August 19, 2010 · 7:44 pm

The Maltese Falcon

It’s impossible for me to resist The Maltese Falcon (1941). Much as, for Sherlock Holmes, Irene Adler is “the woman,” Sam Spade, for me, is “the private eye.” (Sorry, Marlowe.) Spade’s unique blend of cynicism and idealism, his crazy Xanatos-gambit of lies and omissions, and the way he manages to display an array of emotion while committing to almost none of them make him magnetic to watch. Bogart, too short and too dark to play the character Dashiell Hammett originally described, makes the part his own, and the nuance of the performance only gets sharper with rewatching.

I first saw The Maltese Falcon in college, by myself. It was one of those films I’d always meant to see, and it happened to be checked in at our library one night. It wasn’t the first noir I’d ever seen, but it was probably the one that hooked me most firmly. I remember being impressed by the tightness of the plot, the economy of dialogue. So much is done in this film with glances, shakes of the head, tiny gestures. Greenstreet and Lorre resist the urge to careen into caricature with grace, and the film rewards rather than penalizes audience members who catch and remember small details.

But I have a confession to make. For all that, in many ways, this film is the quintessential detective story, its one underlined flaw annoys me more every time I see it. The miscasting of its two main female characters, Effie Perrine and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, could not be more glaring.

As Perrine, Lee Patrick does a passable job considering the fact that she’s far too old for the part (Patrick was 40 at the time, whereas Effie in the book is tomboyish, pert and flirts with Spade more or less constantly). Patrick is, at least, believable as a competent, semi-jaded accessory to Spade’s life. Within the context of the film, as separate from the novel, Patrick makes sense, and my issues with her casting spring almost entirely from my affection for the novel. But Mary Astor, as Brigid, is a trainwreck.

This is not entirely Astor’s fault. Brigid is meant to be a classic femme fatale, and the costume and hair choices for Astor are just baffling. It’s not as if they didn’t know how to make a woman lovely in 1941; Barbara Stanwyck was in The Lady Eve that same year, and Joan Leslie was gorgeous in Sergeant York, if in a slightly different mode. But it can’t be denied that the 35-year-old Astor looks positively dowdy here. If Iva Archer is a bit less than fresh, well, Spade was looking to dump her anyway. But Brigid has to be irresistible for the plot to work.

I do allow that there are ways other than looks for a character to be irresistible. Charisma, for example. Brigid is a constant liar, a brilliant con artist in her own way. We’re told she’s left a string of conned men behind her, Thursby being the latest; we’re meant to believe that Spade is unique in seeing through more of her lies than the average mark.If Astor could be magnetic, could purr instead of shriek, maybe I’d buy this.

But she’s breathless, rushed, as if she’s trying to get everything out before she forgets it. When confronted with her misdeeds, her protests are shrill. And let’s be honest. If you’re acting across from Humphrey Bogart, you will need a boatload of charisma just to keep up. Astor just doesn’t have it.

This wouldn’t frustrate me so much if the film weren’t so close to perfection otherwise. There are so many tiny, crystalline moments that simply could not be improved. It’s a shame the viewer keeps butting up against the limitations of miscasting. (Lauren Bacall was only 17 at the time The Maltese Falcon was made; you can’t help but wonder what a difference a few years might have made. But even someone like, say, Rita Hayworth could have put an interesting twist on the part.)

Still, this would be one of my favorites for Bogart’s work alone, even without an excellent screenplay and a (mostly) solid supporting cast. I catch more nuances and details every time, and even when familiarity has dulled Spade’s “wild and unpredictable” edge, he remains one of the most iconic figures in the genre and, for me, in cinema.

Grade: A- A must see if you haven’t.

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August 17, 2010 · 11:42 pm

Star Wars, Nothing But Star Wars

George Lucas knows how to make money.

You can almost hear the ringing of old fashioned cash registers in the background as a montage of his merchandising plays. And come on, this is America – capitalism is almost a state religion, right? Can’t fault a man for success.

