DUNE:
PART TWO (2024)
Naively, I was hoping for a “Previously in
‘Dune’” trailer before Part Two unfurled, more than three years after the first
installment of this trilogy was released (why not? Instead, I sat through six loud
and uninteresting previews).
While I found the 2021 Part One rather
pointless, the new film kept me engaged for most of its nearly three-hour
length. While I never grasped the nuanced relationship between those fighting
for their freedom from the oppressive rulers and the cultish group that sees
Paul Atreides (a determinedly earnest Timothée Chalamet) as its messiah, there
are enough spectacular battles and human-like bonding to keep anyone
entertained.
I could have done without the substantial
screentime given to the hairless Harkonnens, led by the Baron, a blob of matter
played by Stellan Skarsgard whose orders are carried out by the senselessly
violent Beast Rabban (Dave Bautista) and a young psychopath (an unrecognizable
Austin Butler). The film also introduces Prince Irulan (Florence Pugh), who
clearly will play a key role in Part Three (No release date has been announced),
daughter of the universe’s emperor, played by an embarrassingly miscast Christopher
Walken.
Obviously,
what’s most impressive about “Dune” is the otherworldly look created by Part
One’s Oscar-winning team of production designer Patrice Vermette, set designer
Zsuzsanna Sipos, the visual effects team and cinematographer Greig Fraser. Yet
too often I couldn’t help wonder if the astonishing vistas that filled the
screen were movie magic or just more advanced CGI. But Villeneuve’s worst decision
was approving Han Zimmer’s ear-splitting, torturous electronic score—I longed
for a mute button.
PERFECT
DAYS (2023)
For the past 50 years, German director Wim
Wenders has remained one of cinema’s most interesting filmmakers, making
features, documentaries and short films that reflect the character-based
sensibility of the late 1960s.
The 79-year-old’s latest, a Japanese movie
following the daily life of a Tokyo sanitation worker earned an Oscar
nomination for best international picture. It collects small moments in this
60something man’s mostly solitary life that play out like a beautiful realized
short story, offering more insight into the contemporary world than most overly
plotted stories, a reminder of Wender’s spare approach to filmmaking.
In “Alice in the Cities” (1974), “The
American Friend” (1977) “Paris, Texas” (1984), “Wings of Desire” (1987) and,
more recently, “Don’t Come Knocking” (2005), Wenders lingers over what could be
classified as pedestrian moments that add up to much more.
Veteran actor Koji Yakusho plays Hirayama,
a single man who replays his routine day after day: going to his job cleaning
public toilets, listening to cassettes of classic American rock in his car,
photographing a cluster of trees (using an old digital camera), frequenting the
same restaurant and bar and then ending his day reading paperback novels.
He takes great pride in doing his job well
while silently putting up with his younger, less responsible assistant.
Hirayama’s passive indulgence seems to have no limit, as when the assistant
tries to sell Hirayama’s cassettes to secure a few yens for a date.
In the second half of the film, two people
enter Hirayama’s orbit who offer more insight into Hirayama past and outlook,
but don’t expect something dramatic or revelatory. This is a touching slice of
life, a tribute to a more analog world, as essayed by a superb actor (Yakusho,
a star in Japan since the 1990s, including high-profile imports “Shall We
Dance” and “Under the Open Sky”) and a legendary filmmaker.
If “Perfect Days”—the title comes from a
Lou Reed song Hirayama plays in his car—has the feel of a documentary, it’s
because much of Wenders recent work has been nonfiction; “Buena Vista Social
Club” (1999), “Pina” (2011) and “The Salt of the Earth” (2014) were nominated
for documentary Oscars. His doc on
painter Anselm Kiefer was released in the U.S. last year.
THE
STING (1973)
In a recent email exchange, a friend was
aghast that I wasn’t a fan of this beloved best picture Oscar winner. The
Robert Redford-Paul Newman comic caper remains one of the most popular films of
the 1970s, but not with me.
Take away those two stars and, as I see
it, it’d be a long forgotten minor entry during Hollywood’s second golden age.
