The Third Annual Havasu Film Festival, part six!

  This is a continuation of the previous post. It hasn't quite gotten out of hand, and this, I promise, is the last instalment.  I recommend you read them all in order. Here's a link to the first part.

Walt Disney Pictures

33. White Fang

Starring Ethan Hawke and Klaus Maria Brandauer

Directed by Randal Kleiser

Released: 1991

 You could probably guess that when I was growing up in the 1960s or '70s, the Jack London adventure novel on which this movie is based would have been a favourite of mine. It was (along with Savage Sam and Call of the Wild -- all involving dogs). When this movie came out, I was too old to go see it in the theater, and had no young children around to use as an excuse for my own attendance. So I had never seen it, and jumped at the chance to include it in this year's film festival, where there are no standards.

 It's a Disney movie, both literally and metaphorically; meaning that there is no subtext that would go over the heads of young viewers. (I know, a lot of the earlier animated Disney movies -- I never saw the later ones -- have such subtext, but that's not what "it's a Disney movie" means.) The novel, as far as I recall (and it's been more than 50 years since I read it, so I could be wrong) has no subtext either, so it's not like the movie is a sanitized version of the book. As far as I can recall, the movie tracks the book pretty well. 

 In this film, Ethan Hawke, in his first leading role, plays Jack Conroy, whose father died after staking a claim in the Klondike. Jack has come to take up his inheritance. He meets his father's good friend Alex (Klaus Maria Brandauer), who gets sucked into taking the boy up to the claim in an area that is remote even by Yukon standards, then gets sucked into teaching him how to mine for gold. Along the way they encounter Mia Tuk, or White Fang, a wolf-dog hybrid who has been caught and trained by local natives who are friends of the affable and widely-respected Alex. 

 

 Though all the lines in the movie are said by people, the movie is really about White Fang. Not a great movie, maybe; some of the special effects are a little on the hokey side, as when, in a quick cut, a wolf (played by a big dog) appears to bite a log covered in fur. But a great story. You know, there's a reason why all those old novels are called "classics"; they actually tell great stories, if you can get past the sometimes dated language. (If we still used the King James Version of the Bible, we'd have no trouble reading Shakespeare.)

34. Wild Mountain Thyme

Starring: Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan and Christopher Walken

Directed by: John Patrick Shanley

Released: 2020

 So many movie plots depend on the inability of the characters to communicate thoughts to other characters. This is one of those. Anthony Reilly (Jamie Dornan) grew up on the farm next to Rosemary Muldoon (Emily Blunt). They have loved each other since childhood but he thinks he's unworthy of her, and she thinks she needs to let him make the decisive move. Sadly, he is indecisive. 

 Their romance, or the lack thereof, is also tied up with the land. Rosemary owns a strip of land between two gates that give access to Anthony's family's farm. To tell you how that came to be would be a spoiler, so ... suffice it to say that Anthony's father Tony (Christopher Walken) sold it to Rosemary's father years before. And Tony has decided to sell the farm to his nephew in New York, because be believes Anthony will never marry and thus the farm would eventually pass out of the family, and that would be wrong. Tony is something of an idiot about this, until Rosemary's mother points out that the farm doesn't know right from wrong. You would think he could have figured that out himself.

 It's a rural story, with a rural pace and a lot of rain, but as a romance it's a great success, both beautiful and engaging. You know before hitting "play" that it will have a happy ending, but getting there keeps you watching and hoping. It also makes you glad that movie characters are so often unable to communicate thoughts to other characters.

35. Wilson

Starring Woody Harrelson and Laura Dern

Directed by Craig Johnson

Released: 2017

 Woody Harrelson plays the title character, a garrulous naïf with offbeat opinions about everything, and no filter to stop him sharing them with anyone he encounters. And he encounters a lot of people. He is the guy who will share your table at a restaurant when all the others are available. If you're the only person on a bus, he will sit next to you and force you to converse. No wonder his wife left him: just packed up and moved away without a word.

