The Magnificent Seven

The Magnificent Seven, in addition to being a rollicking good adventure, holds a place of importance in the landscape of world cinema. Or at least, I think it does. In 1954, with his Seven Samurai, director Akira Kurosawa redefined the samurai movie genre by infusing it with the visual style and values of a John Ford western. Six years later, in 1960, Hollywood would come full circle by remaking a Japanese Western into a Western Western.

The world of cinema was getting increasingly smaller, as international films had an increasing influence on filmmakers of the time. The directors of the French New Wave looked to Hollywood auteurs such as Alfred Hitchcock for inspiration. Not long after, the next generation of Hollywood directors, (Coppola, Malick, Scorsese, Lucas, etc.) would look to Kurosawa and the French New Wave. Nowadays, directors draw their influences from around the world and throughout the last century.

Directed by John Sturges, The Magnificent Seven follows the structure of Seven Samurai fairly closely, though in a faster paced, more truncated way. While Seven Samurai is an epic, The Magnificent Seven is a thoroughly enjoyable piece of popcorn entertainment. Sturges clearly has a lot of reverence for Kurosawa, and shows it in his work, with many direct nods or homages to his source material throughout the movie.

The seven in question are led by Yul Brynner, probably cast just as much for his bald head as for his screen presence (the character in the Japanese version shaves his head). He is recruited by a farming village in Mexico to form a posse to help rid them of an army of 40 bandits bent on stealing their crops. Rounding out the posse are such icons of manliness as Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, Charles Bronson (the youngest I've ever seen him, still looks 70), and James Coburn.

The movie doesn't try to mimic Seven Samurai entirely. The seven don't all have the same motivations and personalities as their counterparts, for example. Also, the bandits are given more of a presence; rather than just being faceless bad guys, they are led by Eli Wallach.

Two of the samurai are sort of collapsed into one, in the case of Chico, played by Horst Buchholz. He takes both the role of the eager, hotheaded drifter who shoehorns his way into the group, and the young, naive kid learning the ropes who finds love with a peasant girl. I didn't really care for this. Buchholz would have worked fine as the kid, but he wasn't fit to fill the shoes of the great Toshiro Mifune, in what was possibly his most memorable and iconic role. They should have looked at that character as just as important a role as the Yul Brynner character, and found an appropriate actor.

The Magnificent Seven is as enjoyable as a streamlined remake of a longer, better foreign film can be. It's fun to watch so many superstars sharing the screen together. The score by Elmer Bernstein is tremendous and memorable, and is still referenced in Western movie scores. Also, I was glad to hear that Akira Kurosawa was a fan of the movie.

Everything Must Go

Putting a comedy actor in a dramatic role is not a new idea, and it should come as no surprise by now when it works. Of course these actors are good at drama. Comedy is hard. The real risk comes in how seriously these comedy actors wish to be taken. The best of the dramas starring comedians come across as movies they really cared about and wanted to be involved in. The worst (I'm looking at you, Robin Williams!) come across as desperate bids to be taken seriously. Thankfully, Everything Must Go is in the former category.

Everything Must Go is a film directed by Dan Rush, based on a short story by Raymond Carver. Carver's minimalist stories are perhaps best known by film lovers for providing the raw material for Robert Altman's classic ensemble epic, Short Cuts. Everything Must Go stars Will Ferrell as Nick Halsey, a recovering alcoholic who falls off the wagon, loses his job, and comes home to find his wife has changed the key to his house and thrown all of his belongings onto the front lawn. His AA sponsor, Frank (Michael Pena) is a cop , who is able to pull some strings and give him six days to clear his lawn, by registering it as a yard sale. Over the days, he finds companionship in a lonely kid whose mom is busy as a hospice worker, and a pregnant woman who has just moved in across the way, and begins the steps to putting his life back together by completely letting go of his old life.

It's fun to watch Nick let go. He starts off unwilling to sell any of his belongings, not even a half-used bottle of mouthwash, but as the movie progresses and he has one small revelation about himself after another, his yard sale gains momentum. One of my favorite comedy stars, Will Ferrell brings a lot of control to his performance. His character is a funny guy, but he's not Will Ferrell funny. There are laughs, but they come naturally, and often at his expense.

