts. One is that Billy is a horrified onlooker to Schultz's violence. Never an active participant. The second is that Schultz's violence is always self-defeating. Prohibition is over and the Jewish Schultz has been reduced to whatever scraps Luciano and the Five Families deign to leave him (protection rackets and the Harlem numbers rackets). He is on the way down. It sure looks as if Luciano is perfectly happy to toss prosecutor Dewey a bone to make him happy and that bone will be Schultz. In the end Schultz's political protection abandons him notwithstanding the offer of a $17,000 bribe (multiply times 20. $340,000. That's a lot of money. After all, the $50 Berman lent Billy covered a new suit, black leather shoes, a new dress for Becky, a present for his Mom, and a night on the town credible enough to earn rooftop sex with Becky. Around a thousand.). And furthermore, the presence of Drew. She's no 'moll'. She is a bored, slumming wife and daughter of old money power and privilege. It is the people in her world who really pull the strings, who make phone calls, who have state troopers as personal bodyguards. Schultz is just a cheap hood, not even good enough to meet her friends as Billy is.

The ending for Billy is best. He is out of a world where he never belonged. He has a nice nest egg. And he will doubtless have the undying gratitude and friendship and maybe patronage of Drew and her powerful family.

The Wonder Years: My Father's Office (1988) Season 1, Episode 3

Learning that Dad is Just a Man

[10/10 · 12 July 2007]

There comes a time when you see your parents as the rest of the world sees them.

This was an incredibly touching episode.

Kevin had always wondered why his Dad came home grumpy from work. Now, after a day watching his father at work he learns that...

1. His father is a shipping manager.

2. It is a high pressure job.

3. When anything is late for any reason (even because a subordinate disobeyed his instructions) he is reamed out by his boss.

4. So he only gets negative recognition.

The soundtrack of the episode is the Beatles' "Blackbird" which beautifully conveys the crushed hopes of a trapped man.

Kevin sees how disappointed in his life his father is. It is very awkward to be put in the position of feeling sorry for a parent. And he realizes how deeply his father needs his family.

If Ever I See You Again (1978)

Joe Brooks, You're not Orson Welles

[1/10 · 12 July 2007]

There are different types of bad movies.

This falls into the pretentious bad category, which is the most fun. It is the sort of movie created by someone who takes himself far, far too seriously. He has a degree of talent but not nearly as much as he thinks he has so his strivings for Meaning and Significance and Truth are as clichéd as .... a commercial.

Joe Brooks, a jingle writer of the era, was the 'creative genius' behind this effort. Director, writer, star, teeth grindingly sappy ballad writer. Hey, it was the 'auteur' era so why not get in on the action ? Fortunately, the summer special effects blockbuster was discovered at precisely that time so the threat of Joe Brooks, auteur, was nipped in the bud.

The Fighting 69th (1940)

It's About Turning a Hood into a Man

[23 May 2007]

Hollywood released quite a few films with the Pat O'Brien, Jimmy Cagney pairing with the same general theme, one which I think is unfairly dismissed here as 'cliched'.

In each of these films, Cagney's character was an Irish ghetto hood, full of street values (toughness at all costs... taking, lying, and using ... physical aggressiveness ... resistance to authority or discipline ... contempt for 'chump' 'soft' moral values). He saw Pat O'Brien's character as 'soft' because he was a 'sucker' with all his 'morality' talk.

The redemption came when Cagney's character contrasted Father Duffy's steady courage under fire with his own terror. His street values taught him to respect courage. But he saw that his street values can teach him defiance but not serenity. Serenity comes from moral character and the street cannot teach you that. He saw that there is, as the song goes, more to being a man than just being macho. And there is a courage that has nothing to do with your fists.

That is a very, very important point.

Dr. Cook's Garden (1971 TV Movie)

Marcus Welby from Hell

[8/10 · 8 December 2006]

A very popular series of the time was 'Marcus Welby' where the all wise, all knowing doctor educated his patients out of their pride, prejudice, and folly in resisting his counsel. The doctor is wise. The doctor is all knowing. The doctor is only here to help.

