maxlebow Reviews

Million Dollar Baby (2004)

Just A Few Words

[8/10 · 21 March 2006]

This is a great film to see once. Acting by cast is always in the moment. Feelings evoked are operatic in scale, and humanely humble. Narration is authoritative, precise, and penetrating. The stories, by F.X. Toole, on which the film is based, richly reveal the true grit of human nature. The boxing is as good as that in Cinderella Man. That is good.

There three major characters in this film. Freeman, as Scrap, doubles as the narrator. Whenever he narrates, his voice brings authority, precision, and penetration to each and every word.

Eastwood, as Frankie, doubles as director, and writes much of the haunting score.

Swank, as Maggie, has to deal with a character not quite as finely-drawn as the heroine of Girl Fight, but she, like Eastwood, brings pathos to many scenes that require "doing nothing, very well." She reaches peaks of performance she aimed for in Boys Don't Cry. She brings authenticity to the role of Maggie, the poor girl struggling hard to overcome poverty.

They all earned Oscars for their work.

Some of the dialog in Million Dollar Baby is terse, telling, and subtly beautiful. For example, Scrap tells Frankie that people die every day thinking they never got their shot. It is a short speech, but worthy of the line of poetry about people leading lives of quiet desperation. It should remain in the living language for quite some time.

The film may suffer, however, from the rash decision by director Clint Eastwood, to shoot from what was essentially screen writer Paul Haggis' rough draft. On repeat viewing, some of the longer scenes that evoke true empathy the first time seem to drag. The whole work then becomes clunky and manipulative.

On the DVD, the bonus features are great!

The 2000 Year Old Man (1975 TV Movie)

If Only He Could REMEMBER

[8/10 · 15 March 2006]

Carl Reiner, as the interviewer, sets the scene, saying, "A plane landed at Idlewild." So, the sound track was probably taken from the recording released in 1961. JFK was still alive; his family were not naming things after him yet. So, the airport was still Idlewild, not Kennedy.

According to sources who have asked to remain nameless, citing their need to keep their real ages a secret, Mel Brooks, the 2000 Year Old Man himself, and Carl Reiner performed this little interview throughout the 1950s, but never recorded it.

I seem to remember reading somewhere, perhaps in The New Yorker Magazine, that the first recording took place at Reiner's home, sometime in the late 1950s. After dinner, Reiner turned on the tape recorder, walked the microphone over to Brooks – a dear friend and guest – and set the scene. Then he asked the first question...

I had the impression that the challenge was a new one for Brooks, but if my sources are correct, and they did predict that there would be no weapons of mass destruction, Brooks and Reiner had been through the routine many times before that fateful night.

Now, I have to ask, was that tape transcribed onto the record, or did the duo do it again for vinyl? I suspect they recorded it a few times. The reason is in a detail. In the review that appeared in The New York Times in 1975, when the animation on this video was first broadcast on the CBS television network, there is a quote: "I have 25,000 children...and not one of them ever writes!" In the video the quote is "I have 42,000 children ... and does even one of them ever come over to visit?" So, perhaps by the time Media Home Entertainment picked up the animation and marketed the version I have, in 1984, something changed. Who knows? Both versions of the joke are funny, unless you are sitting at home, in the dark, waiting for your kids to call or come over, in which case neither version is funny.

But seriously, "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you don't look where you are going, fall in a hole, and die." Now, that's funny.

Tom Dowd & the Language of Music (2003)

How to Make a Documentary About Tom Dowd

[6/10 · 14 March 2006]

Although he was well-known in the recording industry, Tom Dowd's obituary rated only 712 words in The New York Times, and not much more than that in Rolling Stone Magazine, although Rolling Stone published a picture with it.

Few people outside the recording industry know much about what is shown in this documentary. However, Dowd's impact on the industry affected millions of fans of Eric Clapton, The Allman Brothers, John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, Tito Puente, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk, and Phil Ramone. All of those artists appear in this documentary.

Dowd also recorded a host of others. The discography on the documentary's website, www.thelanguageofmusic.com, is huge.

In February, 2002, Dowd received a Grammy for his services to the recording industry. Eric Clapton said Dowd had encouraged him to realize "what my skills were." This documentary is supposed to fix the problem of Dowd's relative obscurity. Everyone who worked on it had the best of intentions. Dowd's smiling face and buoyant disposition are amiably represented. But in the end, the documentary leaves out a lot of interesting stuff, in order to keep the audience from getting bored. Also, the rhythm is off. Time and place seem to shift out from under the viewer.

