Lessons of Darkness

The Rock Walks Tall

You've read my review of the original 1973 Walking Tall - now read my critique of the upcoming remake starring The Rock! Yes, the former WWE superstar picks up Joe Don Baker's trusty wooden stick and kicks some sleazy gambling behind, but don't expect the same magic. My Slant magazine review of the new-and-not-improved Walking Tall is ready to rock you...

Walking Tall (1973): C+

Southern exploitation flicks never enjoyed the popularity or critical respect received by their urban African-American counterparts, but Phil Karlson’s Walking Tall is about the closest the genre ever came to mainstream success. Shown endlessly on TV during the ‘70s and early ‘80s, the 1973 film (very, very loosely based on a true story) is a hopelessly melodramatic revenge fantasy in which ex-Marine and former professional wrestler Buford Pusser (Joe Don Baker) returns to his hometown with his wife and two kids and discovers that rampant vice has corrupted the idyllic hamlet. After being left for dead by thugs operating a lucrative casino/prostitution ring (though not lucrative enough to have the prostitutes work inside the building; instead, they do their dirty work in trailers stationed in the parking lot!), Pusser gets himself elected sheriff, grabs a giant stick of wood and begins beating the snot out of the town’s insidious miscreants. Vigilantism is glorified with an unsentimental, un-ironic coldness as Pusser becomes a psychotic David to the ruthless gambling industry’s Goliath, and Joe Don Baker’s hunched posture and grimacing puss give his character a lumbering Frankenstein fearsomeness. Yet Pusser’s heroism is undercut by a superhuman ability to survive three point-blank attempts on his life. Walking softly but carrying a big stick, Pusser teams up with local blacks and disenfranchised locals to battle the town’s crooked cops, dishonest judges, seedy corporate pimps, and moonshine bootleggers – anyone, in fact, who might be part of “the system” (which, I assume, is run by “the man”). Ultimately, however, the film’s legacy has less to do with its anti-establishment leanings than with its uproariously politically incorrect flourishes. Any film featuring an adolescent boy (played by Leif Garrett!) loading a rifle next to his dad’s hospital bed as a nurse silently smiles and nods in approval is indeed walking quite tall.

The Pink Panther (1963): B-

What made Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau so brilliantly funny was not simply all those perfectly calibrated pratfalls, but rather the looks that followed each of the sleuth’s gaffes – with wide eyes and pursed lips, Clouseau always looked slightly embarrassed and eager to ignore his own clumsiness by pretending that nothing ridiculous had just occurred. Sellers’ self-confident but nonplussed Clouseau was the actor’s finest creation, but Blake Edwards’ The Pink Panther is, because of Clouseau’s supporting character status, perhaps the series’ least interesting entry. While we get Henry Mancini's classic theme song and some brilliantly executed slapstick moments – a perfect introduction to Clouseau’s clumsiness courtesy of a spinning globe, a bedroom fiasco in which Clouseau’s wife hides two men from her husband, and the detective’s bumbling behavior while wearing a suit of armor at a costume party – there’s far too much time spent with David Niven’s master thief Sir Charles Lytton (a.k.a. “The Phantom”) and Claudia Cardinale’s ravishing but tedious Princess Dala. The Phantom wants to snatch the princess’ famed Pink Panther diamond, but what I wanted was less romantic dilly-dallying between Niven, Cardinale, Robert Wagner (as Lytton’s sneaky nephew) and Capucine (as Clouseau’s wife), and more loopy Sellers bits. Edwards is the kind of go-for-broke comedic director who throws a barrage of silly jokes at the audience and hopes some of them hit their mark, and while The Pink Panther is hardly what one might call “hilarious,” Sellers is at the top of his game, looking goofily sure of himself while Niven and Capucine conspire to steal the world-famous pink diamond behind his back. Future installments of the series aren’t quite as polished as the original, but they’re also less uptight and more anarchic than this seminal Clouseau mystery. Still, as an initial introduction to Sellers’ infectious, straight-faced zaniness, The Pink Panther is essential viewing.

Jersey Girl

Kevin Smith goes all gooey on us, and the results aren't pretty. And since when do New Jersey video store clerks look like Liv Tyler?!?! Anyway, my review of Jersey Girl is now up at Slant magazine.

Oops

For no good reason, the Alphabetical Review Archive link to my review of 21 Grams was screwed up, so that's why I've republished it below. Thanks to Joe Facce, who found the broken link....

21 Grams (2003): B

(Originally posted on 11/28/03)

Like his stunning debut feature Amores Perros, director Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams concerns a group of strangers from differing socio-economic backgrounds brought together by tragedy. Shot with grainy, washed-out splendor by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, the film is a solemn case study of sorrow, tracing the fateful events that ensnare a dying mathematician, a distraught widow, and a born again ex-con in a web of suffering, regret, and salvation. 21 Grams' title refers to the weight a body loses at the moment of death, and Iñárritu's film attempts to assess the impact and magnitude of grief by intently focusing on these three irreparably scarred people. The film employs a time-hopping narrative that shrewdly reflects the characters' shattered lives, although as the story plays out, one also begins to sense that this construction may be merely a way for the director to spruce up his otherwise straightforward melodrama. Nonetheless, the film is salvaged (or, better yet, redeemed) by its remarkable lead performances. Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro conduct a master class in conveying blistering pent-up rage, and Naomi Watts is fiercely mesmerizing as a shell-shocked woman staring unblinkingly into the abyss. Iñárritu's mise-en-scène is beautifully scraggly (if occasionally monotonous), and his razor sharp editing -- such as when he cuts from a close-up of a sizzling light bulb to Watts snorting cocaine -- gives the material its brooding, slow-burn energy. The film tends to go overboard with the obvious religious symbolism -- Del Toro's Jesus truck is a bit much- - but the performances, by and large, outweigh the film's unnecessary metaphorical gunk. 21 Grams mournfully cloaks its characters in a shroud of emotional and psychological torment, and achieves its gut-wrenching apogee of misery courtesy of Watts, who incisively verbalizes that dreadful feeling one gets upon confronting an irreversible, inconsolable loss by wailing "I'm a fucking amputee."

