AFI 100 - Ben Hur

From the In Case You Missed It department...

I am going to watch the AFI Top 100 films from 100 to 1 and review (a term I use loosely) each and every one of them.  After I decided to do this, I requested Ben Hur (number 100) from Netflix.  They said I had a short wait.  Then the short wait devolved into a long wait, then back to a short wait, and finally I got the Blu Ray.  It only took three months.  That'll teach me to request Christian movies around Easter time.

So here's the thing.  Ben Hur is weird.  And tedious.  And glorious.  And boring.  And fascinating.

Released in 1959 and... hang on a sec.  1959?!  I was minus eleven years old when this came out!  Ugh.  Anyway, it stars Charlton Heston and a bunch of other people who dress in bed sheets, have no electricity, and are constantly surrounded by matte paintings.  Before the movie even starts however, there's five minutes of an overture.  Snooooze.  Like before we even see the MGM lion logo.  And when the lion shows up, he just stares into space.  THE MGM LION DOES NOT ROAR.

The movie is billed as Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ.  Strangely, Christ is rarely depicted in this overlong film.  When he does show, it's from the back, or from a distance with a shadow (the only shadow in the shot) over his face, or (my favorite) only his hands are shown.  When this happened it reminded me of the Seinfeld 'Man Hands' episode because I will always be thirteen years old.

And this film really showcases the problems Hollywood had in casting people of ethnicity.  Midwesterner WASP Heston plays Judah Ben Hur, a Jewish prince.  I suppose it's still better than when Heston played Mike Vargas, a Mexican, in 1958's A Touch of Evil.

Probably the most heinous example of White Guy Portraying a Person of Color is this:

Welsh born actor Hugh Griffith playing Sheik Ilderim...

whose brown makeup changed shade from scene to scene.  A Middle Eastern actress was, shockingly, cast to play (gasp!) a non-white person, Esther.  Palestinian born Hara Harareet, plays Heston's girlfriend and Hollywood made darn sure that she's a light-skinned Palestinian so that she's as non-threatening as possible.

Anyhoo, Ben Hur rambled this way, then ambled that way, then took a nap under a fig tree, then, hey it's time for the signature moment, the great chariot race!  Except it was kinda not exciting.  As set pieces go, I've rarely seen a more ambitious piece, but I just gotta say, meh.  Sure there was some drama, sure there were some awesome stunts, but the editing was like that helium balloon from that party that has lost most of its buoyancy and is now drifting behind my couch: back then it was nice, but today, mostly limp.  And, AND!, they did the thing I hate most about older movies when they're trying to convey urgency, THEY SPED UP THE FILM!  Like we wouldn't notice or something.  Blegh.

So.  Before I spend more time blathering about this movie than it took me to watch it, I will sum up and move on.  I did not dislike Ben Hur, but I didn't like it either.  It's pretty to look at, but it's too long.  There are some nice dramatic moments, but they're overshadowed by lots of posing and orating.  Some very well done acting is undone by egregious overacting.  I got tired of smug people being on my TV screen.

Simply put, there was not enough good to outweigh the bad.

In my humble yet stupid opinion, this is not the 100th best movie ever made.  If this film is a harbinger of what I'm getting myself into, I may have to fall on my sword long before I ever reach Citizen Kane at number one.

Next up: AFI 99 Toy Story

Waiting For Ben Hur IV

Hi kids.

Just got an email telling me that Ben Hur has been mailed!  Woohoo!  Soon I will begin my much delayed plan of watching the AFI Top 100 Films.  But until that happens, I will regale you with mediocre reviews (synopses? blather?) of what I've been watching in the meantime.

Watched the first two seasons of Justice League.  As a comic book nerd, these are right up my alley.  Dig 'em.  I am frustrated with Netflix for only having the first two seasons.  Gimme the other three!  (to be fair, I have to assume that this is not Netflix's problem but Warner Bros.  Seasons 3-5 aren't available for streaming (legally) anywhere I can find them.) That being said, these are pretty good.  I'm more of a Marvel than DC guy, but I still like these quite a bit.