 Now, after many years, he goes to find her. I forget why, and can't be bothered to look this movie up to remind myself why. He locates his ex-wife, who seems to be doing alright, and drags her into his loony effort to be a part of their daughter's life ... the daughter they gave up for adoption 17 years before. 

 There are some amusing bits in this film, like the scene pictured on the poster art, but not nearly enough to make me ever want to sit through this again. I revolt at the thought of having to listen to this character talk, and talk, and talk. And hearing the idiotic Woody character from "Cheers" in everything Harrelson says is more irritating than I would have thought. That may not be a fair point, but there it is. 

 

 Also, the dog dies. You don't see it, but it happens.

36. Spontaneous

Starring Katherine Langford, Charlie Plummer and Hayley Law

Directed by Brian Duffield

Released: 2020

 A Tale of Two Movies: It is the best of films, it is the worst of films.

 First, the premise is hilarious. Gruesome but funny. Mara (Katherine Langford) is sitting in a boring math class and drops her pencil. When she leans over to get it, the student in front of her explodes like a popped balloon. Blood covers everything like the climax of Carrie. No one knows why it happened. The whole class is taken to the police station and interviewed, tested, interviewed again. No answers are forthcoming.

 On the bright side, as a result of this tragedy, Dylan (played by Charlie Plummer) is emboldened to approach Maya, and they begin a relationship that, over the course of the first hour of this movie, will gradually develop into a real romance. Despite the unexplained popping of additional students in the Senior class, Dylan and Maya's relationship is a nicely staged romance manifesting genuine dialogue, natural reactions, and the sort of attitudes that exemplify ordinary people that age. Despite the occasional truly wierd event (Pop!) it feels right.

 Eventually the entire senior class is quarantined, and months pass without a spontaneous irruption of a student. People relax. Then there is a sudden spate as a dozen or more students vanish in puffs of blood. There is a panic scene, as the students run aimlessly about. Dylan and Maya are separated in the crowd, and when they are reunited there's a touching scene in the back of the school building. Until Dylan explodes in Maya's face. 

 And that ends the good part of this movie. The rest of it is dark, and there is nothing fun or romantic about it. It's a high-school version of Leaving Las Vegas. If I were a teenaged boy on a date watching this movie, I would know I wasn't going to be getting lucky that night. The hope and confidence I was feeling until Dylan burst would be gone in a splatter of red dye; it's a real downer. And the ending is crap, managing to be both predictable in gross and irrelevant in detail.

37. Spy Game

Starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt

Directed by Tony Scott

Released: 2001

 It's Nathan Muir's last day with the CIA. It begins with a phone call from a contact in Hong Kong, telling him to get to his office and read a fax if he wants to know what's going on before "they" do. Muir, played by Robert Redford, learns that a former asset of his, one Tom Bishop, has been captured by the Chinese while attempting to sneak a prisoner out of a Chinese prison. Muir then gets called in to a task force meeting concerned with the incident. The agency is planning to leave Bishop where he is, but  first they want to know all they can about Bishop, what he is likely to say before being executed as a spy. Muir keeps information in his head, so he is invited to walk the task force members through his dealings with Bishop.

 In flashbacks, we see Bishop, played by Brad Pitt, being recruited by Muir in Viet Nam, then converted to an agency asset in Germany. We see his work in Lebanon, where he develops a relationship that will have consequences later. And we see Bishop, in quick cuts, in Chinese custody. In between all this, we see Muir doing odd things around the CIA offices in Virginia, things that clearly he shouldn't be doing.

 This is a taut, tense and elaborate script and the performances of both principal actors does it justice. Redford is superb as Muir, a generation older than Pitt's Bishop, and Pitt is probably playing himself as a mentee of Redford, even this far into his acting career. (Ten years before, he had been directed by Redford in A River Runs Through It, one of his first major movie roles.) It doesn't hurt, either, that both actors have similar coloring and could be father and son, except for Pitt's chipmunk-cheek look.