But you can fault him for having absolutely no inkling what made his fanbase love him in the first place. Not that it matters: Indiana Jones and, to a much greater degree, Star Wars are so well-established that fan desire for them is now more or less self-sustaining. By opening up the sandbox to all sorts of artists, and by embracing fan work, Lucas cannily ensured that the emotional investment the audience cultivated with his films would be wide-sweeping.

I myself went through a huge Star Wars phase at about the age of 11-12. There were no prequels at that point, but there were tons of extended universe books to read, and of course, the original trilogy. My VHS copies were well-worn and well-loved, though I always fast-forwarded through the Leonard Maltin interviews with Lucas at the beginning of each tape. Even at twelve, I had little interest in what Lucas had to say, which should have been telling, given my contemporary obsession with Inside the Actors’ Studio.

I still own those VHS tapes, despite the fact I’m slowly replacing my collection with DVDs over time. I will keep those three until they wear out, because as of now, there is no other way for me to see the films as I remember them, with Han shooting first and without the unnecessary CGI aliens in every scene.

With the announcement that all six of the live-action Star Wars films were finally coming to Blu-Ray, I foolishly felt a spark of hope. After all, you can get a huge amount of data on a Blu-Ray disc. How hard could it be to include both the original theatrical release and the 1997 “special edition” so that fans could pick their movie?

Too hard, apparently. Lucas argued that releasing the theatrical versions on Blu-Ray would be “kind of an oxymoron, because the quality of the original is not very good.”

…George Lucas. If I were Jon Stewart, I would tell you to meet me at camera three.

The trajectory of the Star Wars universe, in the past decade or so, has been toward bigger and splashier effects. With the prequels, that’s fine. (Well, it would be fine if you had a real screenplay, though that is another kettle of fish.) But the originals were filmed in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. No one expects them to look like they were filmed yesterday.

I understand that putting grainy analog film on Blu-Ray is not the highest possible use of that technology. But what you have to understand is that it isn’t just about seeing the shiniest shiny possible. This is the way to see films now. By refusing to digitize the theatrical releases, you are barring anyone who doesn’t have a VHS player from ever seeing them again. (That, George, is most people – and it will be everyone when the tapes wear out.)

Many people point to Gary Kurtz’s departure after The Empire Strikes Back as the moment things went wrong, though the chicken-and-egg of it is under debate. Still, I can see it; Empire is considered by many (including me) to be the best movie and, frankly, the bittersweet ending to Return of the Jedi Kurtz says could have been is… well, it could have been some excellent filmmaking. You could have given your characters an arc, you see. The stakes could have been high – there’s a reason the end of Empire is a culture trope now.

If you want to make very expensive toy commercials now, I suppose that’s your business. But you have to realize that some fans are frustrated because the first two films, and especially Empire, were legitimately good movies. Not just engines of pop culture to ride around your money farm, but movies that made you care about the characters, that captured the cultural imagination in a way that’s very special.

Throw us a bone. Give us some way to see them as they were before you felt they needed “fixing.”

Back to the rest of you at camera one. Beyond my rant, there’s a larger point here: directors, like all artists, need to know when to let go. With the advent of DVD and Blu-Ray, we can now expect deleted scenes, makings-of, and director’s commentaries with some regularity. While these are sometimes interesting, I can’t help but feeling they can also serve to obscure, rather than illuminate, what’s great about the actual art they’re describing.

As long as you leave me the option to just watch the movie stand on its own, I’m fine with the fact that all these extras exist. But you have to know when to let your art go. Let the original stand or fall, and go make something new. Not a sequel, not a spin-off – new.

But then, of course, there are the toys to think of. After all, Life Day is coming.

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August 12, 2010 · 11:55 pm

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

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(The following review contains descriptions of adult scenes and themes. Proceed accordingly.)

The original title of Steig Larson’s novel, in Swedish, literally translates to The Men Who Hate Women. And, for the movie version, director Niels Arden Oplev seems to have taken this to heart with a vengeance.

I, like seemingly every other subway passenger in New York, have read the original novel. I liked but didn’t love it, and have every intention of eventually reading the other two in the series. For me, the novel started slow, but evolved into an enjoyable but unremarkable page-turner.