Don't get me wrong, this is a documentary well worth watching. The music is GREAT! Just be prepared, after it's over, to want more.

The Perfect Storm (2000)

A Parable - Men vs. Death

[9/10 · 8 March 2006]

By the time most people saw this film in a theater, or rented it, they already knew the ship would sink and its crew would be dead in less than two hours.

Surprisingly, this diminishes not one whit from the film's power. Even on several viewings, the film never betrays a moment that is false, maudlin, or sentimental. The plot is not what keeps people engaged during this film. It is the issue. How do people face death? In this film, the people are the captain and crew of the boat. They know their job, commercial fishing, is difficult and dangerous, even in good weather. The weather is rainy. The men need the money. They go out even though they know they will meet a storm. They are used to risking their lives every day. Few people appreciate how dangerous it is to deliver that fish entrée to the table.

The storm turns into a hurricane that traps the men, plays rough with them, and kills them. They struggle to save their own lives. They fail. When they are neck deep in water in a compartment of the overturned boat, they face death squarely. They talk, briefly, and unsentimentally, about things they will not be able to do, people they will miss. The stark, plainness of the acting achieves a powerful emotional effect.

At the beginning of the film, the viewer meets the crew. On multiple viewings, the film reveals nothing milked -- nothing artificial. The men are solid, working people. There is no sappy foreshadowing.

Director deserves kudos, for maintaining tight-fisted control of a vehicle that could have been campy, or worse.

The viewer will learn a lot about meteorology, especially about hurricanes. The special effects are indistinguishable from live action.

All the actors, including George Clooney, maintain a stoic, engagement with life, and they struggle to live, with no appeal to our pity, until they die.

The Perfect Storm is more than a film. It is a parable.

A Man for All Seasons (1966)

We Need This Film Today -- More than Ever

[10/10 · 5 March 2006]

My favorite quote from this film is the following exchange between Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England (the rough equivalent of today's Attorney General in the US) and his son-in-law to be Will Roper.

ROPER: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law! MORE: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? ROPER: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that! MORE: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

This has been quoted widely in the blogosphere to describe the behavior of the current administration and the war on terror. Would the zealots among us cut down every law in the US to get at terror? I fear the counsel we would be given by this administration would be rather different from Sir Thomas' advice to his daughter's suitor.

But more instructive advice comes to us from one of its villains, Cromwell.

"We are just the administrators," Cromwell tells Richard Rich, who is meeting with him secretly, desperately seeking a job. Cromwell enthralls young Rich, telling him that if the King wants to divorce his woman and marry another, it is up to the administrators to make it happen. Slowly, inevitably, Cromwell seduces Rich to betray Sir Thomas More, from whom Rich once received a gift.

No matter what the King wants, Cromwell will make it legal. This sounds too familiar. Who could it remind us of today? No wonder people yearn for the quiet moral rectitude of Sir Thomas More.

Rich is played by a young, handsome John Hurt; Cromwell by the durable actor who played "The Common Man" in the play, Leo McKern.

Scofield, as More, brings admirable restraint to More's uncompromising loyalty to his principles of faith. The contrast to today's champions of people of faith is most instructive. It is about Rich, who More knows is about to betray him that More has the following dialog with Roper.

MORE: There's no law against that. ROPER: There is! There's God's law. MORE: Then let God arrest him.

More was incorruptible. He would not invoke God's law over the human-made law he had sworn to uphold as Lord Chancellor, even to save his own neck.

Rich goes on to betray More by misleading the court at More's trial for treason, a charge brought by Cromwell because More would not bless the King's marriage to Anne Boleyn. Like someone we know who went to Africa and came back with the wrong intelligence, More has to be gotten out of the way, discredited, or killed. Rich is just the man for the job. And his reward, he is made chief solicitor of Wales, a job for which he is too young, and clearly not yet qualified.

When this film was released in 1966, the intelligence being cooked so the President could have his way was about Vietnam. Today, you know the story.

More was eventually elevated to Sainthood. He is the patron saint of lawyers and politicians. The certainly seem to need a patron saint.

