Movie Update 30

Here are some Alfred Hitchcock movies! And a couple others too I guess!

Blackmail


Alfred Hitchcock's first sound film is a pretty decent one. It features a lot of elements that would become his signatures - normal people in great distress, tension building as the result of bad decisions, dramatic climaxes in famous locations. It also seems remarkably dark for the period, with the plot kicking into full gear as the result of murder to avoid a sexual assault. It still feels like a silent movie in some ways, with many scenes going on for ages with little happening, but Hitchcock shows a lot of ability in not just his first attempt at a sound picture, but one of the first ever.

Chicago


Chicago is a pretty poor choice for Best Picture, not just in its year but probably most. Laughable, even. But it's not a bad movie. I have a feeling the voters wanted to give the award to a musical again, and the most acclaimed one since Cabaret was a decent opportunity. It's actually sort of the opposite of that film stylistically, with most of its musical numbers being fantasies in the protagonist's head rather than regular performances at an actual music club, but that's not really terribly important. The plot is simple and I have no idea why I'm actually supposed to be sympathetic with Renée Zellweger's character, and some of the pieces being a bit simple for the medium of film. But the acting is pretty good and there's an energy to the movie that's enjoyable to watch. Definitely not bad.

Easy Virtue


An even earlier Hitchcock movie, still stuck in the silent era, and unfortunately this one doesn't show a whole lot of skill from the Master. My main problem with the movie is that nothing happens in it. It begins with a woman going through a messy divorce, and then she meets a new man somewhere else, but eventually her past catches up to her. There's nothing really interesting about any of it, the fallout isn't exactly dramatic and the movie doesn't even really seem to care if you're sympathetic or not. All it really seems to be saying is that women shouldn't do inappropriate things if they want to be happy. Which uh... okay?

Foreign Correspondent


Released the same year as Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent isn't as good, but it's still a solid example of what Hitchcock could pretty much do in his sleep. A reporter gets caught up in a web of spying and secrets that could eventually lead to a World War (paralleling the one that was actually happening), but his ability to tell the truth is compromised when he falls for a girl who's a little too close to the conspiracy. It's one of the weaker American films I've seen by him, but I eventually warmed up to it, especially after its surprisingly exciting climax. It's really more comedic than his work tends to be, maybe because Joel McRea is the lead, and it took me some time to adjust, but it's a fine little international caper.

Rumble Fish


Boy, Francis Ford Coppola's post-70s career is hard to get a bead on. It almost seems like he's a different person. A lot like Tetro, Rumble Fish is a black and white film with splashes of color that partially exists to examine the director's own relationship with his older brother. Matt Dillon plays a young punk who looks up to his brother, played by Mickey Rourke, and who has difficulty finding a way to fit in with the world around him. He hangs out with friends at a pool hall, gets into gang fights,  and treats his girlfriend played by Diane Lane like crap. Eventually things start going badly for him, and I can't say I really minded. It's just kind of a weird movie, but some parts worked well enough that I wasn't bored.

Intolerable Cruelty

Cruelty has a reputation as one of the Coen brothers' weaker films, and the early scenes seemed to signal that, with a generally unfunny and too-silly opening scene featuring Geoffrey Rush as a cuckolded TV producer. Luckily things got better once the lead characters played by George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones are introduced, and while it is one of my least favorite movies by the Coens, that's only because their catalogue as a whole is so damn good, while Cruelty is merely mostly enjoyable. It's also the last movie of theirs I haven't seen, and it was nice to finally plug up all those gaps.

So the movie is a romantic comedy, but it definitely doesn't play like a romantic comedy of the era. It's more of a classic screwball comedy that's been run through a Coen filter, and while it results in a movie with a low bar to jump, they vault it with a fair amount of grace and style. In some ways it's a very typical movie with obvious and less-than-inspired romantic story beats, but I think it's intentional how standard those scenes are, as they're included merely to acknowledge the fact that that's the kind of movie they're making. It's one of only two films where they shared screenwriting credit with others and was followed by their only direct remake, which leads me to believe it was maybe something of a slow period for them creatively. While the work isn't their most original, it's still distinctly theirs with things like the brief snippets with the head of Clooney's firm and the Wheezy Joe character that you would never see if one of the other directors who was previously attached to the story had ended up making it.

So while it is something of a cliche story, it still works because the Coens have such a distinct style and the cast is pretty outstanding. George Clooney manages to make an asshole divorce lawyer into a charming protagonist, and Zeta-Jones is alluring and likable despite her motivations for most of the movie. Billy Bob Thornton pops in in a great dual role that he knocks out of the park, Cedric the Entertainer is amusing with somewhat limited material, and Freddy might be the best character Richard Jenkins ever played in a Coen movie. The dialogue is sharp and rapid-fire in that old style, and the way the movie blends that classic kind of comedy with more modern developments like pre-nup agreement shenanigans just worked for me. When the movie actually wants the sentimental side to work it does, and before that there's a great tension when you know things aren't going the way they should and you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Not everything worked out, but I had a good time watching it. And the music choices were good too. Not a bad movie at all.

It's the last day of the year, so here's some housekeeping work I have to do:

In case you haven't noticed, I've started writing for a website called Player Affinity. I am in charge of the PS3 section and I also contribute to the TV side, and here's the reviews and features I wrote or contributed to that I haven't already linked to here:

PS3
The PS3 Awards
The Other Games of 2010
This Year's Best PS3 Games So Far
The PS3 Team's Favorite Controversial Games
The PS3 Team's Favorite Horror Games
Is It Okay to Play as the Taliban in Medal of Honor?
Why I Like Single Player Games

TV
The Office episode reviews
Costume Contest
Christening
Viewing Party
WUPHF.com
China
Classy Christmas

Also, along with the PA.com responsibilities, I've actually just started a new full time job that actually makes me money, so I simply don't have the time anymore to post on this blog as often as I have this year. I'm not going to stop, but I'm doing a few things to limit the workload. The first is probably no more baseball posts. When I first started the blog, I intended to use this section more, but the truth is I don't have that much to add to the discussion with all of the great dedicated sites and blogs there are out there, and it's fairly incongruous to talk about sports like once a month when this is otherwise basically all entertainment reviews. Another thing is no more music reviews. I actually expect the amount of music I listen to to increase with a hopefully stable income, but the fact is I've never gotten comfortable writing about the subject. I just don't know how to say what I like or don't like about songs the way other people do, and I don't enjoy having to do it. I'll still make lists, but I doubt there will be anymore full reviews.

When it comes to TV and comics, I'm going to stop posting about individual seasons or trade paperbacks of older titles. If they're still running, I'll write a single post about what was already released after I've caught up, and if they ended before I got to them, I'll sum up the whole thing in one go. Posts about current things will continue as usual. I'll see how this all goes at first, but hopefully cutting out some of the stuff that I've traditionally done as filler will help out a lot. Before the blog was almost a job, but going forward it will be more of a hobby. Who knows, maybe the writing will be better when I don't try to make myself do it every day.