Little Shop of Horrors

Directed by: Frank Oz

Written by: Howard Ashman (screenplay and musical play); Charles B. Griffith (1960 screenplay)








Some movies follow the cookie-cutter model. Some movies break off in new directions and blaze new trails.

Then there are movies like Little Shop of Horrors which subvert and twist the cookie cutter model into something completely different.

Little Shop of Horrors has elements of science fiction, elements of romance, elements of comedy (both dark and slapstick), and elements of horror, all under the disarming guise of a musical with puppets. It's disorienting and confusing, and unlike anything else.

It's brilliant. It doesn't try to be pretentious or over-the-top (except in its own ironic way). The energy is all focused in the same direction. There's a synergy which doesn't often hold up in other movies which try to pull off the same tricks this movie does.

Like the interesting looking plant in the window, this movie will lure you in. Just be prepared for what you'll find inside.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Directed by: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

Written by: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely









Catching-up on a lot of the oft-hyped "Marvel Comics Universe" movies, I'm jumping back into it near the beginning of the films dubbed Phase Two.

Reflecting on Phase One, I feel that Captain America: The First Avenger was the one that kept coming to mind as my favorite. (This may be a direct result of the intentionally nostalgic tone of the movie, but the feeling stands.) The Iron Man movies were impressive the first time through, but I never felt the call to see them again. Thor was a personal favorite as I left the theater, mainly for sentimental reasons, but has become less impressive as the series has moved forward. In the end, Captain America remained at the top of the stack, so I had very high expectations for the second iteration in the series.

I was not disappointed. This movie holds up even though I already knew the big twist about the mysterious villain long before I saw it.

The Winter Soldier has action, suspense, drama, character development. It continues elements which had begun in the other MCU films, but is not bound to them or tied down by them. In fact, with only one or two exceptions (the Agent Carter scene being one of them), the movie stands fairly tall on its own. Any needed exposition is given when required in the script, but without dry cardboard storytelling. A passing familiarity with some of the characters is adequate enough to jump on in to the movie.

As with all of these superhero movies, The Winter Soldier is best when it feels like watching a comic book. A movie like this often falters when it tries to do something more. Where the directors succeeded in making this film is making those "big picture" thematic moments blend well into the comic book vision and tone of the rest of the movie.

Vertigo

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

Written by: Alec Coppel, Samuel A. Taylor (screenplay); Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac









My third stop on Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" list brings me to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.

I've written about it here before, but it absolutely bears discussing again.

Vertigo is a dense film - much more dense than it may appear on first or even second viewing. The bait-and-switch-and-bait-and-switch of the story can be very disorienting, focusing thought on the work to mainly the plot.

But there's so much beauty to this film that the analysis must go further. (And it has, much better than I could ever analyze, elsewhere and many times.) The movie keeps calling you back. Look closer. Try again.

The music is perfectly eerie at just the right moments. The notes move in circles up and down the scales, then repeating, which helps enhance the theme and the suspense.

The colors are striking and bold. No holding back here. They are used to draw your attention to (and simultaneously away from) what you are supposed to notice.

I feel weak trying to write about this movie. I've seen it so many times over the last twenty years that it's hard to isolate one part of it here or there, and each of those parts has so many layers that it could be dissected in its own right for an entire post.

(As an example, with spoilers: The first bell tower scene. She begs him not to go up into the church with her. How much of it is Madeline/Judy trying to save him from the trauma she knows is waiting for him if he tries to follow her? How much of it is her trying to manipulate him with reverse psychology? Does she really love him or is she just using him? Where does the acting end and her personality begin? It's worth thinking about.)

Ikiru

Directed by: Akira Kurosawa

Written by: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni










Making my way down Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" list, I arrive at #2 - Kurosawa's Ikiru.

I can't say this is my introduction to Kurosawa's work, but it's the first one I watched with intention and attention. Ikiru rewarded my efforts.

The plot of the movie is simple: A man learns that he is dying and decides he wants to have an impact of some kind. The next few days he wastes trying different avenues of life, but realizes that he can do one good thing - help build a playground. The story may be a distant cousin of A Christmas Carol.

Ikiru starts off slow, but pays off. The narrative is almost episodic, but ties itself together well.

I get the feeling that this is the type of movie that should be re-visited at different points in life. That my feelings and my approach on it now may be different than they will be ten, twenty, thirty years from now.

(This review is scattered. In all honesty, I watched his movie maybe ten months ago and, normally, I wouldn't bother writing anything about it, but I'm trying to be a completist about this "Great Movies" business, so I wanted to get something official posted.)

The Haunting

Directed by: Jan de Bont

Written by: David Self (screenplay); Shirley Jackson (novel)










Going back down memory lane in my attempt to bring myself back to writing about film regularly, I found The Haunting available for streaming and realized that this would be a great place to continue.

The Haunting stands as one of the first "scary" movies I saw in the theater. Before watching it again, though, I was struggling to remember what exactly the movie was about. I vaguely remembered something about a scientist and a massive house, but nothing stood out about what exactly was at the core of the story. I also recalled the movie not being terribly scary. Still, it was a milestone movie in my personal history.

Watching it again, it was obvious to me why I didn't think it was very scary; it wasn't. But what I missed in my youthful hope for jump-moments and scares was how incredibly creepy the movie feels. The house is physically imposing and menacing. The layout of the rooms is confusing and maze-like, mildly echoing the Overlook hotel of The Shining in this way. The ornate carvings and statues are disquieting, at least in part because some of them don't seem to belong together. In one room there are barbed spikes decorating a bed's headboard and spiderweb-like glass windows,  but also cherubic children's faces around the fireplace. (Also, did the expressions of the children's faces change between shots? Early on, it's hard to tell, which adds to the sense dis-ease.)

