(Peter Carter, 1980)
Right off the top, a title card defiantly renounces all obligations to historical accuracy, an obvious pre-emptive strike against the Pierre Berton crowd. I'm no stickler for detail myself, but the movie does make a big deal of featuring real historical characters in their actual historical setting, and it does clearly aspire to the kind of nationalist myth-making that one would expect of such a project; if they were going to fly in the face of the facts they could have at least had some fun with it. Centering on the Northern odyssey of good old Jack London, they trip right out of the gate with the casting of Jeff East, a callow nonentity who might as well be Christopher Atkins, or Justin Guarini. When he gets really worked up he threatens to shatter glass, which differentiates him from the sleepwalking big-money guys - Rod Steiger, Angie Dickinson, Lorne Greene - and makes him a good match for his prospecting partner Barry Morse, who does improve somewhat after an exhaustingly 'energetic' first act. In fact the only actor Carter shows any rapport with is his old "Rowdyman" partner Gordon Pinsent, and this script must have made them both nostalgic. But an attentive director would have demanded a rewrite, and the third act is emblematic of Carter's serial late-career catastrophes. Morse abandons East for no good reason, then changes his mind for no good reason again. Pinsent goes 'into hiding' one scene, and is found inside his own saloon the next. Law-and-order mountie Greene is visibly pleased when East wins the stupid dog sled race by murdering his opponent. East finds gold and wins $2000, then immediately leaves town 'with $5 in his pocket'. I give up.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
King Solomon's Treasure
(Alvin Rakoff, 1977)
There's dumb and then there's stupid, and this movie offers you plenty of both. While H. Rider Haggard purists (I know you're out there) are sure to bemoan the flashlight-eyed crab monsters and a viking ship whose figurehead appears to be a twenty-foot chicken, I strongly suspect that the worst elements are the most faithful to the original, namely the nagging racism that keeps interfering with the camp. On this journey to the dark continent's lost Venetian kingdom, the natives aren't even individuated in slaughter - even Ken Gampu's grinning sidekick ends up taking an arrow for massa. We are also asked to empathize with the tragedy of Britt Ekland's fiefdom being forced to open their doors to non-Aryans, including a crazed voodoo priest who's no more of a 'character' than the other Africans even though he's supposed to be the main villain of the piece. Sure the flashback framing device points frantically to an intentionally antiquated serial approach, but if they thought this would earn them a pass on the retrograde colonialism they were just wrong. It's really too bad because in and of themselves the gaggle of British colonials are quite hilarious, with enough rapport to actually enliven the agonized, shticky script. David McCallum's stuttering twit earns a special prize - almost as entertaining as the guy in the fan-lizard suit.
There's dumb and then there's stupid, and this movie offers you plenty of both. While H. Rider Haggard purists (I know you're out there) are sure to bemoan the flashlight-eyed crab monsters and a viking ship whose figurehead appears to be a twenty-foot chicken, I strongly suspect that the worst elements are the most faithful to the original, namely the nagging racism that keeps interfering with the camp. On this journey to the dark continent's lost Venetian kingdom, the natives aren't even individuated in slaughter - even Ken Gampu's grinning sidekick ends up taking an arrow for massa. We are also asked to empathize with the tragedy of Britt Ekland's fiefdom being forced to open their doors to non-Aryans, including a crazed voodoo priest who's no more of a 'character' than the other Africans even though he's supposed to be the main villain of the piece. Sure the flashback framing device points frantically to an intentionally antiquated serial approach, but if they thought this would earn them a pass on the retrograde colonialism they were just wrong. It's really too bad because in and of themselves the gaggle of British colonials are quite hilarious, with enough rapport to actually enliven the agonized, shticky script. David McCallum's stuttering twit earns a special prize - almost as entertaining as the guy in the fan-lizard suit.
