Friday's Old Fashioned: Run Silent Run Deep (1958)

If there were not mounds of evidence to the contrary, one might suspect the submarine was invented solely as a dramatic device. What could be more perfect than a cramped, potentially claustrophobic, military submersible armed with missiles tracking and being tracked by opposing military submersibles armed with missiles? From "49th Parallel" to "Das Boot" to Harrison Ford speaking with a Russian accent in "K-19: The Widowmaker", the submarine has provided for endless movie fodder.

So maybe that is why a submarine film from 1958, "Run Silent Run Deep," directed by Robert Wise, and a submarine film from 1995, "Crimson Tide," directed by Tony Scott, could share so much in common. How many stories are there to be found in such compressed quarters? And so, thirty-seven years apart, we find a commanding officer - Clark Gable & Gene Hackman - butting heads with a second-in-command - Burt Lancaster & Denzel Washington - as war, respectively, rages and threatens. And yet, amidst the many similarities, there are notable differences that manage to set the two films apart (and not I'm just talking about the old school direction of Wise and the typical Tony Scott-ian frenzy).

Gable is Commander P.J. Richardson who in the opening scene of "Run Silent Run Deep" has his precious sub sunk by a Japanese destroyer in the dreaded Bungo Straits at the height of WWII. He is assigned a desk job in Pearl Harbor but persuades the powers-that-be to give him another crack at sub command. He gets it, ahead of Lieutenant Jim Bledsoe (Lancaster) who was under the impression he was next in line for the commander's job. Alas. So, the two men are at odds from the moment the sub leaves port.

Those odds increase when Richardson puts he and the men through unusual drills that seem to suggest they are going to disobey orders to avoid the dreaded Bungo Straits and plow straight into them. And wouldn't you know it, that's just what Richardson has in store. What was it Gene Hackman said in "Crimson Tide"? Ah yes. "What'd you think, son? That I was just some crazy old coot, putting everyone in harm's way as I yelled 'Yee Haw!?'" But is that really what Richardson is doing?

Even as nuclear war with Russia looms in "Crimson Tide", the film is less about that potential conflict than the onboard conflict between Hackman and Washington's characters. It turns into, more or less, a mutiny, crew members taking sides, shouting and hollering and two great actors acting. "Run Silent Run Deep", while still featuring great acting, is less about the showdown between two differing men than......

Remember that scene in "Saving Private Ryan" when Tom Hanks' Captain Miller decides to deviate from their mission to, you know, save Private Ryan to take out the German position at the radar station which leads to a minor philosophical debate? "Run Silent Run Deep" is a little like that as a whole, but still with all the usual submarine hijinks (depth charges and such) accounted for.

Their specific orders are not to enter the Bungo Straits but isn't the ultimate goal to win the war? If it is, don't they have a duty to themselves to venture onward? These are the questions raised and bickered about and what truly sets Lancaster's character apart from Washington's is that he stands by his Captain even as they disagree. And then when an injury hangs up Commander Richardson and places Lieutenant Bledsoe in charge, Bledsoe still comes around to a different way of thinking.

That's the difference and, maybe, just maybe, telling of the two eras in which the movies are set. "Crimson Tide" runs on the fuel of stubbornness while "Run Silent Run Deep" is about forging an alliance - an acrimonious alliance, perhaps, but an alliance nonetheless.

It's The Final Countdown

Tomorrow's the day. Finally. Uh, at least for us Chicagoans (my apologies to others). "Before Midnight." Jesse & Celine. One more time. I thought about pontificating yet again about these two characters and their two movies, these two characters and their two movies that have meant such an absurd amount to me for the last fifteen years. But then I thought.....nah. Not today. Not before tomorrow.

Today Jesse & Celine should just speak for themselves.

Celine: "When I was a little girl, my mom told me that I was always late to school. One day she followed me to see why. I was looking at chestnuts falling from the trees rolling on the sidewalk, ants crossing the road, the way a leaf casts a shadow on a tree trunk, little things. I think it's the same with people. I see little details so specific to each of them that move me and that I miss and will always miss. You can never replace anyone, because everyone is made of such beautiful specific details. Like I remember the way your beard has a little bit of red in it. And how the sun was making it glow that morning right before you left. I remember that and I missed it! I'm really crazy, right?"
Jesse: "All right, now I know for sure. You wanna know why I wrote that stupid book?"
Celine: "Why?"
Jesse: "So that you might come to a reading in Paris, and I could walk up to you and ask, 'Where the fuck were you?'"
Celine: "No, you think I'd be here today?"
Jesse: "I'm serious, I think I wrote it in a way to try to find you."
Celine: "OK, that's... I know that's not true, but that's sweet of you to say it."
Jesse: "I think it is true. What do you think the chances were of us ever meeting again?"
Celine: "After that December I'd say almost zero. If we're not real anyway, right? We're just characters in that old lady's dream. She's on her death bed fantasizing about her youth...so of course we have to meet again."
Jesse: "Oh, God. Why weren't you there in Vienna?"
Celine: "I told you why."
Jesse: "No, I know. I just... I wish you would've been. Our lives might have been so much different."
Celine: "You think so?"
Jesse: "I actually do."
Celine: "Maybe not. Maybe we would have hated each other eventually."
Jesse: "Oh, what, like we hate each other now?"
Celine: "You know, maybe we're only good at brief encounters, walking around in European cities in warm climate."
Jesse: "Why didn't we exchange phone numbers and stuff? Why didn't we do that?
Celine: "Because we were young and stupid?"
Jesse: "You think we still are?"

To Movie Poster Makers Everywhere

Wrong...

...Right.

Jack & Diane

Today is the birthday of my dearly beloved Kylie Minogue and to celebrate I thought, What better way than to watch and review her latest foray into acting?! No, not the shape-shifting, mind-bending "Holy Motors", which I generally liked, but her less seen, less reviewed, less liked "Jack & Diane." And, readers, I have a sad turn of events to report...

Wait, is Kylie strung out?

Kylie Minogue is barely in this movie. She's in one scene. That's it. And she's barely even in that scene. Don't get me wrong, she's kind of a badass in that one scene even though she doesn't really get to do much of anything. In fact, because she doesn't get to do much of anything you can sense her thinking: "Well then, screw it. I'm costuming the shit outta this scene." So she covers her arms in these bodacious black tats and makes a mess - albeit, an elegant mess (she's Kylie Minogue!!!) - of her hair and kind of postures herself as a metalhead. Oh, she is also Jack's teacher in the ways of love (and when I say love, I mean lust and sex). Except that Jack, as the name implies, isn't a boy. Jack's a girl, played by Riley Keough. (Riley Keough is also the daughter of Lisa Marie Presley which means she is the granddaughter of one Elvis Presley which means that Kylie briefly makes out with the kin of Elvis which just seems right. Yes? No? Have I scared you off?)

This is to say that Bradley Rust Gray's "Jack and Diane" is not an all-American Midwestern romance but the first flush of infatuation between two girls in NYC, one experienced - Jack - and one not so much - Diane. Diane is played by Juno Temple and, I have to say, Ms. Temple has got the market cornered on youthful naïve sort-of waifs. Between her exemplary work here and as whimsical trailer trash in "Killer Joe", she gave two of the most slam-bang, strangely comedic performances in 2012. She plays the whole movie wide-eyed, as if she was just teleported in from a different era to a place she barely grasps.

