July 2019

 

ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD (2019)

     Quentin Tarantino remains a master at creating wonderfully acted, cleverly staged scenes filled with quotable dialogue and winking sarcasm. Yet he seems to have little interest in delivering a fully developed, meaningful drama.

     As much as I enjoyed a solid two hours out of this two-hour and forty-minute homage to Hollywood of the 1960s, the writer-director fails to weave the movie’s many memorable scenes into a compelling, coherent story.

      What he does produce in “Once Upon a Time,” down to the hubcaps, cigarettes and radio DJ The Real Don Steele, is a heartfelt, impeccably rendered trip down memory lane, with a pair of Hollywood clichés—Rick Dalton, a second-rate, hard-drinking actor reduced to guest roles on TV series and his loyal, tough-guy stunt man Cliff Booth—serving as our guides.

     Ironically, Tarantino casts two of film’s biggest stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, as these working-class members of the industry. And both deliver convincingly. Without these star performances, the film would have fizzled into nothing.

     Di Caprio’s Rick once had his own TV Western, “Bounty Law,” but his career has stalled. An agent—for some reason we never meet Rick’s actual rep—played by Al Pacino at his hammiest (which is saying something), suggests he consider a spaghetti Western, following in Clint Eastwood’s footsteps. But the real point of the scene, set at the famed Hollywood watering hole Musso & Frank Grill, is for Pacino to outline Rick’s career.

     Too much of the picture takes place on the set of “Lancer,” an actual Western series in the late ‘60s that starred James Stacy (played by Timothy Olyphant), on which Rick has a guest appearance as the villain. The tedious sequence, sparked only by a cute performance by a pretentious child actress (10-year-old Julia Butters), just reinforces Rick’s lack of confidence.

     But it’s not like there’s anything else that the director can cut to. Large chunks of the film chronicle Rick and Cliff hanging out or driving past Los Angeles landmarks or just loafing around home.

      Rick lives in a classic mid-century house on Cielo Drive (just north of Beverly Hills), next door to up-and-coming actress Sharon Tate, while Cliff lives in a trailer behind the Van Nuys Drive-in with his dog Brandy. This all becomes relevant by the end of the film, but what I kept wondering was why these two Hollywood hunks, in an era of rabid promiscuity, not only don’t have girlfriends, but are never seen even hooking up. I guess Tarantino didn’t want a woman interfering with their buddy chemistry.

     The point of the film, if you can find one, becomes clearer when Cliff takes a young hitchhiker (the ultimate ‘60s “chick” played by Margaret Qualley) to Spahn’s Movie Ranch in the San Fernando Valley. (He even turns down sex with her, asking, in a nod to 2019, for ID.)

     Having shot Westerns at the ranch, Cliff is surprised to find a collection of hippies living there with the approval of the owner (a grumpy Bruce Dern). The dramatic irony is that the audience recognizes this crowd as Charles Manson followers who will soon visit Cielo Drive. To Cliff, they are just dirty hippies—a regular target of the film.

     Tarantino doesn’t hide his self-indulgence: He fills the screen with fictional movie and TV series scenes along with posters of both real and fictional movies. He sends Tate (Margot Robbie, with little to do except look the part) to Westwood where she is surprised when she walks by a theater playing a movie she’s in, “The Wrecking Crew” starring Dean Martin. With child-like joy, she revels in the audience laughing at her pratfalls. (Should I wonder why this first-run theater is playing a movie from the previous year?)

       Later, the camera follows her to the Playboy Mansion where Steve McQueen (British actor Damian Lewis, looking like the actor’s twin) comments on her living arrangement with husband Roman Polanski. 

   It’s all very amusing in a sophomoric way yet so many of the scenes seem to be there only to show how cool the Westside of LA was 50 years ago.

    After “Inglourious Basterds” and “Django Unchained,” no one should be surprised by the director’s penchant for rewriting history, thus “once upon a time,” but the final act left me dazed and cheated. As I don’t want to play spoiler this early in the film’s run, I’ll delay to a later date my thoughts on the ending.

    Reportedly, Tarantino, at 56, is considering retirement from filmmaking after his next picture—an entry in the “Star Trek” franchise. That seems crazy, but just as crazy is his exulted status in the industry considering his thin resume: one great film (“Pulp Fiction”), 25 years ago; three good ones (“Reservoir Dogs,” “Inglorious Basterds,” “Jackie Brown”); and five that showed potential before self imploding. His ego would never allow it, and it’s a bit late now, but what Tarantino has always needed was a co-writer.

     But when Cliff recalls his encounter with Bruce Lee on the set of “The Green Hornet” or Rick and Cliff drink beers while watching Rick’s guest appearance on “The F.B.I.” or when the camera lingers over a fictional movie poster that include real, but offbeat actors fifth or sixth billed or anyone mentions Rick’s film-career highlight, “The 14 Fists of McCluskey,” “Once Upon a Time” is pure delight for anyone who loves movies as much as the director. Maybe that’s good enough…in Hollywood.

