Essential Classics

Out of the Past Review

March 31, 2016 by JD Hansel

In contrast to the western, film noir is more like my cup of tea. I’ll take the visual style of noir over the visual style of the western any day of the week. It’s so dark, smokey, dramatic, theatrical, and mysterious. How could a saloon girl compare to a deadly, spunky femme fatale? How could a singing cowboy compare to an eerie saxophone? Film noir has a special charm about it that I appreciate, but I haven’t actually watched many films in the genre (if any) all the way through, until I finally saw Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past. This picture is a good example of what film noir has to offer to the history of cinema, but what it presents is both the good and bad aspects of the genre.

This is, in its own way, a very interesting movie. It still strikes me as “tederesting” more than captivating, but it is very easy to get lost in the world of the film. The structure is surprisingly pleasant, because the first act or two is/are done almost entirely within a flashback. The plot does take surprising twists and turns, and it handles the twists and turns well . . . for the most part. Eventually, as can happen with noir, the plot becomes unintelligible. It gets too difficult to tell who’s who and why each of them is doing what he/she is doing. As it turns out, the characters are also unsure of what’s going on, and they are surprisingly struggling to know why they are doing what they are doing.

I wish to elaborate on the subject of motivation, because it is an important subject in art and philosophy that I have yet to address in a movie review, and this is the ideal motion picture for beginning this discussion. In fiction, deterministic fatalism is generally treated as a pleasant view of life – the good side is predestined to beat the bad side, and the chosen one simply must save the day because the prophecy says so. While I am not a fatalist, I am a determinist, which is to say that I stand by the evidence that our thoughts and actions are determined by subconscious brain activity we cannot control, which leaves us without freedom of will (in that we are not the source of our own intentions and desires). That being said, I would obviously much rather live in a world in which we do have free will, and the fact that this cannot be is troubling. This movie exemplifies how the genre of film noir uses this troubling predicament to make good drama.

Kathie is the femme fatale with a lot of bad habits, from shooting people without sufficient reason to being a compulsive liar. When challenged for her actions, she persistently claims that she didn’t want to do what she did – she had to, and she couldn’t explain why. In my film history class, the professor explained why. Noir is fascinating because it shows the consequences of living in a world with not only determinism, but fatalism, in that the characters have certain actions that they must commit regardless of their intentions, and they have no control over whether these actions will be good or bad. This is, when pondered, a rather terrifying concept, which brings all the fiction that celebrates “destiny” under serious scrutiny. As annoying as it was to repeatedly hear Kathie’s rejection of responsibility for her actions, this did make me realize that there is a certain kind of conflict that I want to see far more of in cinema: the struggle for freedom in a world that cannot have free will. This subject may very well be the most captivating concept that any work of art could discuss, at least in my opinion, and I wouldn’t have even thought of it if not for Out of the Past.

Overall, this movie is fine. It’s true that I couldn’t fully appreciate the characters, and it’s true that I found the ending a little unsatisfactory. I found it rather slow at many times, particularly in the last act, and I could not keep track of the chaotic plot-line (which was more of a plot-scribble) if I were well paid to do so. However, it does provide a bit of entertainment, and can even be surprisingly thought-provoking, so I give it a pass.

Modern Times Review

February 11, 2016 by JD Hansel

It’s really quite fitting that Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times gets the review that follows my review of Brazil. Each one is a crazy comedy that can get rather over the top, but each one is also a social commentary with something to say; namely, these films express frustration with the faulty technology that’s being thrust upon them. This is somewhat noticeable when the Tramp has to work with a conveyor belt that goes too fast, and he ends up getting carried by the conveyor belt into the giant gears that run the machinery in the factory where he works. However, when this attitude is most obvious is when the Tramp is strapped into a machine that feeds the factory workers lunch so that they don’t need to take a lunch break – which sounds just like something Gilliam would have loved to put into Brazil had the idea not been taken already – and of course, it goes berserk. This kind of a film is to be expected from a man who had been very popular in the silent era, but now had virtually no choice but to make sound films (Modern Times being his first go at them). This movie is fascinating because it shows what happens when the man who had universal appeal in silent cinema tries to make a part-talkie so he can adapt to… well, “modern times.”

