Category Archives: Film Review

Avenging Force (1986, directed by Sam Firstenberg)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

If you think this year’s elections are messed up, just watch Avenging Force and see what happens when two martial artists run against each other for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Steve James plays Larry Richards, a former military commando who is now running for the Senate in Louisiana.  His opponent is Wade Delaney (Bill Wallace), who is described as being “the South’s youngest senator” and who is also secretly one of the world’s greatest martial artists.  Wade is a member of Pentangle, a Neo-Nazi cult that is made up of wealthy businessmen and other politicians.  When Larry and his family are invited to ride a float in the most sedate Mardi Gras parade of all time, the Pentangle attempts to assassinate him.  While Larry escapes injury, his oldest son does not.

Larry’s best friend, Col. Matt Hunter (Michael Dudikoff), is also in town and Hunter just happens to be another one of the world’s greatest martial artists.  (This film leave you wondering if there’s anyone in Louisiana who isn’t secretly a ninja.)  Matt tries to protect Larry and the remaining members of his family from Pentangle.  Matt fails miserably.  With Larry and the entire Richards family now dead, Matt goes deep into the Louisiana bayou, seeking both to rescue his sister (who has been kidnapped and is set to be sold at some sort of Cajun-run sex auction) and avenge Larry’s death.

As you probably already guessed, Avenging Force is a Cannon Film and it’s crazy even by that company’s fabled standards.  It’s not often that you come across a movie about a U.S. Senator who is also a neo-Nazi ninja who spends his spare time stalking people through the bayous.  What makes this plot point even more memorable is that no one in Avenging Force seems to be shocked by it.  Matt isn’t surprised in the least when an elected official suddenly lunges out of the fog and attempts to drown him in swamp water.  Of course, Senator Delaney isn’t the only villain in the film.  In fact, he’s not even the main bad guy.  That honor goes to Prof. Elliott Glastenbury (John P. Ryan), who lives in a huge mansion and who sees himself as a real-life version of The Most Dangerous Game‘s General Zaroff.  He not only wants to secretly rule the world but he also wants to hunt human prey in the bayou.  When Matt shows up at Glastenbury’s mansion, he is greeted by a butler who complains that Matt hasn’t bothered to wipe the blood off his shirt before showing up.

Avenging Force was originally planned as a sequel to Invasion U.S.A., with Chuck Norris reprising the role of Matt Hunter.  When Norris declined to appear in the film, the connection to Invasion U.S.A. was dropped and Michael Dudikoff of the American Ninja films was cast in the lead role.  (Of course, they didn’t bother to change anyone’s name in the script so the hero of Avenging Force is still named Matt Hunter, even if he’s not meant to be the same Matt Hunter from Invasion U.S.A.)  What Dudikoff lacked in screen presence, he made up for in athleticism and Avenging Force features some Cannon’s best fight scenes.  The plot may be full of holes but the idea of ninjas in the bayou is so inherently cool that it carries the film over any rough patches.

The critics may not have loved Avenging Force when it was first released but it holds up well as a fast-paced and weird action film.  It is perhaps the best Cajun ninja film ever made.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: In Which We Serve (dir by Noel Coward and David Lean)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“This is the story of a ship….”

The 1942 British war film, In Which We Serve, opens with footage of the HMS Torrin, a destroyer, being constructed in a British shipyard.  When the Torrin is finally finished, the men who worked on it cheer as it leaves on its maiden voyage.  The film then abruptly jumps forward to the year 1941.  The Torrin is sinking, the victim of German bombers.  The surviving members of her crew float in the ocean, holding onto debris and watching as their home for the past few years capsizes and slowly goes underneath the surface of the water.  Even as the Torrin sinks, German planes continue to fly overhead, firing on the stranded men and killing several of them.

As the men fight to survive both the ocean and the Germans, they remember their time on the Torrin.  Captain Kinross (Noel Coward, who also wrote the script and co-directed the film) thinks back to 1939, when he was first given command of the Torrin.  He remembers the early days of the war and the time that he spent with his wife (Celia Johnson) before leaving to do his duty.  As the captain of the ship, Kinross was a tough but compassionate leader.  He expected a lot out of the men but he also came to view them as his second family.  Meanwhile, Shorty Blake (John Mills) thinks about his wife and his newborn son back in London.  Everyone on the Torrin has left their families behind.  Some of them even lose their loved ones during the war, victims of the relentless German Blitz.  But, even as they float in the ocean, everyone continues to fight on, knowing that there will be bigger ships to replace the Torrin and that Britain will never surrender.

In 1942, British film producer Anthony Havelock-Allan approached Noel Coward and asked him if he would be interested in writing the screenplay for a morale-boosting propaganda film.  Coward agreed, on the condition that he be given complete control of the project and that the film deal with the Royal Navy.  Though one might not immediately think that the author of drawing room comedies like Easy Virtue and Private Lives would be the obvious choice to write a war film, Coward’s family actually had a long tradition of serving in the Navy and Coward based a good deal of the film’s action on the wartime exploits of his friend, Lord Mountbatten.  Though there was initially some concern about Coward’s insistence that he should play the lead role on top of everything else, the Ministry of Information fully supported the production of In Which We Serve.

