Danny is Unforgiven

           With Unforgiven we’re dealing with our eventual best picture winner. And of all the movies we’ve taken a look at so far, this one feels “movie-est”. It feels the least like a great screenplay screaming out from a good movie. Which isn’t to say the other movies were lesser, just that this one needs that big screen, that big sound. When people think of movies, they don’t think of chatty relationship comedies or character studies, they think of Clint Eastwood. And, damn, does Unforgiven have some Clint Eastwood.

            Of course, we’re taking a look at screenplays here. And there’s an element to this project that feels a little disingenuous since we’re not actually reading the screenplays. With this approach, it’s nearly impossible not to take the whole movie into consideration. But, scripts are meant to be movies, right? So what better way to evaluate them? I guess? Self-justification complete.

            With that in mind, I think David Webb Peoples delivers something special here. I’d seen this move before, and only remembered two things: Gene Hackman is a monster and Clint Eastwood. But I’d forgotten how the movie takes time to really develop this small town. In my memory, this is a movie about Eastwood on the prowl. But it’s really not. I mean, it’s about that, sure. But it’s also about this town and the people in it. And the screenplay splits its time accordingly.

Like Passion Fish, you get the feeling that each of these characters leads full, rich lives. And if you ask, I’m sure English Bob or Little Bill would be more than happy to elaborate. Only the backstories aren’t limited to the gunslingers, Strawberry Alice possesses an inner-strength that clearly has history. Ned Logan married a native, and based on the look she gives Eastwood, I’d watch a comedy where Ned invites Eastwood to Christmas dinner. Even the cowboy who cuts up the girl has friends who care about him. And while what he did was horrific, the movie goes on to justify it – reputation is everything in this world.

            And for proof, here’s how we’re introduced to Eastwood: “You don’t look like no rootin’ tootin’ son of a bitch cold blooded assassin.” Okay, so, he’s awesome, right? Not awesome enough, because that quote is followed by a list of all the bad ass shit Eastwood’s done. And it’s a long list. English Bob hires a biographer to secure his legacy. And Little Bill’s reputation is so fearsome he can govern an entire town based on it. Scofield kid has no past, so he just makes one up. And, holy shit, does every character like to talk about the past. They absolutely revel in it. Stories of a bygone error, tall tales and on and on…

            Initially, this bothered me. There’s just so much talking. It’s all these old guys telling stories that sound so much more interesting than the movie we’re actually watching. And Eastwood’s character can be an absolute drag. I tried to count the number of times he uttered a variation on “I’m a changed man”, but my pen ran out of ink. And my hand got tired. And somewhere, a man died. We get it, Clint, you’ve changed. Yes, Little Bill, you’re a tough son of a bitch.

            But about two-thirds in, I realized what was going on. These men weren’t telling the audience anything we didn’t already know. This wasn’t exposition being poured on. They were talking to themselves.  Eastwood needed to believe he’d changed, so he just kept saying it, hoping it’d be true. Little Bill needed to know he was the meanest there ever was, so he just says it. In that context, I think the characters really reveal themselves. They’re just men living on words now. Their days of action are behind them.

            Until they aren’t, of course. Which brings us to the absolutely masterful final scene. We’ve built these two men, Eastwood and Little Bill into legends. We’ve seen what Bill can do. We’ve heard of Eastwood’s deeds. Now, he’s hitting the bottle again, reverting to some dark past. Bill’s putting together a posse. We’re in for a showdown. Figure we settle in for chase. A gunfight. Some posturing. Nope. Cause Eastwood just fucking shows up! And KILLS EVERYONE. And it’s so great. It’s the perfect payoff for all the stories, all the chattering about the past. Eastwood was never gonna call Bill out. Have a gunfight at noon. Be on the run from some dumb posse. He was going to ride into town and fucking blow everyone away. And when he does, it’s the best. And it’s so, so earned.

