Spring 2015 #13: Intolerance (1916) - D.W. Griffith

Do not attempt this movie without proper mental preparation!

Just so you know ahead of time, this shot exists in the film.

Okay. Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages is a silent film epic by famous motion picture director D.W. Griffith. The film comes just one year after his divisive Birth of a Nation, which grossed $48 million, or $678 million in 2015. That film, which revolutionized motion picture storytelling as a true art form, turns 100 this year.

This is his flop of a follow-up. The film cost $2.5 million ($47 million today), used 3,000 extras, and bankrupted the studio, Triangle Film Corporation.

Intolerance seams together four epic stories of… intolerance. There’s a modern (1916) story of a mill workers’ strike, the French story of the events that led up to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572, the Biblical story of the events leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and the Babylonian story of the war between Prince Belshazzar of Babylon and Cyrus the Great of Persia in 539 BC.

Did I mention the movie is 3 hours and 17 minutes? That’s actually tied with Schindler’s List for the fourth longest film I’ve reviewed so far, after Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, and The Godfather Part 2. 

Oh right. So the production value of this is literally unbelievable for its time period. The Babylon scenes are massive in scale, as well as the final massacre scene in the French story.

And while the film is boring as hell for a majority of the time, it did manage to have four separate storylines with simultaneous climaxes for the last thirty minutes or so, which is fun. Between an ancient war, a crucifixion, a massacre of French Protestants, and a high speed train chase, you really can’t be all that disappointed for sitting through the film that’s three minutes longer than Titanic but without a single line of dialogue.

The film transitions between its stories with this shot of “The Eternal Mother” rocking a cradle. It supposedly symbolizes the timelessness of human nature, mothers raising babies.

But the intolerance theme feels forced sometimes. I didn’t know what was intolerant about the Babylonian plotline. In fact, it seemed like Griffith was more making this film as a response to the backlash he received for Birth of a Nation, which was criticized for glorifying the Ku Klux Klan. This is like a “Hey, being hateful is bad, look at what it’s done over the past 2,500 years.” And although I haven’t seen Birth of a Nation, I have a feeling this one is much less problematic.

But Intolerance, despite being a flop financially, has powerful and bizarre cultural influence. For starters, the giant elephant statues at the Hollywood and Highland shopping center in Los Angeles are models of the ones used in the Babylon scenes.

EVEN BETTER, the film INVENTED eyelash extensions. That’s right. D.W. Griffith wanted Seena Owen, who played the Princess of Babylon, to have eyelashes “that brushed her cheeks, to make her eyes shine larger than life.” They wove human hair into gauze and attached it to her eyelids. Crazy right?

Anyway the film is #49 on the AFI 100 Films list, and is impressive despite being released 99 years ago.

Spring 2015 #11: Dirty Dancing (1987) - Emile Ardolino

So this movie ended up on my Moviecation list not because it’s on the IMDb Top 250 (it’s not), or because it’s on the AFI Top 100 (it’s not), or because it’s a Best Picture Winner (it’s not). Dirty Dancing is just kind of one of those movies you need to see for general pop culture purposes, and I got tired of seeing it on Netflix or having it come up in conversation and having to say I hadn’t seen it.

I mean what the HELL does this mean? I’m not kidding, my actual interpretation of this line was that some snooty teenage girl at a school dance got shut down by the protagonist, and left in a corner to sulk. She then crossed her arms, pouted her lips, and whined, “Nobody puts baby in a corner!” as she perpetuated the infantilization of teenage girls. 

Turns out, Baby Houseman is our protagonist, and a badass one at that, played by Jennifer Grey (of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off fame). She is vacationing with her parents and older sister at a resort in the Catskill Mountains in the summer of 1963.

Where she meets our love interest, Johnny Castle, played by the incomparable Patrick Swayze. Johnny is the rough and tough man from the streets who luckily found a job working as a dance instructor at the resort. The weird combination of raw sexual energy and hardened-exterior make him a problematic fave in the first half of the film, when he cares for his dance partner who is dealing with personal crisis.

These are Baby’s first words to Johnny.

Baby sees the trouble Johnny’s partner is in, and offers to replace her in an upcoming dance performance at a nearby resort. Johnny dislikes the idea at first, but I think you can imagine what happens.

Not to mention we get a training montage!

