Iro's One Movie a Day Thread

#271 - The Petrified Forest
Archie Mayo, 1936



A drifter and a waitress fall for each other at the same time that a notorious bank robber decides to hole up in the diner where the waitress works.

The Petrified Forest is a pretty lean little film that starts off with a romance unfolding between a hobo (Leslie Howard) and a waitress (Bette Davis) as he drifts into the town where the diner she works at is located. She wants to see the world, he's seen it and is still looking for something. Of course, when he tries to leave town halfway through, he is thwarted by the sudden arrival of a gang of bank robbers (led by Humphrey Bogart), who then turn the film into a siege as the robbers take up residence inside the diner with a handful of hostages, Howard and Davis among them.

Unfortunately for The Petrified Forest, it doesn't really manage to rise above its B-movie trappings. Howard and Davis make for good leads and Bogart makes for a good antagonist, but they don't have the most compelling material to work with. The first half of the movie is build-up that's not altogether interesting, mainly highlighting the differences between the two leads and introducing the other characters in town for the sake of the film's extremely compressed second half where the established tensions reach their boiling point. It's not terrible by any means, but it doesn't make for especially good viewing even with its incredibly short running time.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

#272 - Moonstruck
Norman Jewison, 1987



A widow accepts a marriage proposal from a friend of her late husband, but things are complicated when she meets her fiancé's brother.

In my reviews, I've been pretty unkind to a lot of different romantic comedies, especially those from the 1980s, but I think Moonstruck has just enough quality to make it rise above a few of the others I've reviewed. Being rooted in a seemingly stereotypical Italian-American New York setting, it follows a widow (Cher) as she is proposed to by a rather awkward acquaintance (Danny Aiello). She reluctantly accepts, but when he goes back to Sicily in order to visit his dying mother, she is left behind in order to patch things up with his brother (Nicolas Cage). Of course, things get out of hand when Cher ends up in a romantic affair with Cage and frantically tries to break things off before Aiello returns. Also thrown into the mix are a couple of subplots involving Cher's parents (Vincent Gardenia and Olympia Dukakis).

The performances on offer are solid enough - Cher and Dukakis may have both won Oscars, but it's probably not a good thing that the one I mainly remember is Cage indulging his usual tendency to ham things up even in this relatively early role of his. Performancs are generally alright but not spectacular, while most of them (Cage excepted) don't generate all that much in the way of genuine comedy. It's decently scripted, though the fact that there is a sequence involving a night at the opera only served to remind me that this whole thing played out like an especially farcical opera without the singing (especially the conclusion). The goofiness of the film's attempts to capture an Italian-American microcosm do work against it somewhat, but there are decent moments scattered here and there. Moonstruck ultimately proves to be extremely average but not exactly awful. It hasn't aged particularly well, but it's still sort of worth watching. Just don't go in expecting a true classic.

#273 - Winter Light
Ingmar Bergman, 1963



The pastor in a small village must confront his own crisis of faith.

I'm not really up on my Bergman - prior to watching this, I had only seen The Seventh Seal and Persona, both of which are good but can ultimately be considering entry-level if such a thing were possible with a filmmaker like Bergman. Winter Light is supposedly the second instalment in his thematic trilogy about the silence of God (along with Through a Glass Darkly and The Silence, both of which I'll get to soon enough) - seems a bit odd to start with, but it's still a perfectly solid film in its own right. Taking place over the course of a few hours, it follows the pastor of a small Swedish town who is already undergoing of a crisis of faith. This is compounded by two factors - one being a parishioner and family man whose paranoia over the possibility of nuclear conflict is giving him an existential crisis, the other being the pastor's atheistic ex-girlfriend causing him even more trouble.

Though this film is only about eighty minutes long, it's still a potent yet painful watch that does draw things out uncomfortably in both the good and bad sense of the word. Being a Bergman film, it's full of stark monochrome cinematography and an almost-complete absence of music - what better way to reflect the silence of God, after all? - and also a small cast of character that keeps thing nice and concentrated. Of course, the fairly down-to-earth nature of the story does mean it gets a little hard to stay invested at times, even though the film does have plenty of well-executed sequences (such as the narration of a letter that ultimately involves the writer delivering a lengthy and uninterrupted monologue straight into the camera) and makes some interesting points about the relevance of God and spirituality in general. It's not about to become my favourite Bergman in a hurry, but it's still a very solid piece of filmmaking.

