City without Pants

Jules Dassin's The Naked City (1948) was cutting edge when it was made, all on location, almost a documentary crime story. There are eight million stories in the naked city, this movie looks at a lot of them.

The main story is about a murdered model. The police, Barry Fitzgerald and Don Taylor, investigate and find plenty of shady characters, including Howard Duff. By the end, they have found the culprit and justice has been served.

But while all of this is going on, we are treated to a tour of the city - the streets, the tenements, the docks, newsstands and subways. Dassin "stole" a lot of this footage - the technical term for filming covertly on location, using the passersby as extras. I don't know how this went down in 1948 - my guess is that people felt a shock of recognition, immediacy, like they could see themselves. Now, it's more like a museum of New York, a sort-of-ordinary police procedural wrapped in a lovely documentary.

Sort of off-topic, but there was a thread on Movie Morlocks about how creepy Barry Fitzgerald is, with his professional Irishman mannerisms. I had that in mind while watching this, and I could really see it.

Better RED than Dead

Watching RED 2 (2013) was pretty much inevitable. I don't think I remembered to blog the first RED; I saw it around the same time as a bunch of similar movies, like the new Mechanic or From Paris with Love, and I guess it fell through the cracks. I kind of liked it - it had a lot of action, and silly love May-December love story, John Malkovich playing a psycho and Helen Mirren.

The new one has all the above. It seems little tired, but that makes sense, since they are theoretically retired. The gag here is that Bruce Willis wants to relax with his young girlfriend Mary Louise Parker, but she wants to do hired killer/spy stuff with the old crew. Adding to the fun are Catherine Zeta-Jones as a femme fatale from Willis' past and Byun Hung Lee as Willis' nemesis.

But I'm afraid it is all a little rote, with only Helen Mirren really cutting through. She brings an amazing amount of presence to the role, and has the best single moment in the movie: Shooting out of the left and right-hand windows of a spinning car. And that scene was in the trailer, so we'd already seen the best part.

Maybe I'm getting a little burned out on these actioners, or maybe this was a particularly uninspired number, but I feel like this is one of those movies that you should only watch if you feel like watching one of these movies. And you don't really care how good it is.

Seeing Red

I remember Redbelt (2008) as being controversial when it came out - was it brilliant, was it pretentious, was it crap? We thought it was great.

Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instructor. His studio is humble, although he has some pretty good students, including cop Randy Couture. A woman with problems shows up, and causes more problems. Ejiofor breaks up a bar fight later on and winds up saving an action movie star (Tim Allen?!?). So on the one hand, he is broke and in legal hot water. On the other, he has made friends with someone rich and powerful in Hollywood. And he is being tempted to compete in a mixed martial arts tourney by promoter Ricky Jay. Oh yeah, Joe Mantegna is around, stirring up trouble.

If those last two cast members didn't clue you, David Mamet wrote and directed this. It turns out that he is a BJJ student and this was somewhat a labor of love. It is also full of Mamet dialog, but not so stilted and structured as to be over the top. The plot doesn't always seem to make sense - What is it with the treacherous Tim Allen, his wife and evil agent Joe Mantegna? But it all builds on testing Ejiofor and his statement that "There is no situation you could not escape from." The final fight scene is both inevitable and surprising.

There is a bit of fighting, but this isn't much of an action movie - more of an exploration of the martial arts.
Since it's a Mamet film, it's full of terse, tough, philosophical dialog. I don't think he ever goes over the top with it, although your mileage may vary. He has been studying Jiu Jitsu for a while, it seems, and the material seems pretty simpatico.

Race War

Until now, I hadn't see Death Race 2000 (1975). So sue me. I had seen the new classic 2008 Death Race, and one or two of the sequels. I thought I had seen it, at a drive-in or on TV or something, but that was just zeitgeist or something.

It's the year 2000, and the theocratic dictatorship of America holds races across the country, with the dual objectives of getting there first, and running over the most pedestrians. You get so many points for schoolkids, more for the elderly, special points for nuns, etc. We used to play that game all the time when I was in high school - never knew where that came from.

Racers include David Caradine as Frankenstein, the horribly mutilated and stitched back together crowd-pleaser, Sylvester Stallone as his main rival, Mary Woronov (did I mention this is a Roger Corman flick), and Roberta Collins as popular Nazi Mathilda the Hun. Meanwhile, a group of dissidents led by a Carrie Nation-like demagogue, played by Harriet Medin, are fighting to overthrow the governemt and the Death Race.