1971, and indeed, the era of the Warren Court represented a high water mark of the notion that we can have a perfect society if we just turn loose experts and therapists guided by the social sciences on our problems. The intelligentsia then were absolutely certain of the ability of the social sciences to rehabilitate all criminals, to end poverty, to end racial inequality, to make a perfect land. All we had to do was use the tools of the social sciences to fix the 'root causes'.

This film was a marvelous criticism of that zeitgeist. Dr Cook is the ultimate therapist. He is only there to help.

Flickers (1980)

A hilarious, warm, insightful case study of entrepreneurship

[10/10 · 13 August 2006]

Flickers has a delightful plot, deeply engaging characters, hilarious wit shading to drama in the final episode. But when I first saw it, I was struck by Arnie and Maud's struggle with the problems of a startup business in a startup industry. There is no body of experience to turn to so everyone is making it up as they go along.

You can see the ones who will prosper because they can improvise. Initially likable Clara Brewer (the pretty daughter in a sappy musical hall family act) turns into a starlet on the make.

Corky, a music hall slapstick comic whose one reelers were the initial bread and butter of the firm, is pushed into the background as Cole and Lejeundre move upscale to making real movies with plots. He doesn't have the talent to grow into "The Gold Rush" as Chaplin did.

Arnie and Maud will prosper because they can listen to each other and work well together. The love comes in time from this. They can also respond quickly to market change. I loved the scene where Arnie is initially furious at Legendre for spending so much money on a new movie. Maud mediates their quarrel. When Legendre explains that the technology and the market have outgrown slapstick one reelers Maud agrees and Arnie listens. If they play it safe and stick to what they know they will pushed onto the scrap heap like Mack Sennett. Betting the survival of their studio on trying to break into the rich end of the market is an enormous risk but it is a risk you have to take if you want to play with the big boys.

The Story of English (1986– )

A PBS Masterpiece from the 80's

[10/10 · 11 April 2006]

This PBS multi-part series whose view of the English language embraced practically every spot where it is spoken was a sheer masterpiece yielding endless fascinating insights (like how much of American culture and idiom derived from poker. Fair deal. Square deal. Double dealing. Fold. Underhanded. Stacked deck. Overplay a hand. Stand pat. Wild card. Ace up your sleeve. Call a bluff. Which happens to say a lot about how Americans view life as more influenced by luck, people skills, and the right mix of patience and boldness than the master plans and brilliant concentration of a chess master. How much American idiom comes from chess ?).

The first of eight parts dealt with a basic history of the English language up to Chaucer, starting with Celtic languages like Breton, Welsh and Cornish, and explaining why Danish and Saxon merged instead of half of England becoming part of Scandinavia. Subsequent episodes detail the national standardization of the language of Shakespeare and the King James Bible and how East Anglia English became Yankee English while Yorkshire English became the Southern drawl. How colonial Hudson Valley American English was taken north by Tory refugees to become Canadian English. The episode on Scottish romps from the still Celtic Orkneys to Edinburgh to the Scotch Irish to the Appalachians to the Texas twang. Then we get episodes on Black English, Irish English to the New Yawk accent, Cockney vs Oxbridge-BBC (Received Pronunciation) English to Australian, Pidgin, etc.

How I wish this was available on DVD.

Columbo: Lady in Waiting (1971) Season 1, Episode 5

Great Murderer, Great Plot, Lousy Evidence

[7/10 · 8 August 2005]

The Columbo episodes that most engaged me were the ones where he responded emotionally to the murderer. Those where he clearly likes the killer (Susan Clark in this episode, Donald Pleasance's wine geek, Ruth Gordon's mystery writer avenging the murder of her niece) and those where he despises the murderer (Robert Conrad's fitness chain owner, Leonard Nimoy's ice veined surgeon, Louis Jourdan's TV chef).

Here, we see Columbo's clear sympathy for a woman ground down by a domineering mother and brother. He acknowledges that her brother's death is the best thing that ever happened to her. He sympathizes with her desire for freedom. We share her freedom as she busts loose in sexy clothes and a hot new sports car. When we see what a hateful bitch her mother is, it is sealed.