Overall, I’d say Chaplin did a good job. The story isn’t all that coherent, but since this film comes from an early time in the history of feature-length narrative film, and because the movie had to be tailored to fit the Tramp’s style, I’m willing to be quite forgiving about that. As long as the comedy and the characters work, and as long as sound is used well, I think this movie did what it needed to do; I’d say these goals were all achieved. I was quite surprised by how much I enjoyed Ellen, his leading lady, who brought a lot of energy and excitement to the picture. I was very fascinated by Chaplin’s depiction of the depression, which made me feel like I was looking at an entirely different world from our own. While I don’t think the musical number towards the end is particularly enjoyable, and although I get bothered by how the film jumps around from one situation to a completely different one, I recommend this movie to anyone who likes part-talkies and loves big laughs.

Brazil Review

January 28, 2016 by JD Hansel

SPOILER ALERT

I think I finally understand what happened here! Not what happens in the movie Brazil – I could never understand that – but what happened to Labyrinth and Time Bandits. Some movie buffs and comedy lovers may know that the Monty Python approach to writing movies was generally to come up with different scenes/sketches that would be funny all centered around a general theme, and then a loose story would be created out of stringing the pieces of the movie together. Naturally, when someone who approaches screenwriting this way has the challenge of writing a more traditional narrative story (that’s focused on likable characters dealing with a dramatic plot, even if that drama is not meant to be taken seriously) we can expect issues to arise with the flow of the story. For Labyrinth, Terry Jones’ screenplay had to be doctored in secret by other writers because it needed a lot of work before it could be made into the film Jim wanted (which still had leftover story problems in the end). For Time Bandits, fellow Pythoner Terry Gilliam made a bizarre family film that makes no sense whatsoever, and is often more awkward and convoluted than entertaining. For Brazil, Gilliam made an iconic ’80s movie masterpiece, but it had similar flaws.

Before going any further, I must recognize that this is, in some ways, a brilliant film. As satire, it’s practically perfect in every way, and makes the human race seem hilariously absurd. At some moments, its comedic criticism of war is better than Stanley Kubrick’s. Much of the film is good fun, and the performances are perfect. The world Gilliam created is brilliantly clever, and the visuals are absolutely outstanding. This truly is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever laid eyes upon, as far as visual art is concerned, because the lighting, the colors, the set designs, and the cinematography are all spot-on. It’s a masterful work of art that raises the bar for the genre of comedy films, and I can respect it if people love this movie a heck of a lot more than I do.

I, however, just don’t get it. Every now and again, I encounter a movie that has me saying to myself, “What the heck IS this movie?!” more and more as the film progresses. It’s a very memorable experience, and it usually means that the movie is going to mean a lot to me for a long time, regardless of whether I think of it positively or negatively. This film had that special quality to it like no movie I’ve seen in a long time, if ever, and I can’t help but be reminded of the first time I saw Gremlins 2, one of my favorite films, and the first time I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of my least favorite. As blown away as I was with just how perfect certain elements of the film are, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that the story didn’t make enough sense. Some of that special feeling I mentioned above was coming from a sense of being immensely impressed, but some was coming from being annoyingly confused. I now understand why Roger Ebert only gave Brazil just two stars saying, “This is a confused and unsatisfying film in which the magnitude of the special effects, and the chaotic implications of the plot, make the movie hard work for any audience to follow, let alone appreciate.”

