Cynical Cinema

Of course, you knew when the new Indiana Jones movie was about to hit theatres, there would be all kind of reissues coming out. Paramount released the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles Volume 3 a few weeks ago, and now comes the original trilogy, in special-edition form, on May 13th from Paramount. The first movie in the series, Raiders of the Lost Ark, remains by far the best of the three. The opening scene in the film is still, to this day, incredible, with the giant boulder and the bag of sand and the darts shooting out of the walls and the whip and the chasm and the closing door and the double crosses and the float plane escape…all very exciting. One of the best opening scenes in a movie of all time. And best of all - no gunshots or explosions! Amazing!

Although the thing that set Raiders apart from other movies upon it’s release and made it an instant classic was that no one had ever seen a movie like this before, what makes it a classic now is that it is still better than any other movie like it. Imagine a movie made now that has something of historic, biblical importance as the central object. Now imagine it involves car chases, gun fights, lost treasure, exotic locales, face-melting guitar solos, and Nazis. And, archaeology! Were this movie to be made now, it would likely star Matthew McConnaughey and Kate Hudson, and it would be directed by Michael Bay and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and written by some Hollywood focus group-watching team of nincompoops. And it would probably be called “National Treasure 4: The One With Nazis”. And it would suck worse than “National Treasure 3: Search For the Necronomicon”.

It is a testament to the brilliance of both Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford that they did not allow this movie to become…that. Raiders of the Lost Ark is, in many ways, childish. And it is simplistic and cheerfully bonkers. And yes, it is standing on the shoulders of many movies that came before. But most of those movies were made in the 30s and 40s. And Raiders is set in the 30s. And it is both homage to the old John-Wayne-type serials of the early era of cinema, and also a completely new film going experience. It’s one of the only movies, ever, that is basically wall-to-wall action and yet could be considered classic. Harrison Ford did more than a good job as Indy, and he did more than create an iconic character in a movie. Much more.

This is what he did: He created an iconic persona in film in general. Not many actors have been able to do that. In the years following films like The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, you could tell in other films when people were playing John Wayne. The Duke created an all-new screen persona. Same goes for Gregory Peck in To Kill A Mockingbird, Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur, and Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany’s. And now, when you watch certain movies, you can see other actors playing Indiana Jones. And that is a remarkable achievement in acting. Harrison Ford makes Raiders magical with humour, toughness, intelligence, good looks and stoicism. And Spielberg makes it magic with the set pieces, the camera work, and the ability to create wonderful moments in dialogue, scenery, and especially action.

Also terrific in Raiders was Karen Allen. Now, for a long time, I always thought that Margot Kidder starred opposite Ford in this film, simply because they look alike and the Superman series ran almost parallel to the Indiana Jones series. But Margot Kidder was NOT in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Or…was she? I did some checking.

And in so doing, I have uncovered a conspiracy! Yes, I saved it for the end of my review, because it is such a huge revelation I wanted to save it for last. And here it is: Margot Kidder was born October 17th, 1948 in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. The daughter of an explosives expert, she rose to big-screen fame playing a bit part in the film Gaily, Gaily, and then scoring the starring role in the Brian DePalma film Sisters. Soon, she became a household name thanks to her portrayal of Lois Lane in the major blockbuster, Superman, in 1978. Superman II, II, IV, V, and eventually Superman XLII followed. After “Sisters”, she briefly dated DePalma, and was linked to Pierre Trudeau for a time. She was married and divorced four times, none of those marriages lasting more than a year, and now lives as a little bit of a recluse, saying she prefers the company of her dogs to that of men. In the early 90s, she came under fire from the press and the establishment in the U.S. for criticizing the press and the government over the Gulf War, saying that they did not realize the long-ranging ramifications of their actions. She had a well-publicized breakdown in 1996, when she was found wandering the streets naked and diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Karen Allen was born October 5th, 1951 in Carrollton, Illinois. The daughter of an FBI agent, she rose to big-screen fame playing bit parts in Animal House (1978) and Manhattan (1979). In 1981, she teamed up with Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg in the massively successful blockbuster, Raiders of the Lost Ark. She didn’t marry until 1988, when she tied the knot with Kale Brown, some guy who was in “Challenger”. She had a son in 1990, and the couple divorced in 1998. Since then, she has become more reclusive, and has professed her love for knitting as an activity. In fact, she loves knitting so much that she started her own textile company in 2003. She teaches acting in Massachusetts, and has been coaxed back to the big screen this year to reprise her Raiders role in the new Indiana Jones flick.