However, Corward knew that he would need help directing the film.  He asked his friend, John Mills, for advice and Mills suggested that Coward should bring in, as co-director, “the best editor in Britain,” David Lean.  Though Lean was initially only meant to handle the action scenes, Coward quickly discovered that he didn’t particularly enjoy all of the detail that went into directing a film.  As a result, David Lean ended up directing the majority of the film.  This would be Lean’s first film as a director and he would, of course, go one to become one the top British directors of all time.

(Also of note, frequent Lean collaborator Ronald Neame served as the film’s cinematographer.  Neame later went on to have his own career as a director.  In 1972, Neame directed another film about a capsized ship, The Poseidon Adventure.)

As for the film itself, In Which We Serve is an unapologetic propaganda film, carefully crafted to inspire the British people to support the war effort and also to win over the sympathy of American viewers.  (During the film’s production, America had finally entered the war but there were still skeptics, at home and abroad.)  Along with being a war film, In Which We Serve is also a rather touching and heartfelt tribute to the strength and determination of the British people.  Though it’s a rather grim film at times and it doesn’t shy away from the fact that lives are going to be lost in the battle to defeat Hitler, it’s also a rather inspiring film.  The sacrifice will be great, In Which We Serve tells us, but it will also be worth it.  The entire ensemble — including future director Richard Attenborough, making his film debut as a frightened sailor — does an excellent job of creating memorable characters, some of whom only appear for a few fleeting moments before meeting their fate.

In Which We Serve was a box office hit in both the UK and the US.  It was Oscar-nominated for Best Picture of the year, though it ultimately lost to another film about World War II, Casablanca.

The Visitors (1972, directed by Elia Kazan)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Haunted by his experiences in Vietnam, Bill Schmidt (James Woods) lives in an isolated farmhouse with his girlfriend, Martha (Patricia Joyce), their young son, and Martha’s tyrannical father, Harry Wayne (Patrick McVey).  Harry is a hard-drinking writer who is proud of his previous military experiences and who is frustrated by Bill’s reluctance to talk about his time in Vietnam.  Harry views Bill as being a wimp who lost a war that America should have won.

One wintry night, two visitors show up at the house.  Mike (Steve Railsback) and Tony (Chico Martinez) served in Bill’s platoon.  The three of them were once friends but then something happened in Vietnam that changed all that, something that Bill refuses to talk about.  Harry is happy to welcome Mike and Tony into the household and he enjoys hearing their war stories.  While the hapless Bill watches, Mike flirts with Martha.  However, as the night continues, it becomes obvious that Mike and Tony aren’t paying an innocent visit on a friend.  Instead, they’re looking for revenge.  Bill testified against Mike at a court-martial and, in the process, ruined both of their lives.

The idea of “bringing the war home” was a popular one in the late 60s and the early 70s.  Radical groups like the Weathermen justified their terroristic actions by saying that they were forcing complacent Americans to face what every day was like in Vietnam.  Books like David Morrell’s First Blood featured psychologically damaged vets waging war on an America that they felt had abandoned them while the new wave of counterculture filmmakers made films that were groundbreaking in their portrayal of death and violence.  The Visitors, which features one traumatized vet being victimized by two other angry vets, was one of those films that was meant to bring the war home.

Directed by Elia Kazan and written by Kazan’s son, Chris, The Visitors is a simple film that sometimes seems more like a stage play than a movie.  The script is talky and heavy-handed, the characters are thinly drawn, and the film’s portrayal of Martha comes close to being misogynistic.  Chris Kazan’s script is openly critical of the United States’s role in the Vietnam War but Elia Kazan is more concerned with presenting Bill as a martyr.  Elia was a former communist who infamously named names during the McCarthy era and, from On the Waterfront on, every film that he made was more or less an attempt to justify his actions.  Like Waterfront‘s Terry Malloy. Bill loses everything because he testifies.  Unlike Malloy, no one comes to Bill’s aid afterwards, which suggests Kazan’s bitterness only grew over the years following his testimony.

The Visitors is a lesser film in Kazan’s filmography but notably, it was the first film for both James Woods and Steve Railsback.  Railsback plays Mike as a charismatic brute, giving a performance that owes more than a little to Marlon Brando’s performance as Stanley Kowalski in Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire.  James Woods brings his nervous intensity to the role of Bill, making him a far more intelligent but no less victimized version of Brando’s Terry Malloy.  Though The Visitors was Kazan’s second-to-last film, both Woods and Railsback would go on to emerge as two of the most interesting character actors in Hollywood.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Winner: Green Book (dir by Peter Farrelly)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Set in 1962, the 2018 film Green Book tells the story of two men.

Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) is a world-acclaimed pianist who lives a regal life.  How regal is Dr. Shirley’s life?  He’s got a throne in his living room!  Being both black and gay, Shirley knows that he’s destined to always be on the outside of American society but he refuses to allow anyone to take away his dignity or devalue his intelligence.  Shirley is scheduled to do a concert tour in the Midwest and the Deep South and his record company knows that he’s going to need protection during his trip.  For that matter, he’s also going to need a driver.

Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen) is actually named Frank Vallelgona but everyone calls him Tony Lip because he can talk his way out of almost any situation.  He’s a casually prejudiced Italian who lives in the Bronx.  He’s a professional bouncer and he can drive a car too!  He’s in desperate need of money and he doesn’t want to have to go to work for the Mafia.  When Shirley’s record company contacts him about spending two months as Shirley’s driver and bodyguard, it could be the solution to all of his financial problems.

Soon, Tony is driving Shirley through the South.  Tony smokes in the car and Shirley snaps at him.  Shirley doesn’t appreciate fried chicken so Tony convinces him to try it.  Tony punches a cop and ends up in jail so Shirley calls his friend Bobby Kennedy.  Eventually, Tony and Shirley even become friends and together….

THEY SOLVE CRIMES!

No, not really.  Instead, Tony encourages Shirley to loosen up and enjoy life a little bit more.  Meanwhile, Shirley teaches Tony how to write a decent letter to his wife.  Tony introduces Shirley to rock and roll.  Shirley introduces Tony to high society.  At the end of the film, we’re told that, in real life, Shirley and Tony remained friends until the end of their days.

It’s a crowd-pleasing ending.  It’s also one that’s been described as being inaccurate.  While it is true that Tony Lip (who later had a career as a character actor in gangster films) did drive Don Shirley around the South during his 1962 concert tour, Shirley’s family maintained that Shirley never considered him to be a friend but instead just viewed him as being an employee.  At the time of the film’s initial release, it was also pointed out that, while the script was co-written by Tony Lip’s son, no one bothered to reach out to Don Shirley’s family during the production.

When Green Book was nominated for best picture, a lot of observers assumed that the controversy over its accuracy would keep the film from winning the top prize.  The fact that Peter Farrelly was not nominated for best director was also seen as an indicator that Green Book was not a serious contender.  Of course, to the shock (and, it must be said, anger) of many, Green Book did win the Oscar for Best Picture, defeating Roma, BlackKklansman, Black Panther, A Star is Born, The Favourite, Vice, and Bohemian Rhapsody.  During the days immediately after the Oscars, there was a definite feeling of embarrassment in the air.  No one, it seemed, could quite accept that — out of all the films released in 2018 — the Academy had declared Green Book to the best.

Why was Green Book such an unpopular winner?  Setting aside the controversy over the film’s historical accuracy (or lack thereof), Green Book is just a painfully conventional movie.  At a time when many directors were testing the limits of narrative and taking cinema in new and different directions, Green Book was a film that was almost defiantly old-fashioned and predictable.  At a time when filmmakers were being praised for their willingness to keep audiences off-balance, Peter Farrelly crafted about as blatant a crowd pleaser as had ever been released.  Not since Alan Arkin shouted, “Argo fuck yourself!,” had a film been so obvious about its desire to be loved.  Even the film’s best scenes have a generic quality to them.  You never find yourself thinking, “Only a cinematic visionary like Peter Farrelly could have made a film like Green Book!”

Beyond that, Green Book is another film that deals with the issue of race in America in the safest and most anodyne way possible.  Tony Lip starts out as prejudiced.  Then he spends two months driving around a black man and suddenly, he’s not prejudiced anymore.  This the type of approach that may drive intersectional film critics crazy on twitter but audiences tend to like it because it leaves them feeling good about the state of the world.  “Yes,” the film says, “things aren’t perfect but all we have to do is spend two months in a car together and everything will be okay.”

The first time I watched Green Book, I thought it was blandly pleasant, predictable and a bit forgettable.  I also thought it was well-acted.  Last night, I rewatched the film for this review and …. well, my feelings pretty much remain the same.  Sometimes, a conventional film will benefit from the intimacy of the small screen but that’s not the case with Green Book.  If anything, watching this film in my living room (as opposed to in a theater with a gigantic screen) made me realize that, when I first saw Green Book, I was perhaps a bit too kind in my evaluation of the film’s lead performances.  Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali are good, charismatic actors and that natural charisma serves them well in Green Book.  But neither one of them really gives that interesting of a performance.  Despite their roles being based on real people, they’re both playing cliches and, as a result, you never really go emotionally involved with either one of them.

I can understand why Green Book won best picture.  It’s competently made, conventionally liberal, and full of good intentions.  Given that the Academy uses rank-choiced voting, it’s probable that Green Book won not because it was everyone’s favorite movie but because it was everyone’s 2nd or 3rd choice.  Hopefully, this year, the Academy will pick something a little bit more interesting for its top prize.