The plot device of trying to diminish sympathy for Beth by making her turn into a tyrant was inadequate. The lawyer wanted a sweet, meek little creature. He wanted to be a milder version of her brother. Beth wasn't about to be anybody's meek little dependent again. He couldn't handle that. I do not find her determination that she will have only equal relationships in the future at all unsympathetic. At the board meeting she tellingly demanded when that company had had a new customer. The board was content to take things easy. She wanted to grow the company and was encountering resistance from those who wanted to just coast on existing accounts. When the leader of the board tried to talk down to her with her brother's patronizing tone she asserted her authority quite correctly. A part of growth is firing complacent people.

Ah, but the ending ! Were I sitting on the jury in Beth's murder trial, I would have found the evidence totally unconvincing. It depended entirely on Peter suddenly remembering the correct sequence of the shots and the alarm. But remember, he had already testified at the inquest exonerating her. He never said anything about any shots before the alarm then when he was her boyfriend. Now, Peter suddenly remembers it differently within hours of Beth dumping him ? A man trained to be precise and detail oriented changes his sworn testimony after his relationship with Beth Chadwick changes radically ? Counsel for the defense would have no difficulty depicting him under cross examination as a resentful ex-lover trying to get even. Or a manipulative schemer trying to take over the company. No jury is going to convict of murder almost entirely on the changed testimony of a cast off lover. Very, very reasonable doubt.

I like Beth Chadwick and take some pleasure in the knowledge that she would have beat this rap.

They Drive by Night (1940)

Superb Use of Metaphor

[7/10 · 13 June 2005]

It has already been mentioned that Ida Lupino's character murders her husband because she despises his drunken boorishness and wants George Raft so I won't call it a spoiler. But the handling of it was a wonderfully done scene.

We earlier had the "prefiguring" scene where Alan Hale showed off his latest toy. A new seeing eye electric garage door opener.

Ida drives back from the party livid at her rejection by Raft. Her husband is passed out drunk in the seat next to her. They are parked in the garage. The engine is still running. She looks at him in disgust and wishes he could just go away. The engine is still running. Then you see the thought enter her head. She could just get up and go into the house and leave him there. No gun, no witnesses, no suffering. Being rid of him is as simple as that. This is a tragic accident waiting to happen. Let it happen. Honest, officer, it was an accident.

She gets out of the car, leaving the motor running and walks into the driveway. As she is about to cross the line of the seeing eye, she hesitates. She's selfish but she has a conscience. She hesitates at "crossing the line" of the electric eye to "shut the door" behind her. Crossing a moral line forever from petty selfishness to evil. Crossing the line for the rest of her life from flawed person to murderer.

She steels herself, crosses the line and the garage door shuts behind her.

Saved! (2004)

A Hearty Thank You to the Makers of this Film

[9 November 2004]

I would very much like to thank the makers of this movie.

After all the abuse that was heaped on the "Passion of the Christ", you went one step further. You launched such a contemptuous, all out assault on Christianity and Christians that you rubbed it in our faces how utterly oh, so, clever bicoastal cultural elite opinion despises us. Your mocking laughter got us mad. We remembered it on election day when we poured out in droves to pay back your candidate.

Thank you for angering and insulting Christians and provoking us to the polls. You have done your part to insure an uninterrupted generation of Christian conservative rule stretching indefinitely into the future.

Village of the Damned (1995)

A Period Piece that Should Not have been Remade

[17 October 2004]

The original "Village of the Damned" was a product of its time and outside that time lacked the necessary impact.

A chilling metaphor for the totalitarian state (in it's murderous sadistic phase under Hitler or Stalin or Mao, not the senile phase under Deng or Khruschev) was a society in which children were encouraged to spy on their families and even denounce their parents to the secret police. Stalinist propaganda made a national hero of Pavel Morozov, a teenage boy who overheard his parents criticize Stalin and turned them in to the NKVD. This testament to the power of the totalitarian state to turn love and trust and family into evil and betrayal and hate horrified Westerners.

In the original "Village of the Damned", which was made when memories of the age of mass murder were still fresh, an alien force invades a bucolic town and turns the children into ice veined white haired Pavel Morozov's sneering to their terrified parents about how their ideology allows no room for "sentiment". Horror works best when it presses a fear button that the culture of the times had already created.

In 1995, after the collapse of murderous utopianism, this film was as quaint as a Godzilla movie.

Above Suspicion (1995)

The mind of a genius

[13 October 2004]

There is much to admire about the twists and turns of the plot of this movie. What makes them so real is the skill of the script in showing that they are the result not of plot contrivance but the mind of a genius at work.

