Comedy is easy, getting murdered is easier.

How does Woody Allen get away with murder?

Allen writes and directs CRIMES AND MISDEMANORS, and let’s the murderer get away with it – as long as the murderer comes to a reconciliation with himself! By all accounts, isn’t that the most important realization that any human could have? It’s in all the media, all the biblical teachings, all the girly songs: Finding yourself – even if you find you’re a murderer – is the best discovery of all. Sunshine, orchestra swell, tears…

Having found his stride in this movie, Allen would get away with murder again in his brilliant MATCH POINT (2006).

Martin Landau is respected ophthalmologist Judah Rosenthal, whose affair with the fiery Dolores (Anjelica Huston) threatens to disrupt his family life when Dolores, uh, threatens to disrupt his family life, if Judah will not confess his affair to his wife (Clair Bloom).

In the B-story, Allen has planted himself as moviemaker Cliff Stern, infatuated with artistic free spirit producer Halley (Mia Farrow), cultivating her through the counter-intuitive method of inviting her to view one of his film projects – raw footage of a philosophy professor (Martin Bergmann playing Professor Louis Levy so convincingly, his footage looks lifted from the History Channel or National Geographic). Halley and Cliff hang out watching old movies together and chatting cinema esoterica; they both work for blowhard producer Lester (Alan Alda), who is cultivating Halley the old-fashioned way – bluntly trying to fuck her. And Cliff is married (to unexciting Joanna Gleason).

The great thing about Woody Allen is that he always asks the “big” questions in his films. Even his comedies explore these biggies, shot through the prism of dark humor. Through his Levy footage, Allen the writer explores the metaphysical nature of love and morality, even as events unfold in the movie to reflect Levy’s musings. (And on a side note, I love the way all Allen’s characters are smart. Not only displayed through their dialogue, but when we walk into any of their houses, we see their massive bookcases filled with books. I love that! How did this writer-director-star ever flourish in an industry – in a world – intent on catering to the Great Unwashed? CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS was nominated for numerous Academy, Golden Globes and BAFTA awards; the first film to win the 2010 20/20 Award for Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor; numerous other awards and nominations coming its way. Score one for Team Smart.)

You will notice that what we are aiming at when we fall in love is a very strange paradox. The paradox is that, when we fall in love, we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the other hand, we ask our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted upon us. So that love contains in it the contradiction: The attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past.
— Professor Levy (character)

While Cliff is busy falling in old-fashioned love, Judah (Landau) is desperate to preserve his family, resorting to calling his underworld brother (Jerry Orbach) to “fix” the mistress situation. It is not as cut-and-dried as it sounds, as Judah is torn morally, rent spiritually throughout the process, and in a daze, actually visits the murder site after the fact, seeing his mistress’s twisted, bloodied body on the floor, long before anyone in the world knows of her demise. It’s a fantastic take on something we’ve grown inured to over the years in movies – premeditated murder.

And with Cliff we see a situation all too familiar to us: the shy guy (Cliff) more intellectually appropriate for the woman than the arrogant rich showoff (Lester) – but the woman ending up with the showoff. After all the cultivating Cliff enacts on Halley, all it takes is money and power to have her proclaiming about the showoff, “He’s really a sweet guy!”

As with all Woody Allen movies, a simple plot outline does not suffice for the intelligence of the dialogue, the richness of his character interrelationships, and their movement among life’s complicated tapestry. Neither does it convey Allen’s razorwire delivery of comedic one-liners sprinkled mad-hatter throughout his scenes whether they be tragic, philosophical or even – comedic.

In the end, Judah sits with Cliff at a party they both happen to be attending. Being ambiguous about actual events, Judah feels compelled to tell Cliff his story and its outcome, of how he suddenly felt at peace with himself, even though he had committed a heinous act. It’s a brain-twisting wink to the audience – here’s the star telling the writer the plot of his own movie back to himself as the actor. And here’s the director as the character playing devil’s advocate and trying to find holes in his other character’s moral relativism. Is this the height of narcissistic conceit or a ménage à trois?

