Guest Editor — or –Probably Just Another Bad Idea

I made the mistake of asking my cinefreak brother (Let’s call him Prospero) to help me come up with some likely candidates for the list below of Scene-Stealing Bit Parts (SSBPs). That was about a week ago and I have lived (and continue to live) to regret that I ever invited him. He won’t shut up. The emails keep coming, followed by phone calls in which all he does is repeat what he said in the email and then laugh at his own cleverness. But I admit he has a much more historic database of movies from which to pull. He watches movies like other people surf the Net: Constantly and whenever there is a single free minute.

He promised to stop calling me if I promised to print his submissions. And here is where I fulfill my promise. In advance I apologize, but it’s my sanity we are talking about. (Unedited form, natch)

“Russell Crowe in L.A.Confidential.Peter Ustinov as the emperor Nero in Quo Vadis…..Anthony Quinn in The Ox Bow Incident………Jack Palance as Sgt.Willis in Attack!……..John Barrymore as ”Billy Bones” in the original Treasure Island……..Joe E. Brown as “Osgood Fielding III”(“ZOWWIE!) in Some Like It Hot.Bye the bye George Raft as “Spats Columbo” was pretty special in the same film………Fred Mcmurray as the slimey naval writer in The Caine Mutiny………Otto Preminger as the Commandant in Stalag 17……..Ernest Borgnine as Sgt. “Fatso” Judson in From Here To Eternity……….Margaret Wycherly as “Mother York”(arguably the best mom ever on screen) in Sergeant York……..Telly Savales as ”Maggott”in The Dirty Dozen……..Charles Grodin and Diane Cannon are flat out funny in Heaven Can Wait,as is Buck Henry in the same movie……..Thelma Ritter in Rear Window………Claude Raines in Notorious,Robin hood,and frankly ANY FILM HE WAS EVER IN!!!!!!!…….Martin Landau as the sexually repressed,depressed and sadistic “Leonard” in North By Northwest……..Jessica Tandy as Rod Taylors weirdly overprotective mommy in Hitchcocks The Birds………..Suzanne Pleshette(God rest her soul) was good also in the same movie!……..Who was that ”little person” in Poltergeist,her characters name was “Tangina”(she gets a nod!)……Joe Pesci in Raging Bull……..Byron Brown in Breaker Morant(A nod here to me sainted Mother,who says this is one of the best movies ever,it does in fact have one of the most dramatic endings of ALL TIME!)………..Oliver Reed as “Bill Sikes” in Oliver!………..Vincent D’ Onofrio,playing two worthy parts in Men in Black…..Marilyn Monroe as ”The Floozy” in Asphalt Jungle……..Agnes Moorhead in just about anything!………….Ronald Reagan in Kings Row……….Peter Graves,Robert Stack,or Llyod Bridges in Airplane………….Victor Mature in The Robe……………..Basil Rathbone in The Mark Of Zorro………..Robert Vaughn in The Magnificent Seven.speakin of Seven,how about Kevin Spacey as the wacked out killer(why did he have to kill Brad Pitts wife?)…………Idare you to try to take your eyes off Cyril Cusack in Day of the Jackal,although Edward Fox played ”The Jackal” with silent aplomb………Cliff Robertson or Max Von Sydow in 3 days of the Condor……who can forget Roy Scheider in Marathon Man;Sir Laurence Olivier was as evil as they come in the film also………..James Mason steals the show in almost any movie he was ever in(I sure miss him0)…Donald O’Connor in Singin in the Rain……George(he sure had style) Sanders in All About Eve………..Piper Laurie as poor Carries religiously out there mom…..Gene Hackman as any villain,but most especially in Unforgiven…………Anthony Quinn in Lawrence of Arabia…..Kevin Bacon in A Few Good Men..and Robert Preston in Victor Victoria!

To all this I have only to add Danny DeVito as Mr. Martini in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (“Hit me. Hit me. Hit me.”)”

Say goodbye, Prospero. It was a one-time gig.