            Which brings us to the movie’s central question – did Eastwood ever change? While I find those title cards that bookend the movie an odd touch, they provide a glimpse into the answer. He loved his wife. That’s clear. And it seems no one understands why she loved him. But in Eastwood’s relationship with Ned and the brief conversation with the cut up prostitute, we’re given a few pieces to the puzzle that is Eastwood (listen, I know the character has a name, but, it’s Clint Eastwood). He’s unbelievably loyal. Probably to a fault. He’s tuned into emotions and feels deeply. He just lives in harsh times. Times when loyalty to the wrong men lead to evil, and feeling deeply can get you killed. I think his wife saw he was a fundamentally good person, and was able to channel his innate qualities into very different type of man. One she could love. But those same qualities can shoot up an entire saloon. Or sell dry goods in San Francisco, apparently.  Hey, he’s a complicated man. He’s Clint Eastwood.

           SIDE NOTE: I loved the brief English Bob interlude. He was such a fun character. With a nice build up. I understand, for this movie’s purposes, why Little Bill had to crush him so quickly, but I wanted more Bob. I wanted to see him do cool shit. And I can’t help but feel Sam Raimi felt the same way. He must have thought, “What if there was a whole fucking town of English Bob’s”? Then he made The Quick and the Dead. And he figured no one could be Gene Hackman better than Gene Hackman, so fuck it, and cast him. I guess what I’m saying is, The Quick and the Dead is sweet.

Finally, my list!

1. Unforgiven
2. Husbands and Wives
3. Lorenzo's Oil
4. Passion Fish

           

           

Unforgiven (Mike's Take!)

Unforgiven

Written by David Webb Peoples

1992’s Best Picture winner is in the running and, while not the only good movie we’ve seen, it’s certainly the one that’s endured the most of this batch. People love Unforgiven. It’s in the National Film Registry. The American Film Institute named it one of the best Western films ever made. So this movie has some accolade baggage going into it. Somehow I missed this movie for years, which is weird since I like Clint Eastwood, cowboy movies, and Clint Eastwood cowboy movies. So does it live up to all that hype?

There are two answers: as a movie, absolutely. Atmospheric, grimy in the best way, some of the best acting of Clint’s career (helped in no small part by ringers like Morgan Freeman and a possibly never better Gene Hackman), this movie has it all. As a script, though, it’s “only” mostly successful. I will explain, of course, but let me sing my praises first.

Four movies in a row, and my time is still not being wasted at all. I love this category! The assault on the poor girl Delilah that leaves her scarred is the very first thing that happens. Then we immediately see what a hold Little Bill has on this town, and how disproportionate his punishments are. The girls are pissed off immediately and call for desperate action: putting a hit on the two men who cut up their friend. Then Bill Munny and the Schofield Kid are brought in to answer that call.

I don’t typically think of many Westerns as being “well-written.” They’re almost all economical by design, relying more on atmosphere than elegant prose, but there’s also a craft to bluntness as this movie illustrates perfectly. Munny is a man of few words, as Clint’s characters usually are, but those words carry heft. “I don’t kill anyone without my partner.” No explanation needed, because he’s not a man who trades in them. The only one in his crew who talks a lot is the Kid, and we find out soon enough that it’s all posturing.

The rest of the ensemble talks a lot, and I think it’s for the same purpose. English Bob talks himself up all over the place, only to prove that he’s no match for Little Bill Daggett. Daggett also talks constantly, as if reminding everyone that he’s the guy in charge.

Speaking of, I love that scene of the other guys in the Sherriff’s Department talking about Daggett, about how “he ain’t no carpenter,” right before he kicks the crap out of English Bob.

While I’m on English Bob, it’s interesting (and at least a teensy bit frustrating) that he has such a fun intro, and is quickly built up as this ultimate assassin who’s so cool he has his own biographer following him around, and he’s dispatched of so quickly. It would seem that the whole point of Bob was to build up what a hardass Daggett is. Like to show us, for the first time, that this is the guy Munny and the gang are up against? Oh no! And I get that, and it does make Daggett out to be this insurmountable obstacle, but Bob was so delightful I still wanted him to do more.

The script also beats me over the head with “I ain’t like that no more.” I get it, Munny hasn’t killed in years, he hasn’t had a drink in years, he’s a respectable man now. He says it like a million times, and he’s only taking this job because he needs the money (hey, like his name!). It all comes together, in two ways. First, I was never not amused when he struggled to get up on his horse. I laughed every time. Second, is what I call the “you done fucked up” moment, and it’s always an effective moment even if you can see it coming from a mile away.