Thank you Kenny Ortega! Speaking of Kenny, the movie actually does have a weird High School Musical 2 vibe to it, but I guess a lot of movies involve a group of musically talented teenagers enjoyed their summer working for the fabulously wealthy? Although in this case Baby would be the Sharpay because she is a guest.

This was my favorite scene for some reason, when Baby and Johnny lip-sync and dance to “Love Is Strange.” A LOT of the songs prominently feature the word “Baby” in them, which I kind of loved. Anyway this scene felt so natural and fun, and Ardolino definitely encouraged improvisation between the two leads and often left the cameras rolling when they were interacting.

But look how emotionally deep the film also is! Baby’s relationship with Johnny is complex because she’s rich and her dad forbids her from seeing him. There’s a lot of “I love you but I come from a world where I’m supposed to look down on you” kind of stuff and it’s interesting and engaging and heartbreaking. Imagine Titanic but with High School Musical 2′s plot.

Oh right so here’s the totally-famous lift from the final scene, aka the performance to the Oscar winning song “I’ve Had the Time of My Life.” So amazing, so classic.

I do want to get into a little analysis I’ve been working up now that I’m out of gifs, and it has to do with the infantilization stuff. In Baby’s opening monologue, she explains how the man she loved most in the world was her dad. Throughout the course of the movie, Baby lies, betrays, and disobeys her dad for probably the first time in her life. But she does it all as a means to get closer to this other man, a man who can’t guarantee her financial stability but can promise her a life of excitement and… dirty dancing. 

And I’m kind of left wondering, how am I supposed to feel about this girl who basically runs and jumps from the protection of one patriarchal figure to another? It reminded me of The Little Mermaid a lot, in that maybe the protagonist navigates these complicated patriarchal systems under the guise of a longing for independence? Her name is BABY for Pete’s sake! And Johnny definitely symbolizes a kind of sexual freedom that is kept from her under her father. Anyway the screenplay is actually semi-autobiographical for the writer, Eleanor Bergstein, who did vacation in the Catskills, perform in dirty dancing competitions, and go by the name Baby. So is this all speculation?

Not to mention this is Emile Ardolino’s first time directing a feature film, but he did win Best Documentary in 1983 for He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin’, which I think explains a lot of the style of the film.

Spring 2015 #7: Gladiator (2000) - Ridley Scott

A $100 million Roman epic that is also a Best Picture winner? Hard to believe in this century, with the past decade being dominated by low-budget indies such as Slumdog Millionare in 2009, The Hurt Locker in 2010, and The Artist in 2012. But it wasn’t so long ago that massive blockbusters like Titanic, Lord of the Rings, and Braveheart were taking home the golden statue.

I think the digital age can be thanked for the improved quality of small independent films, since passion projects like Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) can be made for as little as $1.8 million, or Whiplash (2014) for $3.3 million, and then can be successful enough to get the Academy’s attention.

But anyway, since I have 100 more gifs of this film, I might as well talk about it. Gladiator tells the almost true story of the Roman Emperor Commodus, who became the sole emperor of Rome at the age of 19 when his father, Marcus Aurelius, died in 180 AD.

Here we have a young Joaquin Phoenix, as Commodus, pouring his heart out to his father, after being told that the general Maximus (Russell Crowe) will succeed his father instead of him.

Poor Joaquin. All he wanted was for his father to love him! Well Commodus takes the throne by his own doing, forces Maximus to be executed, and then ascends to the throne in a wonderful celebration of 150 days of Colosseum games.

But you can’t kill Maximus! He escapes, then gets captured as a slave and sold into the games as a gladiator. Okay so maybe the film is about Maximus and not Commodus, but I’m here for the brother from Signs and not Javert from Les Misérables. 

And I know Commodus is a corrupt leader and probably sexually attracted to his sister, Lucilla… but I think Joaquin is beautiful and I can’t stay mad at him.

I call it the Jamie Lannister effect.

Anyway the script went through a million rewrites, which I think can be chalked up to arguments between the historians hired to work on the film and the studio people who were worried about narrative. Apparently, after several drafts, Russell Crowe said to one of the writers, “Your lines are garbage but I’m the greatest actor in the world, and I can make even garbage sound good.” I would like to see the movie fail after a declaration like that, but Russell Crowe did win an Oscar for this… so I don’t know.