Diane: "You just think you're the cat's pajamas, don't you?"
Jack: "What the fuck's that supposed to mean?"

"Jack & Diane" is admittedly weird, but also weirdly affecting. It is slow - often times too slow - but chock full of mood and atmosphere, occasionally breathlessly so, evoking a Mumblecore movie with a more significant budget and an experienced cinematographer (and Kylie Minogue). At its core, it is the simplest of stories - two girls falling in love/lust over the course of a week and not quite knowing how to deal with it. They long for one another. They make mix tapes. They get mad at one another. Diane says they should break up. Jack says they were not even together. They get back together even though they were not together. Diane's mother is freaked out by the whole situation. She tells Jack that Diane is going to art school in Paris at the end of the week.

Gray, however, in one of the oddest directing decisions I can recall, decides to add a subplot involving Diane's transformation into a werewolf, though we rarely glimpse her in werewolvian makeup. Naturally this is how the movie was marketed - lesbians and werewolves! - but this werewolf business is barely there. It hardly factors into the story in a tangible sense, instead allowing for yucky intercuts of (I guess?) the werewolf lurking within and heavy-handed subtext about the beastly nature of her sexual kindling. Perhaps with a much more assured hand this would not have felt completely forced and frustratingly unnecessary, but without this eye-rolling teenage dream symbolism (and with some other edits) "Jack and Diane" would have been shorter and packed with much more intensity.

Really, it's a maddening movie, the sort of movie that seems to be trying to figure itself out as it goes along, mirroring Diane's plight in ways her second life as a werewolf can't replicate. The first half-hour, for instance, in which Diane wanders the streets in a daze, nose bleeding and vomiting into alleys, helplessly trying to find a phone, and Meeting Cute with Jack who takes her to a club where she looks like an out-of-place "Star Trek" alien is so maddening, in fact, that you might get distracted and consider turning it off. And then...

They kiss. And it is one of the most moving first kisses you will ever glimpse in a film, sweet but charged, heightened but intimate. The movie was about to lose you and then it found you. And it will lose you again. And then it will find you again. Over and over. It's highs and lows, it's what it means to be young, it's teenage romance, it's......

I can't function. I can't think. It's too much.  

Frances Ha

Midway through director Noah Baumbach's latest ode to early-to-mid life angst our heroine Frances (Greta Gerwig) has gone home for Christmas and/or to briefly stay with her parents in Sacramento. It is shot, as is the rest of the film, in that French New Wave style (it is also in black and white) littered with quick cuts. This gives the impression that the film is - as in, life - going by much too quickly, but this Sacramento sequence really goes by fast. It goes so fast that you barely have time to register who was who or what was happening. The faces of her parents barely linger in my mind. The holiday lights are strung up, things happen, the holiday lights are struck, and Frances is on an escalator at the airport. This is how I feel every Christmas when I go home - gone with an escalator ride at the airport.

But this sequence you hardly remember actually contains the film's most critical line, a line which threatens to skip right on by, a self-help ship passing in the night. Frances, as characters in stasis are wont to do, lays in the tub. Her mother batters the door. She needs to get in. Frances rebuffs her attempts. Finally, her mother cries: "How long is it going to take?"

I have been a fairly studious Greta Gerwig fan ever since I took the Mumblecore plunge, the talky, low-budget genre wherein Gerwig got her start before branching off into the pseudo-mainstream. Even if her films have not always worked for me, her performances, generally daring and quirkily inventive, have left me impressed. (In particular, her portrayal of an untraditional mental breakdown in last year's "The Dish and the Spoon.") Still, I often found myself wondering, how long would it take for Gerwig to find the perfect role that specifically employed her unique off-centeredness as an actress - mannerisms, scattered line readings, cheekiness - to fully inform the character she was playing?

Well, as is the tragic case in Hollywood, or off-Hollywood (?), often females have to take upon themselves to author that character. So Gerwig teamed with her significant other, Baumbach, to imagine Frances, 27 years old, so poor she cannot afford to live in Tribeca (egads!), couch-surfing, apprenticing as a dancer, which is what she wants to "do". Except the film, both delicately and obviously, hints that this dream is down to last its embers.

Gerwig is a little wonky, immature and uncertain, drifting, perhaps dangerously, but without comprehension (or the urge?) of how to find resolve. She and her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner), adorned with oversized glasses that don't suggest a hipster as much as an adolescent by way of an adult, still seem to reside in a make-believe world of sleepovers and girl talk even as Sophie drifts toward possible marriage with a baseball cap wearing bro.

That last one is key. Sophie has someone, Frances does not. In fact, Frances and one of her part-time roommates - who is writing a spec screenplay for "Gremlins 3" - deem her "undatable." She seems okay with it. This does not, gratefully, turn into Frances needing to find a man to become a woman. In a way, it is not even about Frances becoming a woman - rather, her character trajectory is more like chicken scratches than a classical arc.

I have been a fairly studious Noah Baumbach fan ever since a few of my best friends introduced me to his "Kicking and Screaming" and I fell smack-dab into its cult, incessantly quoting it to anyone who cares (or does not) to listen. I have, more or less, enjoyed all his films, and yet in all his films - even in the sound "Squid and the Whale" - you could sense him struggling to put it all together. I wondered, how long will it take? Will it ever happen?

Here, at last, it does, exhibiting a focus and tightness absent in his other work but still coming across so airy and free-wheeling. The quick cuts never play as artifice, more as the miscellaneous pieces of a life puzzle, one which Frances struggles mightily to put together. A side trip to Paris that is as hilarious as it is sad (which is the movie as a whole) employs the mandatory shot of The Eiffel Tower to excellent effect. Frances tries to light a cigarette. It just won't take. Angered she pushes off the rail she has been leaning against and walks away, revealing that infamous iron lattice tower behind, as if her back is turned to what is typical.

Frances is atypical, even if this whole early midlife crisis is not. The overarching argument, however, is not that Frances needs to find herself, but find her way in life. Her core temperature, so to speak, is intact, and she needs to find her bearings. Any bearings, any bearings at all.

The last shot is strangely, sweetly perfect. I will not reveal it but it seems to suggest she has not completely owned who she is yet. She remains a work in progress. Aren't we all?

Completely Useless Cannes Update 2 (Or: Please Tell Me Someone Else Noticed This)

At this year's edition of the swank soiree known as the Cannes International Film Festival, the impeccable Nicole Kidman stoked (ah?) a moderate cultural furor with her hair choice for a walk along the red carpet. The choice begged the question: did Nicole rip off Lindsay Bluth Fünke?

You be the judge.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Viva Las Vegas (1964)

I generally argue against the “It Was Exactly What I Expected” Theory of movie-watching – that is, the movie was exactly what I expected it was going to be, therefore I enjoyed it. Of course, Elvis Presely movies are right near the pinnacle of “It Was Exactly What I Expected” filmmaking. You need Elvis, obviously, and songs and scenery and a lovely leading lady and hijinks and lunacy and a vibe suggesting the crew had a late night. If you have seen other Elvis movies, however, and then sit down to watch “Viva Las Vegas”, the finest film in the Elvis canon, it’s not quite exactly what you expect. And this usurping of your expectations is on account of a few things.

