Steven Rubio's Online Life

geezer cinema: the return (uberto pasolini, 2024)

It's easy to see why The Return was made. You've got a classic tale based on Homer's Odyssey. You've got two top actors in Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, appearing together for the first time since The English Patient in 1996. One of the screenwriters was the esteemed Edward Bond, his last film before his death at 89. The director was Oscar-nominated Uberto Pasolini.

Epic story, honored actors and crew, what could go wrong? Honestly, nothing goes wrong. But after watching The Return, I'm not sure why anyone bothered. Oh, Fiennes and Binoche might get Oscar nominations, and cinematographer Marius Panduru will be in the Oscar discussion as well. Perhaps the problem lies in the decision to turn Homer's epic into a brooding character story. That gives the two stars plenty to chew on, and they deliver, but the action is pretty limited until an ending so violent it earns the picture its "R" rating. It takes forever to get things going ... Odysseus washes ashore on Ithaca, naked, unrecognizable, then for what felt like forever we go back and forth between Odysseus keeping his identity a secret and Penelope pining for the man who left her so many years ago. It's not boring, not with two actors as strong as the leads. But it did feel like it took ten years to get Odysseus, naked on that beach, to finally claim his identity. The Return is not a waste of your time or the talent involved, it's just inconsequential.

le doulos (jean-pierre melville, 1962)

My fifth Melville movie, and this guy is amazing. It's not just that there are no duds ... they are all at the least very good. The consistency is remarkable. Le Doulos is confusing in a lot of ways. David Thomson usefully compared it to The Big Sleep, saying that movie showed that oftentimes, explanations are tedious. Jean-Paul Belmondo, who plays a thief and perhaps an informer (the title makes reference to the stool pigeon's role), is given a scene near the end in which he "explains" everything we've seen, but who can trust him? Best to greet that speech with a shrug that says, I don't care, I was enjoying myself.

The plot concerns stolen jewels and shaky friendships and betrayals and codes of honor, and we're confused enough that while specific actions are fairly clear, motivations seem variable. Just when you think one character is "good" or "bad", they do something that changes your mind. Yet Melville manages to make things flow, the performers are either good, perfectly cast, or both, and by the end of the film, you've been sucked into its world.

There aren't many women in that world, and Melville isn't impressed by them, anyway. (According to Roger Ebert, Melville claimed he "did not mistreat the women, his characters did." OK, but as he says, they are his characters.) Melville's best films have an intense focus that wouldn't fit here, and that's one reason I don't think Le Doulos is one of his best. But most film makers would kill for a Le Doulos on their resume.

life is beautiful (roberto benigni, 1997)

Life Is Beautiful won 3 Oscars: Best Actor (Roberto Benigni over Tom Hanks, Ian McKellen, Nick Nolte, and Edward Norton), Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Original Dramatic Score. Its popularity among audiences and the breadth of Benigni's ambitions is reflected in the number of IMDB Best Of lists it appears on: Top 50 in Romance, Comedy, War, 1990s, and Drama, and #26 on the IMDB All-Time Best Of list. As you can see, I had a lot of blind spots in my moviegoing that were filled when I finally saw Life Is Beautiful.

How do we pick a movie to watch? Far as I can tell, this question arises frequently in the streaming era ... you have a choice from thousands of movies, which one will you pick? Some might see how popular Life Is Beautiful is and decide to watch it. Some of us look more to critical acclaim than popularity, and here, Life Is Beautiful isn't quite as highly ranked. It's Metascore is only 58 ("Mixed or Average"), and while there are three 100/100 ratings, the bottom of the list is dismal: "borders on the nauseating" (Jonathan Rosenbaum), "abhorrent" (Richard Schickel), "Benigni's movie made me want to throw up." (David Edelstein). David Thomson lays it out:

I despise Life Is Beautiful, especially its warmth, sincerity, and feeling, all of which I believe grow out of stupidity. Few events so surely signaled the decline of the motion picture as the glory piled on that odious and misguided fable.

Kinda makes you want to see it, just to figure out what kind of movie could get such disparate reactions.

It probably comes as no surprise that I am closer to Thomson than I am to the IMDB votes on this one. I wouldn't go nearly as far as Thomson does, but I understand where he is coming from. For me, a central problem with the film, which is comic actor Benigni's take on Nazi concentration camps, is that it isn't in bad taste. I mean, some find any hint of comedy in a film about a camp to be in bad taste, but Benigni steamrollers over that. His character, Guido, is placed in a camp with his uncle, wife, and son, and to make his son feel better, Guido convinces him that everything that occurs in the camp is part of an elaborate game with a big prize for the winner (a tank). This isn't "Springtime for Hitler" funny, it's far more subtle, which is to say, it's not funny at all, and if it's not funny, all we're left with is a movie about Nazi camps where the main character hides the ugliness to make his son feel better.

