The Island of Lost Souls (1932)

The Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1932) You gotta be careful who you meet in your travels.  As they say in Casablanca, there are vultures...vultures everywhere.  Thing is, on The Island of Lost Souls (based on H.G. Wells' oft-filmed "The Island of Dr. Moreau"), they just might be vultures, literally.

Or, at least, some human-vulture hybrid.

Edward Parker (Richard Arlen), though, will take any port in a storm.  Ship-wrecked, he's picked up by a freighter delivering supplies to a nearby island.  After Parker causes some trouble after seeing the Captain attack one of the crewmen, he is thrown off the ship to the boat that meets it to pick up the supplies.  It is manned by Montgomery (Arthur Hohl) and Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton), and the doctor is only too happy to take the ship-wrecked Parker to his island.

It's not a pretty sight.  All jungle and dark and creepy, until Moreau introduces him to a young native named Lota (Kathleen Burke), who is entranced with Parker.  While Parker tries carry on a conversation with her, screams are heard, which frighten them, but mostly Lota who enigmatically says that they come from "The House of Pain."

Parker investigates and finds Moreau and Montgomery performing surgery on a strange creature on an operating table.  Alarmed that his host is a madman, Parker tries to leave the island but is stopped by a crowd of deformed brutes, until Moreau appears, cracks his whip and forces the creatures to obedience, making the Sayer of the Law (Bela Lugosi) recite the rules, which are echoed by the other creatures: 

Not to eat meat, that is the law. Are we not men?
Are we not men? 
Not to go on all fours, that is the law. Are we not men? 
Are we not men?
Not to spill blood, that is the law. Are we not men? 
Are we not men?

"Are we not men?"  Not just a Devo lyric (remember this was 1932. slightly before "their time"), but a profound question of identity. Turns out Moreau is a mad-man with God aspirations, an anti-Frankenstein, the difference being the German doctor was trying to bring life back from death, whereas the doctor with the South Seas practice is altering life, trying to "do" Darwin generations faster by "un-natural selection"—surgically, chemically, any way he can think of, attempting to turn animals into homo sapiens.

And doing a bad job, by the looks of it.  The pre-code movie Moreau presages Dr. Mengele's work for the Nazis by a few years, with vivisection as a specialty, and dictator as a hobby.* Having started with plants and moving on in his designs, his hybrids live as beasts and only the one subject that has yielded the best results—Lota, "the Panther Woman"—has met his standards. Sociopathic in his methods, Messianic in his goals, he sees throwing Lota at Parker as an experiment in biology.  Nothing more.  And Laughton plays the scene like an avid voyeur.

Subsequent films have been make-up experiments to see how realistically latex can be applied to actors to make the illusion playable.  The Island of Lost Souls does a fine job of it, but is expressly concerned with making the hybrids monsters, and the situation nightmarish (as opposed to believable). Realism isn't the goal with this version, so much as driving home the point of the novel (although Wells thought the result was completely different. burying the novel's intentions in horror—he was spared having to see the other versions).  

This movie inspired the phrase "The natives are restless."  No.  Really.

* "Moreau" has been filmed a couple times (once with Burt Lancaster and most recently with a risible Marlon Brando as Moreau, that was frankly a bit incomprehensible), but those times the methods have been "magical" injections that can turn men to beasts and/or vice versa, more in tune with Dr. Jekyll than Dr. Moreau.  Supposedly, there's a new one in the works from Leonardo DiCaprio's company.

Incubus (1966)

Incubus (Leslie Stevens, 1966) A quick view of Incubus brings up two oddities: 1) it's famously filmed in Esperanto (to give it a more cultured air—it was filmed near Big Sur in California—and it also obfuscated any questions about the script when getting permission to film at a local mission, as nobody could read it; and 2) it looks like it's an episode of "The Outer Limits," albeit with satanic leanings and some implied sexuality about it.  Facts are, it is very much in the "Limits" area, directed by the show's creator Stevens, and employing cinematographer Conrad Hall and composer Dominick Frontiere from the series.  

It also follows a typical "Limits" template, with a voice-over telling us we're in the village of Nomen Tuum (where the mayor is "Lorem Ipsum," I think) where, legend has it, there's a well that's a fountain of youth, curing all ills, and restoring beauty.  The rich and vain are attracted to Nomen Tuum to "test the waters," as it were, and thus are easy prey for a coven of satanic succubi who do that voodoo they do nearby.  The movie demonstrates with a drunken victim, lured by one of its members, Kia* (the alluring Allyson Ames, who was to become the third Mrs. Stevens) to the ocean, where she drowns him and is quite proud of it.  She tells the coven's leader Amael (Eloise Hardt) that just dragging lustful men to their deaths isn't very challenging so her next target must be a man of faith and strong will.  

Incubus came out the same year as Bergman's Persona.
I'd say "great directors think alike," but...