 The supporting actors do excellent jobs as well, particularly Stephen Dillane as Chuck Harker, whose position in the agency makes him the bad guy that Redford's Muir has to outwit. Catherine McCormack as Bishop's Beiruit girlfriend Elizabeth Hadley is suitably enigmatic. Muir thinks she's using Bishop and causes a blow-up between them. When next Bishop knocks on Hadley's door, her expression makes the viewer wonder: Is Muir right? I'm still wondering about that. Plot-wise, it's a great smile.

 

Will Penny (Paramount)

38. Will Penny

Starring Charlton Heston, Joan Hackett and Donald Pleasance

Directed by Tom Gries

Released: 1968

 By the time this film was made in the late 1960s, the Western as a movie genre was pretty much on its way out. There were still a few television shows set in the Old West, but the Golden Age of the Western had ended, helped in its passing by the competition from "spaghetti westerns," made overseas on much smaller budgets. 

 The Westerns that came out of Hollywood featured a set of morals that, by the late 1960s, were being questioned in every aspect of popular culture. This film adheres to the "old school," both in message and style. Good guys are good in every way, bad guys are bad in every way, and the cavalry always arrives in the nick of time.

 So it is here. Will Penny, played by Charlton Heston, hires on as a line-rider for a ranching concern. When he gets up to his remote cabin, he finds it occupied by a woman, Mrs Allen (played by Joan Hackett) with a young son. They turn out to have been abandoned there by their guide to Oregon. Penny has not worked out what to do about her presence, with the winter coming on, when he is set upon by a lawless family of itinerant criminals that he had encountered once before. They beat him up, rob him and leave him for dead. He struggles back to the cabin, where he is nursed back to health by Mrs Allen.

 You can guess what happens between them, but as required by the Code of the Western (or something), it's all chaste. When the bad guys return on Christmas eve, even they give Mrs Allen two days' thought before she has to choose which of the family's sons will be allowed to rape her. She uses that time well; she and Penny concoct a plan, and as she provokes fighting between the two sons, Penny neutralizes the father, steals the wagon and rides off, intending to get help from the ranch house three days' ride away. (Not much of a plan, but it's about all they can come up with in the circumstances.) Luckily, the metaphorical cavalry is already out there in the hills close by the cabin, in the shape of Blue (Lee Majors, in his first major film role), a cowboy known to Penny. Together they take on the bad guys, manage to smoke them out of the cabin, and exact justice upon the whole family. As that event reaches its climax, the ranch's boss arrives with reinforcements, having been advised by neighbouring ranchers that something is going on up there in the mountains. 

 As to the outcome of the relationship between Mrs Allen and Penny, I'll let you check out the film yourselves. The scenery is beautiful -- it was filmed in Inyo County, California, which includes both Death Valley and the Sierra Nevada's highest peaks -- and the acting by the principals is better than competent. In fact, were it not for the dated style of acting demanded by the studios in that day and age, and the traditionalist morality demanded by the motion picture industry at the time, I think this could have been a much better film. As it is, it's just pretty good.

The Third Annual Havasu Film Festival, part five (!)

  This is a continuation of the previous post. I recommend you read them all in order. Here's a link to the first part.

 My God, you're thinking, where will it all end? I don't know either. My sister in law has left for a dog show in ... I forget where. My wife is leaving tomorrow for a soccer tournament in Utah, and I'll be going back to the library for a final set of videos to get me through my period of isolation. I'll be here through the weekend, when she returns and we head home to Texas. But until then... Let's go to the movies!

 

 

28. All Quiet on the Western Front

Starring Felix Kammerer

Directed by Edward Berger

Released: 2022

 This is the third time Erich Maria Remarque's classic novel has been made into a film. This one was originally shot in German, but is so well dubbed into English that you hardly notice the occasional disconnect between lips and sounds. (It can also be played in French from the same DVD.) 

 The story is pretty straightforward. Paul Bäumer (played by Felix Kammerer) is seventeen years old and is afraid he's going to miss all the excitement of the Great War. It's already been going on for three years. He forges his father's signature so he can enlist in the German army, and ends up with his friends in an infantry unit on the western front. The film chronicles his experiences there: death, destruction, injuries and amputations, glory and barbarism. It's a long film (nearly two and a half hours) so there's plenty of time for Bäumer to be thoroughly disabused of his youthful zeal for the war.