 

Cyborg (1989, directed by Albert Pyun)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The time is the future and the world has seen better days.  As a result of solar flares and war, Earth has been reduced to a barren wasteland where only the strong survive.  Making things even worse is that a plague has broken out and is threatening to wipe out what remains of the world’s population.

A cyborg named Pearl Prophet (Dayle Haddon) has been sent to New York to retrieve the information on how to cure the plague from a computer system.  Now that she has the information, it’s all a matter of safely returning to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia.  She’s being pursued by the evil Fender (Vincent Klyn), a pirate who says that he loves the new world and who wants to be the one to decide who does and who does not get the cure.  When a mercenary named Gibson (Jean-Claude Van Damme) offers to protect her on her journey back to Atlanta, Pearl declines.  She says that Gibson is not strong enough to defeat Fender and that she’ll take her chances with the pirates.  (Pragmatically, Pearl says that her allies in Atlanta can kill Fender themselves.)

However, Gibson is not willing to take no for an answer.  Gibson is less concerned with saving humanity and more concerned with avenging the death of his lover, who was murdered by Fender.  Working with Nady (Deborah Richter), another sole survivor of one of Fender’s massacres, Gibson sets out to track down and destroy the pirate.

When Cyborg started, I was really looking forward to watching Jean-Claude Van Damme play a cyborg but it turned out that Van Damme was playing a human.  I thought that Fender might be a cyborg but he’s also just a human.  There’s only one cyborg in this film and she’s often superfluous to the action.  I imagine that this movie was called Cyborg in order to capitalize on the popularity of movies like Terminator and Robocop but Cyborg actually has more in common with the Mad Max films.  Van Damme is a haunted loner, just like Max Rockatansky, while Fender and his crew feel as if they could have stepped out of the Road Warrior.  Even the lengthy scene where Gibson is crucified in the desert feels tailor-made for Mad Max and Mel Gibson’s habit of playing characters who undergo lengthy torture scenes.  (And is it coincidence that Mel Gibson and Jean-Claude Van Damme’s haunted hero both share the same last name?)

Jean-Claude Van Damme, with his pun-worthy name and his reputation for bad behavior off-screen, never got much respect but he was one of the best of the Arnold Schwarzenegger imitators of the 80s and 90s.  He was a genuine athlete and he was a far better actor than someone like Steven Seagal.  When Van Damme was under contract with Cannon Films, he was offered his choice of starring in three films: Delta Force 2, American Ninja 3, and Cyborg.  He chose Cyborg, playing a role that was originally envisioned for Chuck Norris.  As a film, Cyborg will never win any points for originality but the fight scenes are kinetic and exciting and, even more importantly, this is a movie that lets Van Damme be Van Damme.  There are no attempts at character development or any sort of self-aware winking at the audience.  Instead, Van Damme shows up and fights.  Matching Van Damme blow for blow is the imposing Vincent Klyn, whose opening monologue (“I like the death! I like the misery! I like this world!”) is a classic of its own.

Cyborg would be followed by two sequels, which were largely unrelated to the first film.  Jean-Claude Van Damme would not return for either of them.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: All That Jazz (dir by Bob Fosse)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Bye bye life….

Bye bye happiness….

Hello loneliness….

I think I’m going to die….”

So sings Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) at the end of the 1979 film, All That Jazz.  And he’s right!  It’s hardly a spoiler to tell you that All That Jazz ends with Joe Gideon in a body bag.  It’s not just that Gideon spends a good deal of the film flirting with the Angel of the Death (Jessica Lange).  It’s also that, by the time the film ends, we’ve spent a little over two hours watching Joe engage in non-stop self-destruction.  Joe is a director and a choreographer who is so in love with both death and show business that his greatest triumph comes from choreographing his own death.

Joe wakes up every morning, pops a handful of pills, stares at himself in the mirror and says, “It’s showtime!”  He spends his day choreographing a Broadway play.  He spends his nights editing his latest film, a biopic about Lenny Bruce called The Stand-Up.  He’s particularly obsessed with a long monologue that Lenny (played by Cliff Gorman) delivers about the inevitability of death.  When he’s not choreographing or editing, he’s smoking, drinking, and cheating on his girlfriend (Ann Reinking).  It’s obvious that he’s still in love with his ex-wife (Leland Palmer) and that she loves him too but she’s also too smart to allow herself to get fully sucked back into his self-destructive orbit.  He loves his daughter (Erzsébet Földi) and yet still ignores her when she begs him not to die.

Joe and the Angel of Death

When Joe has a heart attack and ends up in the hospital, he doesn’t change his behavior.  Instead, he and the Angel of Death take a look back at his youth, which was spent hanging out in strip clubs and desperately trying to become a star.  Joe Gideon, we see, has always know that he’s going to die early so he’s pushed himself to accomplish everything that he can in what little time he has.

