J.D. Hansel

Romance

Bonnie and Clyde Review

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Bonnie and Clyde is one of the most divisive films in the history of American cinema.  On the one hand, many critics praised it for being something entirely new.  Roger Ebert wrote, “It is also pitilessly cruel, filled with sympathy, nauseating, funny, heartbreaking, and astonishingly beautiful.”  By contrast,  it was called needlessly aggressive, violent, purposeless, and unfocused by a great many critics, but we’ve mostly forgotten that.  All that we remember is that it was shockingly different from Classical Hollywood, and so we’ve decided it was a great movie.  And maybe it was.

Now it’s not.

Now there is very little of interest here.  The main characters are uninteresting, the comedy isn’t very funny, the violence isn’t much of a spectacle, and the bold style of editing just isn’t striking anymore.  I do think there are a few likable things about this movie, but not enough for it to be considered one of the greatest films of all time.  It was different from other films, but not different in any ways that are really worth praising (compare to The Graduate or Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner).

So why isn’t my star rating lower?  Simple: Gene Freaking Wilder.  It’s one of his best performances, and he made the whole movie well worth the watch.  To be fair, there are some other scenes I like as well – the opening credits, for example, or … well, really most of the beginning of the movie, after which it largely goes downhill – but only Gene Wilder’s part can be said to be truly great.  For the rest of the film, I’ll repeat the same old adage I’ve said time and time again: if I don’t care about the characters, I won’t care about the story.  It’s possible for a film to be good even without a great story, but this film is too dependent on a story that was done better by Trouble in Paradise and Gun Crazy for that to be possible.

The Nutty Professor Review

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Wait a minute – isn’t this movie supposed to be … ya know, funny?  It’s amazing how, with one look at the DVD case, anyone would think this film surely was one of the worst ever made, yet a look online would reveal how highly regarded it is as one of the great comedies.  While I can easily understand why critics want to recognize Lewis for his talents, I just have to ask … really?  This counts as a good comedy?

The characters are insufferable.  The story is insufferable.  The hokey visual gags are insufferable.  Most of the other jokes are insufferable.  The ending is just plain stupid, and undercuts everything else in the movie.  The only thing about this movie that’s impressive is, much to my surprise, the filmmaking.  The way that it’s shot and edited impressed me, but even more impressive is the production design – the costumes, the props, and the sets.  Largely due to its brilliant use of gorgeous colors, this is a movie I would gladly show to anyone who wanted to see my idea of a pretty-looking movie, as long as I didn’t have to watch it with them.

Pretty Woman Review

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Professors really like to tell their students stories about how things we mere millennials could never understand.  I remember an English professor at my first college (although I don’t remember which one) explaining that Pretty Woman was a very surprising and controversial movie upon its release – one might even say a “game-changer.”  The film was important because it presented two shifts in values: the first being acceptance of the fact that sex workers are people too, and the second being consideration of the opinion that a kiss on the mouth is more meaningful than sex.  Now that I think about it, I can see how this could have ruffled feathers at the time, but I can’t make myself feel what it must have felt like to watch this film at the time when it came out – I can’t emotionally understand the significance of the movie.  To me, it just looks like a movie that’s perfectly fine.

It does the job.  The director and cinematographer seem to have had some fun with it, the writing is generally fairly smart, the comedy is satisfactory, and the performances are good.  I’m not much of a fan of Roberts, and I might have liked her character more with a different person in the role, but I’ll grant that her performance was quite well-done.  The other characters were less impressive – particularly the male lead – but there’s only so much you can do with a character as flat as … well, most of the characters (although Héctor Elizondo as the hotel manager is a treat).  The problem is that, apart from this one twist on the rom-com genre, Pretty Woman is actually pretty generic, even to the point that a number of its scenes (the romantic montage being the best example) are unintentionally funny.  But don’t think I didn’t like this movie – Pretty Woman is one of the most charming films I’ve seen in a long time, and while its initial “wow factor” may be lost, some of its appeal, as it is with other fairy tales, is timeless.

Moonrise Kingdom Review

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You know what’s an ugly color?  Yellow.  Yellow is a really sucky color.  It can make a movie look pretty terrible, or at least it’ll make the color scheme seem smelly.  In fact, one of the main reasons I’ve waited so long to watch a Wes Anderson film is that I didn’t think I’d be able to stomach all of the colors (or at least hues) he tends to use that make me sick.  The second reason is my distaste for films that are overly quirky for the sake of being quirky.  Much to my surprise, I found that I can appreciate the film’s colors and quirks because Anderson can appreciate the beauty in the fakeness of things.

The important thing to remember about the film is that it takes place in a strange version of the 1960s, and the film is very conscious of that.  Anderson doesn’t stylistically approach the decade the way that most filmmakers would though.  Perhaps because he’s playing with themes of childhood and nostalgia in the film, he uses color, grain, and visual effects to make the film look like an old photograph from the ‘60s or ‘70s, which is exactly what any of us today would have to use to get a glimpse what the time period was like for kids.  No one could ever have a jacket as vividly red as the narrator’s in real life – real life doesn’t look like that – but in old photos it would seem normal, and photos of our childhood inform our memories of what the world used to look like.  It’s a very strange effect, but it makes for a look and feeling that’s oddly warm and charming.