The movie, however, left a bad taste in my mouth, for several reasons. Some are personal, some are cinematic, but the biggest one is rather glaring.

In the book, we see many things in Lisbeth Salander’s life before she joins Mikael Blomkvist on his search for Harriet Vanger’s killer. We learn about her group of semi-friends, and her friendship of a sort with her boss (despite his unrequited affection for her). We see her as a hacker, we learn a bit about where she comes from, and, as one component among many, we’re treated to a rather horrible series of incidents with her legal guardian, once her prior guardian (for whom she held real affection) suffered a stroke.

In the movie, we see Salander first when Nils Bjurman comes to collect surveillance on Blomkvist, and then rather briefly. The large bulk of the rest of her screen time between this and joining the main plot is spent watching her a) be assaulted in the subway, managing to drive off her attackers but suffering the loss of her laptop, b) get raped, twice, the second time very graphically, and c) exact torture and revenge on the rapist.

In the book, these incidents happen, but they’re part of a larger pattern of illuminating Salander as a character. In this sort of film, you don’t have the time (or you shouldn’t) to linger slowly on things that have no direct relation to the plot. I realize that it does tie to larger themes in the movie, but the way it’s handled feels almost fetishistic.

Additionally, the differences between media work to the film’s disadvantage here. In the book, you share the scene from Lisbeth’s point of view. It’s brutal, and horrifying, and though I didn’t care for the use of rape to build sympathy for a character, it did its job. Film doesn’t allow you that pass into one character’s head. Instead, there’s an element of voyeurism at work that you can’t escape. Throughout, this film loves tight closeups, and it gives you no option to look away or to process the horror yourself. It shows everything, in excruciating detail, and the sheer amount of screen time spent on the subplot is ridiculous for its ultimate significance, or lack thereof.

Even beyond the viewer-as-accomplice feel of the first third of the movie, the film had some problems. Michael Nyqvist, as Blomkvist, was competent but unremarkable. Noomi Rapace, who played Salandar, did a fine job with a difficult character. (I don’t know if I’ll see the film, but I will be interested to hear who gets cast as Salandar opposite Daniel Craig’s Blomkvist in the American remake.) But I felt little connection with either character, nor did I observe much connection between them.

The cinematography is of a piece with the rest of the film, in many ways. The colors are washed out, muted, to begin with, and get slowly more vibrant as the action progresses, though they never become truly vivid. The lighting is harsh and intense or brutally dark, with very little in between.

GWtDT title

The title sequence sets the movie’s dark, muted palate.

Were the movie paced a bit more quickly, or perhaps if I didn’t already know the answer to “whodunit,” I could have enjoyed the film more: the best moments tended to be the ones of revelation or suspense, but these were few and spaced between long, slow stretches. (I cannot tell you how many times we watch a bar load on a Mac in this movie, or lines of code flash by. Watching other people compute is never exciting, hacking or not.) I realize the book is long and complex, but so much was already cut (including Blomkvist’s relationships with pretty much anyone besides Salandar) that they should have gone the distance and narrowed the focus to just the Harriet Vanger case and anything related to it.

There were some strong choices. The use of Harriet’s photo was clever and memorable, and an excellent use of the visual nature of film.

Her face comes to haunt the viewer, much as it seems to haunt both her uncle and, eventually, Blomkvist. The climactic scene in a basement room is tense and well-played, if skirting a bit toward the torture porn the movie seems to favor.

On the whole, however, the movie plays like an episode of Criminal Minds that’s been stretched to encompass two and a half hours. 90 minutes would have been plenty for the good parts. This isn’t Schindler’s List, after all, it’s a popular crime novel. And where the book is atmospheric, the film just gets mired. It has its moments, but on the whole, it takes itself too seriously and plays its hand too hard.

Rating: C It has some merits, and it’s not a horrible film. But for me, what I didn’t like roundly distracted me from what I did.

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August 10, 2010 · 6:47 pm

Out Now and Coming Soon

Quick takes on the multiplex and my to-see list.