But he’s right, so many of the lines are garbage. It’s like they focused on the massive sets and costumes (over 27,500 pieces of armor were made for the film), that they didn’t care what anyone was actually saying, as long as it looked awesome.

And it does look awesome. The first scene is a battle between the Roman army and the Germanic tribe in the last holdout against the Roman Empire’s expansion. Beyond that, the Gladiator scenes themselves are cool as hell.

Oops wrong gladiators. Despite the insane effects, including CGI shots of the entirety of Rome and a packed Colosseum, the film is lacking in character stuff. Apparently, Maximus himself wasn’t even a likable protagonist until they added all of this weird stuff about the afterlife.

So the film added a ton of random dream sequences where Maximus ponders his life after death, wondering about the meaning of it all. He was just an innocent farmer who became a general who became a slave who became a gladiator!

You do you Commodus. Anyway the film went on to gross $457 million, it won five Oscars including Best Picture, and it is #46 on the IMDb Top 250. The first Best Picture winner of the 21st century!

Fall 2014 #16: All About Eve (1950) - Joseph L. Mankiewicz

I did it!! Oh god it feels good to finish a film bucketlist, because it means I get to make a new one!

The last film on my list is Best Picture Winner All About Eve. The story was originally a true anecdote told by actress Elisabeth Bergner, then written as a short story by Mary Orr, and finally written for the screen and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. It tells the story of Eve Harrington, a renowned Broadway actress winning a fictitious theatre award, and how she climbed the social ladder to achieve her dream of fame and fortune.

After seeing Eve receiving her award, the story flashes back to the day the main characters meet Eve Harrington. She has spent weeks seeing every performance of the famous Broadway actress Margo Channing, and now the writer’s wife, Karen Richards, wants to introduce Eve to her idol.

The incomparable Bette Davis plays the egomaniac diva, Margo Channing. An aging Broadway actress, Margo is constantly obsessing over how others perceive her and how she’s going to remain in the spotlight. To her, Eve is an innocent little nobody who is in for a rude awakening in the theatre world she so desires to be a part of. So Margo takes Eve under her wing, making her her assistant, agent, secretary, and friend.

But things take a turn! I don’t want to give away too much, but the film is an entertaining look at the relationships between women in the workforce, how building one up means tearing another down, and how theatre is especially designed for this ruthless competition.

Margo’s obsession with age is constant, as she eventually reveals herself to have recently turned forty, while her boyfriend (who is also her director) is only 32. Her bombastic attitude and abrasive reaction to everything relating to her persona is at its peak when Eve starts to encroach on both her professional and personal lives.

Also every scene where Margo is drinking is amazing. But the film is also a lot deeper than its story about theatre prima donnas and the malevolent critics who make or break them. Its release less than a decade after World War II has created for some incredibly interesting interpretations on what it means to be a woman in America.

Many have argued that Eve’s invasion of everything Margo holds dear is a metaphor for the attack on traditional American values: women trying to assume agency in a patriarchal society, homosexuality encroaching on traditional heteronormative values, COMMUNISM! It’s all hinted at with the audience being left to decide which side they support. 

I don’t know what to make of the LGBT reading of the film, since in 1950 any vaguely homosexual character is innately the antagonistic force in the story, while Eve to me is more of the generic woman trying to conquer an extremely unwelcoming and sexist industry.

Speaking of female empowerment! Marilyn Monroe appears about halfway into the film for no reason.

I’m going to be completely honest and say that I have never once seen a film with Marilyn Monroe in it… which is saying something since I’ve seen every episode of Smash!

But I was actually shocked at how much Marilyn shines on camera. Like it’s unthinkable that someone could steal a scene from Bette Davis, but I literally couldn’t take my eyes off her when she was on screen.

Iconic. Anyway the film is an impressive study on the power of theatre and performance in our lives, and how becoming the person we dream of being can mean sacrificing everything others believe about us. It almost reminded me of Birdman, the way it intertwined film and theatre and the way different walks of life view different types of artistic creation.

The film was nominated for a record fourteen Oscars (a feat not accomplished again until Titanic 47 years later. It won Best Picture, and is still the only film ever to have four actresses nominated. It currently is #98 on the IMDb Top 250 and #28 on the AFI 100 Films list. And that’s all folks! Stay tuned for my Summer 2015 Moviecation List!