As a result of his drive and his refusal to love anyone but himself, Gideon is widely recognized as being an artistic genius.  However, as O’Connor Flood (Ben Vereen, essentially playing Sammy Davis, Jr.) puts it, “This cat allowed himself to be adored, but not loved. And his success in show business was matched by failure in his personal relationship bag, now – that’s where he really bombed. And he came to believe that show business, work, love, his whole life, even himself and all that jazz, was bullshit. He became numero uno game player – uh, to the point where he didn’t know where the games ended, and the reality began. Like, for this cat, the only reality – is death, man. Ladies and gentlemen, let me lay on you a so-so entertainer, not much of a humanitarian, and this cat was never nobody’s friend. In his final appearance on the great stage of life – uh, you can applaud if you want to – Mr. Joe Gideon!”

Now, of course, Connor doesn’t really say all that.  Gideon just imagines Connor saying that before the two of them launch into the film’s final musical number, Bye Bye Life.  It should be a totally depressing moment but actually, it’s exhilarating to watch.  It’s totally over-the-top, self-indulgent, and equally parts sincere and cynical.  It’s a Bob Fosse production all the way and, as a result, All that Jazz is probably about as fun as a movie about the death of a pathological narcissist can be.  This is a film that will not only leave you thinking about mortality but it will also make you dance.

All That Jazz was Bob Fosse’s next-to-last film (he followed it up with the even darker Star 80) and it’s also his most openly autobiography.  Roy Scheider may be playing Joe Gideon but he’s made-up to look exactly like Bob Fosse.  Like Joe Gideon, Bob Fosse had a heart attack while trying to direct a Broadway show and a film at the same time.  Gideon’s girlfriend is played by Fosse’s real-life girlfriend.  The character of Gideon’s ex-wife is clearly meant to be a stand-in for Gwen Verdon, Fosse’s real-life ex-wife.  When the film’s venal Broadway producers make plans to replace the incapacitated Gideon, Fosse is obviously getting back at some of the producers that he had to deal with while putting together Chicago.  It’s a confessional film, one in which Fosse admits to his faults while also reminding you of his talent.  Thank God for that talent, too.  All that Jazz is self-indulgent but you simply can’t look away.

It helps that Gideon is played by Roy Scheider.  Originally, Scheider’s Jaws co-star Richard Dreyfuss was cast in the role but he left during rehearsals.  Dreyfuss, talented actor that he was, would have been all-wrong for the role of Gideon.  One can imagine a hyperactive Dreyfuss playing Gideon but one can’t imagine actually feeling much sympathy for him.  Scheider, on the other hand, brings a world-weary self-awareness to the role.  He plays Gideon as a man who loves his talent but who hates himself.  Scheider’s Joe Gideon is under no illusions about who he is or how people feel about him.  When Fosse’s own instincts threatens to make the film unbearably pretentious, Scheider’s down-to-Earth screen presence keeps things grounded.

I love All That Jazz.  (Admittedly, a good deal of that love is probably connected to my own dance background.  I’ve known my share of aspiring Joe Gideons, even if none of them had his — or Bob Fosse’s — talent or drive.)  It’s not for everyone, of course.  Any musical that features actual footage of open heart surgery is going to have its detractors.  For the record, Stanley Kubrick called All That Jazz “the best film I think I’ve ever seen.”  It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and it was nominated for Best Picture, though it ultimately lost to the far more conventional Kramer vs. Kramer.

All that Jazz would be the last of Fosse’s film to receive a best picture nomination.  (Fosse directed five features.  3 of them were nominated for Best Picture, with the other two being Cabaret and Lenny.)  8 years after filming his cinematic doppelganger dying during heart surgery, Fosse would die of a heart attack.  Gwen Verdon was at his side.

Grambling’s White Tiger (1981, directed by Georg Stanford Brown)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The year is 1968 and Jim Gregory (played by Caitlyn Jenner, back when she was still credited as Bruce) is a hotshot high school quarterback who has just been offered a scholarship to play at Grambling University.  With their star quarterback in his final year, Grambling needs a good backup.  Meanwhile, Jim dreams of playing in the NFL and is excited to play for a program that’s known for producing professional football players.  Grambling’s legendary head coach, Eddie Robinson (Harry Belafonte), is eager for Jim to join the team.

The only problem is that Grambling is a historically black college and Jim Gregory is very much white.  In fact, Jim will not only be the first white player to ever join the Grambling Tigers but he will also be the only white student enrolled at the school.  From the minute that Jim arrives on campus, he discovers that he’s not wanted.  The rest of the team sees him as an interloper and they resent that he took a scholarship that could have gone to a black player.  Meanwhile, the local whites distrust Jim because he’s a student at a black college.