Now for the big revelation - Margot Kidder and Karen Allen are the same person! First of all, here is some photographic evidence:

Here’s what I think happened. Margot Kidder, finding that her Canadian background closed certain doors to her in Hollywood, while opening others, decided to make the best of both worlds by creating an American alter-ego for herself. As Karen Allen, she decided to make herself three years younger, since certain roles always go to the younger actress. She made sure that the family background was similar. Their birth dates, for example, were only two weeks apart. While Kidder’s father was an explosives expert, she decided that Karen Allen’s father should be something a little more vague, and thereby easy to explain - and FBI agent. Possibly one with knowledge of explosives. When Kidder hit the big time with Superman in 1978, she was unprepared for the sudden fame, and the alter-ego, Karen Allen, took over. Working with people she admired (like John Belushi and Woody Allen), as Karen Allen, and working with people who wanted her simply for her name, as Margot Kidder.

Then, in 1981, disaster struck. Karen Allen was offered a part opposite a little-known actor named Harrison Ford, in a movie helmed by a fairly interesting, two-hit wonder director named Steven Spielberg. It seemed like a perfect role for the Karen Allen persona - that was the side of Kidder that made the indie movies, and took risks, after all. But when that movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, became a massive blockbuster, all of a sudden both personas were out in the open and in the consciousness of America. Kidder tried to deflect attention away from her movie work by marrying and divorcing several times, but when she met Kale Brown, she thought it would be forever. And so, having painted Margot as the oft-marrying type, she had to get Karen to actually marry this guy and settle down. Once she was married, as “Karen”, she stopped working as Karen.

This gave her the opportunity to truly live two lives. One was the quiet, suburban home life with her husband and son, out of the limelight. That was Karen. Margot, on the other hand, since she no longer really existed, was totally free. Free to express her opinions and sound off about anything she wanted. After all, she had an escape where she could return home and be Karen for the rest of the evening, and let the Margot stuff slide off her back. But after eight years of this, the double life finally took it’s toll, and she snapped. Fortunately, she had the presence of mind to snap as “Margot”, since “Margot” had already portrayed herself as the left-wing nut, the outspoken eccentric, and it would stand to reason that it was she, and not “Karen”, who momentarily lost her mind. In fact, Margot now wanted to live AS “Karen”, and was planning to do away with Margot completely, a la Fight Club. But rather than succeeding in killing off one of the two personalities, she merely succeeded in making one of them crazy. After nursing her back to health, and explaining the two personalities away conveniently as “bipolar disorder”, her husband could take no more and divorced “Karen” two years later.

Shocking, eh? Not only that, I can go one better - I know where Kidder got her idea for the final transformation! In 1988, as “Margot Kidder”, she starred in a made-for-TV movie called “Vanishing Act” with Elliott Gould, where she plays a woman who insists she is the husband of a man whose wife has just disappeared on their honeymoon, even though the man has never seen her before. Vanishing Act was a re-working of a Robert Thomas stage play called “Trap For a Lonely Man”, and had previously been filmed as “One of My Wives is Missing”, and “Honeymoon With A Stranger”, starring Janet Leigh. That same year, she, as “Karen”, married her final husband. Now, “Margot Kidder” hangs out in a rural area with her dogs, and “Karen Allen” hangs out in a rural area with her knitting. You read it here first, folks!

The opening sequence of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is bothersome. Harrison Ford is sitting with some evil men, who mean to do him harm, and he really looks like Han Solo trying to play James Bond. The dialogue (the antidote - to the poison you just drank!), the set pieces (that big rolling gong), the utter ludicrousness of the entire scenario, just don’t feel like the Indiana Jones we know and love from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Fortunately, as soon as this scene ends, he goes back to being the Indy of old, but the movie never seems to recover. Although Temple of Doom is still quite good, and definitely better than any of the imitators that have followed, it comes off as cartoonish when seen in th context of Raiders. Kind of like Return of the Jedi was a cartoon after watching The Empire Strikes Back.

Of course, Temple of Doom still has dozens of memorable moments, like the chase in the railway cars and the pilotless plane, and the raft ride, but it is so LOUD. It’s so busy, and loud, and over-the-top that it loses any charm Raiders might have had. The first forty minutes or so are non-stop action, when you kind of just want to get to the story. Short Round is still hilarious, and I still love that kid, but Kate Capshaw is irritating as the love interest, and the bad guys just aren’t as compelling as Nazis. The whole underground temple has just such a creepy feel to it that’s incongruous with the rest of the movie’s bonkers implausible tone. I don’t care if a guy can pull my heart out of my chest, I still fear the Nazis more. And those gross-out scenes with the monkey brains and all that? Totally unnecessary. And obnoxious.