Though Carver's stories were short and sparse, there is a recognizable element of his work found in Everything Must Go. We as viewers get to eavesdrop on Nick and his neighbors in some of their most private moments, in an almost voyeuristic way. Also, there's a scene when Nick reaches a low point, and contacts a girl he barely remembers, who wrote a nice message in his high school yearbook. Played compassionately by Laura Dern, she recognizes Nick's desperation and helps him remember why she wrote what she wrote. That scene itself could have almost been a Carver story.

I really liked Everything Must Go. It had a positive, almost Buddhist message without being preachy. It really dragged its protagonist through the mud, took him all the way to rock bottom, but also gave him a clean break. I related to it personally in some small sense. I'm not a drunk or anything, but I do have a TON of stuff, and I do have a real hard time getting rid of it. I've had to let go of some fairly dear possessions the last couple of times I moved, including many childhood toys, and my MAD magazine collection. It's not easy to do, but it does feel quite liberating once the deed is done. Everything Must Go made me remember that feeling and think maybe it would be good for me to lose some more of my junk.

Jane Eyre (1943)

I only have a passing familiarity with the story of Jane Eyre. My wife is a fan of Charlotte Bronte's* novel, though I've never read it myself. I wanted to see the movie version that came out recently, and I heard was pretty good, but I haven't had that chance yet. So that all means that this, Robert Stevenson's 1943 adaptation of the novel, starring Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles, is my first real introduction to Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester.

Jane Eyre is the story of a girl who, after a difficult, loveless youth, finds love in the shape of a stern, grouchy, rich man with a secret. Her journey is full of hardships and heartbreaks, and all of those things that made a good novel in the 19th century.

Our main reason for watching this version of Jane Eyre when we did was to see another movie starring Joan Fontaine, who my wife and I both loved in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca. Fontaine makes a pretty great Jane Eyre (or so I'm told by my wife), which is no surprise, since Rebecca is kind of exactly the same story, but with a more modern, suspense thriller vibe. I liked her better in Rebecca, though, especially in the early parts of the movie, when she's all awkward and clumsy and timid.

Orson Welles is Orson Welles, which is great. This was made not long after Citizen Kane. I always kind of wondered if other directors felt weird directing the guy who blew the doors of possibility wide open on the way movies were made. The screenplay was based off a radio production that Welles performed with his theater troup. He makes a pretty believable Mr. Rochester, and is able to find and show us the humanity in such a grouch, allowing the viewer to understand what Jane Eyre might see in this guy.

The director, Robert Stevenson, is actually a very important movie director, though one many of us may not know by name. Starting in the 1950's, he became the Disney studio's go-to guy for their live action kids movies. He directed some true Disney classics, including Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Nutty Professor, The Shaggy Dog, and That Darn Cat. Jane Eyre is made long before any of those movies, and shows that earlier in his career, he could make mature and serious films just as well as he could make whimsical family movies.

Well, there you have it. I finally know what Jane Eyre is all about. Maybe someday I'll read the novel. I do enjoy reading the classics from time to time.

Oh hey, one more thing: Aldous Huxley worked on the script for this. Crazy, right?

*Apologies to die hard Bronte fans, (or Brontesauruses as I have just now decided to call them), I have no idea how to put the two little dots over the E in her name.

The Manitou

Welcome, everybody, to my 200th movie review! I started writing these reviews 16 months ago as a hobby more than anything else, and since then, I've written about every single movie that I've watched for the first time (and even a couple of repeat viewings). Is there no end in sight?

I had originally intended to add some drawings for movie 200, and I even tried to start some, but as it turns out, nothing I can draw can even come close to the utter insanity that is The Manitou. The Manitou, directed by William Girdler, is one of those weird, post-Exorcist 1970's horror movies, that tried to add some level of believability to their movie by rooting it in both medical science and some sort of mythology. Remember that scene in The Exorcist where they took the little girl to get a cat scan? That they would try to explain her behavior medically before resorting to the Catholic stuff made the movie feel so much more real.

In the case of The Manitou, the attempt to ground the story in reality just comes across as silly. It is the story of Karen, a woman in San Francisco who visits a specialist because of a tumor growing on the back of her neck. The doctors are baffled by it as well. When Karen goes under to have the tumor removed, the tumor starts to fight back, possessing the surgeon to cut his own hand with his scalpel rather than it.

While in town, she runs into an old friend/lover, a charlatan fortune teller played by Tony Curtis, and they become reacquainted. Strange occurrences cause him to suspect all is not well with Karen. She mutters ominous foreign words in her sleep.

