J.D. Hansel

New Movie Reviews

Top Hat Review

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This film was not what I expected it to be, and yet it was only what I expected it to be.  There are some dance numbers in here that are very nice and impressive, and that feel like what I would expect from this duo, but only one or two, and I had already seen one of them.  For some reason I thought there would be a bit more of the two of them dancing and a bit more fun, with less of the two antagonizing each other.  Most of the film, however, is dominated by their bizarre conflict/romance and a cliché story of mistaken identity.  I’m not sure if it seemed as cliché at the time, of course, but it felt very much like it was just repeating the kind of things one finds in the usual comedic plays of someone like Oscar Wilde, or even Shakespeare.  In a way, this makes it a very standard romantic comedy, although it’s still a very smart one, so it serves as a great example of what a serviceable Classical Hollywood romantic comedy feels like (just with more cool dancing).

Of course, don’t think for a second that I don’t really like this movie.  Certain aspects of some of these dance numbers are brilliant, and a lot of the writing of the dialogue is clever too, which was only improved by the strong characterizations these actors brought to their characters, so I can see why this film is so popular.  Perhaps I’ve been a bit too hard on this movie – it did, after all, give us the song “Cheek to Cheek,” which is one of the greatest love songs of all time – but for whatever reason, I just felt like something was missing.  I’m not sure what.  I feel like the movie was somehow not fun enough, even though I enjoyed myself watching it, and Fred Astaire’s character seemed to be having a great deal of fun the whole time.  Still, since this was my first time actually watching an Astaire-Rogers musical in its entirety, I was hoping for something a little more bright and dazzling, but maybe I’ll find that in another one of their films.

What About Bob? Review

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I generally try to be a really tough critic.  I never give five stars, and I only give four and a half stars to the movies that grab me in the most intense and personal ways possible or impress me such that I would not object to considering them the greatest films of all time.  Naturally, I try to keep the list of films that get this most esteemed rating as small as possible, with only a few such reviews every year so they only make up about 10% of my reviews.  As I watched What About Bob?, I could tell that this film was in the 4 to 4.5 zone, but I wasn’t sure where, and I regrettably remained unsure even after the film had ended.  Over time, however, I found myself leaning towards 4.5 not only because its particular story and comedy style grab me personally, but because I kept laughing at its comedy after weeks had passed since I watched the film.

I do believe that this film is truly (and perhaps objectively) good, but the reasons why I love it are more subjective.  I have a personal connection to What About Bob? because I love Frank Oz, who directed the film, and I’ve grown fond of his style as a filmmaker and humorist.  He also cast fellow Muppet performer Fran Brill as a fairly significant character in the film, which I greatly appreciate – it’s not every film that pairs Bill Murray with Prairie Dawn.  I also just like comedic stories about craziness, mental illness, anxiety, psychology, and the brain, which is why films like High Anxiety, Silver Linings Playbook, Crazy People, and Inside Out are among my favorites.  I also like comedy that focuses on the dynamic between characters that each have distinct and understandable personalities, a la the early Harry Potter films and certain Muppet movies.

To be more objective, however, the story is cleverly written, and the performances are absolutely excellent. Richard Dreyfuss in particular clearly had a difficult task in that his character must become progressively and consistently less sane, while staying somewhat relatable during most of the film, and I think he handled it very well, delivering most of the film’s best comedy.  I will say that the extent to which I empathize with Dreyfuss’ character does at times get in the way of the comedy, and it is perhaps a consequence of this that the film’s ending feels a little weak, but overall, What About Bob? offers the high level of cinematic craftsmanship that I’ve come to expect from Frank Oz.  I don’t think this movie gets a lot of credit as one of the greats – although it did make Bravo’s list of the “100 Funniest Movies” and a quote from the film is in my movie quotes daily calendar – but regardless of what anyone else might think of it, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Metropolis Review: Upon Further Consideration…

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NOTE: This is an amendment to an earlier review of the same film.

When I first watched this movie, it was the Giorgio Moroder version (a soundtrack comprised of ’80s pop that only sometimes fit the scene well).  This is because I had little tolerance for silent cinema at the time, and while I still don’t think I’m very good at watching silent movies, I’m improving.  The main reason why it made sense for me to return to this story is that the version I saw from back in the ’80s was missing so much of the movie – a lot of the film was lost and had yet to be restored.  I didn’t realize that at the time, so I stupidly criticized Lang for the unintelligible plot that the incomplete version had (and felt quite ashamed when I learned within the month or so that followed that I had been so ignorant of such important information).  The current (2010) version is missing only about five minutes, which is why it’s called “The Complete Metropolis” in some editions, and its plot is perfectly understandable and enjoyable.  For this and other reasons, although I’m not changing the four-star rating I gave the film before, I think I appreciate the movie even more than I did years ago.