Eastern Promises

Me love David Cronenberg long time. Since Videodrome, and especially for Dead Ringers. I forgive him for eXistenZ. I embraced his tactic-change in History of Violence on many levels: The Viggo Mortensen level, the William Hurt level, the Ed Harris level (Just remembered…Ed Harris has a Scene-Stealing-Bit-Part factor in HoV). It was all good. I just feel like his movies are smart minus the smug, and disturbing minus the scary. There is a huge Creep Factor in his movies.

Eastern Promises I saw in the theater just about the first week it came out. This was more via serendipitous circumstances than design. It was too violent for one of my sisters, and too slow for another sister. Me? I talked in an annoying Russian accent for 3 days following.

After watching it again last night on DVD, I wrote an email to my sister in which I called her a short-sighted, shallow viewer who probably thought it was slow because we had shared a couple-three pitchers of beer in a bar before seeing the movie. And split a Coors tall in the (parked) car in the parking lot. She has to watch this again. Mostly because it is one of those movies that has puzzle pieces that slowly reveal themselves, and at the end many things come together.

But while the puzzle unfolds you have two stories: A violent, shady one, and a compassionate, ordinary one. It’s the story of (among other things) an orphaned baby and of a Russian mobster. It is really easy to get bowled over by Viggo Mortensen’s laconic, slick, cold mob chauffeur, but when the movie is over it might be Amin Meuller-Stahl as the creepy, menacing-but-avuncular kingpin, or whiny, hot-headed, ineffectual Vincent Cassel as the kingpin’s son that stays in your head.

Some of the Cronenberg touches are there: Super violent, lots of surgical references, fascination with the human body (this time as a canvas), and immersion in an unfamiliar subculture (the Vor v Zakone … Russian Mob). But this is definitely a different movie from The Fly, Dead Ringers, or even History of Violence.

This is really very good. Worth watching again just to see it after the puzzle is in place.

Scene-Stealing Bit Parts

Those ass-kiss rodeos they call “award shows” are bogus for yet another reason: As far as I can tell, they allow no recognition for The Bit Part. One of my favorite things about reading fiction or watching a film is the peripheral characters.

When a writer pays such close attention to detail that even the most fringe element is interesting…that’s impressive and gratifying. In a movie, when an actor is handed a teensy little part, not a leading or even what the Narcissistic Movie Powers That Be deem a “supporting”part, and he or she gets the bit between his teeth and makes it a showstopper, a scene stealer — well, I heartily appreciate that. It deserves to be recognized.

Often, the Scene-Stealing Bit Part (SSBP)  is one more thing to love about an already good movie. Many (many more) times, The Scene-Stealing Bit Part is the only memorable thing about an otherwise forgettable movie.

This essay is a work in progress. I asked my cinefreak brother to help me compile a list of SSBPs, and he came up trumps, digging into older movies and some I had not heard of. The resulting phone conversations were long and punctuated with whooping laughter. He left me 4 messages after midnight last night. So, yeah. This is probably just Part I:

• Vince D’Onofrio — He gets two mentions here. Pooh-Bear in Salton Sea, and Edgar the Bug in Men in Black (the lurching, the dead eyes, the rictus grin!). Both mediocre movies except for his total commitment to freakhood.
• Siobhan Fallon – Can’t mention Edgar from MIB without mentioning Beatrice, his hapless wife, who utters the immortal line, “That wad’n Eggar. That was…a bug. In a Eggar suit.”
• Bill Paxton — As Chet Donnelly, the military-freak older brother in Weird Science who leers and declares, “I’d like to butter your muffin.” Good movie. Great bit part. Shows bone-deep commitment to his role.
• Gene Hackman — Two mentions for this one, too. The Blind Man in Young Frankenstein (uncredited role at that) and as Senator Keely in The Bird Cage. Actually, The Bird Cage was a total bore except for one other totally lit bit part (below) and Hackman’s senator-in-drag dancing to “We Are Family” at the end. I assert here that Hackman makes the ugliest woman in the history of cross dressing. That’s a compliment.
• Hank Azria as Agador in The Bird Cage. His cliched, over-the-top, flaming houseboy/cook with an accent. It’s one of the two things I even recall from this movie. Admirable effort. Throws himself into that accent and outfit with all he’s got.
• Stacy Keech — The cop in Up in Smoke. It’s hard to steal a scene from Cheech or Chong, especially on their own turf. But he does.
• Tom Skeritt – Up In Smoke again. As Strawberry the Viet Nam vet who keeps lapsing into aggravated, post-traumatic-stress-disorder fugue states, Skeritt is one of the reasons why this movie rose far far above the rest of Cheech and Chong’s bong-hit genre.
• Michael Caine — Actually, Caine deserves his own category, just for being the best part of any movie he is ever in. Just dominates. I love him as Jasper, the pot-smoking old coot, in Children of Men. He flips everyone the bird — front and center — with a crazy smile and a cackling laugh, just before he is assassinated by government thugs. Rulz this movie.
• Stephen Tobolowski in Groundhog Day. Ned. Ned the Head. Needlenose Ned. Ryerson!! BING! One of the best things about a consistently excellent, multi-layered masterpiece of comedy, philosophy and character study. Every detail, every seemingly minor character really matters in this movie. It was obviously made with love, and I LOVE Ned Ryerson. Bing!
• Jay Robinson as Caligula in two swords-and-sandals epics from the 50s — The Robe and Demetrius and The Gladiators. Caligula…what an opportunity for any actor. Jay Robinson does the biggest freak in history proud: Shrieking, tempestuous, petulant, scary. A real freak show. Bravo.
• Rick Moranis as Louis Tully, nerd extraordinaire, in Ghostbusters. “Gozer the Traveler. He will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During the rectification of the Vuldrini, the traveler came as a large and moving Torg! Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the McKetrick supplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Slor! Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!” Matchless. Just perfection.
• Tony Shaloub in GalaxyQuest. Actually, this is an excellent ensemble cast any way you look at it. It’s hard to find the weak link. Certainly it’s not the Valium-cool Fred Kwan. Constantly eating and underreacting to the other-wordly, life-and-death events around him, his sly smile and his deadpan remarks are all part of his consistently hilarious characterization.
• Diane Cannon — For freaking and screaming every single time she sees her husband (whom she thought she murdered) in Heaven Can Wait.
  
• Burt Kwok  – as Cato in every one of the Peter Sellers’ Pink Panther movies. Total commitment to his role. Never breaks. You never feel he’s an actor. He could fool you into thinking he’s actually a martial arts guy who dropped in to the set and stayed.

I like this. These are the kinds of parts that make movies such a joy for me. I am going to try to keep a running list (Ha. Just thought of another one: Alan Rickman in Die Hard) and periodically post another edition to the list. Email me if you can think of any. Don’t (just don’t) disappoint me and mention Rosie O’Donnell in Sleepless in Seattle because that won’t wash.)

3:10 to Yuma

For a Western fan such as myself, this movie has all the makings of heaven and it deeeeelivers big. I started out on my Western jones when I was a kid watching Clint Eastwood as The Man With No Name in Hang ‘Em High and I quickly and greedily ate through the rest… all of them, including the underrated and nearly forgotten Two Mules For Sister Sarah. Then I blew through Peckinpah; the very best of which — to me — was Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. God I love Westerns.

I love the mythology, the bigger-than-life, the struggle for survival, the downtrodden and independent ranch owner battling the elements to survive, the moral quandary of the dubious lawmen, the dust in my teeth, the saloons, the dirty glasses, the brutality. (Odd thing: Aside from True Grit I am not big on John Wayne, though, and I hated the TV show Gunsmoke. It just seemed totally bogus-Western to me.)

