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FAHRENHEIT 451 1966
Written by Francois Truffaut and Jean-Louis Richard.
Directed by Francois Trufaut.
Starring Oskar Werner, Julie Christie and Cyrill Cusack.
This is one of those films that you think is really great, right up until you watch it. It’s based on a classic sci-fi story and this adaptation was written and directed by one of the great names in European cinema. In the past when I caught little bits and pieces of it on TV, what I saw seemed really good. Then I finally sat down to watch the whole thing and frankly…it kinda sucks.
In a world where all new construction is fireproof and reading has been outlawed, Montag (Oskar Werner) is a fireman who burns forbidden books. He’s good at his job and is in line for a promotion but after meeting a young woman one day, Montag becomes disenchanted with his life and his dull-witted wife. He starts reading books himself, hiding them around his home the exact way he’s seen in other homes in which he found the books and burned them. Of course, Montag’s lawbreaking is eventually discovered and he’s forced to try and find someplace where reading isn’t a crime and feeling isn’t a formality.
Bradbury’s book is a lot more involved than that and there are more things that happen in this movie, but none of them really amount to anything. You certainly won’t feel anything when you watch most of it. Seeing great books burned may stir some emotion, but the characters and their actions in this film are all weirdly cold, dry and bloodless. And while events happen, they don’t really connect to each other and they certainly don’t build upon each other. Take Montag’s reading, for example. You would think there would be a series of scenes where he is gradually more and more tempted by books until he finally gives in to the temptation. That’s not what happens, though. He just comes home with a book one day. You can tell that the movie tries to imply that it’s Montag’s interaction with the young woman that causes him to start reading, but that’s not what the film actually presents to us. I don’t think I’m missing any subtlety here, either.
In some ways, this movie reminds me of Ang Lee’s Hulk. While a tremendously talented storyteller, Lee’s vision of that story wasn’t what everyone else wanted to see. What he found interesting in Bruce Banner, Betty Ross and Ol’ Greenskin wasn’t what everyone else was interested in. People went to that film wanting to see a guy who turns into a super-strong monster when he gets angry. Lee spent the first half hour of Hulk focusing on how a woman’s bad relationship with her father poisoned her interactions with other men.
I think Truffaut brings the same sort of trouble to Fahrenheit 451. He doesn’t appear either interested or capable of telling a conventional story and as great as the original book is, it’s very conventional. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. It starts at Point A, builds to a climax and then finishes at Point Z. And while it clearly has a theme and a point of view, it’s not at all metaphorical. Sci-fi allows an author to bring metaphors to life in a way that obviates the need or necessity for much subtext. Truffaut is able to pull off individual scenes, which is why it looked good when individual scenes are all I ever caught on TV, but he can’t or won’t connect them and order them in a compelling way. Instead, he just lets the story spill out and relies on heavily melodramatic music to generate some tension and energy, while he inserts several absurdist “arthouse” moments into the narrative.
Truffaut also demonstrates contempt for his audience by having the character of the Fire Chief repeatedly explain the point of this story out loud. Apparently he was worried that people might walk out of the theater and wonder “Why were they burnin’ them there books, Ethel?”
I can’t end this review without confessing to something. I didn’t realize that Julie Christie actually played both the role of the young woman and Montag’s wife until I saw it in the credits. That might say something about my powers of observation, but I think it says much more about how unengaging Fahrenheit 451 is and how little it makes you care about these people, their world and what happens in it.
FAIR GAME 1995
Written by Charlie Fletcher.
Directed by Andrew Sipes.
Starring Cindy Crawford, William Baldwin, Christopher McDonald, Steven Berkoff, Miguel Sandoval, Johann Carlo, Salma Hayek and John Bedford Lloyd.