They choose war veteran Marc (William Shatner), who lives with his sister, Armdis (Ann Atmar), who lives down the road apiece on a farm that doesn't appear to grow anything, but where there's plenty of wood to chop. Kia wanders by, saying she's lost and Marc, nice guy that he is, offers to take her back, but not before the three discuss the fact that there's going to be an eclipse ...why, in mere moments!  Despite being warned by Marc that you could burn your eyes by looking directly at one, sister Arndis does it anyway just as Marc and Kia go wandering back to wherever Kia thinks she came from. This affords some shots of Arndis flailing around the farm, calling for Marc, while Kia attempts to seduce him and drag him down to the ocean.  Marc is all too willing to be seduced, but insists that they be married in the eyes of God before any further hanky-panky occurs ("hanky-panky" doesn't translate well in esperanto).

A visit to the nearby mission doesn't go so well, as Kia panics seeing crucifixes, religious statues, pews, and holy water, leaving Marc to wonder if she might be Unitarian, or something.  Then Arndis stumbles in, saying the darkened church makes her eyes feel better, and that sub-plot goes away.

But Kia decides that she wants revenge on Marc and so she and Amael call up an incubus (Milos Milos), who arrives writhing and muddy from out of the ground, and then things just go horribly, horribly wrong, both for Marc, Armdis and for the movie: Marc gets attacked, their farm is burned down, Armdis gets incubussed, and the movie gets padded with people roving around in the dark from the house to the mission to wherever the succubi go beddie-bye.  Stevens could make the slimmest of ideas stretch for 50 minutes on television, but here, there's a bit of padding that has more to do with atmospherics than it does with showing off the locations.  Done at a minimal budget, with just enough artiness to sell to Europe, and just enough suggested sex and horror to try and sell to the drive-in crowd seeing the horror films of Corman and Hammer, Incubus never lived up to its creators' expectations, receiving next to no exposure in the States, and was considered lost until a sub-titled copy was found in Paris—it's why the subtitles are burned in with a black background, obscuring the picture, but also the French sub-titles.   The film's at its best when "suggesting" (in the first half) and at its worst having to pay off the conceits (in the second half).  

And it's always fun to watch Shatner, here mere weeks before starting work on the original "Star Trek" television series.  One moment that makes me laugh is his speaking esperanto (which he does competently—Shatner is Shatner in any language) and feeling the need to gesture like an Italian.  It has its moments, though: flashes where you see something and then hit the remote to see if that was what you thought it was—for moments both perverse and absurd.

"Could we put a key-light right across the eyes?  Ya know, make it more dramatic?"

* pronounced Kye'-a, not Kee'-a (like the car).

In a World

The Cult of Non-celebrity
or
Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics...and Marketing

Lake Bell's new comedy In a World (she wrote, directed, stars in, and wins The Welles Award for over-achievement this year) is a funny, funny look at the L.A. studio scene, or at least the LA studio scene of a few years ago.* She gets the nuances right of the bubble-verse that a lot of folks get into, and the sexist nature of the industry—female voice-overs for commercials have broken the glass recording booth ceiling, but movie trailers are still reliant on the paternalistic "Voice of God" to "sell" the image the studios want.

Bell stars as Carol Solomon, a periphery actress, semi-content to act as a vocal coach to other artists (like Eva Longoria because her cockney accent makes her sound "like a retarded pirate."), carrying around a mini-recorder to capture any vocal inflections to add to her collection (a habit that has more than one irritation and complication in the film) and do the California Hang Out, professionally waiting for the big break to happen.

That big break translates to not telling others how to do voice-work, but doing it herself, whether voicing commercials, or, even better, trailers, the toughest nut in voice-over work to crack. The reason?  Women don't "do" voice-overs for trailers.  How does she know?  Her father (Fred Melamed) does voice-overs for movie trailers, and is only too happy to tell her that it's a man's market, and that she can't possibly break into it because 1) women don't do voice-overs and 2) she can't do voice-overs because she's not as talented as he is and he does voice-overs. 

In any industry there are out-sized egos, and the voice-over field is no different.** Most have a healthy sense of perspective and a genuine gratitude for being paid to (as one voice-over guy described it) "talk out loud for a living."  But, there are those (and sadly, you don't know who you are) who see it as "art" and their every syllable is "golden."  Carol's dad is one of them, and despite his extraordinary ego, he still sees himself following in the wavelengths of the King of Trailers, the late Don LaFontaine, who, "legend" has it (or at least Don had it), "created" the "in the world" tag-line, and who, in his honor, the line has been retired since his death.***  

However, there's a new chic-lit-based "quadrilogy" movie series coming out, and they just might be using that "In a world..." line for their trailers.  Carol's father, in his largesse, bequeaths it to up-and-comer Gustav Warner (Ken Marino), who's lost a couple of gigs to "some chick" over a throat ailment, and the two chortle about how they can screw her over—not realizing that "some chick" is his own daughter.

At about this time, anybody with a few movies under their eye-lids is going "Oh, he'll find out it's her, feel remorse, and turn over a new leaf..."  Bell's movie isn't that easy. In fact when he hears that she might get the gig, he decides that he'll audition for it himself ("Auditioning," oh, the humiliation. Don't they know who he is?), in a fit of ego and competitive envy.  That's surprising.  But...I gotta say, not out of the realm of reality.  