And then for Judah and Cliff to resign themselves to the fact that life has no happy endings; that a man must eventually pay for all his crimes and misdemeanors. Judah laments: “If you want a happy ending, you should go see a Hollywood movie.” But this is a happ– and this is a Hollywood mov– ahhh, my brain is twisted…

We are all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions. Moral choices. Some are on a grand scale. Most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are in fact the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying, and even to find joy from simple things like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.
— Professor Levy (character)

Remember, these aren’t the words of a real philosopher, these are not platitudes handed down from Freud’s era, or established in philosophical canon – these are the words of a grand filmmaker. These are the words of Woody Allen.

Now go, and may all your crimes and misdemeanors be reconciled…

END

The Most Tedious Story Ever Told.

Oh God! THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD is so far up its own arse that Satan called the filmmakers and thanked them for turning so many people off Christianity.

While choirs of angels provide the soundtrack, God speaks through Jesus Christ, his only begotten son whom he sent to Earth to take away the sins of the world. Having failed that task, it now falls to Max von Sydow to play Jesus, because The Power Of Christ Compels Him.

Wolfman Baptist

Jesus wanders about the Middle East – very, very slowly – sowing the seeds that would create unending religious war for two millennia, while platitudes spring forth from his cherubim lips; love thy neighbor, fisher of men, consider the lily – all of which sound suspiciously homosexual. Which is okay – if he would just come out of the closet. Instead, he gathers twelve -ahem- “disciples” who dog his footsteps and were probably the first alcoholics to vent the aphorism, “Have you heard the news? He is Risen,” without any irony.

GREATEST STORY is director George Stevens’s rejoinder to Nicholas Ray’s KING OF KINGS (1961). It was the age of the Jesus movie, so no one found anything remotely weird about this movie that didn’t have a cogent plot. For example, Jesus visits John the Baptist (Charlton Heston) in a river to be baptized. No evidence is given as to why John wants it the other way round, why Jesus is appearing now or what his purpose is. Crash cut to Jesus climbing a mountain, meeting an unidentified bum who promises Jesus all the kingdoms of the Earth if he would but bow down before him (oh, it’s General Zod!). There’s a cheat going on here though, because we all know the backstory (from being sensually whipped into hearing it at unholy Sunday Mass), so we are meant to be impressed that Jesus has turned down kingdoms that could have actually been provided. But in this movie there is no evidence on whether Zod can actually deliver what he promises, so Jesus might just be rebuffing an old bum. And where’s the fortitude in that? The writers are taking it for granted we’ve all been whipped by the same priests.

“Let him among you who is without sin cast the first stone!” You’ve read the story, you know this is the debut of Mary Magdalene, the whore. This Jesus line always gets me, because it speaks to the hypocrisy of humanity. And I love whores.

Movie continues meandering, lifting exact passages from -snigger- gospel, while those angels keep choiring. Someone says it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a smurf to enter the kingdom of heaven, and no one pipes up and sez, “Hey, are you gonna explain that, or are we gonna have to kill people for the next 2,000 years on how to interpret it?” I’m guessing the latter.

Monty Python Award for the funniest scene must go to the three cured guys who run through the crowds after Jesus heals them, yelling his praises while the Hallelujah Chorus yells the praises of Handel. They reach the high walls of the city, with Roman soldiers manning the ramparts above, and scream to the soldiers, “A man was dead but now he lives!” “I was crippled, and now I walk!” “I was blind, and now I see!” Hilarious not just because it reminds us of THE LIFE OF BRIAN (“Lord, I am affected by a bald patch!”) but because I’m wondering what the soldiers musta been thinking – “Why’re you telling US? We’re the lowest cogs in the empire, just gate guards. We don’t care. And we’ve got no stake in reporting this unverified gossip to anyone above us in rank, let alone spreading the news like it’s going to get us comfy chairs.”