You would think that combining a generic action movie with one of the most beautiful women in the world would be a foolproof formula. Have a few people get shot, blow something up real good and make Cindy Crawford take her top off. What could possibly go wrong? Well, if you watch Fair Game you’ll know the answer to that question is…so very, very much. I’ve seen coloring books better written than this script. I’ve witnessed better acting jobs from cigar store Indians. And I’ve had fever dreams that made more logical sense than this movie.
The long and the short of this paint-by-numbers story is that Miami lawyer Katherine McQueen (Cindy Crawford) invokes a little know aspect of maritime law that throws a monkey wrench into the plans of some former KBG agents to steal the ludicrous sum of 957 million dollars. They try and kill Katherine, sending her into the protective arms and slicked back hairdo of detective Max Kirkpatrick (William Baldwin). Unable to get help from other cops because of the ex-KGB agents improbable skill at impersonating law enforcement, Katherine and Max are forced to flee on their own by car and train before everything winds up on a boat off the Florida coast, where the bad guy manages to get both blown up and drowned while Katherine and Max escape a fireball by jumping in slow motion. Yeah, it’s that kind of film.
To call Fair Game trash would be an insult to used tissues and half-eaten cinnamon buns. It’s predictable, ridiculous and stupid, frequently all at once. Crawford shows all the acting ability of a seasick sea slug. The most entertaining thing about the whole movie is comparing the amateur bad acting of Crawford with the professional bad acting of William Baldwin, who conclusively proves here that he’s the least talented of all the Baldwin brothers. In fact, watching this will make you suspect Baldwin was actually adopted and just had plastic surgery so he’d resemble the others. When you make Daniel Baldwin look like a master thespian, you should really find another line of work.
The only possible reason anyone could ever have for renting this DVD is if you enjoy making fun of truly terrible films. From Crawford’s breasts having the power to cloud men’s minds to Salma Hayek as Max’s inexplicable ex-girlfriend to Christopher McDonald playing Max’s lieutenant like he has a lit blowtorch shoved up his ass, it’s hard not to laugh at much of this crap. Fair Game is such a poorly contrived disaster that it almost morphs into a parody of bad action flicks.
When Fair Game was produced, Crawford was still one of the most famous and attractive women in the world, so you really can’t blame anyone for trying to make a movie star out of her. She certainly was a no more unlikely candidate for cinema stardom than a mush mouthed bodybuilder from Austria. But this film demonstrates why Crawford’s career on camera peaked with MTV’s House of Style and the embarrassment it caused Crawford is probably one of the main things that pushed Tyra Banks away from movies and into reality TV. So that’s another thing we can blame on this film.
Unless you’re planning to watch/mock it among friends, skip Fair Game.
FALLING DOWN 1992
Written by Ebbe Roe Smith.
Directed by Joel Schumacher.
Starring Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall, Barbara Hershey, Rachel Ticotin, Tuesday Weld, Frederic Forrest, Michael Paul Chan, Raymond J. Barry, D.W. Moffat, Karina Arroyave, Joey Hope Singer, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Brent Hinkley and Dedee Pfeiffer.
Many people have said many nasty things about Joel Schumacher for what he did to Batman on the big screen. Every single one of them has been entirely deserved. But those insults should be softened with just a little praise for making a bold urban nightmare like this film.
Falling Down is the story of a man who is stuck in traffic one day when his tolerance for the world is finally used up. Identified only by his license plate “D-Fens”, the man (Michael Douglas) abandons his car and starts walking. He says he’s going home, but where he’s going isn’t his home anymore. His ex-wife Beth and daughter Adele (Barbara Hershey and Joey Hope Singer) now live there and Beth has a restraining order against D-Fens. As he walks his way across Los Angeles, D-Fens has a series of violent encounters, first with the everyday aggravations of life in the big city. From busting up the shop of a immigrant merchant who speaks broken English to confronting some gang bangers to a gun point rant against the unctuous martinets at a fast food restaurant, D-Fens eventually graduates to more brutal acts against more existential frustrations like neo-Nazi gun nuts, pointless road construction and the vicious sense of entitlement among the wealthy. All the while, getting every closer to Beth and Adele.
