Apocalypse Now (1979)***The production of “Apocalypse Now” was a disaster befitting the title.Director Francis Ford Coppola fired original star Harvey Keitel. Keitel’s replacement Martin Sheen suffered a heart-attack on set. The production was delayed by typhoons and the budget ballooned. Coppola rented helicopters from the Philippines but the army kept taking them back to conduct actual war maneuvers.When filming began in 1976, studios were letting geniuses like Coppola have complete budgetary and creative control of their movies. By the time “Apocalypse Now” finally limped into theatres three years later, the era of Hollywood supervision and PG-crowd-pleasers had dawned.Incredibly, amid all the chaos, Francis Ford Coppola almost made the perfect war movie. The first half of “Apocalypse Now” is spellbinding.Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is – by his own admission – too sick in the head to handle life in the States anymore. So he’s back in Vietnam and he’s just been given his most compelling assignment yet.Willard has been sent on a top-secret mission to assassinate a fellow officer. We learn that Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) used to be a model soldier. Now he has lost his mind, gone rogue, and is leading an army of his own deep in the jungle.As Willard makes his way up a dangerous Vietnamese river, he ponders his own broken brain and wonders whether it is possible that Colonel Kurtz is crazier than the other officers in the war.Case in point: Lt Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall). Kilgore is delighted to use his helicopter cavalry division to help Willard get upriver. He has learned that there’s a splendid spot for surfing that he can take advantage of. The only thing Kilgore loves more than violence is surfing.This is the finest hour of Robert Duvall’s career an all-time great movie sequence. The action scene where Kilgore’s helicopters clear out a Vietcong school to make room for surfing (with Wagner playing on Kilgore’s stereo) is perfectly executed.It is an unequaled technical achievement by Francis Ford Coppola. “Someday this war will end,” Kilgore sighs wistfully. And at that point, we feel his pain. We don’t want the sick fun to end, either.But the film gets worse from there. Much worse.After two hours of anticipation, we are so excited to meet Colonel Kurtz. What a letdown!We’ve been told that Kurtz was a West Point prodigy, a Napoleon-level tactician, and so charismatic that American soldiers and Cambodian villagers follow his every word. But the pathetic Kurtz that we meet is nothing like this. He’s a corpulent kook spouting incoherent poetry and college-level philosophy.The craziest thing about this crazy film is that Marlon Brando came to the set without any understanding of the script or his own character. Does one laughably incoherent section destroy an otherwise great movie? I’m not sure, but Brando sure as heck tries.The ending of “Apocalypse Now” is strangely appropriate. It is a disaster.
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Five Easy Pieces
Five Easy Pieces (1970)
****
In 21st Century America, we talk about race all the time. But we rarely talk about class.
While race conflict is America’s very public Achilles Heel, class differences are swept under the rug.
If you were brought up in a lower-class household, you have virtually no chance of being promoted or elected to a position of power. The Glass Ceiling has been almost completely shattered. The Class Ceiling is still there and it’s harder than ever.
If you were raised by working class parents and you want to marry into an upper-class family, it’s not going to be easy. Your in-laws are going to make you feel insecure and dumb even if they aren’t trying to.
“Five Easy Pieces” is the most insightful and culturally sensitive film about class that I have ever seen.
Jack Nicholson stars as Bobby Dupea. When we meet him, he seems to be your average blue-collar dude. He works in a California oil field. He goes bowling with his buddy. He fights with his waitress girlfriend Rayette.
Though Bobby lives in a working-class world, he never looks comfortable there. One morning – while stuck in a traffic jam on the way to work – he gets out of his car, climbs up on the back of a moving truck, and start playing the piano. He plays like a virtuoso. Who is this guy?
Slowly, we learn that Bobby grew up in an elite musical household and was raised to be a concert pianist.
When he discovers that his estranged father is dying, Bobby drops everything and heads up to Puget Sound. Even though he’s plainly embarrassed by Rayette, Bobby brings her along. A culture clash is inevitable.
“Five Easy Pieces” is a perfectly paced drama. It’s never boring; but the story unfolds slowly, like a novel.
Carol Eastman should have won the Oscar for her magnificent screenplay.
There are several important female characters in “Five Easy Pieces.” Each one is interesting and completely unique.
There’s the lesbian hitchhiker who’s obsessed with the “filth” of American culture. She says that she doesn’t want to talk about but then she won’t stop talking. Sally Struthers is only in the movie for five minutes playing a bowling alley floozy. But Eastman gives her a powerful little speech about childhood trauma.