Kings and Desperate Men
(Alexis Kanner, 1981)
Go ahead and scorn the vertiginous camera work and the nonlinear montage and the dots-and-loops scoring as mere self-indulgences. They're also gorgeous - as close as Canadian narrative has come to 'pure cinema' outside of Winnipeg - and, after you acclimatize yourself, surprisingly kinetic for an almost two-hour movie. And that's not even mentioning the brilliant, punk-Altman sound design, which winds up being more meaningful than the script itself. The tale of a talk-radio host (Patrick McGoohan) held hostage by a revolutionary cabal of dubious provenance tilts uncomfortably toward brainwashed-masses cynicism and dead-end philosophics. The hyper pyrotechnics also keeps us a long arm's length from the performers, who despite their crucial human frailties wind up functioning more as symbols than characters, an impression undiminished by the stunt casting of Margaret Trudeau as the host's wife. All of which is ultimately okay, because behind the veil of attenuation this movie is a quite committed and expert piece of deadpan comedy. Avant-garde showmanship is something we could use more of, and when things threaten to spin out of control there's McGoohan holding it all together in a great performance that really does have some depth. Shot in '77, festival premiere in '81, and banished to cable in '84, this is not your usual failure story - its discord with the marketplace is conscious and purposeful, and Kanner's years of manual labour under myriad hats is all up there to be seen.
Go ahead and scorn the vertiginous camera work and the nonlinear montage and the dots-and-loops scoring as mere self-indulgences. They're also gorgeous - as close as Canadian narrative has come to 'pure cinema' outside of Winnipeg - and, after you acclimatize yourself, surprisingly kinetic for an almost two-hour movie. And that's not even mentioning the brilliant, punk-Altman sound design, which winds up being more meaningful than the script itself. The tale of a talk-radio host (Patrick McGoohan) held hostage by a revolutionary cabal of dubious provenance tilts uncomfortably toward brainwashed-masses cynicism and dead-end philosophics. The hyper pyrotechnics also keeps us a long arm's length from the performers, who despite their crucial human frailties wind up functioning more as symbols than characters, an impression undiminished by the stunt casting of Margaret Trudeau as the host's wife. All of which is ultimately okay, because behind the veil of attenuation this movie is a quite committed and expert piece of deadpan comedy. Avant-garde showmanship is something we could use more of, and when things threaten to spin out of control there's McGoohan holding it all together in a great performance that really does have some depth. Shot in '77, festival premiere in '81, and banished to cable in '84, this is not your usual failure story - its discord with the marketplace is conscious and purposeful, and Kanner's years of manual labour under myriad hats is all up there to be seen.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
The King of Friday Night
(Andrew Gosling, 1985)
Not just shot on video - the majority of the movie takes place in glittering, cheese-saturated chroma key, and with its mid-80s take on early-60s youth culture, it's like a great acid trip at your local Wimpy's. The clash of hyper-stylized pastel elements is so gaudy and incessant that it nearly overwhelms the stagebound rock-and-roll fantasy of the script - but not quite. John Gray's plainspoken dialogue is generously laced with affection and lived detail, and it makes a point of being witty as it posits the music as a harmless ego-projection and social unifier. But the nostalgic frame of reference comes with its own built-in critique. By setting the action in an uncomplicated and homogeneous 1961, Gray duplicitously ignores a quarter-century of challenges to his simplistic thesis, and while his celebration of "boring" people is totally valid in itself, the situation of redemption in the distant past is the usual bourgeois snow job. Ideology aside, the climax is corny and pat in the great musical theatre tradition, and the sharp lyrical moments are never matched by the too-clean, too-emotive score. Though the performers are fairly appealing and individuated, only Eric Peterson's holy greaser ghost manages to address the camera with the necessary cinematic finesse.
