J.D. Hansel

JD Hansel

The Straight Story Review

by

Coincidences come up an awful lot in my experiences viewing movies, and one such experience happened not too long ago when I was watching a YouTube video by Doug Walker, “Can an Ending Ruin a Film?”  I started watching the video sometime before my class on “art film” on Wednesday, but for whatever reason didn’t get around to finishing it until Thursday.  Within the last five minutes or so before that class began, he decided to show The Straight Story, which is David Lynch’s Disney movie.  The professor then explained for those of us who missed it, as I think I had, that the film had been subtly telling us everything about the character’s past and motivation, setting up the ending, without ever making it clear that any of the events of the first hour and a half of the film had a point.  The ending is when the audience is supposed to put everything together.  Interestingly, when I resumed Doug Walker’s video, I found I had apparently paused it just one second before he brought up The Straight Story, making the argument that the ending to this film turns it from a painfully boring film into a brilliant film.  Some might take this as a sign of some sort, but I am not a superstitious man – I just see this as a great opportunity to explain why this film actually sucks, even with the ending.

This film is horribly, horribly boring.  None of its characters are particularly interesting or likable – most of them are really quite forgettable – and the performances from the cast were not able to redeem the script in this area.  There are a few interesting moments that seem a little bit clever, cheeky, or quirky, all in the way one would expect from David Lynch, but they are severely overpowered by the surprising amount of banality in the film.  The plot is purposely slow and uninteresting, but as deliberate as this may have been, I have yet to understand what positive effect this was meant to have on the film as a whole.  The list of moral lessons and sappy moments throughout the film is unbearably long, and the number of times that I’m supposed to tear up but don’t feel anything by annoyance is nauseatingly high.  This is probably how most viewers feel about the film until the ending, but the ending doesn’t change anything for me.

The ending doesn’t tell us anything that isn’t part of a generic, cliché family separation story, so it isn’t exactly a big shock or an exceptionally moving moment.  When the brothers are reunited, I’m waiting to see what happens – to get more specific information about what exactly makes their conflict unique – but the film ends with little time spent on the brother.  The goal of the ending is to use the audience’s knowledge of Harry Dean Stanton (the brother, Lyle) and his previous film roles to fill in the gaps about what kind of guy his character in this story is supposed to be, ideally filling in the gaps about the conflict between the Straights.  This is rather silly, because I haven’t seen any other film of his, and even if I had, that tells me nothing about who this character is supposed to be.  It’s a gimmick that I doubt would work with the likes of John Wayne or Ben Stein, and it certainly doesn’t work here.  I think the main problem is that Richard Farnsworth (Alvin Straight) just isn’t likable enough for me to care about the conclusion to his story, so the story entirely falls flat, and the film leaves much to be desired.

154-the-straight-story

The Shining Review

by

MINOR SPOILERS

One of the tasks I’ve taken up recently is familiarizing myself with more classic horror cinema.  I’m usually not the type to enjoy being anxious and afraid, so it’s taken me a while to see the classics of this genre.  Fortunately, The Shining is an easy one for me to appreciate.  While it is scary, it’s not all about jump scares and other cheap tricks – it’s classy, as one would expect from Kubrick.  It’s fun, it’s clever, it’s thought-provoking, it’s suspenseful, and it’s memorable.  Even though it may not have totally sucked me in, I must say that I was consistently impressed with the cinematography, the editing, the acting, and the fascinating story.  I think that Scatman Crothers’ character (Dick Hallorann) could have been a little less creepy, because it’s very important that the audience likes this character, but I still rooted for him at the appropriate time.  It’s not entirely clear to me what everything in the movie meant exactly – and I do think some parts are meant to be open-ended – but that doesn’t affect the story too much.

It’s not my favorite film, but it’s one of my favorite Kubrick films, and I highly recommend it come next Halloween – just don’t expect it to be anything like the book . . . .

153-the-shining

The Asphalt Jungle Review

by

(SPOILER ALERT)

It’s surprising to me just how much better this film is on my second viewing – how much easier it is to follow and enjoy watching it after having already seen it before.  That’s not to say I really liked it the second time I watched it – in fact I never finished watching it a second time – but it is easier to appreciate.  The film has a structure that’s hard to work out on the onset, and the first few minutes of the film give the impression that the story will follow the perspective of the police officers more than the criminals.  Without any clear protagonist, and with an ensemble cast with intricate relationships, it’s easy to get lost in the story, as I did when I first started watching it.  There’s also the fact that I generally have little interest in crime and heist films, which made me hope for better motivations behind the characters’ actions so I could have an easier time getting invested.  On the second viewing, however, it has become clear to me that this film is very careful and detailed, making it rather fascinating.  I’m particularly fascinated by the role of women in the film.

I think it is quite safe to say that the filmmakers planned on having a mostly male audience, seeing as how the main characters in the film (or at least the ones who push the plot along) are men, so the film looks at women from a few male perspectives.  There seems to be a dichotomy presented between the “good life,” represented by adhering to domestic norms, and the wrong way of living, represented by inappropriate lust (or, to a lesser extent, greed).  The professor seems to have no interest in settling down with a wife – his ideal retirement is chasing the pretty Mexican girls around in the sunshine.  The film seems adamant about making the point that greed, lust, and criminality are all in the same family of things that ought to be avoided, and it is no surprise that Doc’s lust becomes his undoing.  Similarly, Emmerich’s affair seems to be at the very least related to his unhappy ending.  When Bob Brannom suggests that Emmerich went broke because of Angela (Marilyn), Emmerich denies it, saying it was his extravagant way of living, but I argue Emmerich would have no need for his many properties if he didn’t need places to have his affair.  “Doll” tries to pull Dix into the conventional, domestic, married life, but he inexplicably resists, instead pining after the horses of his home.

