Keitel's naughty bits and Lloyd's silent classic among others
It's time to take a look back at seven films I watched at home this past week outside of the six I saw in theaters. Hmmmm, 13 films in one week isn't too bad? Considering I watched four Mariner games and Tiger at the Bridgestone Invitational I would say that's pretty good, and I am going to make it an even 14 after I publish this piece, but not sure which one that will be… gonna have to wait until next weekend to find out.
As for this past week, I caught up on a couple of Paul Newman features from my recently purchased Newman collection, a silent classic I had yet to see, a Jane Campion Oscar-winner I had never seen and along with that one, a second film that featured full-frontal nudity from Harvey Keitel. What are the odds on that coincidence?
After checking out what I watched, add your thoughts on the films to the comments as well as share some of the films you watched recently and suggest future titles for myself and others to add to our Netflix queues, which if you are Netflix subscriber you can connect with my queue by clicking here.
Now let's get to it…
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QUICK THOUGHTS: This one is part of a Paul Newman collection I purchased for $19.99 while strolling through Costco, and while it's not made up of Newman's stand-out classics, I was still interested in seeing some of the man's earlier films and at $19.99 for seven movies how can you really go wrong? In Harper, Newman plays the title character Lew Harper, a smart ass private detective who has to get to the bottom of your average run-of-the-mill whodunnit. The appeal of this one isn't the by-the-numbers mystery, though, it's the performance from Newman and an entertaining script allowing Newman to toss around a few words of wisdom, such as badgering a local sheriff saying, "I used to be a sheriff until I passed my literacy test." The supporting cast is made up of the likes of Robert Wagner playing a douche-bag playboy type, Shelly Winters, Lauren Bacall and even Janet Leigh gets a couple scenes in as Harper's on-the-outs wife. It's not a great film, but it's a film I'll definitely revisit and if I can find one more to like in this collection it makes it instantly worthwhile.
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QUICK THOUGHTS: The Drowning Pool is also part of the same Newman collection and is the sequel to Harper, but I'm sorry to say isn't very good at all. About halfway through the wit dries up leading to the ridiculous ending you can see below if you have nine minutes to spare. I was watching this one with a friend and he said, "This has to be the worst bad guy plan I have ever seen." It's hard to disagree with him, but watching it together did allow us to have a little more fun with it than I otherwise would have.
Assuming it was made one year prior to its release I will say it also stars a 17-year-old Melanie Griffith in her second credited role and it is a rough appearance, but it did bring up an interesting point. Griffith plays an underage girl who tries to hit on Harper and throughout the film puts him in suggestive situations. This is something I wish Hollywood would address nowadays by throwing a younger girl in a mainstream movie and make not only the characters in the film uncomfortable with her come ons, but also the audience as I think our society is getting increasingly disturbing with the way older men look at younger girls such as the birthday clocks placed on celebrities such as the Olson twins and Britney Spears. This film does a great job at pointing out how despicable it is and 34 years later perhaps it's time for a refresher.
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QUICK THOUGHTS: Jane Campion has already earned a lot of attention for her upcoming feature Bright Star so I felt it would only be right to make sure I finally saw her most awarded film, The Piano, which won three Oscars in 1994 including one for 11-year-old Anna Paquin. On top of Paquin's Oscar win, Holly Hunter also took home an Oscar for her lead performance, but I think Harvey Keitel deserves some notoriety for his performance considering he was overlooked for an Oscar nomination in a performance I would nominate before that year's winner (Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive). I have never been a huge Keitel fan even though I enjoy many of his movies and am rarely disappointed with his performances, but I thought he was great in this picture.
The film is good, I didn't fall head over heels for it, but I thought the ending worked very well considering it allowed me to have some kind of emotional reaction for Ada (Hunter) whom I really hadn't warmed up to until that point. It was has a good performance from Sam Neill who I either seem to love or detest when he is in a film. In the Jurassic Park films I continue to wish he would just get eaten, but there are other moments I truly love his performances such as here and in The Hunt for Red October and his short stint on "The Tudors" for example.
I still have a lot more from Campion to see, considering this was only my second film of hers — In the Cut was the other and it is awful — giving me something to look forward to.
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QUICK THOUGHTS: Like I said in the opening, a double-feature of Keitel frontal-nudity, but Bad Lieutenant couldn't be any farther on the spectrum from The Piano if it tried, but it too is another great performance by Keitel in a film I don't ever really want to watch again, but feel as if I need to.
