At 2 1/2 Hours 'Infinity War' Earns Its Title

By Steve Evans

I’ve long since outlived the core demographic for superhero films, yet when I find out such-and-such a movie is one of the most expensive ever made, I’m drawn to it like moth to flame. So I squandered more than 2 ½ hours of life watching Avengers Infinity War on Netflix. This is a movie that cost almost $400 million to make and has so far recouped more than $2 billion – with a B – worldwide. Big Business, this. So I wanted to see what $400 million looks like burning up on a screen. My screen, as it turns out, since I had no desire to drop $15 on a theater ticket when the flick came out last April. Sitting in a packed auditorium with 13-year-old boys chattering like monkeys is not my idea of fun. So what does $400 million look like on fire?

It looks like a lot of computer-generated imagery supplemented by noise, more characters with speaking parts and convoluted backstories than I care to count, planets where anyone can breathe without oxygen tank assistance and phenomenally powerful, mystical devices with names I am ill-prepared to pronounce.

No way I could summarize the plot here, beyond the observation that the antagonist looks like an oak tree covered in shit and he wants magic stones to fit in his metal glove (or "gauntlet," if you want to be particular about it) so he can obliterate half the life in the universe by snapping his fingers, which makes him marginally worse than Hitler. Or possibly Trump. When his glove is fully tricked out, this tuff guy looks like he's been accessorizing at boutiques favored by George Michael. The villain’s name is Thanos, which I do know is derived from the Greek word for “immortality,” suggesting he’ll be a tough bastard to beat when the next installment of this franchise opens in April 2019. Marvel excels at cliffhangers; keep 'em coming back for more.

You can read this film as an anti-capitalist screed, as some have, though that seems ludicrous given the amount of money these Marvel films make. You can read the film as a dire warning on totalitarianism, though I’m skeptical the world really needs such another warning, given the prevalence of mad would-be tyrants running amok these days.

Was I entertained? Marginally. I have a kickin’ surround sound system and it got quite a workout from all the booms and bangs. For my own troubles, I got a three-Aleve headache and a bunch of questions I suspect can only be answered if I watch earlier Marvel films and get caught up on who’s who and what’s what, which I am not wont to do. I also wonder how much good could be done in the world with $400 million, rather than give Robert Downey Jr. profit participation so he’ll have money to go buy another bong.

At 2 hours and nearly 40 minutes, calling the film Infinity War almost seems like truth in advertising.

Behold the churlishness of a middle-aged man, a film snob whose preferences run to black & white foreign films with beautiful women and subtitles. I should have known better.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2019 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

No Rush, Thanks

By Steve Evans

I love rock documentaries. Any chance I get to learn context and meaning behind the music, I jump on it. Sometimes I get lucky and encounter an unintentional comedy disguised as a rock doc, leaving me sputtering with laughter. Rob Reiner’s great mockumentary This is Spinal Tap (1984) relentlessly skewered rock and roll pomposity and stupidity, of which there remains no shortage.

Sometimes, though, you don’t need a work of satire to help high-minded musicians look foolish. Often, they don’t need any help.

This set the scene for my viewing of Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, a film about the Canadian power trio’s 40-odd year career. The picture came out eight years ago, though I had successfully dodged it until last night when, in a fit of tedium, I cracked into a six-pack of particularly good beer and cued up that Rush doc. Eons ago, when I was in high school, Rush was an anomaly. If you listened to them at all, it was just to tide you over in-between Zeppelin albums. From the first time I heard the band, I thought a root canal could be no more painful. Or a spinal tap. Not even sure why I watched the damn documentary last night, except beer was involved.

But I’m glad I did. This is a band that should be slapped for writing a song titled By-Tor and the Snow Dog, which still makes me giggle decades on. Their early success, 2112, is a ponderous space-rock concept album that devotees say is best experienced, if not understood, under the influence of vodka and Quaaludes. From my high school days I recall the band’s biggest fans were people you wouldn’t want to be alone with.

