Scarface: 1932 gangster movie directed by Howard Hawks
and Richard Rosson and starring Paul Muni, George Raft, Osgood Perkins, Boris
Karloff and Ann Dvorak. If you’ve seen
the 1983 remake with Al Pacino then you’re already familiar with the plot: Tony is the muscle for Johnny Lovo’s gang in
Prohibition-era Chicago, and he decides to expand his boss’s territory and then
take it over in a gutsy power play. Good
news is he has his best friend Guino to help with the dirty work; bad news is
Guino has his eye on Tony’s wild younger sister.
So you know that inevitable
retribution montage that takes place in most gangster movies? This is like a whole movie of that: shoot
some guys, take over their bootlegging business, get hassled but ultimately
released by the cops, repeat until dead.
Despite its predictability it’s an excellent movie, and a must-see if
you like any of the classic gangster movies that followed it. Dvorak could’ve taken it down a notch, but
other than her incessant shrieking the acting is decent all around. I love George Raft in this.
People don’t menacingly flip coins
anymore, have you noticed?
Savages: 2012 crime thriller directed by Oliver Stone
and starring Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Benicio del
Toro, Salma Hayek and John Travolta. Chon
& Ben are pot-growing prodigies living in Laguna Beach with their lithe
young mutual girlfriend, O. When they
refuse a buyout offer from Mexican cartel leader Elena, O is kidnapped and they
go to crazy, dangerous lengths to get her back.
It’s an interesting, if not entirely successful take on your typical
drug movie. John Travolta is semi-compelling
as the corrupt DEA agent, and del Toro is terrifying as the cartel hatchet
man. It had promise, but it’s too long
and really started to drag at times. And
the ending is straight-up annoying. It’s
just okay.
Witness for the
Prosecution: 1957 English
courtroom drama directed by Billy Wilder and starring Tyrone Power, Marlene
Dietrich and Charles Laughton. Barrister
Wilfrid Robarts delays his retirement when he’s offered an intriguing defense
case: Leonard Vole is accused of murdering
a rich elderly woman, and when Leonard’s cold, calculating wife is called as a
witness for the prosecution (get it?) the physically ailing Robarts must use
his considerable wit to prove that his client is innocent.
Um, it’s amazing. If you like
courtroom dramas or even Law & Order,
I encourage you to watch it. Pretty much
anything by Wilder is a good bet. The
acting is spectacular, I absolutely loved the back and forth between Dietrich
and Laughton, and Elsa Lanchester is adorable in her small role as Robarts’s
nurse – you may also recognize her from a bit part in Mary Poppins as a pissed-off nanny or as the Bride of Frankenstein.
The only underwhelming performance is that of Power, who comes across as
weak and melodramatic, but it makes him more realistic as a totally unwitting
pawn, I guess? Talentless or talentless like a fox? TWIST.
The Man Who Shot
Liberty Valance: 1962 American
Western directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, James Stewart, Vera
Miles and Lee Marvin. U.S. Senator Ranse
Stoddard and his wife Hallie have returned to a small town in the Wild West
called Shinbone to attend a funeral.
Stoddard proved his mettle and rose to the political top after beating a
local bully named Liberty Valance decades ago, and when he shows up to pay his
last respects to an apparent nobody the local journalists get curious. Stoddard is cajoled into recounting how he knew
this roustabout, and why he was so important to the Senator and Hallie. It’s a classic American Western film, so if
you like that sort of thing you should watch it. Personally I thought it was a little over the
top and the only reason I made it all the way through is my unconditional love
for Stewart.
Django Unchained: 2012 American Western written and directed by
Quentin Taratino and starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio,
Samuel L. Jackson, and Kerry Washington.
A bounty hunter scouring the Antebellum South for his prey frees and
partners up with Django, a slave who can identify the men he’s looking
for. They quickly become friends and go
into business together, and after much travel and training they set out to find
and free Django’s wife, who is owned by a particularly cruel plantation
owner. It’s entertaining but I have the
same problems with it that I have with all Tarantino movies: it’s an hour too long, just over the line of
acceptable goriness, and prone to long philosophical rants. But I appreciate that I always have to think
about his movies; they’re not the kind of fare you can watch, immediately
process and forget. There are lots of
great cameos and clever, brilliant use of music – of course. And he’s on this interesting trend of very
neatly defined Good Guy v. Bad Guy, as opposed to his earlier work where
there’s a bit more ambiguity.
To
sum up: if you like Tarantino, then see
it. If you don’t, then don’t.
War Games: 1983 Cold War sci-fi thriller directed by John
Badham and starring Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, Dabney Coleman, and John
Wood. Young teen hacker David is
scrolling through phone numbers in California in an attempt to get access to a
new computer game when he comes upon a computer that won’t identify
itself. On it he finds a list of games
like chess and checkers and GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR, and when he hacks in he
unwittingly sets off a series of War Games.
With the help of his feisty girlfriend he must track down the computer’s
creator and break in to NORAD to convince the military that this is all a big
misunderstanding before they retaliate against the U.S.S.R. for real.
It’s a really great, fun ‘80s
movie. Despite the tension and running around
and close calls it’s still a fairly light thriller. I have no idea if any of the tech stuff he
did is possible but it’s still cool. And
this is Sheedy and Broderick at the peak of their awesome. Definitely see it or watch it again.
Zero Dark Thirty: 2012 thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow and
starring an excellent ensemble cast including Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke,
Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Ehle and Kyle Chandler.
Maya is a young, driven, and hyper-focused CIA officer involved in the
hunt for Osama bin Laden. Over the
course of nearly 10 years she tracks down leads, visits black-ops sites that
use torture to obtain information from prisoners, makes enemies and allies and
frenemies, has no social life whatsoever, works and works and works to find her
quarry. Along the way colleagues are
killed, she’s beset with bureaucratic roadblocks and political maneuvering that
she lacks the savvy to counteract – an administration haunted by the WMD
kerfuffle that led to the Iraq War is going to need more solid proof than one
woman’s instincts. And then a raid is
authorized, and she gets to witness the death of the man she’s been tirelessly
hunting.
Look, it’s riddled with
inaccuracies both minor and really fucking major. It’s been described as advocating or even
fetishizing torture as an acceptable method of interrogation, which I think is
true. And the film’s claim that it is
“based on firsthand accounts of actual events” is such a gross exaggeration
that it’s laughable. All that being
said: it’s an amazing political
thriller. It’s really outstanding. The acting is brilliant all around, but
Chastain really just nails it. It’s
tense, with the occasional twinge of humor to lighten the tension, it’s
interesting, and the pace is perfect. I
LOVE this movie, mostly because to me the theme at the end seemed to be this: Now What?
Mya, as a metaphor for the entire intelligence community, has dedicated
all of her efforts to finding ONE GUY.
And now he’s dead. So now
what? Al Qaeda is still around. Terrorist attacks still occur. As one faction weakens, another gains
strength – AQAP, anyone? So where do we
go from here?
I
totally get the uproar over Bigelow’s interpretation of events. But if you still think that fictional movies
supposedly based on true events are accurate, or even that documentaries are
telling you the whole story, then you’re not an informed movie-goer. And I guess perhaps most of us are not, and
won’t take five minutes to look into the facts before forming their opinions,
and that’s why Zero Dark Thirty
should take some heat. But whether you
end up loving it or hating it, it’s definitely worth watching.
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