In the end, Temple of Doom IS pretty good. But it comes nowhere near the standard set by Raiders of the Lost Ark, and it is the worst of the three films by far. Well worth having, this is one of those trilogies that needs to be complete in your collection, and you can’t ignore this one. But it will likely be the one you watch the least.  It’s out in Special Edition form tomorrow from Paramount.

Only time will tell if the new Indiana Jones movie stacks up to the rest of the existing trilogy. And in all likelihood, it will. But the same concerns were voiced nineteen years ago when the third installment hit theatres. And, over the years, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade has held up extremely well. In fact, it is only slightly behind Raiders of the Lost Ark in terms of quality and awesomeness. It really is Temple of Doom that is the weak(er) link in the series. The Last Crusade fits right into the theme - Harrison Ford as the hard-edged James Bond of the world of archaeology. Classic lines (no ticket!). And classic set pieces - the airplane and the seagulls, the airplane off the dirigible.

The new twist added to this third film is the addition of Indy’s dad, played by Sean Connery. This is a common theme now, of third movies in trilogies. Austin Powers has run out of ideas…let’s give him a father in the third one! But at the time, it injected new, refreshing life into the series, and the interplay between Connery and Ford is fantastic. Also, this film marks the return of the Nazis. And, as I have said many times about Temple of Doom, it’s great that you can pull a guy’s heart out of his chest, you’re still not as bad-ass and scary as Nazis. The unfortunately named Alison Doody is light-years ahead of Kate Capshaw in terms of a worthy foil. Again, Indy is archaeology’s James Bond, as he is now given a female lead, in whom he has both an enemy and a lover. How very Bond.

And the Indiana Jones series could easily have turned into another James Bond series. Every movie with the same lines, the new gadgets, the scene where Indy has to face, once again, his fear of snakes. And it’s a testament to the brilliance of Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford that it did not. The inclusion of Sean Connery is fantastic casting, the search for the Holy Grail is, while a logical next step in Indy’s adventures, not overdone. And the spirit of the original is maintained. The Last Crusade is a more-than-worthy inclusion in the trilogy, and is almost as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark. Well worth renting, if you haven’t seen it, but buying the whole set is really the way to go.  They are all out in Special Edition form tomorrow from Paramount Home Entertainment.

When I was a kid, after a long game of tennis, I saw an episode of Mission: Impossible at my friend Oliver’s house. I loved this show! It was one of the best things I had ever seen on TV! It had everything - espionage, international bad guys, gadgets, and missions! And that theme music! So distinctive, so cool! However, Oliver had some channels that I did not, and I never saw the show again until today. When I grabbed Season Four of Mission: Impossible from Paramount Home Entertainment on May 13th, I wondered if it would be as good as I remembered. After all, my favourite programs growing up were MacGyver and The A-Team, and I can’t watch those now without laughing at what an idiot I must have been to have enjoyed such crap.

As it turns out, however, Mission: Impossible really does hold up over the years. Of course, over those years it has been the source of some of the worst pop culture has to offer. Those three horrible movies with Tom Cruise. The music has been used as background for the irritating Scientology video, also starring Tom Cruise. The phrase “your mission, should you choose to accept it” has been overused ad nauseum, and the self-destructing message has been a concept taken to asinine proportions. By the way, I DID watch Inspector Gadget as a child, and I could never understand the self-destructing message. The chief would always pop up in a garbage can, a dryer, a potted plant, and hand Inspector Gadget the message. Then, he would be told that the message would self-destruct. And Gadget would throw the message right into where the chief was hiding, and it would blow up the chief. Every time. Every time, it happened! And I would always wonder, as a child - if the chief was so adept at finding these hiding places for himself, in order to give Gadget his mission, why wouldn’t he just pop out of the dishwasher and tell Gadget the message, rather than having to hand him paper and wait while he read it? That always bothered me.

Season 4 of Mission Impossible is yet another example of when network TV used to be good. It’s like the A-Team, only without the terrible writing, the ridiculous gunfights and the lame acting. It’s like Counterstrike, only less slick and less Canadian. And it is far, far better than those absolutely idiotic Tom Cruise-John Woo movies.

Humphrey Bogart might now be considered the greatest actor of all time, but there was a time where he was considering giving up movies for good. Two starring roles convinced him to stick around. The Petrified Forest and High Sierra. High Sierra was a gangster movie in an era where gangster movies reigned supreme. James Cagney was the biggest star in Hollywood thanks to gangster roles in the Public Enemy and The Roaring Twenties. And Bogart had been his second fiddle for a while. As the lead in High Sierra, Bogart showed he was a legitimate star in his own right. He’s the leader of a gang looking to knock off a hotel, and Ida Lupino is terrific as the girl who complicates things.

