Sowing My "Wilder" Oats 2: Stubbornly Clinging to This Awful Title: Witness for the Prosecution and Kiss Me, Stupid

Hey, everybody, I'm back, and I have more "Wilder" oats to sow. As I mentioned last week, Billy Wilder is one of my favorite directors and I recently decided that I needed to see more of his films. Luckily, there's a wealth of them on Netflix Instant, including some of his best work.

Witness for the Prosecution, by Billy Wilder, 1957


One of my favorite things about Witness for the Prosecution was the end credits. And no, not because the movie was over. What I liked was that a card came up on the screen that politely advised outgoing cinema-goers to not spoil the twist ending for anyone. I wonder if it worked?

Witness for the Prosecution isn't one of Wilder's screwball comedies, in fact it's an adaptation of an Agatha Christie play. It's something more along the lines of Ace in the Hole, a drama with some comedic moments balancing out some very dark moments. He was very good at walking that line and finding the necessary balance between the two.

Charles Laughton plays Sir Wilfrid Robarts, a highly respected barrister brought out of retirement to defend a man (Tyrone Power) of the murder of an old woman. Making the case more difficult is the man's wife (Marlene Dietrich) who is uncooperative and clearly hiding something, or perhaps many things. Robarts deduces that she is the key to finding the truth of this case, as she takes the witness stand against her husband.

Laughton's Robarts is a really great character. He puts himself through a lot of physical and mental stress when he's defending someone. He's large and unhealthy, and when he's working, he drinks and smokes a bunch and pops heart pills like crazy, so the stress of this trial could very well kill him. He's actually quite loveable, despite his self destructive tendencies. They even make him kind of heroic, like 'this is how I am while I'm working, but I'm still going to see this trial through even if it does me in.' Robarts also has a great repartee with his nurse (played by Laughton's wife, Elsa Lanchester), trying to avoid her throughout. Most of the light moments come from the two of them.

Marlene Dietrich is excellent too. I don't want to say too much about her, because many of the film's twist and turns are placed on her shoulders, so I'll just leave it at that.

Witness for the Prosecution is one of Wilder's strongest films, and that's saying quite a bit. The word 'cynical' gets thrown around a lot in reference to Wilder, and this is no exception. His cynicism has always worked in his favor, though. Most of his films have that edge. It's weird, I don't generally like my cynical side, and try to avoid letting it loose, but I sure enjoy his.

Kiss Me, Stupid, by Billy Wilder, 1964


I'm not much for the crooners, so I really never felt much need to watch any of the movies featuring the Rat Pack guys. The only movie I think I've ever seen with one of those guys is Scorsese's The King of Comedy with Jerry Lewis. I'm not even sure if that counts. Anyway, if it weren't for Billy Wilder, I don't think I ever would have given a Dean Martin movie a shot, but as expected with Wilder, Kiss Me, Stupid is smart, funny, and edgy for its time.

Dean Martin stars as himself, though just referred to as "Dino" throughout. Like Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, he's playing a broadly exaggerated version of the way the public perceives him. You know, drunken and lecherous. He's pretty gross in this movie, but I always assumed he was pretty gross in real life too, so I don't know how exaggerated it is. I just assume there was some self awareness going into his performance.

Anyway, Dean Martin drives through a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, Climax, Nevada (get it?). When a couple of struggling songwriters named Orville and Barney (Ray Walston and Cliff Osmond) stumble across him, they concoct a plan to strand Dino there overnight so they can pitch him their songs. Dino refuses to deal with them because he's horny, and he hears good things about Orville's wife (HINT HINT). Orville understands the implied trade, a night with his wife for a song, but can't bring himself to sell her out like that (plus he's worried that she, a HUGE Dino fan, just might say yes). So they do the right (?) thing and instead of prostituting Orville's wife, they get her out of the house and hire an actual prostitute named Polly the Pistol (Kim Novak) to pretend to be her. All sorts of screwball scenarios then ensue as they try to keep the ruse going.

This isn't one of my favorite Billy Wilder movies, but I still liked it. Ray Walston played things a little too big. He mugs a lot for the camera. I read that Orville was supposed to be played by Jack Lemmon but he wasn't available, and that makes a lot of sense. Then Peter Sellers was supposed to do it and he had a heart attack during filming. It goes without saying that both of those guys would have killed, but Ray Walston is what we got and I can accept that, I guess.