Aliens (1986) - James Cameron

I saw Alien for my film class just a few months ago, and when I noticed that Aliens was on my bucket list, I realized that it couldn’t be more fitting for my first film of the year. So I dug through my parents’ movies and whipped out the… yes… VHS of Aliens. And as I plugged the VCR player into my projector and began the rewinding process, I started some preliminary research.

The 1986 remake of the famous Ridley Scott film, Alien, came a whopping seven years after its predecessor. 20^th Century Fox felt the film hadn’t been enough of a commercial success for a sequel, even though our now famous Avatar and Titanic director James Cameron had come to them with an interest in spearheading a sequel as early as 1983. The studio basically told him that he could only make it if his current project, The Terminator, was a success.

About 78 million dollars later, Cameron was given the green light. After a few disputes between Cameron, Fox, and the actress playing the first film’s heroine and only survivor, Sigourney Weaver, it was decided that the film would follow a similar formula to the critically successful and Oscar winning (well… Best Visual Effects) Alien. 

Because of the familiar background and characters that the second film begins with, I feel compelled to immediately compare the two. The idea of “Ridley Scott vs. James Cameron” stuck with me the entire time I watched it, and that perspective actually helped me see some interesting distinctions in not only storytelling but also in directing style. The second film kept the same basic “anti-establishment” theme as the first one, but took it in its own direction that is not only imaginative, but also satisfying as a fan of the first one. The big business of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation is immediately cast as the corrupt and greedy force of the film, a similar thread to the first film that famously declared its employees “expendable” in comparison to the specimen they wanted from the alien planet. While Ripley, Sigourney’s character, seems to be the only level-headed person left in the world she now inhabits, she is labeled as mentally unstable about five minutes into the film. While post-traumatic stress disorder certainly fits due to her frequent nightmares about an alien clawing out of her stomach, pathological lying is not in her arsenal.

What really separates this film from the second one is that it dives right into the action. Ridley Scott takes painstaking time to set up the mass mayhem that takes place aboard the spaceship Nostromo, which is the kind of psychological horror film that I enjoy. This time around, Cameron is entirely aware that the audience has already seen the creature and expects to pick up basically where the last film left off in our understanding of the planet.

Another thing I picked up on was an uncanny similarity to Avatar, which kind of made me feel like Cameron had been stringing us along for decades (well, not me in particular) until the release of his biggest work to date. There are robots that humans control (those big Transformer-looking things used to lift materials or fight blue aliens), a manipulative and greedy corporation that plans to stop at nothing to get what it wants, and Sigourney Weaver fighting for the good guys.

iThe premise of the film is unique in the way a sequel should be, but also close enough to the original to keep our interest. When Ripley put herself to sleep at the end of the first film, she expected to awake a short while later on earth. Instead, fifty-seven years later, Ripley is found with her ship drifting through space aimlessly. She is deemed insane for her stories about the alien, and soon finds out that several dozen humans now populate the planet where her entire crew was killed. But shortly after, earth loses contact with the planet and the corporation realizes that Ripley might have been right. They send her to the planet with a ragtag team of marines in hopes of finding any survivors. They find a small girl living in the garbage shoot, whose name is Newt but reminds me too much of Cosette to call her anything else. The marines then find out that the tracking devices on the humans all point to one room, and when they get there it turns out to be the hive of the aliens.

As soon as the action really got started, and the aliens killed all of the characters whose names I hadn’t yet bothered to learn, the deeper plots really got rolling. The group is trapped in one corner of the planet’s colony, with walls of automatic weapons set to destroy any oncoming aliens. The character of Burke, who is the embodiment of the corporation, shows his true colors when he locks Ripley and Newt in a room with two of the “impregnating” aliens that lay the eggs in a host’s stomach. Burke thought he could sneak the aliens back to earth in Ripley and Newt’s stomachs, but he dies minutes later when the surviving marines’ barricade is invaded.

I don’t want to mention any spoilers, but basically the movie has a fantastic ending that stays true to the first film but also adds the interesting twist that Ripley isn’t the only one to survive! Aliens ranks at #58 on the IMDB Top 250, as compared to #40 for Alien, although the sequel has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes while the first has 97%. Overall, I definitely plan on seeing the next two in the franchise, and couldn’t recommend them more highly to anyone who is interested in seeing a classic science fiction thriller directed by the man who brought you Titanic.