So, what is it about this tumor, you ask? Well, I'm going to spoil it for you, because it's pretty bugnuts. You see, there is a fetus growing inside the tumor on the back of Karen's neck. Weird, huh? I'm not finished, though. It is the fetus of a powerful ancient Native American shaman, using Karen's body as a host to reincarnate himself and enact vengeance upon the white man. Good night, everybody!

Still there? Well, there's plenty more to say. I feel like I can ruin things in this movie and still have confidence that you will want to watch it in order to see the scene where a dwarf wearing Native American monster makeup climbs out of the tumor on the woman's back. Or the insane final showdown in the Astral Plane or something where Karen shoots lasers out of her hands to fight the Shaman.

The crazy thing about The Manitou is, as utterly ridiculous as it is, it's kind of watchable. I think this is owed to the fact that the story is told very earnestly. The people who made this never seemed to realize the absurdity of the premise, and that in and of itself helps lend a level of enjoyability to it.

As hilarious as all that weird tumor stuff is, my favorite scene is the one where Tony Curtis is doing his fortune telling scam on an old woman. He wears a robe with magical looking symbols on it and a fake mustache (???) to make himself seem more mystical. Then the old lady gets possessed by the shaman who starts flipping out and throws the old lady down the stairs. Boy, that sounds hilarious, doesn't it? I guess you just have to see it for yourself.

I also liked the supporting cast, which includes Tony Curtis' character's friends, one of whom looks like a member of The Doobie Brothers or something. And there's also a cameo by the great Burgess Meredith as an expert on Native American mythology. He also forms a friendship with a real Native American shaman, who agrees to help him defeat the evil one inside Karen's tumor in exchange for a donation to a charity and some tobacco for himself (he was almost out).

The Manitou is a truly strange relic of the 1970's. Though I can't recommend it as a good film, I thought it was still a fun movie, and worth watching, just to say I've now seen a little man climb out of a neck tumor. It probably would have been even more fun to watch with a group of like-minded and possibly inebriated friends, but this time around, I was on my own and sober, and I still had an oddly good time.

The Grifters

Making a good Con Man movie at this point is no easy task. It's always fun to watch con artists pull off a job, but the genre itself is riddled with cliches. I get so tired of when you find out that the con man hero was actually being conned the whole time, by his partner or mark. That was a funny and original twist thirty years ago in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, but a tired old gag by the time it turned up ten years ago in Matchstick Men.

The Grifters is, thankfully, different from the typical con man movie. In fact, it's not like any I've ever seen. It is less interested in the act of deception and more interested in getting inside the characters and exploring the reasons why they make a living out of deceiving. Produced in 1990 by Martin Scorsese, and directed by Stephen Frears, The Grifters is a dark and gritty look at what makes the con artist tick.

John Cusack stars as Roy, a young grifter who focuses only on the small game. He learned from his mentor never to pull a long con, never to work with partners, and never to get caught. Unfortunately, he's maybe not as good as his mentor. At the start of the movie, he gets caught by a bartender he attempts to rip off and takes a baseball bat to the gut, resulting in his hospitalization for internal bleeding.

This brings his mother, Lilly (Anjelica Huston), out of the woodwork. She works at a horse racing track for a dirty bookie, betting on horses in order to mess up the odds. Lilly had Roy when she was only 14, and never has fully forgiven him for ruining her life. The feeling is mutual. Roy has issues with her methods of parenting as well.

Roy's girlfriend, Myra (Annette Bening), is also in the game. Though in her glory days, she worked long cons with the big guys, she now also works small time, largely relying on sex to get the job done. There is an instant dislike between Myra and Lilly upon meeting.

What follows is a story of deception and betrayal, as the three characters demonstrate just how far they will go to get what they want. I loved that there wasn't a "mark" or a con that they all team up to pull on somebody. It was all about the three of them.

In the case of Cusack, he's not willing to go quite as far as the women. He doesn't really have what it takes to be in the game, and that's what makes him likeable, and maybe is why his performance is not as well regarded as Bening's and Huston's, who both got Oscar nominations. He really is just as good as they are, though. This was made not long after Say Anything... with Cusack hungry for the big leagues and ready for more grown-up roles.

As said before, Annette Bening and Anjelica Huston are fantastic as well. They take each of their characters to really dark places. Moreso than with Cusack's character, who really just wants to be loved by his mother, you see through them the kind of damaged person one must be to make a life out of lying.