Aside from Lili Taylor, most of the acting is screen chewing. (Or, maybe that's just the way Owen Wilson really is?) Liam Neeson is especially guilty of this in this movie, never feeling like he's doing anything beyond reading lines in a corny horror movie. At no point does the audience have any reason to accept him as a scientist of any kind, much less the kind that could pull off setting up an experiment of the type we're supposed to accept as the opening premise. (This accusation may be more indicative of the flaws in the script rather than his acting.)

The story itself works just fine, but drags itself down with a few too many unnecessary twists and turns. Some of these twists work within the confines of the story, but others are awkwardly forced and contrived, merely serving as pretext to the next twist. Although Lili Taylor's character adds to the story significantly (she's the crux of one of the major turns in the story), the other characters fall back into filler material with little or no distinguishing personality. For long stretches of the movie, Catherine Zeta-Jones seems merely there to give Lili Taylor someone to have dialogue with about the creepy house. Usually having too many characters becomes a flaw in a movie like this, as most of them never develop beyond a vague outline of a human being, but in this film a few more distinct personalities could have helped.

What this movie lacks in script and acting and gore (at least, for a horror movie), it makes up for in the outstanding eerie ambiance. The dark beauty of the house gives chills and discomfort. Other haunted house movies should take note of how well this film reaches the goal of making the house feel haunted just by its mere existence.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

Directed by: Kevin Reynolds

Written by: Pen Densham and John Watson










When trying to decide where to start again with this blog, I decided that it would be best to start with something "older." This movie is not old in the literal sense, but it is very old in my mind. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is one of the first movies I can recall seeing in the theater, and when it popped up as an option for streaming, I figured it would be worth re-visiting and might prove to be a good film to help me back into the saddle of blogging here.

To start: I can't believe my parents took me as a child to see this movie. It's not at all like the cartoon Robin Hood I would have been familiar with going into it. It's dark. It's violent. (Nowadays we'd probably call it a "gritty re-imagining.")

It's also very long. The word "bloated" comes to mind. I kept checking to see how much more time was left, not because I was bored but because the pacing of the story was so inconsistent.

This movie has all the right pieces, but is so hit-or-miss that it never quite settles in to all the pieces working together. Although there are many great actors in here, there are issues with the acting being very ham. (Would it be cliche here to point out Kevin Costner's Mid-Western accent not quite working? Why have Sean Connery arrive for one scene and about three lines?) Although there are many great action scenes, there are issues with those scenes being reduced to camera tricks. (How many times did the movie jump to a "point of view from the flying arrow"?) Although the story should be compelling, there are issues with some of the drama being forced. (What exactly were we supposed to feel when Will Scarlett reveals his parentage? Why did the Scots come and go so quickly?)

I was caught up in this movie at times. Alan Rickman snivels and sneers like a master. Morgan Freeman awkwardly pulls off his part as Azeem. Moments of tension, such as the hanging at the wedding, were convincingly dramatic.

This movie screams 1991. And, despite its weaknesses, it holds up as a proto-typical big 1991 film.

Casablanca

Directed by: Michael Curtiz

Written by: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch (screenplay); Murray Burnett, Joan Allison (play)









Roger Ebert's Great Movies #1

There's not a whole lot I can say about Casablanca that I haven't already said to most of the people who would be reading this.

I love this movie. Everything about it is great. Everything.

I can't remember how many times I've seen this movie, but it's easily one of my favorites

I first saw it and immediately fell in love with it in my Senior year of high school. My dad and I were wandering around the hometown Blockbuster (back when there actually were Blockbuster video stores around), and they had a display up of the most recent "AFI Top 100 Movies" with most of them underneath. Citizen Kane was already out, so we grabbed #2 - Casablanca - and headed home. At that time and at that age, I shouldn't have been interested in this film. But from the introduction after the opening credits, I was hooked. The next day, I watched it again before we returned it.

Not long after, dying to form my own unique identity in a college world filled with "unique identities," I bought my own copy of the film on DVD. I then proceeded to watch it and all the special features included. Whenever people tried to talk about movies to show off their intellectual and artistic personalities, my go-to reference was Casablanca. I knew it backwards and forwards and everything I could about it's history. (Sadly, most of what I once knew is now reduced to a few bits of trivia - I need to watch those special features again.) It was old. It was cool. And, always to my dismay, it was mostly unwatched by people I knew. Of course, to resolve that issue, I forced all my friends (and many people who were not my friends) to watch it.

Now, Casablanca has been a part of my life for longer than it wasn't. I've watched it with my friends. I've watched it with students. I've watched it with my family. I've watched it with my wife (though she might add "too many times"). I'm not afraid to admit, I've watched it by myself.

Each time I watch it, I catch something new. Or I understand a new nuance that I didn't catch before. Or I just have a new insight.

For example, when watching it with my students, it finally came to me exactly how complex Rick's plan at the end had to be. It involved him lying to everyone. It even involved lying and saying that Elsa was lying when she said she was in love with him. At the end, he manages to be a step ahead of everyone else in understanding what was at stake and what needed to be done. He has planned for every possible contingency, and everything he's said and done in the past few scenes - both the casual encounters and the big moments - have been to carefully calculated to make sure his plan is executed flawlessly.

The next time I watched it, I realized the complexity of Rick's plan should have been evident from the start. The moment we first see him, he's playing chess - a notoriously complex game of maneuvering and counter-maneuvering, in which the most successful players are able to see and plan several moves ahead of their opponents. Its a