  • I have almost nothing to say about Inception that someone else hasn’t already said. But I loved it, and will probably go see it again while it’s in theaters. Perhaps I will have a proper post about it then. In the meantime, a nice roundup from the Guardian of many reactions, including the graphical representation of the dreams.
  • Salt looks silly but fun. I like Angeline Jolie best in action roles, I must confess, and as a popcorn movie, it looks thoroughly entertaining. Unfortunately, I’ve heard it’s crossed the line from “silly” to “stupid,” so I probably won’t see it in theaters.
  • The Disappearance of Alice Creed looks really, really interesting. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it’s not another Inside Man (a fascinating trailer for a subpar film). Though the article I linked suggests the film is good, but that the trailer rather spoils it, so… whoops.
  • Despite the fact that being excited for Tron Legacy is not exactly edgy, I kind of am. I have such nostalgia for the original, and the effects look razor sharp. Here’s hoping that they screenplay is solid enough to make them palatable. This is probably not going to happen. But I would like it to!
  • Red looks so awesome I can’t stand it. Mainly for Helen Mirren. It’s like The Expendables, except I’m actually interested.
  • It could be epically brilliant or awful, but I’m willing to give Buried a chance. It’s unusual, and I feel like it could work well.
  • True story: When I saw Inception, everyone was clearly very into the trailer for Devil until the words “M. Night Shamaylan” appeared, at which point there was an audible groan. That is the sound of lost trust. Right there.
  • Recently on DVD: I really, really wanted The Box to be good. But from what I heard it really, really wasn’t. Still… if it goes to instant streaming on Netflix, I may give it a try.
  • And the classic noir new release that caught my eye: City of Fear. A convict thinks he’s stolen heroin, but has actually stolen radioactive cobalt. My attention is grabbed.

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August 6, 2010 · 8:49 pm

Shutter Island

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I believed that Shutter Island had been, at least in part, spoiled for me.

Now that I’ve seen the movie, I don’t know that it can be. (That said, as fair warning, this review will contain major plot points, some of which are twists, so read on at the risk of disagreeing with me. Spoilers also follow for Citizen Kane and The Usual Suspects.)

Given that the film is set in a mental institution for the criminally insane, it seems only natural that the viewer should question Marshal Teddy Daniels’ sanity from the get-go. If he isn’t crazy when the film begins, you suspect he might become so by the end. That is often how this sort of thriller works.

What is interesting, and what makes this film pack such a punch, is the way in which the story unfolds. Though I knew, definitively, that Daniels was a patient because of a co-worker with little regard for people who wait for DVD releases, I did not know all the details of his illness – nor why he was institutionalized. These are much more intriguing questions, and led to a whole different sort of suspense than I might have felt when seeing the movie cold for the first time.

(Sort of cold, at least. Trailers, while a great marketing tool, are hell on movies like Shutter Island. How to cut it without misleading the audience as to the movie’s nature, while at the same time giving nothing away? Here’s how they did, and it’s a decent job, but I don’t envy the original editor:)

This film is not a noir in any traditional sense (watch, readers, as I exercise the power of this blog to review mysteries and thrillers as well!), but it does engage some noir-ish elements. Not just fedoras, no. The isolation of the main character, as it grows throughout the film, teeters on the line between legitimate fear and paranoia. After all, it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you. The sense of a corrupt world closing in, literally cutting off escape, is oppressive from the outset – the movie begins on a boat, and the captain tells Daniels and his partner that he will leave the moment the marshals are ashore.

In some ways, knowing Daniels was a patient set me up to be duped even more fully by the actual reveal of what has been going on for the entirety of the movie. The twist, such as it is, reveals the difference between, say, The Sixth Sense and The Village.

In the latter, even those audience members who hadn’t guessed the ending where left with a simple “Oh, I see” moment; the emotional impact of the film, if it had any, was located elsewhere. I liked parts of The Village, though it had quite a few flaws, but what I liked best were characters and their interactions, and the twist had little to do with that.

In The Sixth Sense, on the other hand, the moment I knew the twist, I had to recontextualize everything in the film. Every moment, every interaction, was new because I understood it in a new light. It made me want to see the film again immediately.