#274 - Natural Born Killers
Oliver Stone, 1994



A pair of married mass murderers kill their way across America, capturing the world's attention in the process.

I saw Natural Born Killers over a decade ago and disliked it so much that it went onto my Worst 100 because not only was it a mess, but it wasn't even an enjoyable mess. Even so, when I saw it pop up on Netflix recently I decided that it might as well be worth a second chance. Unfortunately, ten years on and after having watched a bunch of Stone's other movies (to me, this film feels like it mixes the best aspects of JFK with the worst aspects of The Doors) hasn't done enough to further endear me to this film.

Natural Born Killers is supposed to be a satire of how the media sensationalises violence for the sake of ratings and profits without caring about the greater social damage it's doing as a result. The film seems to be a bit too complicit in all this as it spends its first half setting up its two leads, Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) as they meet up, kill her abusive parents, then hit the road, get married with a blood pact and proceed to go on a cross-country killing spree. Their incredibly screwed-up backgrounds and the fact that they are so hopelessly head-over-heels in love with each other are supposed to endear us to their situation and make them somewhat sympathetic, but it doesn't work because they still come across as gormless fools whose actions are (perhaps deliberately) given the flimsiest of justifications. Their killings draw the attention of the mass media and the world in general, thanks in no small part to the host (Robert Downey Jr.) of a true-crime television series. As a result, the first half of the film plays out like a somewhat typical American road movie, which is of course so fundamentally boring that the film changes things up halfway through by having Mickey and Mallory finally getting caught and imprisoned. As such, the second half of the film ends up being considerably superior, though not enough to sufficiently save the film.

I know this film has a reputation for being a love-or-hate kind of deal, but I honestly struggle to see how anyone could seriously love this film. I'll admit there are things about this film that I grudgingly like. It seems funny that Stone's JFK won Oscars for its cinematography and editing, both of which are shot to hell in this film as it throws every possible stock and technique into the mix. The cinematography is actually good for the most part, though one could question how necessary a lot of the frenzied editing choices were (such as the frequent flicking back and forth between black-and-white and colour, or violent animated fragments). The soundtrack also has its fair share of good tunes thanks to being curated by Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor, though some of them are ridiculously on-the-nose (the prime example being Jane's Addiction's "Ted, Just Admit It...", a song that condemns the media's attitude towards violent murderers and takes about seven minutes to make the same point that Stone does in two hours) or ludicrously aggressive (Rage Against the Machine, L7, etc.) Such musical choices are pretty indicative of just how blatant and ineffective the film's attempts at satire are. This much extends to the supporting cast of "good" characters, whose depth basically amounts to them being - shock horror! - even worse than the vacuous, murderous protagonists. Aside from Downey Jr. as the amoral TV host who seeks to profit off the duo's deeds, there's also Tom Sizemore as a heroic detective who harbours his own perverted ultra-violent tendencies and Tommy Lee Jones as a prison warden who would rather see his most notorious charges dead than alive.

It's a shame, then, that Natural Born Killers absolutely fails to stick to its point. There are some good qualities - the cinematography is good when it's not being cut to ribbons for no apparent reason (though Stone supposedly knows what's he doing with the film's disjointed aesthetic) and, though most of the performances actually tend to be irritating, I have to give credit to Jones' hamminess and Rodney Dangerfield's brief against-type turn as Mallory's extremely reprehensible father (who almost makes the flashback's 1950s-style sitcom veneer work). Ultimately, though, this film is still an overly long and painful-to-watch mess that isn't nearly as clever as it thinks it is and has its occasional intriguing aspects buried by the generally poor quality of the rest of the film. Given the extremely shallow mindset behind the film and its message, I guess it's no surprise that I still find it as intolerable as I did when I was 14 - if you wouldn't like this even a little as a teenager then it's hard to imagine you liking it at any other age.

I'm with you on Natural Born Killers-probably the most disappointing movie I've ever seen. It would seem to suit my taste so well and I love the cast, but what a mess it turned into for me.

All reasonable and well-written criticisms Iro, I admit you did a great job of trying to show that Natural Born Killers is crap, but it ain't working for me. I found the extreme satire and ruthless violence work out very well with me, it's an easy all-time favorite for me. Sorry, it is possible for someone to love this film, so stop struggling.

Why?