Munny and the Kid have killed the second man. They want their reward money and they want to go home. The Kid has even had an epiphany and will never kill again. Then Munny gets the news. Little Bill Daggett killed Ned. Munny squints his eyes, takes his first drink in years, sends the Kid home, and you just know that Daggett is about to get shot all kinds of dead. You can see it coming, but it’s oh so satisfying. Really, Daggett seals his fate in the movie’s first moments, by refusing to serve justice when it doesn’t suit his interests, but the whole movie builds him up as someone you want to see D-E-D dead, and there’s something to be said for a movie that gives you exactly what you want.

The killer with a heart of gold is a trope as old as Westerns themselves, but movies don’t need to constantly reinvent the wheel. Unforgiven is a great example of putting old clichés to good use. I was genuinely touched by Munny’s scene with Delilah, the assaulted girl. It was quiet and sweet and said a lot about both characters, and the situation they find themselves in. That really sums up the best parts about this movie for me.

And I’ll finish up this one by pointing out that “Strawberry Alice” is the best possible old-timey hooker name. If David Webb Peoples has one true triumph to take away from Unforgiven, it’s that.

Danny's Passionate Fish

It’s fitting that Passion Fish focuses on the life of a former soap star, as the movie itself often threatens to dive head first into the very melodrama playing out on the screens in the background. Thankfully, it never does. But it’s also a reminder that a soap opera without melodrama isn’t exactly a thrill.

Of course, Passions Fish doesn’t have thrills on its mind. Best to pour a glass of lemonade – or bourbon, have a seat and enjoy the Louisiana sunshine. To call this movie leisurely paced is generous. Sometimes I felt trapped in the chair with May-Alice. We get a parade of visitors to break up the monotony, but by the end, I was dreading the prospect of any more callers. Leave May-Alice alone so this thing can just end!

Okay, that’s disingenuous. Its not like this movie wasn’t good. It’s just long. And it crawls, so you feel every minute. Once I settled in, I came to appreciate the local color the movie offers, to bask in the culture – the long river rides, the dancing, the bugs. But I’m also not looking for a travel documentary. Okay, okay, enough harping!

Sure, the picaresque structure grew tired for me, but the people we meet along the way were never less than fantastically drawn. Writer and Director John Sayles has a real knack for bringing characters to life. In particular, I enjoyed the Colonel Sanders relative that stops in for a few drinks. Not white wine, not to his taste, I’m afraid, but he’ll ferret out any bourbon in the area! Like a bourbon truffle dog.

His scene’s a good example of that teetering melodrama. I kept expecting him to have some kind of ulterior motive. And maybe he did. But we never saw it. And he just disappears from the story. Same with May-Alice’s actress friends. I thought we were in for some big blow up, but, no, just a weird space alien monologue.  Really wonderful character work all around. And we haven’t even discussed our leads.

Mary MacDonnell and Alfre Woodard crush their roles as May-Alice and Chantelle. Okay, yeah, crushed is the wrong word. But I like the idea of describing anything in this movie with the word “crush”.  Sayles fucking crushes it with Passion Fish!  Woodard fucking destroys this intricate character portrait! MacDonnell’s subtly and depth fucking kills!

I’m done. But, really, I appreciate the way Sayles trusts us to watch the story unfold. The character reveals - the shades of depth they add - pile on with such slow assurance. It’s like a master class in how to make characters into real people. I feel like even the clerk at the supermarket leads a full, rich, Louisiana life.

When people talk about the death of adult dramas, they’re talking about this movie. Or story-driven porn, I guess. Depends on who you’re talking to. And even though this isn’t my favorite movie, I’d be on board for more like them. Something tells me we’ll run into quite a few of them on this adventure. And a little peek ahead tells me we’ll be seeing Sayles again down the road.

Sayles is a guy who’s been on my radar for a while now. He’s a pretty big figure in independent cinema, yet imdb tells me I’ve never seen any of his movies. Even the most likely candidate, The Howling, remains unseen. Obviously, that one’s on me. How have I missed a Joe Dante werewolf movie? But after this, I’m intrigued to look through his filmography. And even more intrigued, because while I’d never seen his films, I was unknowingly familiar with his work.  Which leads to my favorite Passion Fish related fact --

This is the man who directed a handful of sweet, goofy Born in the USA music videos! The Boss hurling a baseball? The Boss creepily fixing a babe’s car then stalking her? Sayles is responsible. He’s the best. I’m now a fan for life.