 It's not a pretty movie. Neither is it downright gruesome. It is, as far as is possible without actually sacrificing actors, accurate in its depiction of the horrors of trench warfare, where deadly technology exceeds the capacity of generals to imagine tactical solutions. In the actual event, the two sides lost three million soldiers without significantly moving the lines. The only idea they had was the blunt frontal attack, and they sent their millions of soldiers "over the top" into machine gun fire. (Makes me wonder how the Ukrainians are doing right now in the face of unprovoked Russian aggression, which has degenerated into trench warfare across the eastern part of that country.) 

 Neither is this quite the anti-war film it's often called. It takes social-comment swipes at the luxury enjoyed by the elite, who scramble for canapés while fighting soldiers scramble about in mud and filth, and it draws attention to the unchecked madness of zealots who have too little respect for their subordinates; this is personified by the general who orders his men to attack the French half an hour before the armistice goes into effect. Many are lost in that pointless attack, instigated solely by the general's personal quest for glory. But war itself? That is not a question addressed by this film. It shows war for what it is, but that doesn't mean war isn't sometimes necessary. (Although any student of history has to wonder why this particular war was necessary.)

 The film was nominated for a bunch of Academy Awards when it came out in 2022; it won four. The only one of those four that surprises me is the one for Best Original Score, as I found the intermittent and sudden heavy-metal guitar licks anachronistic and distracting (though, to be fair, in other places the music did create a suitable mood for the action on the screen).

29. What If

Starring Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan

Directed by Michael Dowse

Released: 2013

 This movie, I learned while looking for a poster picture to download for this blog post, was originally called The F Word. The movie-ratings people wouldn't give them a PG-13 rating if they called it that, so they changed it to What If. Because little kids never see the advertising for a movie, I guess. Imagine an eye-roll emoji here.

 The F Word is a more clever title, because the movie is all about being in the friend zone, and "friend" starts with F. Get it? But it implies something else, which also has a relationship to the movie's plot. Isn't that clever?

 Oh, well.

 I found myself thoroughly engaged by this charming little romantic comedy. Wallace, played by Daniel Radcliffe -- seeing him all grown up makes me feel soooo old, but it had to happen -- dumped his girlfriend for cheating on him. It's been over a year but he's still getting over it. He goes to a party hosted by his best friend Allan (played by Adam Driver) and meets Chantry (Zoe Kazan). They hit it off, and when he walks her home, she mentions her boyfriend. What man hasn't been in a similar situation before? What does one do? Wallace chooses to inhabit the Friend Zone ... for a while, at least. Better than not being with her at all.

 Daniel Ratcliffe had years as Harry Potter to learn the craft of acting, and having now seen him in a number of different roles, I think he learned pretty well. While he'll always be the boy with the lightning scar, he manages to inhabit other characters convincingly: you don't feel like you're watching Harry say the lines. 

 

 The bigger surprise in this film is how fully I was interested in Zoe Kazan's portrayal of Chantry. Maybe hers was simply written to be the more interesting character, but I felt drawn more into her dilemma than I did Wallace's. Each has a moronic and lame advisor in the film: Chantry has her airhead sister Dalia, played by Megan Park; Wallace has Allan. Wallace seems to buy into the idiotic advice Allan gives, while Chantry seems appropriately and politely dismissive of her sister's pontificating. Chantry seems to have a better grasp of reality, as though she's actually thought about things. The actress, Kazan, has been in about two dozen films, none of which I've seen all the way through, so this is the first time I've noticed her. And from what I see here, I'll look forward to her future work.

IMPAwards

30. Without Remorse

Starring Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell and Jodie Turner-Smith

Directed by Stefano Sollima

Released: 2021

 

 Every film that came out in 2020 and 2021, and most that came after that, have a built-in excuse for box office failure, because of the Covid pandemic. This is the type of film that, had that pandemic not happened, my best friend Roland would have dragged me to the theater to see. Well, maybe "dragged" is a little too strong, but we would have seen it, because there's a lot of shooting, and lots of people get killed. But honestly I'd have gone willingly, because the main character, John Clark (played by Michael B. Jordan) is the creation of the late Tom Clancy, and that's as good a guarantor of excitement and tight plots as you're likely to get in a story.