By far my favorite performance in the movie is Kim Novak as Polly the Pistol. She steals the show and by the end of the movie I was totally crushing on her. I also read (thanks, Wikipedia!) that Marilyn Monroe was meant to play the role, but of course, she died during pre-production. Well, I could see why they wanted a Lemmon/Monroe reunion, but I'm glad Novak got the part, because she brought a soul to the character that I'm not entirely sure Monroe could have.

Dean Martin wasn't actually a huge part of the movie. He spends a lot of it sleeping, actually, occasionally waking up to sing a song or complain about not having had sex yet. I don't know how self aware of his character's portrayal that Martin was for this, but he comes across as a total creep. It seems to me that Dino might not have realized that Wilder was sometimes lighting and shooting him to look like a home invader or a rapist or something. If he was aware, that's awesome that he's willing to let himself be portrayed that way, but if he wasn't aware, that's kind of even more awesome.

Just like up above, I won't spoil the ending, but I was genuinely surprised at how adult it was! Things have come a long way in the nine years since the relatively chaste days of The Seven Year Itch. So to sum things up: Dino's a creep, Walston is hammy, and Novak steals it. The script is sly and edgy, but with a better protagonist, the movie could have been a whole lot more. Still, Wilder pulls it off and Kiss Me, Stupid is still a good time.

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If you want to read more of my Billy Wilder reviews, follow these links!
- The Front Page
- Ace in the Hole
- The Seven Year Itch / Sabrina

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

I love when a whole bunch of different genres get mashed together into something strange and new. I love it more when it works, but I still appreciate the attempt when it doesn't. Tsui Hark's film, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame is a historical fantasy murder mystery kung fu adventure movie, and for the most part, it clicks.

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame is set in 7th Century China, during the reign of the controversial first female Emperor. A massive statue of the Buddha is being built in preparation for her coronation. But when an official visiting the construction site spontaneously combusts, Detective Dee is called in to use his deductive reasoning to solve the mystery. We then follow him on his mission, and we see fantastical cities under cities, completely hidden from the sun, talking deer Gods, and people who can change their appearance via acupuncture pressure points.

Andy Lau (Infernal Affairs, a million billion billion other movies) portrays "Detective Dee", a fictionalized version of a real historical figure. He's a bit of a Sherlock Holmes type, well ahead of the curve in a lot of ways. When we meet him, he's been imprisoned for eight years for opposing the rule of the Empress that he is enlisted to help. I thought that aspect was interesting, his willingness to help a ruler he ideologically opposes for the good of China. In a way, it kind of reminded me of D'Artagnan of the Three Musketeers fighting so hard to protect the Queen's honor, even though he knows she's been sleeping around on the king. Does that make sense? Maybe just in my head.

My favorite character was Jing-er, played by Li Bing Bing. She acts as the Empress' right hand, and is sent to keep an eye on Dee. Her weapon of choice is a whip, and she's all sorts of awesome, and you're not quite sure where her loyalties lie.

As a whole, Detective Dee is an entertaining fantasy adventure with an interesting engaging mystery. I thought it would be a stretch to have a skeptical Holmes-ian character integrated into a world full of Chinese mysticism, but the mysticism is accepted as fact in the context of the movie and is all kind of taken in stride by the characters, and it actually works rather well.

The one element in the genre mish-mash that didn't really come together for me was the Kung Fu. Pretty surprising, right? There are some fun sequences and fights, but the way they were shot felt very Western to me. So much of it was done in tight close-up, with more cutting than is necessary. The best martial arts scenes in movies are shot in a way that we can see the fighters' whole bodies at work. If it's just patched together in editing, it's far less impressive.

Besides that aspect, though, the action sequences are all a lot of fun. They just feel more Hollywood than Hong Kong. Overall, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame is an interesting and original piece of popcorn moviemaking, and totally worth a watch.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Sherlock Holmes is possibly my favorite literary character. I've read all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes stories. I'm sure a lot of the most devoted Holmes fans probably hate Guy Ritchie's hip, revisionist take on the classic characters and stories, but I think the characters are quite elastic and open for reinterpretation many times over. I also think these movies are quite fun, though both of them slouch for a good stretch in the middle.

Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law return as Holmes and Watson, this time on the trail of Prof. James Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime. Joining them this time around are Noomi Rapace as a gypsy fortune teller, and Stephen Fry as Holmes' equally brilliant older brother, Mycroft.