It is very clear that this is a unique work of art from the very beginning.  The film’s opening – specifically the title card – is in and of itself worthy of praise, and it sets the exciting tone for the epic movie that follows.  The film is structured in three acts, more or less, and the cards that tell us how far we are through the movie help to create the theatrical experience.  The theatrical feeling – that is, the feeling of being at a stage show – makes me wish I could see this in the form of a musical, but I know that it is designed to serve a very different purpose.  Lang is borrowing from theater to appeal to the people who would be too embarrassed to go to a film that didn’t resemble high culture in some way: the upper class.  This project of making cinema something for intelligent and sophisticated audiences was very important to many German filmmakers at the time, and it is apparent in the relentless use of biblical references all throughout the film, even including the obscure Canaanite god “Moloch.”  The protagonist is very much a Christ-like figure, but is also at least as much a Moses (since he is, more or less, the son of Pharaoh).  Nods to the Tower of Babel are also mixed in, with Maria entirely reworking the story to support her thesis – an unsettling use of religion that sort of makes Maria, a very moral character, seem almost like a lying demagogue.

The film has such a strange mix of elements that I love and elements that I find frustratingly disappointing.  The binary between the moral Maria who hasn’t a bad bone in her body (and who seems like she might as well be oblivious to the existence of sex) and the robot Maria who embraces all things sexual and wild is a great setup, but it would have been great for the two of them to have had an encounter.  The protagonist is a fascinating character: he has a number of visions that make him either a madman or a supernatural prophet, and the has his most important vision – a nightmare sequence – after he wakes up, whereas any other film would show him having a nightmare and then waking up.  It is actually this nightmare scene that makes the film work for me; it’s my favorite part of the movie because it builds up to such a satisfying climax of the second act, ending just as perfectly as the second Hunger Games film does.  I can’t help but compare it to the film adaptations of Carrie, which send us into the third act with great anticipation to see how everything’s about to fall to chaos, “B-movie style,” although Lang gives us more hype before act three that makes it all that much better.  The problem is that the third act doesn’t offer quite enough excitement to live up to this hype, instead feeling rather long.  The ending, too, is not as satisfying as it could be, mostly because the message that the film keeps preaching about the heart being a “mediator” isn’t very meaningful (and I think I read somewhere that Lang himself didn’t sincerely believe it).

This issue of the vague thesis brings me to the question of what the heck this movie is supposed to be.  Is it a utopia or a dystopia?  I hear that Hitler loved this movie, but I can’t tell if it promotes fascism, socialism, democracy, or some other form of government entirely.  Somehow this movie is very European and very American.  It may be in black and white, but it is very colorful (although perhaps my memories of the lovely tints in the Moroder version have shaped the way I want to see this version).  I can’t even tell what I’m supposed to think about technology after watching this film.  It almost tries to undercut its every move, and yet it still manages to be a very satisfying experience.  There’s a kind of energy in this film that’s infectious, and it’s the kind of movie that I just want to have on in the background all the time because I enjoy its essence more than anything else about it.  After thinking about all of this, one thing has become more and more clear: this must, indeed, be made into a musical.  Get to it.

Carrie (1976) Review

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MINOR SPOILER WARNING

This is one review that I didn’t think I’d ever be writing.  Some readers may recall the first time I reviewed a Carrie adaptation – when I saw the 2013 Carrie movie – at which point I decided that the original Brian de Palma film was not for me. I was in a place in life when I wanted to see the story taken very seriously, and I didn’t want it to be too fun, too silly, too campy – with the possible exception of the ending. For anyone with any familiarity with the Stephen King story, the ending is the part where, no matter how serious and dramatic the adaptation has been up until this point, the viewers had better throw their hands in the air and get ready to ride this roller-coaster down into the pits of Hades, laughing and screaming all the way. Still, this is one of the very few stories for which I feel it is best for a film to do as good of a job as possible at making everything seem very real, believable, and even mundane for the first two acts – employing an almost Our Town-like structure in saving the fantastic elements for the ending.  Much to my surprise, this movie mostly sticks to this form, offering much more realism than I would have expected.  The fact that so much of de Palma’s film makes it feel like these could be real people in a real high school assuages most of the concerns I had about about watching this movie, but the parts that are over-the-top and expressionistic are the kind of fun ’70s cult horror moments that my recent fascination with this sub-genre has made me crave.

When I wrote the review for the 2013 movie, I was in a different place in life.  I wanted to approach this story as seriously as possible and find in it something that could be used to express to the older generations why it is that so many teenagers suffer from depression and anxiety these days.  The 1976 film doesn’t work for that, but it might have served that purpose back in its day, leading me to suspect that – in general – the best version of Carrie is whichever one best expresses the anxieties to the viewers in its time.  The film I watched first may have been best for 2013 (at least for teenage viewers) while the 1976 film was probably best for the 1970s – each feels very much like a reflection of its time.  That’s why the ’76 version needs to be approached differently now – it’s a time-capsule, and the fashions of the era have not aged well.  As I’d initially feared, much of it is comical, but even some of the cheesiest moments with John Travolta feel they could have happened back then.  That being said, part of why I loved this movie so much is the stuff that doesn’t feel normal at all.  I watched this movie specifically because I wanted to see more of the kind of thing Brian de Palma did with Phantom of the Paradise, so I wanted to laugh, to feel confused, to have fun, and to cheer as the style got very expressionistic and experimental.  I came into this movie with the goal of seeing weird little kinks like sped-up dialogue to get us through a scene faster and a split-screen effect that shows two aspects of the same action – and I kind of wanted everything to be a joke.

Still, while that may seem like the exact opposite of what I wanted from this story when I watched the 2013 film, there are some things that I would’ve had to admit are perfect here even if I’d watched this movie back in the summer of 2015.  Julianne Moore may be a great actress, but the mother in this film is obviously superior, making the character seem believably uncanny for most of the film and then delightfully creepy in the end.  Even the Carrie in this film, whom I’d suspected I would have a hard time taking seriously with her acting style and her accent, is generally as relatable, likable, and believable as I’d like, and is exactly as scary as one would hope by the end.  The final scene is absolutely perfect and gave me a bigger scare than anything I’ve seen on screen in a long time – in a good way.  Even the colors, which I thought would detract from the reality of the world, actually make sense because they come from the lights at the prom, so the parts that feel theatrical still feel plausible and very much at home here.  Then, of course, there is the visual poetry in the resemblance between Carrie’s mother and the creepy Jesus figure, which may not have much of a deep meaning in this story, but it’s a heck of a cherry on top.

It’s also worth making it clear that most of the things critics complained about in the 2013 film aren’t very different from the 1976 film that is so critically revered.  The Carrie in this movie is just as pretty as Chloe Grace Moretz, and it actually seems less plausible that Sissy Spacek would have been considered too strange-looking to be one of the popular girls.  Critics complained that the 2013 film isn’t scary enough, but this film isn’t much scarier, and that’s not really the point of the story anyway.  Critics argued that the Moretz film lacked a build-up to the finale that the story requires, but I felt the build-up about equally across each film – although that may have been because I already knew the story before watching either movie.  I will concede that the critics are right in pointing out that, in comparison to de Palma’s work, Kimberly Peirce’s film didn’t seem to do much with the story that stood out – she didn’t get very playful, and one could call her work rather boring – but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing if the aim is making everything feel normal for most of the film (again, I refer to Our Town).  With that said, however, it is the Brian de Palma film that must go down in history as a classic because it manages to be such a great and important drama while being a bundle of fun and laughter.  As far as I’m concerned, while it may not be the kind of horror that most people are used to, this is the ultimate horror classic (excluding horror comedies like Gremlins) and I love it just the way it is.

Dick Tracy Review

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In my experience, if a story and its characters are good enough, I can forgive many aspects of a film that seem lacking.  I can forgive the forgettable music scores and relentlessly bland visuals of most contemporary films so long as I’m invested in what the characters are trying to do.  For this reason, I’ve held the position for many years now that a film’s cinematography, choreography, mise en scène, color scheme, lighting, score, attention to detail, use of the camera for visual storytelling, and even (to some extent) acting are not sufficient reasons to consider a film great – it is the content that matters.  As an intellectual who looks at cinema as a communication medium, this makes sense – great presentation of a bad idea is still a bad idea – so I usually have had no problem appreciating the impressive aspects of a visually pleasing film (see Carousel) or even a film with excellent performances (see American Hustle) while still hating the movie.  However, as I have long feared it would, Dick Tracy has challenged this perspective: the main character, the plot, and seemingly the directing (at least in some respects) are all sub-par at best, but with its stylistic excellence, I cannot help but love this movie with all my heart.