The stumbling block for me was always Geddy Lee, the band’s bassist. His banshee-shrieking, kicked-in-the-balls vocals could resurrect a cemetery of skeletons who’d abandon their graves in mute protest. Tunes like Tom Sawyer and Freewill (a wince-inducing ode to whack-job Ayn Rand) were staples of MOR classic rock radio stations. Still are, for all I know. My best recollection of Rush in their heyday was making fun of them with my own band of hooligans out at the lake, blasting the local FM station on a boombox and striking absurd rock-hero poses on the sand whenever a Rush tune was played. Some music ages well. Some music does not. Some sounds just as ludicrous as the day the tunes were pressed into vinyl.

What elevates this documentary to comedy gold is the occasional interview with one of the band’s celebrity fans. When a no-talent peanut head like Jack Black starts using the words “Rush” and “intellectual” in the same sentence, it’s time to pop another beer and stare in amazement that absolutely no one, except me, is laughing. And Sweet Baby Jeebus laff I did, until my tears fell like rain.

Cinema Uprising Copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Keeping Four Wheels on the Road at High Speed

By Steve Evans

I love learning new bits of film history. I live for it. Better than birthdays and Christmas. So I was reading about the short career of James Dean, which got me to thinking about the guy’s death 63 years ago, which led to the discovery that on his fatal drive in that Porsche Spyder he was the lead car in a caravan of friends heading to a race track. About two minutes behind him was Dean’s racecar-driving mentor, an occasional actor named Bill Hickman, who arrived at the crash scene in time for Dean to expel his final breath of air in Hickman’s face. By his own account, Hickman was so haunted he didn’t sleep for five days.

I didn't know that story until today, but I instantly recognized the name Hickman. His destiny was to become a legendary movie stunt driver. Steve McQueen chased him all over San Francisco in Bullitt (1968). Hickman did the high-speed driving for Gene Hackman in The French Connection ('71) and outran Roy Scheider in The Seven-Ups ('73), a little-seen thriller with an incredible car chase as its centerpiece. Hickman drove real cars down real roads, barreling along at speeds well in excess of 100 mph. No computer enhancements or image manipulation. One slip of the steering wheel and he coulda ended up like his pal Dean. Some of us like living on the edge. Hickman took it over the edge and came back to show us the real deal.

Hickman died of cancer in 1986. He was 65. French Connection director William Friedkin called him the greatest driver in the history of cinema. That’s Hickman in the photo below, at right, with Dean lighting a cigarette at left. I'm not sure about the guy hunched over the fateful Porsche. Could be Sal Mineo, Dean's co-star in Rebel Without a Cause. Mineo was murdered in a botched robbery in 1976, but that's another Hollywood story for another day.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Play Misty for Me at 47

By Steve Evans

Big Clint Eastwood's directorial debut, the moody thriller Play Misty for Me, was released OTD in 1971. Somewhat dated in tone, Misty explores romantic obsession and a woman's psychotic breakdown as the lover who spurns her, then comes under violent attack, struggles to evaluate his increasingly dwindling options.

I've visited many of the locations where Misty was filmed in Carmel-by-the-Sea, a lovely town where Eastwood was briefly mayor. You can walk the length of Carmel in 15 minutes. Its scenic beauty is the equal of any spot along the Pacific coast. The bohemians on the beach create the most elaborate sand sculptures I've seen. Come high tide, they're gone. The beach bums return the next morning and start all over again, hoping the curious might give them a few dollars. Such is the ephemeral nature of their art.

Misty was essentially remade in 1987 as Fatal Attraction, with a few yuppie twists to update the material. Eastwood's film stands out for its spot-on use of jazz on the soundtrack. For this reason and as a curio of Eastwood's early cinematic style Play Misty is recommended viewing.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Check Your Baggage for Destination Wedding

By Steve Evans

Destination Wedding, an experimental film now available on Video on Demand, is the best rom-com of the last 40 years. I mean this most sincerely; no hyperbole. It has an essential edginess that eluded Sideways, which had been the genre's gold standard since 2004, and before that, Annie Hall from 1977.