I told you Roger Corman produced, now I must mention that Paul Bartels is directing, first time in that chair. From this I assumed DR2K would have satirical elements, but I was wrong. It is an out-and-out farce, pure black comedy. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but not a serious frame, even when Frankenstein is killing his pit crew.

Take the cars, for instance. They were built by Dean Jeffries, known for the 1960's Batmobile, Black Beauty and Monkee Mobile. I was expecting something from Mad Max, but these are a lot closer to Wacky Racer territory.

Big Event

I wasn't planning to watch Event Horizon (1997) - frankly, I was chicken. But Ms. Spenser, inspired by the Film Sack episode, talked me into it.

The scientific space mission Event Horizon has become lost around Neptune, and the ship Lewis and Clark is sent out on a rescue mission. They arrive to find corpses, hallucinations and madness. Also, a ship full of pointy things and non-OSHA-approved fixtures.

I think the original pitch was "The Shining in space" - the genre is definitely sci-fi horror. The cast is great - Laurence Fishburne as grouchy captain, Sam Neill as twitchy mad scientist, and a bunch of redshirts. The horror is horrible, but comes in small doses - lots of almost subliminal blips of hell. So my sensitive feelings were not upset.

In conclusion, possibly a classic of sci-fi horror, but I'm not that into sci-fi horror.

Real Live Boy

As mentioned in the Dragonball: Evolution post, we are kind of manga fans. As a result, Astro Boy (2009) was kind of up our alley. Fortunately, we didn't get our hopes up.

Astro Boy (named Tetsuwan Atom in Japanese) was possibly the greatest creation of Osamu Tezuka, possibly the greatest manga artist. It is the adventures of a robot built by grieving Dr. Tenma to replace his dead son. The robot has cool powers and is almost a real boy, but his creator rejects him, because Astro can't be his son.

That is roughly the story in this computer animated 3-D modeled version. Astro Boy is voiced by Freddie Highmore, Dr. Tenma by Nicholas Cage (who keeps it pretty light). The art design in nicely retro, with a lot of 2-D animation thrown in. There is some cute robot liberation politics thrown in, since the moral of the story is clearly anti-discrimination.

But overall, it really didn't thrill us. The character design was weird, not very close to the beloved originals (except Dr. Elefun, who was pretty spot on). The story seemed to drag, and I didn't get a real sense of authenticity from it.

Oh well, they can't all be Iron Giant.

That's Me in the Spotlight

Readers who were embarrassed by my gushing, fulsome review of The T.A.M.I. Show might want to skip this post. But definitely don't skip the movie 20 Feet from Stardom (2013).

20 Feet is a documentary about backup singers - like the "colored girls" in Lou Reed's songs. They are the anonymous voices that support the lead singer with sweet harmonies or soulful cries. You may have heard of one or two of these voices, like Darlene Love, but you have definitely sung along with the other, like Merry Clayton (Gimme Shelter, Sweet Home Alabama), Lisa Fischer (Sting, Rolling Stones), Tata Vega (Stevie Wonder, The Color Purple). This movie gives you faces to go along with the voices.

First, a couple of downsides:

1. A major theme of the movie is the question of fame: What puts some people in the spotlight, and leaves some in the chorus? Is it talent, luck, ambition, or do some people just prefer to take a paycheck and go home? The movie seems to lean toward the latter view, but constantly subverts it with stories about how these singers wanted to solo but couldn't break in. 
2. Although the movie puts names and faces to the previously anonymous singers, it weaves their stories together in a way that suggests that they are interchangeable. In fact, after talking about one singers solo album, it panned down a whole long gallery of obscure solo albums released by other backup singers. Sure, it was a common fate, but these are individuals.
3. There are just too many stories, singers and songs that had to be left out to keep it down to ~90 minutes.

But these issues are all swept away by the awesome power of these (mostly) black women's voices. Almost every clip they played sent chills up my spine, and I had tears in my eyes by about the 10-minute mark. The stories are interesting, the singers are fascinating, but their songs - both backup and solo - are amazing.

If the movie leaves you wanting more, you might want to check out the director, Morgan Neville, talking with Elvis Mitchell on his podcast The Treatment. Lots more stories and discussion, lots of fun.

In conclusion, they didn't even mention the greatest backup group ever, the Sweet Inspirations. Too famous, maybe?

Update, 3 Mar 2014: Looks like this won Academy Award for Best Documentary. The only nominee I watched this year, too.