A well-craft­ed sus­pense film employ­ing some of the for­mu­las of Hitch­cock. Despite the title, it’s a Span­ish film. The main char­ac­ter is a Por­tuguese video dis­trib­u­tor, on a car trip from Spain, going home. He picks up a mys­te­ri­ous woman, and gets tan­gled in a web of mur­der. Well-trod­den mate­r­i­al, but direc­tor Her­nan­dez han­dles it well, and the odd­ly low-key end­ing is original.

“Oh, no! Not the BEES!!”

Okay, I’ve final­ly seen it. When I heard there was an Amer­i­can remake of the clas­sic 1973 British film I knew it would have to be bad. When it came out, every­one who saw it assured me that it was not just ter­ri­ble, but an absolute atroc­i­ty. But still, I was not pre­pared for how unbe­liev­ably bad this film is. It’s sick­en­ing­ly, loath­some­ly, hor­ri­bly, hideous­ly, insult­ing­ly bad. Not even the hilar­i­ous sight of Nicholas Cage punch­ing an Evil Wic­can Fem­i­nist while dressed in a bear suit can make it seem charm­ing­ly bad, like an Ed Wood movie, or Robot Mon­ster. The insult to the orig­i­nal film is sim­ply too mon­strous to per­mit that kind of plea­sure. This was made by morons who under­stand noth­ing. The best way to watch it, if you must, would be to be dead drunk, stoned out of your mind, or, bet­ter yet, in a clin­i­cal coma.

Richard Lin­klater’s Dazed and Con­fused (1993) has an endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty. It was an ensem­ble piece, focus­ing on a dozen char­ac­ters, all young, unknown actors at the time. Ben Affleck, among them, went on to a major film career. But when­ev­er I dis­cuss the film with any­one, they always fix on one per­for­mance, that of Wiley Wig­gins, who played an amaz­ing­ly lik­able char­ac­ter that saved the film from being too pat­ly cyn­i­cal. Lin­klater wise­ly employed Wig­gins again to play the cen­tral char­ac­ter in Wak­ing Life. This off­beat 2001 film employs a com­bi­na­tion of roto­scope and com­put­er ani­ma­tion. Roto­scop­ing is a tech­nique that is usu­al­ly annoy­ing, but here it works per­fect­ly to put across the idea of lucid dream­ing. The sto­ry line involves a char­ac­ter who is trapped in a dream about being trapped in a dream, and sus­pi­cious that he is actu­al­ly dead. He con­stant­ly encoun­ters char­ac­ters who lec­ture him on var­i­ous con­ven­tion­al philo­soph­i­cal notions ― the stan­dard reper­toire of Exis­ten­tial­ism, Post­mod­ernism, etc, the kind of stuff that usu­al­ly makes me cringe. But the warmth of Wig­gins’ per­son­al­i­ty (his char­ac­ter is nev­er named) makes it all work, and the ani­ma­tion’s shift­ing styles and visu­al jokes are per­fect for por­tray­ing dream states. Some of the seg­ments are quite beautiful.

This is a film clas­sic that holds up rather well. John Buchan’s spy thriller, pub­lished in 1915, formed the tem­plate for hun­dreds of future sto­ries. It cer­tain­ly pro­vid­ed the for­mu­la that Hitch­cock repeat­ed in many of his films: an inno­cent man, ordi­nary enough, but cheer­ful, resource­ful, and mod­est­ly brave, acci­den­tal­ly gets entan­gled in a com­pli­cat­ed espi­onage scheme, gets framed for mur­der, goes on the run, and has to foil the spies to clear his name. The chase takes him across coun­try, a pil­grim’s progress through a sequence of encoun­ters with com­i­cal and sin­is­ter char­ac­ters, and finds love along the way. Hitch­cock made exact­ly the film again in Sabo­teur and North By North­west. Robert Donat played this kind of hero to per­fec­tion, so charm­ing­ly that you for­get the famil­iar­i­ty of the plot. Hitch­cock moved the sto­ry up from 1915 to the time of film­ing, and made the hero, for some rea­son, a Cana­di­an, but the for­mu­la works in any time or place.

Mar­lon Bran­do’s per­for­mances were stun­ning in sev­er­al fine films of the 1950’s (On The Water­front, A Street­car Named Desire, Julius Cae­sar). But some films just don’t trav­el well through time. What­ev­er it was that peo­ple saw in this film, wide­ly regard­ed as a clas­sic, has evap­o­rat­ed. Bran­do’s per­for­mance mes­mer­ized audi­ences at the time, who seemed to see some kind of pul­sat­ing ani­mal mag­net­ism in it. But Bran­do was already get­ting pudgy, and the char­ac­ter now just seems to be a com­plete nitwit. You start laugh­ing in the open­ing cred­its, as you see a motor­cyle gang “rid­ing” fake motor­cy­cles in front of a pro­ject­ed back­drop. They’re about as men­ac­ing as the Brady Bunch. They ter­ror­ize a small Cal­i­for­nia town with a reign of impo­lite­ness. Bran­do has ani­mal mag­net­ism, alright — he looks like a chip­munk in a leather jack­et. What­ev­er this film had then, it just does­n’t work anymore.