It's a film that's so good it makes you want to grab another punishing film off your shelf and continue the torture. Had it not been so late at night I would have popped in Taxi Driver, and strangely enough I think it would have lightened the mood. Bad Lieutenant is an intense, intense picture and one I will not say I enjoyed as much as I would say I experienced it. The edition I watched was the brand new special edition from Lionsgate and it comes with a new retrospective making-of doc that's worth a watch as well as an audio commentary from director Abel Ferrara I didn't get a chance to listen to, but definitely intend to. Jeremiah Kipp at Slant Magazine recently did a review of the DVD if you are interested in knowing more. You can get that right here.
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| Dead Poets Society (1989) |
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QUICK THOUGHTS: Nope, I had never seen Peter Weir's Dead Poets Society, but so often in reading about movies around the net it seems to work its way into many conversations so I felt it was high time to check it out. Overall I would say it's a good film with great performances, but when it comes to films of this nature I don't necessarily think it stands above the rest as much as it is a satisfying entry.
In my opinion, I think the clip I included below with Robin Williams and Ethan Hawke was the absolute turning point in the film. It comes just after Keating (Williams) says to one of his students who just read a snarky six-word poem as his assignment, "Just don't let your poems be ordinary." Up until that point I would say Dead Poets Society was nothing more than ordinary, but the clip below tipped the scales. Oh, and it took me about 15 minutes to realize Neil (Robert Sean Leonard) was Dr. Wilson from "House". He gives a great performance and I couldn't help but think how much he reminded me of Josh Hartnett… that is if Hartnett was a better actor and didn't squint all the time.
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QUICK THOUGHTS: Harold Lloyd's Safety Last! was the only film on IMDB's Top 250 I had never seen and when I saw there was going to be a whole day dedicated to Lloyd on TCM's Summer of the Stars and saw Safety Last! was going to be part of it I instantly set the DVR and was ready to remedy the situation. Not only is this film part of IMDB's list, Roger Ebert considers it one of the greatest films of all-time and surprisingly enough he hadn't even seen it until 2005 as he wrote up his thoughts on it only four years ago. And guess what, it was even the immortal Ebert's first time ever seeing a Harold Lloyd film (lesson here, think before the next time you chastise someone for not having seen a movie). Here's the opening paragraph from his 2005 piece:
It is by general agreement the most famous shot in silent comedy: a man in a straw hat and round horn-rim glasses, hanging from the minute hand of a clock 12 stories above the city street. Strange, that this shot occurs in a film few people have ever seen. Harold Lloyd's "Safety Last" (1923), like all of his films, was preserved by the comedian but rarely shown; having been through most of Charlie Chaplin and virtually everything by Buster Keaton, I viewed it for the first time last week, and it was my first Harold Lloyd. Others now have their chance, as a retrospective of Lloyd's work, meticulously restored, tours the country in advance of a DVD package.
The only reason I hadn't seen this film was because the only way to purchase it is by buying $80+ boxset of Lloyd films Ebert mentions. Considering I had never seen a single one of his films and while I do like many silent films, they aren't exactly the first films I pop in the player when it comes time for choosing, I wasn't about to spend that kind of money. Luckily, it is now saved on my DVR until I delete it, which I doubt will be anytime soon. The clip you see below contains, as Ebert says, "the most famous shot in silent comedy." As much as the film is considered a comedy, I actually found some of the film's final moments rather harrowing.
You can get all of Ebert's piece on the film right here.
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QUICK THOUGHTS: Finally, and I'll keep this short since I'll be reviewing the upcoming Criterion Blu-ray edition of Jacques Tati's bank-breaking production in the coming weeks, we have Play Time, the third film I have seen of Tati's and one that may slowly grow to become my favorite but right now that title still belongs to Monsieur Hulot's Holiday. In the simplest of terms I would describe the first half of Play Time as an extension of Mon Oncle and the second half as an absolute work of genius. However, since I can't show you a clip from the second half that would do the film any kind of justice I will give you a snippet from the first half. Among other things, one of the themes of Play Time is a commentary on modern architecture as architecture from the past such as the Eiffel Tower are often reflected in the many glass windows of the massive buildings in Tati's world…
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Your turn… and remember, click here to connect with my Netflix account and share your queue and also click here for past installments of "What I Watched, What You Watched."
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