But maybe I was being too harsh on the picture—it did revive interest in
Ragtime music. Then I watched it again, probably for the first time in 30 years.
I found the plot repetitive and obvious,
the direction clumsy and as flat as a TV episode and surprisingly pedestrian
dialogue.
Especially in the long period in the middle
of the film when Newman’s Henry Gondorff nearly disappears, the film flounders
and Robert Shaw’s rather one-note bad guy performance takes center stage.
The picture’s biggest flaw is that little
of interest happens before it arrives at the final con—which, of course, is
what everyone remembers fondly. The back- and-forth chase of Johnny by a bumbling
cop (Charles Durning) grows tiring quickly.
Redford, nominated for best actor for the
performance (the film scored 10 Oscar nominations, winning seven) was in the
midst of his most production stretch as an actor—“Jeremiah Johnson” and “The
Candidate” came out the year before and just around the corner was “Three Days
of the Condor” (1975) and “All the President’s Men” (1976). His work in “The
Sting” doesn’t match those other performances, though most of the blame goes to
David S. Ward’s too cute script.
Newman, as always, is a joy to watch work playing
the veteran conman, but he’s a supporting actor here. Four years later, also
under the direction of George Roy Hill, he gave his best performance of the
1970s as the aging hockey player in “Slap Shot.”
Hill topped Ingmar Bergman (‘Cries and
Whispers”) for best director in 1973, though I suspect the Oscar was as much
for his earlier work with the two actors in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid,” a much better movie.
“The Sting” isn’t a bad film, but, in my
mind, wasn’t among the best films of 1973, probably wouldn’t make my Top 20.
This was the year of “Mean Streets,” “American Graffiti,” “Badlands,” “Serpico”
and “The Last Detail” just to name a few standout pictures, not to mention “Last
Tango in Paris,” the most compelling movie released in the U.S. that year.
THE
CAINE MUTINY COURT-MARTIAL (2023, TV)
Herman Wouk’s play, based on his Pulitzer
Prize-winning novel, has remained one of the most enduring stage productions
since its Broadway debut in 1954. The latest adaptation, made for Showtime, is
the final work of high-profile filmmaker William Friedkin, who died last August
at age 87.
Though the director’s most important film,
“The French Connection” was released more than a half-century ago, he continued
to make features and TV films into the 21st Century, including
“Rules of Engagement” (2000), another court-martial film.
Unlike the Humphrey Bogart-starring 1954
movie, based on Wouk’s novel, the play is set entirely in the military
courtroom during the court-martial of Lt. Stephen Maryk (a rather bland Jake
Lacy), accused of mutiny for taking over the command of USS Caine during a
storm. The defense centers on questioning the mental stability of the ship’s
commander, Philip Queeg (Keifer Sutherland), who made enemies of the crew with
his petty rules and stern discipline. The play’s most famous monologue is
Queeg’s description of his painstaking investigation into missing strawberries.
Sutherland, best known for his unstoppable
intelligence agent Jack Bauer in the TV series “24,” never convinced me he was
the unstable burnt-out case that is Queeg. Jason Clarke, one of the busiest
supporting actors in movies today, is excellent in the play’s most complex
role, defense attorney Barney Greenwald, who has grave doubts about his client.
But dominating this production is Lance Reddick, as the chief judge of the
court-martial. The late actor’s commanding baritone voice brings a Shakespearian
resonance to the role; he would have been a memorable Queeg.
After “The French Connection” won the
1971 best picture Oscar and Friedkin took home best director, he hit Hollywood
gold with the genre-redefining horror film “The Exorcist.” With this box office
hit, Friedkin seemed destined for an important filmmaking career. But over the
next 50 years, he rarely found the magic of those two films again. He undercut
his standing in Hollywood with “Cruising” (1980), an uncompromising—some would
say homophobic—look at the gay S&M club scene. It was a misfire with critics
and filmgoers.
In the 2018 documentary “Friedkin Uncut,”
a mix of clips and an interview with the outspoken Friedkin, a case is made for
“Sorcerer” (1977) and “To Live and Die in L.A.” (1985) as equals to his early
successes. While I haven’t seen “Sorcerer” in many years, I remember it as an
average remake of the great 1953 French film “Wages of Fear.”