 Well, in this case maybe the plot gets a little loose. This movie is based on a book of the same name that I read maybe thirty years ago and don't remember at all, but as with all of Clancy's works, there's a complex story behind the action. He, as an author, never had to limit himself to 250 pages, but trying to tell that same story with a movie's time limitations means that lots of stuff gets cut. That tends to leave some holes. At least they're not too glaring in this case. 

 The story starts with a raid in a Middle-Eastern war zone to recapture a hostage. Things go a little sideways and the villain, we'll all agree, is the slimy CIA agent Ritter (Jamie Bell). Of course we know that any identifiably evil character at the beginning of an action movie will turn out to not be the problem. But every time we see Ritter, and listen to his oily speech, we think it must actually be him. His despicable character is nicely drawn in the film. At the other end of the honor spectrum -- the higher end -- is Lt Cmdr Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith), Clark's CO.

 Long after the opening raid is done, the members of the squad are being killed at their homes in the US. This leads to a retaliatory attack against the instigators, who are in Murmansk, Russia. Greer takes her hand-picked squad there to conduct its operation, and overcomes betrayal and geopolitical posturing to accomplish her mission. It's a happy ending, but not too happy.

 I did see, after watching the film, that it gets poor ratings from both critics and the audience on Rotten Tomatoes. This is why I don't put too much faith in those ratings. I'd give it a good rating, not so much for the film's acting or cinematography or writing or any particular thing; really just as entertainment. If you like action-adventure films, this one will keep your interest to the end.

 

Jason Statham/ Simon West/ Lionsgate/ William Goldman

31. Wild Card

Starring Jason Statham

Directed by Simon West

Released: 2015

 I didn't know the name "Jason Statham" when I selected this movie from the library shelf; I was mainly curious about the names on the jacket that I did recognize: Anne Heche, Sofia Vergara, Jason Alexander and Stanley Tucci. Now that I've seen it, I can say that I think I recognized Sofia Vergara in her one scene near the beginning; I definitely recognized Jason Alexander in his one scene shortly after that; I definitely did not recognize Stanley Tucci, with a full head of hair, in his scenes near the end; and I have no idea which of the many waitresses, dealers and bartenders might have been played by Anne Heche. 

 On the other hand, I found out that I did recognize Jason Statham: he played the "rogue" English spy in the Melissa McCarthy romp, Spy, one of my and my wife's favourite action-adventure send-ups. 

 In this movie, he's Nick Wild, a martial-arts expert whose background is never defined. Wild goes around Las Vegas, slaying dragons, rescuing damsels in distress and earning a grudging living generally by putting small pieces of the world right. Sort of a Jack Reacher type, but without the hitchhiking. The tone of the film is serious, but not too serious. The story is episodic, in that it is two separate stories that kind of overlap at the end.

 In one story, Wild helps a friend of his get revenge against a mafioso; in the other, a golden-child tech nerd hires him as a bodyguard. Don't worry too much about the stories, though. They're reasonably coherent and cogent, but they're really just vehicles for the elaborate fight scenes that pop up throughout this film; like songs in a musical, except instead of interrupting the flow of the story, they are the story.

 Ever since Matt Damon's first portrayal of the superspy character Jason Bourne in 2002, movies have focussed on the action hero who is able to instantly see potential weapons in everything around him. Bourne was followed by Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher and Keanu Reeves as John Wick. I think the ability of movies to portray such fight scenes, which tend to move from place to place as the combatants flee and stand, is likely down to a development in camera technology, but no matter. The point here is that, starting with Bourne, action heros were able to beat the crap out of villains with a rolled up magazine and a piece of pastrami. Punching and kicking still happen a lot, but they're kind of livened up by the clever use of props.