Yes, Elvis acted with Barbara Stanwyck (“Roustabout”, the second best film in the Elvis canon) and Walter Matthau (“King Creole”), but Ann-Margret, far and away, was his finest co-star. It was as well-known then as it is now that Elvis & Ann carried on a fairly heavy-duty affair during filming of "Viva Las Vegas" and it shows on the screen where sparks fly. It reminds me a little of “To Have and Have Not” when Humphrey Bogart was falling in love with Lauren Bacall on AND off screen. Let’s be honest here, people, and say that you never quite look at someone the same in any other point of a relationship as you do right at the first flush of love and/or infatuation. And what you see on Bogey’s and Elvis’s faces in their respective films is this playful bemusement, this “Damn, brother, I DIG this chick” vibe, this feeling that they both want to declare “Let’s just scratch those reshoots today and skedaddle to the boudoir.”

Other couples at the movies have possessed better chemistry than Elvis & Ann but no couples except actual couples have created that particular type of chemistry. It’s unmistakable and unfakeable. So often Elvis just seemed to be going through the motions, particularly in his later films as they got lazier and lazier and he got heavier and heavier, but Ann-Margret perks him up and draws him out. Notice his double-takes in the stone-cold classic “The Lady Loves Me” when she keeps exiting the frame unbeknownst to him. It’s a little thing but a lot of those little things add up to a great deal over the course of a whole film and makes all the difference between interested and disinterested.

The camera, it goes without saying, indulges in several opportunities to ogle Ann-Margret’s winsomeness, such as when she is introduced and struts right into the camera at which point the shot reverses to see her walking away from the camera which allows the audience to pleasantly digest her sashaying derriere. Quite honestly, it’s not unlike Michael Bay’s camera leering at Megan Fox, and yet….. The character Ann-Margret plays – Rusty Martin (great name) – and her performance go a good ways to transcending the stereotypical sex kitten role of the Elvis movie. This isn’t to suggest she’s two-dimensional, because she’s not, nor to suggest that she doesn't exist just to wind up in Elvis’s arms, because she does, but that she at least is allowed to conform to her character's prerogative. Ann-Margret is able to convey the welcome sensation that she's having fun with this dude, playing a hella good game of hard to get.

Perhaps this could be attributed to the film's writer, a surprising Sally Benson. I say surprising because Ms. Benson was very much skilled in the authoring arts, perhaps best known for her short stories in The New Yorker and subsequent book compiling them and a few new ones that eventually became the masterful musical "Meet Me In St. Louis." Again, the screenplay for "Viva Las Vegas" is not necessarily groundbreaking but, hey, at least it understands cause and effect, how this leads to that which leads to something else and so forth. Sounds simple, sure, but not so much in an Elvis movie where often story and motivation appear out of thin air.

So yeah. I suppose we should discuss the story. It goes like this: Elvis is the gloriously named Lucky Jackson, a race car driver in Sin City for its Grand Prix. He has a special car and needs a special engine in order to beat his friendly adversary Count Elmo Mancini (Cesare Danova), sort of an Italian Jean Girard. He gets inevitably distracted by Rusty and scours casino after casino in an attempt to find her until he finds out - gasp! - that she works at the hotel where he's staying! Which leads to his courtship which leads to her shoving him into the hotel pool which leads to all his money going bye-bye which means Lucky can't afford his special engine which leads to Lucky taking a job at the hotel where he's staying and continuing to pursue Rusty as he does.

Well, needless to say, Lucky gets the engine and wins the race and even marries Rusty, which happens in a hilariously brief sequence right at the end that suggests both the characters and the actors were itching for the after party, all amidst the requisite show tunes.

The songs here, too, are generally solid, including the noted title tune, but most importantly they all work - aside, perhaps, from the unnecessary "Yellow Rose Of Texas" - as parts of the plot, advancing it and explaining what makes our characters tic. For example, a big part of the movie, as it must, hinges on a talent contest (this is how Lucky can win his needed money) which leads to direct competition between the song & dance stylings of the Lady and the Dude.

But, of course, nothing compares to the aforementioned casual amusement of "The Lady Loves Me" wherein Elvis strums his guitar as he and Ann-Margret take a brief tour of the hotel pool, trading lyrical barbs. It is one of my all-time favorite single sequences in cinematic history, and, readers, I mean that. Sometimes you just want to have fun at the movies and what's more fun than Elvis and Ann-Margret having fun right there in front of us? This is what pure joy looks like...

 

Completely Useless Cannes Update

Currently the swank soiree known as the Cannes International Film Festival is the center of the cinematic universe. They are showing lots and lots of prestigious and potentially award-winning films and lots and lots of actors and actresses and directors and producers are attending various galas and giving various interviews and so on and so forth. But I'll be honest........

I kind of stopped paying attention once Kylie Minogue showed up for the premiere of the latest Leos Carax film.

When Kylie walks the red carpet, even Cannes momentarily halts.

Top 5 Movie Locations I Wish I Could Visit

Recently it was unveiled that photographer Rä di Martino had, by chance, wound up searching for and tracking down the long-ago sets used by George Lucas for the Tatooine scenes of his legendary original "Star Wars" film. Well, this got me to thinking.

It got me to thinking about how the righteous hosts of Filmspotting, Adam Kempenar and Josh Larson, the Rob Gordons of Top 5 Movie Lists, a couple months back unveiled the Top 5 Movie Locations They Wished They Could Visit.

Granted, I am no amateur when it comes to actually visiting movie locations. Everyone knows I took a pilgrimage to North Carolina to pay respect to the filming locations for "Last of the Mohicans" and on the way there I stopped to pay respect to Elizabethtown (because of "Elizabethtown") and when I visited my sister in Maine I made sure we took a detour to Bethel and Andover to pay respect to the filming locations for "The Myth of Fingerprints" and when my sister lived in Oregon I made sure we spent a day in Eugene to pay respect to the filming locations of "Without Limits."

Of course, all those are real locations that actually exist and the point of Filmspotting's list was to name make-believe places that solely exist within the movie itself that you wish you could go visit. Ah! Well, that's different!

Top 5 Movie Locations I Wish I Could Visit

5. Rick’s Café Americain, "Casablanca." Tonight they’ll be at Rick’s. Everybody goes to Rick’s. Except for me. I wanna go to Rick’s too! I do, I do, I do!!!

4. Speedboat, Gulf of Mexico, “Miami Vice.” Remember in Michael Mann's exorbitantly underrated update on the 80's TV show when Colin Farrell & Gong Li jet off to Cuba for mojitos and salsa (dancing) via speedboat? Sure, you do. I admit this location is a little difficult to pin down. I also admit this location is very much real but... Well, I could rent a speedboat. Sure. And I could pilot that speedboat from Miami to Havana, Cuba with a fetching lady to imbibe mojitos and dance salsa. But, of course, I couldn’t really do any of this. I would never make it to Havana for the mojitos because the Cubans would lock me up. If by some miracle I did make it to Havana I could never possibly dance the salsa (could we instead contort very enthusiastically but very, very badly to Kylie Minogue?). Of course, I would never get anywhere near Havana because if I tried to pilot a speedboat it would totally capsize in about 27 seconds, never mind the fact that I could never pull off Colin Farrell’s suit or convince a fetching lady to join me in the first place. And all that is why if I could be magically transported to movie location with the movie gods covering my every move I would be transported to a speedboat with a Malin Akerman-esque lady jetting off to Havana for mojitos and a salsa.

