The Lunch Movie

Saturday August 21, 2010 at The Brattle Theater, Cambridge, MA.

THE HARDER THEY COME, written & directed by Perry Henzel, starring Jimmy Cliff, Janet Barley, Carl Bradshaw and Basil Keane.

The Boston area has a long history with Perry Henzel’s first film. THE HARDER THEY COME was a midnight classic showing every Saturday for ten years at The Orson Welles Cinema until that theater was lost to an electrical fire in 1986. I became aware of the movie via Jimmy Cliff’s music video when I was in high school, back when MTV played songs. After numerous missed opportunities to see THE HARDER THEY COME in revival houses, the Brattle Theater offered the irresistible proposition of pairing it with Henzel’s second and final film, NO PLACE LIKE HOME.

It was worth the wait. Jimmy Cliff plays Ivanhoe Martin, a young man who leaves his deceased grandmother’s home in the Jamaican countryside, traveling to the city to bring his mother the remaining pocketful of cash from his grandmother’s savings. From there, Ivan’s path follows two cliched story lines — a) naive lad with a song in his heart trying to break into the music scene and b) decent but desperate unemployed guy descending into a life of crime. After a few false starts, Ivan succeeds both in recording his song, and establishing a foothold has a soldier in the ganja trade. The waters begin to muddy when corrupt local police team with flame-thrower bearing American soldiers, ostensibly to restrict international smuggling, while also potentially seizing distribution of a sacrament within Jamaica’s Rastafari movement.

As murky as the socio-political landscape becomes, so too does Ivan’s destiny. Within this story it appears Jamaica’s penal system has a problem similar to America’s: negative or violent behavior is not reformed but reenforced and enhanced. Early in the film, Ivan spends a brief period in jail, where he is humiliatingly beaten for a relatively minor crime. After being released from prison, Ivan gets in a fight with another man over a bicycle and brutally slashes his opponent’s face. If any confusion remains about Ivan’s path to becoming a bad@$$ anti-hero rather than a noble hero, compare his ambivalence during a church sermon to his exaltation while watching a spaghetti western. The latter sequence is hauntingly echoed as Ivan revels in his outlaw notoriety and imagines the eyes of the nation on he and his blazing guns.

THE HARDER THEY COME has been dismissed by some as being poorly made. I adamantly disagree. Cheaply made? Yes. It was shot in an impoverished nation on Super16mm, which in the ’70′s was a notch above your Uncle Larry’s home movie camera. It is unrealistic to fault a film made under these circumstances for not looking as crystal clear as the crane shots from THE CONSTANT GARDNER. This is no reason to ignore what has been captured here: the cracked and worn city across the tracks from the idyllic-fishing-village Jamaica most of the world had previously glimpsed in DR. NO. Henzel not only shows us a Caribbean nation as no feature film had done before, he shows what few have managed to do since. DePalma’s SCARFACE rushed to bask in the glamorous life, glossing over an opportunity both in Cuba and Miami to explore how Tony Montana’s street-level crime fed a much larger empire. THE HARDER THEY COME remains firmly rooted in that daily struggle that deludes thugs into thinking they can gain control simply by killing their immediate competitors, while unseen men grow rich on the blood of both factions.

NO PLACE LIKE HOME, written & directed by Perry Henzel, starring Carl Bradshaw, Susan O’Meara, P.J. Soles and Countryman.

NO PLACE LIKE HOME had as unusual a journey to the screen as could be imagined. Perry Henzel shot this quasi-metafiction story, in which actors and non-actors play versions of themselves, as an imperialism themed follow-up to the corruption themes of THE HARDER THEY FALL. What exists in the way of a linear story concerns an American camera crew attempting to shoot a shampoo commercial in Jamaica. The star of the commercial, P.J. Soles, disappears without a trace. Producer Susan O’Meara recruits driver-gofer-guy-in-the-know Carl Bradshaw to help her search the countryside for their star as the clock ticks on Madison Ave.

…And then … Henzel’s footage vanished. No friends, this is not a CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST or BLAIR WITCH trick, Henzel’s film actually vanished before he was able to edit it together! In a twist that would be considered incredible if one tried to pass it off as fiction, Henzel’s footage was recovered in a New York film lab nearly 30 years later. Henzel completed NO PLACE LIKE HOME, which premiered to a sold-out crowd at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival, but he succumbed to cancer days before it was to premiere in Jamaica.

