Adam at 6 A.M. (1970)

"Hey, at least I'm not as barrel-chested as my pappy!"

Michael Douglas' second film is unavailable on DVD and used VHS copies start at $65. He plays Adam (though we never find out why at 6 A.M.), an increasingly bored, young linguistics professor who decides to trek into The Heartland of America for the funeral of a great aunt he barely knew. The best part is how dated this film is: it's like one of those forbidden looks at the past that feel a little too honest rather than the highly stylized or idealized versions often portrayed. It looks so authentic that it overcomes its poor acting (save Douglas and Joe Don Baker, pictured with him above) and plodding pace. This dated sense also fits in with how Adam sees the rural town as dated himself.

The film aspires to be more than it successfully delivers. Adam tries to debate a local wazoo about film (actually the wazoo confronts him about liberal Hollywood and nonsense art films) that brings back memories of Sullivan's Travels yet again. People want to be entertained, not reminded of reality. That's why Adam dodges his old job and signs up to clear forested areas for new conduits for power lines. He feels new meaning in his job, his coworkers, and his unrealistic girlfriend. Ultimately he realizes he was right all along and isn't prepared for vanilla ice cream.

Like the end of The Sopranos, Adam's exposition seems almost completely limited to this interval, and we exit the film without resolution--except that he throws two gallons of vanilla ice cream from the back of his car as he drives away and we get a freeze-framed look at the spilled ice cream in the sunset. It's a great ending shot really. I suppose given the symbolism of throwing away the plain life via the ice cream his future mother-in-law wanted him to get, there's a bit more resolved than the immediately preceding quick wrap up gives us.

Sudden endings are suddenly becoming popular again, but this film shows how it's not necessarily new (though used in newer, more complex ways). The focus on this is because another film I saw recently, Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) also used this device as well as Meek's Cutoff (2010). They both seem to emphasize the psychological aspect of its use (like David Chase did)--to manipulate the viewer's experience of the film in such a way that they experience a similar sense of paranoia or lack of resolution as the character.

An example of the dated, low-budget nature of the film, perhaps.

Adam at 6 A.M. (1970)
Directed By: Robert Scheerer
Written By: Steven Karpf and Elinor Karpf
Grade: B

Prefontaine (1997)

Terry's Grade: C-

pretty sure this mustache peels off

As a movie, this is pretty awful. As a summary of the life of Steve Prefontaine, it'll do. Jared Leto plays Steve Prefontaine, R. Lee Ermy (that Marines guy) plays his coach and Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman, and Ed O'Neil plays assistant coach Bill Delinger. The movie is in a weird kind of docudrama style that pretty much fails: the majority of the film is standard historical fiction, but there are added "interview" scenes where the actors play their characters as though being interviewed for a documentary, and the film also includes some real historical clips as well as what look to be re-enacted TV clips. It sounded like the 90210 theme song was playing continuously in the background of the movie, except when they're playing some Hendrix or CCR. The old cars and the 70's mustaches are fun to look at.

It's an interesting story, though, and definitely one that deserved to be put in film. Apparently in 1998 there was another movie about Steve Prefontaine called Without Limits. I guess I'll have to watch it sometime, but hopefully not sometime soon. I'd like to see just a straight-up documentary, but maybe it'd be hard to get his personality across in a documentary if there's not enough footage of him lying around.

Despite its best efforts, Prefontaine does manage to be moving at the end, at Steve's funeral (he dies: spoiler). And the running scenes don't seem too bad to me, although I'm not a runner. I'd only recommend this movie to someone who's really interested in Oregon, running, or Steve Prefontaine. Preferably all three. Or Jared Leto, I guess. He's pretty hot in this movie, and takes his shirt off once or twice.

On The Marx Brothers (with reviews of Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera)

I do not like the Marx Brothers. I don't have any bad feelings towards them personally, it's just that if I had an hour or two of free time that I wanted to enjoy, watching a Marx Brothers movie would be pretty near the bottom of my list of things to do.

I remember watching a Marx Bros. movie or two with my brother when we were kids; out dad used to rent them for us. (Our dad was also a fan of the Three Stooges; I think it's just a result of growing up in a different era.) And I remember not being too impressed, but I'd always chalked that up to the fact that as a kid I basically rejected anything black and white. However, having recently seen two Marx Brothers films I can confidently say that I am just not a Marx Brothers fan.