Above all, Eastman makes a hugely important feminist statement with Rayette. In any other movie, drama queen Rayette would be the butt of jokes. But Eastman makes her sympathetic and the emotional heart of the film.
Rayette foolishly loves Bobby and wants nothing more for him to love her back. But it’s never going to happen. Part of her knows that Bobby isn’t being open with her. Part of her knows that he is unfaithful. Part of her knows that he looks down on her for being white trash.
“Five Easy Pieces” has an incredibly important message for young women. If your man isn’t really into you, you must leave him – sooner rather than later.
When he finally makes it up to Washington to reunite with his snooty family, we realize the full tragedy of Bobby’s life. He isn’t comfortable with them, either.
Jack Nicholson’s performance is brooding but subtle.
Bobby is not insecure or even depressed. He just does not like life at all. And he expresses his discontent by being a jerk to everyone he knows. And when Bobby can’t stand how badly he is treating someone anymore, he leaves.
“Five Easy Pieces” is as great as cinema gets: perfectly written, perfectly paced, and perfectly acted.
And it is a rare movie that has something to say about class differences in America. It is brutally tough to be a working-class woman trying to earn the respect of elites. But, at the end of the day, life is hard for everybody.
The Maltese Falcon
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
****
A beautiful and mysterious woman named Ruth Wonderly walks into Sam Spade’s office. She offers him too much money for too easy a job. Of course he takes it. He wants the money. He wants the woman. And, above all, he wants to know the full story that she’s not telling him.
I’m sure there were detective movies before 1941. But they don’t matter. Every stereotype about how a detective should act and every cliché about how a detective movie is supposed to work began with “The Maltese Falcon.” It’s amazing how much of this film seemed familiar even though I had never seen it before.
The plot is not so familiar. And not particularly important. The mysterious woman (Mary Astor), Sam Spade, and everyone else in the colorful cast is searching for The Maltese Falcon: a one of a kind 16th Century jewel-encrusted bird.
Everybody wants the fancy falcon. But all the characters go about their search in a different way.
Kaspar Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) is the only one in the movie having a good time. He is as charming as he is corpulent. He is a treasure hunter who has been chasing the bird for 17 years. He seems to enjoy the thrill of the hunt and the interesting people he meets along the way more than the actual treasure.
Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) is Gutman’s emotional and frantic assistant. Where Gutman sees joy, Cairo sees only danger and mistrust. Cairo is the inspiration for the crazed chihuahua Ren from the 1990s cartoon “Ren and Stimpy.”
I’ve been watching a lot of classics lately, and the thing that I’m most impressed with about old movies is how realistically selfish the characters are. Humphry Bogart’s Sam Spade is an irredeemable jerk.
Sam Spade is having an affair with his agency partner’s wife. When his partner dies, though, Spade’s first thought is to brutally cut off all contact with her.
When the police get involved in the case, Ruth Wonderly pleads with Sam Spade to help her. Spade lies and says he’ll look out for her. All he really does, however, is take Ruth’s $500, including the last $100 she needs for food and living expenses.
Finally, and most interestingly, Sam Spade is a bully just for the sake of bullying. When he meets Gutman’s young henchman Wilmer, Spade immediately senses the kid’s weaknesses and exploits them. But long after Spade has demonstrated his physical and intellectual dominance, he keeps pushing Wilmer’s buttons. He keeps belittling and emasculating the young man until he’s literally in tears.
They call the millions of people who fought in World War II the Greatest Generation. After meeting Humphry Bogart’s Sam Spade, I wonder if they were simply tougher and more ruthless than people today. And that’s how they were able to kill millions of people and won the war.
There’s a reason why Humphry Bogart is the movie star of the 1940s that people still remember today. No one had a screen presence like Bogart. And Sam Spade is his signature character. “The Maltese Falcon” is well-worth seeing.
Touch of Evil
Touch of Evil (1958)
***1/2
Our national assessment of police has been absurdly polarized.
Some people want to defund the police. Some people think we’d be better off if we disbanded the police altogether. They view local police forces as little more than the governmental wing of the Ku Klux Klan.
Other people view cops as the thin blue line that separates peaceful people from violence. We believe that the role of police officers is to maintain order in a world that can easily devolve into anarchy and mayhem. And we think they are doing are darn good job.
