The Three Movies Everybody (Well, Me) Should Own
It was a pleasant Sunday afternoon - I cruised on by the barnes and noble to surf the web. It was there I noticed that they were having a DVD sale - buy two, get one free! For a change, I decided to buy my DVDs instead of rent them (or illegally download them, for that matter - haha, just kidding MPAA!) so I’m now the proud owner of three new movies to watch on my modest HD flatscreen.
So what does a guy like me buy, when presented with the opportunity?
Well, my tastes are just like the average guy, mostly. I guess I concentrate on directors more than most people.
DVD #1 - 2001: A Space Odyssey. A two-disk special edition crammed with documentaries, and audio commentary by Kier Dullea and Gary Lockwood (but not Douglas Rain, the voice of HAL and the most human character in the movie. It’s possible I’ll never watch this, because I understand from Skot that the transfer is disappointing, and I’ve seen 2001 on the big screen a dozen times, including one at the Cinerama Dome. So I may just stick to disk two. But it’s been criminal of me to not have this on my shelf, especially considering that I’ve made room for CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA, TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE and the pilot episode of THE INCREDIBLE HULK.
2001 influenced (inspired to rip off) the producers of THE SIMPSONS, George Lucas, and perhaps most notably Brian De Palma, whose MISSION TO MARS marked the first time I ever saw him do a movie where he wasn’t ripping off Hitchcock. It was nice to see him stealing Kubrik’s style instead.
DVD #2 - SHOWGiRLS. God help me, I love this movie. Yes, it marked the beginning of the end of Paul Verhoven’s career, as well as Joe Eszterhaus’ and Elizabeth Berkeley. And deservedly so! But it’s a fascinating conundrum - beautifully shot, impeccably directed, and there isn’t a false move in the whole thing.
The thing about Paul Verhoven, who is also responsible for TOTAL RECALL, ROBOCOP, STARSHIP TROOPERS and THE FOURTH MAN, is that he’s an extremely subversive director. He’s never just interested in telling a story, he also wants to get away with something. In ROBOCOP he simultaneously made a cruel parody of cop action pictures and an effective cop action picture. In TOTAL RECALL, he gives you every indication that the whole thing takes place in the lead character’s mind then gets you to root for him to stay there, to choose his psychotic break over reality.
Here, the fun challenge is to make a movie in which the lead character is not only unsympathetic but actually hateful. They surround her with slightly less hateful people , and one nice roomate, who is raped as a kind of punishment for not being as mean as everyone else.
It’s just crazy that Elizabeth Berkely’s Nomi is as horrible as she is. Normally in American filmmaking someone would have softened that character - the director, or the screenwriter, but certainly the actress, who you’d think would get cold feet as she saw her future prospects dimming with each shooting day. But no! Watching Nomi fail to win my sympathy at every turn is a high-wire act that I just find delicious.
Plus I could spend the whole weekend watching Gina Gershon’s lips.
DVD #3 - F FOR FAKE. This is the wild card. Of the three movies it’s the only one I had never seen. It’s the Orson Welles picture I’ve been meaning to get around to for 30 years. And it’s fascinating, and mostly indescribable. To call it a documentary about Clifford Irving is like calling TWIN PEAKS a TV show about an FBI agent. What F FOR FAKE is is nothing less than a trip through Orson Welles’ brain on a roller coaster with a mouthful of acid tabs. Or it’s an essay written by a guy whose IQ is around 200 for other guys whose IQs are around 200, and you’re allowed to read it but they’re not really writing with you in mind.
Visually it prefigures Oliver Stone’s work. There’s a lot of film stock switching and quick cutting, and the only difference is that Welles talking directly to the camera is STILL less didactic than Stone.
This bowl of scraps is arguably the most finished Welles movie since CITIZEN KANE. Unlike everything he did in between, no studio hacks took over post production on F FOR FAKE - it was too weird for the money people to even bother with that. The Criterion Edition (yeah, like someone else would have picked it up) features an introduction by Peter Bogdonovich, and a documentary about famous unfinished Welles projects. I can’t wait for that one. It might be about every single Welles movie except for two.
-daniel K
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:17 am
It was not very amusing watching Brian De Palma’s imitative efforts on MISSION TO MARS. Strange, though, because he’s clearly capable of imitative greatness (SCARFACE) as well as impressive originality (UNTOUCHABLES, PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE).
I’d be hard-pressed to tell you which director has dropped the Kubrick ball more clumsily: De Palma, godawful Peter Hyams with his typically godawful 2010, or Spielberg’s excessively Speilbergian A.I.
And you stand by your assertion that F FOR FAKE is the most finished Welles movies since his first? I’d amend that slightly, and say it’s the most PERSONAL Wells film since CITIZEN KANE. Some of it plays a lot like a YouTube USB camera rant, in fact.
But as for a “finished” Welles film I’d still score TOUCH OF EVIL as second to KANE. Not many people note that Orson Welles single-handedly kicked off the Film Noir era with KANE and effectively provided it’s coda with TOUCH OF EVIL. Consider it noted again.
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Ah but Welles didn’t really finish TOUCH OF EVIL. Just ask Walter Murch about that one. I suppose what I should have said was “the most finished (by Welles) Welles movie”, but you see the comprehension problems in that construction.