The Year's Best: The Broadway Melody (1929)

The Year's Best is a continual feature at The Kuleshov Effect.  In these posts, I take a detailed and chronological look at films declared the “Best Picture” of a particular year by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.  These posts are not intended as discussions of whether or not these films “deserved” to win.  Rather, they are simply my musings and thoughts on what are supposedly the cream of the crop of American cinema.

Title: The Broadway Melody
Director: Harry Beaumont
Starring: Bessie Love, Anita Page, Charles King

Oh, the late 1920s.  It was a time of change for Hollywood.  Film studios were still transitioning into the sound era – the technology was not yet perfected, and most theaters were still not equipped for audio, meaning that most films had to be shot and edited for both “talkie” and silent versions.  It was in this context that MGM began producing films in what would come to be its most popular and well-known genre: the musical.  The Broadway Melody was released in 1929 and was a critical and commercial success, grossing a record $4 million at the box-office and going on to become the second winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture. 

Unfortunately, though it’s considered the “grand-daddy of musicals,” The Broadway Melody is a pretty mediocre film by today’s standards.  It’s clear that Hollywood was struggling to adapt to the new sound technology.  Microphone range and placement limited camera placement.  Actresses who were stars in the silent era were frequently unable to adapt to the new style of acting, and those who were often faded from the limelight after the public didn’t like their voices.  The Broadway Melody carries the scars of an industry confronted with rapidly-changing technology: stiff acting, a formulaic script, and bland cinematography.

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The Year's BestAndrew JohnsonHarry Beaumont, The Broadway Melody, musicalComment
Review: Tape (2001)

"You think I'm a dick?"
"Uh, no.  But I do know that occasionally you have a tendency to act in a phallic fashion."
--Tape

Few films I’ve seen recently have left as much of an impression on me as Richard Linklater’s Tape.  Despite being a fan of a great deal of Linklater’s work, I was apprehensive about sitting through a film built around what might at first seem like a cheap gimmick: the entire thing takes place in a single room.  Linklater has been successful with his character-driven pieces in the past, but his experiments don’t always pan out the way one might hope – A Scanner Darkly, which involved a unique process of rotoscoping animation over the actors, was a dismal experience from start to finish.  And before you start sending me hate mail, yes, I’m aware Linklater first used the effect in Waking Life, but I have yet to see that film and can only hope that it fared better than its successor.

Released in 2001, Tape is a micro-budget film shot on digital video – it looks like Linklater went out and bought a camcorder at Best Buy and decided to shoot a movie.  Based on a play written by Stephen Belber and sent to Linklater by frequent collaborator Ethan Hawke, Tape takes place in a single hotel room.  There are three characters.  It’s a simple set-up, with not much in the way of what mainstream viewers would call “action.”  Like many of the films in Linklater’s oeuvre, most notably the Before Sunrise/Before Sunset duology, this is a film that relies first and foremost on dialogue.

If that sounds boring to you, don’t worry: Tape is absolutely riveting.

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ReviewsAndrew JohnsonEthan Hawke, Richard Linklater, TapeComment
Review: Sherlock Holmes (2009)

It’s official: Guy Ritchie can still make a good movie.

Sherlock Holmes isn’t as memorable as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or Snatch, but it’s a fun time in the theater and that’s all I was really looking for.  From the very beginning, it’s clear that Ritchie knows how to handle a big-budget blockbuster: the costumes are lavish, the architecture is ornate, and the set design screams “19th Century London.”  The script and art direction perfectly capture the Age of Enlightenment, from the wheels and cogs of the Industrial Revolution to the extreme emphasis on rationalism and the mistrust of religion. 

