Delayed Reaction: The Dirty Dozen

Premise: 12 of the Army’s worst prisoners are sent on a suicide mission with the promise of amnesty if they succeed.

 

There are some stories you can do a hundred times and they never get old. This is one of them. Band of misfits comes together as a team and achieves the impossible. That’s gold. It gives room to introduce 12 (really 13) interesting characters, full of quirks and personality, then it moves them onto a plot-driving obstacle. The Dirty Dozen isn’t my favorite version of this ever (I tend to prefer the Western or Samaria variety) but it’s good for what it is.

 

The cast is tremendous and varied. It’s strange seeing John Cassavetes, Donald Sutherland, Jim Brown, and Telly Savales all on screen together. Given the number of characters to juggle, it does a good job giving them all backstories. And, in typical Hollywood fashion, almost all of the men get a story that allows them to still be heroic when needed. They’re bad guys but not bad guys.

 

What’s most interesting to me about this is how much it feels like the major studios doing everything they could to hold back The New Hollywood and still not succeeding. This is the same year as The Graduate and Bonnie & Clyde. It’s the year the auteur-driven New Hollywood really broke through. The Dirty Dozen has the feel of a movie made with old studio logic. It’s an epic length (2h30m). It’s more produced than directed. However, there is an edge to it. It’s like watching the first time a rap song got put into a fast-food commercial. MGM is trying to make something less safe. This is pricklier than a Magnificent Seven. But it does lean back into a lot of the black-and-white, hero-or-villain tropes of the earlier era. It’s interesting to think about where The Dirty Dozen fits in an evolution from The Great Escape in 1963 to The Wild Bunch in 1969.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: For a Few Dollars More

Premise: Two competing bounty hunters team up to catch and kill a group of ruthless bank robbers.

 

The spaghetti Western isn’t my favorite genre, but I get the appeal. They are tough, cool, and atmospheric. The score is excellent. It’s a cast full of badasses. The stories are simple and brutal. I can see how these became so beloved. Personally, they all feel like the same movie to me in the way that any genre you aren’t invested in can. Like, all the Star Wars movies feel distinct to me because I love them and am invested in them. To someone who is indifferent to Star Wars, the films can feel pretty uniform. I just saw For a Few Dollars More the other day and I’m already struggling to remember what I saw in that as opposed to Once Upon a Time in the West or The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

 

Lee Van Cleef is a nice foil for Clint Eastwood. It’s funny how they both look about a decade older than they were at the time. I guess props to the makeup team for getting them to look so sun-worn. It was fun seeing Klaus Kinski pop up as one of the gang of robbers. I kept expecting him to become more prominent as the movie continued before I finally realized that he was a nobody at the time this was made.

 

While I’ve come to like the Western genre more over the years, the spaghetti Western still eludes my interest. I’ll certainly see more of them. Sergio Leone really is a master at making this. It’s fun tracking how these films were a sort of bridge from the classic American Western to the neo-Western. They are as fun as the classics and as brutal as later films.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Borrego

Premise: A botanist working in the desert is kidnapped by a drug mule after a crash landing.

 

Sometimes you’re drunk, it’s late, and Netflix informs you of a new Lucy Hale movie. I’ll keep this pretty short for a few reasons. 1) I was drunk and pretty tired when I watched it. 2) The movie itself is pretty simple. 3) It’s a movie that was dropped more so than released.

 

It’s the debut feature of this writer/director. I wouldn’t say it exceeded my expectations, but it certainly met them. This is a reasonably entertaining crime thriller. The Southwest, with the wide expanses and isolation, is great for something like this. The main draw for me was Lucy Hale. Yes, it’s mostly because she’s pretty. She’s also interesting enough on screen and I think she’s good in this new kind of performance for her.

 

It’s a small detail, but I appreciated that they didn’t subtitle the Spanish. I could figure out the basics of what they were saying from the performance, and I like the disorientation that no subtitles creates. Then again, maybe the filmmaker was just shaming the audience for not knowing Spanish. Either way, I liked the decision.