3. The Hit Pit, “Million Dollar Baby.” Never mind that Frankie Dunn would probably take one look at me, grimace and banish me to the corner where Danger is shadow boxing to pitiful effect, I would like so much just to spend a day – just an afternoon even – at his hole-in-the-wall gym. I would sit back, breathe in that disgusting aroma of sweat, gym socks, fresh blood and cheap bleach, listen to the sounds of speed bags and skipping rope. Besides, visiting Maggie Fitzgerald’s home gym would be for me like a baseball aficionado getting to set foot in the home locker room of old Yankee Stadium.

2. New York City, “The Royal Tenenbaums.” As much as Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” romanticizes that city all out of proportion, it is still showing us the real Manhattan – as in, places that actually exist. Wes Anderson’s “Royal Tenenbaums”, on the other hand, while technically being set in Manhattan envisions it is as a mythical Manhattan, a place that only exists in our imaginations. It is set on streets and at places that while being located in New York do not actually exist – such as The Public Archives and the Lindbergh Palace Hotel. This is what sets it apart. I think my favorite place to visit in NYC every time I go is The Algonquin Hotel partially because just being inside it feels like New York in the 30’s and 40’s. And really, that’s the New York I want to visit – the New York of the 30’s and 40’s. And the New York of “The Royal Tenenbaums” feels like the New York of the 30’s and 40’s but still with the amenities required by the modern unmanly man.

1. Nelson, Washington, “Roxanne.” So in the wake of the esteemed Roger Ebert’s passing I was, of course, perusing various Ebert-related bits out there on the world wide interwebs and stumbled across a Youtube video of he and the late Gene Siskel discussing “Roxanne”, one of my all-time favorites, on an episode of At the Movies. (Both of them loved the movie so much Ebert actually concluded their review by saying “We can’t even have an argument.” Awesome.) And a line of Siskel’s struck me like a bolt of Midwest lightning in May. He termed Steve Martin’s lead performance as being akin to “effervescent ginger ale.” Well, it is! It is effervescent ginger ale! But the whole movie is effervescent ginger ale and its setting – the city of Nelson, Washington – is effervescent ginger ale! Not just the scenery, mind you, which is striking or the delightfully slanted streets of a ski-town but the……the………aura. The way Martin declares “Irony? Oh, we don’t get that here” just seems to permeate every sidewalk and home and main street shop. But at the same time it’s not staid, plain-jane Eisenhower America, it’s something sweeter and truer, a place where no one seems to put on airs or masquerade as something they’re not. It comes across so tranquil, so refreshing, so much like……effervescent ginger ale.

Dammit, I want to go there.

Star Wars: The ABC Saturday Night Movie Re-Release

There have, of course, been roughly 1.5 million re-releases of the original “Star Wars” trilogy in some sort of home video format. VHS & DVD & Blu Ray & Gamma Ray & A-1 Ionisation & Orographic Advanced. It has been re-released with new footage & bonus footage & special footage & special bonus footage & deluxe special bonus footage & enhanced deluxe special bonus footage featuring Cloud City reimagined as a Blanket Fort (unless I’m confusing that with an episode of “Community” – I honestly don’t know anymore).

All I ever wanted, though, was the original versions. That’s it. The “Star Wars” where Mos Eisley still looked like a sleepy desert town off I-80 in Nevada and “The Empire Strikes Back” where Cloud City still looked like a leftover Emerald City set and “Return of the Jedi” still had The Yub Nub Song That dream finally came true in 2006, even if Grand Chancellor Lucas still stuck the special edition versions on there too. Didn’t matter. I had the originals, Jabba didn’t show up ‘til the third one, you barely saw the Wampa and the X-Wings lifting off from the moon of Yavin were still tiny blips of light in the sky. It was – to quote Shelley Duvall in “Annie Hall” – transplendent! Except……

Well, just recently Ryan McNeil of the ever-fabulous Matinee wrote a post detailing how one of the crucial ways in which he first watched film as a young lad was off TV – watching broadcasts and taping broadcasts to VHS and so forth. And this made me realize something. See, kids, there was a time when home video meant there was no such thing as “Netflix streaming” or some such fancy-pants nonsense. No, it meant your whole family piling into the car and driving to the Roadshow Video and arguing for who-knows-how-long about what to get from the severely limited options and getting something like Howie Mandel’s “Walk Like A Man” which even if you were all of 10 years old you knew was a cinematic atrocity.

It also meant gathering around your TV set for the ABC Saturday Night Movie because cable was niche-driven and an afterthought, something your family might not even have for another handful of years, and mostly unnecessary since ABC, CBS & NBC ruled the roost all on their lonesome. Way back when we had “Star Wars” (that is to say, “Episode IV: A New Hope”) taped onto Betamax from an ABC Saturday Night Movie telecast, and THAT’S the version I want most of all. I want the feeble sound and the dodgy visuals and the dude saying “We will return to ‘Star Wars’ after these messages” and I want those messages. I want Karl Malden hawking American Express and Wendy’s customers wondering “where’s the beef?” and people arguing about whether Miller Lite tasted great or was less filling.

Look, I get it. I do. I’m as nostalgic as anyone, if not possibly more than anyone, and asking for a “Star Wars” re-release of a TV telecast with freaking commercials from around the end of the Reagan administration is essentially hitting nostalgia rock bottom. And it’s not that I don’t love Netflix, because I do. And it’s not that I don’t adore DVR, because I do. And it’s not that without Turner Classic Movies I wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown, because I would. And it’s not that my DVD collection isn’t more important than the possibility of finding life on mars, because it is. And while it certainly has something to do with wanting to gather around the TV with my family for popcorn and “Star Wars”, that’s not all of it.

Nowadays we become discontent when our movie-viewing experience isn’t the biggest and/or brightest and/or best. There was a time when you could watch a movie on a middling TV with middling sound and middling special effects and still have it be.........special.

Happy People: A Year In The Taiga

Summer in Siberia and the air is awash in mosquitoes, so thick with them the residents are forced to dress head-to-toe in protective garments and cover their faces with netting. Well, all except for the trapper with whom we have become friends, hard at work chopping wood and prepping a hut, who has no netting to keep the swirling, blood-sucking mosquitoes away from his eyes and ears and nose. He seems……almost bemused. He says in his native language: “When you’re busy, you hardly notice them.”

Everyone seems busy here in the Taiga, a ginormous swath of land in eastern Siberia. Siberia is isolated to start and Taiga is even more isolated and even more isolated is the Taiga-set village of Bakhta. It is 300 people strong, reachable either by helicopter or by boat when the Yenisey River is not frozen solid. Our sort of protagonist in the documentary "Happy People: A Year In The Taiga", Gennady Soloviev, the trapper who forgoes the face netting, explains he came here in 1970 and was employed by the Soviet Union to trap game. He has stayed on ever since, tending to the same land granted to him by the communist regime. Politics are hardly mentioned, aside from one strange arrival of a campaigning politician. But no one pays him any mind. You can almost sense the landmark moment of the Soviet Union giving way to the Russian Federation having passed by unnoticed.