Binge watched Hemlock Grove on Netflix.  Zzzzzzzz.  This is the worst thing I can imagine.  Let me explain.  There are three kinds of movies (or TV, but for the sake of simplicity, we'll call everything I'm talking about here 'movies'.) There's the good kind; I don't really feel the need to elaborate.  Good is good.  Good is worth watching.  Then there's the bad kind.  Some bad movies are just, well, bad.  They're not worth watching.  But some bad movies are good in a I-can't-believe-this-crap kind of way.  Others are fun to give the MST3K treatment.  But some movies are mediocre.  This, to me, is the biggest sin filmmakers can foist upon the public.  Mediocre is not good enough to be good, not bad-bad enough to just turn off and scrub from your memory, and not bad-good enough to enjoy for their badness.  Mediocre delivers just enough quality to give you hope and then they suck just bad enough to never deliver.  Hemlock Grove was mediocre.

Drive.  I've seen this one before, but I wanted to show it to a friend of mine, so watched it again.  Love it.  Five stars.  This is quality film making.  The confidence of direction to let the silences speak volumes.  Living, breathing characters who are complicated and conflicted.  Wonderful, intimate moments shattered by hyper-violence.  This movie is not for everybody, but I find it to be top shelf.  Outstanding cinema all around.

Moonrise Kingdom.  I an a Wes Anderson fan. Saw Rushmore at the dollar theater and was blown away.  I went again.  I dragged several friends to it.  I saw it there five times.  It, I thought, perfectly captured the angsty disaster that is the unrequited love of an adolescent.  And the unrequited love of a grown man who was still an adolescent.  And the feud between the adolescents.  All of this set to a cracking soundtrack.  I've been an Anderson supporter ever since.  So as I'm watching Moonrise Kingdom, I realize, at about thirty minutes into it, that I'm not connecting with these kids, Sam and Suzy, at all.  I was digging the adult roles (how can you not dig Ed Norton, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) but Sam and Suzy were leaving me cold.  I guess I was struggling with the 'why are they behaving this way' stuff.  Was this film a misstep?   Had I lost my connection to Anderson's works?  Oh, the horror.   Then, THEN, it is revealed that Sam and Suzy are both broken, angry, disillusioned malcontents, and suddenly it all made sense.  I love how Anderson addresses important and powerful human emotions with a sense of tenderness and whimsy while still driving home his point.  This movie is really really good.  So there.

Looper is smart, inventive Sci-Fi.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt is awesome (despite some awkward and unfortunate  makeup), Bruce Willis is always good when he wants to be and here he wants to be, Emily Blunt was spot on as the emotional achor, struggling single mom, and the kid who played the kid did a very good job (I usually don't care much for child actors, but this kid is outstanding.)  Rian Wilson, writer/director, gets this story moving fast and doesn't care if you keep up.  This is an intelligent film with some crazy effects and powerful emotions.  Loved it.

John Carpenter and Kurt Russell.  They're awesome together.  Just look at the awesome that is Escape From New York.  Well, I didn't watch that (not recently, anyway) I watched Big Trouble In Little China.  A fun, occasionally ridiculous romp full of mysticism, ninjas, wizards and a long haul truck driver.  This was one of my favorite films from the 80's and thankfully it still holds up now that I'm entering my dotage.  Two things really stood out to me from this film.  Russell has always had a wonderful head of hair, and I'm always surprised when Kim Cattrall is fully clothed.  Oh, and practical effects are almost always better than CGI.  Suck on that Roland Emmerich.

Ya'll know I loves me some Quentin Tarantino.  I even like the stuff that other people think is his worst.  Yep, I liked Jackie Brown and Death Proof.  But today we're talking about Django Unchained.  Thank god my brainiac coworker hipped me to the proper pronunciation: Duh-jango.  Got it.  Thanks for that.  Later when I said "The Duh-jingos ate my baby" he didn't get that I was making fun of him.  ANYway, I get the feeling that if Tarantino somehow directed a narrative from a Chinese takeout menu, I would be enthralled.  Some directors just seem to speak my language.  Or I theirs, I suppose.  Whenever I'm two hours into a film but it feels like forty-five minutes, I know that the experience is good.  As one would expect from QT, great writing and direction, strong acting, offensive language, buckets of gore and good old fashioned revenge.  Yay!

Okay.  That's all I gots today, cool kids.

Laters.