Sharp, acerbic, jet-black and cynical, Destination Wedding will appeal to anyone who has ever pulled out of a relationship and wondered: how the fuck did I ever get into that? But moving forward, it also poses that eternal challenge: why not try this thing called love again? Two terrific stars, Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves, who have the only dialog in the film (toldja it was experimental). They play hugely unlikable characters thrown together under standard rom-com tropes that director Victor Levin turns upside-down. Imagine a farcical romance written by David Mamet.

I laffed. I cried. I damn-near died. This is a great movie.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

"No, I did not borrow Laura's Mercedes"

By Steve Evans

Alfred Hitchcock’s immortal classic North by Northwest premiered 59 years ago today. I first saw the picture on television in the ancient pre-Internet year of 1982 and was instantly smitten. Time has done nothing to diminish my love for this film, still my favorite out of some 15,000 movies I’ve seen in a lifelong affair with the cinema. North by Northwest is close to a perfect film. It delivers everything I want in a movie and does it with class. It’s thrilling and comical and elegant, delightfully sophisticated and often darkly cynical, with some of the best writing you’ll ever encounter in a film. The set pieces build in excitement and preposterousness in equal measure, but I never care because I get swept up in the pure joy of it all with every viewing. The early James Bond films owe a stylistic debt to this picture, though it is far better than any of them.

Cary Grant taught me how a gentleman should dress, how to light a lady’s cigarette, mix a proper Gibson cocktail, deliver droll & smartass remarks, run from biplanes and scramble across the actual faces of national monuments while saving the love of your life in a literal cliffhanger ending. The final shot of Cary and Eva Marie Saint embracing, with a smash-cut to their train roaring into a tunnel, is an amusing bit of impudence to conclude a film that is so damn good I usually want to spin it again from the beginning, right then and there, soon as I finish clapping.

I wrote a 30-page paper about the film in graduate school. I’ve owned two videotape copies, a DVD and a Blu-ray. A digital copy of the complete film exists on my phone, tablet and laptop. I’ve visited many of the locations where it was filmed. I have a photo of Eva with her autograph tucked away in the case of my DVD copy.

The common question to this sort of blathering enthusiasm is “What the hell is wrong with you, Steve?” There’s really no satisfactory answer except that I love the movies, especially this one. The very best films take us on an exhilarating ride through experiences many people can only dream of. We fly in the darkness, cheer our heroes, fear for their lives, exalt in the bewitching power of story and eventually come cruising down, down, down, rolling across the runway, returning at last to the seats we never left. And that’s enough.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Can't Cure Insomnia With Psychomania

By Steve Evans

Stayed up way too late last night laffing at the great guilty pleasure that is Psychomania (1973). This movie is a riot -- an occult, horror-thriller biker flick starring Malcolm McDowell lookalike Nicky Henson in a role not dissimilar to McDowell’s in A Clockwork Orange, made two years earlier. I saw Psychomania decades ago on late-night teevee and was delighted to catch it again. The film only improves with age. Filmed at Shepperton, it has a Hammer Studios vibe, solid stunts and not-bad special effects.

Briefly, Henson and his rude biker gang commit suicide in novel ways, then use black magic to come roaring back to life on their motorcycles, terrorizing the English countryside as the living dead. Featuring an amazing wacka-wacka guitar soundtrack by a band called Frog. You can’t make up this stuff; I dare you even to try.

The great British character actor George Sanders (who co-starred in two Academy Award Best Picture winners, Rebecca and All About Eve, and won an Oscar himself for the latter) was nearing the end of his career when he appeared in this film. Sanders committed suicide shortly after Psychomania was made. Sadly, he did not come roaring back on a motorcycle.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Reflections on Dead Home-Entertainment Technology

By Steve Evans

On this day in 1975 Sony introduced the Betamax 9300, a "video recorder" almost the size of a footlocker and priced at $2,295 (about $11,000 in 2018 dollars). It had fat piano keys for controls and a crude LCD numeric screen. Made a fair amount of whirring noise, too. With the release of this brute of a component, Sony began the era of the home theater concept and forever changed the way people consume programming, since they were no longer at the mercy of broadcasters' schedules. That is, if you could figure out how to program the machine and set the timer to record the correct channel.

