Short Takes: December 20th, 2013

Monsters University

I loved Monsters University.  It's delightful, funny, beautiful to look at, and heartwarming. It captivated my family, which ranges in age from 7 to 45, and it's the first prequel I've seen in a very long time that doesn't feel like it's just putting the pieces in place for the movie that inspired it.

The Iron Lady

This just in: Meryl Streep is really good at acting. I spent the 90 or so minutes of The Iron Lady feeling like Margaret Thatcher was in the room with me.

Unfortunately, it seemed like she was there only to show me a "greatest hits” reel of her life. The Iron Lady skips along Thatcher's biography like it's in a hurry to get to the end, when I'd have appreciated a deeper examination of one particularly illuminating period of her life. The Iron Lady and the Miner's Strike, for example, or The Iron Lady and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. As it was, The Iron Lady gave me a sense of who Thatcher was, but it really didn't tell me how she ticked. That's a film I'd have found much more engrossing.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a perfect movie. It's well-shot, elegantly constructed, finely performed, and satisfying on every level.

It's so well shot that it'd benefit from a scene-by-scene analysis of its use of framing, lighting, and depth of field to tell its story and illuminate its characters. It's so elegantly constructed that every element of the script fits together like an elegant watch. It's so finely performed that you'll believe in the heroes right down to your boots, and you'll come away hating Lee Marvin so much that you'll actually have trouble rooting for him in films where he's the hero. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance works, and it works in every way. If you love movies, you need to see this one.

Looper

Looper is basically The Terminator, with Bruce Willis playing the T-1000, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Kyle Reese, and the wonderful Emily Blunt as Sarah Connor. Looper's twist is that the T-1000 is a later version of Reese.

I'm ok with that. It's a good formula, and Looper executes it well. Bruce Willis is as convincing an action star as ever, the multitalented Gordon-Levitt excels at putting a human face on the most despicable of characters, and I don't think Emily Blunt has ever been bad in anything. Rian Johnson's writing is clever as always, and Looper is a good time at the movies.

The Naked Spur

Somewhere along the way, I picked up the notion that there was a twist ending to THE NAKED SPUR. There is, but not the in the way I thought. It’s a twist so much more engaging than anything I’d have imagined that it elevates the picture from merely good to damn good. Unfortunately, it also makes the film nearly impossible to write about.

I will write that the cinematography is not particularly fascinating and the music is grating, relentlessly telling us what to think and how to feel. Mid-career Jimmy Stewart is fine, as always, and the supporting cast does its job well enough that no one struck me as a “favor cast.”

But the real credit here goes writers Sam Rolfe and Harold Bloom, who fashion a story that appears straightforward, but gets more and more complex as things develop. By the end, even though I knew this was a Western of a certain era, I had no idea how things were going to turn out. And that twist, wow. This movie took me by surprise.

The Flight of the Phoenix

FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX'S first victory is in its casting.

I know it isn’t fair to bring extratextual knowledge to a film, but when we see Jimmy Stewart behind the controls of that old Air Truck, we know we’re seeing a guy with a Distinguished Flying Cross, an Air Medal, a Croix de Guerre, and 7 battle stars in his dresser drawer. The movie doesn’t have to spend a lot of time convincing us that its lead character is a salty pilot because its lead character is Jimmy Frickin’ Stewart, BGEN USAFR, Ret’d.

The casting victories don’t end with Stewart, however. Ernest Borgnine is phenomenal as a mentally-challenged passenger, Hardy Krüger shines as an aircraft designer who happens to be onboard, and everyone, with the exception of Richard Attenborough, rises to their tasks. A word about Attenborough: while he’s generally fine, there’s a scene that requires him to blend laughter into jagged crying. It’s an important scene, and the actor can’t quite pull it off. Nevertheless, that’s one misstep in an otherwise fine performance.

Great casting aside, FoP works as a Boys’ Own Adventure, with all the elements of exotic location, survival concerns, competition for dominance, honor, loyalty, and the delicate balance between knowledge and skill. It works as an adventure, it works as a psychological study, and it works as a great way to spend two hours and twenty minutes. What a delight.

Two for the Weekend

THE SANDLOT is lazily written, horribly acted, altogether miserable, and a laugh riot if you happen to be a five-year-old boy. It's a story about some Boomer kid in the early '60s who moves to the San Fernando Valley and falls in, improbably enough, with a pack of Babe Ruth worshippers. It was like something a guy who grew up in New York would imagine growing up in California to be. This movie made my soul bleed.


MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, on the other hand, was surprisingly successful. As a reasonably cynical Washingtonian, I didn't expect to be taken in by Capra's paean to Americana; nevertheless, I bought it hook, line, and sinker. I think the movie sold me in a scene in which Mr. Smith has a brief conversation with a senior senator's daughter. Instead of focusing on Smith, the camera focuses on his hat. It shifts from left hand to right, gets dropped again and again, and does more to tell me its owner's state of mind than would an extreme closeup. Some movies are great because people generally think they're great. Some are great because they really are. MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, thankfully, is the latter.