In my attempts to find a way to justify my arguments with my feelings as I’ve thought about what to write for this review, one thought that keeps recurring is how similar this film seems to The Dark Crystal.  Here we have a creative producer who has taken on the task of directing a passion project of his with a visual style that no one has ever seen before, even going so far as to play the lead himself to ensure that everything is done right, and yet something is still very wrong here.  Dick Tracy is just not a likable character, Madonna doesn’t work all that well for the particular kind of sexy that’s required of her, and somehow the very simple plot seems too complex to follow.  Even stylistically there are problems, especially because of the pacing.  It’s incredibly jarring to see the big scene in which Tracy goes and catches a bunch of bad guys, knocking people out all the while, as a very slow jazz song plays over it.  Weirdly though, the fact that it is terrible almost makes it better – I think this belongs in the category of “génial–nanar blends”  These are films that are sometimes so bad that they’re good, and other times so good that they’re great (and occasionally they’re all of these at once).

I think this is a fair case because of just how many strong elements this film has.  I cannot emphasize enough that most of the cast is excellent.  The cameos kept surprising me, although they sometimes seemed awkward – consider Colm Meaney (Miles O’Brien of the Star Trek franchise) as one example, who appears in the background as a police officer in one scene and is easy to miss if the viewer isn’t paying attention.  Dick van Dyke is as delightful as always, Al Pacino is perfect for his part, and Dustin Hoffman had me in hysterics with his unique performance.  For the most part, however, what makes the characters work so well is the way they look.  The make-up and costumes are very much deserving of the awards they’ve won, and the kinds of faces that appear in this movie simply aren’t in any other films at all – this look distinctly belongs to Tracy’s world.  While I could easily put together an image gallery that showcases the make-up, I’ve decided not to do that because I don’t want to give that away for any readers who may not have seen the film.  I do, however, want to show off some of the shots that are cool simply because of the lighting, colors, sets, backgrounds, and camerawork, just to back up my case that this is the best-looking film ever made.  For a taste of what this film’s visual style has to offer – and I’ve only pulled from a particular section in the middle so the rest of the movie’s visuals aren’t spoiled – enjoy the following gallery:

By this point, it should be fairly easy to see why I love this movie, but I want to make it clear that I still don’t think I’m straying too far away from the theoretical principles to which I have claimed to be subscribed.  To me, an interesting story involves following a character who’s in a fascinating situation, and usually what makes the situation interesting is how the character clashes with his/her context.  Here, the situation of being in this kind of warped world with such strange characters is so interesting that virtually any character, no matter how uninteresting, can make this film captivating, as long as he/she is reasonably consistent as a character.  I can’t stand films that try to present an imaginative world in an objective and emotionally distant way, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, but a film with an immersive and captivating world (see Dark City) invites the viewer to explore it and get wrapped up in it, which makes full use of cinema in its purest form: transportive simulation.  Perhaps more importantly, however, is the appeal that comes from a different story that the film reflects, which is the story of its own construction.  This film offers a way to watch a director struggle to create the kind of world that his film needs, and the mix of powerful successes and unbelievable failures gives the film a very cinematic sort of drama.  This tension in the film is just enough of a story of its own for the needs I expressed in the first paragraph of this essay to be appeased, making for a very enjoyable movie experience.

Also, I truly do consider this to be, in terms of visuals only, the greatest film ever made, and I would appreciate it if any readers challenged that by offering an example of a film that looks even better.  This is not a request, but a dare.  Please accept it.

Psycho Review

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SPOILER WARNING

I think I’m being very kind with my rating – perhaps overly kind.  While I’m not sure I would say that I had high expectations for Psycho, I will say that I was hopeful.  I have often been curious about how this film would work ever since I heard that it killed off its protagonist within the first act.  I had concerns that the movie would feel like it had no real purpose after that scene, but fortunately, the structure of the movie is perfectly fine.  The problem is that I nearly fell asleep watching it (and that is no exageration) because of how slow and boring it gets at times.  It’s another one of those films that falls into the category of “tederesting” – films that are fascinating and keep me curious about how they will unfold, but don’t grab me emotionally and consequently leave me with an annoying sense of boredom.  I can’t say I dislike it – some parts are genuinely chilling, and the ending is satisfyingly eerie – but it had such a hard time holding my attention that I can’t really consider it one of my favorites.  It may not be the kind of horror classic one watches for a fun date night, but it is a fascinating example of the kinds of strange and surprising stories that can be told when a filmmaker has the boldness to play with the story structure and keep the audience guessing what could possibly come next.  It’s not quite as good as The Birds, but it’s still worth the watch.