In less than a decade Betamax would be extinct after losing the videotape format war to VHS cassettes, which delivered noticeably lower image quality but were cheaper. We had a top-loading Betamax that ended up in basement storage when VHS took over and it was no longer possible to buy the smaller Betamax cassettes. I remember the owner of a local video rental store saying how happy he was when Betamax died because he no longer had to buy two copies of the same movie on different videotape formats. Blockbuster arrived a couple years later and he went out of business, anyway.

My first movie from that rental store was Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969) on a Betamax cassette. I had never seen the film, much less uncut, as there is no way any network back then would have shown that legendarily violent film as released theatrically. As a fledgling 14-year-old film buff, being able to rent and watch a movie on demand was a revelation (nor did the rental shop owner give a damn about whether I was old enough to be watching R-rated movies). Soon, most of my allowance money was going to movie rentals at the video store down the street. All of them were beat up and scratchy, even the new releases after only a couple of weeks, but I didn't care. In a town with only two single-screen movie theaters and cable TV service still a few years off, having a video rental store was like a passport to exotic lands of adventure.  

I'd bet that mom still has that Betamax monster socked away somewhere in her basement -- and it probably still works -- only there's no way to hook up the equipment to a modern TV because RCA jacks, and the red, yellow and white cables to connect them, are likewise a thing of the past.

Nothing lasts forever, except my ridiculous habit of renting and then buying films like The Wild Bunch on video cassette (twice), DVD and, more recently, on Blu-ray. If Peckinpah's bloody classic is ever released in the 4K format, I’ll buy that one, too. Obsessions always start somewhere. I have Betamax to thank for mine.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Today in History: Bonnie, Donnie and Clyde

By Steve Evans

Let's play a game of perception v. reality.

On this day in 1934 the murderous bank robbing duo Bonnie and Clyde were machine-gunned to death in an ambush set by a posse of Louisiana and Texas law enforcement.

Arthur Penn's celebrated 1967 film that bears their names did no favors for the historical record, although accuracy was not Penn's intent. Though possessed of low cunning, the real Bonnie and Clyde could best be characterized as moronic and sleazy -- quite a departure from their charming cinematic counterparts Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty.

Penn's film treats the pair as folk heroes and they were embraced as such by audiences watching the film at the height of the counterculture. The paradox here is that despite the picture's many liberties with historical accuracy, Bonnie and Clyde in their heyday were indeed heroes to many victims of the Great Depression, people who were angry at the system, at the banks Bonnie and her beau enjoyed robbing.

I could draw parallels here to Trump supporters, those disaffected yahoos who root for a rebel as balm (or distraction) for their own problems. There's no doubt in my mind that the rise of Trump coming on the heels of the Great Recession is no mere coincidence. His ascension is a maneuver of pure exploitation as clever as any Hollywood rendering of historical record.

Make no mistake: Bonnie and Clyde were only out for themselves. Trump is no different, as evidenced by each new day. He's just a little more polished than Clyde, a bit more slick.

As it happened, the frivolity came to an end for Miss Bonnie and her Clyde on May 23, 1934. Penn's film, in a daring-for-its-day climax, also brings harsh reality crashing down on the antiheroes of his long frolic of a film. It's a classic example of yanking the rug out from under an audience, forcing viewers to confront, finally, the nasty truth of the characters they've been rooting for and maybe don't even understand why.

Wondering if the Donnie Trump Story can deliver a conclusion at least as exciting.



Cinema Uprising copyright © 2018 by Stephen B. Evans. All rights reserved.

Perils of Fortune and Glory

By Steve Evans

We are giddy with the acquisition of The Man Who Would be King (1975) in hi-def. A magnificent entertainment from the twilight of director John Huston's mighty career. Michael Caine and Sean Connery have made many enduring classics through more than six decades of working in cinema. The Man Who Would be King is equal to all of them and better than most.
Huston in the 1950s wanted Bogart and Clark Gable for the leads, though sadly, Bogart died of cancer before the project could get off the ground. A decade later, Huston dusted off his script, adapted from Kipling, and went after Paul Newman and Robert Redford for his stars. Newman told him, "John, much as I'd love to do this, you want Connery and Caine for this one." Newman was spot-on. 