   

GUNMAN’S WALK (1958)

     Like current complains about the unending number of superhero movies, I wonder if moviegoers of the 1950s lamented the onslaught of cowboy films?

      From classics with major stars such as “The Searchers,” “High Noon” “Shane,” “3:10 to Yuma,” “Johnny Guitar” and “Naked Spur” to lesser-known gems like “Ride Lonesome,” “7 Men From Now,” “Silver Lode,” “Day of the Outlaw,” “Jubal” and “Forty Guns,” Westerns dominated Hollywood’s output that decade.

     You can add to the list this little-seen, sharply writing picture of a psychologically racked relationship between a father-son set in a frontier town.

     A major teen heartthrob of the era, Tab Hunter, stars as a tightly wound, volatile young man who hates everything about his father Lee Hackett (the always solid Van Heflin) but shares both his self-centered approach to life and unbridled hatred of the Native Americans they live among.

     The conflicts escalate when Ed pushes an Indian, who was working for his father, to his death while both are pursuing a white wild horse. The man killed was the brother of Clee (Katherine Grant, then newly married to Bing Crosby), who works in the town’s grocery store and has drawn the eye of Ed’s more tolerant younger brother Davy (James Darren, another ‘50s heartthrob and later TV star). The father, who all but runs the town, finds a way for his son to avoid murder charges, but things soon go from bad to worse.

    Briskly directed by Phil Karlson, best known for his well-acted film noirs--“Kansas City Confidential,” “99 River Street, “The Phenix City Story,” among others—the film is both a powerful condemnation of racism and a complex study of a son who is doomed by the way he reacts to his upbringing. It’s no surprise that the sophisticated script is by Frank S. Nugent (from a story by Ric Hardman), whose screenplays for John Ford are central to the development of the genre.

    In most of his roles, Hunter is a wooden, vacant presence, undercutting at least two potentially first-rate films, William Wellman’s “Lafayette Escadrille” and Stanley Donen’s “Damn Yankees.” By the 1960s, he mostly worked in TV, including a short run with “The Tab Hunter Show.” But as Lee Hackett, he uses that stiffness (or Karlson does) to perfectly capture this disturbed, self-destructive man. This is a character that would fit nicely into any of Karlson’s dark alleys of noir.

THE FAREWELL (2019)

     The difficulties faced by immigrants trying to balance the old-country values of their parents with living as an American has always been the source of conflicts. While Hollywood did it’s best to hide the country’s diversity for years—except for the occasional Jewish story of culture struggles (“The Jazz Singer,” “Humoresque”)—this century has seen it become a popular plot-device.

     One of the best of this sub-genre is “The Big Sick” (2007) and “The Farewell” matches it. At the center of the new film is a deception: while the dispersed family gathers for a wedding (real life not the fantasy of “Crazy Rich Asians,”) in mainland China, the focus is on saying goodbye to Nai Nai, the matriarch whose cancer diagnose has been kept secret from her.  

    In fact, the news is also hidden from granddaughter Billi (Awkwafina, the scene stealer from “Crazy Rich Asians”), who lives in New York, because her parents don’t believe she can keep it secret from her grandmother.

   But after learning the truth she shows up, much to the delight of Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhao), and struggles each day with the knowledge of her grandmother’s illness.

    While the film, written and directed by Chinese -America Lulu Wang based on personal experience, offers plenty of family-gathering humor, it also looks at the deeper issues of identity and origins and duality. Not that much happens, but like most family gatherings, every conversation is steeped in personal histories and unresolved grievances. (Though an American film, much of the dialogue is in Mandarin with English subtitles.)

      Wang portrays the dynamics between Billi and her parents (superbly played by Diana Lin and Tzi Ma—the busiest Chinese actor in Hollywood since his villain role in “Rush Hour”) without sentiment, revealing deep-seated emotions that never slip into melodrama.

     Awkwafina, a New York City native born Nora Lum, shows in “Farewell” that she’s not just a comic foil, creating a complex, unsettled woman who anchors the film. Her unusual voice is scoring her plenty of work on animated films, but her subtle acting skills may turn her into a major Hollywood actress. Toward that end, next year she’s set to co-star with Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep in “The Prom.”

CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? (2018)

    The idea of Melissa McCarthy playing a has-been biographer who turns to literary forgery to remain financially afloat sounded very appealing. But it turns out that despite the good reviews and Oscar nominations for the actress and co-star Richard E. Grant there nothing more to the film than what’s in the trailer.