The resulting film is, on the surface, sexier and more playful that THE HARDER THEY COME. Carl Bradshaw finds time for afternoon delight (with Grace Jones!) in the middle of a workday, P.J. Soles lounges topless under a waterfall waiting for the camera crew to stop arguing, and Susan O’Meara notices that Carl is a pretty interesting fella while both of them are supposed to be searching for missing P.J. This is all surface, mind you. The point that Henzel drives home is that while these luxurious distractions occur, high-rise hotels are springing up and commercials are being shot, but little of the money being generated reaches the local economy. In 1972, Ivanhoe Martin risked the “If you can’t beat ‘em” option, as the aforementioned unseen criminal empire benefited from the blood on Jamaican streets. By 1976 the unseen benefactors of Jamaica’s sweat and tears had become more legitimate businesses, forcing Carl Bradshaw to face the “Join ‘em?” end of the equation.

Thursday, March 11, 2010 at The Brattle Theater.

Written & Directed by John Woo, starring Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Chiling Lin and Fengyi Zhang, and featuring an opulent score by Taro Iwashiro.

America is now able to see two versions of John Woo’s RED CLIFF, a truly epic story of warring Chinese factions in 208 A.D. toward the end of the Han Dynasty. The 148 minute cut released theatrically last fall, which was among my Favorites of 2009, is out today on DVD and BluRay. For a few dollars more, you can buy RED CLIFF Parts 1 & 2 (146 and 142 minutes respectively), and see the version that played across Asia and in a few European countries. In mainland China, RED CLIFF Part 1 broke the box office record set by TITANIC in 1998.

Comparing these two versions is not like comparing the shorter and longer versions of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, where one is clearly superior to most movies ever made, and the other is average at best. RED CLIFF is more akin to DAS BOOT, which was originally released in the U.S. at 149 minutes, but is now available in a 293 minute version that aired as a mini-series on German television. The shorter versions of RED CLIFF and DAS BOOT are very strong, and worth your time, with the longer cuts being quite simply the same immense quality in increased quantities.

Both versions of RED CLIFF contain some of the most intense and vivid battle sequences since the advent of CGI armies. It is endearing that Woo uses those grand CGI shots only long enough to establish the scope of his battles, before diving in close to focus on his strong cast doing impressive stunt work, including less wire-work and more horsemanship than I expected. The vanishing art of dramatizing military strategy debates (check out PATTON and A BRIDGE TOO FAR if you’ve never seen this done well) is in full force in either version of RED CLIFF. We not only learn about these characters through heroic speeches to their armies, or death-defying feats against their enemy, but also through their thoughtful planning with their brothers in arms.

RED CLIFF Parts 1 & 2 offers more than just longer action sequences by comparison to its abridged version. In both cuts, Princess Sun Shangxiang (played by Wei Zhao) defies her royal family’s “girls can’t fight” attitude, both by joining in battle and by sneaking behind enemy lines to send out intelligence via carrier pigeon. In PART 2 she accidentally befriends a reluctant officer in the enemy camp, a relationship nowhere in the shorter cut, granting her character a far more satisfying journey from start to finish.

The clear villain of the shorter film is General Cao Cao, seen above played by Fengyi Zhang, opposite Xiao Qiao played by Chiling Lin. General Cao Cao is a power-hungry military aggressor in the single film, though he is given a slight secondary motivation of lusting after Xiao Qiao, the wife of his opponent Zhou Yu (Tony Leung Chiu Wai). The combined films expand Cao Cao’s passing lust into a consuming obsession. We see Cao Cao being unnervingly creepy when he forces a courtesan to answer by Xiao Qiao’s name, and tragically vulnerable when he finally meets the object of his affection. But wait, there’s more Cao Cao: try to name another war movie where the big rally-the-troops speech is delivered by the villain?! Yeah, I can’t either!! With a potential mutiny growing among Cao Cao’s army after a series of command errors, he unites his troops in a manner usually reserved for heroes. John Woo is not saying “poor Cao Cao’s just a misunderstood teddy bear,” but he makes a fascinating point of showing why this general’s army would follow him so loyally.