 

The other day, I looked at movies I’ve seen in the last 5 years based on distribution studio. It turns out that I’d seen about twice as many Netflix movies as the 2^nd place studio. That was surprising, because I remember so few of them. I certainly didn’t love many of them. When I looked at the list of films, it was a lot of disposable titles. Good to fill 90 minutes and not very tedious but little else. In that respect, Borrego fits right in. I didn’t love it but it wasn’t time wasted either.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: La Strada

Premise: A young woman is sold to the employ of a travelling strongman.

 

I don’t know how to pick my Fellini movies. 8 ½ felt right as my first one. It’s the one that seems to be referenced the most and I recognized the structure from other films and shows. After that, it’s less clear. I have the mostly clean slate, so I could start from the beginning. I’m not sure that I’ll like him enough to want to do that though. He has a bunch of famous titles, but I know little about them. So, I took a shot in the dark and tried La Strada. I didn’t love it, but it certainly felt like an Italian film from that era. I wasn’t expecting to see American actors in some of the roles, but I guess it was easy since dubbing in post-production was common practice at the time.

 

Obviously, Giulietta Masina carries the movie with her simple and quiet performance. It’s interesting to think about how that performance couldn’t exist anymore. I feel like any attempt to do it now would lean too close to Forrest Gump*. Masina pulls back the exact right amount to make the character work.

 

*While I love Forrest Gump, I fully admit that it’s a role that can no longer be attempted. In my mind, it has grandfathered itself into acceptability.

 

Two films in, Fellini remains in that “Great filmmaker; their movies do nothing for me” category. Hopefully that will change in time.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

Premise: Something something cavalry troops something something fighting Cheyenne something something John Wayne.

 

It’s nice to know there is a limit for me with Westerns. I was concerned that my AARP membership was in the mail with how often I’ve liked the assorted old Westerns I’ve seen. Thankfully She Wore a Yellow Ribbon came along as a quality control test. You see, I’ve mostly targeted the classic Westerns so far: the top tier ones that nearly everyone agrees are good (High Noon, Rio Bravo, The Searchers, etc.). She Wore a Yellow Ribbon isn’t one of those. It’s in the “just another John Wayne Western” category, and it feels like it. There are only so many stories to tell, especially in this era that wasn’t as introspective about the genre, so the films do turn into a Mr. Potato Head story. Same body; enough different parts to count as new. There’s nothing in this I haven’t seen before. It’s entertaining enough once you accept that the Native American depictions aren’t going to be great and it might see the Confederate’s point of view a little too well. John Wayne is a god damn movie star as always. While I don’t recognize the rest of the cast, I’m sure the all had perfectly fine careers, because they were perfectly fine here.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Quick Reaction: Tunisian Victory

These WWII propaganda films are fun. This is a contemporary documentary released in 1944. I’m intrigued by anything WWII made before the war was done. At that point, it was clear where things were going, but it wasn’t quite complete. Tunisian Victory has the added feature that it’s about a part of the war I almost never hear about. I hear a ton about what was going on in Europe and the Pacific. Less is said about North Africa. I’ve heard the name Rommel and I guess that’s where Eisenhower spent some of his time, but I hear so little about the stakes, phases, and consequences of the African part of WWII. So, Tunisian Victory was informative in that respect. At the end of the day though, this is a propaganda documentary. It felt like the dad in a horror movie telling his kids everything was going to be ok. It was clearly trying to sell me something. But I knew that going in.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Ivan the Terrible: Part 1 & Part 2

Premise: An account of the rule of Ivan IV of Russia.

 

This is my first time combining two films into a single Reaction. I don’t like doing it, but here it feels necessary. Even the Wikipedia article combines it into a single page. This is the final film of Battleship Potemkin director and (based on all the pictures I’ve found of him) David Lynch character Sergei Eisenstein. While the two parts were filmed before 1942 and 1946, part 1 was released in 1944 and part 2 wasn’t released until 1958. Thanks Stalin. And I’m not being flippant. Apparently he didn’t care for where the second film was going and refused to release it.

 

The two parts do feel pretty distinct though. Part 1 feels a lot like a Hollywood movie of the time. The photography and score are very polished. I’m not used to European films feeling this much like they could’ve been produced by MGM. Part 2 looks much newer. I had no trouble believing the film really had been made in the 1950s when I watched it. I didn’t realize it was made a decade earlier until afterwards. It has scenes in color and the photography looked a lot cleaner. There are story elements like the different songs which felt like they were responding to a different trend than when the first part was made.