Couple things I wanna cover before I wrap up – why is the beginning of this movie loaded with cornball guitar riffs? Even for the time, they had to be silly. And they’re wildly out of place.  I propose a Passion Fish drinking game -- Take a shot every time Eddie Van Halen inexplicably scores this Oscar caliber drama!

Finally, about halfway through, it occurred to me that this movie would work much better as a TV show. It’s already paced like one. The character work is stellar. It even ends like a great episode of TV. We’re here, we’re changed, but we’re gonna keep moving. None of the story threads really wrapped. And, in hour chunks, I’d enjoy exploring the town and culture more. It just feels like an HBO show. And I imagine if it were written today, that’s exactly where we’d see this movie. Well, some people would see it. I’d wait for the reviews. Maybe binge watch it before the Emmys.

All in, not my favorite of the bunch. I’m glad we watched it though, because this, and movies like it are almost never something I sit down to watch. But there’s a lot to learn here. And plenty to like.

1.     Husbands and Wives

2.     Lorenzo’s Oil

3.     Passion Fish

Passion Fish (Mike's Take)

Passion Fish

Written by John Sayles

Oh boy. I gotta tell you, man, I’m completely of two minds on this movie. For everything I really, really liked, there was something to frustrate me lurking right around the corner. Every single time. One step forward, one step, you know?

So this is going to be a pretty scattered write-up. Most of the stuff I really liked came in the first half, and most of the stuff I didn’t was in the back-end, so my cynicism will gradually creep in as I go. To me, this is a movie that starts strong and rambles its way to a pretty unsatisfying conclusion.

But about that first half, there are so many little things I appreciate. It’s the kind of subtle stuff that you might not notice if you weren’t aggressively taking notes like we are. I LOVE that the movie opens in the hospital. Like Lorenzo’s Oil, this movie isn’t wasting my time. May-Alice is in the hospital and it only takes a minute to figure out why. She’s paraplegic. We also learn she’s a soap opera star because the very first lines are her playing her character on television, which is a very clever touch. We know her past life, and we know what the rest of her life is going to be almost immediately.

She’s sent to her hometown to recover and a parade of caretakers come and go. I liked these scenes a lot, too. May-Alice’s acerbic nature caught me off guard, and I began to really like her, or at least enjoy her. It should be said that Mary McDonnell absolutely kills it in this movie. When it works, it’s usually because of her. Maybe my favorite small detail in the whole movie is how her native Louisiana accent slowly comes back over the course of the story.

Eventually, Chantelle comes into the picture. She’s a tough cookie, as they say. She ain’t gonna back down. Their dynamic is interesting and, once again, I like that the movie doesn’t go for histrionics. They feel like real people caught in a tough situation. But even though Chantelle’s relationship with May-Alice is ultimately the whole point of the movie, her introduction brings with it most of the movie’s problems. Characters flit in and out of their lives and never go anywhere. May-Alice’s alcoholic uncle, Chantelle’s drug dealer ex-boyfriend, May-Alice’s high school classmates, etc. That last one gave us a scene I actually enjoyed, but it never really built to anything. Only two characters really stick around, and they’re kind of sort of love stories? I don’t know. Passion Fish goes a long towards establishing that Rennie and Sugar could have a real impact on the ladies’ futures, but it never goes anywhere with either. Rennie is married and Sugar is… I don’t know. He disappears after the zydeco festival towards the end.

And then there’s Chantelle’s actual motivation for sticking around in this thankless job: she used to be a drug addict (which, admittedly, does parallel nicely with May-Alice’s apparent alcoholism) and lost custody of her daughter. She needs to get her life together so she can get her little girl back. But that whole thread isn’t introduced until like the last ten minutes! And for a movie that’s more than two hours long, that’s obnoxious. I have no time to get to know her kid, or care about her.

Once again, it leads to something I DO like. It’s a neat idea that Chantelle just wants her old life back right around the time May-Alice decides to let hers go. But it could have been developed more. Chantelle doesn’t have any real motivation for staying until the movie’s final moments, as far as we know. In all, this movie bugged me as much as it sometimes surprised me.