As reports of D-Fens’ slow moving rampage come in, the only one to figure out what’s going on is a cop spending his last day on the job. Detective Prendergast (Robert Duvall) is retiring early, an taking a reduced pension, to satisfy the demands of his insecure, needy and somewhat unstable wife. Aided by the only cop he’s friends with (Rachel Ticotin), Prendergast sets out to stop D-Fens before this day turns out to be the last day in the life of a lot of people.
Falling Down is a smart film that takes on two cultural phenomena of the early 1990s. One is the concept of “going postal”, where relatively normal men started going into their workplaces and shooting people. The other is the sense of economic disenfranchisement that came out of the recession that bridges the first Bush and Clinton Administrations. Now granted, as befitting a Joel Schumacher picture, this movie doesn’t take those subjects on with any subtlety. But it does address them thoroughly with both empathy and honesty.
Schumacher, Michael Douglas and screenwriter Ebbe Roe Smith combine to make D-Fens a character who defies easy definition. He’s neither the righteous vigilante of right wing fantasies nor a liberal’s easily dismissed symbol of white male intolerance. He’s a man who can legitimately claim he’s been victimized by society, yet he’s also a man whose seething rage terrifies the ones closest to him. Most of the carnage he creates is accidental or without malice, yet his ultimate goal is the darkest sort of evil. D-Fens is someone you cannot completely embrace or reject. You can only wonder how much of yourself is reflected in him.
The whole film is somewhat like that. Most of the characters, even minor ones, are given depth and personalities like they’re real human beings and not just constructs serving the script. They experience genuine humor and friendship and anguish and fear in a way this sort of high-concept movie usually doesn’t provide.
The contrast between D-Fens and Prendergast that runs through the story is a great example of that kind of complexity. They’re both guys whose lives aren’t working out like they wanted. One has a failed marriage and a lost career, the other a dead daughter and a crazy wife he feels responsible for. The ways they deal with those challenges are quite different. D-Fens is an idealist who cares about the way he thinks things should be, at the expense of the other people in the world with him. Prendergast is a pragmatist who takes the world as it is and does what he has to do to get by, without even thinking it could be any other way.
I suspect that Falling Down has not gotten the acclaim it deserves because it’s a mainstream work of entertainment that won’t fit neatly into a particular box. It looks and sounds like a white male power trip, but it feels much more introspective and melancholy and despairing. I find it to be a compelling story with some great acting and I think you should give it a look.
FANTASTIC FOUR 2005
Written by Mark Frost and Michael France.
Directed by Tim Story.
Starring Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis, Julian McMahon, Kerry Washington, Laurie Holden and Hamish Linklater.
Hollywood has taken the classic comic book The Fantastic Four and made a great movie out of it. It’s called The Incredibles. This official, big screen adaptation of the comic falls far, far short of being great. In fact, it’s pretty crappy in most respects. As bad as it is, though, I still like its lighthearted tone and the few things about the FF that it gets almost precisely right.
Born in the Cold War days of the space race, the Fantastic Four comic was about a brilliant scientist named Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffud), his best friend and pilot Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis), Sue Storm (Jessica Alba), the woman Reed loves, and her kid brother Johnny (Chris Evans). The four of them defy government orders and sneak aboard of rocketship to launch it into space, where they’re bombarded by cosmic rays and are transformed into the stretchable Mr. Fantastic, super-strong and rock-like Thing and the more obviously descriptive Invisible Girl and Human Torch. The foursome band together to argue like cats and dogs while using their powers to protect humanity, most notably from the evil schemes of and Eastern European tyrant, scientist and sorcerer named Doctor Doom (Julian McMahon).
