Cynical Cinema

          Spike Lee made a fairly lousy movie a few years ago.  It was called Summer of Sam and starred John Leguizamo and Mira Sorvino, and it pretty well sucked.  It was all about New York, in the summer of 1977, when Son of Sam was terrifying the people.  And although it was a fairly bad movie, it did one thing very well.  That being the fact that the movie didn’t really focus on Son of Sam at all.  Oh, he was there, killing people with his pistol, and showing up now and again.  But the movie dealt with a bunch of young people doing a bunch of stupid young-people things while the killings just happened to be going on at the same time.  It was a nice device to put the serial killer in the right perspective.  People talked about it, they worried about it a little, but it existed on the periphery.  And a new TV miniseries called The Bronx is Burning does the same thing.  It will be released tomorrow, June 3rd, by Alliance Films, and it’s all about the New York Yankees in the summer of 1977. 

          Now, before I start my review, I must state, for the record, that I am a Red Sox fan.  A big fan.  And I therefore am against everything Yankees-related.  However, I still enjoy John Goodman as The Babe, and I still cry at Pride of the Yankees, and I really enjoyed this miniseries.  I can still revel in the successes and the history of the enemy.  I would love to see an interesting documentary on Rush, or a fascinating retrospective on Coldplay’s career, such as it has been.  And it was with great pleasure that I watched the behind-the-scenes 1977 Yankees season.  Some great actors came together for this ESPN special series, including John Turturro as oft-fired and oft-rehired Yankees manager Billy Martin, and Oliver Platt as oft-insane Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.   

          Now, I must say it’s a bit tough to watch Platt’s Steinbrenner, because he seems to be channeling the “George Stenbrenner” of Seinfeld fame.  And every time he talks, or makes a big speech, I’m always a little surprised when the camera turns away and George Costanza isn’t shaking his head and waving his hand and walking out of the room.  The combustible and crazy relationship between him and Martin forms the dramatic centre of the series, but there are other story lines at play here as well.  The friction between Reggie Jackson and the rest of the team, particularly Thurmon Munson, is a big one.  And then there are the
New York-in-1977 stories that set the Yankees story in context.  The Son Of Sam.  The devastating power blackout.  The hotly contested mayoral race.  And the fires and looting and violence that plagued the streets of the Big Apple that year. 

          Steinbrenner comes off as the villain of the piece, with his craziness and his impossible demands and his need to control everything that goes on within the organization.  Turturro’s Martin, in an odd way, despite his lascivious and fractious behaviour and volatile temper, therefore becomes the hero of the show.  And Reggie Jackson, although in real life his transformation may not have been so dramatic, is the person who grows the most over the course of the season and this six-hour miniseries.  Now, I don’t think I’m giving too much away by saying the Yankees won the World Series in 1977.  I think most people who were alive at that time know this.  And those who weren’t, like me, also know this if we are baseball fans. 

          Although me, being a baseball fan, and having six hours to watch, I would have liked to see a little more baseball.  I would have liked to see more players than just Munson and Jackson and Bucky Dent.  I was hoping to learn more about Catfish Hunter, Ron Guidry, and Dock Ellis (who is of particular interest, because on June the 12th, 1970, pitching for the Pirates against the Padres, he threw a no-hitter while completely bombed on LSD.  See - fun baseball stuff.)  Also fun stuff - Graig Nettles, who was with the Yankees that year, said in 1977 “the best thing about playing for the New York Yankees is that you get to see Reggie Jackson play every day”.  Nettles (played by Alex Cranmer) is barely mentioned in the series, but
Jackson is portrayed excellently by Daniel Sunjata as he really was.  More of a Star than a great player, a larger-than-life sports figure.  While exceptionally talented and passionate about baseball,
Jackson was always more of a Star than he was a great player.  He was the Joan Crawford of baseball. 

          But what makes The Bronx Is Burning great is that you don’t need to be a baseball fan to appreciate it, (although it helps), and you don’t need to be a New Yorker either.  You don’t need to have lived through it, and you don’t need to know anything about the city, the summer, the team or the sport to enjoy it.  The actors are very good, the dynamics on the team are believable and rarely stray into the realm of cheesy re-enactment, and the characters are well drawn.  And the Ramones-intensive soundtrack is both awesome and a-propos.  The
Bronx is Burning comes out June 3rd, from Alliance Films, and it is worth the trip to the video store.

I was struggling on Saturday night. Struggling to watch the Sens-Leafs in HD, while my girlfriend had her friend over. While Jen is usually pretty good about hockey, especially Senators games. But Ashley was extremely insistent upon watching whatever was on MTV. MTV! I decided that the best thing to do was to compromise in some way, and that was to find a movie that was not the hockey game, but that HAD to be better than whatever was on MTV. The girls seem to like documentaries - the last time Ashley was over I made sure she never shopped at Wal-Mart again by showing her Wal-Mart: The High Cost Of Low Price. This time, I thought I would put on the new documentary “Everything’s Cool”, an insightful look at Global Warming. But there were previews. And the girls decided, on the fourth preview, that the movie being previewed looked far better than the documentary I had suggested. The movie was called The Ten, a humourous look at the ten commandments. So, grudgingly, I switched the DVDs. And put on The Ten. As that movie started, the girls saw another preview that caught their attention, and asked if I had THAT movie, maybe we should watch that one. (THAT movie? It was “Everything’s Cool”!)

I put my foot down. I am not putting the DVD I just took off back on because you saw a preview for the one movie on the other disc, because then I would be switching discs all night and perhaps end up creating some kind of sci-fi situation where I am stuck there, in my living room, going from one DVD menu to another for the rest of eternity. So I skipped the rest of the previews and just pressed play. And we watched The Ten. Which is OK. But not fantastic. Just a little bonkers and kinda funny. Some of the hottest women alive are in this movie - Jessica Alba, who I really don’t think is that hot (kind of cabbagepatch kiddy, as far as I’m concerned) but who seems to be the #1 Hottest Chick Alive according to the rest of the world. And also my personal favourite, Famke Janssen, who I really think is the hottest woman on Earth. In a cougar-ific kinda way. (Check out Deep Rising. Horrible film, hottest wet-T-shirt Famke Janssen scene ever.)

The movie is basically ten short vignettes about each of the ten commandments. Paul Rudd (who was fantastic in Knocked Up) oversees the vignettes, introduces them and runs his own little bizarre drama as we move from one to another. Famke Janssen is his wife, and he is cheating on her with Jessica Alba. Some really cool actors show up in the film as well - Liev Schreiber, Adam Brody, Rob Corddry, Janeane Garofolo, and Winona Ryder in some inspired casting. (She appears in the Thou-Shalt-Not-Steal vignette. Get it?) Each vignette gets more and more bonkers, as they connect to each other in a bizarre sort of way. There are three really excellent ones. The Thou-Shalt-Not-Steal one is great, as Winona Ryder falls in love with a ventriloquist’s dummy, and steals it…it’s insane. So too is the Schreiber bit where two neighbours keep trying to one-up each other by buying more and more catscan machines. Totally demented. But very little is as demented as the animated “Lying Rhino” sequence, narrated by a bunch of junkies, done in full, almost-X-rated, Felick The Cat style animation.

There are a couple of duds as well, but overall each segment is pretty watchable if not excellent. This film is not for the squeamish, as my girlfriend squirmed uncomfortably for the entire duration of the “Covet thy Neighbour’s Wife” segment, where Rob Corddry and Ken Marino converse very seriously and intensely about rape in prison, and how if you are one man’s prison wife, there is an assumption that you will not let yourself be raped by others…it’s definitely an over-the-top scene, but it made me laugh. Most of this film did, and it is definitely worth renting. (In the end, if you have to make a choice, as I did, between this one and Everything’s Cool, choose the latter. But if you can watch both, do it.)

Martian Child is coming out Tuesday on DVD from Alliance Atlantis. It’s worth watching with your kids, if your kids are having a tough time adjusting at school, or if they are just plain really weird. But as an adult, it is just plain not worth watching. It starts out with a laudable premise, and then degenerates into the sort of movie sentimentality that would make John Wayne beat the living crap out of Hugh Grant and John Cusack were he still alive, God rest his violent macho soul. I now feel confident that this review will break new ground, as it is sure to be the only review of Martian Child that mentions The Duke. So, on with the review. Martian Child is a movie along very similar lines to K-Pax, the Kevin Spacey movie where Spacey plays a man who may or may not be from outer space. Although K-Pax was not that good, it is still far better than Martian Child. John Cusack is a single father (a fantasy writer) who adopts a boy who believes he comes from Mars. This movie obviously wants us to wonder, at least for a time…is he? Isn’t he? Where does he come from? Maybe, just maybe, he is from Mars.
K-Pax did the same thing. And not that either plot is within the realm of likelihood or believability. But if you want to make the case that someone is from outer space, possibly an alien being, then choose K-Pax. Not Mars. We have heard of Mars. We know where it is. We can see it with our naked eyes on certain days. It is the most familiar planet to all of us. We know that there is no life on Mars, and certainly no small-child-shaped life. Pictures like the one above notwithstanding. Therefore, we know the answer right away, and even if we were to suspend our disbelief for the sake of the story, we would have a hard time buying in. There are scenes that try to convince us otherwise. A baseball scene, a traffic light scene, a scene with some M&Ms, that are basically red herrings in a movie that cries out for no red herrings.
In the end, the movie is about John Cusack’s relationship with his adopted son, and it gets this mostly right. When he adpots the boy, he believes very strongly that he is from Mars. (The boy does. Not John Cusack. Or us.) The kid is extremely weird, and Cusack tries to cope as best he can, using sappy talk like never, never, never, never, ever give up and such like. Their relationship seems to hit a breakthrough, and the kid goes (extremely suddenly) from barely ever speaking to laughing and joking and having a good time. We believe that Cusack cares, we believe the boy likes him, and then the Children’s Aid people show up. These people have just given the child to Cusack. They know he believes he is from Mars. And now they want to review his case, because they may have to take the child away. There has to be some kind of huge problem like this at this point in every movie. The review is taking place maybe six weeks after Cusack gets the boy to begin with. And if he still believes he is from Mars, he will be removed from the home. OK…here’s a kid with obvious problems, serious social and mental issues, and if you, the foster parent, can’t cure him of those problems completely within six weeks, he’s gone.
There may well be some super-parent out there who could have effected this change that quickly. But I have not met that super-parent, nor, I wager, has anyone else. But, that is the conflict that must arise at the one hour and ten minute mark of the movie, so arise it does. Other characters populate the movie, including Olvier Platt, who is obnoxious, Joan Cusack, who is in every John Cusack movie so that she gets work playing - go figure - his sister, who is irritating and looks as though she went on the no-food-plus-lots-of-heroin diet to weigh in at a feisty 49 pounds, and Anjelica Huston. Huston plays Cusack’s publisher and delivers the one, painful line that drops this movie off the cliff of heartwarming into the sludge of Hollywood sentimentality and schmaltz: “Why can’t you just be what we want you to be?” COME ON! This leads, inexorably and annoyingly, to a final scene straight out of the worst Hitchcock imitator’s reject pile, a chase and a confrontation on top of an observatory.
John Cusack is a very likeable guy. It is tough not to LIKE his character in this movie. When the kid finally comes out of his Martian shell a little bit, it is tough not to like him as well. But there isn’t one other character in the film that is easy to like, and whatever points the movie scores with us in terms of a connection between the man and the boy are destroyed and wasted as soon as Anjelica Huston says “why can’t you be what we want you to be” and Cusack has an epiphany and runs home from his big gala event to tell the boy that all is forgiven and…whatever. A movie with high ideals such as this one can’t be crammed into that Hollywood cookie-cutter of “this happens here. This sets off that”. It’s like you’re Rembrandt. And you have this great idea for a painting called Belshazzar’s Feast. And you start to paint it, but your boss tells you that paintings have only three people in them, tops, and crowns don’t go on top of Turbans, and you’ll have to make that writing on the wall English so the people reading it can understand. Would you still paint the picture? I’m guessing not.