The Film Junkie

I recently watched this film again, because I remember loving it so much when I was younger.  I remember thinking that this was one of the most original ideas I had ever heard of for a film and that it was funny and sweet.  All of these things I remember, and all of these things remain true all these years later.

The story follows Daniel (Albert Brooks who also wrote and directed the film), a yuppie who drives his brand new car into a bus and wakes to find himself in Judgement City, a sort of land between life and death.  Here he has five days to defend his life in a sort of relxed courtroom before the judges decide whether he will continue on his journey or whether he has not lived a complete existence and must therefore return to earth to try again.

In Judgement City, he meets Julia (Meryl Streep who glows throughout), a sort of perfect woman who has lived a perfect life and is pretty much guaranteed to be moving on.  As their relationship grows, Daniel grows as a person and finds that he now has something to live for, but it is too late.

Many Albert Brooks films are funny in the male struggle aspect, but falter in the love story, however this story is entirely believable.  The chemistry between Streep and Brooks is serious and by the end of the film you are itching to see them end up together. 

The humour is also great.  Brooks has always been good at one-liners, but he gives a lot of great work to Rip Torn as his defender.  Torn and Brooks are a great combination.

I suppose what I love about this movie is that it has a message, but doesn’t beat you over the head with it.  It is not Christian, or any other religion, in fact it mocks humanity for being “little brains”, instead the film is trying to tell us that if we let our fears rule our life has our life been worth living?

Just great.

Grade: A

Of all the Potter books that have been turned into movies thus far, the source material for this film is the most complex, intriguing and character driven of the bunch.  The story follows Potter as he comes to grips with the fact that he has a very important connection to Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes, chilling in his few scenes), his own anger, mortality, love and loss while the Ministry of Magic starts a witch hunt at Hogwarts.

It is impossible not to notice that the actors are growing up faster than the movies can be made, yet I am not bothered by it.  I have grown up watching actors in their 30s play teens, so why would it jar me to watch an 18 year old play 15?  It is a non-issue.  That said, as they grow Daniel Radcliffe as Potter and Rupert Grint are becoming better actors, while Emma Watson as Hermione Granger has begun to grate.  She is quite a one-note actress and it is only becoming more apparent.

Much of the film centres around Dolores Umbridge, a Minister of Magic who comes to Hogwarts to set things into ‘order’.  Imelda Staunton has the time of her life with this character.  She completely personifies the character from the books, and I was hugely impressed.

Another new character comes in the form of Sirius Black’s cousin Bellatrix Lestrange.  Helena Bonham Carter attacks her very few scenes with incredible pinache.  She has always had a dark, morbid and gothic style, even before her relationship with Tim Burton, and she lets it loose with a vicious and great performance here.

Yes, there are many great performances and we finally see a little romance, but the last half of the film felt very thrown together for me.  Much of the mystery and style of the book was lost and I think it comes down to direction.  The last two Potter films have been directed with such a strong sense of style they almost made me forget the initial two Chris Colombus flims, and this falls somewhere in between.  It is probably the funniest of the films, but it should be the darkest.  Instead it doesn’t capture the disturbing themes of ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ (2005).  Perhaps it is because we hardly spend any time with the villians, perhaps it is the return of the “children are awesome and can do anything adults can, maybe better” theme that we were clobbered over the head with in the Colombus films.  The final showdown of this film should have been epic, and it tries, but it can’t compete with all the epic moments that have come before. 

All in all, there are some great elements to this film, like finally seeing Dumbledore face off with Voldemort (it reminded me of Yoda kicking ass), however it is my third favorite of the films overall.  The film tries to fit a massive story into too small a package and in doing so loses much of the book’s charm and terror.

Grade: B+

For all the faults in the plot and characters of this film, in the end it is a massive undertaking of an epic that takes chances and introduces new ideas of special effects into mainstream Hollywood.

To be honest, the first hour and forty minutes or so is pretty dull.  It is the story of Blackie (Clark Gable) a bar owner and community leader who discovers a young new singer in Mary (Jeanette Macdonald) and eventually falls in love with her.  However she is courted by another man and he is pressured by his best friend, Father Mullin (Spencer Tracy), to leave her be.  For the majority of the film, Macdonald grates on your nerves and her singing rings in your eyes, not in a good way.  Gable has that same old charm, but you never really get why he would like such a dull and prissy young woman.  The best character in the film is Tracy’s, he is a complex man who grew up on the rough streets but took an entirely different path than Blackie yet still understands both sides of life.  Tracy was nominated for an Oscar for this role and you can easily see why, he commands the screen.