Here is a perfect union of casting and material in a glorious adventure film that explores recurring themes in Huston's work: greed, machismo, obsession. You can see this in The Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Moby Dick, but Huston took these themes to their logical, epic conclusion in this tale of two 19th century British soldiers, rogues really, who set out for the mythical land of Kafiristan in search of fortune and glory. Inevitably, dark clouds of fate follow arrogant kings with a god complex. 

Makes a terrific double-feature with Gunga Din (1939), another Kipling tale that Hollywood got right. Trivia: the Kafiristani woman Connery falls in love with was played by Shakira Baksh, also known as Mrs. Michael Caine, who married her two years before this film was made after declaring Shakira the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Their union endures to this day.
Cinema Uprising copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Handicapping This Year's Best Picture Oscar Nominees

By Steve Evans

Out of nine Best Picture nominees this year, The Shape of Water is favored to win tomorrow night. It’s lavishly produced, weird and strangely compelling in its love story.

Because the Academy has been quirky of late, I’ll say Shape will indeed win.

Here’s my annual effort to break down the contenders and handicap the race. Let me be clear. These thoughts have less to do with artistic merit than with Oscar politics, past trends and an intuitive sense of how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences chooses Oscar winners for maximum self-aggrandizement...so:

Jordan Peele's Get Out, a thriller with horror and science fiction elements, was probably the most profitable film of the year with a $252 million-plus worldwide gross against a $4.5 million budget. It's scary and funny, and the makers of the film pushed hard after the fact to play up the picture as a racial allegory, instead of just leaving it as a black comedy, yeah, pun intended. Instead, the film comes off as a reverse-racist polemic to some viewers. Controversy might be good for box office, though seldom for Academy Awards. And despite the ignorance of film critics hailing Get Out for originality, the picture is highly derivative of films like The Clonus Horror, Coma and The Island. Get Out and freshman director Peele will have to settle for the honor of nominations only. He now has the clout to make plenty more films and establish a track record that could lead to an eventual win.

Dunkirk and Darkest Hour – both stories of Brits during World War II – will cancel each other out.

Call Me by Your Name is handicapped by the fact that a film about gay boys won Best Picture last year, and Hollywood is not inclined to overdo it.

Lady Bird is a sweet little comedy-drama about a gal’s coming of age in the shadow of a difficult mother. But that’s it. The film just…ends. Not nearly enough gravitas for a Best Picture win.

The Post and Phantom Thread are both prestige productions directed by and starring some of the top talent working today. Problem is, neither found a wide audience. The Post is overwrought with odd character quirks, which are distracting, and a focus on so much inside baseball about newspaper operations that the greater issue at stake is obscured. Scotch that one. Phantom is reputed to be Daniel Day-Lewis’ acting swansong – and he may just pull an upset for Best Actor over Gary Oldman, but in the age of #MeToo the film’s tale of toxic masculinity is not going to sit well with Academy voters ever conscious of appearances.

That leaves Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.  Any other year, this would be the runaway favorite. It’s got bleeding-edge social issues, powerhouse acting and delivers an unflinching look at rural America. But. As some critics have observed, this is also a black comedy directed by a Brit, taking some easy potshots at America’s rural South. My point is, the tone of the film is off, never quite believable, though the actors try mightily to sell the story. In sum, it’s flawed.

So we’re left with The Shape of Water, the strange story of a mute woman in love with an aquatic lizard man who escapes his government captors. This is what you get when you cross The Fugitive with The Creature from the Black Lagoon, only this time the gal is not screaming and has even brought her own condoms. I made up that last part. On balance, this is high fantasy, beautifully produced and powerfully romantic, plus it delivers a unique twist on some familiar cinematic tropes. All of this is a semi-fancy way of saying The Shape of Water is a novelty of pure escapism that puts a balm on the frayed nerves of modern moviegoers living in a surreal world of their own with Trump, Kim Jong, et. al. doing crazy things most every day.  Count on The Shape of Water to win.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Come for the Oscar, Stay for the Dissolution

By Steve Evans

Some win Golden Globes and Oscars. Others get stuck on Sunset Boulevard (1950) and end up floating face down in swimming pools. Boulevard of Broken Dreams, as Tony Bennett likes to sing.