Still, taste preferences always get in the way. Most of the first half of the film is straight comedy, and I rarely laughed. That is on me ... I often miss the joke in modern comedies. By the time we got to the camp, I was already feeling hostile.

la piscine (jacques deray, 1969)

Seemed like I should watch an Alain Delon movie as a tribute to the actor, who died yesterday. During my extended stay in the bedroom, recovering from my broken ankle, I watched a lot of movies I'd seen before, and I wanted to avoid that as I moved upstairs to watch the big screen TV for the first time in months. I've seen some of his films ... loved The Leopard, Le Samourai is also excellent, not to mention Purple Noon and Le Cercle Rouge. I decided on La Piscine (in English, The Swimming Pool).

Besides his other qualities, Alain Delon brings eye candy to the screen. And he is joined by some pretty sweet co-stars: Romy Schneider had been partners with Delon for several years, although they had separated, Maurice Ronet wasn't exactly shabby, and there was Jane Birkin to round things out. La Piscine is smoldering from the start ... Delon and Schneider still had great screen chemistry. The appearance of the other two stars setup a steamy who-will-and-with-whom plot. Jacques Deray, though, lets the chemistry of his actors do all the heavy lifting, so the film is actually a bit boring as it meanders its way to a thriller ending.

Ultimately, I don't think La Piscine makes any large statements ... not sure that was intended, to be honest. None of the characters is particularly likable or the opposite, they are just well-off and better-looking people than the rest of us.

for a few dollars more (sergio leone, 1965)

The middle film in Sergio Leone's trilogy is a bit of an improvement over A Fistful of Dollars, but I wouldn't overstate the difference. Lee Van Cleef is good as Clint Eastwood's co-star, and Gian Maria Volonté once again adds a villainous touch. For a Few Dollars More is too long, although The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is longer than all of them and is still the best of the three by quite a margin. All three are of the style-over-substance school, but that style is still impressive after all these years.

 

the conformist (bernardo bertolucci, 1970)

I re-watched The Conformist for the first time in 50 or so years. I've often listed it as my favorite Bertolucci film (and I like a lot of them), even though my memories of it were pretty vague compared to others I'd seen over the years (I have a special fondness for The Dreamers, even though I've never thought of it as his best). There are subtleties in the film that perhaps contributed to the vagueness of my memories ... I never forgot how much I liked it, but never could pinpoint exactly why.

This is an interesting time to be watching The Conformist, which draws a picture of fascism (or, perhaps better, a run-of-the-mill fascist) that resonates in 2024. Jean-Louis Trintignant's Marcello wants to be a fascist because he wants to go unnoticed, to be "normal". The subtextual connection between fascism and sexual "deviance" is as silly now as it was in 1970, but in Marcello's case, it's not clear that sex interests him. The most sexually charged scene comes when Stefania Sandrelli and Dominique Sanda dance together ... it's a scene you remember 50 years later.

I don't know where I got this idea, but I always thought the actor who played Fanucci in The Godfather: Part II was a non-actor cast because he looked the part. So imagine my surprise when Gastone Moschin turned up in a key role in The Conformist. (He's very good, too.) The Conformist looks gorgeous, as most Bertolucci films do. Shoutouts to cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and art directors Ferdinando Scarfiotti and Nedo Azzini. After all these years, I may still believe that this is Bertolucci's best film. #83 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of all time.

unbridled (jota linares, 2018)

An experiment. I have a list of films made in Spain ... more specifically, Andalusia, more specifically still, in Andalusian Spanish. Which I continue to work on ... as I've noted in the past, the half of me that is Spanish is (more specifically) Andalusian, and when we go to Spain, we go to Andalusia, and they have a distinct way of speaking the language, and I apparently picked up the accent if nothing else when I was growing up. So, Animales Sin Collar, or Unbridled, which takes place in and around Sevilla, and which features people speaking Andalusian. The idea is that I would watch it with subtitles, but the subtitles would be in Spanish, so I'd have to work to get what was happening.

It was admittedly tough going, and soon I decided on a different approach. The film takes place over four days, each marked with a title, so after Jueves, I paused and rewatched with English subtitles on. Then I watched Viernes with Spanish subtitles, and rewatched with English subtitles. I did this for all four segments.