If the movie were all that, it would be a thin script, indeed.  But Bell complicates this world, with others in the fringe—Carol's sister, Dani (played by Michaela Watkins) a concierge, whom Carol has to crash with when her Dad tosses her out so his 30-something girlfriend (Alexandra Holden) can move in with him, thus messing up the lives of her sister and her husband (Rob Corddry, proving he can play a normal guy, for once), a reality television editor.  Then there are the studio crew, including her engineer-friend (Demetri Martin) who promotes her work, enabling him to keep burning the torch he has for her.  The repartee among these players is refreshingly spontaneous-sounding, with half-finished sentences, colliding overlaps and repetitions, stray asides, floating exiting explanations, and general discomfiture, making great use of actor/comedians for improv/mumblecore cred—the difference being that it's actually funny here, and not just awkweird.

There's a line from In a World... that does raise a point, despite it coming from one of the most insufferable characters: "a great voice isn't just a blessing, it's a choice."  Bell takes it somewhat seriously, she was/portrays a vocal coach, and makes it a point several times to decry the up-inflected "sexy baby voice" that seems to be "the rage" these days, after it's been perpetuated by reality-show denizens and nondescript and untrained readers, like the kind that fill up "This American Life."  She has a point, but a narrow one.  The commercial world reflects the real world, but not very far, and certainly without any degree of real innovation, as it's always art by committee. And once the mad men discover a trend, they do it "to death," until it passes into the cliche mode and stops making short-term money.  But, I found it a little disingenuous for Bell to be on her soap-box about how people talk, because, as the line implies, we can't all be blessed, nor can we all afford vocal coaches.   We work with what we have, whether it fits into an "acceptable" niche or not.  In a World does a good job of turning its eye on the chauvinism in the marketplace, but it's blind to it in its own little bubble-verse.

Easy for her to talk.  

In a World in a Matinee. 

A compilation of movie trailer cliches as voiced by Hal Douglas, Peter Thomas, 
Dom Morrow and (three or four times) Don LaFontaine


Hal Douglas can't say 'In a World...'


A rare female voice on a trailer...Melissa Disney (featured in In a World) for Gone in 60 Seconds

* "In a world" of DSL lines, fiber-optics transmission, satellite feeds and home studios, the voice-over business is not quite as concentrated in Los Angeles as it used to be.  It's where a lot of production is done, but a lot of the voice-over artists now do things from their own home and "travel" when the technology demands it (or the egos of the producers do).

** During one session in my memory, one well-known national voice-over talent was told by the writer-producer that he'd "fluffed" a line and the response was "Fluffed?!  FUCK YOU!"  And then there are those famous out-takes by Orson Welles and William Shatner.

** This is bull-shit.  The line has certainly been used (and probably too much in the past few years since LaFontaine's death) as a pop culture cliche—an easy go-to  laugh  among the most dull of hipsters.  And it's also bull-shit because LaFontaine was only one of the voice actors who did that style of "read" (the most prominent probably being Hal Douglas), but spent the last year of his life (sadly) promoting himself as the "In a World..." guy.  THE "In a world..." guy.  And the only way he got away with it (and the man was dying, so the industry let him) is because so many people have a tin ear and can't tell the difference between LaFontaine and the other dozen or so voice-actors who "do" trailers. One wonders, besides marketing, why he did it.  The ones who did the news stories and puff-pieces did it because...well, they didn't know any better and bought the hype for a good story.  LaFontaine had great pipes.  

But he was no Ken Nordine.

I Never Sang for My Father

I Never Sang for My Father (Gilbert Cates, 1970) Family drama about older kids (Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons) struggling with what to do with their elderly parents (Melvyn Douglas, Dorothy Stickney) and the way emotional buttresses are formed between generations to prevent "in-home care" for the elderly. 

It's a simple equation: kids want their lives, and parents want their lives back.

Gene Garrison (Hackman) is an author/college professor who's the chief care-taker/"baby-sitter" for his elderly parents, who have just returned to upstate New York from their winter home in Florida.  Mom's frail, as is dad (Douglas), but he won't admit it.

Gilbert Cates produced the play on Broadway (where it starred Hal Holbrook, Alan Webb, Teresa Wright and Lillian Gish), and directed it (such as he did) for film.  It's not great work, hand-held, close-up stuff that basically gets out of the way of the actors, with a bit too much transitory busy-ness—there's a lot of walking out of rooms as if that's going to stop a conversation, but it doesn't.  Cates went on to a career of directing mostly TV movies, but became most famous for producing the annual Oscar telecasts.

One hesitates to come down too hard on I Never Sang... because the issues are familiar if limited to the personalities involved and the selfish motivations of such, but the acting, especially by Douglas, Hackman and Parsons is note-perfect and feels real.