Though I mainly invest my time on this blog trying to keep film classics alive, now and again there comes occasion to resurrect some obscure band I used to love that will kick your ass if given half the chance. So it is with bassist/lead singer Johnette Napolitano and her group. This is one of the all-time great rock videos. Phil Spector did not produce.

Hit it.



Cinema Uprising copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Little Donald's Bitter Lament

By Steve Evans

He may think he's as ruthless and capable as Michael Corleone. He certainly has the foul temper of Sonny. But wee Donald Trump shows himself increasingly as nothing more than a frail and insecure Fredo. Take him fishing. Please.

We're Down for a Remake of Death Wish

By Steve Evans

The original Death Wish (1974) with big Charlie Bronson is an exploitation classic -- and like Dirty Harry three years earlier -- a product of its high-crime time. Bronson plays a pacifist architect whose family is attacked in a home invasion. His wife is murdered. His daughter is left catatonic. Charlie follows the only sensible course of action: he acquires a gun and goes out every night killing muggers, would-be rapists and other miscreants who spark his wrath.

Audiences ate it up.

The movie spawned four sequels. Inevitable, then, that we would eventually get a re-do of this seminal film. The original made Bronson a star at 53 after 20 years of film work. Death Wish remains the role with which he is most closely associated. And the picture holds up nearly 45 years since its release. The film benefits especially from an older actor in the lead, as the notion of a deadly vigilante demands portrayal by an older man possessed of self-control, discipline and the resolve to not get caught. Remakes usually annoy the hell out of me, as does director Eli Roth, who may well be a certifiable lunatic but is at least consistent and dedicated in his thematic concerns. Chief among these is revenge (Tarantino works the same turf).  The trailer below is very slick and accomplishes a difficult trick: counteracting potential cries of racism and fascism (as were levied against the original) by remaking the hero as a kindly doctor who cares for people of all creeds and races. The trailer makes clear he's out for revenge and, eventually (inevitably?), he embraces the thrill of killing bad guys without mercy and in increasingly gruesome ways. But mostly it's about revenge.
Having invested some time pursuing this subject, I've discovered that the idea of revenge is far more satisfying than the actual getting of revenge, which carves out some of your soul and leaves you diminished. Because movies enable us to live vicariously, looks like I'll just have to pony up coin for a ticket to the remake of Death Wish. It looks tight. Great cast, too. Besides Bruce Willis, who is aging nicely in his role as senior statesman of action-film badassery, we have Vincent D’Onofrio, Elisabeth Shue, Dean Norris (DEA agent Hank on Breaking Bad) and Mike Epps. I'm sure Willis is serviceable in the role, even if he's no Bronson. Big Charlie always looked so ferocious he probably didn't need a gun to take out the street trash. Charlie could insert the damn bullets manually if he wanted to. He could level a scowl and give villains a stink-eye and they would drop like shoo-flies on a hot summer day. He sweated testosterone sufficient to kill a dozen strong men. I tell you, Bronson was tuff. Still, Willis is always fun to watch, going back almost 30 years to his breakout role in Die Hard.

But there's another, subtle, reason this remake will fascinate. Experience and my cynical nature tell me this picture will play audiences like a grand piano -- pushing buttons, eliciting reactions, jerking with emotions. Hitchcock was a master at this; Roth considerably less so. But I'll take what I can get. As an amateur anthropologist, watching an audience watch Death Wish is almost as entertaining as checking out the film itself. There's nothing quite like the sight of a crowd responding to pure cinema. Originally set for a fall 2017 release, the film was pushed back without explanation to March 2, though I suspect the October mass shooting in Las Vegas may have precipitated the studio's decision. While neither bears any relation to the other, delicate sensibilities can set off an online firestorm -- and studios are all about keeping up appearances while protecting their investment. Word is, the remake is coming out with a hard-R rating typical of Roth and befitting the film's tone. This is not a date movie, but you guessed as much, didn't ya?

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.