I have seen “To Live and Die in L.A.”
recently and it hasn’t aged well. Despite a plot less interesting than a 1950s
B-movie and an annoying soundtrack dominated 1980s pop-jazz fusion, the film
has retained a cult-like following. In the film, Friedkin all but ignores Los
Angeles, setting most of the picture in the unpopulated areas around the port
and mistakenly relies on unknown actor William Petersen (he had had one small
role in a film four years earlier) to carry the film.
Friedkin retained his status as a A-level
director into the new century, making “The Hunted” (2003) with Tommy Lee Jones
and Benito del Toro and two films penned by Tracy Letts, “Bug” (2006) with
Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon and “Killer Joe” (2011) starring Matthew
McConaughey as a ruthless hitman.
But he could never match the gritty,
street-level realism and edge-of-your-seat cat-and-mouse pursuit of “The French
Connection.” Few have.
THE
SCARF (1951)
From the end of World War I until the rise
of Hitler, Hollywood was the beneficiary of the emigration of some of the most
talented German and Austrian filmmakers of the era. Some of the finest pictures
of the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s were made by this collective, led by Ernst Lubitsch,
Fritz Lang, Max Ophüls, Robert Siodmak, Fred Zinnemann, Otto Preminger and Billy
Wilder.
But
not everyone found success in America. Ewald André (E.A.) Dupont, one-time
journalist, became a central figure of the German expressionist movement,
mostly as a screenwriter but also the director of “Variety” (1925), the
critically acclaimed story of trapeze artists. Later, working in England, he
made “Piccadilly” (1929), Anna May Wong’s best known starring role.
McCambridge plays a smart-mouthed hitchhiker
who Barrington picks up on the road to Los Angeles and helps him figure out if
he really did kill his girlfriend.
Also in the cast is Welch actor Emlyn
Williams as Ireland’s best friend and psychiatrist and Harry Shannon (he played
Charles Foster Kane’s father in “Citizen Kane”) as the prison warden.
Ireland and McCambridge had long careers
as supporting players while Barton, who started his career in silents, played
grizzled old timers until his death in 1962.
Dupont continued his low-budget career,
making his final feature three years later, “Return to Treasure Island,”
starring Tab Hunter. But he did write the story for “Please Murder Me!” (1956),
an odd film noir starring Raymond Burr and Angela Lansbury and the script for
“Magic Fire” (1958), a biopic of Richard Wagner. Dupont passed away in 1956.
.
GO
TELL THE SPARTANS (1978)
To state the obvious, more movies were made
about World War II than any conflict in history—yearly, European directors
continue to find stories about the conflict. Yet the relatively small cinematic
output focused on the Vietnam War has resulted just as many, if not more, great
films than the Allied victory in the mid-century war.
Vietnam, offering a less clear-cut view of
right and wrong, winners and losers, produced “The Deer Hunter” (1978), “Apocalypse
Now” (1979), “Platoon” (1986), “Full Metal Jacket” (1987), “Casualties of War”
(1989) and “Born on the Fourth of July (1989), just to name the very best.
This neglected picture, which came out
the same year as “The Deer Hunter” (and the home front picture “Coming Home”)
isn’t quite at that level, but deserves to be remembered as one of the best
depictions of the early years of American involvement in Vietnam.
Burt Lancaster, in one of his best
late-career performances, plays Major Asa Barker, a cynical veteran of WW II,
now heading a small platoon of American advisers, along with a volatile
collection of South Vietnamese soldiers, in 1964. Not much is happening until a
very enthusiastic Gen. Harnitz (Dolph Sweet) orders Barker to establish an
American presence at the remote area of Muc Wa. The expected minor resistance
from Communist troops turns into something much more deadly, foreshadowing the
unexpected number of casualties that kept growing as the U.S. role increased in
the coming years.