It's an odd way to watch a movie, and I'm not sure I can properly evaluate it as a movie. It's a political thriller that takes its time disclosing what is the big secret everyone is worried about, so it's a little frustrating ... we're asked to care about people before we really know who they are. Jota Linares, in his feature debut, keeps things as clear as possible considering obfuscation is part of the narrative, and there is good acting across the board from people I didn't know before hand. Female lead Natalia de Molina and the primary antagonist, Ignatio Mateos, are Andalusian, so their accents are on target, which makes them perfect for my "experiment".

challengers (luca guadagnino, 2024)

Likability is a funny thing when it comes to characters in movies. There are actors so likable that it's hard to cast them as villains, and there are actors who often play villains but are likable enough that we enjoy seeing them on the dark side. Zendaya is a gorgeous screen presence, but she has shown in her two-time Emmy-winning role in Euphoria that she can play ugly with the best of them. Still, I found myself glad that in Challengers, as a former college tennis star turned tennis coach, Zendaya wasn't afraid to be unlikable. It's the kind of role where an actor can coast on their likability, but that's not Zendaya's game.

I mention all of this because there are other characters in Challengers that aren't overly likable ... part of the theme of the film is that it takes a certain kind of obsession to be great at something. I've liked Josh O'Connor when I've seen him in other movies like Mothering Sunday. And I'm pretty sure he is playing one of the tennis-playing characters in Challengers as everyone intended, as a person whose likability is reduced by his desire to be the best at his sport. Yet there was something about O'Connor in this movie that really set me off. I couldn't stand his character ... of the three people in this Jules and Jim Play Tennis story, I think there is supposed to be a balance in the characters, yet I found O'Connor to be so off-putting I rooted against him pretty much the entire movie.

Because of this, I don't know that I can fairly evaluate Challengers. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, and plenty to like. But looking back, I suspect my memory will be how much I didn't like Josh O'Connor.

Bonus clip:

a fistful of dollars (sergio leone, 1964)

The first of the so-called Dollars Trilogy ... Sergio Leone didn't intend them to be a trilogy, and perhaps nowadays we'd call it a franchise, with Leone directing Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name. Many of the trademarks of Leone's style are here ... it's hard to miss the close-ups. It's easily the shortest ... the films got progressively longer, and A Fistful of Dollars is more than half-an-hour shorter than the next in the series, For a Few Dollars More. It's a decent movie, if not up to the standards of the real classic of the three, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

The plot of A Fistful of Dollars is reminiscent of that for Kurosawa's Yojimbo, and Kurosawa successfully sued Leone's company. (The irony is that Yojimbo's plot is very similar to Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest.) A settlement was eventually achieved, but the release of A Fistful of Dollars in the United States was delayed for three years. Perhaps this is one reason a trilogy is assumed, for by the time the dust cleared in the lawsuit, Leone had finished the other two films, which were all released in the States in the same year (1967).

While Leone had an interesting career, more than anything, this film began the establishment of Clint Eastwood as an iconic actor in film history. Of course, he later became an Oscar-winning director, using much the same style of directing that he did in his acting: minimalist.

geezer cinema: the train (john frankenheimer, 1964)

John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, but also The Island of Dr. Moreau) had a long and varied career, with a few real highlights. The Train, like Seven Days in May, is very entertaining, with enough subtext to add depth without distracting too much from the basic intention to offer an intelligent action picture. I looked forward to seeing this movie, which seemed to have a decent reputation but which isn't talked about as much as Seven Days in May (much less Manchurian Candidate). And that reputation is deserved .... The Train isn't special, yet that gives it a retrograde enjoyment, as in the cliche of "they don't make them like that any more". Of course, they do still make big action movies, but in line with the retrograde feel, The Train is in black-and-white (reputedly the last big B&W movie), and Burt Lancaster is always good for the nostalgic angle.

Frankenheimer makes excellent use of Lancaster, who does all of his own stunts (on an off-day, Lancaster injured a leg playing golf, so Frankenheimer wrote a scene where Burt's character gets shot in the leg to explain his limp). They also used real trains throughout, no models ... when you see big trains crashing, often into each other, it's the real thing. It's perhaps especially impressive in the CGI era, when such extravagances are unnecessary.

The plot, based on a true story, is about French art treasures the Nazis have stolen. They are trying to get the masterpieces to Germany. Lancaster is a French railway inspector and Resistance fighter (as evidence of his star status, Lancaster does not use a French accent ... he's pretty much the only person in the movie who sounds like an American). The film is a combination of clever manipulations by the French to forestall the transfer of the art works and occasional action set pieces that usually involve one or more trains blowing up. The entire film is a bit long, but it holds its entertainment value throughout. The brutality of the Nazis is there but as a supplement, not the core of the film, and the general question of whether art matters more than the lives of humans is at least deep enough to make The Train a bit better than the standard war picture. Lancaster is at his action best, Paul Scofield as the main Nazi antagonist has a German accent, and Jeanne Moreau is wasted (her part is apparently Woman with a Few Scenes So We Can Say There's a Woman in the Film). #9 on my Letterboxd list of the best movies of 1964.