Dempsey is brilliant. At the beginning of the film he is asked by a superior to go over a cop kill crime scene that his resentful colleague Rhinehart had already gone over. As Rhinehart fumes at the captain's lack of confidence in his work, Dempsey notes that the dead cops badge was taken by the killer as a trophy and asks forensic to dust the spot on the ground where the killer would have had to rest his left hand to bend over the body and take the badge with his right. Bingo. Prints of the killer. Rhinehart seethes. Once again Dempsey has shown him up.

Throughout the film he is like that, one step ahead of everyone else. Dempsey plans, anticipates, outwits, gifted with iron self-control and the concentration of a laser. It is rare that one sees genius depicted so well, so without peculiarity and eccentricity.

I am moved by one final scene between Dempsey and his brother. Dempsey gently asks whether his brother Nick hates him. Nick, who is frankly an incompetent failure whose every action reeks of carelessness (Dempsey was shot in the first place because his brother screwed up the bust), confesses his envy. It's not that Dempsey has more than him. It is that Dempsey so clearly deserves it because he is so superior to him in every way leaving him no right whatsoever to feel envy. Just shame at his endless screwups. It was a good scene of how love can be tried by a stark difference in life lots, even when those outcomes are as just as excellence rewarded and incompetence punished.

Another point. Others on this thread have seemed to imply that Rhinehart was motivated by bringing a criminal to justice. Justice had nothing to do with it. As the defense counsel truthfully showed it was Rhinehart's envious hatred of Dempsey that pushed him to create a case where no one else saw one. We saw in the very beginning how the captain openly preferred Dempsey's work to Rhinehart's and we saw that he had good cause to. Dempsey found the shooter's prints that Rhinehart missed.

HealtH (1980)

A Critic's Crisis of Conscience

[1 September 2004]

When Altman made "Health" his career was sinking fast. Hollywood had discovered the summer special effects blockbuster and had no further need of 70's temperamental, erratic, auteurs like Altman or Bogdanovich or Cimino or Coppola. And considering that they were producing stuff like "One From the Heart", "Heaven's Gate", "Quintet", and "At Long Last Love" who can blame them.

The New York Times reviewer, maybe it was Judith Crist, was trying real, real hard to like this movie. She honestly acknowledged that she did not want Altman to go the way of Orson Welles or Erich von Stroheim and knew that his career could not survive more flops. Altman had made one flop after another since "Nashville" (then again his critically praised overlapping dialogue technique confused and alienated audiences so he had never been much of a moneymaker, just a critical darling. Now the critics were abandoning him.). The reviewer desperately wanted this film to be good enough to save Altman's career.

It wasn't anywhere close.

A Perfect Couple (1979)

An auteur tries for mainstream popularity

[30 August 2004]

"Nashville" represented a critical and commercial high point for Altman. He followed it with a series of films that puzzled the critics and alienated his already slender audience (the critics loved his overlapping dialogue and generally unhappy endings but audiences didn't). "Buffalo Bill and the Indians", "A Wedding", and worst of all, "Quintet".

Altman was running out of studio backing and critical support. He had never really been a money maker and by 1979 with "Jaws" and "Star Wars" Hollywood had discovered the special effects summer blockbuster. It was tired of auteurs like him and Bogdanovich and Coppola, particularly auteurs who didn't make money (auteurs who remain the darlings of the critics like Woody Allen and Scorsese and don't cost too much money are OK.). Altman needed to show Hollywood that he could make money.

"A Perfect Couple" and "Popeye" were Altman's attempts to make movies he hoped would reach out to the general audience and be hits at the box office.

Conspiracy (2001 TV Movie)

A comparison with "The Wannsee Conference"

[30 April 2004]

I saw "The Wannsee Conference" several years ago and there are some differences in focus.

"The Wannsee Conference" in my opinion, focused more on Heydrich as the central figure. Eichmann was, frankly, Heydrich's shadow. In "Conspiracy" Eichmann is a stronger presence and a more terrifying bully. He is always degrading or humiliating someone below him in this film.

