Author: Bob Westal (Page 253 of 265)

Writer guy Bob Westal was literally born in Hollywood and has commented on the worlds of movies, popular culture, politics, and food ever since. His interest in cocktails is more recent, but he made up for lost time with hundreds of “Drink of the Week” blog posts for Bullz-Eye. In addition to writing and editing, Bob also talks a lot.

Madame Bovary

January 15, 2009 /

Compared to that other famed desperate housewife of world literature, Tolstoy’s sympathetic Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary is, well, kind of a…word that I’m too well brought up to use. Especially as portrayed during Isabelle Huppert’s perfectly minimalist performance, she is more than a little superficial, unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality, and horribly unable to asess the consequences of her own actions. On the other hand, she’s no Paris Hilton, by which I mean she is still very recognizable as an actual human being, all to similar to anyone one of us (her creator, author Gustav Flaubert famously declared, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi!”). Still, the flavor of the story is dry – almost satirical. So, France’s ultra-prolific master of ultra-dry melodramas and tales of suspense, Claude Chabrol, makes perfect sense as the writer-director to bring Flaubert’s revered, frequently filmed novel to the screen. This 1991 production takes a worm’s eye of the tale, which has Emma coldly marrying a goodhearted but deadly dull doctor (Jean-François Balmer) simply to get out of the house. Bored literally to tears, she cuckolds him with a cold-blooded womanizer (Christophe Malavoy) and a seemingly more goodhearted law student (Lucas Belvaux), while literally spending the good doctor and herself to destruction. Yes, this is an evergreen story with a contemporary ring to it – and Chabrol’s cool, dispassionate, and not merely cynical eye is an appropriate counterpoint. This is no tearjerker, but it’s also impossible to stop thinking about this underplayed tragedy of a family destroyed by pretension, materialism, and self-involvement, with innocent victims all around.

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The Garment Jungle

January 5, 2009 /

Two good directors are not necessarily better than one. This 1957 fact-inspired noirish black and white melodrama about union-busting gangsters in the clothing business was written by producer and veteran scribe Harry Kleiner and credited to classic-era directing mainstay Vincent Sherman, but the initial helmer was one of the most interesting younger mainstream filmmakers of his generation, Robert Aldrich — already a major talent, and with such classics as “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” and “The Dirty Dozen” still in his future. Apparently, Aldrich clashed with the film’s biggest name, Lee J. Cobb (“On the Waterfront”). Those on-set clashes might well explain the erratic quality of the acting from the usually outstanding Cobb as the driven head of a garment firm being undermined by Richard Boone (“Have Gun – Will Travel”) as his mobbed-up underling, while second-string swashbuckler Kerwin Matthews – just a year away from his career zenith in “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad” – is actually better than usual in modern garb as Cobb’s idealistic son…while future “Dr. No” Joseph Wiseman gets to do a bit of overacting as a guilt-stricken worker, and a young Robert Loggia (Tom Hanks’ dance partner from “Big”) steals the movie as an idealistic union organizer…and Gia Scala (“The Guns of Navarone”) elicits sympathy and looks beautiful as Loggia’s tragedy-stricken wife. The only problem is, all my run-on fanboyish links of “The Garment Jungle” to far better known films turns out to be somewhat more interesting than this rather overblown, preachy, bit of pro-union agitprop — heavy on speeches (even if I happen to agree with them) and long on hard to swallow deus ex machina plot points.

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Ludwig

January 2, 2009 /

Heavy hangs the head of the repressed homosexual and opera fanboy that wears the crown in the final major work from director Luchino Visconti. Featuring an all-star international cast (who, following the usual practice, are all painstakingly dubbed into Italian), this 1973 biopic of the so-called “mad king of Bavaria” successfully mixes 19th century European history and perhaps more than a touch of autobiography from Visconti — himself an openly gay aristocrat with a lifelong attachment to opera. “Ludwig” stars the aging director’s final companion, 28 year-old Helmut Berger, as the sympathetic, self-involved king who winds up spending way too much of his time and his nation’s wealth on an unrequited fantasy female love object (Romy Schneider, “What’s New Pussycat?”), his passion for the music and poetry of Richard Wagner (Trevor Howard), and ridiculously opulent castles to house what may or may not be all-male orgies. Naturally, his reign doesn’t exactly end on a high note.