As you can tell, I am part of the second group. However, I am not so blinded by partisanship that I can’t see that both sides are too extreme. The truth is somewhere in the middle and it’s hard to find.
There is good and bad in every police force. Indeed, there is good and bad in every cop. The remarkably relevant Orson Welles classic “Touch of Evil” gives us a thought-provoking analysis of law enforcement.
The movie begins with a bang. A rich gringo’s car blows up while he is driving across the Mexican border.
Two very different cops are assigned to the investigation. Charlton Heston plays Miguel Vargas, a high-ranking official in the Mexican war on drugs. Vargas is brave, honest, and noble.
The American investigator in charge of the case is a very different animal. Orson Welles wears a huge fake nose and a sweaty fat suit to play Detective Hank Quinlan.
Quinlan is the living embodiment of the pig stereotype. He’s arrogant, racist, violent, and he doesn’t give a darn about the rights of his suspects.
Right at the scene of the explosion, Quinlan says he has a hunch that the assassin used dynamite. It isn’t long before the detective is interrogating the Mexican son- in-law of the victim. And – wouldn’t you know it? – the police find two sticks of dynamite at the poor man’s apartment.
Quinlan has found his murderer and he will stop at nothing to convict. Miguel Vargas sees that the American cops are railroading his fellow countryman and goes to war with Quinlan to prove he’s crooked.
It sounds like “A Touch of Evil” is a tale of good vs evil. And it sort-of is.
But Orson Welles is too smart and interesting to make a movie that simple. His surprising conclusion is that being good at keeping order involves doing things that are wrong. In other words: bad cops are truly bad but they might be necessary.
Mark Fuhrman was certainly racist and it is likely that he planted or altered evidence. However, that didn’t make OJ Simpson any less guilty of murder.
The only flaw in the film is the dated-feeling subplot where the bad guys try to frame Vargas’s wife. Amusingly, the most dastardly crimes they can think of are – gasp! – lesbian sex and smoking marijuana.
Overall, though, “Touch of Evil” is gritty, uncompromising, and sophisticated. If you think that all cops are racist and bad or if you defend police no matter what they do, you should see this film. The truth is murkier and a lot harder to find.
A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
****
I’ve argued in this column that owning a house is an unwise move. It’s wasteful and expensive and it encourages materialism that leads you away from the road to happiness.
However, I must admit that having a house with your spouse is very good for one thing: longterm houseguests.
If your wife invites a relative to live in your spacious house, the living situation could end up being tolerable – even fun. Probably not, but it is possible.
If your wife invites her relative to move into your apartment with you, however, the situation is going to get ugly.
“A Streetcar Named Desire” begins with human trainwreck Blanche DuBois (Vivian Leigh) rolling into town. Blanche just left Mississippi under mysterious circumstances and she’s moving into her sister Stella’s studio apartment in New Orleans. Oh, and she is meeting Stella’s husband Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando) for the first time. What could possibly go wrong?
Ultimately, we are supposed to sympathize with Blanche DuBois. But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s a lousy roommate. She’s a motormouth who makes constant meaningless small talk. She’s a habitual liar. She drinks all the booze. She has issues about feeling dirty about her past and she tries to deal with them by taking long, fragrant baths in the apartment’s only bathroom.
Stanley Kowalski was certain to clash with Blanche DuBois from the very start. Stanley is blue collar, straight-forward, obsessive, and a little dense. He deals with his anger and low self-esteem with childish tantrums and domestic violence. It’s interesting how Brando never encourages us to like Stanley or sympathize with him. But the performance is so emotional and so human that we never view Stanley as a simple villain even though he always acts like one.
I was surprised and impressed by “Streetcar”’s frank depictions of self-destructive sexuality.
In one memorable scene, Stanley drunkenly belittles Stella, hits her, and tosses the radio out the window in a drunken rage. Stella goes to a neighbor’s upstairs apartment to get away from her crazed husband. Stanley recognizes that he has gone too far, begins crying, and yells for his wife like a lonely wolf. “Stella!!!!”
Then a darkly funny thing happens. Stella walks down the stairs to her husband. She isn’t angry and she isn’t forgiving. Stella is in lustful ecstasy. Right there we learn that the violent fights aren’t a problem in their relationship; they ARE the relationship.