 

Definitely throw Ivan the Terrible into my “I’m glad to have watched it” pile. I didn’t get much out of watching it at the time, but it will be a useful one to have as a reference point now. It’s an ok movie. I want to see more of Eisenstein. He’s the only point of context I have for this era of this region’s filmmaking. The performances in the film, Nikolay Cherkasov as Ivan, in particular, are very big, like Eisenstein hadn’t quite worked out the transition from silent to sound in film. But they are at least distinctive.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Pride of the Yankees

Premise: A saintly telling of the Lou Gehrig story.

 

The context of this movie is unparalleled. It’s a film about a scandal free, beloved baseball star who had died only a year before of a rare disease. They got actual teammates to appear in it, got a movie star to play him, assembled a crew of top behind the camera people to make it, and cleaned up on Oscar nomination morning. Oh, and the film was a hit. I can’t even think of a modern parallel. Like, imagine if last year they made a Kobe Bryant movie starring Will Smith off an Aaron Sorkin script, directed by Steven Spielberg in full sentimental mode and that film got a dozen nominations and made $100,000,000 at the box office. Granted, Bryant had retired due to age, not disease, died in a freak accident, and had plenty of scandal tied to his name. The Lou Gehrig story is too perfect and the idea of Hollywood’s best reacting that quickly to his death is both impossible and gauche in modern times. And I haven’t even gotten to the speech. Gehrig’s goodbye speech at Yankee Stadium is the kind of thing a screenwriter would be told is too sentimental to work.

 

So, I accept that this is a “You had to be there” movie. That said, this movie isn’t very good. Gary Cooper is distractingly old. He was born before Lou Gehrig and was supposed to play Gehrig as far back as college. Cooper isn’t the kind of star who can pull off younger the way that even Jimmy Stewart (It’s a Wonderful Life) can. There’s also a reason they don’t make biographical films this quickly. The hagiography of this film is over the top. There is shockingly little introspection in this movie. Perhaps Gehrig really was a saint, but that’s pretty boring. I’m not exactly cynical about this movie. The ending is moving and I do kind of like how this is just a nice movie. People don’t make movies this nice anymore. It is dull though. I don’t know how to square that. In hindsight though, this looks like one of those Oscars movies we get every year that even a year later we wonder why that one got so much love at the time*.

 

*Granted, that’s probably most of the Best Picture nominees, but I’m talking about the ones like The Revenant. Why was that a nomination leader and not a couple noms and the win for Leo? 

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Movie Reaction: The Black Phone

Formula: IT * the location of Saw * the structuring of Signs

 

As an aspiring film nerd, there’s a secret I’m never supposed to admit: some movies don’t lose that much if you see them at home. Don’t get me wrong. A theatrical viewing is always better all else being equal. The size, ambience, and lack of distractions means they always play better in a theater. However, there are movies and genres that lose a lot more from the theater to home drop. Big action movies are great in theaters. It’s hard to get the same size and sound systems at home. However, coming-of-age dramadies play about as well at home. Many comedies live and die by the idea that a large audience will loosen up the laughter in a way that an at home viewing can’t. There’s even a divide in horror. Many of my favorite horror movie are all about dread and isolation. I’m sure Hell House LLC would work in a theater, yet it still worked wonderfully in my dark apartment late one night. Other horror really needs the collective screams of an audience to work. I don’t always prefer this latter brand of horror, but they are undeniably fun in a full theater.

 

The Black Phone really plays well with an audience. It’s a horror movie of big moments, jump scares, and strategic editing. It’s the story of a young boy, Finney (Mason Thames), who is abducted by a serial killer known as “the Grabber”, played with a lot of zeal by Ethan Hawke. Finney is placed in a basement with a bed and a black phone that is disconnected. He and his sister have a touch of the supernatural. For his sister (Madeleine McGraw), that means she has dreams that give her clues about where her brother is that she passes onto the police. For Finney, it means he gets calls from the ghosts of the kids who were killed before him. They let him know about their different attempts to escape that failed but could lead to Finney getting out.