The last fifteen minutes or so of this film are remarkable.  The earthquake of 1906 destroys the city and leaves our characters in disarray.  The scenes capturing the earthquake are entirely believable and the special effects are eerily real (with the exception of one shot of Gable walking away from a large fire which was obviously filmed in front of a large projected image).  The sound effects are groundbreaking and these final moments will shake you to the core.

All in all, a film with one hell of an ending and that’s about it.

Grade: B-

I have seen many Tracy-Hepburn movies over the years, and for the most part I have preferred Katharine Hepburn with Cary Grant, that is until I saw this pre-feminist take on equality in America.

It follows the two as married lawyers who take the opposite sides of a case, she defending a scorned wife who shot but did not kill her husband, and he as the Deputy DA.  Judy Holliday is fantastic as the wife who takes revenge.  She represents the kind of women many Americans thought they had to be.  The kind of lady who believes smoking is “unfeminine”.  She completely messes up the shooting of her husband, but fully admits to it thinking she can just return home since he was not killed.

The film quickly becomes a battle between traditional men and the “new woman”.  A marriage that once worked is tested by the fundamental ideas that the two clash on.  However the best part of this film is that, unlike so many ‘equality’ minded films of the time, the “new woman” never backs down.  She never loses her fire to appease her husband, but works to change his mind. 

In this film, Hepburn is a woman to be reckoned with.  Her character raises so many critical ideas that helped to change the world over 20 years later.  I am stunned by how ahead of its time this film was.  Great script by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin.

Grade: A

This film based on a play is the story of three generations of an African-American family living together in a tiny two bedroom apartment in Chicago.  The film deals with civil rights, the role of women of colour in modern society and the pride of many black people in a changing society.

Sidney Poitier stars as Walter, a married man living with his wife, son, sister and mother in this small space who is trying to make a name for himself despite the controlling women in his world.  His mother is played magnificently by Claudia McNeil.  She gets all the great speeches of the film, and she represents a generation that was happy not being slaves in a world where black people wanted to be more than ‘free’, they wanted to be ‘equal’.  Walter’s wife, Ruth, is played by the lovely Ruby Dee.  Ruth is coping with an unhappy marriage and an unwanted pregnancy and in her we deal with abortion rights and a woman who is struggling to keep everyone together.  Finally, Diana Sands plays Walter’s sister, Beneatha.  She is studying to be a doctor and thus brings in the new idea that a black woman in America could be whatever she wanted, supposedly.  She meets a man from Nigeria and becomes enthralled by wanting to be African and not an “assimilationist”.  In Beneatha, we see the roots of the African-American people and the quest to embrace that history without forgetting the reality that they have been Americans for several generations.

This is a complex emotional drama that takes place mainly in their one small apartment.  It is filled with strong female characters that are constantly breaking away from the boundaries of cinema at that time.  The script by Lorraine Hansberry, adapted from her play, is a remarkable feat that allows all sides to have their say without taking anyone’s side.  Walter is a strange and wonderful creation of a man, emasculated and grasping for control while completely in over his head.  But this is a film owned by one woman and Claudia McNeil is a powerful image on that screen.  You cannot take your eyes off of her and it is only right she is given the final image of the film.

A classic.

Grade: A

I truly believe that Atom Egoyan is one of the most talented filmmakers working today.  He has impressed me time and time again, and yet here I am not sure what he was thinking.

The film starts out a very promising story about a pair of comedians known for their telethons (much like Martin and Lewis) who have hidden from a scandal involving a dead girl in their hotel room for 15 years.  Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth play the duo and are exceptional in their roles.  We are drawn in and begging to know more.

Yet as the film continues to unfold we are forced into the life of Karen (Alison Lohman), a journalist connected to the two who is attempting to write a book about their lives.  I have liked Lohman in previous roles, however here her voice is childish and grating and her performance is too soft and cold to be interesting.  As we are forced more and more into Karen’s world, we lose our connection to the two men and the plot becomes predictable, soft core porn-ish and unentertaining.

Egoyan stays true to his Canadian roots by casting Rachel Blanchard as the dead girl as well as Don McKellar, Arsinee Khanjian and Gabrielle Rose as publishing executives and the incomparable Maury Chaykin as a gangster.  I appreciated seeing these great Canadian actors in their small roles, only wishing they were more involved in the story.