Not just shot on video - the majority of the movie takes place in glittering, cheese-saturated chroma key, and with its mid-80s take on early-60s youth culture, it's like a great acid trip at your local Wimpy's. The clash of hyper-stylized pastel elements is so gaudy and incessant that it nearly overwhelms the stagebound rock-and-roll fantasy of the script - but not quite. John Gray's plainspoken dialogue is generously laced with affection and lived detail, and it makes a point of being witty as it posits the music as a harmless ego-projection and social unifier. But the nostalgic frame of reference comes with its own built-in critique. By setting the action in an uncomplicated and homogeneous 1961, Gray duplicitously ignores a quarter-century of challenges to his simplistic thesis, and while his celebration of "boring" people is totally valid in itself, the situation of redemption in the distant past is the usual bourgeois snow job. Ideology aside, the climax is corny and pat in the great musical theatre tradition, and the sharp lyrical moments are never matched by the too-clean, too-emotive score. Though the performers are fairly appealing and individuated, only Eric Peterson's holy greaser ghost manages to address the camera with the necessary cinematic finesse.
Killing 'em Softly
(Max Fischer, 1985)
There are a few, er, problems with this twinkly light comedy about a singer who falls in love with the old bum in the next apartment after he murders/robs her manager and frames her boyfriend. The filmmakers do really seem to be expressing some kind of ass-backwards class consciousness here, but they sure don't give it much of a sales job: should we cheer when George Segal throws acid in the eyes of a guy who's mad because he bought a bad car? Are we to admire Irene Cara for crawling in the bath with this guy while her sympathetic boyfriend rots in jail, forgotten by lover and filmmaker alike? Did we really need that scene-long chat with the floozy about the volume and velocity of Segal's ejaculate? All the bits and pieces of backstory strewn around Segal's apartment never add up to a character, and while his scenes with Joyce Gordon's blowsy neighbour at least work as shtick, they're also typically extraneous and unresolved. Cara's presence requires a bunch of rock-club singing and dancing scenes early on, which warp the arc, though the Segal-Cara piano duet at the end is unexpectedly charming. Nicholas Campbell got a Genie nomination for his performance as the manager, who does get to establish a character, then promptly undermines it, in about three short scenes. But Campbell's really a victim here: his performance largely unfolds in halting, endless wide shots whose only possible explanation is that he's anticipating cutaways that never arrive. Of course any cross-cutting more complicated than two people sitting at a table seems to be beyond Fischer, as one parallel-action setup after another are lost to the linear-sequential energy void. Remedial film school, here we come.
There are a few, er, problems with this twinkly light comedy about a singer who falls in love with the old bum in the next apartment after he murders/robs her manager and frames her boyfriend. The filmmakers do really seem to be expressing some kind of ass-backwards class consciousness here, but they sure don't give it much of a sales job: should we cheer when George Segal throws acid in the eyes of a guy who's mad because he bought a bad car? Are we to admire Irene Cara for crawling in the bath with this guy while her sympathetic boyfriend rots in jail, forgotten by lover and filmmaker alike? Did we really need that scene-long chat with the floozy about the volume and velocity of Segal's ejaculate? All the bits and pieces of backstory strewn around Segal's apartment never add up to a character, and while his scenes with Joyce Gordon's blowsy neighbour at least work as shtick, they're also typically extraneous and unresolved. Cara's presence requires a bunch of rock-club singing and dancing scenes early on, which warp the arc, though the Segal-Cara piano duet at the end is unexpectedly charming. Nicholas Campbell got a Genie nomination for his performance as the manager, who does get to establish a character, then promptly undermines it, in about three short scenes. But Campbell's really a victim here: his performance largely unfolds in halting, endless wide shots whose only possible explanation is that he's anticipating cutaways that never arrive. Of course any cross-cutting more complicated than two people sitting at a table seems to be beyond Fischer, as one parallel-action setup after another are lost to the linear-sequential energy void. Remedial film school, here we come.
The Killer Instinct
(William Fruet, 1982)
The classroom-debate framing device promises a movie about the moral justifications for murder, but in fact the teens angle seems like a market-driven afterthought. The film is really about machismo and morality, in full Southern Gothic mode. Remove the screamers altogether and there's still the complex 'family' dynamics of the mountain-shack community, the divided loyalties of the sheriff's department, and the philandering gas company man - an adult cast dealing with actual themes in a coherent (if frivolous) way, acted and directed with the kind of concentration you don't usually encounter at the drive-in. Check out the scenes between lead hick Henry Silva and jailbait Danone Camden - they don't waste a word or a frame in establishing this ambiguous, neurotic relationship, and there's comparable intelligence throughout. But while erasing the kids would have allowed us to get a little further into these peoples' lives, they are integrated well enough that they don't really hurt anything. In fact they bring some fun action with them - a mountaintop car chase, an antenna-impalement, and an unforgettable climax with Silva covered in boiling tar and waving his axe around, plus, you know, Ralph Benmergui with his leg in a bear trap.