Based on a true story, this is a football film that doesn’t feature much football.  Jim doesn’t get to play in a game until the very end of the season and, even then, he’s only on the field for a few minutes.  He doesn’t win the game or even lead a scoring drive.  Instead of focusing on the usual sports movie clichés, Grambling’s White Tiger instead explores Jim experiencing, for the first time, what it’s like to be a minority.  Jim eventually wins over his teammates through his hard work but he still remains an outsider for the entire film.  When he goes into town, a saleswoman and her boss initially offer him a discount on a pair of boots until they discover that he plays football not for Louisiana Tech but instead for Grambling.  When he first meets the parents of his new girlfriend, he’s told that an interracial relationship will never last and is advised to move on.  When the funeral of Martin Luther King is broadcast on television, all Jim’s teammates walk out of the room one-by-one until Jim is left sitting alone.

In typical made-for-network-TV fashion, Grambling’s White Tiger explores important issues without delving into them too deeply.  (For instance, the fact that Jim’s spot on the team is potentially coming at the expense of a black student is an intriguing issue that is mentioned at the start of the film but never really dwelled upon.)  Harry Belafonte is perfect as the stern but compassionate Coach Robinson while LeVar Burton is likable as the only member of the team to initially welcome Jim.  Jenner, however, is thoroughly miscast and several years too old to play a college freshman.  As an actor, Jenner is stiff and awkward but the true story of Jim Gregory is interesting enough that the film will hold the attention of any football fans in the audience.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Lenny (dir by Bob Fosse)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yes, it’s true.  Long before the creator of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was even born, Lenny Bruce was a real comedian who was challenging the status quo and going to jail for using words in his routine that were, at the time, considered to be so obscene that they couldn’t even be uttered in public.  Today, of course, we hear those words and they’re so commonplace that we barely even notice.  But, in the 50s and the early 60s, it was not uncommon for Lenny Bruce to get arrested in the middle of his act.  Club owners could literally be fined for allowing Lenny Bruce to perform on their stage.  At the height of his fame, it was a struggle for Lenny to find anyone willing to even consider booking him.

Whether it was his intention or not, Lenny Bruce became one of the first great warriors for the 1st amendment.  It made him famous and a hero to many.  Many people also believe that the pressure of being under constant legal threat led to his death from a drug overdose in 1966.  Lenny Bruce was only 40 years old when he died but he inspired generations of comedians who came after him.  It can be argued that modern comedy started with Lenny Bruce.

Directed by Bob Fosse and based on a play by Julian Barry, 1974’s Lenny takes a look at Lenny Bruce’s life, comedy, legal battles, and eventual death.  As he would later do in the thematically similar Star 80, Fosse takes a mockumentary approach to telling his story.  Clips of Lenny Bruce (played by Dustin Hoffman) performing are mixed in with “interviews” with actors playing the people who knew him while he was alive.  Because the story is told out of chronological order, scenes of a young and enthusiastic Lenny are often immediately followed by scenes of a burned-out and bitter Lenny reading from the transcripts of his trial during his stand-up.  Fosse never forgets to show us the audience listening as Lenny does his act.  Most of them laugh at Bruce’s increasingly outrageous comments but, to his credit, Fosse never hesitates to show us the people who aren’t laughing.  Lenny Bruce, the film tells us, was too honest to ever be universally embraced.

The film doesn’t hesitate to portray Lenny Bruce’s dark side.  For much of the film, Lenny is not exactly a likable character.  Even before his first arrest, Lenny comes across as being a narcissist who is cruelly manipulative of his first wife, stripper Honey Harlow (Valerine Perrine).  As opposed to the somewhat dashing Lenny of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Dustin Hoffman’s Lenny Bruce comes across as someone who you would not necessarily want to be left alone with.  The film’s Lenny is a hero on stage and frequently a hypocrite in his private life but that seems to be the point of the movie.  Lenny argues that one of the reasons why Lenny Bruce could so perfectly call out society for being fucked up was because he was pretty fucked up himself.

As with all of his films, Lenny is as much about Bob Fosse as it is about Lenny Bruce.  As a director, Fosse often seems to be more interested in Bruce’s early days, when he was performing in low-rent strip clubs and trying to impress aging vaudevillians, than in Bruce’s later days as a celebrity.  (The world in which the young Lenny Bruce struggled was a world that Fosse knew well and its aesthetic was one to which he frequently returned in his films and stage productions.)  It’s also easy to see parallels between Lenny’s uneasy relationship with Honey and Bob Fosse’s own legendary partnership with Gwen Verdon.  The film’s grainy black-and-white cinematography captures not only the rough edges of Lenny’s life but also perhaps Fosse’s as well.  Just as Lenny Bruce performed confessional stand-up comedy, Lenny feels like confessional filmmaking.