So, my first criticism is that the movie doesn’t make enough sense. What starts off seeming like it offers too little with its minimalist plot (which consists of a man trying to meet the woman he’s seen in his dreams) eventually unravels into a psychedelic acid rock song that’s sad about the loss of friendships and angry with society’s constraints. There is very little correlation between what happens in Sam’s dreams and what he deals with in real life, and this gives the audience too big of a chore when they have to try to find the patterns and the meaning in all this. Heck, even the movie’s title, and its titular song of the same name, don’t seem to be very connected to the film at all. There are just too many things that Gilliam did not communicate as efficiently as one would hope.

My second big criticism is directly tied into the first, as it pertains to the lack of satisfaction. I’m not against a movie that doesn’t end with the characters living happily ever after, but I am against endings that don’t feel “correct.” I may have written a bit too much about this before, but screenwriter Terry Rossio’s rules about how an ending must be set up, inevitable, and yet unexpected are a good way to figure out why one might feel unsatisfied by a movie. If the simplistic plot consists of navigating through a dystopian future to marry a dream-girl, there had better be a good reason for missing the one goal we’re rooting for Sam to achieve, but this Gilliam’s only reason seems to be that he wanted to blow one last raspberry at western governments before he had to step down from his soap box.

I think it’s plain to see that I have mixed feelings about this unique work of art. The various trains of thought that I’ve boarded because of this film are so numerous and labyrinthine that I can reach no final verdict. I can completely respect the opinion that this is one of the greatest motion pictures of all time, and I can equally respect the opinion that this movie is whiny, bitter rubbish. Any efforts to unveil what exactly I feel because of Brazil seem to be disappointingly futile, but perhaps the important thing is that it made me feel, and it did so profusely. When it comes to rating the visuals, however, my feelings are clear: it’s in the 99.9th percentile, A++.

Dr. Strangelove Review

October 17, 2015 by JD Hansel

For October, I decided I would review only scary movies, or at least films with monstrous or otherwise Halloween-related themes. The problem is that I didn’t think of this until I’d already watched Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a film that isn’t really about Dr. Strangelove, and that never explains how anyone learned to love any bombs. In a way, this is still fitting for a time focused on scary themes since the threat of being nuked was arguably the biggest scare of the twentieth century. For me, however, the most frightening element of the movie was knowing who directed it . . . Stanley Kubrick.

Kubrick and I have a history. Many years ago (actually it was about a year and a half ago, but that doesn’t sound as dramatic), I was taking a history of film class, when all of the sudden . . . Kubrick.

Evil Kubrick Devil — This image has been stolen from the good people at Channel Awesome, who used this graphic in this excellent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZAzHbUw5W8

When I expected a thoughtful science fiction film that would make me re-think life, humanity, and the universe, what I received was a headache. I expect it’s only a matter of time before I put together some sort of video, article, or other presentation on what it is about 2001: A Space Odyssey that I find terrible, but I’ll try to express it briefly here: if a work of media tries to talk about ideas for the audience to consider, it should use complete sentences. In other words, it should explicate the ideas thoughtfully rather than gesturing towards potential ideas and interpretations that an audience member might project onto the work. After all, if an artist’s work is ambiguous enough, it’ll have all the depth that the individual viewer chooses to see in it, but if the work is detailed enough, its depth will be undeniable. While 2001 is certainly visually detailed, its story is deliberately vague in all of the areas where it should be most expository, making the “storytelling” resemble interpretive dance more than it does narrative. My brain was desperately trying to find meaning throughout where there was none, and since I am not the type to put my own thoughts into the storyteller’s mouth, I found myself bored to tears (not figuratively – literally) and forever terrified of the Dumbfounding Devil.

Then, on one fateful night not so long ago, I dared to watch another of Kubrick’s films – this time the famous comedy Dr. Strangelove – and to my shock I found . . . it was okay. Strangelove is certainly no Python or Brooks film, but it has its moments that really do delight. I was a bit disappointed that there are no noticeable jokes (not in any conventional sense, that is) for the first 35 minutes, but the movie can get away with it because it keeps the audience in suspense concerning what’s going to happen with the bomb. I could still see the Dumbfounding Devil up to his usual tricks again though, including a tedious story, ignorance of the audience’s investment (or lack thereof) in the characters, and a somewhat ambiguous, unsatisfying ending. This isn’t even mentioning that the movie is centered around a fear that is largely intangible to viewers who did not experience the cold war, or the politics of the 1960s, which limits the film’s appeal severely by keeping it from being timeless.