The Heydrichs were quite different. The Heydrich of "The Wannsee Conference" struck me as more of the "Blond Beast" as his terrified subordinates called him. A sociopath of Satanic purity motivated by no greed lesser than that for total domination of himself and everything around him. A man with no use whatsoever for any feelings, who despised sadism because even that is a feeling. A perfectionist of tremendous ability in anything he chose to do, without the least shred of humanity. I really didn't get that sense of pure unblinking malevolence from the Branagh of "Conspiracy" as I did from "The Wannsee Conference".

There is a third point. By the time of this conference Heydrich had had himself appointed ruler of Bohemia and Moravia which allowed him to report directly to Hitler. Another hat Heydrich wore, the hat in which he was chairing the conference, was head of the Office of Reich Security. As head of the Office of Reich Security the chiefs of the Gestapo and SD (intelligence) were HIS direct reports, not Himmlers. So not only was he out from under Himmler's physical supervision, not only could he filter everything that ended up on Himmler's desk, but he could report directly to a Hitler who adored him as prototype of the New German. Heydrich was Hitler's golden haired boy. He was everything Hitler could have wanted in a son. And Heydrich certainly saw himself as Hitler's ultimate heir. I believe that had the Nazis won he would have succeeded Hitler. Heydrich had pulled off the ultimate office politics coup, i.e., bypassing your boss, cutting him out of the loop, and reporting directly to his boss. He was a direct threat to Himmler at this point so his assassination by an SOE team was something Himmler probably took with a tremendous (secret) sigh of relief.

In "The Wannsee Conference" Heydrich is interrupted, I think twice, by phone calls from Himmler. In "Conspiracy" Eichmann flatly tells a subordinate that no calls are to be taken during the conference "except from Hitler and he won't call". I wondered, "What about Himmler who is nominally his boss's boss ? Refusing to take a phone call from your boss is total disrespect for his authority.". Is this a difference in viewpoint between the two films ? That the Heydrich of "Conspiracy" is so confident of his role as Hitler's surrogate son and heir that he can blow off Himmler while the Heydrich of "The Wannsee Conference" is not ?

Fail Safe (1964)

The Cold War meets "Peaceful Coexistence"

[27 April 2004]

By 1962, it had sunk into the American people that the Soviets didn't want WWIII any more than we do. The Soviet system was no longer ruled by murderous psychopaths or ruthless visionaries but by stodgy bureaucrats. So if war did come about, it would be like "Fail-Safe" or "The Bedford Incident" or "Dr Strangelove". Because of some screw up, some accident, some Captain Ahab in a destroyer or some cowboy.

Although, I suspect a great time travel scenario is someone from the present (or, worse still, from 1998) going back to the Soviet Union of 1980 and warning them that time is not on their side. If they do not use their massive war machine now they will never get the chance.

This film is a marvelous time capsule of that moment when the Cold War had settled into a dangerous routine in which both sides cooperated to avoid unnecessary trouble.

Jurassic Park III (2001)

I hated the Kirbys and I hated their brat kid

[5/10 · 19 April 2004]

The yuppie Kirbys succeed in getting the three mercenaries they brought killed trying to rescue their out of control brat kid (Papa Kirby acknowledges that the root cause of the problem has been their total failure at disciplining him). As an aside, these men are described as professional mercenaries. Since the Kirbys paid them with rubber checks, did it occur to them that stiffing killers isn't a terribly safe or smart thing to do ? Or like their son were they selfish, spoiled people who want what they want right now without ever considering the consequences ?

One can clearly see that the root cause of the entire project was a fat paycheck. A starring role in a major franchise is money in the bank. Sam Neill is a fine actor but he has never been a major box office star so he can be begrudged this.

The Passion of the Christ (2004)

Two additional points

[10/10 · 14 April 2004]

First...

A correction to something someone said earlier. An earlier poster said that Mel had erred in having the soldiers talking in something that sounded like Italian and was willing to concede that the actors were Italian so it sounded that way.

Mel was absolutely right.

You see, the textbook Latin, Classical Latin, was not the same language that common people spoke in the Roman Empire. Pontius Pilate, because he was upper class, spoke Classical Latin because he was an educated man. The common people spoke what is called Vulgar Latin and it is what the Romance languages are derived from. Vulgar Latin did not have the declensions and grammar and syntax of Classical Latin. It was much simpler. It had articles unlike Classical Latin and a syntax like Romance languages. So Mel was absolutely right to have the common soldiers speak Vulgar Latin, a kind of proto-Italian.