It's just that the film is dully presented, and looks like an after-school special for those going through a mid-life crisis, and it ends, never resolving the issues or presenting any ideas or insights.  To do that would involve compromise and none of the characters are willing to, while the movie itself does so at every stage.

Gene Hackman has retired from films and acting, but it would be nice if he would grace audiences with his take on the Douglas role, just to see what he would do with it.

It is interesting to note that the "Death ends a life" monologue from the play/film is considered one of the most "overdone audition monologues" in theater.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

"Sometimes the Magic Works...."

or 

"Wanna See it Again?"

Repetition, repetition, repetition.  It is the secret to prestidigitation.  Do it over and over and over again, honing the skill, making it more fluid, perfecting the illusion, increasing the speed, so you leave the audience dazzled by the pixie dust of distraction.  Then, once perfected, you do it again and again and again in performance, producing a jaded hardening of the artistry, the audience becoming s revolving series of marks you hit over and over again.  You lose respect of the audience and the skills and the gig.  The magic goes away.

Repetition is the key to The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, too.  One of its major themes is the drudgery of performing the same tricks over and over and over again, a process that turns the titular magician (Steve Carell) into a zombie with a spray-tan, barely able to speak to his partner Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi) as they perform the umpteenth repetition of their standard Vegas act.  Not even the addition of a new assistant, Jane (Olivia Wilde) can stop the ennui, as the self-absorbed Wonderstone keeps calling her "Nicole" for some reason.  Probably because he can, she looks more like a "Nicole" than a "Jane," and he doesn't care.  At all.  So, he always calls her "Nicole."  "Jane" she immediately corrects, but he doesn't get it.

Repetition is also the key to Burt Wonderstone's comedy.  They throw out that "Nicole"/"Jane" joke a half-dozen times throughout the movie, and a good many others, too, usually to expose the shallowness and perpetual myopia of the characters as well as the flatness of their learning curves.

That flatness, that lethargy or lack of magic, is the starting point of the character arcs.  Burt is at the top of his game, successful, bored, settled into the day-to-day—the romantic encounters he engineers (if you can call them romantic) are one-night stands he pulls from the audience, provides a quick tour of his pad, a complimentary memento arranged for the evening, the signing of a non-disclosure agreement, and it all ends when he pulls a disappearing act.  Whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.  Except the magic.  It left a long time ago. 

Burt (Carell) and Anton (Buscemi)—Pure Magic

Because success isn't very funny, Burt and Anton stagnate, especially when there are newer, edgier, geekier magicians with reality shows—like the masochistic, egotistic Steve Gray (Jim Carrey) who bills himself as "the brain rapist." The owner of Bally's (James Gandolfini), where the two have performed to sell-out crowds for years, sees the attendance softening, and demands something more "street" than his regulars can provide, and so they get canned, split up, try to rebuild, crack up, and then the story can actually begin.  

As typical romantic comedies go, this one is by the numbers: Burt's career set-back is completely unprepared for, and he finds that without the safety net of Anton, and the routine of their act, that he can't start over, or reclaim his former glory, so before long he finds himself sinking to rock bottom (performing magic at an old folks home), where, by the prestidigitation of convenient screen-writing, he finds his magic mojo again in the form of Rance Holloway (Alan Arkin), mentor and Obi-Wan Kenobi-figure who critiques Burt's work and attitude ("What, magic makes you feel 80 again?" cracks Burt).  Anybody knows, if they've taken a screenwriting class, or seen any Tom Cruise movie from the '70's-'80's knows how it will run in its course (success kills your soul, there's a rival/villain, and one must have a sage elder to find the proper path), but at least the thing maintains an entertainment value throughout and right up to the end.  Thanks to the mixture of the personalities—Carell, Buscemi, Wilde, Arkin (I'll see anything with him in it), and especially Carrey, who makes the most of his small screen-time—there's always a sprinkling of surprise, a detail, a quirk to appreciate among the over-arching familiarity of it.  There's something magical about that.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is a rental.

Iron Man Three

Rust Never Sleeps
or
The Hot Mess Protocol (Chaotica in Extremis)

One still finds it incredible, if not amazing, that the most popular film-series in the Marvel Universe* continues to be "Iron Man."  Don't get me wrong.  Tony Stark's character is an important one in the pulps (are they still using pulp paper?), but relatively minor next to Captain America, Spider-man, The Fantastic Four or The Hulk.  Now, Cap and Spidey're doing fine in the flickers, but the others, not so much.  And the "Iron Man" series is the lynch-pin for the "Avengers" movies Marvel is creating as major events in the film-calendar.

The secret to its success seems to be, single-handedly, the casting of Robert Downey Jr. as billionaire-tech Tony Stark, a move that was initially resisted by Marvel.  But Downey's refusal to stick to text, traditional acting rhythms, and mercurial energy makes even the most generic of roles a circus act, balancing on a tight-wire, never being predictable and finding interesting ways, by body and soul, to entertain, even when cocooned in a tin can.  He's the best special effect in the "Iron Man" series, and dominated and energized the other characters in Joss Whedon's first "Avengers" movie.