The supporting cast seems more appropriate
for a TV movie, but they deliver when called on, including Craig Wasson (“Body
Double,” “Four Friends”) as Corporal Courcey, an enlisted man who sees his
service as a higher calling, Jonathan Goldsmith as the no-nonsense Sgt.
Oleonowski and David Clennon as an efficiency expert who mostly irritates
Barker. The ubiquitous James Hong has a touching role as one of the South
Vietnamese fighting alongside the Americans.
Ted Post, a veteran of television who
also directed Clint Eastwood in “Hang ‘Em High” and “Magnum Force,” keeps the
tension high and the moralizing at a minimum, working from a script, both
heartfelt and humorous, by Wendell Mayes (“Anatomy of a Murder”) based on a
novel by Daniel Ford.
Lancaster, one of the best actors of the
1950s and ‘60s, who starred in one of the great WW II films, “From Here to
Eternity” (1953), plays Barker as a man out of his time struggling to get a
handle on what this new war is all about. Two years later, he channeled the
same kind of old-timer, tough guy role in the more acclaimed “Atlantic City.”
THE
TERROR (1963)
Two of the funniest comedies in recent
years have been about the making of movies—"Dolemite Is My Name” and “The
Disaster Artist.” I’m certain, after repeated viewings of “The Terror,” an
ineptly made and badly scripted Roger Corman production, that it has all the
elements—including the involvement of future cinema stars—to be the basis for a
comedy classic.
Reusing the sets created for “The Raven,”
Corman convinced Boris Karloff, who co-starred with Vincent Price in the Poe adaptation,
to film for more two days and co-star with young actor Jack Nicholson, who had
a small role in “The Raven,” in “The Terror.” It’s one of those films, typical
of so many low budget pictures, in which nothing makes any sense until a
character, usually under duress, spells out the implausible plot details. An
uncredited Peter Bogdanovich, then 24, took claim for at least some of the
script.
Nicholson plays Lt. Duvalier, a French army officer who, while riding alone along a beach, encounters a mysterious woman (Sandra Knight, who co-starred with Robert Mitchum in “Thunder Road”), and then, in search of her, visits a towering castle perched on the rocky cliffs above the sea.
Karloff is properly haughty as the Baron
Von Leppe, the master of the castle still mourning the death of his wife—who
looks a lot like the woman Duvalier seeks—20 years earlier. Stealing the film
is Corman regular Dick Miller as Stefan, the Baron’s henchman, who shadows
Duvalier as he scouts around the castle’s labyrinth of rooms and hallways. Miller
was memorable as a murderous sculptor in Corman’s “A Bucket of Blood” (1959)
and went on to prolific supporting actor career, working right up to his death
in 2019.
According to Corman, because of guild
rules, he was unable to finish directing the picture so he handed the reigns
over to one of his assistants, Francis Coppola, whose experience at this point
was as co-director of a couple of racy, D-level pictures. By week’s end,
Coppola was offered a chance to direct “You’re a Big Boy Now,” his break into
the bigtime.
Next up was Monte Hellman, listed as
location director, who went on to direct Nicholson in two cult classic
Westerns, “The Shooting” and “Ride in the Whirlwind.” Also reportedly running
the set for at least a few days were Jack Hill, who went on to make the
Blaxploitation pictures “Coffey” and “Foxy Brown;” Dennis Jakob, who also
served as Karloff’s stunt double, and Jack Hale, who, for all I know, ran the
production’s craft services.
At some point, Corman (who recently turned
98) relates, Nicholson complained to him: “Every idiot in town has directed
part of this film. Let me direct the final day.” So he did.
The first 15 minutes of “The Terror” isn’t
bad, but the final, pieced-together product is a confusing mess. Yet it still
shows up on television 50 years after its release due in large part to
Nicholson’s subsequent fame. Actually, it’s baffling, considering his
performance in “The Terror,” that it was six years before the actor scored his
breakthrough role in “Easy Rider.”
I’m seeing Tom Holland as Jack and maybe
Jonah Hill as Corman, but no doubt there are TV actors I’ve never heard of who
would fit the roles—just so someone makes this choice piece of Hollywood
history into a movie.
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