Heaven Can Wait (1943)

I recall enjoying this film immensely when I first saw it way back in the summer of 1990. That was when I forced myself to watch a classic film every night for the whole summer.

I don’t recall buying the Criterion Collection DVD of Heaven Can Wait. It must have been on sale. Watching it again, I cannot say what I found so appealing. Ernest Lubitsch is said to have a ‘touch’, a certain knack for sophisticated, romantic comedies. Heaven Can Wait is certainly of this pedigree, but it is also one of his latter pictures and the magic does not have the charm of earlier works. While its central hero pleads that for a room in hell, one he feels he deserves from his playboy past, it is hard to imagine by today’s standards how Henry van Cleve could even be considered for eternal damnation.

Of laughs, there are plenty, though they are innocent and dated. What struck me as being most hilarious was something of sheer coincidence or perhaps a hint of subconscious memory surfacing. In Heaven Can Wait a running joke involves a family business and its mascot, Mabel the Cow. When I named our new dog – one that is gray and white and spotted like a Holstein cow – Mabel, I had completely forgotten that this was the name of the cow in Heaven Can Wait.

Sweet Home Alabama

Don’t ask me why I watched this. Instead, wonder why there are no black people in this film.

The New South – Now Diversity Free

To be correct I should mention that there are roughly three or four African-Americans in Sweet Home Alabama. One of them is the maid at a plantation house. The other two are from New York City and one of them is a gay fashion designer; a fish out of water and a cliche for comedic relief. Still, this is rather limited, considering the actual number of non-whites who call Alabama home, sweet or otherwise.

Alabama must be sweet to Reese Witherspoon, her lily-white ass, and the honkeys that made this movie because it doesn’t feature any real local color or people of color. In fact the film wasn’t even shot in Alabama. No, it was shot in Georgia, that uppity neighbor of a state. Shot in the south or not, what makes it to the screen is a South consisting of smoke free bars, clean pick-up trucks, and down home, gosh darn, honest to goodness, straight-shootin’ folk, too good to believe and nothing like them evil, black clothed New York yankees.

Introducing The New Carpetbaggers

I’m no advocate for the South and I’m not saying that spending seven years below the Mason-Dixon line made me Southern, but I would like Los Angeles to stop carpet-bagging the land of Dixie. The South is never as simple as they make it out to be. Hollywood only uses the South for one of two things. It’s either a backdrop for harmless eccentrics or a loaded symbol for racism.

Hollywood should make films about Hollywood and Los Angeles and other places where things are as unreal as the whimsical stories they dream up.

The Last King of Scotland

Sometimes it only takes a matter of minutes for me to realize I’m locked into watching a bad film. Call me stubborn or stupid, but I refuse to walk out on a film. Rather, I stir in my seat, grumble to myself, and question who’s the bigger fool me or the person making the film. I’m sure in the case of The Last King of Scotland the answer must be me.

The film is garnering a lot of attention, mostly due to Forrest Whitaker’s performance as the Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin.

Simply put, Whitaker is overacting. There is a glint in his eye, a knowing sparkle, the sort of twinkle you see in Jack Nicholson when he’s being devilish. He’s a man getting to behave badly and he loves it.

I guess there is nothing too wrong with Whitaker relishing his chance to be over-the-top – after all Amin was a larger than life character, charismatic, charming, crazy; over-the-top. That being the case, must the filmmakers act the same way? They take what could have been an interesting character study of a young, impressionable doctor from Scotland living in Uganda and transform the story into a sexy, Seventies, spy thriller.

From the opening minutes until the every end the filmmakers’ use erotic sex, swelling music, and gruesome violence plays out in such a visceral fashion that I can fully understand why people are titillated by this film. They present Amin as some sort of dictator by way of Hugh Hefner – pool parties, et. al. I assume they want us to be as in the dark about Amin’s politics and his savagery as the young doctor happens to be, but that is asking a lot of anyone who knows anything about Amin. We are not as innocent or as ignorant as the protagonist.

At the same time, why must we be so informed about the fashion, fads, and sex of the times? Why do the filmmakers choose to show so much of this and so little of the travesties caused by Amin’s dictatorship? Why not show both or show neither? Making the conscious decision to show one and not the other, and to show the more pleasing of the two reduces the film to a period piece with little, but spectacle to present to the audience. We are left only wondering if the young white European boy will see past the parties, understand the horror of Amin, and escape the dark continent in time to realize the error of his ways.

In this manner the film feels dated; colonial.

Notes on a Scandal

The story is interesting, if not topical. A youthful first-time art teacher has an inexplicable affair with a 15 year old student. A lonely and manipulative battle-axe of a history teacher uses her knowledge of the illicit romance to force a friendship between the two woman. Two stories of two lonely women each looking for someone to share their passions with could present a very touching a very human story or a dark comedy. Notes on a Scandal plays it both ways and only occasionally succeeds in either. Too often the scenes feel like note, short one, cutting too soon before real confusion and real emotion might enter the frame. Other notes, the ones pounded out by Philip Glass’ score distract and over-emphasize reactions. But, being didactic is Glass’ way.

If any fault lies with director Richard Eyre, I am unsure. Both Judi Dench and Cate Blanchette give wonderful performances, in particular Dench. She is capable of eliciting feelings of sorrow and sliminess. Sadly, these moments get interrupted with a story that often clips by with the pace of a police thriller, the type that gets ripped from today’s headlines. The crime committed dominates a story that needs no real crime to be told. Surely, there are thousands of woman, young and old, looking for some thing missing in their lives. My lingering question for the film is, “Does the story need to really be centered around an illegal affair in order survey the human story at play?”

Notes on a Scandal is neither nasty enough or dark enough to call into question the nature of these sort of affairs and the media circus that engulfs them. For that approach Gus Van Sant’s To Die For is far superior. As for the human elements of film, there are not enough films willing to seriously address the dissatisfaction with life that drives women (and men for that matter) to act so rotten and selfish.

Hospital Massacre

A quick re-view of a movie I’ll have to miss at this Sunday night’s Basement Cinema.

Originally, I saw Hospital Massacre in the late 80′s on Cinemax, Showtime, or the Movie Channel. Surely, it was late at night when I first saw the film and more than anything else I watched it then just for a glimpse of Barbi Benton in the flesh.

Watching the film now I remember enough to have my memory sparked by a few creative uses of hospital equipment as murder devices. What I don’t recall is why or how Barbi Benton was considered such a hot commodity. Yes, she was Hugh Hefner’s long-time lady, but seeing her stretched out on an examining table with little left to the imagination really makes you wonder about Hugh’s taste. Even trying to account for the change in tastes between the 80′s and 2007, I’m left confused about what the world saw in Barbi.
As for the film itself, it’s smart enough to use a hospital as its setting. Those places are creepy and the doctor’s that inhabit this one are a bunch of creeps. On a side note, this is just one of many films I’ve seen where a doctor has to smack a hysterical female to calm her down. Where’s the Norman Rockwell of that scene? As for story, the whole thing is set up in the first ten minutes with a broken heart, a ten year old getting rammed through a coat rack, and a young girl growing up to be Barbi Benton. Twenty years later Barbi finds herself trapped in a hospital with a maniac on the lose. The killer’s identity is no secret. Still, I commend the makers for not showin the killer’s face until the end. Their blunt refusal to admit the obvious is like watching a retarded child perform a magic act.

Speaking of retarded children, does anyone know if some special services group or some association that speaks up for the mentally handicapped or emotionally disturbed has ever spoken out about 80′s slasher films? Just how many of these things were devised around the idea of some unstable character going on a killing spree? Is that what America was most scared of in the 80′s, the mentally unstable?