Two scenes I want to talk about that I couldn’t fit in above:

Okay, does every movie about someone with a disability have to feature a brief fantasy sequence where they don’t anymore? It has to be the most common trope of the entire genre, whether it’s about a real person or not. I actually rolled my eyes.

And, I did really like the picnic with her former co-stars. I thought it was going in one direction (they would all think Chantelle was some kind of rube, and that Louisiana was a hellhole) but they seemed genuinely concerned for May-Alice’s situation. In fact, my favorite scene in the whole movie was the girl who took over May-Alice’s character telling the story of the first part she ever had, in that weird indie alien movie. It’s a great little monologue. The only problem is that I have no idea how it relates to what’s going on in Passion Fish. All it did was make me feel bad for her when you find out later that she was fired because viewers refused to accept her.

So, yeah. Passion Fish. A movie that was somehow both exactly and nothing like I expected. Easily the weakest of 1992 thus far for me, but we’ve got two more to go! Onward and upward!

Lorenzo's Oil (Mike's Take)

Lorenzo’s Oil

Written by George Miller & Nick Enright

Man, what a year 1992 has been so far. We are really starting this thing off with the most uplifting movies, aren’t we? This entire movie seemed to be about fighting back against an endless torrent of hopelessness. So, a little bit of a downer.

I actually saw this movie once in high school. We watched it in my 10^th grade bio class. All I remembered from that viewing was Nick Nolte’s accent and Tommy Pickles’ voice distractingly coming out of Lorenzo’s mouth when he’s sick. I’m happy to report that I actually enjoyed this movie on a second watch.

The way the movie is structured is pretty excellent. The build-up to Lorenzo’s diagnosis was so smart and so economical. It just gets to the point and doesn’t waste my time, which is so refreshing. We see the kid playing in Africa over the opening credits, but the movie doesn’t spend a half hour showing us what a normal kid he is and I’m so thankful for that. And the pre-diagnosis movie has some striking images. Michaela holding Lorenzo down as he’s seizing all over the place hits pretty hard, and I also really like the long walk down the hospital hallway right after they hear the diagnosis for the first time. Chilling, and very real.

That brings me to one of the things I really liked. Doesn’t it feel like this movie should have had a lot more yelling and crying and other typically “Oscar-type” stuff? It’s very subdued with the exception of two moments: the fight that ends up with Michaela kicking her sister out of the house and their fight with the parents who run the Foundation. For me, at least, it made them feel like real people and less like movie characters.

In fact, my favorite scene is toward the end. It’s when Agusto is breaking it down for Michaela that even though they’ve helped Lorenzo survive, he’ll never fully recover and he asks her, “Did you ever think that all this work, all this struggling, might have been for someone else’s kid?” Then she cries. It’s the first time tears fall in this movie at all, if I remember it correctly. I just found it an effective way to hit typical “prestige movie” beats without doing so in a “prestige movie” kind of way.

And of course it has to be brought up that this movie was written by George “Motherfucking Mad Max” Miller, which is all kinds of nuts at first. This is the last movie I would have ever expected him to make, until he made the Happy Feet movies anyway, but in my research (the IMDb trivia page) I found out that Miller is actually a trained doctor. Cool! That goes a long way in this movie, since there are a lot of expected scenes of doctors explaining the illness to the Odones and, once the Odones have it figured out, them explaining it to everyone else around them. It’s unavoidable in movies like this but at least it’s all medically sound, and never comes off as phony.

Are there things that don’t work? Sure. I don’t really buy that Michaela would kick her sister out of the house, or how difficult the Foundation parents are to deal with. I’m pretty sure they are planted in there as superficial obstacles since, apart from Lorenzo’s horrific disease, the Odones don’t have many. They’re financially well-off enough to care for Lorenzo full time, and are clearly smart and capable enough to find a cure for a rare disease practically on their own. Obviously it’s too late to fully save Lorenzo, but nothing is truly standing in their way.

I don’t know, after having mostly slept through it in Mr. Collier’s class so many years ago, I actually ended up liking this movie a lot. Like I said before, Oscar Bait without ever feeling particularly Oscar-Baity. So bravo, man who made Beyond Thunderdome, well done.

Also, Laura Linney! Credited as “Young Teacher!” I love her.