To start with, this film butchers that origin about as badly as any super-hero origin has been butchered in movie history. Here, Reed is a financially strapped scientist who has to go to wealthy industrialist Victor Von Doom and ask for his help in conducting a science experiment involving an approaching cosmic storm. Sue and her brother Johnny work for Von Doom, with Sue even dating the guy while Reed, who was cold and forceful in the comics, is reduced to an insecure and socially awkward misfit who broke up with Sue years ago.
They fly up to Von Doom’s space station, get zapped by the cosmic storm and change into their super-powered forms, with Von Doom being included this time as a metalized version of the old Spider-Man villain Electro. Back on Earth, the Fantastic Four become a media sensation while Reed tries to work on curing their conditions. Reed and Sue grow closer as Von Doom is caught up in a stupid subplot involving the loss of his company. Eventually, Von Doom dons his traditional hood and metal face-plate and tries to destroy Reed and company. They fight. The end.
I believe the background of this movie is that it was first intended to be a comedy, something like a super-hero version of The Addams Family or The Munsters, and some studio executives then demanded it be refashioned into a more stereotypical comic book adventure flick. If that isn’t true, it should have been because that’s what Fantastic Four is like. There’s a whole lot of humor and fun with a few badly designed and badly pulled off action sequences sandwiched in at the beginning and end.
Let’s start with the good.
Johnny Storm is may be the best ever big screen version of a comic book character. The rambunctious 60s teen who could burst into flames is recast as 20something hothead who’s never met a risk he didn’t want to take or a woman he didn’t want to kiss. This irresponsible guy learning to be responsible is actually a big part of both this movie and its sequel.
The tempestuous relationship between Johnny and Ben is also wonderfully captured here. The familial animosity between the two of them flows naturally and is the source of a lot of the movie’s best laughs.
The story also does a nice job of illustrating the pitiful plight of Ben. The idea of being remade into horrible monster was much more of a compelling concept for a super-hero a half century ago. In a world that’s much more used to the grotesque, it doesn’t quite sting as much. But the film finds little ways of emphasizing Ben’s suffering that are almost touching.
Fantastic Four also work hard at trying to be as much fun as possible, which is a nice break from so many other super-hero movie that treat everything so SERIOUSLY. There’s something childlike and marvelously silly about the idea of people with costumes, code names and super-powers punching the forces of evil in the nose, and most super-hero movies move Heaven and Earth to squelch that sentiment. Where those films try so hard to be dramatic, this one goes for comedic and it’s a nice chance of pace.
Now for the bad.
Reed Richards is a shlub, Sue Storm is a cypher and this movie aesthetically sodomizes Dr. Doom. He’s turned into an utterly different and vastly inferior character. I can sort of understand why they thought they needed to change him. Countless sci-fi and fantasy storytellers have ripped off Dr. Doom to create their own bad guys and it might have been thought that the genuine article would have come off as derivative of his own copies. But if they didn’t think Doom would work, they didn’t need to jam him into this film. They could have used the Mole Man, Blastarr, the Skrulls or several other FF villains to do whatever evil-doing needed to be done.
Fantastic Four really isn’t a good movie, but it demonstrates yet again that being good and being entertaining are not the same thing. For all its faults, and they are legion, I still had a great time watching it.
THE FAR COUNTRY 1954
Written by Borden Chase.
Directed by Anthony Mann.
Starring James Stewart, Ruth Roman, Walter Brennan, Corinne Calvet, John McIntire, Jay C. Flippen, Harry Morgan, Connie Gilchrist and Jack Elam.
If the classic Western myth is the rugged individual battling the threats of Man and Nature, The Far Country is a film that subtly undermines that myth in both form and function. It doesn’t seek to demolish the Western archetype, but it clearly suggests that people distinguish between the myth and reality.