(Par­rish 1969) Jour­ney to the Far Side of the Sun
(Boor­man 1974) Zardoz
(Lieber­man 2004) Earthsea
(Hard­ing 2006) Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Ep.55 ― Cards on the Table
(del Toro 2004) Hellboy
(Zeisler 1936) The Amaz­ing Quest of Ernest Bliss [as Amaz­ing Adventure]
(Stevens 1941) Pen­ny Serenade
Read more »

I’m far too irri­tat­ed by this sil­ly doc­u­men­tary to ana­lyze it dis­pas­sion­ate­ly. It fool­ish­ly roman­ti­cizes the Weath­er Under­ground. Those pompous, arro­gant ass­holes were typ­i­cal exam­ples of spoiled-brat rich kids align­ing them­selves with evil and mas­querad­ing as “oppo­nents” of the Viet­nam War. These were NOT rad­i­cals in any sense. Their ide­ol­o­gy was ultra-ortho­dox, ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive, pro-slav­ery, and total­i­tar­i­an. Today, part­ly because of the activ­i­ties of these fake “rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies”, the tru­ly evil nature of the Viet­nam War has been suc­cess­ful­ly obfus­cat­ed by its per­pe­tra­tors. These clowns were NOT the oppo­si­tion to that evil war. Far from it. As the six­ties say­ing went, you are either part of the prob­lem or you’re part of the solu­tion. Hyp­o­crit­i­cal poseurs like the Weath­er­men were part of the prob­lem. They should be firm­ly clas­si­fied where they belong: sym­bi­ot­ic part­ners with the mon­sters who pro­mot­ed and exe­cut­ed the Viet­nam War. Mean­while, all the courage of the gen­uine oppo­nents of the war has been for­got­ten. Let us hear no more non­sense about these pho­ny creeps.

Natal­ie Port­man plays a chin cush­ion in Revenge of the Sith.

Final­ly got around to see­ing this, albeit only on the small screen. I nev­er knew there could be any­thing more tedious than Par­si­fal. I notice now that the female char­ac­ters in the Star Wars movies have got­ten pro­gres­sive­ly more inac­tive and orna­men­tal. Remem­ber Princess Leah? She was expect­ed to do some fight­ing and solve prob­lems. But that was the 1970s. This episode’s Pad­mé has all the dynamism of a hydro­gen atom at the end of the uni­verse. Not even spec­tac­u­lar CG bat­tles could keep my eye on the screen. I’m not very demand­ing when it comes to space opera. A few nice visu­als, maybe a clever line or two is all it takes to keep me hap­py. But I would have been pissed off if I had paid the­atre prices to see this.

Giant Ice­lander Peter Ron­son, and Gertrude the Eider­duck, the real stars of Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of the Earth

I’m very fond of this absurd 1950s Hol­ly­wood ver­sion of the Jules Verne clas­sic. My broth­er tells me that my child­hood fas­ci­na­tion with pale­on­tol­ogy can be traced to being ter­ri­fied by the “dinosaurs” of the film ― small gar­den lizards with rub­ber fins glued to them, mat­ted into the film. Believe it or not, this was top-of-the-line spe­cial effects when the film was made, the only oth­er option being clay­ma­tion. Oth­er unin­ten­tion­al­ly humor­ous ele­ments of the film include the cast­ing of Pat Boone (yes, Pat Boone!) as a young geol­o­gy stu­dent spout­ing the most pathet­ic attempt at a Scot­tish accent in his­to­ry, and a scene where the adven­tur­ers reach “a place with a mag­net­ic field that snatch­es gold away, the junc­tion of the north and south mag­net­ic fields, the CENTER OF THE EARTH!”, which appears to be a whirlpool in an under­ground ocean. The con­cep­tu­al con­fu­sion in the scene tran­scends any­thing you have ever seen in any oth­er movie. Even Ed Wood had a bet­ter grasp of physics. Jules Verne’s nov­el is quaint, today, but it fit rea­son­ably well into the sci­ence of its time. Some­how, the screen­writ­ers man­aged to push the film’s sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing to about two thou­sand years ear­li­er than Verne.

James Mason and Arlene Dahl are the lead actors in the film. It had a big bud­get, a lush score com­posed by Bernard Her­mann, and was part­ly filmed in Carls­bad Cav­erns, though that nat­ur­al won­der appears to be filled with cheap junk jew­el­ery and papi­er maché boul­ders. Mason does a won­der­ful job of keep­ing a straight face as they encounter dinosaurs, giant mush­rooms, and the lost city of Atlantis. A vil­lain fol­lows them, played by Thay­er David, and he gets to utter one of the most won­der­ful bad lines in film his­to­ry: “I nev­er sleep… I hate those lit­tle slices of death.” But despite all that high-pow­ered hami­ness, the film is stolen by Peter Ron­son, an Ice­landic olympic ath­lete who got the part because he was the only Ice­landic-speak­ing giant, mus­cu­lar man avail­able in Hol­ly­wood. His char­ac­ter, Hans, seems to have an unhealthy pas­sion for a pet eider­duck, and the duck accom­pa­nies them to the cen­ter of the earth, meet­ing a trag­ic end when the vil­lain gets hun­gry. Hans’ remorse­less march of vengeance is the most won­der­ful part of the film. Peter Ron­son died, last year. This was his only appear­ance in a film.