Now, out of the factory comes "Iron Man Three" (as it is presented in the titles), the third film where most film series (post-Star Wars, and excepting the films that choose to bifurcate their last chapters) seem to stop, usually because either star-salaries and their negotiations are unsustainable, a logical character arc is achieved, or the film-makers have run out of ideas, or audiences, of interest.  Three seems to be a good stopping point for super-hero movies, too.  Face it, by the third movie, it's all about the toys and the merchandising.  In this one, there's a veritable garage of Iron Man suits in enough variations that they'll be clogging toy store-shelves in a week (and bargain bins in six months).  That's not the reason to see the movie, though, as each suit has little to no screen-time, with no explanation of what they are or what makes them special in any way.

This one is a movie version of the comics' "Extremis" storyline, originally written by Warren Ellis, but changed significantly and inserting one of Gear-head's major villains, the Mandarin—(as portrayed by Ben Kingsley) but not in a way that will impress comics fans, although general audiences might find the use amusing and apt for the times.  Tony Stark is having issues with PTSD from his encounter with "Gods, aliens, and wormholes" in the Avengers movie**  Stark Industries (and it's CEO, Pepper Potts—Gwyneth Paltrow, once again) is being schmoozed by the creepy head of AIM, Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), while Tony, sleep-deprived by nightmares, vows to deal with Mandarin-orchestrated terror attacks that have become personal—Jon Favreau's Happy Hogan is left in a coma after an attack on one of America's great industrial centers, Grauman's Chinese Theater, by creepily glowing human bombs.  Tony calls out the Mandarin, inciting an attack on his Malibu cliff-house, leaving him presumed dead and without resources, hiding out in Tennessee.  If all this isn't complicated enough, Col. James Rhodes, the "Iron Patriot," (Don Cheadle) goes after the Mandarin himself at the behest of the government, and is captured, making his combat suit a threat, as well.

That's the plot—colluding and combusting—and Tony must rely less on his established mechanical persona than his own wits and ingenuity.  Would that the filmmakers were, as well.

Favreau, who oversaw the first two movies, executive-produced this one.  The writer-director of this mess is Shane Black, who collaborated with Downey in the not-bad movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and he makes the first two efforts seem brilliant by comparison.  Oh, the charm of Downey is still there—there's one particular scene between him, Paltrow and Rebecca Hall in a three-way snark-argument that's particularly nice—and concerted efforts have been made to keep him out of the suit and his own man throughout most of film.  But the movie's gears seize up every time a big action kerfluffle begins, and the only rhyme or reason for shot placements seems to be to keep the multiple cameras recording the events out of line of sight with each other.  The editing suffers from some odd inserts in the middle of the action that merely confuses, rather than informs what is going on.***  

And, it seems a little obvious to accuse an "Iron Man" movie of a deus ex machina overdose, but this one suffers greatly from it and finally breaks down in a denouement that polishes and shines everything in a nice little package and makes you wonder "that easy, huh?"  This film could have used a little Geritol, frankly, feels a little like spinning its wheels, all the while you hear a lot of grinding in the works.  The film proudly states that "Tony Stark will return."  Oh.  Wow.  Can't wait.

Iron Man 3 is a Rental

Tony Strak kinda, you, know, uh, explains it all for you.

* © Disney Corp.

** In that movie, which is only referenced as "New York," Iron Man must fly a Big Exploding Thing into a wormhole connecting Asgard's multi-verse realm to deal with an Earth-threatening happenstance.  In that other dimension, his suit gives out and he falls unconscious to Earth where he is caught by Dr. Bruce Banner's Hulk, without any of the neck-snapping consequences incurred by girl-friends of Spider-man.

*** Chris Nolan's "Batman" films have gotten flack for that, but Nolan's story-telling sense usually gets him through rough patches and "wait-a-minute" moments that this "Iron Man" entry immediately brings to mind.

The Impossible

Disaster Relief
or
The Tides That Bind

It truly is an amazing story, fully befitting the title The Impossible.  The heart-and earth-rending circumstances surrounding the 2004 tsunami are the stuff of nightmares.

The Bennett family* is spending Christmas 2004 in Thailand.  They're Australians living in Japan: she's a wife/mother/home-maker for now, a doctor by trade; he's a something or other, attached to his phone and worried about losing his job.  The kids are twelve, seven, and five, respectively with the oldest, Lucas, a bit of a pre-teen jerk to everybody—little brothers and parents—and has a bad case of the surlies with a lot of growing up to do.

Thailand at Christmastime 2004 is the perfect time to do it.  Their seaside resort is pristine, perfect.  They spend Christmas lightly bickering, worrying, and considering the future.  Man plans.  God laughs.

What they can't anticipate is the earthquake that rocks Southeast Asia, or the resulting wall of water that comes crashing through the resort, pushing everything out of its path, slamming everything up-shore, sucking it back to the ocean and then, hammering them again, turning the tidelands into a raging river in both directions, scattering everything in random paths.