Director Elia Kazan slowly builds up evidence that Blanche’s self-esteem is so pathetic that she even turns to teenagers for attention. The scene where Blanche keeps calling the newspaper boy back to the apartment for smalltalk is powerful and uncomfortable. They never mention anything more substantive than the weather, but Vivian Leigh makes it very clear to the boy – and to the audience – that she would eagerly sleep with him if she could get away with it.
There is no apartment big enough to hold crazed, abusive Stanley and delusional, self-destructive Blanche. There was no possible way “A Streetcar Named Desire” could have a happy ending. And yet the finale is even a bit more grim than I was expecting.
I still think apartment life is the best life. However, when your wife asks you whether her sister can crash with you for a while, watch this movie and then tell her ‘no!’
The Kid
The Kid (1921)
***1/2
One hundred years ago, Charlie Chaplain had an ambitious, forward-thinking idea.
First, he used his star power to demand total creative control of his next movie. The studio let him write, direct, produce, star, and edit the project – taking as long as he wanted.
After a bloated 13 months of production, Charlie Chaplain released “The Kid.” The world was used to seeing Chaplain’s character The Tramp in 20-minute short films; “The Kid” was feature length. The world was used to seeing The Tramp in slapstick comedies; “The Kid” had drama and social commentary about poverty and religion.
“The Kid” was the second highest grossing film of 1921 and holds up extremely well today. I wanted to watch it mostly to learn about early cinema. But I ended up enjoying the movie thoroughly.
It is interesting that America’s favorite movie character was The Tramp. Because we are not used to seeing lead characters living in abject poverty.
When we meet him, The Tramp lives in a shabby one-room apartment where he has to put a quarter in a machine just to get gas for his stove. In a funny scene, The Tramp takes a cigarette case out of his pocket. The case is actually a sardine can, and it contains various cigarette and cigar butts that he probably found discarded on the street.
The Tramp has neither the resources nor the inclination to be a father. But that’s just what happens. He comes across an abandoned baby on the street. Our hapless hero doesn’t really have a choice so he does the right thing and takes the infant home with him.
Five years later, The Tramp and little John are as close as any real father and son can be. They live together and work together. Jackie Coogan became a breakout star in his own right playing the kid, and his amazing acting is the glue that makes the movie work.
The scene where the idiotic government authorities come to take John away from The Tramp is exceptionally well done. Chaplain suddenly brings emotion into a slapstick comedy. We earnestly feel for the kid as he is being carted away and we root wholeheartedly for The Tramp as he works franticly to get his son back. Chaplain nails the drama without resorting to melodrama.
The film goes from effective to fantastic in the final act.
The Tramp is exhausted from searching for John and collapses on the steps in front of his apartment. He suddenly finds himself in Dreamland.
The Dreamland sequence is wild and imaginative. There are angels and devils and surprising special effects. Chaplain’s future wife Lita Grey steals the scene as a flirtatious cherub.
Charlie Chaplain is using “The Kid” to give his perspective on morality and religion. But I admit that I don’t know what he’s trying to say. I am guessing that his satire made more sense to people who grew up in Victorian England like he did. A whole lot about Christianity and morality has changed since then.
What hasn’t changed is great cinema. Charlie Chaplain knew how to make a well-crafted, crowd-pleasing film. That’s why every single person reading this column still knows who he is. And only half of you know who was president in 1921.
(It’s okay, you can Google it now; I won’t tell anyone).
The Lion in Winter
The Lion in Winter (1968)
***1/2
In 1066, something truly disastrous occurred: William of Normandy successfully invaded and conquered England.
The problem wasn’t that the Normans were bad rulers. The disaster was that the invasion turned the eyes of Englishmen south to France for the first time. Suddenly the English world was a lot more complicated. After 1066, French leaders wanted to control England and English kings wanted a piece of France.
To make things even more of a mess, France wasn’t France yet; it was an ever-shifting web of territories, counties, and duchies. To English and French kings, these pieces of land were pawns in a never-ending game of thrones. They traded Brittany and Burgundy back and forth like baseball cards.
1066 set the stage for 800 straight years of bickering and warfare between the English and the French. Our own country exists because the king of France wanted to stick it to the English.
“The Lion in Winter” is a nerdy comic tragedy about a group of 12th Century royals who bicker for two hours straight about French territories and French people that shouldn’t belong to them.
It’s 1183. King Henry II of England (Peter O’Toole) has invited his whole family to a castle in Chinon (in France, of course) to spend Christmas together. He even lets his rebellious wife Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katherine Hepburn) out of prison for the holiday.