But there’s much more to the visual style than that.  Anderson has a knack for playing with size and perspective, somehow making many of the props and set pieces look like little toys.  I think part of this is done with camera tricks, and some is done by using small models of props and set pieces instead of the real thing.  This gives the sense that everything on his set is one of his little toys to play with, as though making a statement in favor of Auteur Theory the characters are just as much his puppets as the characters in his stop-motion film are.  Now, most people don’t notice this as much as they notice his unique cinematography – his habit of framing his subjects symmetrically, moving the camera steadily in elaborate tracking shots, and filling the frame with things dropping and sliding and jumping and spinning so nothing is ever too boring.  Since I’d seen a clip or two from this movie a few years ago, I figured I would find it irritating, but in context, I don’t mind it.  I think I’m okay with it because, on the one hand, Anderson is clearly having too much giddy, childlike fun doing it, and on the other, he keeps it limited to what will help the scene/story more than distract from it.

And this story is good.

The story itself is rather quirky, but it builds up to its least plausible parts very carefully, so it still feels like it’s been written carefully – not like everything has been thrown at the wall, as I would have expected.  And I think it has been written carefully.  The story is both innocently childlike and unsettlingly adult, somehow blending emotions one would only expect to feel in an old Tim Burton film with an empathetic love for these characters.  It’s incredible that characters with so little visible emotion grab the heartstrings the way these characters do – I don’t understand how it’s possible – but they keep the viewer completely sucked into the story.  In fact, I believe this movie tells one of the most intriguing and captivating stories ever told, and it tells it beautifully.  So, yes, some aspects of the film stray far from what I usually like, but Anderson keeps me engaged on a level that few others can, and he seems to have a heck of a lot of fun doing it.  I’m not sure if I liked this movie for itself or just because I’ve never seen anything quite like it before, but I can say that I look forward to watching it again.

Roman Holiday Review

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Roman Holiday defies traditional classification.  On the most basic level, it’s a romantic comedy – after all, it is romantic, and it is comedic.  That being said, it’s not like any romantic comedy I’ve ever seen.  At a certain point it becomes clear that, as much as the two leads love each other, they don’t see how it’s possible for them to live out the rest of their lives together since one of them is royalty and the other is not.  Because the rest of the film feels like a fun, happy romantic comedy about escapism, the audience expects that, by the end, everything will work out such that they can be happy together, but this doesn’t happen – and logically it’s a given that it couldn’t happen.  I find it difficult to decide whether or not this counts as an example of bad screenwriting.

Don’t think that I believe all movies should have happy endings.  I don’t even necessarily think all comedies must have happy endings to count as comedies.  My problem with Roman Holiday is the futility of its events.  The ending requires the audience to believe that Princess Ann is now content to return to her restrictive duties as Princess now that she’s had her one holiday, even though there is little evidence to suggest she is.  Joe Bradley actually ends up worse off than he was at the start, having upset his boss and landlord and having lost a lot of money (not to mention a big story that would have advanced his career).  Neither of them should be happy, but the film tries to argue that cherishing the memories of this one wonderful holiday offers enough lasting happiness for the both of them (it’s a “better to have loved and lost” kind of story) even though this conclusion simply isn’t supported anywhere in the film – the viewer must assume this to be true.

Apart from this, however, the film is put together brilliantly.  Right from the very first scene (not counting the newsreel), the writing, camerawork, editing, and acting are all excellent, establishing the character with a carefully paced and wildly funny opening.  The rest of the film continues this high-level of craftsmanship and fun, making for one of the smartest romantic comedy films I’ve seen to date.  What’s particularly likeable about it is Audrey Hepburn’s performance – the only film of hers I’d seen before was Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and I’d always wondered why she was considered such a great actress.  I wonder no more, and I now look forward to seeing more of her work.

A Star Is Born (1954) Review

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This movie may have made a big splash in its day, but I don’t think it gets talked about much anymore.  I can understand why – in many respects it’s very generic.  It’s the kind of romantic epic/tragicomedy that feels like textbook Oscar-bait, just mixed together with show-tunes.  That  being said, it’s a pretty solid film.  It may start out boring, but as it goes on, the performances get more impressive, the drama gets more captivating, and the musical numbers get more enjoyable.  The look of some of these numbers alone is reason enough to watch the film, and I see this as one of the greatest examples of theatricality in cinema at its best.

But at the end of the day, as expected, the appeal is Judy Garland.  I’ve always known she was a great singer, but this is the movie that shows the full range of her acting abilities.  What’s amazing is how she takes a character that’s absurdly cliché and makes her distinct.  Along with her co-star, she made me really care about a story in which I thought I would have no interest, creating a level of sincere, beautiful drama I hardly ever see.

So yes, much of the movie is trite and forgettable, and the film starts off quite boring – I imagine it stays boring for those who don’t like musicals – but it redeems itself in spades.