Interestingly, the film only touches on the subject of how crime can hurt one’s family.  The brief memorial service scene seems to mostly serve the function of reminding the audience of the consequences of criminal behavior, which is a message the film probably needed to drive home quite severely in order to get approved.  If a big proponent of Sobchack were to try to figure out why a family would be brought into this film, it seems that the reasons would be purely functional: to raise the stakes so the drama of the heist is more interesting, and to help the film get its approval.  I can’t help but wonder how entirely different the film would be if one woman had been involved in the heist itself and how the perspective on women the film presents might completely change.

Unfortunately, a film that’s fascinating in hindsight is not the same as one that’s entertaining from the start, which is really what I was hoping to see.  Some of the characters are really good and leave a strong impression, and I think that’s largely due to the great performances from Sam Jaffe, Jean Hagen, and of course Marilyn, but somehow this isn’t enough to keep the film interesting.  I recognize that it’s a well-made film in many respects, but it’s not my kind of thing.  I think I’ll have to finish my second viewing sometime, or maybe even watch it a third time, because as of right now, I’m wondering if I’ll ever decide if the film’s ending is an unsatisfying bummer or a work of poetic genius.

152-the-asphalt-jungle

Blue Velvet Review

by

It’s a little bit surprising to me that this was so popular.  It’s one of the strangest films I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen freaking Daisies.  What’s strange is that it doesn’t go all the way into the unfathomable and surreal – this is not Un Chien Andalou.  Parts of it feel like a slightly warped version of a Hollywood teen film, and parts of it feel like an artsy French film, but all of it feels like Lynch’s brand of the uncanny.  The film exists to make the spectator uncomfortable, and yet it stays grounded in something that is comfortable – a nostalgic representation of a small town that reminds me of home . . . until he turns that into something mildly unsettling as well.  The use of the fireman waving from his truck as it passes by turns from charming to creepy with virtually no change, and that’s the brand of the uncanny that Lynch does perfectly, making for a thriller experience.  At the same time, he mixes this with scenes that are more blatantly disturbing, yet kind of comedic, while ultimately ruining “In Dreams” for me.

A good example of this special style of his appears around nine minutes into his semi-concert movie Duran Duran: Unstaged, at which point a tunnel appears that leaves the viewer thinking, Is that even real?, before it clicks that it’s just a normal tunnel that everyone has driven through a million times.  He can make anything seem like something from another planet, but that’s not all there is to his style.  He also can present excellent visuals with beautiful extreme colors and throw in some neat visual effects.  He can make the viewer care about a character even if he/she seems really odd.  He uses good songs for his soundtracks and finds interesting uses for them.  He can play with psychological anxieties and Freudian symbols, thus arousing fascinating interpretation of his work.  So I suppose I can see why it was so popular now that I think about it – it’s the ideal Lynch film, never allowing the viewer to be at ease or anything but confused, and yet it tells a believable, concrete, and easy-to-follow story in a way that makes the story much more interesting than it would be in the hands of any other director.  On the other hand, I hope to high heavens I never see that lipstick-covered face of Dennis Hopper again.

Yuck.

151-blue-velvet

The Elephant Man Review

by

There is much to be said for a filmmaker that can repeat common stories, scenarios, and twists that we’ve all seen before while still making great work (and evoking a strong emotional response).  David Lynch is one of those filmmakers, as he demonstrated most clearly when he made The Elephant Man.  It’s Lynch’s go at a conventional Hollywood film, and we are very fortunate that Mel Brooks took a chance in bringing young Lynch on board to direct the project before he was well-known.  Obviously, everyone else involved in the project was already established, which means we get to see some great performances, and I would argue that the score is some of John Morris’ best work as a composer.  The story doesn’t really go anywhere, and it’s blatantly based on the old trope that “the monster isn’t the monster, the normal human is the monster,” and yet it all still works very well.  We fear for John when we’re supposed to fear for him, and we wonder if Treves is right in worrying that he’s mistreated John, and we adore Madge Kendal the same way John does.  The drama just works.

As a great combination of Hollywood drama and Lynchian weirdness, I think it’s a film everyone ought to see.

149-the-elephant-man

It Happened One Night Review

by

It’s an interesting sign of how times have changed to see that this was the “Best Picture” winner at the Oscars back in the mid-1930s.  This film would probably be dismissed today as a fairly average romantic comedy, but it actually was sort of novel at the time.  The notion of the “re-marriage comedy” as a sub-genre didn’t really exist before this film appeared, and director Frank Capra ended up solidifying elements of the romantic comedy (and arguably the screwball comedy) that would stick around to this day.  The story and characters are simple, and much of the film is predictable, but between the clever writing and the great performance given by Clark Gable, it still manages to be highly entertaining.  It’s easy to get tired of the old stereotype of the obnoxious, arrogant, manipulative man forcing himself into the woman’s life until she falls in love with him, but Gable makes the character likable, and even made the character so clever and funny that he became an influence on the comedy of Bugs Bunny.  The pacing is nice and speedy, and the witty dialogue exchanges are often so fast that they make today’s films and TV shows seem sluggish in comparison (and at the very least they rival the clever dialogue exchanges in the Smith/Coleman years of Doctor Who).  It’s not my favorite film, but it’s a smart, masterful, influential, and exemplary film.

148-it-happened-one-night