That's not to say that there aren't things I find funny in their movies. When the entire dialogue of the movie consists of a flurry of zingers, odds are that one or two are going to hit the mark. However, too many of the jokes are just too dated; a lot of Groucho's jokes, in particular, have to do with women and ideas of womanhood that don't really resonate today. Also, a lot of the jokes use dated vocabulary; I don't mind this at all, really--in fact, I love it--but it usually means it takes a couple extra seconds to process what's being said. Given the fast-paced nature of Marx Bros. movies, you don't usually have the luxury of a few extra seconds.

Fortunately, there are plenty of sight gags and physical comedy to keep you occupied even if you don't get the one-liners. Unfortunately, most of that stuff isn't all that funny to me. Partly, this could be an effect of the success of the Marx Brothers. For instance, the famous mirror scene from Duck Soup, where Groucho and Harpo (in disguise as Groucho) mimic each other in various hilarious ways, has been replicated countless times. Most recently, I think I saw it on an episode of SNL. Also, the old "cut some dude's tie off" routine (which, for all I know, predates the Marx Brothers), pops up in The Wire, a Capital One commercial with Alec Baldwin, and countless other places I'm sure.

At least they knew how to keep movies short back then. At 92 minutes, A Night at the Opera practically feels like an epic. I think I fell asleep. I'm sure at some point I'll re-watch it, since I'll feel guilty about not liking it, but at least I won't waste too much time on it.

Duck Soup (1933)

Terry's Grade: B-

Groucho is some sort of charlatan who convinces a wealthy woman from some obscure, made-up European country ("Freedonia") to appoint him leader. Chico and Harpo are a duo of spies sent to infiltrate Groucho's government. They try to steal Freedonia's secret war plans, which results in Harpo dressed up in disguise as Groucho in his pajamas (complete with a pointy nightcap), sneaking around the lady's mansion. Eventually he runs into the real Groucho, and the mirror scene ensues. Later, they all go to war. Not that any of that really matters, it's just an excuse for jokes. There are songs, too. I liked this better than Opera, maybe because it's shorter, maybe because it's a little zanier.

 

A Night at the Opera (1935)

Terry's Grade: C

Admittedly, I think I fell asleep at some point during this movie. The basic plot is that Groucho overhears someone talking about how much some famous opera singer is going to be paid, then he mistakenly signs a contract with a different singer, thinking he's the famous one. Chico plays the lesser singer's manager, and Harpo plays a "dresser," basically a costume assistant. The scene with the drafting of the contract is kind of funny, if a bit too long:

Somehow, they all end up on a steamer. There is a classic scene where dozens of people end up crammed into Groucho's cabin:

Eventually they do end up at the opera, and chaos ensues (you know, backdrops going up and down, people swinging from the rafters). That kind of comedy doesn't really do it for me. My recommendation is to watch a few clips on YouTube of the most famous scenes, and save yourself the trouble of watching the whole film.

Sunset Blvd. (1950)

Terry's Grade: B+

Well, here's another one for the "movies about movies" category. Lots of cameos in this one, most notably (to me) Cecil B. Demille and Buster Keaton. Both of those guys are really just names to me, but they're famous names.

Summary: Struggling Hollywood writer Joe Gillis (William Holden), while trying to evade the repo men who are after his car, stumbles onto the decrepit estate of aging, washed-up, yet still fantastically wealthy, silent-era actress Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). She hires him to help her edit a screenplay she's written (the story of Salome, the dancing-girl who was paid to murder by beheading John the Baptist). Norma is desperately lonely, so she uses all kinds of gifts and tricks (including a suicide attempt) to keep Joe around. Meanwhile, Joe starts falling in love with Betty (Nancy Olson), an aspiring writer who also happens to be his best friend's fiance. Through it all, there is Max von Mayerling (Eric von Stroheim), Norma's faithful servant and driver (and ex-director and ex-husband). Things don't really go well for anybody.

The opening scene reveals a lot about the ending of the movie, and it's one of those scenes that leaves me wondering how much the director expects his audience to grasp. My brain finally made the connection maybe about ten minutes after the scene, and I'd guess that while many other viewers also probably come to the same realization, many others probably don't. There are other movies where the ending is also revealed early in the film, but the director tries to obscure it to some degree. (I'm sorry if that paragraph is opaque, but I'm trying to avoid spoilers... I know, I know...)

Also, this being a movie about a forgotten silent-era movie star, there are connections to The Artist. Valentine is certainly partly inspired by Norma Desmond (watching her old movies alone in her house, as smoke wafts up into the light of the projector), but you could also make the connection between the butler/driver Max and James Cromwell's character in The Artist, as well as the two cars themselves. Also, in Sunset Blvd. they keep mentioning some guy named Valentino, which sounds a lot like The Artist's main character.