But this isn’t your grandfather’s Sherlock Holmes.  This is a Holmes who seems to enjoy beating people up as much as proving he’s smarter than they are.  He frequents bare-knuckle boxing arenas (complete with Ritchie’s trademark slow-mo fistfights), takes on henchmen twice his size, and doesn’t think twice about leaping out of tall buildings.  This is a Holmes with balls as big as his brains, the kind of detective a 21st-century audience can get behind.  Ritchie directs the action set-pieces with a frenetic energy that feels exciting without being disorienting.  While there’s quick-cutting galore, there’s no shaky-cam to distract from the geography of the scene, and as a result Sherlock Holmes is at the very least a fun romp through back-alley London.

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ReviewsAndrew JohnsonGuy Ritchie, Robert Downey Jr., Sherlock HolmesComment
The Hitchcock Files: Blackmail (1929)

The Hitchcock Files is a continual feature at The Kuleshov Effect.  In these posts, I take a detailed and chronological look at the filmography of Alfred Hitchcock.  It should be noted that this series does not include his early silent films, though these are probably noteworthy in their own right.

“A good, clean, honest whack over the head with a brick is one thing.  There’s something British about that.  But knives… nope, knives is not right.  I must say that’s what I think and that’s what I feel.  Whatever the provocation I could never use a knife.  Now mind you a knife is a difficult thing to handle… knife… knife… knife…” –Blackmail

If there’s one thing that can be said about Alfred Hitchcock, it’s that he was an innovator.  He first worked in the motion picture industry as a title card designer, and was so good at it he was directing silent features within five years.  Over the next five decades he would radically influence the art of filmmaking and be known as the ultimate “master of suspense.”  Through his habit of having a cameo in each of his films, appearing in marketing materials, and hosting his own television show (Alfred Hitchcock Presents), he would become one of the few film directors everyday citizens could easily recognize.   Though he never won an Academy Award for Directing, if there was a Top 10 list for Best Directors of All Time, he’d be on it. 

Even though I love the few Hitchcock films I’ve seen, and am fully aware of his larger-than-life reputation, I wasn’t expecting much when I sat down to watch his first sound film – one of the first European talkies – Blackmail.  Released in the summer of 1929, it had only been a year-and-a-half since Warner Bros. had premiered The Jazz Singer in the United States, which signaled the sound revolution.  That film, while accompanied by recorded score and a few sound effects, only had a few scenes in which sound was recorded live on set, and most of them were musical numbers.  I expected much of the same from Blackmail.

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The Hitchcock FilesAndrew JohnsonBlackmail, HitchcockComment
Ouch, My Balls! The Philosophy of Crank: High Voltage

Crank: High Voltage is a visceral experience.  It is so insane, so perverse, so racist and misogynistic, that it can only be one of two things.  It's either one of the most despicable pieces of garbage ever filmed, or it’s actually an incredibly self-aware piece of subversive satire.  This is a film that has been dismissed by critics as a fun B-level action flick at best, and a morally offensive junkyard at worst.  But I think there’s a certain level of intelligence running through Crank 2’s orgy of debauchery.  In fact, I would go as far to say that this is a film that’s going to be studied in film classes years from now, not as any sort of “classic” by any stretch of the imagination, but as a piece of quasi-avant-garde filmmaking that had its finger on the pulse of a generation.

I recently re-watched Crank: High Voltage with my parents, both of whom loathed the film and found it to be borderline pornographic in its depiction of women and violence.  My mother said it was like a fantasy for white Southern “bubbas.”  She’s absolutely right.  Take the stereotypical image of a white trash, politically conservative male – the kind who idolizes guns, frequents strip clubs and still uses the n-word – and give that guy a video camera.  This is probably what you’d end up with.

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EssaysAndrew JohnsonCrank, chev chelios, jason stathan, masculinity, sexism Comment
The Year's Best: Wings (1927)
The Year's Best is a continual feature at The Kuleshov Effect.  In these posts, I take a detailed and chronological look at films declared the “Best Picture” of a particular year by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.  These posts are not intended as discussions of whether or not these films “deserved” to win.  Rather, they are simply my musings and thoughts on what are supposedly the cream of the crop of American cinema.