When Jesus reanimates Lazarus (seemingly to impress a coupla chicks who won’t stop yammering at him), how come no one runs screaming that Lazarus is now a zombie? Isn’t it your own mythology that denotes a body reanimated after death is termed a “zombie”? Later, Jesus himself becomes a zombie when he “rises from the dead.” I mean, these are your own rules, right? Stop me if I’m wrong. And isn’t it your own mythology that states zombies eat humans? What then does this mean, “Take, eat; this is my body. Drink, this is my blood.”

The Roman authorities fear Jesus’s promotion of civil harmony, so use modern Roman diplomacy to undermine his message: crucifixion. It was the social media of its day. Like every Jesus movie, writers James Lee Barrett, George Stevens and God try to imply the Roman authorities were more worried about their political futures than the “holy” or “spiritual” ramifications of Jesus’s presence, but – like every Jesus movie – they heartily fail to convey this, each character ultimately falling under the delusion that if someone SAYS he’s The Messiah then he probably IS.

Performances are exceptional; cinematography is sweeping, we feel the sand in our sandals and the sun on our backs. This is truly an epic. And the messages – whether from a Messiah or a very naughty boy – are there for all to hear. And, as Python said, the messages were great then and always will be. But no one’s listening. Not the Jews, not the Catholics, and especially not the christians.

Who is the one who is truly – BETWAYED?! Jesus? Or are you still betraying yourselves with delusion that you are doing his bidding? Or that he was the Messiah? Or that he was supernatural, which, by definition, is what he should be if he can preempt the state of death? Or that he was the -snigger- son of god?…

GREATEST STORY is loaded brim to barrel bottom with stars, every single B-role an A-List star or a That Guy. Heston opens a new cheese factory in Jerusalem with his Stentorian invocations to “Repent!” (when centurions dive on him waist deep in his river, they’re trying to capture him, and he’s busy dunking them all trying to baptize them,  yelling “Repent!”); Judas is a spy, so of course he’s THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (David McCallum); there’s Victor Buono (who wishes he was Frank Thring), Mark Lenard (Spock’s dad), Corporal Klinger from M.A.S.H (Jamie Farr); Kojak sentences Jesus (Telly Savalas as Pilate, who invented exercising on a floormat); The Duke repents at the foot of the cross (John Wayne as a centurion – of course, the ancient version of a military guy, “Surely this pilgrim was the Son of Gahd!”); Cornelius from PLANET OF THE APES (Roddy Mcdowall) is a disciple of Ape Law; Shelley Winters is cured by The Exorcist (although he couldn’t stop the Poseidon going over); Pat Boone (lovin’ his role as Angel at the Tomb!); Sidney Poitier helps Max von Sydow carry the cross (oh, I get it! Make the black man carry the white man’s burden!); a host of other familiar faces, Van Heflin, Jose Ferrer as Herod, Richard Conte, Angela Lansbury, Sal Mineo, Martin Landau – and there’s Professor from GILLIGAN’S ISLAND – This movie has everyone!

THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD succeeds as an epic movie about a famous personality. Where it fails is where every Jesus movie fails – it thinks it is relating the story of a man who succeeded. And everyone takes it for granted – filmmakers, audiences, characters within the story – that Jesus did succeed. I guess he did. Isn’t it great how there’s no more sin in the world because Jesus took it all upon himself  and “died for our sins”?

Take that, Satan!

END

Sock It To Me.

Sock puppet apocalypse!

First, allow me to register a complaint: Tim Burton’s name is bandied about this production like it was his to bandy. Even the intriguing trailers stank of advertising Burton. Tim Burton is one of the producers and his name is for marquee strength only. “9” is solely the vision of animator-writer-director genius Shane Acker.

Shane Acker. We’ll hear from this boy in the future.

“9” is his jaw-dropping, wonder-making, magnificent animation sight-spectacular, and an ambitious stab at conceptual darkness. Gone awry. The concept is lost amidst this action movie that didn’t need to be.

A tiny hessian puppet named 9 awakens in a blasted cityscape and wonders at his existence. He meets others of his kind, all with numbered names, and they embark on a journey of self-discovery while facing monstrous mechabeasts with unknown motivations and fatal inclinations.