Second...

The cultural significance of this cannot be underestimated. I am reminded of the Pope's first return visit to Communist Poland. The whole nation turned out to welcome him in such vast numbers that people who had felt isolated in their Christianity amidst a fiercely pagan political culture realized that they were NOT alone, they were NOT a minority. They were in fact, the majority and the power was theirs if they wanted it. That is where Solidarity came from.

With the tremendous success of this film American Christians have seen their economic power and with that comes cultural power. TPOTC has effortlessly left every other movie released this year in the dust. The Cultural Left threw everything it had this winter against Mel Gibson and this film, resolved not only to make this film a flop but to make an example of him by destroying his reputation and career. Christians saw this and seethed. In response to the Cultural Left's maximum effort, the Cultural Right made a maximum effort and the result has left the Cultural Left speechless in shock. Millions of people who never go to the movies poured out of the woodwork to see this film. A huge and lucrative audience existed that Hollywood had completely ignored with simpleminded special effects blockbusters pitched to teenagers. The Cultural Right has demonstrated its power to make something a colossal hit that the entire secularist Hollywood community wanted to see fail. This will have big consequences.

1984 (1956)

A failure

[2/10 · 14 April 2004]

The first half of the book contains practically no dialogue. Just chats with the Parsons and with Symes. But aside from that Winston Smith's total isolation.

Rendering this cinematically required more subtlety and intelligence than was shown in this Cold War propaganda piece. In the '80s version a voice-over rendered Winston's thoughts. In this version he prattles them nonstop.

SPOILER...

Well, we've all read the book so hardly a spoiler. Do you remember the part in the book where Winston finds himself holding in his hand an old clipping that proves that three recently purged and executed party members were actually in London when they were charged to have been meeting with Eurasian agents in New Jersey ? Now, in a totalitarian state of the murderous Hitler/Stalin/Mao variety, where a careless remark can get you shot or sent to a concentration camp, you learn to very, very carefully watch what you say. Spontaniety must be completely eradicated from your character. Well in this movie Smith enthusiastically goes running up to his superior waving the picture, babbling like an imbecile, "Look ! Look ! See what I've found. Proof that those three traitors were innocent !" No one who lived in a society as terrifying as Oceania would ever be that stupidly naive.

This movie was so unimaginative that it insisted on making Winston Smith a conventional movie hero but the constant furtiveness necessary to survive in a society as crushing as 1984 Oceania is not heroic so it made him a fool.

And by the way, do all the people rating this comment negatively understand that it is about the 1956 movie that virtually no one has seen in 30 years, not the John Hurt movie in the '80s ?

Commando (1962)

A rather touching spoiler...

[7/10 · 13 April 2004]

For the most part this is a standard, but good, action movie. But there is one moment where it truly shines as something better.

Captain Le Blanc has a little problem that he has been hiding from his men. The bottle.

At one point one of his men is captured by the rebels and being tortured. He is screaming in agony. The captain, shoots him to end his suffering because there is no way they can rescue him. Trembling, without thinking, he reaches for his hidden bottle and uncaps it. He then remembers were he is. He tries to stash the bottle and turns to look at his men. It's no use. They all saw. But they aren't surprised or mocking. They always knew about his little problem. But it never diminished the love and respect they have for him. There is nothing in their faces but compassion. They know that the value of this man is so much more than his deepest, darkest secret.

Go on, sir, they say. But their respect and compassion give him the strength to put the bottle down.

Sundays and Cybèle (1962)

This film has haunted me since college...

[10/10 · 21 March 2004]

It is a terrible pity that this wonderful film is not on DVD. Alas, had Serge Bourgoinon gone on to make more films of equal quality it would be remembered alongside "Jules and Jim" instead of being just a footnote. The earlier poster who noted that it is precisely because he and Patricia Gozzi were meteors who cooled quickly that this film is forgotten was absolutely right.

Another point is the haunting Maurice Jarre "We're Home" theme. So much of his later soundtrack music was bombastic that is astonishing to find a simple, poignant melody used here to evoke the tenderness, beauty, and vulnerability of the world that these two are able to create in the park.