Unlike many other Holmes films, Guy Ritchie presents them as action adventure mysteries, utilizing his hyperactive, slick visual sense to its best advantage. I like this angle, because the original stories were very much the forerunner to pulp adventure books. Holmes was an expert pugilist and swordsman, and Watson was a former military man, who did much of Holmes' legwork for him. I get so sick of Watson being portrayed as a fat sidekick who is just there to go, "Amazing! However did you figure it out?"

Downey's Sherlock is an interpretation only he could bring to the table. He's eccentric and foppish and weird, and from what I can tell, he's obsessive-compulsive, and possibly bipolar. Without a case to occupy him, he gets depressed and turns to drugs, but when he's in a manic state, he becomes obsessed with certain ideas. In addition to his infatuation with Moriarty, this time around, Holmes is hung up on disguises.

Mad Men's Jared Harris is pretty much the perfect James Moriarty. I mean, seriously, you can't get any better than him for this role. He's manipulating events on a grand scale, diabolically twisting the fates of entire nations to his will. Sherlock Holmes is truly the underdog in the face of this Moriarty.

Like the first Sherlock Holmes movie, this one isn't perfect. The two leads are great together. The Victorian England it is set in is vivid and fully realized. But man, that second act starts to drag. There's a point where they're being chased through the woods and being shot at and it changes to super slow motion as trees explode around them as they run. It looks really neat, but it grinds the movie to a halt. My mind started to wander for a few minutes there.

The droopy middle is made up for in A Game of Shadows by a wonderful showdown at the end, where Holmes and Moriarty have a chess match, both figurative and literal, deciding the fate of the world.

Like the first one, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is worth a watch, though not as good as it could be. I'm glad that Guy Ritchie has found a Hollywood-type movie that is a good fit for his style. I like his first couple movies a great deal, but he floundered for quite a while after those. For those clamoring for a more faithful yet still refreshing take on the character, might I suggest the currently airing BBC show, Sherlock? If you haven't seen it yet, you're missing out on the definitive Holmes of our generation.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

My wife was actually much more excited to see David Fincher's adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo than I was. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to see it. I want to see any new David Fincher movie. But I get nervous about seeing movies with particularly brutal violence, such as rape and torture. Sometimes I chicken out entirely. I've got to say, though, I'm glad I didn't chicken out, because I found that I enjoyed the movie way more than I thought I would.

For those who don't know, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a murder mystery thriller about Mikel Blomqvist (Daniel Craig), a recently disgraced Swedish investigative journalist hired by an old millionaire (Christopher Plummer) to figure out who in his family murdered a niece he was close with 40 years prior. His life soon collides with Lisbeth Salander, a tough, brilliant, but emotionally shut-down hacker who has been more than once been sexually and physically abused by men in her life.

So, was my initial hesitance justified? Not really. Well, kind of. There are multiple rape scenes in the movie, and they're pretty intense and brutal and not for the weak of heart. But whenever I'm nervous about a movie like this, I almost always find that my constitution for this sort of thing on film is a lot stronger than it is in my imagination.

I've read the original Stieg Larsson novel that this movie is based on, but I haven't seen the original Swedish film. I should probably check it out, I suppose. I liked the novel but didn't love it. It was definitely a page-turner when the thriller aspect was going, but there were long stretches that I just didn't find all that interesting. David Fincher actually did a great job of weeding out those parts. There are several scenes of them simply researching old photos and files, but Fincher manages to draw you in and keep it engaging. The story actually continues in the book for 150 pages or so after the huge climactic mystery-solving scene. In the movie, that stuff is thankfully reduced to about a half hour or so. It's still a lot of movie after the story is seemingly over, but I felt like it really drove home that the story is more about the relationship between Blomqvist and Salander than the murder they're investigating.

I liked Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara in the leads. I'm unable to compare the two of them to the original actors who played them, which may have worked to my benefit. My wife has seen the original and she says both sets of leads are good in different ways.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a pretty great thriller, and it grew on me even more over time. I've probably thought about it more than I've thought about all the other movies I've seen the last few weeks. Zodiac is my favorite of all of David Fincher's films (in fact, one of my favorite films of the last decade), and I think he applied some similar techniques to this film. Certainly the whole making research interesting thing.

If you're not a movie wuss like I am, you should totally check out The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Even if you are, maybe you should give it a shot. I did, and it totally paid off. I hope that it does well enough and that they can lure Fincher back for the sequel, because the story is a great match with Fincher's sensibilities, and Lisbeth Salander is a truly unique and interesting character.