As much as all that bothers me, I think I had a generally good experience watching Dr. Strangelove, and because of a few good laughs and some strong performances by Peter Sellers, I’ll concede that this movie is good. However, I must remain alert, because while Krubrick and I may have had peace this time, we’ll meet again . . . don’t know where, don’t know when. *Maniacal laugh.*

Casablanca Review

September 23, 2015 by JD Hansel

There’s not much I can say about this one – I can’t critique perfection, but I must confess that, initially, I was not a fan of the film. I started watching Casablanca back when I was about eleven years old, and I didn’t get anything that was going on: I didn’t know the history or context, I didn’t care about the characters, I wasn’t into the music, I couldn’t appreciate the technical aspects, I didn’t get the jokes, and I wasn’t sucked into the drama. I couldn’t even finish the movie. I eventually decided that it would be best to watch the film again, and finally finish it after having completed a high school-level history course some time ago – not to mention a history of film class.

Even still, I found myself doing a little bit of research online within the first few minutes of the movie to make sure I understood the historical and political context correctly. With that out of the way, I was able to fully appreciate the film, and I got wrapped up in every detail. The first thing that stuck out to me was the visual presence, and while the visual style I tend to prefer is quite colorful, the lighting of this picture is so theatrical and dramatic that I all but drool at half the sights the film offers. This was followed by an appreciation of the music, since I could not have asked for a much better soundtrack for this particular story. I quickly came to love the marvelous cast of colorful, distinct, and memorable characters that are found at every turn, all of whom are performed to perfection, and casting the lovely and charming Ingrid Bergman as the leading lady was the best decision anyone has ever made since the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment (at least I remembered something from history class). Lastly – and this is what made me fall in love with the picture – while I was expecting a totally serious drama, I was enthralled to find that the superb dialogue adorning the screenplay is filled with the Epsteins’ witty and hilarious lines, all of which are right up my alley. While I do not consider this picture to be my favorite, and I refuse to let its critical acclaim alone determine my rating, I simply must give this film the highest praise simply for making me want to be a much better writer.

The Ten Commandments (1956) Review

August 19, 2015 by JD Hansel

It’s hard to keep a long movie interesting. After all, some movies that are only 90 minutes long struggle to hold my attention, so when a movie goes over two and a half hours, that’s risky. (It is, however, understandable in many cases, because the length must be determined by what the story requires.) While I’ve never been able to make it all the way through any of the Lord of the Rings movies, I did enjoy the 1996 Hamlet, which has a running time of 242 minutes – about four hours. Little did I know when I picked up The Ten Commandments that it was almost as long, or that the experience I had yet to face would take days to complete.

Was it worth sitting through the whole thing? Yes. Unlike some movies I know, this film actually filled its long running time with many interesting characters expressing very intriguing drama, so it’s easy to get through a lot of the film in one sitting. Based on what I knew of DeMille’s work before I watched the film, I was already expecting the gorgeous visuals to keep my eyes glued to the screen, but I had no idea that my ears would be enticed as well by the absolutely excellent dialogue throughout. This is the kind of writing that inspires me. (I should mention that my ears were also listening for the epic score by Elmer Bernstein.)

So, in the end, while I’m not sure the story itself is my kind of story, and the film may suffer a little from a lack of focus, it is an excellent masterpiece that I cannot help but respect. While I think of Egypt and the dessert to be visually bland settings for a movie (since I like colorful, theatrical visuals, rather than tan, brown, or sandy visuals) this movie has some of the best and most cinematic shots I have ever seen. It finds a way to make a nearly-four-hour biography into a dramatic experience that I could never forget.