Lorenzo's Oil (Danny's take)

            Movie number two – Lorenzo’s Oil. We didn’t bring this up last time, because the Woodman is such a damn icon, but we should make it a point to mention all the writers by name in these articles. It’s too easy to get caught up in the mystique of the director (of course, we’ll always talk about them too, no doubt).

So….

            Lorenzo’s Oil by George Miller and Nick Enright!

            If not for this project, I’m confident I’d have missed this movie entirely. Maybe, if timing were perfect, I’d have caught it in a hotel room or something, but that’s assuming I hadn’t seen the night’s rerun of Seinfeld recently. I’d simply never heard of this before, and we were alive when it came out. Granted, I was more concerned with Ninja Turtles and my own shit than prestige drama, but that’s hardly an excuse. Especially since, fully grown, but no less concerned for my shit

(it’s key to understanding what the body needs!), I’d consider myself a fan of George Miller. But I guess, even for the strange dichotomy of Mad Maxes and talking animals that are Miller’s career, this one’s an outlier.

            It’s also a movie that has all the hallmarks of Oscar bait. And, really, by that I mean it looks fucking boring. I can imagine us sitting in a theater while this trailer played and me rolling my eyes while making a jerk off motion with my hand. And that jerk would last until the trailer finished. I’d have to keep going. Even after you tried to shush me, because you’re clearly embarrassed. Especially since we’d be at the Queen’s theaters (Arclight), and everyone around us paid fifteen bucks for ticket. But, by the end of the trailer, and, by extension, my jerk, we’d all agree I was right. This does look like pandering garbage – sick kid, ACTING, rare disease, based on a true story, Margo Martindale. Okay, that last one’s a lie. She’s delightful. All right, so we know what it looks like, but is there more to this movie than it’s sleek, gold-seeking surface?

            Yeah, totally. This movie’s smart. Everyone in it’s smart. And it’s so, so refreshing. Because it assumes you’re smart too. It’s interesting to note that fellow nominee, Husbands and Wives, is also full of smart people. Maybe something was in the air? And, to clarify, I don’t mean this is a movie full of inaccessible geniuses. We’re not marveling at their feats of brainpower (another awards trick), we’re just impressed by their ability to handle their shit. When Lorenzo gets hit with this disease, his parents dive in like fucking superheroes to find a cure. It’s a thrill, and they spend a good chunk of the movie in the library.

           

            One of the things I love about this script is its ability to make us understand the rare disease in question - ALD. By the credits, I was ready to raid my kitchen, and cure the disease myself. The script goes out of its way to make you feel like an expert. Occasionally, I wished they’d breeze passed the science and get moving already, but I’ll admit I was mostly wrong on that. Because the cumulative affect of truly understanding the disease puts you in the parent’s heads by the end of the movie. You feel their victories, their losses more acutely. You can really grasp the debates they have, they pain they feel.

           

            And that’s another thing this movie does well. Yes, we’re rooting for the parents. Yes, we want them to find a cure at all costs. But we also understand the views of their opposition. The doctors and scientists aren’t evil, heartless bastards. They’re professionals. And their opinions are given equal heft. Same with the family that heads up the ALD foundation. They’re not monsters. And they aren’t presented as such. The script is extremely even-handed and it manages to make a complicated issue easier to digest. We’re not watching an inspirational sports movie here, and it’s nice that the medical community isn’t treated like the fucking Cobra Kai.

            Before we dig into a couple things that didn’t work for me, I wanted to point out another aspect that really did – this movie’s ability to veer into horror. It’s not strictly script related, but it’s there in it’s willingness to make Sarandon’s character pretty unsympathetic by the end. She becomes a single-minded monster. She wants to save that kid like Jason wants to slice up teens. And it’s there in the writing, but in the cinematography. Miller starts to get pretty creepy with the lighting and the low angles toward the back end. And Sarandon’s performance grows fiercer as the movie continues, allowing her to show a side of motherhood that’s more mother tiger than her previous guise as a story-reading mother goose.