All three of King Henry’s sons – Richard, Geoffrey, and John – are vying to take the throne when their father dies. Henry favors teenage John. Eleanor prefers Richard, if only to tick Henry off.
To add a final layer of complication, wily French King Philip II (Timothy Dalton) is there to marry his sister Alais off to one of Henry’s sons. I only knew Mr. Dalton from his mediocre late-80s James Bond movies. Apparently, he was a tremendous actor when he was younger.
Honestly, the only reason to watch “The Lion in Winter” are the fun, scene-chewing performances. The plot is minimal and the endless scheming and double-crossing is absurd and hard to follow.
Anthony Hopkins – as the future Richard the Lionheart – gives the saddest and most subtle performance. On the face of it, his chivalry and bravery makes him the ideal choice to be king. But he’s a wounded child and a closet homosexual in love with King Philip. His vulnerability and humanity make him weak and foolish.
In this insanely great cast of young British super-actors, it is 60-year-old Katherine Hepburn who steals the show.
Eleanor of Aquitaine is the living embodiment of a great woman: a swirl of contradictions. She earnestly loves her husband Henry but she is compelled to compete with him. She loves her sons but she doesn’t respect them or like them particularly.
Hepburn is the only actor in “The Lion of Winter” who rises above the melodrama to find substance in the scheming. She shows us that the royal intrigue isn’t any different than any other family fighting with each other at Christmas.
Hepburn also reminds us that there are human consequences to all of this. The women of the medieval world are pawns. And so are the people of England, whose kings care more about Paris than London. And so are the people of Anjou and Aquitaine, who are mere prizes for warmonger monarchs.
1066 was an epic calamity. Instability, confusion, and war plagued the English and the French for 40 generations.
Getting involved in other countries’ affairs is always bad news. Thank goodness our wise rulers are always careful to keep us out of foreign entanglements.
The Graduate
The Graduate (1967)
**
Poor Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman).
He just graduated from the prestigious East Coast college of his choice. Now he’s back home in suburban Los Angeles, living rent-free in his parents’ house. Ben has no pressure to get a job, so he lounges in the pool by day and drives around in his Italian sports car by night.
But poor Ben – poor baby – he isn’t happy. He’s concerned about his future. Boo-hoo.
If he could manage to take his head out of his rear end for just a few minutes, he might think about the poorer boys his age who were drafted and fighting in Vietnam. He might think about the people in his own city who are penned up in bad neighborhoods because they had the misfortunate of being born with different color skin. But Ben is far too self-absorbed for feelings like perspective and empathy.
“The Graduate” is a strange movie that hasn’t aged well. Buck Henry’s script is original, engaging, and sometimes amusing. But the characters are poorly written, the plot is improbable, and the lead character is deeply contemptible.
You probably know the story. Ben’s dad’s law partner is Mr. Robinson. One night, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) seduces Ben. Ben is into it and they begin meeting nightly at a nearby hotel.
Hey, I made plenty of mistakes with women growing up, too, so I’m not judging 21-year old Ben too hard.
However, Ben goes from regular selfish kid to legendary super jerk when he goes on a date with the Robinsons’ daughter Elaine.
The one date goes pretty well and Ben decides that Elaine is the love of his life and they are going to get married. Elaine, it seems, doesn’t get a say in the matter.
Also, Ben never considers how ludicrous it is to marry a woman when you’ve broken up her parents’ marriage. Elaine has considered that, though, and she leaves abruptly to go away to Berkeley.
And that’s when Ben becomes a stalker. There’s a fine line between self-absorbed and dangerously obsessive, and Dustin Hoffman’s character crosses it in the last act.
By the way, there is nothing wrong with a movie having a selfish, awful lead character. Most of the best films are about anti-heroes. The problem with “The Graduate” is that I can’t tell whether we are supposed to sympathize with Ben or loathe him and root for his downfall.
That isn’t just a problem of clarity on the part of director Mike Nichols; that’s a problem of morality. Entitled rich guys who view women as possessions are a menace to society. Dustin Hoffman’s character needs to be seen as a miserable villain, not a hero who wins in the end with his greatest act of selfishness.
It all starts with gratitude. If you are 21, healthy, and have parents who support you, stop feeling sorry for yourself. Quit moping, count your blessings, and get a job.
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