Cinderella Man (2005)

Living and Surviving During the Great Depression

[10/10 · 2 March 2006]

If the great depression of the 1930s is a mystery to you, then Cinderella Man can fix that. The story, about the ups and downs in the career of a boxer, is uplifting and entertaining. However, what makes this film more than that is its believable depiction of the great depression.

The sets look similar to pictures I have seen in books I read about the depression, and the costumes are correct. But this is not just a "period piece." The behavior of everyone in the cast, and every extra, shows dedication to reproducing the gestures and attitudes I have observed in people I have personally known who lived through the depression.

Take, for example, the scene at the dock where Braddock, the boxer, waits with dozens of other men for the chance to work a stevedore job for the day. "We need ten," shouts the boss. Then he points, and counts. Every eye is trying to meet his, trying to be picked. Not a gesture is out of place.

This kind of verisimilitude comes only from fanatics for accuracy. Look at drector Ron Howard and male lead Russell Crowe. Ron Howard also directed Cocoon, Willow, and -- for the Academy Award for Best Director and the Academy Award for Best Picture -- A Beautiful Mind, which also starred Crowe. He drove the set designers, the costumers, the cast, and the extras, with telling effect. Nothing is over-acted.

Crowe trained for the film using the same, low-tech methods used in boxing in the 1930s. He also studied film footage of Braddock to master the real fighter's characteristic gestures. In the ring, said one of Crowe's trainers, he successfully duplicated Braddock's moves, his footwork, and his style.

The boxing drives the story along. It is bloody, fierce boxing. Some people may find the fight scenes objectionably violent. Crowe broke his hand in training. Real fighters played most of his opponents. Sometimes they forgot they were supposed to fake punches, leading to the spilling of real blood, which was left in the final version. Crowe also landed a few real punches by mistake.

The boxing, however, is overshadowed by life during the depression. Millions were out of work. Milk was delivered in bottles, by a milk man. People left their empty milk bottles out at night so the milk man could collect them early the next morning, and replace them with full bottles. When the dairy could no longer extend a family's credit, the empty bottles were still there in the morning with a note of apology stuck in the mouth of one of them.

During the depression, there was no unemployment insurance, no Medicaid, and no Social Security. There was the dole, but it was new, humiliating, and under funded. You cold not get enough to keep your family fed and clothed.

Braddock is shown waiting for and getting his dole, another moving scene in which everyone is stoically in character. The film also accurately depicts the huge gap that opened between the masses of the poor, and the few, fabulously wealthy.

This is a very entertaining film. However, if you are just beginning to study the great depression, it can be a a great head start.

The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

The Thomas/Catherine Love Feast

[8/10 · 28 February 2006]

The Thomas Crown Affair is an exception to the Hollywood rule that the remake must be true to the original. In 1968, Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway served up a 1960s sexy confection of skimpy clothes and clever heists. John McTiernan turns the flick into a sultry, almost jaded, romance. Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan, slick from practicing seduction as James Bond) is a power-lunching, billionaire robber-baron who gets his kicks stealing art treasures from taxpayer-supported museums. Catherine Olds Banning (played by the tough, but sexy Rene Russo) is the insurance company detective determined to get back the painting he steals at the beginning of the film. If she can get it, she will save her insurance conglomerate a nice chunk of change. The billionaire and the detective try everything to outsmart each other including a highly charged love affair that's a heated mix of business and pleasure. Russo looks very good with her clothes off.

The director's attention to the detail of the sumptuous, luxury sets, provides a suitably comfy backdrop for the steamy action. McTiernan also directs the action pieces almost as well as one might expect from the director Die Hard.

Brosnan and Russo supply most of the heat for the developing romance. The witty dialog by Leslie Dixon make the film move by with enough grace to paper over the fact that it is the sex we are interested in. Russo is beautiful, stylish, smart, self-possessed, and incredibly sexy.

Denis Leary gets a good character role as a police detective smitten with Russo, and Faye Dunaway (the love interest in 1968) gets a wholly enjoyable cameo as Brosnan's therapist, who helps him try to figure out why he is such an irresponsible business man.

One wonders now, after Enron, Tyco, and other big payoff corporate heists, just whom Crown is robbing to pay for his high-tech robbery crew. How many of his company's employees will have to give up their pensions or health benefits to keep his company looking good on Wall Street. Who cares? It's just a movie! Actually, it is a great date movie. Pop it in. See if it works.