That includes the Bennetts. When Mom Maria rises above the wall of water, battered and bleeding, she sees Lucas being carried away to the ocean.  The two desperately risk safety and stability to connect and stay within reach, despite being tossed about like so much silt.  When the waters subside they scrabble in bare feet amid the carnage of uprooted vegetation, rubble and broken bodies.  Maria's leg is torn apart, flesh ripped from bone.  A makeshift tourniquet keeps her together, and Lucas becomes parent, keeping her focused through her shock and finding high ground and supervising her trip to a triage center, a hospital drastically ill-equipped to deal with the wreckage of such a catastrophe.  What has become of the rest of the family is anybody's guess, but that is for another time, if they can spare it from just surviving.

Director Juan Antonio Bayona (in the credits, he's "J.A. Bayona") manages to keep the focus micro, while presenting a macro canvas.  That in itself is an amazing accomplishment, but he has an amazing talent for making things personal and visceral, the scenes of the struggle swept up in the ocean waves is tough to watch, and the inundation of the victims in the tsunami's path, as experienced by Maria is a surreal nightmare of images, that convey panic and horror simultaneously. The details of everything, especially the personal crises of the peripheral victims is in plain view, as much a part of the story as the Bennett's struggles.  Their crisis is central, but the individuals' own efforts in providing help to other survivors is reflected by the help they get back.  It's a story of one family, but the efforts of all the survivors, native and tourist, to help each other through the overwhelming havoc is knitted throughout the story in an overall arc that is inspiring, and something of a tonic in this movie season.

The Impossible is a Full-Price Ticket.

Watts, McGregor and The Impossible Belon family

* Much has been made of the fact that the Belon's (who are Latinos) are being played by Anglo actors,  something that is much pooh-poohed by Maria Belon.  But, one has to ask: why did a production, headed by Spanish-speaking artists, make such a decision, other than for "sellability?"  I only bring this up, as there is a pattern here, what with the similarly anglicized Argo.  Are Latinos not allowed to be featured in movies because it might hurt the box office (I say this while ruefully noting that a Latino actor and black actor are "inserted" into the all-white Gangster Squad—if one is to be accurate one way, shouldn't one the other—and yet I thought Mackie and Pena were a nice touch, and they're always welcome to see). Yes, as Maria Belon says, the story is "universal"—it has more to do with family than what race that family is.

I Was a Male War Bride

I Was a Male War Bride (Howard Hawks, 1948) Hawks doing what he does best in a comedy—taking the finely chiseled speci-man that is Cary Grant and reducing him to a frustrated, humiliated wreck, robbing him of everything—dignity, decorum, manhood and sleep...mostly sleep.

In this one, Grant plays a Belgian in the French Army (in the same way he plays an American...as Cary Grant) in post-war Germany (it's actually based on a memoir—"I Was an Alien Spouse of Female Military Personnel en route to the United States Under Public Law 271 of the Congress" by the fellow this happened to) trying to break a black market operation with the help (and frequent hindrance) of Ann Sheridan.  They have history and start out loathing each other.  Along the way, he suffers bumpy rides in a motorcycle sidecar—in a rainstorm, no less—is nearly vaulted and scrunched by a barricade, paddles on the brink of a waterfall, climbs a pole (only to find that the sign, in German, says "Wet Paint"), is knocked off an awning from the second floor of a hotel, tossed in jail, and, in general, is made to suffer every indignity known to Man.

War is Hell, with several levels of humiliation, and its an everyday occurrence in this man's (and this woman's) Army.  If it's not a battle of the sexes. its a battle with bureaucracy, or the everyday battle with being a stranger in a strange land.  It is constant frustration, and Grant, outwardly so unflappable, is the master of its comic equivalent (as evidenced by such Hawks-Grant pairings as His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby, and the non-Marx Monkey Business.  Grant was the perfect test-subject for emasculation and the break-down of the cool customer.

As is typical Hawks, the camerawork is nothing fancy; set the camera up at chest-level and let the actors go and just try to keep up with everyone jumping over roadblocks, whether made or wood or red tape.  Typical situation—getting married.  She's American.  He's Belgian.  They're in Germany.  So, there are three wedding ceremonies and so many "I do's" that there's no time for a honeymoon—leaving him with one big "I don't" ("Get some sleep" says one of the hoteliers to him, to which he replies "That's ALL I'm getting," which is a pretty racy comment for the time, but Hawks always liked to push the envelope and tweak the censors)—plus, she's getting re-assigned to America, while he's fresh out of the Army, something that he'd been looking forward to but is now complicated by...all the complications.  But the mark of a professional in the Hawks world is the ability to punt, to improvise, and heal quickly...and move on, or around.  It was a constant with this director, in front of and behind the camera.  To persevere, do the job, despite set-backs and soldier on was the measure of a man...or a male war bride.