I love it as you know. I even have it on my 100. It's everything you say it is there, although the hypocrisy of the American happy family/50's sitcom section is my least favourite part of the whole film. I love RDJ's repulsive, slimy tv journalist (and whatever accent that's supposed to be) and TLJ's warden. The message is delivered with an atom bomb such is its blatant force and it never lets up. Despite all this, though, I do really love it and I love how it looks. Maybe it's the Oliver Stone version of Mann's Heat for me?

The only thing I've ever had to say against the film is that I don't actually think it's violent enough. If you're going to be that OTT and obvious, then really go at it. Of course, I might not love it if it were, so I'm probably better off with it not being.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Satire is obviously subjective, so it's just that I though it did a brilliant job of making fun of the media, and you though the opposite.

I'm against the need for more gore- the film's purpose is not to create a mindless, bloody mess. It would've ruined the whole effect.

It's supposed to be an Australian accent, and in my experience fake Australian accents are pretty dire. How he thought it was worth recycling for Tropic Thunder is beyond me. Jones is far and away the best performer in the film, of course. At least I don't find the film's extremely disjointed aesthetic all that annoying anymore.

Well, of course satire would be subjective considering its basis in humour, but I can at least explain why I personally don't think the satire works. Even Honeykid, who considers the film worthy of a place in his Top 100, doesn't even try to contest what I've written and basically says "I like it for all the reasons you dislike it".

#275 - Ghost
Jerry Zucker, 1990



When a man is shot and killed by a mugger, he becomes a ghost who must work to stop his girlfriend from being murdered.

For a work of fiction, becoming so iconic that your plot and best-known scenes become part of the cultural syntax is something of a double-edged sword as people who actually go in and watch the film won't exactly get a lot of surprises. Ghost is one such film - though its supernatural premise would suggest otherwise, it's still an extremely rote example of a romantic dramedy. How much of this opinion is due to the fact that I already knew virtually every single narrative beat ahead of watching it is virtually irrelevant - if the film was genuinely solid then it wouldn't really matter all that much if I knew what would happen, right?

Even trying to disregard the flaws in the film's paranormal world-building, there's still not much of note. Patrick Swayze doesn't exude much in the way of his usual charisma as the dead man walking while Demi Moore doesn't get much to do as his love interest. Whoopi Goldberg rightfully earns an Oscar for her role as a medium who is the only living person capable of acknowledging Swayze's posthumous existence - though her stubborn reluctance to help Swayze is often played for comic relief, she still has enough depth to make her a well-rounded character, which is more than can be said for the other characters in the film. The plot also feels rather contrived and overly long, while the effects work has definitely not aged well. In spite of all that, I don't hate it outright. It's just extremely bland and trite. Even now, it feels like I'm giving it a high rating - guess that can be credited to its relatively unusual premise and Goldberg's presence. Also, how is it that this got directed by one of the directors of Airplane!?

I would rep that, but Satan rightfully won an Oscar for her performance?!?!?!??! "Rightfully"?

*shrug* I didn't think it was especially unfounded. Would not have been averse to it going to Lorraine Bracco for Goodfellas, though.

I can see that and, as I said, I might not love it as I do had I done it. But it's so out there that it feels as if it's missing, to me. I think it'd work even better with the satire, as Mickey and Mallory would be even more extreme, more disgusting and yet still on the same level as the media which exploits them and revels in everything they do while condemning it and, by extension, us as a society.

I love Ghost.

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#276 - Rango
Gore Verbinski, 2011



A sheltered yet theatrical chameleon winds up lost in the middle of the desert and soon becomes the hero of a town in the middle of a drought.

It's sad how Rango is so clearly hamstrung by the whole Hero's Journey narrative that it almost off-sets the fun caused by the film's bizarre array of influences and references. Ostensibly a homage to Westerns (mainly those of the "spaghetti" variety, though some of the visuals would suggest an acid influence), the film follows a chameleon (Johnny Depp) who has spent his life alone in a glass case inventing characters and stories to stave off boredom. Things change when his case falls out the back of a station wagon on a desert highway and soon finds his way into a typical Western small town that's populated by a variety of animals. It turns out that the town is running out of water and the inhabitants soon turn to this fanciful out-of-towner (who makes up a heroic back-story for himself) for help.