The Handmaid's Tale (1990)

Must See for Those Who Still Care About Women's Rights

[8/10 · 26 February 2006]

Margaret Atwood, a Canadian novelist (and poet) wrote the dark fantasy novel on which this film is based. It is set in The Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, or at least the parts of it that are not radioactive. The radioactive parts are called the colonies, where bad girls are sent to die of radiation poisoning. The time is the near future, after the inevitable nuclear war, and the breakdown of government as we know it.

The society depicted in The Handmaid's Tale is a nightmare: everyone is watched by the Eyes, unknowable, unseen government spies. Women are forbidden to have jobs. They are irrevocably assigned to classes. At the top are the chaste, but morally superior, Wives, almost all of whom have been rendered infertile by the inevitable unclear war. At the bottom are the housekeepers, or Marthas, who are non-entities. In the middle are the Handmaids of the title, who are fertile, but tightly controlled. The term Handmaid is a Biblical term that is used in the Old Testament stories of Abraham, Sarah, Jacob and Rachel. In the Bible, the wives gave their handmaids to their husbands in order to produce heirs.

Handmaids, in the film and the book, are forced to have sex with the Commanders, the husbands of the Wives. During this sex, the Wives are intimately present to take in any "love" their Commanders have to give.

The Handmaids are trained to remain unattached to the Commanders. They are prohibited from using makeup or doing anything to make themselves attractive. Handmaids are forced to turn their offspring over to the morally "fit" Wives.

Robert Duvall, a Commander in whose home Offred is placed, gives a family Bible reading performance that will curdle the blood of true people of faith. It is a breathtaking, heart-stopping performance.

The government is totalitarian and monotheistic. The one god is very strict, and has His Eyes everywhere.

Offred, who was once known as Kate, is a Handmaid who, despite her training (read brainwashing), recalls her past, her loving husband, and her adored daughter. She tells with sparkling, and terrifying clarity, how the society came to be the way it is.

This governmental aspect of the story is instructive, however, they are almost totally absent in the film.

Offred's/Kate's personal story is heartrending. It reminds one of the miseries of, say, the women of Darfur. When the government breaks down, she and her husband and daughter attempt to flee to Canada. Unfortunately, they are caught. Her daughter is "confiscated." Her husband is taken away. She never sees her husband again.

Offred's training is not as extensively portrayed in the film as it is in the book, but her feeling of terror and helplessness are palpable, in an exquisite performance by Natasha Richardson. Warning, blood is shown.

As we ride down the slippery slope toward the overturning of Roe v. Wade, this film is a must see for those who still care about women's rights.

Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

Fahrenheit 451 -- On the Web, the Paper Does Not Have to Burn

[10/10 · 26 February 2006]

This film first appeared in theaters in 1966. The Vietnam War was just getting under way. The Pentagon was beefing up its disinformation campaign that was later documented in David Halberstam's book The Best and the Brightest. The film is based on a novel by Ray Bradbury, first published in 1953, when the hysterical Red Scares of McCarthyism were near their peak.

Bradbury's writing was originally published in the second issue of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine. In an interview, Bradbury claims that Fahrenheit 451 was his only work of science fiction.

That the "New Wave" director, Francois Truffaut agreed to direct the film was unusual. Bradbury was already an established writer, who probably wanted some artistic control, but Truffaut was promoting the auteur theory of film in which the director has absolute artistic control.

The friction had a couple of effects on the film. Truffaut, eager to begin filming wrote the screenplay before fully mastering English. Even Truffaut was disappointed in the end with the stiff, flat dialog. For Truffaut, Fahrenheit 451 was his first, and last, English-language film. This may have contributed to the flatness of the characters.

Some reviewers made an asset out of the stiffness by saying that the characters, deprived of serious thinking, and of books, and addled by drugs, were themselves, in fact, flat, soulless creatures.

The central character, Guy Montag, (Oskar Werner) is a "fireman." In this disturbing vision of the future, firemen burn books. Books are all but banned by the government because they have "conflicting ideas" in them. Those ideas can make people unhappy. It is the government's job to keep people happy, with drugs, large-screen television, and other entertainment.

Let's keep it positive.