It Happened at the World's Fair

It Happened at the World's Fair (Norman Taurog, 1963) I'm something of a lunkhead about Elvis Presley, even though I grew up in the Elvisian Era.  Fact is, I was born into the Presley presence—he was a fact of life and nothing revolutionary to me, and by the time I was actually cognizant of him, aware, he had moved on from being a rock n' roll revolutionary to being something of a lounge lizard.  He'd evolved on to the Hollywood Elvis period, where there was less emphasis on picking good material and taking chances and more on banking on his success and name recognition, while also taking the edge off his persona to be more acceptable to "Mom and Dad America."  The films started out somewhat inspired, even special, then settled into a pattern of sticking the King into formula scenarios pulled from the screenwriters' template that had the feel (and factory precision) of romance novels.  They did the job, but had all the nutritional and aesthetic value of a TV-dinner, circa 1960.

Culturally, the U.S. had swiveled away from mambo (Castro's overthrow of Cuba being the main reason, as well as the inevitable momentum of faddishness) and gone Polynesian—the American Eagle had sunk its claws into Hawaii permanently, folding it into statehood, and Tiki had started to invade American dens and Trader Vic's was the big restaurant.  At the same time, Seattle was looking to the future, Sputnik having launched America's fledgling space program into a panicky orbit, and the plastic revolution bombarding American kitchens.  City fathers (one of whom was my father's employer) started a campaign to bring another World's Fair to the home of Boeing (its first being the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exhibition in 1910—on the site of what is now the University of Washington).  This one would be more forward thinking, embracing science and technology, and the 1962 Seattle World's fair was dubbed "Century 21."  It was surprisingly successful, managing to turn the city's "Warren Avenue slum" where the Armory was housed into a central hub of the downtown era...and—a rarity for World's Fairs—turn a profit.

The organizers were particularly good at attracting celebrities and entertainers to the Fair, and only the Cuban Missile Crisis kept President Kennedy from officiating over the closing ceremonies.  They even managed to make a movie deal with M-G-M for Elvis to make a movie, no doubt paying the studio a handsome sum for the privilege, while also getting some of the corporate sponsors of the Fair to contribute towards the film (probably the reason why G-M's "car of the future" figures so prominently in the film—for no apparent reason).  If it was to promote tourism and the Fair, they might have worked out the timeline a little better—The film opened in April of 1963, six months after it had closed!

It Happened at the World's Fair (It's rather tough to determine what "it" is) is a fairly lousy Presley programmer, short of plot (Elvis is a pilot of a crop-duster, in partnership with Gary Lockwood, and gambling debts force them to try and raise money to buy their plane "Bessie" back) but it's the gristliest of connective tissue between songs that were barely charting and love scenes for the fans.  Director Norman Taurog was an efficient, if uninspired, director who moved from silent pictures through studio series—his peak years were directing the Martin and Lewis comedies before Lewis got the directing bug—who could be counted on to bring things in on-time and under-budget.  He was good at logistics, and managed to keep the studio accountants happy that his films were managed enough to be able to make a profit at the box-office.  And his experience with comedies made him a good candidate for making things light and airy and moving fast.

Which is what this one needed.  Seeing it as a kid, I thought it was the dullest thing in the world and needed more shots of The Space Needle and, frankly, The Fair.  Seeing it as an adult is a grim experience when noting that your tastes haven't changed much.  There are faint flashes of wit once in awhile, but it goes without for long stretches of obvious, perfunctory film-making.  But, face it, the thing was a commercial enterprise that had outlived its usefulness except to sell records for M-G-M, rather than break them.  It does have one oddity worth noting for trivialists: in the role of a kid who kicks Elvis in the shins (to fake an injury to see a pretty nurse) is Kurt Russell, who would play Presley in John Carpenter's biographical film (produced by the late Dick Clark, by the way).

The Seattle World's Fair opened 50 years ago, this past weekend.

The Iron Lady

Keeping Up Appearances
or
"Don't Want to Dig Around Too Much, M'. You Don't Know What You Might Find."

The Weinstein's last bid in 2011 to win an audience of Anglophiles seems a trifle desperate and might be a bit too early to give the subject proper justice, like Oliver Stone's Nixon or W.—we're still too close to the Thatcher years to have any sort of perspective, other than a cursory glance at the events that shaped the Conservative years of the '80's.  What damage was done, what was gained, is still unknowable, especially given the subsequent Blair years and how British-American relationships changed and coalesced.  We get highlights and lowlights, but no illumination, and, instead, we get a look-back, not unlike Nixon's drunken reverie, but this time filtered through Maggie's Alzheimic reflections, with the dementia-figure of her dead husband Denis' presence as a Iago-like devil's advocate (played by Jim Broadbent, in just the way you think he would, a little dotty, but with a puckish edge).  Really, both of them deserve a little better, no matter what one thinks of the politics.

But, the Alzheimer's is a good tool if someone wants to do a hatchet-job.  The disease brings the past into crystal clarity (for the afflicted, not for the story-teller), while also undercutting the reliability of the narrator in the present day.  Hardly seems fair, as the two women who wrote and directed The Iron Lady (Abi Morgan and Phyllida Lloyd) do seem sincere about presenting the hurdles that Thatcher had to overcome in her ambition to seek change, achieve office, and, in becoming a political animal, save her party and become PM.  The role could have easily gone into caricature, were it not for Thatcher's best supporter in the film, Meryl Streep .