These are just two cases of how the expanded running time allows for much more intriguing characterizations. Rest assured that either version will show you the most sumptuously photographed show-stopping musical performance ever used in place of diplomatic negotiations, with Zhou Yu facing off against Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro). Please pardon the lack of subtitles in the clip and focus instead on the music and how Woo’s camera covers it.

As a final thought, I need to make the observation that the lines of resolution in digital video still cannot touch a single image on film, at least insofar as each technology stands today. When The Brattle Theater in Cambridge, MA screened RED CLIFF Parts 1 & 2 a few weeks ago, a mix-up with their distributor forced them to show Part 1 on film and Part 2 on BluRay. I will say this much for Blu Ray: the subtitles were considerably easier to read. Nonetheless lighter colors, like heavily clouded skies that appeared richly detailed Part 1, became white-washed in Part 2 even during the opening summary of scenes from Part 1. Night sequences often looked muddy. This has less to do with RED CLIFF than my confirmed preference for seeing movies in theaters that use film versus digital projection. Just a thought Now go rent RED CLIFF Parts 1 & 2!!

10. WONDER BOYS (2000) Directed by Curtis Hanson

Try as they might, Paramount just could not make a success of this film. Upon release in February 2000 with an ad campaign featuring a disheveled Michael Douglas in a pink bathrobe; critics raved, but audiences ignored. WONDER BOYS was rereleased in the fall with the poster above, touting quotes from well-respected critics aimed squarely at receiving award nominations. Despite a handful of nominations, only Bob Dylan’s song “Things Have Changed” won a Golden Globe and an Oscar.

WONDER BOYS is simply too random in its humor, subtle in its soul, and illuminating without being condemning or condescending in its observations of human nature in general and academia specifically, for it to be sold in a 30 second TV commercial. It is one of those treats where you forget you are watching actors, and feel like you are watching real life happen to people who handle their slings and arrows with so much more wit than most of us could muster. If all that is not enough, it is also my favorite movie about the writers, a profession that has given us no end of tedious and pretentious films.

9. SPIRITED AWAY (2001) Written & Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

SPIRITED AWAY showed up in a moment where computer animated films were becoming more common than traditional animation. A decade later, with 3D computer animation surpassing the range of color and detail of 2D hand-painted, Miyazaki continues to remind us why film did not spell the end of live theater, nor recorded music the end of performance bands and orchestras. In traditional animation this laboriously realized, humanity emerges from the chaotic palette that a program would never allow. As live actors on a stage and music played by real musicians have survived, so will animation drawn and painted by patient masters who love this form.

Many films tell the story of children entering a fantastical world to which their parents are not privy. Few make the obliviousness of parents as potent a force as the wonder at the other end of the child’s experience. The elevation of these opposites to equal strength creates a desperation on the part of our young heroine that most children’s films or animation would shy away from. A protagonist can only be as interesting as the situation they are trying to conquer. SPIRITED AWAY trusts a child to a journey of such emotional, psychological and spiritual enormity that her courage and ingenuity dwarfs entire legions of X-Men mutants.

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I won’t presume to insist that this list is The Best of 2009, if for no other reason that there was so much that I missed in 2009. I really wanted to see big Hollywood movies like TERMINATOR: SALVATION, quieter indy movies like ADVENTURELAND, and foreign fun like O’HORTEN, but sometimes they fall through the cracks. Here are the ones that grabbed me:

10. HARRY POTTER & THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE, directed by David Yates. The HARRY’s had me wondering after the ho-hum GOBLET OF FIRE in 2005, but ORDER OF THE PHOENIX in 2007 gave me hope that they were back on track. They definitely were — HALF BLOOD PRINCE is so solidly conceived that I’d say you could enjoy it even if you’d never seen a HARRY movie. I can’t think of another film series where characters actually evolve to this degree from one installment to the next. This feeling of watching these kids grow up grounds the fantasy elements in something more real and poignant than most straight dramas can hope for.

9. PIG HUNT, directed by James Isaac. What’s the point of making one of these lists if you can’t include one guilty pleasure? A 3,000 lb giant monster wild pig isn’t enough to get you in the theater? How ’bout a cult of mostly nekkid completely stoned hippy chicks, and we’ll throw in Les Claypool as the leader of a chopper-ridin’ Bible quotin’ inbred family of hellions?! If GRINDHOUSE had been a triple-feature…

8. WHIP IT, directed by Drew Barrymore. I expected this movie to be fun and Ellen Page to be great, but I was not prepared for how well written it was, nor for how seamlessly Drew can toggle between family drama, teen hilarity and roller-rink mayhem. Page and the entire cast were committed to every funny, sad and angry note. John Hughes must be smiling from heaven.