The novel played on the concerns of the time when it was written. Censorship and suppression of thought, mainly through intimidation, was being exercised in the United States. The intimidation was being done by radio and newspaper columnists, who supported Senator Joe McCarthy. The book burnings by Nazis, which started in Germany in 1933 and continued until the end of World War II, were still in living memory. And the world was still reeling from the horrible pictures of the explosions of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as implications of the mass production of nuclear weapons.

By the time the film appeared, America was more concerned with race riots. So, burning was a viscerally powerful theme. Lost on most viewers in 1966 was the detail that among the burned books was the film journal Cahiers du Cinema for which Truffaut wrote, and that on the magazine's cover was a picture from the film Breathless, written by Truffaut. Also among the burned books: The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, both written by Bradbury.

SPOILER ALERT Truffaut, however, contributed much to the uniqueness of the film as a work of art separate from the book. From the opening credits, which were spoken and not displayed on the screen, to the ending, in which the exiles who have devoted their lives to memorizing books recite their books while walking blissfully in the snow, Truffaut's genius is there.

Also a stroke of genius was the casting of Julie Christie as Monag's drug-addled wife, and as the more compassionate and interested Clarisse, who seduces him into reading and thinking.

Like Brave New World, a book by Aldous Huxley, Fahrenheit 451 describes a hedonist world, where the people need not think.

If you like Fahrenheit 451, you might also like the 1956 animated film version of George Orwell's Animal Farm, now available on DVD.

Animal Farm (1954)

Still Relevant Animated Film -- Not For Kids

[8/10 · 25 February 2006]

Animal Farm, based on a novel by George Orwell, is ostensibly about a group of animals who rebel against the drunken farmer who owns them, and abuses them. They begin running the farm themselves. Their revolution is corrupted into tyranny which eventually becomes worse than the human farmer's regime.

A not-so-veiled criticism of totalitarianism under Stalin, many events portrayed in the DVD correspond to real events that took place in the Soviet Union. However, the DVD may be understood as a critique of totalitarianism, no matter where or when it appears.

Maurice Denham, the Mel Blanc of England, performed the voices of all the animals in the film. It is worth seeing the DVD for that alone.

The Dukes of Hazzard (2005)

I Found This Film Depressing

[1/10 · 24 January 2006]

Except for the quote about politicians taking Viagra, I found this film depressing.

I wonder how films like this get made. How do people who work on them get up in the morning and go to work? The sodden predictability of the humor and the so-called plot left me wanting to bail out after the first half hour.

I liked the nudity. It relived the boredom for a few seconds.

However, the film portrays the worst aspects of human character. It also makes fun of crooked cops, makes fun of any authority, and generally promotes the idea that driving in an extremely unsafe manner is just good clean fun.

Too many people die on the roads each year, authority in this country is breaking down. So the idea that this film is funny is, in my humble opinion, incredible.

Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)

Very Relevant

[10/10 · 24 January 2006]

This film portrays an episode in television history. That period was covered in a class on documentary film that I took many years ago as an undergraduate. So, I've seen the full episodes of Murrow's challenge, McCarthy's attack on Murrow, and Murrow's response.

McCarthy overreached when he went after the Army. And Murrow, I have learned from other sources, waited until McCarthy was politically wounded before challenging him. These elements are missing from the film. My guess is they were omitted to avoid boring the audience.

For those with no experience with McCarthyism, the film may be boring anyway as some have already commented.

However, like Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, which set McCarthyism in the time frame of the Salem witch trial hysteria, this film does a decent job of portraying the atmosphere of fear engendered by continual hysterical threats to the personal safety of the American people from within or from without. It does not show the chilling effect the atmosphere of fear imposes on the journalist.

It does show a relationship between the corporation and the journalist. This is an important point. It is well made. I find this the most relevant part of the film.

Mad Hot Ballroom (2005)

Spiritually Uplifting

[10/10 · 24 January 2006]

I found this film uplifting.

Disadvantaged kids work hard and win a prize.

It is a predictable film.

It is a documentary with real teachers and real fifth grade students from several public schools in New York City.

Several people connected with this film obviously did a lot of things right.

I appreciate the fact that the characters are real and not professional actors.

Those who enjoyed this film would probably also like the made-for-TV movie Knights of the South Bronx, although it is a fictionalized account with professional actors based on a real person.