     Based on an autobiographical tell-all by writer Lee Israel, the film offers an interesting setup as Lee (McCarthy), faced with little support from her publisher after a recent failure, first dabbles in illegality by penning a short “letter” from Dorothy Parker. Parroting the famous 1920s writer’s cleverness, Lee sells it for hundreds of dollars. She’s found her new profession.

     She strikes up a rather odd—and clearly doomed—friendship with a neighborhood character/itinerant barfly, a scene-stealing Grant, who has been playing this kind of role since “Withnail and I” in 1987. It’s an unlikely friendship that you would think a smart, previously successful writer would have been a bit more cynical about; it seems clear from the first second he enters her life that he’s looking for a meal ticket and is about as trustworthy as Lee’s fabricated letters.

    The second half of the film plods along, waiting for the inevitable moment when authorities discover her scheme.

      Sometimes real stories are the hardest to adapt into interesting movies. Neither the script by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty (nominated, for no discernible reason) nor McCarthy are able to do much with this character—she’s irascible and pitiful, but that’s about as complex as she gets. McCarthy’s comic instincts push the character to being more common and a bit denser than you’d expect of someone who made their livelihood from researching and writing biographies. The film, directed by Marielle Heller, becomes repetitive as it runs out of ideas. 

    While it seems clear that much of Lee’s troubles began with her messy breakup (that happens before the film story begins) with Elaine (Anna Deavere Smith), the script just barely touches on that.

     Considering how females have dominated the best seller list for the past 20 years, a film about a woman writer is overdue, but “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” doesn’t offer enough story to support the character or strong enough performances to hold up the flimsy plot. 

TOY STORY 4 (2019)

     For moviegoers of a certain age, Woody, the now vintage cowboy doll voiced by Tom Hanks, represents every child’s favorite toy and their emotional connection to that plastic-cloth product.

    This latest update on Woody’s world feels more like a class reunion than a movie, but it does move the franchise story in a direction that could make for an interesting “Toy Story 5,” and isn’t that what it’s all about.

     In this film, Woody becomes the caretaker of a spork (that’s right, a plastic utensil) constructed by young Bonnie on her first day of kindergarten. The film quickly becomes tiresome as Woody, now a rarely played with toy, realizes that his only point in life is to safeguard Forky, who keeping trying to jump into the trash, from where he came.

     The film comes to life when it moves to an antique shop where Woody spies a clue to the whereabouts of his long-lost love, Bo Peep (Annie Potts).

     The final act is all action, with a band of ventriloquist dummies and a desperate baby doll pursing Woody and Bo Peep. The rest of Andy’s old toy collection receive little screen time, though Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) performs his usual heroics despite himself.

    While it doesn’t come close to what Pixar achieved in “Toy Story 3,” one of the best modern animation movies, the film is colorful, sentimental and a reminder of the iconic nature of this franchise.

TORCH SONG (1953)

         In this backstage musical, Joan Crawford plays Jenny Stewart, a Broadway star who is simply insufferably demanding. With empathy for no one, she rails against the director, the stage manager, other actors, her agent and has no time for her mother (Marjorie Rambeau, who scored an Oscar nomination for the rather slight performance) or her younger sister. Jenny Stewart makes the real Joan Crawford look like a saint.

     The high-maintenance actress doesn’t even turn down her vitriol for the new rehearsal pianist (Michael Wilding) who was blinded in the war. Midway through the film, which lacks any real plot other than Jenny’s blazing bitchiness, I assumed that the only way the picture was going to redeem her character was to have her suffer a crippling accident.

    That wasn’t in the cards; instead we’re supposed to “understand” her when she falls for the pianist, who had admired her from afar before the war.

    But then the film crashes and burns in stunning fashion when a production number in Jenny’s show is done in blackface. It’s beyond shocking to see a star of Crawford’s caliber, along with a dozen or so dancers, donning this offense face paint, doing a “Porgy and Bess”-like song. Now I understand why this film never shows up on TCM.

     In the 1920s and 30s, this kind of act was accepted without a thought; it was a popular style of entertainment in the era of singers Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor. In the 1939 film “Honolulu,” the great tap dancer Eleanor Powell applies blackface to imitate her real-life dance mentor Bill Robinson. But by the 1950s most Americans found it offense.

      I’m not sure what director Charles Walters (“Easter Parade,” “High Society”) or Crawford were thinking when they added this pointless dance number. It completely negates the casting of a black woman (Maidie Norman) as Jenny’s personal secretary, which itself was rather surprising for a ‘50s film.

    To add insult to injury, India Adams, who’s singing is dubbed in for Crawford, isn’t given any on-screen credit. Surely, Crawford didn’t think audience thought that was her singing? (Go to Youtube to compare their voices.)

     Crawford made many bad films in her career, in fact, more clunkers than winners, but this is worse than most and not even bad in a funny way.