7. INVICTUS, directed by Clint Eastwood. For all who say “they don’t make ‘em like they used to,” I’d answer “Find someone who’s been makin’ ‘em since they made ‘em like they used to!” One of Clint’s great strengths as a director is that he trusts and encourages his cast, his crew, his composers, everyone to do their absolute best. Then he films it when they think they are still rehearsing. There is nothing sappy about making a movie with a message that “Yes we can all get along” when your story is about the intelligence and courage it takes to make the first steps toward the goal. …No pun intended. Seriously.

6. UP, Directed by Pete Docter & Bob Peterson. The opening ten minutes of UP contain some of the most luxuriously nuanced animation, in terms of character and location and tone, that Pixar has ever offered. And then they keep doing it! Coming to terms with Loss and Death have been staple themes of films aimed at children and families since OLD YELLER, but it is rare that they get it so right and still leave you smiling.

5. FOOD INC., directed by Robert Kenner. One might argue that this is more a piece of journalism than film-making. Maybe so. Kenner gets plenty of people on record discussing the pros and cons of many facets of a divisive issue. That is what a good journalist does; that is what FOOD, INC. interviewee Eric Schlosser did with his book FAST FOOD NATION. Kenner chose film as his medium, and the medium and the message are better for it.

4. FIVE MINUTES OF HEAVEN, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. A fire-breathing story of rage and redemption, with James Nesbitt and Liam Neeson at the top of their game. There is an intimacy so urgent that at times you swear you’re watching it on stage. As much as I dig it when a film meets and exceeds my expectations, I dig it even more when it doesn’t waste time showing off afterward, but rather keeps its pace and drives toward one unpredictable destination after another.

3. THE ROAD, directed by John Hillcoat. Just because THE ROAD takes place in the near future does not make it science fiction, anymore than the lack of robots or rayguns make it not science fiction. It is not only the most thought provoking and soul stirring “What If?” in years, it is with all due respect to the Coens, the most spot-on photographic rendering of Cormac McCarthy’s prose as we’ve yet seen.

2. THE HURT LOCKER, directed by Kathryn Bigelow. When my dad and I saw PLATOON, he said that every 20th century war gets one film that sums up the experiences that made that war unique from all others. Pondering this, we came up with ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT for WW1, BATTLEGROUND for WW2, THE STEEL HELMET for The Korean War, and PLATOON for Vietnam. I’m not going too far out on a limb to guess that THE HURT LOCKER will be that film for Iraq or The War On Terror. It casts aside politics and focuses sharply on men doing a job. Many films offer a single image that becomes a powerful anti-war statement. Few offer anything as crushing as Jeremy Renner standing alone in a grocery store aisle to remind us how little we are doing while these brave and crazy volunteers risk their lives on the other side of the world.

1. THE COVE, directed by Louie Psihoyos. In following former “Flipper” dolphin trainer Ric O’Barry on a quest to Taiji, Japan to expose the illegal slaughter of dolphins, THE COVE inadvertently ends up being the most intense social/political thriller of the year. It would be interesting to sit O’Barry in front of the camera and listen to him say “They wouldn’t let me inside to see how dolphins and other animals and fish are being treated,” but an element of doubt would remain. To answer that doubt, Psihoyos employs a battery of camera technology that would make the Myth Busters envious as he and Barry adapt to each challenge they encounter. What results is an impassioned story of redemption, and some of the most imaginative camera work of the year, all topped off by an ending that I will only describe as “unforgettable,” lest I say more and deprive you of the impact.

…and, ’cause what’s a Lunch Movie post without at AFTER THOUGHT, here’s something that I remembered in the wee hours of 1.1.10 and was embarrassed that I’d forgotten to include:

RED CLIFF, directed by John Woo. I dunno how closely they follow the 208 A.D. battle that RED CLIFF is based on, but it’s still a ride worth taking. I can’t recall a war movie in years where tactics were so vividly planned and discussed. Most movies these days throw a bunch of fighters together and give you 5 minutes of sloppy-edited gunfire. RED CLIFF’s naval battle finale goes on for 15+ minutes, but even before that you get to see the planning, and later what some characters do to improvise when parts of the battle plan fall apart. Witnessing the rationale behind tactical decisions may not appeal to the “action crowd,” but to anyone who takes the cost of war seriously, it’s pretty damn intense. Fear not, action crowd: a hand-to-hand battle about an hour in, you’ll recognize it by the Turtle Formation strategy, is one of the most jaw-dropping action sequences I’ve ever seen — and the movie isn’t even 1/2 done yet!