Things progress toward a you’ll-never-take-me-alive-copper ending where Bogart is at his very best, holed up in his mountain hideout, with Lupino and a bad-luck dog coming to find him.

High Sierra is dark, intense and, for it’s time, fairly bad-ass.

Another movie mash-up, this time perhaps the first one ever, was 1943’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. As is proper, Frankenstein gets top billing, since his was the superior series of movies. In fact, the Frankenstein movies were excellent up to this point, and continue being excellent through this one. In a sense, this is the sequel to both The Wolf Man and Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and House of Frankenstein, only this one involved only Frankenstein’s monster, and he isn’t portrayed by Boris Karloff, the original and best monster. Bela Lugosi, however, one of the great monster movie actors, reprises his role as the Wolf Man.The premise is solid. Grave robbers awaken the Wolf Man, who has lain dormant in his coffin for five years. Lugosi, afraid he is going to continue killing, seeks the help of Dr. Frankenstein, who has done crazy experiments altering life and death. The Wolf Man wants Frankenstein to figure out a way to kill him so he can stop injuring innocent people. However, he arrives to find Frankenstein dead and only his monster remains in his palace. The two of them recruit Frankenstein’s daughter to help find his missing notebooks so that the Wolf Man may be killed.

Of course, not everything goes to plan, and leads to the obvious conclusion of Frankenstein fighting the Wolf Man to the death. The tone of the movie is similar to the Frankenstein series, which was excellent throughout, and some of the characters - most notably the old gypsy woman - from the Wolf Man movie show up. Not essential viewing, but certainly a great addition to both the Frankenstein and Wolf Man series.

Laurence Olivier is renowned as maybe the greatest actor who ever lived, and a large part of that reputation is due to his work in Shakespearean productions. But he is also perhaps the greatest director of Shakespeare on the big screen. And Henry the fifth is one of his greatest achievements as both a director and an actor.The movie is a stage production filmed and put up on the screen. It does not attempt to disguise this as the first three acts are clearly on the stage. As the movie progresses, however, the stage becomes bigger and the scenes take place in bigger and bigger areas, culminating with the battle scenes with hundreds of horses and people on the open plains.

Henry the fifth is, first and foremost, a military play. It was not done in the tradition of Shakespearean tragedy or comedy, but it retains elements of both. This is the play with many of the famous Shakespeare military quotes – Once more unto the breach, dear friends and so forth. And it’s Olivier’s performance that brings these lines to life with his excellent portrayal of the king. The battle scenes are reasonably well done for the time, but when compared to some of today’s similar scenes, like those of Braveheart, it pales in comparison. But Shakespeare was great not for the stories or for the scenery, but for the language his actors spoke. And no one understands this better than Laurence Olivier. Is this his best work? No. But it certainly ranks with his best.

If Shakespeare was like the Beethoven of the written word, Olivier is like a great conductor bringing his works to life. He is Herbert Von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. Not his best, but his most rousing and exciting.

One of the great things about older movies is the fact that without the special effects we have today, the movies had to be good. They were carried by acting, scripts, direction and cinematography. Today’s horror movies are special effects crap-fests and bloody gross-out flicks. I used to think that was because we as an audience had become so desensitized to violence and scary scenes that they had to become more and more over the top before they elicited a reaction out of us. I no longer think that’s the case. I now think the reason is more simple. We use special effects because we can, studios know really gross movies are cheap and make their money back, and that way we can just churn out movie after movie without ever writing a real script or creating real tension. This is a blanket statement, and I apologize to such films as 28 Days Later and the first Saw.The best horror movie I’ve seen in a while is The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Not the 1978 version, which I have never seen but which seems to be more well known, but the 1956 original, which was truly intelligent. In the old days, every monster movie, zombie movie, alien attack film, was done not only for shock value, but also as a broad social commentary. Body Snatchers is no exception. The social comment, in a way, presages it’s own future in today’s horror movies. The idea is that we as a people are becoming so desensitized that our emotions are becoming almost invisible. There are no big scares in the film, you don’t see anyone die, but the tone and the script are so well executed that you are riveted to your seat the whole time.