 

 Statham's Nick Wild character follows in that vein, and it's as enjoyable a spectacle in this little movie as it is in a big-budget movie. I guess after more than 20 years of this kind of fight scene being produced, the skill in staging it has spread, and director Simon West's staging in this film is, I'd say, a complete success, particularly the fight in the casino (I think it's the next-to-last fight scene in the movie) where Wild vanquishes a number of bad guys as he makes his way from a restaurant counter through the blackjack tables to the roulette wheel before security shows up to put an end to the melee. I couldn't care less about the relationships between Wild and anyone else in the film; neither, it seems, does he. It's not about relationships, really.

 (And BTW, Wild drives a 1969 Ford Torino in this movie; an oddly distinctive car for a character who probably has a lot of people looking for him. Cool, though.)

32. And While We Were Here

Starring Kate Bosworth, Jamie Blackley and Iddo Goldberg

Directed by Kat Coiro

Released: 2012

 

 Leonard, played by Iddo Goldberg, is a viola player. His wife Jane (Kate Bosworth) miscarried a baby and can no longer have children. She seems to define herself by that fact. Leonard takes a temporary position with an orchestra in Naples and brings his wife with him. The movie doesn't say so, but I suspect he thought a change of scenery might do her some good, as she's totally self-absorbed and cold. As they arrive, she has her wallet stolen as they leave the train station. This scene seems to have no particular point except to show that she is ill-equipped to play the tourist in Naples, while Leonard goes about dealing with the tedium of cancelling credit cards and ordering replacements in an anal-retentive businesslike manner.

 Leonard, of course, is there to work. He's very serious about his work, and it's not going especially well, so he's tired and distracted in the evenings as he tries to get it right. Not for nothing is he something of a stick in the mud, and quite reasonably so. If this were real life, he'd have more time for fun stuff after he's learned the music thoroughly and gotten accustomed to the conductor. She, on the other hand, alternates between wanting to tell him all about her aunt's boring stories of living through World War II (she's got hours of audiotapes of these stories, and claims to be working on a book about it) and wanting to tell him next to nothing about her daytime escapades in Italy while Leonard's at work.

 On her first day, she goes sightseeing and meets Caleb (Jamie Blackley), a 19-year-old American who's clearly trying to seduce her from the start. He follows after her like a puppy dog, telling stories of questionable veracity and jokes of the roll-your-eyes variety, all of them involving viola players. She seems pleased by the attention and probably knows why he's doing what he's doing, and doesn't mind. He shows her a little adventure. Maybe she's looking for a fling?

 The next day she and Leonard encounter Caleb, playing International Man of Mystery, while at lunch. Suddenly Jane is doing little things that surprise or even shock her husband. Smoking (presumably a cigarette, but does it matter?), for example. "I smoke sometimes back home. At parties," she says. Leonard seems not to have noticed her doing this. She tells a viola joke, showing derision for her husband in the presence of this young stranger. Leonard chooses not to make a scene over it. When he goes back to work, Jane goes off by herself, and surprise, surprise! Caleb shows up again. He confesses that he couldn't sleep the night before for thinking about her. They start to make out in an alley, but she breaks it off. Having moral qualms, or playing hard to get?

 The next day she feels differently, and tracks Caleb down for a roll in the hay. Caleb is planning to go off to Tibet with some people he just met, and asks Jane to go with. She never says, one way or the other, but a day or so after that, she tells her husband she's leaving him, because he doesn't see her. Leonard, frustrated by her vague accusatory insinuations and admission of infidelity, gives her her return train ticket to London and says Go do what you have to do and meet at the station when it's time to go home. Instead, when he's waiting for their train, she catches one going the opposite direction.

 

 I chose this movie from the shelf because it promised the beauty of the Amalfi coast. The film moves at the pace of the tides in that place. And the scenery, while occasionally beautiful, is rarely seen.

 There are, I'm sure, a lot of women who have difficulties dealing with the problems life hands them. Not all of them blame their husbands, and not all of them insist on the kind of mindreading necessary to discern whether they expect help or hands-off. Leonard is better off, I'm sure, with her in Tibet. I'd have been better off if I'd picked a different movie.