 

It’s all a little neat for my taste. A lot about the screenplay is reverse-engineered. As I like to say, I could see the puppet strings. There are a lot of Chekov’s guns in this and it’s pretty clear that they are all Chekov’s guns. I do appreciate that that the film is mapped out enough that it all comes together, but I wish that it could’ve been less obvious about it. The sister’s powers are ultimately pretty useless too. It makes for some good climactic visuals but in terms of saving her brother, she could’ve been written out with the exact same result. Perhaps that’s what really bothers me. If a film is going to be about a confluence of supernatural events it should be a lot tighter. To err is human, but when the divine is involved, I’m look for some peak Shaymalan connecting the dots. The Black Phone stops at merely being clever.

 

It’s a good audience movie though. The Grabber doesn’t have to be as good as Ethan Hawke. He’s under a mask most of the time. It could’ve been James Randone in the role, but Hawke has fun with it. He’s quite frightening and his body movements are all about 10% wrong, which is unsettling. Even when I knew they were coming, the jump scares got me to jump a little. There’s a lot of scary imagery. Director Scott Derrickson knows what he’s doing.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

 

After the Credits

 

Other than the mask, the Grabber is an awful horror villain, right? If he owns two houses, why doesn’t he just let his brother stay in the spare one instead of risk his murder house getting discovered? I’m not sure how he’s able to afford two houses in the first place. And what’s his game exactly? What’s the significance of the mask and what are the rules of his game? He seems pretty sloppy at this. I’m surprised he ever caught and killed one kid, let alone 5. And where’s the scene where he shows that he’s capable of fitting into the real world to fool people? His appearance when he catches Finney is automatically suspicious. Based on his van, he seems to work in the service industry. Are you telling me no one ever reported that weirdo when kids went missing in his area? I’m obviously being petty, but there’s not much about The Grabber to make me believe the thinking only went as far as “he’ll have a scary mask”.

Delayed Reaction: Dead End

[Note: This is part of a project I'm calling "A Century in a Month". The idea is that I'm going to start with a movie from about 100 years ago and pick a series of connected films until I get to the present. The rules I set this time are release years, per IMDB, can't be more than 5 years apart. I can't repeat the same connection although I can reuse the same type of connection. That means if I use "movies directed by Scorsese" to connect two, I can't use Scorsese as a connection again but I can use a director as a linking element again. I'm not really sure why I'm doing this, but it seems like a fun game.]

Connection to A Farewell to Arms: Both Oscar Nominees for Cinematography

 

Premise: A group of slum kids make trouble in a neighborhood in New York where the tenements are getting replaced by rich people building mansions.

 

There’s way more to unpack in this film than I expected. I went into it with the Cinematography link in mind. How does one of the best shot films of 1932 compare to the same for 1937? It definitely seems like the photography is incrementally better. I was much more focused though on other elements. The sound didn’t feel like a complication at all by 1937. They had that system figured out. What blew me away was the Production Design. The film is a pretty obvious stage adaptation. It’s bound to very few locations, so they made up for it with a huge set. When it comes to production design, once I accept that I’m dealing with limited locations, I switch to the Cheers rule. If there’s only going to be one set, it better be a great one.

 

I was mainly aware of this film for Humphrey Bogart, and I was surprised how much he was a supporting character. I couldn’t believe he died and that there was still 30 minutes left when he died. While he’s good as always, the real stars are the Dead End Boys – a Hollywood artifact I knew nothing about. Apparently these kids were taken from the Broadway production of Dead End for the movie. Then different combinations of them went on to make 80+ films together under different group names and studios for a couple decades. The have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It’s strange to me that I’ve never heard of them before this. Granted, it doesn’t seem like they went on to make any classics as a group.

 

This was a very pleasant surprise. It’s the exact result I was hoping for with this stupid game I’m playing this month. I love finding films I’d never have seen without tricking myself with some arbitrary set of rules. It’s a much grimmer movie than I expected. Still a little sappy at points but that was mostly earned. It helps that it all works within the Hays Code morality standards that essentially say “people who break the law are not allowed to have happy endings”. It certainly makes me want to follow up with this filmmaker. In fact, I think I might do exactly that.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend