Shameful #6 - Fitzcarraldo

Fitzcarraldo (1982, Herzog)

Fitzcarraldo is the story of a man in Peru with a dream. Brian Sweeny Fitzgerald aka Fitzcarraldo, is a entrepeneur who loves opera. His dream is to open an opera house in the jungle, but he's currently bankrupt from a failed attempt to build a railroad across the Andes. The other businessmen scoff at him, teasing him about how he;ll go bankrupt next, but he borrows money from his girlfriend, a brothel owner, to buy land to start a rubber business. He gets the land cheaply beause it's almost impossible to get to, but he braves the journey up the river anyway.

Klaus Kinski plays the titular Fitzcarraldo,and it's a really startling performance. I, like everyone, was used to the raving, crazy Kinski that we all hear about (allegedly natives offered to kill him on Herzog's behalf while shooting), but he's so soft and just plain likeable here. He makes it so easy to relate to this guy; he's so in love with opera, so optimistic, so driven that you really want him to succeed, even when he's forcing people to drag a steamboat up a mountain.

Oh, did I forget that part? Yeah, they drag a steamboat up and down a small mountain. And by "they" I mean "Herzog and the crew". Herzog believed that if they used special effects, it wouldn't look real, so he actually did it, and it's just as impressive as it sounds.

Anyway, this is the second in an unofficial trilogy of a sort of 'man vs. jungle' theme, the first being Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Fitz has to brave treacherous waters, and, like Aguirre, he and his crew must deal with sickness, mutiny, and threats of native attack, all of which threaten his chances of achieving his dreams. Unlike Aguirre, however, Fitz succeeds in a way at the end; he introduces opera to the natives (he plays it while going up the river) and, at the end, to the rest of the town, and so while he still isn't rich, he gets a sweet ending. It's weird for me to say that a two and a half hour movie about going up a river to start a rubber business is "cute', but there's definitely an "awww" factor by the time you get to the end.

Nicolas Cage Series #4 - Birdy / #5 - The Boy in Blue

Alright, a double on the Nicolas Cage marathon (though not really).

Birdy (1984, Parker)

Birdy is an unexpectedly emotional film about the friendship between two boys, Al (Nicolas Cage) and 'Birdy' (Matthew Mondine), told through flashbacks as Al tries to get Birdy to open up in a mental hospital. Both were drafted in the Vietnam War, and Al, still recovering from severe facial wounds, is sent to try and save Birdy, who has stopped communicating since he came back. We learn that Birdy has been obsessed with birds and flying for all of his life, and when Al first meets him, it's a strange hobby. But as they grow older he gets more and more obsessed and withdraws from society, and when he sees him after the war, it seems like he really thinks he's a bird.

It's really moving, seeing how isolated Birdy feels throughout his life; Al is his only friend. By the time they meet again, Al is almost as broken as Birdy; his face is healing, but he's not dealing well with the possibility of being disfigured and the trauma of the war in general. I was honestly surprised about how involved I got into the story; Parker really does a good job of helping you understand Birdy and why Al is so loyal to him.

However, it's almost completely ruined by the flippant, out of nowhere ending. The last act ramps up the drama as Al tries to save Birdy from being stuck in a mental hospital for the rest of his life as he worries that he'll be thrown in there also, and then it just...ends. Seriously. Abruptly, and in a way that would seem comedic if we hadn't been watching a drama for the last two hours. I mean, really? It's still worth watching, but it would be so much better if the ending wasn't so fucking flippant.

Fortunately for the next movie I watched, I didn't have such a big problem with the end.

The Boy in Blue (1986, Jarrot)

Unfortunately, that's because I didn't get there. The Boy in Blue is a typical rise from nowhere to fame sports movie about sculling set in the 1870s. Sculling is some sort of boat racing (it's similar to crew, except really kind of only for one person instead of a team), and it's pretty fucking boring. There's really no attempt to make it seem interesting in any way, so why should I care? Cage is playing the offbeat chick-fucking decent guy with something special that he's played in Valley Girl and the flashback parts of Birdy, but it's really out of place in the 1870s. I lasted maybe 45 minutes, hoping that something would differentiate this from every rags to fame sports movie movie ever, but it really didn't, so I have to admit that I gave up. Don't even bother with this one.

Shameful #5 - Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)

 What can I say about Taxi Driver?

Seriously, what can I say about it besides that it's great. Scorsese perfectly sets the dingy world of 1970s New York at night; even now where the streets are cleaned up and Times Square has (almost) no sex shops, there's still that feeling you have when you're in the back of a cab late at night, lights passing you by coming out of the darkness and momentarily flitting into your window. The soundtrack is simply a perfect addition to the visuals.

But what really stands out about Taxi Driver is, of course, Travis Bickle. He starts out as an outsider, weightlessly floating through time; he doesn't sleep, and so his existence is like that feeling of a long car ride when you're tired. He's there, but he seems to float past society without entirely understanding it; he's physically there when he's at the diner with his coworkers, but something's just sliding by him that he can't understand. His detachment causes him to look down on the majority of society, and when he tries to connect with Betsy, he doesn't get the subtlety behind human interaction. He knows on a date you're supposed to take a girl to a movie, but he really can't understand why she's upset when he takes her to a porn theater. Every negative experience he has pushes him closer and closer to the edge, until he feels that since he's the only one outside of the societal system, he has to be the one to save it. Unfortunately, because he's outside of it, he doesn't understand the consequences of assassinating a politician or killing the only protection Iris has; in particular, he can't see how complicated Iris' situation might be. We don't know why she ran away from home, but Travis can't even imagine that she might have a good reason.

Roger Ebert compares this film to John Ford's The Searchers, but I just can't agree. In The Searchers, the main character is an outsider because he's out of the times; he's a former Confederate soldier who lost his purpose once the Civil War ended. While he is on a quest to save a girl who we later find out doesn't want to be saved, and he does take her back to her parents, I feel like The Searchers doesn't have quite the same purpose as Taxi Driver. The Searchers is about a quest gone wrong and how racism and societal values have changed after the war; the main character's main issue is that he is no longer relevant. Travis' main issue is that he's always been an outsider, and that constant isolation causes him to lash out against the world. Both characters see things in terms of black and white, but for very different reasons.

Shameful #4 - Annie Hall

I was given Annie Hall after the admission that I had never seen a Woody Allen film, and with it being a multiple award winner, one of his most popular films, and a New York classic, I thought it'd be just perfect for me.

Annie Hall (1977, Allen)

And it really almost was. Woody Allen paints a really charming and relatable picture of both Manhattan and Brooklyn, and of some daily life pet peeves (the scene where he's in front of the pretentious idiot at the movies is one great example). It's just brilliantly structured and written; I loved Alvy Singer's asides to the camera, the scene where Annie's distant in bed, and my favorite was the two of them on Annie's balcony, showing both of them frantically worrying about sounding good to the other. I have to admit, as a New Yorker, I also enjoyed some of the jokes about LA, mainly the driving everywhere and the fact that Alvy's terrible at it.

Unfortunately for me, I couldn't stand Alvy. I was really surprised, since I am a neurotic Brooklynite (I'm actually just about half an hour away from Coney Island!), but he's just too neurotic. I just couldn't feel too sorry for him; while Annie's also definitely a flawed character, Alvy's anxiety triggers were just so over the top that I couldn't understand why she, or any of his other girlfriends, would be with him at all. For example, I mentioned Alvy not being able to drive in LA. Immediately after crashing into three different things, he's pulled over by a cop. Hilarious. But he just fumbles so damn much that I just got tired of it. He is charming sometimes, but not enough to offset how annoying he is. It's really kind of a shame, because I loved pretty much everything else about Annie Hall.

Nicolas Cage Series - Valley Girl / Shameful - Star Wars

Valley Girl (1983, Coolidge)

Not counting Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Valley Girl,  is Nicolas Cage's first appearance in film, and the first where he's billed as Nicolas Cage. It's a loose retelling of Romeo and Juliet, where the Juliet character, Julie, is the leader in a trio of valley girls, and Cage's character, Randy, is the punk Romeo from Hollywood who vies for her affection.

Really, I feel like there's not much to say about this film. I grew up in a decade where the Valley Girl was a trope already being lampooned and where the punk isn't a weirdo, but the awesome one. In general, the whole "good girl bad boy they're from different worlds but it eventually works" storyline is pretty damn boring. The only thing that makes this remarkable at all, besides the now-surprising idea of Nicolas Cage as the hot guy, is Julie's parents. Instead of the typical "I disapprove of your unconventional love!" types, Julie's parents are hippies who own a health food store, smoke pot on occasion, and really just want her to be happy.

Oh, also, for those who are interested, there are tits. I'm not, so yeah, it was a wash for me.

Fortunately for me, soon after that I saw something was much, much better.

Star Wars (1977, Lucas)

 

I was a little reluctant to see this at first. After all, everyone on earth knows that Darth is his father, Leia is his sister, and those Family Guy episodes pretty much go through the entire plot of the first two films, so I thought, why bother? I just didn't feel like it, and the exaggerated shock I got whenever I admitted I hadn't seen it as a kid got so annoying that I felt like I never wanted to.

But I did, and it was awesome. So awesome that I can't even give a half-decent review or discussion about it, because my thoughts after watching it were basically "space battles laser guns PEW PEW omg Han Solo is so awesome and cute!"

Someday I'll probably end up watching the other two of the original trilogy (I really see no reason to watch the prequels at all), but really, Star Wars works so well on its own that I don't feel like I really need them.

Which almost definitely means I'll be forced to watch them about five years from now.