Of course, it’s not always a pleasant film to watch.  Dustin Hoffman does a very good job of capturing Lenny Bruce’s drive but he doesn’t really have the natural comedic timing necessary to be totally convincing as a stand-up comedian.  (The film sometimes seems to forget that, as much as Lenny Bruce was admired for his first amendment activism, he was also considered to be a very funny stand-up.)  Still, it’s a valuable film to watch.  It’s a document of history, a reminder of a time when you actually could get arrested for saying the “wrong” thing.  Some people would say that we’re returning to those times and it’s easy to imagine that the real Lenny Bruce (as opposed to the idealized version of him) would not be welcome to perform on most college campuses today.  One can only imagine how modern audiences would react to a part of Lenny’s stand-up where he repeats several racial slurs over and over again.  (If Lenny Bruce had lived to get a twitter account, he would be getting cancelled every week.)  Lenny‘s vehement celebration of freedom of speech is probably more relevant in 2020 than it was in even 1974.

Lenny received several Oscar nominations, including best picture.  However, 1974 was also the year of both The Godfather, Part II and Chinatown so Lenny failed to win a single Oscar.

(Interestingly enough, Fosse’s previous film, Cabaret, was also prevented from winning the award for best picture by the first Godfather, though Fosse did win best director over Francis Ford Coppola.  Five years after the release of Lenny, Fosse would make All That Jazz, which was partially based on his own health struggles that he suffered with during the filming Lenny.  In All That Jazz, Cliff Gorman — who starred in the stage production of Lenny — is frequently heard reciting a Lenny Bruce-style monologue about death.  Fosse’s All That Jazz would again compete with a Francis Ford Coppola production at the Oscars.  However, Kramer vs Kramer — starring Lenny‘s Dustin Hoffman — defeated both All That Jazz and Apocalypse Now for the big prize.  22 years later, Chicago, which was based on Fosse’s legendary stage production and which featuring the song that gave All That Jazz it’s name — would itself win best picture.)

The Take (1974, directed by Robert Hartford-Davis)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Lt. Terrence Sneed (Billy Dee Williams), a tough and suave cop from San Francisco, is sent to New Mexico to help Police Chief Berrigan (Eddie Albert) take down the local crime syndicate.  No sooner has Sneed arrived in town than he’s helping to prevent a prison break and killing gangsters.  Berrigan is impressed and explains to Sneed that the local crime boss is Victor Manso (Vic Morrow).  Even though everyone knows that Manso is crooked, the police haven’t ever been able to put together a case that will stand up in court.  Maybe Sneed is the man who can do it.

What Berrigan doesn’t know is that Sneed is a crooked cop, himself.  As soon as Sneed leaves his meeting with Berrigan, he goes over to Manso’s office and collects his money.  Manso assigns Sneed to work with another crooked cop, Captain Dollek (Albert Salmi).  However, it turns out that Sneed has plans of his own.  While still on Manso’s payroll, Sneed starts to put together a case that might finally take Manso down.

The Take is full of good actors in small roles.  If you have ever wanted to see Billy Dee Williams share a scene with Frankie Avalon, The Take is the film for you.  Avalon plays Danny James, a small-time hood who is arrested and interrogated by Sneed.  At first, Danny is cocky and arrogant but, as soon as Sneed removes his jacket and his watch and makes a fist, Danny starts crying and begging Sneed not to beat him.  Danny is soon turned into an informant and then disappears from the movie.  The beautiful model Kathirine Baumann plays Danny’s girlfriend.  While only wearing a towel, she gives Capt. Dollek the finger and looks amazing doing it.  Sorrell Brooke, who later found fame as Boss Hogg on The Dukes of Hazzard, also has a few good scenes as Sneed’s deceptively respectable money launderer.

The Take can be a confusing film to watch because it’s never firmly established just how corrupt Sneed actually is.  Sometimes, Sneed just seems like he’s trying to make a little extra money and then, other times, he comes across as being a full-blown gangster.  Despite being on Manso’s payroll, Sneed seems to be determined to take him down and the film never makes clear why.  Billy Dee Williams is his usual supremely cool self but he seems almost too cool to play a morally ambivalent cop.  More impressive are Vic Morrow and Eddie Albert, who both shamelessly chew the scenery as two leaders on opposite sides of the law.

The Take is often mistakenly referred to as being a blaxploitation film but it’s really just a cop film with a lead actor who happens to be black.  Unlike the best blaxploitation films, there’s no political subtext to be found in the movie.  Sneed could just as easily be a corrupt white detective and, with the exception of one throwaway line, race is never mentioned.  While this is a minor cop film, it features a few good action scenes and, again, it’s your only chance to see two very different pop cultural icons, Billy Dee Williams and Frankie Avalon, acting opposite of each other.  That’s not a bad pay-off for 91 minutes of your life.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: A Star Is Born (dir by Bradley Cooper)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Happy birthday, Bradley Cooper!

Bradley Cooper is 45 years old today.  With all the recent talk about how people’s lives have changed over the past decade, let’s take a minute to appreciate just how spectacularly things have gone for Bradley Cooper, career-wise.  Ten years ago, Bradley Cooper was probably best-known for playing the smarmiest member of The Hangover‘s quartet of friends.  Now, Cooper is known for not only being one of the best actors working today but also for making an acclaimed directorial debut with the 2018 Best Picture nominee, A Star Is Born.