In the 1950s, many of the best movies in the world were coming out of Japan. And fully half of those were made by one man, director Akira Kurosawa. His Seven Samurai is considered by many to be the greatest film in history, and Rashomon was perhaps the most influential movie ever made.In 1952, Kurosawa crafted what may have been his finest film ever, Ikiru. It’s the story of a man named Watanabe who has worked for the city department for thirty years. He has become so accustomed to the routine of life, that he has forgotten how to live. When he finds out he has but a few months left, he enlists the help of several people to help him learn to live. Some of these scenes are hilarious and entertaining, others are heart-wrenching and poignant. Watanabe becomes obsessed with building a city park over an open sewer and runs through every level of the city system to do it. The protrayal of the city office at the beginning of the movie would be almost hilarious if we weren’t aware that beaurocrats operate in exactly the manner shown. His co-workers reaction to his renewed sense of purpose also show beaurocracy in action. Ikiru really shows the way big businesses and governments are set up to break the spirit of everyone. Not just the people who deal with those organizations, but those who work for them as well. It’s heartbreakingly realistic when we see Watanabe’s co-workers taking credit for the park he built upon his death. And it’s also a blow to the spirit of the viewer to realize that while his efforts were noble, they will never be recognized as such by the very people who ought to be behaving in the same manner.

But in the end, Ikiru is uplifting and inspirational. It makes us want to get out into the world and do something with our lives, to really live until we die. Be warned. If you watch this with your wife, she will cry.  Touching, sad, but in the end a message of joy.

There are a few movies I have always meant to see, movies I know I should see, but somehow have yet to get there. I have recently narrowed the gap some, having watched E.T. for the first time, as well as Annie Hall, Manhattan, The Grapes of Wrath, The Best Years of Our Lives, 8 1/2, and Fritz The Cat. But I always, for whatever reason, left the Frank Capra movies aside. I had seen a few of his movies - Arsenic and Old Lace, Meet John Doe. And I liked them enough to pick up the Frank Capra box set that’s out there - or, at least, to ask for it for Christmas. But I had yet to open it until a week ago. I managed to catch It’s A Wonderful Life over Christmas, but it was an effort for me to sit down and actually force myself to watch it, since I had been avoiding it my whole life. I hate schmaltzy, Hollywood pap, and for some reason I associated this movie with the beginning of that painful sentimentality. Of course I was wrong, and It’s A Wonderful Life was certainly the brilliant movie everyone has always said it is.

So I moved on to such fare as Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, another triumph for Capra, and now to perhaps his greatest work, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. I can’t imagine another actor playing the role of Jefferson Smith in this movie, it was the part Jimmy Stewart was born to play. Sure, Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds was a similar character, both small-town naive and at the same time smart enough to play with and see through the corruption in the big city. But I can’t see Cooper bringing the same kind of energy and force to that scene where Smith goes through the letters and telegrams on the floor of the senate, doctored letters that tell him it’s time to stop. In fact, the entire final scene, where Stewart refuses to cede the floor and talks for 24 straight hours, is one of the finest moments of true acting in movie history. In watching it, we feel both his passion and his fatigue, it’s like we’re right in there with him, rooting for him yet at the same time exhausted. It’s as though we too have been sitting on the Senate floor for 24 hours. And the scene with Jean Arthur when she tells him how to go about getting a bill passed in the senate, and he listens with rapt attention, is both hilarious and poignant. This is a man who is absolutely in love with the system and the country and the higher powers. So much so that learning his bill will likely take two years to be passed, if it is heard at all, still fills him with some kind of misdirected American pride.

Which all lends so much weight to his devastation and disillusionment when he discovers that the system is not perfect. That in fact, it is corrupt, indecent, and run by shadowy figures that no one really understands. That the justice and legal system at the top of the food chain in America is run more on bribes and threats and blackmail than it is on ideals and the notion of right and wrong. Which is why, sadly, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington remains timeless. This film, I warrant, will never feel dated, because the corruption at the highest levels of American government will never disappear. In fact, it is likely even more corrupt now than it was in Capra’s day, what with lobbyists and campaign donations and the desperate deisre to be re-elected. The only reason the movie could not be made today is that today, everyone is aware of the cesspool. You could not find a wide-eyed, idealistic rube from anywhere in America, who was not aware of the infernal dealings that go on at that level. In 1939, that character was wholly believable. Today, such a person does not exist.

(Note - it WAS possible to do a remake of All The King’s Men a year ago. Willie Stark did indeed start out as an idealist, but was aware of the corruption inherent in the system and fought against it. Then he too was corrupted by that system. He was no naive innocent rube, he was always a smart and calculating man.) Claude Rains is wonderful as always as Senator Joseph Paine, Jean Arthur is reliably terrific, and Edward Arnold plays the best role of his life as shadowy, influential media magnate James Taylor. An early model for the Rupert Murdochs of today. But the movie always, in every scene, belongs to Stewart. No actor in history was a better fit for the role he played (with the possible exception of George C. Scott in Patton) than Stewart was here. And this movie, sadly, will continue to be completely relevant and topical for the rest of our lifetimes.