The classroom-debate framing device promises a movie about the moral justifications for murder, but in fact the teens angle seems like a market-driven afterthought. The film is really about machismo and morality, in full Southern Gothic mode. Remove the screamers altogether and there's still the complex 'family' dynamics of the mountain-shack community, the divided loyalties of the sheriff's department, and the philandering gas company man - an adult cast dealing with actual themes in a coherent (if frivolous) way, acted and directed with the kind of concentration you don't usually encounter at the drive-in. Check out the scenes between lead hick Henry Silva and jailbait Danone Camden - they don't waste a word or a frame in establishing this ambiguous, neurotic relationship, and there's comparable intelligence throughout. But while erasing the kids would have allowed us to get a little further into these peoples' lives, they are integrated well enough that they don't really hurt anything. In fact they bring some fun action with them - a mountaintop car chase, an antenna-impalement, and an unforgettable climax with Silva covered in boiling tar and waving his axe around, plus, you know, Ralph Benmergui with his leg in a bear trap.
The Kidnapping of the President
(George Mendeluk, 1980)
The "President" part of the title is taken care of by sending Hal Holbrook on a diplomatic mission to Toronto, with stumblebum entourage including Secret Service hack William Shatner. The "Kidnapping" part is taken care of by an explosive truck permanently parked in Nathan Phillips Square. Thus - after the first act throws us a couple White House sets, a weekend-in-Cancun guerrilla opener, the old reliable exploding gas station, and a ticker tape parade down a notably abbreviated side street - things give way to an even more brutally efficient, one-location movie. Sure it's totally ridiculous, but it also manages to be pretty entertaining - most interestingly, the state security apparatus is as bewildered as the terrorists themselves, and the power-mad interactions that ensue lead unpredictably into bad decisions and failed gambits. As a result the tension building devices tend to work, providing a nice counterpoint to the slop-trough of hams in the foreground. Shatner and Holbrook's contrasting thespian rhythms are sandwiched between a panoply of street-level Canuck regulars (Gary Reineke, Miguel Fernandes, Maury Chaykin) and some bizarre Arthur Hailey-type interludes featuring Van Johnson's worse-than-Palin VP and Ava Gardner as his clotheshorse wife. The ending fails to resolve the various tensions, pasting a series of happy faces onto a trick shot that could have been one of the great iconoclastic statements of its era.
The "President" part of the title is taken care of by sending Hal Holbrook on a diplomatic mission to Toronto, with stumblebum entourage including Secret Service hack William Shatner. The "Kidnapping" part is taken care of by an explosive truck permanently parked in Nathan Phillips Square. Thus - after the first act throws us a couple White House sets, a weekend-in-Cancun guerrilla opener, the old reliable exploding gas station, and a ticker tape parade down a notably abbreviated side street - things give way to an even more brutally efficient, one-location movie. Sure it's totally ridiculous, but it also manages to be pretty entertaining - most interestingly, the state security apparatus is as bewildered as the terrorists themselves, and the power-mad interactions that ensue lead unpredictably into bad decisions and failed gambits. As a result the tension building devices tend to work, providing a nice counterpoint to the slop-trough of hams in the foreground. Shatner and Holbrook's contrasting thespian rhythms are sandwiched between a panoply of street-level Canuck regulars (Gary Reineke, Miguel Fernandes, Maury Chaykin) and some bizarre Arthur Hailey-type interludes featuring Van Johnson's worse-than-Palin VP and Ava Gardner as his clotheshorse wife. The ending fails to resolve the various tensions, pasting a series of happy faces onto a trick shot that could have been one of the great iconoclastic statements of its era.
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