These people, more or less, are on their own, self-reliant to quote the narrator. The narrator is Werner Herzog, the legendary German eclectic, and while it is very much his film is also very much not his film. The actual footage, four hours worth, was shot by Russian filmmaker Dmitry Vasyukov, but then was seen by Herzog who took and whittled away Vasyukov’s material to craft this 90 minute documentary. He also, of course, added his infamous Herzogian balladry for voiceover accompaniment. The appeal of this story to him is obvious, not just the self-reliance but the accord with nature. No wonder he is the one who dubs them “Happy People.”

The film tracks Soloviev from the end of winter, which they burn in effigy while still being all bundled up, to the mosquitoes of spring to the too-few extra-long days of summer to the wintry fall to the arctic winter. It is in the winter that the trapper, off on his own with only a dog (given a reverential treatise here) for accompaniment, earns his living, but, as “Happy People: A Year In The Taiga” shows, preparation for trapping is a year-around event. The trapper is always busy.

The movie occasionally diverges from the hard-working but reflective Soloviev to catch up with another trapper related to the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and also takes a brief detour to what remains of one of the area’s few remaining indigenous groups, the Kets. The portrait painted of them is quietly tragic – there is little work for them to do which leads to problems with alcohol even as they cling, somewhat desperately, to ancient customs. Whether it is meant as irony or not, these original Taiga inhabitants merely become tourists in this story of their land. And I suspect that is because Herzog’s heart lies squarely with the rugged and individualistic trappers.

Conflict is noticeably absent especially when considering the peril into which these people seem to put themselves so consistently. Incredibly difficult situations are seen and addressed, such as Soloviev returning from trapping to find his hut buried in snow or recounting her first winter in the Taiga on his own and short of supplies, but the danger always feels less than tangible. And this, I think, is because Herzog wants us to sense that these are just lives being lived, that is way of life is something they respect and danger is merely part of the bargain. It’s the same as Soloviev’s arc essentially being non-existent. There is no great triumph, no moment of holding a trap with the most desired prey above his head, but rather work, work and more work. Always more work to be done. Always busy.

 The reward for these “Happy People” is in the doing.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Blue Hawaii (1961)

The opening scenes of “Blue Hawaii” are a picture-perfect tone-setter. I say picture-perfect because the opening credits, set to The King’s lilting rendition of the tune bearing the movie's title, is a montage comprised of clichéd Hawaiian images – blue surf, white beaches, palm trees swaying in the breeze – that go to show how the clichéd can still make you dreamy.

From there we move on to Maile (Joan Blackman) jetting down an Oahu roadway – jetting too quickly, it turns out, because a motorcycle cop pulls her over and explains she’s speeding. Well, he calls her by name first and then she proceeds to tell him she’s speeding only because her soldier boyfriend is coming home from service overseas. Never mind then, says the motorcycle cop, transforming himself into her personal pace car and escorting her to the airport. Maile may be in a hurry but “Blue Hawaii” is not, content to function as a tropical postcard (the film was released but two years after Hawaii joined the union), escapism of the most breezy sense.

Consider the motorcycle cop. We won’t give the actor’s name to protect the innocent but suffice it to say his acting is of the most stilted sense, as if he just landed the role the night before and tried too hard practicing his lines in the mirror. Which, hey, maybe he did! Maybe director Norman Taurog noticed him on patrol and asked: “Do you want to be an Elvis movie?” It would have fit the mood just right.

Back to the layabout story. Maile’s soldier boyfriend is Chad Gates (Elvis). She plans on driving him home to his well-to-do parents, his pineapple magnate father and his meddlesome mother (an annoyingly ostentatious Angela Lansbury – yes, Angela Lansbury), but Chad would rather postpone this reunion as long as possible. He diverts them to a secluded beach with a shack where we reckon Chad has spent a lot of time in the past. “It’s a Hawaiian holiday,” he tells Maile. “Haven’t you ever heard of hooky-hooky-day?” This is what passes for humor in “Blue Hawaii.”



Chad seems content on this beach – when Maile exclaims he can’t spend the rest of his life on a surfboard he replies “The G.I. Bill of Rights say I get my old job back and this is my old job” – and, frankly, the movie does too. Of course, a movie about a guy laying on a surfboard and watching the sun rise and the sun set and then strumming a guitar and crooning a casual ditty probably won’t pass muster for a whole 90 minutes. So Chad’s dad wants his son to join the family business and Chad’s mom wants him to refrain from hanging around those ne’er-do-well “beach boys” but Chad, by golly, wants to be his OWN man and make his OWN way in life. Therefore he decides to cash in on the burgeoning Hawaiian tourist industry.

Elvis fans often dismiss “Blue Hawaii” as the moment his film canon jumped the shark. Its box office success – third all-time for Presley behind “Viva Las Vegas” and “Jailhouse Rock” – as well as its easy-to-recreate vibe and values meant that for the rest of his career his movies followed the “Blue Hawaii” template, much to their detriment. There is certainly truth in this viewpoint but, at the same time, harsh as it may sound, I don’t know that Elvis was headed for a transcendent acting career. People will point to “King Creole” and while Elvis was decent in the part and showed at least of semblance of potential, I genuinely think that film gets graded on a curve. This is to say that while “Blue Hawaii” is definite fluff, it’s not quite the harbinger of middling disaster it’s made out to be.

So, too, did the character of Chad Gates stray from Elvis’s image of the young rabble-rouser who burst on to the scene throwing flames with The Sun Sessions. The tuneage in “Blue Hawaii” is decidedly more adult contemporary – “Rock-a-Hula” barely rocks – and his image is more polished. Yes, he aims to defy his parents, but he also brings a dose of levity to young Ellie (Jenny Maxwell), a rambunctious child in a small tour group he escorts around the islands. She is intent on not having fun and then she is intent on getting into Chad’s pants and Chad is having none of it, forced to finally forced to……spank her. Yes, spank her. No, this is not in any way lascivious, rather it is Elvis making like the parental chaperone he is and scolding this unruly teen. It would have been a moment to make Steve Allen – the square talk show host who viewed Presley as a no good ruffian – proud.

In fact, this entire second-half storyline of Ellie & The Tourists threatens to stall out “Blue Hawaii” as it alters its leading man into being a sort of moral policeman while balancing tepid humor, sing-alongs and, of course, the obligatory bar fight. (Not every Elvis movie has a bar fight but it feels like they do.) It’s funny – every time I watch this movie I start to drift off as it meanders toward the end, like napping on a longboard out in the water, and yet I return to it again eventually anyway.

“My French blood,” says Maile at one point, “tells me to argue with you and my Hawaiian blood tells me not to mind.” And while I have no French blood nor Hawaiian blood, well, while my French blood tells me to examine the film analytically and structurally and say it’s not very good, my Hawaiian blood is telling me not to mind.

Happiness Is...

Your two favorite movies of 2012 arriving together in the same Amazon package. 

My Favorite Time Travel Movie

Time travel is inherently ridiculous. It is, after all, time travel. This is why I always find the generally overused film criticism term “plot holes” being associated with the term “time travel” to be almost as ridiculous as time travel itself. Oh, perhaps one day a sturdy, serious filmmaker will get down to brass tacks and create a time travel docudrama in which every single action, every single movement, every single breath is coordinated exactly to ensure prevention of the Butterfly Effect’s wrath (though, more than likely, this will drive audience members to naps in droves) but until that day time travel should merely exist as the dilithium that drives the plot.