Friday, December 9, 2009 at The Brattle Theater, Cambridge MA

Directed and co-written by Frank Capra, starring James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, Henry Travers and Gloria Graham.

It is convenient that The Brattle Theater offered IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE in the weekend right after I had seen Herzog’s THE BAD LIEUTENANT. This sequence enables me to stay on the topic of “movies I had strong hesitations about seeing.” For years I was way too impressed with my deep dark self to ever watch a movie with such a sappy title, never minding that I’d loved MIRACLE ON 34th STREET since I was old enough to barely begin wondering if Santa was real or not.

Wonderful Life, who are you kidding?! It did not matter if Mom or Dad loved it; it would take much more than that for me sit through a trip to Bedford Falls. When the challenge came in 1990, I was 20 years old in my senior year at Emerson College, so the deep dark (and pretentious) self was in overdrive. I was working at a Loews Theater in Copley Square, which is now sadly a Barney’s New York. We had three projectionists, all of whom taught film at local colleges and had made their own films. There was one fella named Phil who looked like Rasputin in Levis and an oil-stained t-shirt. Phil had earned the right to be as deep-n-dark as the rest of us students-by-day/ushers-by-night thought we were. If we mentioned Lucas, Phil would ask what we knew about Kurosawa; if we mentioned 2001 or CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, he would ask if we’d seen SOLARIS. It was this man who, when I mocked IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE simply for it’s title, informed me that he felt it was “one of the most important and purely American works of art in any medium that any artist has ever made.”

So I watched it. And I cried like a sap. Way before the end, and again at the end. And I have watched it at least once per year since then. In all those viewings, I have come to the conclusion that IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is not amazing for the tears and joy that it makes us all look forward to. Its greatness lies in the levels of hell that it puts poor ol’ George Bailey through before he earns that tearful ending. This is a man who just cannot catch a break. Every time things are going right, something will come along to ruin it. Hey George, you have Mary in a very interesting situation and needing her robe? Guess what, your father has fallen ill. Hey George, your brother Harry has returned from college to take over your job? His new wife and her father have other plans. You’re finally escaping Bedford Falls to see the world, and on your honeymoon no less? Not on October 29, 1928!

The story is brilliant in its precision, ratcheting up George’s hope in equal measure with his dashed expectations. The winning decision that Frank Capra makes as a director is that he stands back and lets Jimmy Stewart become George Bailey. Camera movement and editing are, for the most part, spare. When George learns that Harry will not be taking over his job as planned, we follow George for a searching moment as he approaches Harry’s new wife. There is a similar pause when George and Mary are about to leave for their honeymoon, when they witness a mob gathering outside the Bailey Building & Loan. Yet another comes after Clarence has granted George his wish, where Capra closes in tight on Stewart’s face as George surveys what his become of Bedford Falls in his absence. Stewart’s eyes deliver a soliloquies of greater despair than anything that could have been written for him to say.

Capra also loads the film with other little gems like the shot above: rather than belaboring George’s skepticism about Clarence with excessive dialogue, Capra simply inserts a physical barrier into the shot. We had already seen the clothes line earlier to know that George and Clarence’s clothes were drying from their fall into the river. We do not need to see it in this shot, except that it works to sever a lost man from his own salvation.

When I was younger and uninformed, I had expected IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE to be a blissfully ignorant denial of the very same hardships I had yet to experience. It is in the film’s embracing and transcending life’s slings and arrows that it finds its power and glory. Even for those of us who can only aspire to the destination George reaches, we can all relate to the road he travels. Capra is on record as saying he got more mail regarding the fate of old man Potter than he did any other topic in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. What those letter writers missed was that Potter’s punishment is that he has to be Mr. Potter for the rest of his miserable life. George Bailey reminds us that those hallmarks of America’s Greatest Generation — tenacity, ingenuity and generosity — can be their own rewards. Thanks for the push, Phil.