Here’s another thing: I love morally ambiguous situations, of which there are a few in 3:10 to Yuma. It has a protagonist-antagonist situation that draws you in immediately, in addition to a main character that you are supposed to loathe, but you end up liking him (Well, I did. But I’m easy.). This has Russell Crowe charming and killing his way through two small towns in his quest NOT to be taken to the train that will take him to trial for being the baddest, most murderin’, most bloodthirsty guy in many towns . Christian Bale is one of those righteous-but-desperate guys who is being paid to get him on that train. He has so many chinks in his armor it’s nearly Swiss cheese, and Crowe mind-fucks him plenty.

You will lose count of how many people die (and in at least two cases, very creatively), and how many of the good guys are total pigs. All the bad guys are reassuringly and grotesquely bad. Except maybe one, who takes an odd shot at an ambiguous and ambivalent redemption. The end had me in tears. Not that that’s hard or anything.

P.S. It has Peter Fonda, and that is never a bad thing.

Non Ti Muovere (Don’t Move)

Penelope Cruz. Meh. Until Volver (I need to get around to reviewing that, don’t I?).  In this Italian movie, she speaks not her native Spanish, but Italian, opposite an Italian much-loved actor/director (Sergio Castellitto) in a movie co-written by the director and his wife, based on the wife’s popular novel. Seems like she’d be the stranger in a strange land, but whatever. She’s great in this…as good as in Volver, certainly. She’s also as mangy and ugly as a stray cat….almost unrecognizable in a bad bleach job, sallow complexion and tragic teeth.

Hang on a second, though. I liked this movie and I need to figure out why I can say that. Hell, I need to figure out why I even hung in there after our protagonist (reserved but charismatic surgeon Timoteo) rapes Cruz’s impoverished and rough-hewn Italia after she offers to let him use her phone (his car has broken down in her disreputable neighborhood). Then he rapes her again the next day when he comes to apologize.  It’s repugnant and really distasteful and I wanted to hate him but I couldn’t. I wonder why.

Over time, after he continues to visit her, they fall in love. He has a polished, gorgeous wife at his seaside home. An active social life and a great career. Why is he doing this? The two of them really do fall in love. It’s clear and palpable. It’s also weird. I bought into it totally, and by the tragic end, I was misty and melancholy.

I almost never watch the DVD special features that go behind the scenes, as they are usually ass-kiss rodeos, but I watched these. I was fascinated that a husband would agree to adapt his wife’s novel for the screen, then direct it and star in it. Seems like he would be setting himself up for failure — especially in a story so fraught with misogyny and masculine piggery . Castellitto is obviously well thought-of in Italy…sort of indie-street-cred-meets-artsy-intellectual-big-star. I can see why. He sure knew what he was doing in casting Penelope Cruz. The two of them made a really ugly story interesting and oddly beautiful.

The Year of The Dog

I wanted to see this when it was out in the theater, but, alas, I had to cook dinner or take out the trash or drive someone somewhere. So it arrives from Netflix and I notice it is the dreaded PG-13 “for racy (my word) references.” O no. What willwe do? Racy references? How will we ever go on?

PG-13 to me is basically saying “We are too pussy to get into it and too scared of not making any money to completely clean it up.” But it’s got the creepy-delicious Peter Sarsgaard so I’m in. I guess.

Molly Shannon plays a pretty-plain secretary at an Office Space-type company. She’s kind and considerate and listens to everyone’s petty concerns and rants. She brings donuts. She is happy for her office mates when they get engaged, married, promoted, etc. She is unmarried and has a dog, named Pencil (great name), whom she adores and lives for. Her existence is seemingly narrow, but she seems like a real sweetheart.

Pencil dies. She completely and spectacularly crumbles over a period of months — adopting another (troubled) dog, alienating her neighbor, forging her boss’ signature on checks, drowning her astonishingly and scene-stealingly awful sister-in-law’s fur coats (I never liked Laura Dern until she played this consumately horrible, obsessively self-absorbed piece of work…she’s really worth the whole movie) and scaring her niece out of ever eating a ham sandwich again in her newly-vegan zeal.