Dilithium, of course, is the element that propels spaceships in “Star Trek” to travel at warp speed. At least, I think that’s what it is. At least, that’s what it was in “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”, the only “Star Trek” movie Cinema Romantico really deems worthy of discussing. (I don't mean that as a knock against "Stat Trek", trekkies. Honest, I don't! It just ain't my bag, baby.) And hey! As chance would have it, “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” is all about……time travel! In fact, “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” is the greatest movie ever made about time travel.

That’s right. You heard me. Time travel is most effective and enjoyable when its explanation is limited. How? Don’t care. Why? All that matters. Establish the end game so that time travel is the only means to get us there and then, you know, just get us there. The end game in “Star Trek IV” is that humpback whales are needed to answer a probe threatening to destroy 23rd century humanity. Humpback whales have been extinct since the 20th century. Thus, the sole remedy is time travel. Now, how to time travel? What follows is what passes for the movie's entire explanation:

McCoy: “Are you really going to try time travel in this rust bucket?” 
Kirk: “We've done it before.” 
McCoy: “Sure, slingshot around the sun. If you pick up enough speed you're in time warp. If you don't, you fry.” 

On with the show!!!!!!!!!!!!! So yeah, they travel back in time, back to 1986, and proceed to do anything and everything that could overwhelmingly f--- up the future. Like, they’re not accidentally stepping a single innocent butterfly, yo, they’re basically taking battering rams to rhinos and driving them off cliffs. They need to ferry the whales to the future, of course, and Kirk’s requisite love interest COMES BACK TO THE FUTURE WITH HIM and in a minor mishap a naval officer winds up with Chekhov’s phaser and Spock Vulcan grips an 80’s-styled punk into submission and – gasp! – Kirk orders a Michelob (The Butterfly Effect should really be re-named The Michelob Effect) and, oh right, I almost forgot, Scotty gives away the secrets of futuristic transparent aluminum.

Well, he and McCoy need to barter with the kindly Dr. Nichols in order to attain the necessary equipment to house their whales aboard their spaceship for the spaceship ride home, see, and the only real bargaining chip he has is this futuristic formula. At this moment you can practically see/hear The Plot Hole Picker Outers blowing a gasket and The Butterfly Effect-ers crying heresy and, as if the movie senses it, McCoy pulls Scotty aside to strike it all down with one brilliant blow.

McCoy: “You realize that by giving him the formula we’re altering the future.” 
Scotty: “Why? How do we know he didn’t invent the thing?”

Scotty. Out.

The Great Gatsby's Perfect Shot

No, this isn't the shot.

“There are eight million stories out there and they’re naked.” This is what hip hop virtuoso - and "Great Gatsby" executive producer - Jay Z espouses in his generally iconic “Empire State Of Mind.” His line, of course, was an ode to the famed lines in the 1948 noir “The Naked City” recited in memorable monotone that go: “There are eight million stories in The Naked City. This has been one.”

Well, eight million stories……I mean, that’s a lot of stories. Right? How can you possibly convey eight million stories? In their song “8 Million Stories”, A Tribe Called Quest managed to squeeze in – roughly – twelve tales of woe before, of course, the song had to end. So, by that estimation, they would have needed to record about 667,000 songs to completely encapsulate all the stories out there in the naked city. This is why it is necessary to follow “The Naked City” template. In order to tell these eight million stories, we must tell them one at a time. Everyone has a story worth telling, don’t they? Isn’t that another semi-noted idiom?

Of course, there is a reason why this phrase has become affixed to The Apple. Whenever I’m in New York City, I can feel the brunt of those eight million stories with an almost ineffable lucidity. It’s like this: I leave my apartment in Chicago and I’m on my block, which is a very lovely block, and……that’s it. I’m on a block with houses and apartments and parked cars and trees. I leave my best friend’s apartment in Brooklyn when I visit and I’m immediately in the midst of a mystical energy, of lives being lived all around me.

Maybe it’s because everything and everyone is so close together in New York. We’re close together in Chicago, too, sure, but it’s a different closeness – in New York it’s all just right ON TOP of each other. You walk around the city and wherever you go, whatever you do, you see a story or hear a story or sense a story. You leave a Kylie Minogue show and realize the two gay dudes walking directly behind you are in the midst of hooking up (Godspeed, gentlemen). You talk to a bartendress at some random Times Square pub you duck into to get out of the heat and away from the people and have her explain to you, frazzled, how she is in love with a co-worker but could never tell this co-worker she loves him because, well, she’s obviously too frazzled. You see a bewitching redhead that kinda resembles Jenny Lewis at an East Village tavern and realize that for the rest of your days you will wonder: what was her story? (And wonder: was that Jenny Lewis?)

I live in Chicago and I love Chicago and sometimes I think I don’t ever want to leave Chicago but I sometimes get in arguments with friends in Chicago about why I believe the New York City skyline is so much better than Chicago’s. Perhaps Chicago’s skyline is more aesthetically pleasing, as I’m often told, but the Manhattan skyline? That skyline TALKS to you. When I visit my best friend and I cross the Pulaski Bridge to catch a train to the city it affords a view that's not so much a view of buildings as a view of a stage. You look at Chicago's skyline and think: architecture. You look at New York's skyline and think: joy and grief and madness and all the lives lived amongst those buildings that have passed.

This long-winded wind-up brings me to my main point - that is, a specific shot in Baz Luhrmann’s flamboyant telling of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”, just released theatrically in 3D that sort of makes it seem like you’re showering with champagne.

One of the early scenes involves Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), the aspiring bond salesman, tagging along with rough and gruff Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) to a booze-filled party with him and his married mistress (Isla Fisher) and a few of her garish friends. It’s a scene that really doesn’t have a whole lot to do with anything in the bigger picture – aside from establishing Fisher's character so later on she can......eh, never mind – but on its own it’s a genuine marvel. Andrew O’Hehir of Salon was struck by it too and wrote: “(T)he entire sequence is an out-of-body mini-masterpiece that blends sex, jazz and liquor – the great trifecta of the Roaring ‘20s – into a potent cocktail that kicks like a horse.”

It concludes when Nick drunkenly traipses to the window. Across the way is an apartment building, another building - that'd be the Empire State - standing in exaltation to the left of the frame, and each window is romantically lit with an inhabitant peering out at the city and its infinite wonder and terror below. And then……

Then Luhrmann’s camera looks in on Nick from the outside – an omniscient spectator – and employing CGI in the best way possible it pulls back and pulls back and pulls back, faster and faster, taking in all the buildings and all the streets and all the lights of that decadent metropolis. It’s still a stage but we are no longer on the outside looking in – we are in the play, we are mixing it up. For a few dizzying seconds this isn’t just Nick’s story, it's the story of each of those people at the windows gleaming in Nick’s eye and everyone else in all the buildings and on all the streets and beneath all the lights as the camera whirs past.

There are eight million stories in The Naked City. And for once, it feels as if they are all being told at the same time.