Title: Wings
Director: William A. Wellman
Starring: Clara Bow, Richard Arlen, Charles "Buddy" Rogers
Wings was released in August of 1927, when Hollywood was still transitioning into the sound era – it is the only silent film to win top prize the Academy Awards.  During the first Academy Award ceremony, Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans won the statue for Most Artistic Quality of Production, while Wings received the Oscar for Best Overall Production.  The two categories would be combined into one award, Best Production (the precursor to Best Picture) the following year.
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The Year's BestAndrew JohnsonBest Picture, Oscar, Roaring Twenties, WingsComment
The Top 16 Films of 2009
It’s the end of the year, so everybody feels obligated to make their “Best Of” lists.  Given that I feel 2009 was a rather weak year in cinema, I was tempted to not even bother.  However, after looking over the list of everything that came out this year, I realized that while there were very few films I would consider “classics” or “must-sees” in the vein of last year’s Wall-E or2007’s There Will Be Blood, there were plenty of films that were way above-average and worth tracking down.  So here’s my list of the Top 10 (or Top 16 if we’re including Honorable Mentions) films of the year.  While it’s possible I may have liked certain films slightly more or less shortly after their initial release, these are the ones that stick out the most in my mind as being the most noteworthy and potentially deserving of multiple viewings.  Since ranking them from “least” to “greatest” is often very difficult and nit-picky, I’ve organized them in alphabetical order.

NOTE: Though I've seen 120+ of the films released this year, I still haven't seen a few films that I've heard are noteworthy: Antichrist, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Crazy Heart, A Single Man and Away We Go.  I also haven't seen several foreign and independent films that a lot of critics are raving about.  With that in mind, here's my list. 
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ListsAndrew Johnson2009, Top 10 Comment
RACE JAM or: How MJ Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Man

NOTE: This post is an expansion of an argument originally made in episode #87 of MovieChatter, which can be found here.  It is not meant to be read as an attack on Space Jam, Michael Jordan, or capitalism, but simply as an exploration of how historical and cultural attitudes can unintentionally affect the production and content of art.

For young boys growing up in the mid-90s, Space Jam was the equivalent of a cinematic wet dream.  Whoever decided to take Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny and put them together in the same movie was a genius.  I’ve never been much of a sports fan, but even as a child I had seen enough commercials for Nike and underwear to know about Michael Jordan.  I knew that he met the American standard of “cool.”  And I was already absolutely certain that the Looney Tunes were one of the most brilliant artistic creations of all time.  So any film that put them together in the same frame, let alone for 90 minutes, automatically deserved an honorary Academy Award for Best Motion Picture Of All Time.

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EssaysAndrew JohnsonMichael Jordan, Space Jam, racism Comments
Review: Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)

Note: This review was originally published in Technician on January 27, 2009.

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Underworld shows itself a tame breed

Do you like vampires?  What about werewolves?  If so, then supposedly you're frothing at the mouth to see Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, the latest film in the franchise about a war between the two mythical species.  Unfortunately, you're better off staying at home, because not only does it fail to live up to the previous installments, it's just an awful film in general.

The first two Underworld films, while not fantastic, at least felt like they were trying to achieve something.  Characters were multi-layered, there were various dimensions to their motivations, and the mythology was more creative and richer than most fantasy films.  Unfortunately, this prequel feels like it was made with no thought in mind except to make some more money for the studio.  Forget about making a good film.

The film takes place hundreds of years before the original.  Vampires and Lycans (werewolves) are at war with each other, and the leader of the vampire coven, Viktor (Bill Nighy), decides to enslave the Lycans and use their unique abilities to his advantage.  Unfortunately for him, his daughter Sonja (Rhona Mitra) is having an affair with Lucian (Michael Sheen), the first of a new breed of Lycan who has the ability to transform at will.  One thing leads to another, and it isn't long before Lucian is leading a Lycan uprising.

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ReviewsAndrew JohnsonBill Nighy, Michael Sheen, Patrick Tatopoulos, Rhona Mitra, Rise of the Lycans, Underworld, vampire, werewolvesComment