Stephen Frears is an extremely talented director who has made some great movies in a wide range of different genres. He is perhaps best known, in addition to The Grifters, for directing another John Cusack classic, High Fidelity. These two work together excellently. I'd go so far as to say Frears is the best Cusack director there is. They should make another movie together, it's well past time for that.

I laid off talking about the actual plot of The Grifters, because there are some twists and turns and it actually took me by surprise. The story did not play out remotely how I expected it to, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. It's rare and refreshing to see a Con Man movie that doesn't fall back on the usual devices of the genre.

A Night in Casablanca

Are there people out there who don't find The Marx Brothers funny? I'm sure there must be, but I just don't understand how. Their brand of comedy is so chaotic and fast paced, blending superb physical humor and witty dialogue, that it's hard to imagine it not working for somebody.

A Night in Casablanca is kind of a spoof of Casablanca, but not really. It isn't copying the story outright, though there are some hints of it. There's a Nazi war criminal in hiding at Casablanca, on the search for hidden Nazi treasure. He has killed the last three manager of the hotel he is staying at, though he has finally met his match with Ronald Kornblow (Groucho Marx), the new manager. Chico plays an opportunistic camel rental owner who takes it upon himself to be Kornblow's bodyguard when he realizes Kornblow is in danger. And of course, Harpo plays the Nazi guy's mute valet, who infuriates him at every turn, seemingly both innocently and intentionally at the same time.

I love that the Marx Brothers could just be transplanted into any setting and there would be a million new opportunities for gags. Here we see Harpo Marx's amazing physical skills in the form of a hilarious sword duel, and Chico's ability to even make the act of piano playing look funny (while actually playing a song, at that!) Groucho does his thing too, usually making snappy jokes at the expense of stuffy, upper class hotel guests and the like. No matter where these guys go, they bring anarchy with them. It's a shame they never did a movie called "A Night on the Moon". Or maybe it isn't.

A Night in Casablanca is actually one of The Marx Brothers' later films, made long after Zeppo Marx left the group. The Marx Brothers are maybe a little past their prime, but they still manage to bring the laughs. Their comedy is timeless.

Rebecca

After a series of successful thrillers in England, Alfred Hitchcock made his way to America in 1940 to make movies for Hollywood. He hit the ground running with Rebecca, an adaptation of a recent bestselling novel that earned him a Best Picture Oscar.

Rebecca stars Joan Fontaine as a timid young woman who works as a personal assistant for a domineering old rich lady, vacationing in Monte Carlo. Fontaine (whose character is never given a name) soon falls in love with Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier), an aristocrat spending time away from his manor after the death of his wife, Rebecca.

He soon proposes to her, and they return to his mansion, Manderley. Manderley is an unsettling place, a shrine to Rebecca, where all of her things remain untouched, and not a moment passes where the servants, especially the cruel Mrs. Danvers, compares Fontaine unfavorably to the former Mrs. de Winter. Maxim will not speak of Rebecca at all, and flies into a fit of rage when reminded of her. Soon, the presence of Rebecca weighs heavily on Fontaine, pushing her into despair, and ultimately, a confrontation with Rebecca's past.

Rebecca is a quintessential Hitchcock movie, in which he explores how people can often be in the control of other people. Even the dead can hold sway over us. It's a ghost story without an actual ghost. I love the techniques Hitchcock employs to make Mrs. de Winter seem insignificant. In addition to keeping her character nameless, he also made everything in Manderley seem way too big for her. The house itself oppresses her, with huge doorways with handles so high that she has to reach up to open them. Even in a low angle, the walls are so high that they stretch endlessly above the top of the frame. We are given no hint of a ceiling.

The entire cast is great, but Rebecca is Joan Fontaine's movie all the way. She begins the movie young and clumsy and eager to please, full of innocence but with very little self worth. By the end of the events of the movie, she is transformed into a different woman, innocence gone, but walking taller.

I won't spoil the story for those of you who aren't familiar with it, but there is a twist in the third act, that sets the entire story into a different direction. The twist is smart and surprising, and I certainly wanted to see how the rest of the story played out, but the third act is never quite as enthralling as the first two. There's absolutely no way I'm the first reviewer to say it like this, but the first two acts of the movie overshadow the third, much in the way that Rebecca holds sway over the new Mrs. de Winter and Manderley.

Rebecca is still great, though. Hitchcock was already making great movies by this time, but this movie pushed him up to another level.