Cooper not only directed A Star is Born but he also starred in it.  He played Jackson Maine, a country musician who has been drinking for as long as he can remember.  He used to drink with his father and when his father died, Jackson continued to drink alone.  (At one point, Jackson says that he was a teenager when his father died.)  Managed by his older brother, Bobby (Sam Elliott), Jackson became a star but his career has been in decline for a while.  For all of his talent and for all of his belief that he has something worth saying, Jackson is drinking his life away.  He stumbles from show to show and is often dependent upon Bobby to tell him what he missed while he was blacked out.

When Jackson stumbles into a drag bar and sees Ally (Lady Gaga, making her film debut) singing a song by Edith Piaf, he is immediately captivated by her talent.  Ally, whose father (Andrew Dice Clay) is a limo driver who once aspired to be bigger than Sinatra, is at first weary of Jackson but he wins her over.  After she punches a drunk and he takes her to a grocery store to construct a makeshift cast for her hand, she sings a song that she wrote and Jackson decides to take her on tour.  Soon, they’re in love and, before you know it, they’re married!

Unfortunately, Jackson’s alcoholism threatens both their happiness and their future.  While Ally’s star rises, his continues to dim.  Will Ally sacrifice her career for Jackson or will Jackson sacrifice his life for Ally?

It’s a familiar story, one that’s been told many times.  The first version was 1932’s What Price Hollywood, which featured aspiring actress Constance Bennett falling in love with an alcoholic director played by Lowell Sherman.  In 1937, What Price Hollywood? was unofficially remade as A Star Is Born, with Janet Gaynor as Esther, the actress who falls in love with faded matinee idol, Norman Maine (Fredric March).  The next version came out in 1954 and featured Judy Garland as Esther and James Mason as Norman.  Significantly, the 1954 version added music to the plot, with Judy Garland singing The Man That Got Away.  

In 1976, the story was told a third time.  This version of A Star is Born starred Barbra Streisand as singer Esther Hoffman and Kris Kristofferson as a self-destructive rock star named John Norman Howard.  The 1976 version was terrible, largely because there was zero chemistry between Streisand and Kristofferson.  And yet, one gets the feeling that the 1976 version is the one that had the most influence on the 2018 version.  Not only does Bradley Cooper’s version of A Star Is Born make the story about aspiring singers but one gets the feeling that Cooper watched the 1976 version, saw the lack of chemistry between Kristofferson and Streisand, and said, “There’s no way that’s going to happen in my movie!”

Indeed, it’s the chemistry between Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga that makes the latest version of A Star Is Born so compulsively watchable.  I mean, we already know the story.  From the minute that Jackson and Ally meet for the first time, we know what’s going to happen.  But Cooper and Lady Gaga have got such an amazing chemistry, that it almost doesn’t matter whether the movie surprises us or not.  There’s a scene where Ally says that she’s always been told that her nose is too big and Jackson responds by nonchalantly touching her nose and, with that one simple and very naturalistic gesture, the film convinces us that Jackson and Ally are meant to be together, even if just for a while.  It also makes it all the more upsetting when a drunk and jealous Jackson later uses Ally’s insecurities against her.

(Of course, I should admit that I’ve always been insecure about my own nose so, at that moment, I totally understood what Ally was feeling.)

It’s an unabashedly romantic and sentimental film but it works because, as a director, Cooper brings just enough of an edge to the story.  Cooper, who has been sober since 2004, has been open about his past struggle with alcoholism and, as both an actor and director, he’s smart enough not to romanticize Jackson’s addictions.  In many ways, Jackson Maine is a pain in the ass to be around.  We watch as he goes from being a fun drunk to a sad drunk to a mean drunk, all the while lashing out at anyone who gets too close to him.  At the same time, Cooper also captures the spark of genius and the hints of inner goodness that would explain why he is never totally rejected by those that he’s hurt.  Cooper offers up hints of who Jackson could have been if he hadn’t surrendered to pain and addiction.  We understand why Ally and Bobby stick with him, even if we wouldn’t blame either one of them if they refused to have anything more to do with him.

Lady Gaga, meanwhile, gives a performance is that is down-to-Earth and instantly relatable.  Anyone who has ever been insecure or who has ever felt as if she was being punished for being independent or thinking for herself will understand what Ally’s going through.  At some point, we’ve all been Ally and we’ve all had a Jackson Maine in our lives.  Sadly, these stories rarely have happy endings.

For most of 2018, it was assumed that A Star Is Born would be the film to beat at the Oscars.  While it was eventually nominated for 8 Oscars, Bradley Cooper did not receive a nomination for Best Director.  (Cooper, Lady Gaga, and Sam Elliott were all nominated in the acting categories.)  In the end, Green Book won Best Picture while A Star Is Born only won one award, for Best Original Song.

Of course, Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s performance of that song was perhaps the highlight of the entire Oscar ceremony.

That’s the power of good chemistry.