There's a bonus to watching the DVD rather than just streaming the movie online: the bonus features for Sunset Blvd. actually included a little (15-minute) retrospective, with interviews from various cast members and others. I've wished for that kind of thing on several other of the older, classic films we've watched recently, but surprisingly (or not?) many of those older films don't have any special features whatsoever. Without that special feature I never would have known that the actor who plays the butler/ex-husband/ex-director Max has such an epic name, Eric von Stroheim (well, I might have figured that much out), and that he himself was a former director, who had directed Gloria Swanson in her youth, and even directed the film Queen Kelly, whose footage we see in the scene where Desmond watches her old film. Or that Swanson's career at least somewhat mimicked that of her character in the film (although, if you're casting a 50-year-old Hollywood actress to play a 50-year-old Hollywood actress, there are inevitably going to be some similarities).

Ultimately, I can see why this is a classic movie. There are a few great shots (mainly the early shot from under the pool, which turns out to have actually been shot above the pool using a mirror), quality performances, and a classic story line. As I watched, I was imagining a remake starring Helen Mirren as the old actress and Ewan McGregor as the writer, although it might be that they're both too old for those roles at this point. But then I saw Glenn Close talking about how she'd only done "Sunset Blvd: The Musical" because it was a musical and it would be impossible to do a straight remake of the movie. That's definitely true; you can't remake classic movies. But when you have a classic story, you can remake it forever, and at the heart of Sunset Blvd. is a classic story. (Even within the movie, you have at least two classic stories referenced: Cecil B. Demille is in the process of filming "Sampson and Delilah", and Norma's script is the story of Salome, the famous beheader of John the Baptist, who has been endlessly painted.) Although she gets a lot of praise for her acting in this movie, I think Gloria Swanson goes just a little too overboard for my taste. That said, I really enjoyed watching this movie and I'm glad I did. It's even probably worth a re-watch after a year or so.

(On the word "gay"; Norma recalls to Cecil that the last time they met was at a "gay" place, meaning a dance club or a party or something like that. Just interesting that it's 11 years after the "gay" line in Bringing Up Baby, but still plenty early enough to use the word "gay" in the joyous sense without a second thought. Also, there's really no homosexual content in this movie, explicit or implicit, as far as  I could tell, not that that's surprising.)

Young Adult (2011)

Terry's Grade: C+

 Guys like me are born loving girls like you.

This was not my pick of a movie, although that's not to say I would never have decided to see it on my own. It was a decent movie, and I had a great time going to see it: this was my first trip to the Cedar-Lee theater here in Cleveland Heights, and it turned out to be free! There was some week-long Key Bank propaganda thing going on, and I guess they'd been doing give-aways all over town. That night, we all got free tickets and free popcorn, although the event hadn't been publicized (the staff said they'd only found out a few hours earlier), so there wasn't really a crowd. So that (and a couple of pre-film cocktails) put me in a good mood before the movie even got rolling.

This all happened a few weeks ago, so I might not have these details all correct, but here goes. Charlize Theron plays Mavis Gary, a professional novelist living in the "big city" of Minneapolis. She is not satisfied with her life; she is part of a team of writers producing young adult pulp under common pseudonym. When she finds out that her high-school boyfriend Buddy Slade (an excellent name for a character, played by Patrick Wilson) and his wife Beth (Elizabeth Reaser) are having a baby, she decides to head back to stalk him and try to break up their marriage. She runs into another high-school classmate Matt (Patton Oswalt) at the bar, and they slowly hit it off. Matt was not popular in high school, and is remembered for being severely beaten in high school by homophobes who thought he was gay. As a result, he's had to walk on crutches his entire life. That very interesting, dark, component to his character is one of the details that makes Young Adult interesting. I've never seen a character like that before, and it's such a significant detail of his character, very visible because of the fact that he's always using crutches, and yet it doesn't really become a central part of the story.

I think that may be intentional, since the real point of the movie seems to be showing us what a completely self-centered asshat Mavis is. I was reminded of The Graduate, in the way that during the movie you start off rooting for Mavis, who's the protagonist after all, but by the end of the movie you realize that she's just a crazy, alcoholic, narcissist. The medium of film almost, just almost, makes you not realize that their actions are totally unacceptable. Just when we think she may be about to have a breakthrough, she has a pseudo-epiphany (aided by Matt's sister, played excellently by Collette Wolf), which brings her back to her original point of view. In fact (according to my notes) Mavis even quotes The Graduate in the movie, interpreting its message as "love conquers all." I think that says enough about her character.

With Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, and Patrick Wilson, this could be considered a pretty good cast. I've really started to like Patrick Wilson after seeing him first in Hard Candy, then The Watchmen, and Little Children. He seems to end up playing characters who are part-boring, part-interesting (of course, superhero+alter-ego is the clearest example, but suburban-dwelling housedad who dreams of riding skateboards also fits). I don't really like Charlize Theron, but I don't dislike her. I think Ciderhouse Rules is her only movie that I really enjoyed. She was good in The Road, but had little screen time and less dialogue. Patton Oswalt is getting some interesting, dark-comedy roles lately (see this movie, plus Big Fan), but I'm not really on the Patton Oswalt bandwagon. I thought Collette Wolfe was great in her role. Looking on IMDB I think the only other movie I've seen her in was Hot Tub Time Machine; she played John Cusack's sister and was forgettable.

I think in the end, Young Adult is a good movie, but not my movie. It's enjoyable, and there's plenty going on to keep the audience entertained. I really loved an early scene where Mavis packs up and leaves her Minneapolis apartment. It's a scene we've seen many times before: the morning after a one-night stand, the guy wakes up and tries to sneak out without waking up the girl. In Young Adult, not only do we have the girl sneaking out on the guy, she's sneaking out of her own apartment. She gets out of bed, grabs some clothes and her dog, then gets in her car for a roadtrip, leaving some rando dude still sleeping in her bed. It's a great inversion of a standard trope. That kind of thing, plus various film references (e.g. The Graduate references mentioned above, or the fact that Matt's home-distilled whiskey is named "Mos Eisley") make Young Adult fun to watch, but it's another movie with unlikeable characters, and it's not exactly a gripping story. It avoids being predictable, but that doesn't really matter much if you don't care how the movie ends.

On an unrelated note, before the film we saw previews for Albert Nobbs, where Glenn Close plays a woman passing as a man in early 1900s England (I think). Is it weird to say her character looks more than a little like Mrs. Doubtfire? Maybe it's just the excessive makeup and kind of stretched-looking face. Anyway that looks to be an interesting movie I hope I see.

The Searchers (1956)

Terry's Grade: C+

This movie didn't really resonate with me. It has an okay story, and great landscape visuals, but the portrayal of the native Americans is worthless, many of the performances are over the top (in a bad way), and there's nobody in this movie you can really relate to.

John Wayne stars as Ethan Edwards, a Cival War veteran (for the Confederates), who returns home several years after the war's ended, still wearing his uniform (as he does throughout the film). We suspect he's been up to no good, based on the fact that he pays his brother Aaron (Walter Coy) with a sack full of freshly-minted, uncirculated American dollars. Also he's a jerk.

Why is the movie called The Searchers? When Indians abduct his niece Debbie (played first by Lana Wood, then as a teenager by Natalie Wood), Ethan sets off in pursuit, aided primarily by Martin (Jeffrey Hunter). Martin is a part-Indian (one-eighth, he claims) boy who was raised as a son by Aaron and considers Ethan an uncle. Ethan does not, however, consider Martin his nephew, and repeatedly reminds him that they share no blood relation. Basically, I guess, Ethan is a racist who hates Indians. He can speak some Comanche, which helps somewhat in their search, but not that much, since it takes them five years before they finally catch a glimpse of Debbie.

Ethan might make a more convincing character if he was played more as the racist jerk he is. But with John Wayne in the role, he just seems a bit curmudgeonly. Throughout the movie it just feels like the dramatic action in the script (rape, murder, love, revenge) isn't quite matched by the actors' performances. I guess this is a factor of the genre and the time when the film was made, but it still doesn't work for me.

Although I haven't read it, I could believe that the book is actually a decent book, although I have doubts that it's any fairer in its treatment of Native Americans. The main Indian antagonist, a chief named Scar, is played by Henry Brandon. You might have guessed that he doesn't have a drop of Native American blood in him (in fact, he was born in Germany). Many of the other Indian characters appear to have been played by Native American extras, which is something. But they are portrayed as one-dimensional, universally brutal raiders and scalpers, whose only activities seem to be raping and murdering white people. The only Indian character who rises above this is Martin's accidental wife (he thinks he's trading for a blanket, but purchases a wife instead), "Luk,"played by Beulah Archuletta. Even she is an ambiguous character, since we're not sure if she is a help to Ethan and Martin, or a Comanche informant.

The landscapes are scenic and nice to watch, and overall the story gives an interesting view of the dangers and fears that the pioneers certainly had to deal with. But I just don't think I'll be watching this movie again for fun. I never thought I was a Charlie Chaplin fan, but then I saw some Chaplin movies and realized I liked him a lot. I never thought I was a John Wayne fan, and after seeing The Searchers, I'm not changing my mind.