Considering that Visconti was considered the founder of the real-time loving neorealist movement, and that this director’s cut clocks in at just under four hours, it’s no surprise that “Ludwig” feels at least an hour too long, particularly in the opening and closing sections. Nevertheless, the middle portions amply reward our patience, once Ludwig’s problems begin in earnest as Berger gradually devolves from the perfection of youth to a sadly seedy monarch cursed with teeth that would frighten the most inbred of English nobility. This somber extravaganza requires some patience, but its tragedy, horror, and beauty makes it worth the investment.

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The New Centurions

December 20, 2008 /

This entry in Sony’s amusingly vague new “Martini Movies” imprint stars George C. Scott (“Patton”) at the height of his early seventies fame as Kilvinski, a humane cop nearing retirement who bonds with his new partner, a would-be lawyer rookie partner (Stacy Keach) going through some big changes of his own. Adapted from a bestselling novel by ex-policeman Joseph Wambaugh, “The New Centurions” often foreshadows later cop dramas, particularly eighties TV groundbreaker “Hill Street Blues” — right down to earthy pre-patrol briefings and actor James B. Sikking sporting what appears to be the very same pipe he parlayed to semi-fame as the affected, egomaniacal Lt. Howard Hunter. Still, while familiar faces from lighter fare show up (Isabel Sanford of “The Jeffersons,” Erik “CHiPs” Estrada, and the eventually dickless William Atherton of “Ghostbusters”), 1972 was a year when grim was in and even the most mainstream of Hollywood films were often deliberately under-structured. Taking place over what appears to be several years, there is no particular “case” and this is not really a story about crime fighting; it’s an investigation into the effects of police work on vulnerable human beings. Written by Stirling Silliphant and directed by Richard Fleischer (“20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” “Soylent Green,” and “Mandingo”), “The New Centurions” is slowed by overly novelistic/episodic pacing and a few too many contemporary mannerisms (including a wah-wah heavy score by Quincy Jones) but it works more often than it doesn’t because of its two first-rate lead actors and a great deal of sincerity. The film’s benevolent view of the quasi-militarist seventies LAPD may be iffy, but its depiction of the bigger truth here feels true enough: policemen are nothing more than human beings doing a job that can be as seductively destructive as heroin.

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Aki Kaurismäki’s Proletariat Trilogy

December 18, 2008 /

Radio humorist Garrison Keillor gets a great deal of mileage poking fun at the taciturn ways of Swedish and Norwegian-Americans in the bleak Midwest. By comparison, Aki Kaurismäki’s similarly Nordic Finnish Fins make the citizens of Lake Wobegone seem like a bunch of raging drama queens. Kaurismäki is known for blending clever ultra-deadpan comedy and classical neorealist filmmaking, and since I love the former and just barely tolerate the latter, his works tend to be a hit and miss affair for me. Nevertheless, the definite class of this no-frills three-disc set from Criterion’s Eclipse line — comprised of three short feature-length movies about the lives of working folks who get themselves into bad, bad trouble — is also, however, the least overtly funny. 1990’s “The Match Factory Girl” is an ultra-dry twist on the pathos-heavy Hans Christian Anderson tale starring Kati Outinen — the female lead of Kaurismäki’s terrific 2002 art-house hit “The Man Without a Past” — as a trodden-upon lass who finally has enough of her vile parents and her even more vile boy-enemy (you can’t call him a friend). Ned Flanders-mustached Matti Pellonpää, who appears un-credited as the cruel seducer, also plays major roles in the less melodramatic, less reliably entertaining, but also very deftly made, films that round out the set: 1986’s “Shadows in Paradise,” a romantic comedy of sorts, and 1988’s “Ariel,” an out of sorts heist picture.

“Match Factory Girl” aside, this is the kind of material that will test the patience of viewers who don’t love such neorealist tropes as watching characters make tea for 15 seconds of real time. On the other hand, if kitchen sink realism and downbeat, ultra-subtle humor is your thing, they all may be your cup of tea. An ecological note: Given that all three features combined run just over 3.5 hours (the longest is an epic 76 minutes) and there are zero extras, someone should ask Criterion why was it necessary to package this brief trilogy on three separate discs.

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