Peter Sarsgaard shows up as an animal shelter employee who turns Shannon on to veganism, and the plight of animals. He’s fairly mainstream about his beliefs, but she goes totally Ground Zero on him. His character is the one I thought about for a long time and one of the reasons I liked the movie more the more I thought about it: He mentions he’s celibate, but he never goes into the details of why. He talks about a disturbing dream in which he is raped by mastiffs, and he seems pretty rigid about rules in general. Funky character. He also weeps really high-pitched and makes you think, Whoa, what?

I like that the movie does not answer anything neatly at all. I also love the completely deadpan-serious way it lets unintentionally funny lines just lay there for you to appreciate…or not. I also LOVE that this movie was written and directed by the guy who played Ned Shneebly in School of Rock. He basically made a movie all about fringe characters like Ned Shneebly.

Better after you let it sit in your head for a day or two.

Everyone Says I Love You

Everyone Says It’s Nauseating…and they would be right. I KNOW this is supposed to be a parody. Yes. I get it. But it is a bad parody. It is a bad movie. It has a bad script. It has bad acting. It has bad singing (I can still feel my husband’s vice grip as he grabbed me, screaming, “Tell me Julia Roberts isn’t singing. Please!! NO!!” as I desperately searched for the remote’s MUTE button.)It is celluloid botulism. It is as bad as the very worst high school play you have ever squirmed your way through. At one point, the clouds did part, and I looked up and saw Billy Crudup, but …then the singing started again, and I had to find the Mute button, and, well, you know the rest. I hope they handed out barf bags in the theater when this played.

28 Days Later

How appropriate that Rage and Lust — two of the seven deadly sins — make such auspicious plot devices in this wonderful, tense, thoughtful, pulse-pounding movie. Rage is a deadly virus that steals the humanity of its victims in a brutal, terrible manner. Lust– and its accompanying loss of humanity– is a wholly voluntary characteristic that is ultimately responsible for taking the lives of a whole compound of Rage’s survivors. How ironic that the character who personifies love, compassion and humanity (Jim)ends up committing a brutal murder to defend the “family” that he has built in this bleak, post-pandemic world. I loved everything…the story, the scenery (!!), the music, the gritty film quality, the touchingly sincere acting (even the soldiers), the odd bits of humor. I cannot stop thinking about this movie.

Rebecca

his book is on my top-ten-reads EVER list. This movie is on my top-ten-movies EVER list. DuMaurier’s sentence structure is so absolutley perfect. You can feel the heart of the protagonist beating harder as the suspense increases. Joan Fontaine captures this so achingly well. Hitchcock did the book proud in this screen adaptation. Olivier is so handsome it hurts to look at him (or away) and we can really identify with his new, intimidated and outclassed wife as she wallows in her own insecurities. The peripheral characters (Danvers, Giles, Frank, etc) are perfect. The very best is Mrs. Van Hopper. ICK ick ick. She reminds me of a Jane Austen concoction (I mean that as a compliment to Austen and DuMaurier). I love this movie and watch it when I need to be completely swept away to a “dreadfully romantic” place.

State of Grace

Here’s what I love: Movies about the mafia (any ethnicity, thanks); Irish families (because I come from one); movies with a LOT of drinking and swearing (I’m Irish…it’s standard issue); and Sean Penn. So this movie racks up the stars with me for all of the above reasons. It has a basic, great plot, lots of tension, crisp and toothsome dialog, and the lovely dichotomy of the explosive, emotional Gary Oldman and steely, monstrous Ed Harris. Once again, Penn makes me forget I am watching a movie, and stays with me long after the credits have rolled. He’s just plain something else. I feel like this movie got lost in the shuffle and has never had the rennaisance it deserves. As a side note, there is a scene in which Gary Oldman is drinking a beer (well, one of a billion drinking scenes in this) and he chugs the beer dry in one swallow. I LOVE drinking a beer like this: My brother Patrick taught me. Makes you want to have a drink while watching this excellent, emotional tale of loyalty and betrayal.