Set in Seattle and the wilds of Alaska in the mid to late 1890s, this movie focuses on a couple of cowboys. Jeff Webster (James Stewart) prides himself on not needing anything from anyone, except his old trail buddy Ben Tatum (Walter Brennan). They’re looking to drive some cattle up to a Canadian gold mining camp named Dawson to sell the beef for top dollar to hungry miners. Along the way, they run into trouble from Gannon (John McIntire), the sheriff who rules the Alaskan town that’s the only gateway to the Canadian wilderness. Gannon seizes Jeff and Ben’s cattle for himself, forcing the two to take jobs from Ronda Castle. She’s a local businesswoman who needs someone to lead a caravan up to Dawson so she can set up her own saloon there. After stealing their cattle back from Gannon, Jeff and Ben lead their whole company into Dawson, only to find the locals have no interest in letting Castle move in and take over their camp. And things get even worse when the smilingly evil Gannon arrives, looking to set himself up as the equivalent of a feudal lord and squash any dreams of Dawson becoming a real town. But unlike other Westerns where the story is all about the good guy riding into town and solving every problem with his quick draw and his six gun, The Far Country is all about the need of people to work together to face their challenges and make the world a better place.
This is a pretty entertaining film, most notably for the performances of James Stewart and John McIntire and for the story’s take on the closing of the frontier. Stewart and McIntire play characters with a remarkably modern sensibility, standing out from the somewhat corny and cheesy acting typical of the 1950s Western. Stewart appears to relish the misanthropic aspects of Jeff Webster and McIntire plays Gannon as the sort of bad man who’s perfectly capable of doing something good as long as it amuses him. The movie is also effective at showing how the days of the Wild West are ending. Strong men like Jeff Webster can no longer make their way in the world alone, uncaring and uncompromising. The trappings of civilization have become too strong, even in little mining camps for that. It’s men like Gannon, who cloak themselves in the law and authority, that are seizing control and it takes more than any one man to stand up to them.
The Far Country is a Western grappling with the end of an era without wanting to demystify it. Throw in some great Canadian scenery, plenty of likable characters and a chance to see Walter Brennan in his classic fatherly sidekick role and you’ve got a good movie.
FAY GRIM 2006
Written and Directed by Hal Hartley.
Starring Parker Posey, D.J. Mendel, Liam Aiken, Chuck Montgomery, James Urbaniak, Jeff Goldblum, Leo Fitzpatrick, Thomas Jay Ryan and Anatole Taubman.
If you think Henry Fool is one of the greatest characters in cinema history, you might (and I emphasize MIGHT) be able to tolerate Fay Grim. If you’re unfamiliar with Henry Fool or are unimpressed with Hal Hartley’s creation, watching this film would only be a waste of your time. This is an artless art house film where ostentatiously affectless performances parade through a willfully obtuse story. Fay Grim doesn’t work on any level, except as a love letter to a movie most people have never seen which gets sidetracked into a limp wristed take on the politics of global terrorism.
Fay Grim (Parker Posey) is the wife of Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan). Ten years after her husband vanished, Fay is recruited by CIA agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum) to go to Paris and retrieve Henry’s notebooks. A great deal of this film is consumed with various and sundry characters talking about those notebooks and then some other characters shoot each other over those notebooks. There are different ridiculous reasons offered up for why everyone is so interested in the writing of Henry Fool, all of which amount to pretentious twaddle. There are also a bunch of plot threads that either never go anywhere or never add up to anything, such as Fay’s poet brother getting out of prison, Fay dating her brother’s publisher and Henry’s involvement with an undefined terrorist. There’s also a pornographic Viewmaster and an ending so embarrassingly trite I hope Hartley was being sarcastic with it.
There’s really not much more to say about this movie. The actors wade through Hartley’s self reverential dialog as best they can, giving artificial performances that get about as close to genuine humanity as Jesse James can get to Sandra Bullock nowadays. Hartley’s direction is competent, given the slack and lifeless script he wrote, but it’s very mannered and feels very dated.
Fay Grim is a movie made by and for people who think a sequel to Henry Fool is a big deal. If you are one of those people, you’re welcome to this film. The rest of us have all got better things to do.
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