An A-Z Archive

Hope everyone's enjoying the new site. Just wanted to point out that, two posts below (directly underneath my review of 1955's The Ladykillers), you'll see that I've posted an Alphabetical Review Archive. It can also be accessed via the category link to the right. I've done this to make finding my reviews easier, and to keep them archived in a more orderly fashion.

Thus, if you want to find an older review, use the Alphabetical Review Archive. But if you want to peruse my reviews in chronological order, then feel free to check out the Film Reviews, DVD/Video Reviews, and Published Reviews categories.

There will be a test on this later in the weekend....

The Ladykillers (1955): B

Alec Guinness had a deadpan English wit that brightened up many ‘50s Ealing Studios comedies, and his charm is on full display in Alexander Mackendrick’s The Ladykillers. Guinness, partially hidden beneath a garish wig and monstrous fake teeth, is Professor Marcus, a courteous crook who robs an armored truck with a gang of goofy British gentlemen (including Peter Sellers, sporting a shaggy hairdo in his screen debut). To keep a low profile, Marcus and company, disguised as a musical quintet, stage their operation from the home of little old Mrs. Wilberforce (a delightfully perturbed Katie Johnson). The film, like a stage play, is evenly bifurcated – the first section details the crew’s attempts to deceive their elderly landlady, and the film’s latter portion involves their inability to escape with the stolen loot after Mrs. Wilberforce discovers their true identities. As an early Technicolor comedy, Otto Heller’s cinematography utilizes a hyper-realistic, slightly ruddy color scheme, but like this outdated visual palette, the film itself hasn’t aged all that well. Mrs. Wilberforce’s constant interruptions of the quintet’s “rehearsals” – they sit around discussing their plan while a phonograph plays – is quaintly cute, but most of the slapstick set pieces warrant a polite smile rather than a hearty guffaw. The crooks’ ridiculous attempt to capture Mrs. Wilberforce’s parrot features a man falling through the seat of a chair and another guy awkwardly navigating the house’s roof, but like so much of the film’s humor, the scene never rises to truly lunatic heights. The gang eventually decides to do away with Mrs. Wilberforce, but since they all fancy themselves proper English gentlemen, no one is willing to execute the hit. Instead, each criminal attempts to abscond with the money, leading to a murderous conclusion that's at odds with the preceding comedy of manners. With his creepy grin and his bug-eyed cordiality, Guinness manages to make The Ladykillers pleasantly silly, even if the film doesn’t fully live up to its clever premise’s potential. We’ll have to see how the Coen Bros’ upcoming remake fares in the next few days…

DMX is the "King"

Welcome to the new and improved The Nick Schager Film Project. I've posted a big batch of new reviews in the past two weeks, all of which can be found below or via the links to the right. Hopefully, this new site design will make navigation easier, and also allow you - the reader - to give me more feedback about my reviews. Please feel free to leave comments, as I'm always up for a good discussion or argument.

For this overcast Thursday morning, I've also got a new Slant magazine review for DMX's latest film Never Die Alone, one of the most unintentionally funny films I've seen in some time. Enjoy.

Gothika (2003): D

“Logic’s overrated,” says Halle Berry’s frazzled Dr. Miranda Grey at the conclusion of Gothika. Apparently, director Mathieu Kassovitz (La Haine) wholeheartedly agrees, since his ghost story/murder mystery succeeds in making every plot twist more unbelievable and irrational than the last. Grey is a psychiatrist at a mental ward, but after a rainy night encounter with a deceased teen’s apparition, she wakes up in her own hospital as an inmate accused of murdering her husband (Charles S. Dutton). Everyone thinks Grey is crazy, and her recurring visions of a dead girl with wet spaghetti hair and a disjointed gait don’t do much to dispel that assessment. Like The Ring, The Others, The Sixth Sense, and innumerable Asian horror films, a ghost returns to the mortal world in order to undo a wrong and find closure. Gothika, however, doesn’t really care about the physical and sexual abuse at the crux of its story; it just wants to provide a few familiar jolts as it meanders toward its thoroughly implausible climax. Robert Downey Jr. discards any trace of his mischievous affability as Grey’s new doctor, and Penelope Cruz goes haywire playing a nutcase with delusions (or are they?) about being raped by the devil. Berry, asked to carry the film from start to finish, looks quite fetching even with flat hair and a nondescript outfit (white t-shirt, hospital pants). Unfortunately, the actress’ torrents of teary-eyed histrionics fail to suggest that her character has anything resembling an internal life. Kassovitz, in spite of his gimmicky CGI-aided camerawork, does an adequate job creating a spooky atmosphere, but the film doggedly lurches and lunges in increasingly ridiculous directions. The villains’ motives, Berry’s escape from the asylum, the ghost’s decision to viciously abuse Berry as a means of enlisting her help – absolutely nothing in this cockamamie thriller makes sense. Next time, a little logic might be just what the doctor ordered.