Examining The "I'm Pregnant" Reveal

It happened again recently. I was watching “Save the Date” (I have a full review that perhaps I'll post one day) when a nice little film that could suddenly decided it couldn’t and decided it needed to help resolve its story by resorting to one of the more insipid and frustrating story reversals of our time. You know the one I’m talking about. It’s where a female character utters the magic words… “I’m pregnant.” Bam! Movie re-prioritized! Free of charge!

It’s a cheat! An easy out! A pulling of the statue on the mantle and opening up a secret wall! Maybe this is a bad analogy but do you recall the moment in “127 Hours” when James Franco as real-life hiker Aron Ralston is trapped in the canyon wedge and he drifts off and dreams of an epic storm that magically lifts him up and out of the wedge and sends him running to his wondrous freedom only to then come to and realize, nope, that ain’t real and he’s still stuck and to get out he’s going to have to……well, you know?

It’s like “Save the Date” – and this is the identical fate of so many other films – yearns to avoid the heavy lifting and hard work of getting its characters out of their own proverbial wedges and where they need to go and so it simply has a character say “I’m pregnant” and she isn't stuck anymore.

Ah, but as with any trope, however antiquated or normally ill-fitting, there are exceptions and examples of proper usage.

Do you know what movie gets “I’m pregnant” just right? “Juno” gets “I’m pregnant” just right. It gets it right because it’s not a Reveal – not to the audience anyway. We know her eggo is preggo straight away and, thus, when it comes time for her to spill the beans to her dad and stepmom there is actual suspense derived – how will they react? – as opposed to phony surprise. And when she says “I’m pregnant” (a deft line reading by Ellen Page that concedes the disappointment she has in herself) those subsequent actions offer a wealth of insight. Juno's folks are shocked and disappointed, but also supportive and understanding. They scold while immediately also focusing on the fundamentals ("first things first, we need to get you healthy"). The scene has laughs and truth in equal measure and cleverly underlines in a matter of moments all the realities of teenage pregnancy.

Do you know what movie gets “I’m pregnant” just right? “Fantastic Mr. Fox” gets “I’m pregnant” just right. That film is Wes Anderson’s masterful piece of animated whimsy, based on Roald Dahl’s book and written by Anderson and the impeccable Noah Baumbach. The opening sequence demonstrates the film’s wit – Mr. & Mrs. Fox (voiced, respectively, by George Clooney & Meryl Streep) are out for a stroll and a bit of thievery, bantering like a canidae Nick & Nora, and find themselves ensnared in a fox trap. At this point Mrs. Fox advises: “I’m pregnant.”

Well, Anderson and Baumbach are fully aware of the trope, of course, and what they do with it here is ingenious and it is both ingenious in the way it works on its own and in the way it signals the tone of the forthcoming film – that is, “Fantastic Mr. Fox” amazingly exists in a perpetual state of total sincerity and irreverence. It's funny that the movie is poking fun at the ancient reveal and, at the same time it's genuinely moving. Only in this moment of need could Mrs. Fox be stoked to confess and the confession underlines how magical it is even in such a moment of need.

But do you know what movie really gets “I’m pregnant” just right? “Rachel Getting Married” really gets “I’m pregnant” just right. This is a film centered around a weekend and a wedding held on that weekend and the sprawling, mildly wrecked family at the center of that wedding. And the two most crucial characters are the Sisters Buchman – Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt), who, as the title indicates, is the one doing the marrying, and younger Kym (Anne Hathaway), the erratic addict out of rehab just for the occasion.

The scene: the family has just returned home from a pre-wedding soiree where Kym (in a bravura piece of acting by Ms. Hathaway) has given an awkward toast. Rachel calls her out, caustically commenting: “Nice apology.” And so Kym says she was trying to make amends – “It’s one of the steps” – and Rachel indicates that she is fully aware of the steps and that Kym has never even tried to apologize and, yet, at her wedding dinner decides to take a painful stab at it. Barbs are traded. Their Dad (Bill Irwin) gets dragged into it. He thinks Kym is making an effort. Rachel thinks Kym thinks she is the sun around which all else revolves. Kym compares the atmosphere in the room to the Salem Witch Trials. Back and forth they go, exchanging big words and pschyological terminology in place of just calling each other the b-word over and over.

“You’re suffering is not the most important thing in the world to everybody!” Rachel declares. “Other people have lives! We have lives! I have a life! I’m in school. I’m getting married. I’m……” And Kym gets this abject look of horror, as if the film has momentarily come face to face with The Amityville Horror. And Rachel says the magic words. “I’m pregnant.”

It’s a Reveal, yes, in the technical sense, because we didn’t know she was pregnant and her family didn’t know she was pregnant – except that it’s not really a Reveal at all because it has no bearing on the overall story. Kym gets it. She says: “You can’t just drop that tectonic bit of information into a completely separate conversation, Rachel. You just can’t do that.” And DeWitt’s expression at this is stone-cold brilliance, glowing with I’m-Gonna-Be-A-Mom warmth and dripping with To-The-Victor-Go-The-Spoils smugness. She replies: “You’re going to be a niece, Kym.” In other words, she just won the argument.

It’s the only “I’m pregnant” confession in cinematic history that doubles as a mic drop.

Obligatory Kate Winslet Casting Update

Screen Daily reports that Kate Winslet - whose official moniker at the Cinema Romantico offices is, of course, The Greatest Actress In The World - has agreed to star in director Jocelyn Moorhouse's adaptation of Rosalie Ham's Australia-set novel "The Dressmaker."

Cinema Romantico confesses to having no knowledge of this "Dressmaker" so we promptly hopped over to Amazon to check things out. As it happens, customer reviewer Redhead provides the necessary breakdown, deeming it an "Australian gothic novel of love, hate and haute-couture." That gets the noted Cinema Romantico roar(!!!!!!) of approval.

Readhead continues: "As Rosalie Ham's first novel unfolds, the reader can see, smell and move through Tilly's jumbled and dusty hometown of Dungatar - possum piss, old tyres, lavender flowers, chugging farm trucks, kids and wheat. Who will die, who will live? Who is marked for life? Who will explode out of their drab life in one of Tilly's creations? Who wears home-made ginghams under their uniform? Read 'The Dressmaker' and find out."

I wanna find out! I do, I do, I do! I wanna know if Kate Winslet wears home-made ginghams under her uniform!

Friday's Old Fashioned: No Man Of Her Own (1932)

Libraries are not necessarily noted for their erotica but there is a scene in “No Man Of Her Own” (1932) that smashes this theory to smithereens. Babe Stewart (Clark Gable), brand new in town, has chosen, almost upon disembarking from the bus, to court the comely Connie Randall (Carole Lombard). Well, court, perhaps, is not the proper term. Perhaps we should say……he pursues her in the manner of a dapper cruise missile. He essentially stalks her to the library, fakes a fuss about wanting to check out a book, makes like he’s interested in some book on a top shelf all so Connie can climb her trusty step-ladder so Babe can check her out, and then he swoops in……right into a close-up on the two of them. He’s looking right at her with that Gable-y smile and she’s looking right back at him, a little more hesitant but unable to tear her eyes away from his. It’s like a 1932 version of Fassbender’s tractor beam stare at the lady on the subway in “Shame.” And director Wesley Ruggles holds the shot and keeps holding it. And you get this lump in your throat and you don’t want them to fall in love or even make love – no, you want them to pick up where Sienna Miller & Daniel Craig left off in “Layer Cake” right before poor Daniel got kidnapped.