The animation in “9” is so unique and the story so strange that it takes viewing and listening to the Audio Commentary to understand the fullness of the world that Shane Acker created. But Acker attempts too much conceptualization and it gets lost. To relate to the motivations of the burlap sock puppets, they must be anthropomorphized, which turns them into little dolls. Which they aren’t.

The Number P

We discover the hessians (which Acker calls “stitchpunks”) are the vestiges of a living soul, the continuance of the scientist’s mind who forged them, each numbered doll purveying a different element of the scientist’s humanity.

Flashbacks via old newsreels reveal a Terminator-like past, where a useful artificial-intelligence machine was put to evil use by “The Chancellor” (no prizes for guessing he’s a Hitler allegory), whereby it gained evil sentience, created more of itself and wiped out mankind.

The machine is the villain – although I don’t like the way “science” is offhandedly blamed as the cause of the evil machine, as if science is a religion or a tangible thing. Science is a methodology.

Number 1 (voiced by Christopher Plummer) is especially aggravating in his denunciations of science-as-religion; an analog for Dr. Cornelius from PLANET OF THE APES, he is a quivering would-be leader who must create the perception of peril so that others will look to him for ad hoc leadership (much like Dick Cheney).

Number 2 is Martin Landau, old and inquisitive, who meets a brutal end. Numbers 3 and 4 are mute tabulators of history. One-eyed Number 5 is John C. Reilly. Stripey Number 6 is Crispin Glover. Number 7 is pretty hot, even without boobies, voiced by Jennifer Connelly (who is a 9 in real life). Number 8 (Fred Tatasciore) looks like Oogie Boogie from THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. And Number 9 is Elijah Wood.

Giving voices to the rag dolls demeans the production. The Original 2005 Short for 9 (on the DVD) features a mute 9 and 5 in a well-structured little tale with great payoffs; it is alien, bizarre, excellent. The feature film is homogenized for family entertainment – and with Elijah Wood as the star voice, well, it’s just too comfortable to be darkly enjoyable.

I wonder:

• When 7 gets stabbed by a needle, how come it hurts? The hessians have no bloodstreams, no muscles or tendons to tear into; they can’t go into circulatory shock. Even 9 gets his arm torn and he acts “wounded.” Both 7 and 9 are healed – ironically – by stitching them up.
• The hessians’ eyes are apertures, like camera shutters, enabling them to blink. But if your eyes do not have delicate corneas that need to be constantly lubricated, why blink?
• The puppets were brought to life through an alchemical process whereby the scientist’s soul was sucked out of him via a Talisman into them – explaining how they retain his “goodness.” The evil intelligent machine goes about sucking the souls of the little numbered puppets into itself – therefore why doesn’t it progressively get nicer?

A lot of Running and Screaming just to end on a very mundane preachy note. 9’s last words – when he is left with a nuclear family of himself, sexy 7 and the raggie twins, 3 and 4 – are “This is our world now. It’s what we make of it.”

More fun than losing a sock in the dryer.

END

Gere Up For Double The Love.

Whadaya know: if you’re skidding headlong into a death-tastic car accident, and you happen to be Richard Gere, your life does flash before your eyes – well, your love life, at least. If you’re Richard Gere.

INTERSECTION is almost a Chick-Flick version of MEMENTO, as Vincent (Gere) reminiscences back through his life of juggling his lover (writer Lolita Davidovich), with his ex-wife (business partner Sharon Stone), adoring daughter, and a successful architectural profession.

The plot hinges on who Vincent will choose as his life’s love. Weaved throughout are scenes of a unique clock (which Vincent bought for his lover), with a ball-bearing winding mechanism which tilts one way and then the other, metaphorically mirroring Vincent’s indecision.

The body of the movie, consisting of scattered vignettes, is rife with clues as to which of the two women would be his ultimate choice: Stone’s architectural planner (who, in her most passionate moments with Vincent, exuded a clinical iciness that he chose not to perceive due to her social positioning and surface charms), or Lolita’s columnist (independent, yet clutching at Vincent for primacy of attention).

His moment of clarity, alas, comes too late. But no matter – he’s Richard Gere!

END