            Praise. Praise. Praise. Okay, what didn’t work? It’s a little long. It does get draggy in parts. Above, I noted that all the science helped bring the movie home for me, and it totally does, but I probably could have done with one less “kitchen sink” metaphor. Or, to save time, maybe Sarandon only fires, say, two nurses, instead of the ten or so it feels like. Oh, and, maybe we don’t need dozens of shots of Lorenzo crying. Maybe. But that Tommy Pickles wail is amusing. And Nolte’s accent…I mean, look, it settles in. By mid-movie, I was able to just accept because I don’t think it’s bad so much as…goofy? I kept waiting for Groucho and Harpo to show up and join the shenanigans.

            Gotta say though, Lorenzo’s Oil worked for me. Maybe I just had low expectations going in, but either way, I enjoyed this movie. I appreciated it for it’s intelligence, and it’s willingness to trust that I’d follow along. If the rest of the prestige movies turn out this good, we’ll be in for a fun (sad, brutal, depressing) ride.

            And to continue --

1.     Husbands and Wives

2.     Lorenzo’s Oil

Husbands and Wives (Mike's Take)

Husbands and Wives

Written by Woody Allen

Okay, let’s begin this in earnest. You and me, talking movies, talking original screenplays, the most consistently interesting category at the Academy Awards. You get interesting concepts fleshed out, quirky ideas, no sequels, no remakes, no adaptations of any kind. So where do we start?

I find it very fitting that we start with Woody Allen, one of your idols, so you already have a much stronger frame of reference for this movie than I do. I love Woody, and I love his movies, but I’ve only actually seen a handful of them. Annie Hall, Manhattan, the “Essential Woody Allen” collection, if you will.

To get things out of the way so I can talk about the actual script, though, it’s pretty interesting that this was the last Woody movie Mia Farrow ever appeared in, and that it was released in the wake of all that unpleasantness. The things that were going on in the real world in 1992 certainly lend this movie a contextual relevance it might not have had otherwise. I’m not sure if that warrants further conversation, since we’re just talking MOVIE here, but it’s worth noting.

So onward towards “Husbands and Wives,” not the document of Woody Allen’s tumultuous personal life, but the movie Woody Allen made because he felt like it. It's wonderful and kind of funny that the very first lines of the very first movie we watched for this project are a brief diatribe on writing as a craft. You’re either good or you’re not. You can’t teach it. Gabe (Woody) is a writing teacher who believes you can’t teach writing.

I was struck by how honest this movie was. I know Woody has made as many dramas as he has comedies by I honestly believed, going into this one, that I was about to watch a comedy. As such, the movie caught me off guard. None of the four leads come off as particularly well-balanced people. Every time you almost like someone, you get Jack berating his girlfriend outside of a party, or Gabe attempting to seduce his student, or a confessional from an ex-husband hinting at Judy’s true nature.

About those confessionals, too. At first they reminded me of Spinal Tap, but the more I watched they seemed more like an early take on the style employed by “The Office” and “Parks and Rec.” I cite those examples partially because, with Spinal Tap, it makes sense that a documentary crew would be following them. Why are cameras constantly on Michael Scott? Why are they following this group of dissatisfied married couples? It makes no sense, but it works well stylistically. This is how we can get Gabe to confess things that he would never say to his friends. I really loved his addiction to “kamikaze women,” who crash and burn but take with you with them.

The movie is also great at portraying that seething rage that can accompany long-term relationships. These are people who can barely stand each other but stay together largely out of obligation. Once Jack and Sally announce their separation, Gabe and Judy see the opportunity to put the kibosh on their own relationship. Gabe goes after Rain, Sally starts looking for excuses to leave Gabe, etc.

About the only new coupling in the movie’s second act that didn’t click with me was Mike falling head over heels for Sally. Not just because Liam Neeson wasn't brutally murdering anyone with his bare hands while talking angrily into a cell phone, but also because Sally is so cold. The movie makes a point of that, but it never really goes into why Michael finds that so appealing. Jack and Sally (a whole year before Nightmare Before Christmas!) are miserable people. It makes sense that a younger woman would shack up with Jack, because he’s old, refined and smart. It makes sense that they would end up back together, too. I just don’t get Michael’s devotion to Sally, so strong that he nearly torpedoes his later relationship with Judy over it.

Those are some rough thoughts. I definitely really liked this one and was surprised by it at nearly every turn. I didn’t even realize until just now that the characters talk about their kids a lot but we never meet them. Are there any children in any Woody Allen movie?

Anyway, onto Lorenzo’s Oil, I suppose!