Alas, this is the high point of “No Man Of Her Own.”

Recently on his site And So It Begins, Alex Withrow listed his ten biggest movie pet peeves. One of them was, in his words, Falling In Love After Having Sex Once. It’s a fair point, of course, but, hey, at least characters these days get to have sex! Clark & Carole fall in love after kissing twice. Whoops! My mistake again! Falling in love isn’t even the right way to put it – they get married after kissing twice. Of course, they only agree to marry by the whim of a coin flip.

See, Babe’s a gambling man, the sorta gambling man who likes his gambles to be sure things, which is why he chooses to “gamble” in the form of grifts. He and a few devious associates stage fake card games with clients who assume the card games are real so they can take the patsy for all he’s worth. Ah, but the requisite cop is, as he must be, wise to Babe’s scheme and looking to nab him. So, Babe decides to follow the advice Aubrey Plaza would relay many years later in “Safety Not Guaranteed”: “There’s no sense in nonsense, especially when the heat’s hot.”

He high-tails it outta the Big City (Manhattan) for the Small Town (Glendale) which is where we catch up with Connie telling her folks with whom she still unfortunately resides about how nothing ever happens where she is and how she’ll run off with the first handsome salesman she meets. Which, of course, she does. Babe mis-represents what he is, not so much who he is, neglecting to tell Connie of his card hustling and posing as a well-to-do businessman. Always a good idea to start off lying to the woman to whom you propose and so once they wed and move back to Manhattan it isn’t long before Connie is able to deduce that something is amiss at these nightly poker games Babe and his cohorts are always winning. Will Connie still love Babe tomorrow? Will Babe make a play for the straight life? Will he be able to handle it?

Eventually Gable and Lombarde would be married in order to become one of Hollywood’s most glamorous couples until her tragic death in 1942. At the time “No Man Of Her Own” was filmed, however, they not only had never appeared on the screen together (and would never appear on it together again) they were both married to someone else – he to Rhea Langham, she to William Powell. The off screen flirtations would come later, though perhaps there were already burgeoning signs on this production. The Internet is awash in stories of, post-production, Lombarde presenting Gable with a ten pound ham bearing his photo and him presenting her a pair of ballerina slippers with a note saying “To A Real Primadonna.”

I love these stories. I do. A Ham & A Primadonna. The fact they were willing to tease each other this way – even if we did not know they would go on to become husband & wife – suggests a rapport and while in certain moments that rapport shines through, too often “No Man Of Her Own feels disconnected from its dizzying premise. Late in the film, for example, Babe decides to employ a con in an effort to re-woo Connie but its handling and presentation moves at a snail’s pace compared to other screwball comedies for which these two were well known. This leaves it feeling, strangely, like a staid modern day rom com despite being released during the Hoover Administration.

The rest of the film just never quite re-captures the crackle of that eye-to-eye showdown in the bibliotheca. I suppose it’s nice that Babe and Connie get to live happily ever after but the movie in which they are featured might have been better off if it was just a one night stand.

5 Directors For Mission: Impossible 5

It was recently announced that Tom Cruise inked a deal to return to his "Mission: Impossible" franchise for a fifth film. Director of "Ghost Protocol", the series' most recent entry, Brad Bird is not slated to return and speculation centers around Christopher McQuarrie as being the man to helm the new one. Until such time, however, Cinema Romantico is here to helpfully offer five names that could lead Cruise's indefatigable IMF agent Ethan Hunt in a new direction.

5 Directors For MI-5

Edgar Wright. Simon Pegg is already part of the team so, hey, why not surround Ethan Hunt with Nick Frost & Lucy Davis and have the IMF commander (Bill Nighy) send Hunt off to London to, unbeknownst to Hunt & team, eliminate a member of the House of Lords solely because he never settled a backgammon bet with Nighy. Chaos ensues when it turns out some guy referred to as “007” (Timothy Dalton) is tasked to defend the same Lord.

Your next IMF Commander?

Christopher Guest. A mockumentary chronicling a week in the life of the IMF where Ethan Hunt and his team – Eugene Levy, Parker Posey, Bob Balaban – struggle to file paperwork in the face of an impending deadline from their blowhard commander (Fred Willard). Meanwhile, a megalomaniacal vending machine magnate (Ed Begley Jr.) takes IMF headquarters hostage in a misbegotten effort to have the IMF employ his services. Hunt hatches a scheme to get to and take out the magnate by crawling through the building’s air duct system until Willard explains the air duct system was removed on account of too many villainous break-ins via air ducts.

David Gordon Green. In an effort to have more strangers on the street quote lines to him from movies he made to feel validated, Green employs Shane Black as screenwriter with one order: “Add as many quips as you can." Black does. The film flops. No one approaches Green on the street to quote lines from it. Disillusioned, Green makes a severely independent film in north Mississippi.

Imagine this is, from left to right, Michael Cera, Tom Cruise & Michelle Monaghan

Joe Dante. After catching “Innerspace” one night on CMT Tom Cruise decides he wants Ethan Hunt to be miniaturized in a submersible pod and, thus, hires “Innerspace” director Joe Dante to helm MI-5. In the film, an IMF experiment involving miniaturization goes awry which causes Ethan's ex-wife (Michelle Monaghan) to accidentally be miniaturized and subsequently injected into the body of an Orange Julius employee (Michael Cera) in a desperate effort to conceal sensitive information which causes villainous Michael Shannon to miniaturize himself to be injected into Michael Cera to retrieve the sensitive information which causes Ethan to miniaturize himself to be injected into Michael Cera to stop villainous Michael Shannon and save his ex-wife.

Your MI-5 villain?

Len Wiseman. Kate Beckinsale is featured as the leather & high-heeled boot clad villain. Which is all that matters.

When I Accidentally Saw The Before Midnight Trailer

For the last month of my moviegoing there has been a simple rule – if attending the Landmark, which serves up the majority of Chicago’s indie fare (which means I’m there a lot), I sit on the aisle. I do this in the event the “Before Midnight” trailer appears and I need to make a fast exit to prevent myself from having any information spoiled. This past Saturday when I attended a showing of “At Any Price”, however, I made a mistake.

Perhaps the spring weather on the walk there had clouded my judgment. Perhaps the fact “At Any Price” was showing in the smallest theater and, thus, aisle seating was not the best viewing option took my mind off my rule. Whatever the case, I sat in the middle, between two couples. In the case of a trailer emergency, I was stuck.

There was a trailer emergency.

And you know what? It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The FIRST SHOT of the “Before Midnight” trailer gives away the essence of Jesse and Celine’s relationship. By the time I realized what trailer I was seeing, it was already too late. My thought process was honestly the following: “Oh. Hey. That’s Julie Delpy. I haven’t seen her in awhile. Is this – wait, that’s Ethan Hawke! This is……..oh, f---.”

So this is a warning, my fellow Tweed Jackets, that to see a split second of the trailer is to know what you don't want to know. I would advise to ask an usher if there is a trailer for "Before Midnight" before your chosen movie and, if so, just cool your heels in the hallway 'til the trailers are done.

Or watch the trailers with your ears covered and your eyes closed - like I did for the rest of the "Before Midnight" trailer once I realized that's what it was.