The role ultimately won LaStreep another Oscar (and, say what you will about the "unfairness of it all," she does deserve it—this is an amazing performance) and it contains her hallmark studied approach with the same intricate nuances she brings to every role—the rock-solid accent, the filigreed gestures, the interesting way she fills up the pauses and held-shots with interesting choices that are unexpected, but deeply felt.  In the elderly sections, she doesn't quite have the "thousand-yard-stare" I've seen in Alzheimer's patients, but the frailties are there, right down to the quaking-arms-under-pressure and the processing pauses that flash through without making a big deal of them.  Streep's always good, good enough that one might take her for granted, but this one's practically a one-woman show and certainly the best thing in a film that's "too little-too soon."

The Iron Lady is a Rental.

I Married a Witch

I Married a Witch (René Clair, 1942) A Preston Sturges production (that he quit over differences with the director) partially written by Dalton Trumbo (who quit over his differences with Preston Sturges—maybe he should have waited), this is one troubled flick, and, sadly, it shows.  Where it should be charming, it's merely cloying.  And the off-screen wrangling has an effect among the actors, too.  Joel McCrea (who would have been a better match here) passed on the starring role after his difficulties with Veronica Lake on Sullivan's Travels ("Life's too short..." was his comment) and Frederic March—a better actor and no slouch at comedy (see Nothing Sacred) was inserted.  But, his efforts comes off forced and flat, and Lake's antics off-screen soured any chemistry when the two were photographed together. 

And yet, Lake is great.  She didn't take any of this too seriously—it's a fantasy, after all—and she's that perfect combination of alluring and goofy.*  Her character, a witch named Jennifer burned at the stake during the witch-trials by one of the ancestors of March's character, places a curse on the male family-line to always marry the wrong woman.  By the time, lightning strikes a gnarled tree which frees the spirits (in smoke form), the latest of the Wooley clan is a scion running for political position and on the eve of marrying the starchy daughter (Susan Hayward) of his chief supporter, a newspaper publisher (Robert Warwick).  Everything seems well-orchestrated and on-schedule, prim and proper and corrupt.  What's needed is a little black magic.

And where there's smoke, there's fire.  Wooley and Jennifer "meet cute"...in a burning building—whatever the merits of the film, you can't say it's "formula"—and Jennifer's witch starts popping up everywhere, most notably in Wooley's pajamas in his bed, which makes things...complicated.  Now, that formula we mentioned earlier comes to the fore, when the witch decides to seal the deal with a love potion to ensure Wooley's love for her.  Guess who drinks it?  You don't need magic powers to guess.

Where the film picks up (and actually does catch fire) is in the drawn-out wedding sequence, where Jennifer's manipulations (along with her father's, played in corporeal form by Cecil Kellaway) manage to derail the most staged of political-social weddings and does so four times.**  The wedding singer sings "I Love You Truly," the wedding march begins, and then (boom) something happens and everything gets pushed back to the starting point—"I Love You Truly."  Having to pick up the pieces and re-stage something so elaborate that many times is comedy gold, and Clair and the writers (including Robert Benchley who has a prominent role) keep ramping up the stakes when returning to the ritual, leading to a fine capper involving the ceremony's stodgy wedding singer.

But, then, things turn "charming" again, undercutting the satire and the basic push-pull of organization and chaos.  But, for a brief time, anarchy reigns supreme, turning the greased gears of prominence and political glad-handing into a thudding, shuddering mess, seeing a processional and wanting to pull the rug out from under it.  No wonder Sturges wanted to do it.  And Trumbo?  He knew a lot about witch-trials (but not as much as he would).  Benchley is nicely droll throughout, light on the irony, heavy on the farce.  There's a constant battle between the wisenheimer and the twee and the result is rather milquetoast.  What should have bubbled like a cauldron comes across as rather tepid.

But that wedding section.  It's crashingly good. 


"that perfect combination of alluring and goofy"



* What is it with blondes and comedy?  As much as Hollywood tries to shoe-horn gorgeous blonde-types into drama, some of the most alluring women are at their best doing comedy—Carole Lombard, Grace Kelly, Kim Basinger, Cybill Shepherd, Charlize Theron (all serenely beautiful) were at their best (in my opinion) when they were sly and antic, as if there was something in their DNA (or peroxide) that compelled them to find the "funny" in a situation, especially their own, and blow it up.  One of those little mysteries that occupy my brain in stray moments.

** The bride is played by pre-stardom/America's sweetheart Susan Hayward, who's character is such a straight-laced sour-puss that she has to be reminded by her newpaper-editor of a father to smile at her own wedding, which she manages to do only the first three times.  It's among the collection of running gags in the extended sequence that builds to a satisfyingly disruptive conclusion.