What follows is a feature film worth of cartoon shenanigans that aren't altogether family friendly. There are some off-kilter lines of dialogue here and there plus a number of shout-outs that even threaten to spoil the film at times. Depp delivers an extremely over-the-top performance as the titular lizard who bluffs his way through all sorts of dangerous situations - though you may already be tired of Depp getting into all sorts of humourous escapades in other films, here he's actually rather decent (though it probably helps that he's a lizard this time). The supporting cast fill out the cast of stereotypes reasonably well. The various sequences featuring action and comedy are pretty par for the course as far as Western animated films go but are not bad by any means. Rango seems like it should have been the kind of modern animated film that I'd have loved outright with its clever use of parody and off-beat approach to its material, but it still just manages to be merely alright. Having moments of considerable creativity be undone a bit by a plot that's extremely predictable even by family film standards is quite a shame, but I still like it enough. Hopefully it'll grow on me, but that's probably unlikely. Still, consider it recommended anyway.

#277 - What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?
Robert Aldrich, 1962



Two sisters - one a former child star whose adult career never took off, the other a former actress whose career was cut short by an accident - live in a house together.

Man, talk about a film that gets under your skin. What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? starts off with an extended prologue introducing us to the Hudson sisters, Jane (Bette Davis) and Blanche (Joan Crawford). The former starts off as a precocious child star popular enough to sell dolls of her likeness while the latter waits in the shadows. Things change a couple of decades later as the former fails to become a successful actress while the latter begins a meteoric rise to success in pictures. Of course, after a car accident leaves Blanche paralysed, the sisters retreat into a small house and it is there that we find them living in a state of unhealthy co-dependence and isolation.

Davis and Crawford both put in some serious hard yards as the sisters, especially Davis as the film's protagonist and main source of conflict. Jane is a character that inspires some degree of sympathy due to her worsening mental health and refusal to accept her obscurity, but also considerable revulsion over how badly she treats Blanche. Crawford still has a fair bit to work with as the saner of the two who is still troubled by her clearly toxic relationship with Jane and struggles to reach out to others in order to try to get Jane the help she needs. As a result, the bulk of the film ends up being a chess game of sorts as the two try to accomplish their own goals, dragging innocent people into the mix (such as the unemployed keyboardist who Jane contracts to help her stage a comeback singing her trademark song from her child-star days). Though Davis is clearly in a position to upstage Crawford, Crawford more than holds her own.

The monochromatic film is frequently dark and cramped with most of its scenery happening inside the sisters' home with sporadic ventures outside to visit other characters. The background music is appropriately creepy, but it doesn't come close to topping Jane's trademark song, "I'm Sending A Letter To Daddy". Just listen to those lyrics. That song was already kind of unsettling when being performed by Jane as a child, but seeing a haggard-looking Davis trying to pull it off is an unforgettable image. What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? is a slow-burning and unsettling but ultimately saddening foray into psychological drama. Long-time rivals Davis and Crawford bring that tension to the screen and make their venomous interplay work wonders, being sure to draw out the suspense in virtually every scene either one of them is in.

Ghost is one of my favorite movies, and it's sad to see you gave it such a low rating.

Rango was okay, but I didn't love it. I may give it a re-watch someday because I think it might be better the second time around.

BTW, the picture for What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? isn't showing up.

#278 - Coraline
Henry Selick, 2009



A girl who's just moved to a new house with her distant parents discovers a portal to a world that's a funhouse mirror of the real world.

I do have to wonder if I'm perhaps being a bit too harsh on a lot of the family-oriented animated films I've watched recently. They can't help it if they have to keep their plots fairly simple so that kids can follow along. Also, it's not hard to feel myself starting to get too used to the quality of contemporary animated features and how their tendency towards using computer-generated animation means that, while they are technically accomplished, they still tend to blur together a bit for me and not leave all that much in the way of individual impressions. As a result, Coraline and its stop-motion aesthetic come across as a breath of fresh air, even if the story itself does cover extremely familiar ground.

Selick and co. present more of the uncanny dark fantasy visuals that made The Nightmare Before Christmas so unforgettable, distinguishing the film through its unique character designs and the world-building for both the real world and the mirror universe. The mirror characters are distinguished by the fact that their eyes are black buttons and the mirror universe itself is full of weirdly colourful characters and things that start off enchanting but make for a very organic transition towards the nightmarish as Coraline realises that this seemingly ideal other world is not all that it seems. It is most definitely worth watching if you want to see animation that isn't completely dependent on CGI - the fluidness of the stop-motion is truly eye-catching and the film's atmosphere is strong.

Have you checked out the movie site? The videos are really interesting!