Overall I saw it coming and by the time it was ‘revealed’, I just didn’t care anymore.  If only the second half lived up to the first.

Grade: C+

This somewhat forced love story has its good elements, but overall it seems strange and nothing seems to fit together. 

Cary Grant stars as a father of three who has been separated from his wife for several years when she passes away leaving him alone with the children he barely knows.  The child actors are delightful, intelligent and full of life.  Grant is great as a distant father used to being alone who is unprepared for the strange curiousity of youth as well as children who are trying to cope with mortality.

The movie takes a turn for the weird when Grant’s son encounters the runaway daughter of a famous Italian conductor (Sophia Loren) and begs his father to make her their maid.  Loren looks over-tanned and sort of dirty throughout the film.  Her golden dress is a sight to behold, but before that she looks over-corseted and odd.  As far as her acting, Loren is charming, but her accent can be slightly frustrating. 

Thus the film goes from being about fatherhood to being about surrogate motherhood to being a romantic comedy to being about modern marriage.  By the end of the film, the children are aggravating and Loren is tiresome, Grant is the only constantly good element in the film.

Grade: B-

What an amazing and groundbreaking film.

Based on the play of the same name, it takes place during a birthday party for one of many homosexual New York men.  Though they constantly refer to themselves as ‘fairies’, ‘fags’ and ‘queens’ most of them could easily “pass” for straight.  These are middle-upper class gentlemen who happen to be gay.  They are at times bitchy, extravagent and bitter, but you can see the love hidden underneath their scathing words.

Michael (Kenneth Nelson) is the host of the party.  He is a bundle or neurosis, paranoia and resentment for who he is.  Though he is out to many, that does not include his college roommate, Alan (Peter White), who pops up for a visit on the night of this fiesta and discovers the truth about his old friend.

The party really gets a-buzzing, however, when Harold (Leonard Frey) turns up.  He is an elegant mess of a queen past her prime.  Every sarcastic comment would make Bette Davis jealous and it is all spoken from behind a daze of booze and pills.  Harold is the epitome of a beautiful disaster and because it is his birthday, the action all centres around him while also having very little to do with him.

This one night reveals the tenderness in certain the relationships and the lies others have been constructed on.  I don’t know how to take the ending, in that we never really understand Alan’s motives and why Michael leaves to attend church.  We are left wondering if the events of that evening really had lasting affect on anyone other than us, the audience.

However the one thing I know for certain is that this film is still ahead of its time.  It doesn’t flaunt homosexuality brazenly, or treat it like a freak show, these men are people, complex, fucked up and proud, even if they don’t know it.

And no, it is not a musical.

Grade: A

I absolutely loved this book.  It was something very rare to find these days: a completely original experience in narration and style.  It was funny, moving and interesting.  The film adaptation, on the other hand, completely misses the mark.

Elijah Wood stars as Jonathan Safran Foer, a Jewish writer who visits the Ukraine in a quest to find out more about his grandfather’s experience during WWII.  Foer is a quiet and odd character and I was impressed with Wood’s performance for the most part.  You can see him trying to bring in his natural appeal but then fighting it back in many scenes, but his physicality as a small man worked for the character.

Eugene Hutz costars as Alex, Jonathan’s translator and tour guide.  Hutz is funny and odd as Alex, however this is not the Alex I met in the book.  This Alex does not have the full circle experience and we do not see the fears and insecurities hidden underneath the large personality.  This Alex is somewhat attractive and appealing, where in the book he only pretended to have those qualities.  I can see why Hutz was cast, he is a charismatic young rock star, but he does not fit with what Alex was intended to be.

This film is actor Liev Schreiber’s directorial debut and it is a lovely looking movie.  He clearly designed the shots very well and he has a very cinematic eye.  However, Schreiber also adapted the script and it is in this adaptation that so many of the films flaws comes from.  In the book, we were constantly flashing back into the history of Jonathan’s family to discover their stories alongside his journey.  Schreiber chose to ignore those chapters and change one of the most important parts of the story to make it more ‘approachable’.  Alex’s grandfather is a far less appealing man in the book and his redemption is a much harsher conclusion.  Instead we get a neatly wrapped up ending that leaves us wanting more mystery.  Without the stories of Jonathan’s relatives we lose the weight of the story and instead it becomes a weird little road trip movie through the Ukraine.

Disappointing.  I cannot recommend the film, but I highly recommend the book.

Grade: B-