That’s also the difference between “Rosebud is the sled” and “Verbal is Kaiser Soze.” It’s not that one movie is better than the other, in this case: it’s that in one, the mystery is a pretense to drive the plot, in the other, the entire movie is a trick.

(Confession: I love trick movies. Inception, The Illusionist, The Brothers Bloom – yeah.)

I think Shutter Island falls firmly in the camp of The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense. The ending is so viscerally affecting because, in part, it forces you to shift your perceptions of everything that’s come before it. That’s not good or bad, nor does it effect the rewatchability of a given movie. But it does mean that, in a very particular sense, you only get one first time.

To say the movie is well-directed seems redundant, given that it’s a Scorsese film. But he really is on form here. Critical reception was mixed, but I think that’s in part a function of the kind of film he was making; a lot of the bad reviews accuse it of not being creepy enough. But Shutter Island is not a horror film, and I don’t think it was intended to be. It may not be a masterpiece on the level of The Departed or Taxi Driver, but the craft involved is undeniable.

The acting is also standout. This would be a very easy movie to get campy in, but the cast collectively resists the temptation. Leonardo diCaprio is strong (though given that Inception followed this movie so closely, the two performances can’t help but be compared), laying a solid groundwork for the denouement without tipping his hand too soon. Mark Ruffalo and Ben Kingsley, however, cemented the movie’s foundation and were right on target throughout. Patricia Clarkson is excellent in a small but pivotal role.

Grade: B+ A few imperfections, but on the whole, well ahead of the curve.

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August 3, 2010 · 9:40 pm

Introduction and Welcome

When I entered the world of people who Applied For Things in the later part of my high school career, I ran against the peculiar combination of selling myself and explaining myself in the same stretch of writing. It’s a perilous line to walk. Still, when undertaking a blog, I feel the instinctual need to take a moment to say what on earth I think I’m doing here.

This blog exists for a number of reasons, but the most direct one is Roger Ebert. Anyone my age with an interest in film can hardly escape him, whether you agree or disagree with his reviews. But I’ve always liked him best as an essayist (one of my favorite gifts ever was a copy of his The Great Films), and I’ve found a new affection for him as a reader of his thoughtful and engaging blog.

A few months ago, his post “The Golden Age of Movie Critics” convinced me that I should finally make the transition from someone who says they’d like to blog to someone who actually does so. I’ve always been passionate about film, and discussion of it is woefully absent from my present life.

Thus. A blog was born.

The title is sort of a vague attempt to focus this blog. Though I love all sorts of film, I have a theory that most people have one genre, or family of genres, that they love enough to cut slack to. People who love cinema are quick to admit that a good film in almost any genre can bring them pleasure. What’s sometimes harder to admit is that you really loved a film like…

…like Van Helsing. Or Pearl Harbor. Or Grown Ups. (I loved one of these three, found one tolerable, and plan never to see the third. Assign as you will.) I, for one, have a low tolerance for clichéd romance plots, but will forgive pretty flimsy plot contrivances if enough things explode.

I also love a good mystery. A lovely whodunit with clues galore. Or a gritty, worldly film noir. A thriller, whether it be psychological (like Gaslight) or political (like Syriana). Or just a flat-out revenge story (I’m looking at you, Lucky Number Slevin).

So. The Exploding Macguffin will be a film blog with a slant toward the mystery/thriller/noir side. I’m notoriously rebellious with clean genre labels, so it’s a slant, not an exclusive boundary; still, I’d like it to have some sort of unifying tone.

For now, I’m aiming to post twice weekly. Once a week, I’ll post a reaction to a film I’ve just watched (or rewatched). The other post will be a potpourri; reactions to books in or about the genre, collections of trailers for upcoming projects that excite me, links to other interesting film blogs or articles, and possibly some more general thoughts on aspects of film. I expect it will grow and change as I learn what I’m doing, and comments or constructive feedback are welcome.

I’ll try to be honest and entertaining, as best I can be. Thanks for reading.

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