Tonight I am not mad after the Oscars. I do not feel compelled to read movie reviews that share my negative view of the winner. I do not feel the need to read anything. I feel at peace. Tonight after the first Oscars in some time, I can actually sleep.
I liked Anora. I loved Flow. While I didn’t agree with all the choices, nothing (from my knowledge of the films I did see) was an out-an-out horrible choice.
Thank you, Academy, for not pissing me off this year. I really need the sleep.
Sometimes you see an Oscars list, and you’re happy to see not what IS on it, but what isn’t. Some idealistic prognosticators theorized that this buzzy little tennis film called Challengers (2024) would get a bid. After all, its music had won a Golden Globe.
The only thing more annoying than the film, I can safely say, is that music.
I watched the movie out of lethargy. Anora (2024) had just completed, and Challengers started playing. I watched for a bit, idly thinking, “This has to get more interesting.”
Forty-five minutes in, I thought, “No, it really doesn’t” and turned it off.
I turned the movie on again a week later, committed to discovering what others saw in it, and can now say I liked it–the last five minutes, that is. I yawned through every minute of the rest.
So here’s what I saw:
There are some scenes of tennis, in which I had no stake.
There were some characters, so thinly developed I felt nothing for them–not even dislike. They reminded me of the fly that got into my home the other day after surviving the cold. It buzzed here. It buzzed there. No one could say why. I did watch it. I watched Zendaya too. She’s pretty. I liked her clothes. She flitted here; she flitted there. She frowned a lot, sometimes in sunglasses.
There are two other characters. There’s some implication they all want to have sex. The preview suggests that, as does the brief scene it captures. Actually, they don’t. They don’t seem to like anything, including sex. A sandwich is eaten with more relish than they gaze at each other. The sandwich was my second favorite part.
The tennis was at least more active than the characters’ faces. Right when I would wonder, “What is the point of this?” some loud, abrupt, terrible music would come in, but only after a very awkward pause, kind of like an angry teenager turning on speakers full blast to drown out parents, but a teenager unaccustomed to how speakers work. Then the music would go away for no reason, and then come back. Much like my fly. EDM is bad enough at any time, but I’ve never experienced a less artful use of music in any film, at any time. Apparently, this is what wins an original score award at the Golden Globes these days.
And besides the last five minutes, which I did enjoy?
Laura is a curious film. I always think of it as the male gaze on steroids, as we know so little of the heroine apart from the versions we get from the men who surround her: the portrait artist, the boyfriend, the best friend and the cop. All are obsessed with her, and all want their version of the murdered heroine to supersede the others.’
That’s why I chose the film for A Haunting Blogathon: In the Afterlife, hosted by the Classic Movie Blog Association. Crime writer James Ellroy once said something about Laura being the ultimate film for cops, and I think he’s right: the victim you only learn of from diaries, from photos, from others’ words. You never quite know who she was.
Surely, it would be easy for those driven to solve a homicide (especially one that remains out of reach) to become possessive about what they know and haunted by what they don’t. (Ellroy, whose mother was murdered, explores his own haunting in My Dark Places, a fascinating read, as is the book that inspired him: Joseph Wambaugh’s true-crime masterpiece, TheOnion Field.)
It’s not hard to imagine becoming enamored with and fascinated by a victim who looks like Gene Tierney. In this particular story, however, the hauntings turn from reasonable to pathological.
What I love about the film is that the versions of Laura these men (and one woman) tell don’t quite add up. Her housekeeper, Bessie (Dorothy Adams), describes Laura as the sweetest lady on earth, and certainly Gene Tierney’s perfect face and that sentimental theme song seem to confirm those impressions.
But would such an angel be best friends with Waldo Lydecker, enjoying his poisonous remarks about her admirer and fellow party guests, as we see her do (in his version of her story, of course)?
Is she really a woman who, as fiancé Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price) claims, will indulge any visitor, day or night? He has treated his bride-to-be like a doormat. Since he wants to continue to do so, this tenderhearted version of Laura is convenient for him. But Laura does, in fact, dump him, and despite occasional remarks seems little affected by the poor woman (cheater or not) who got killed in her doorway. Not exactly the heart-on-her-sleeve, always-forgiving softie he takes her for.
Of course, Lydecker isn’t wrong in accusing Det. Lt. Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews), Laura’s most recent admirer, of being a creep. McPherson wants to buy a portrait of her when she’s dead and becomes instantly possessive of her after she returns to life.
Who instantly hits on a stranger (worse than that, assumes she’s already his) while she’s still in shock?
Even if she is vulnerable enough to think she’s in love too, it would be wise and kind to wait–I dunno–48 hours? He also chooses for the moment of his wooing a party during which the following things are happening to his new love:
Her fiancé has basically just said to her, “Yeah, I know you killed my lover, and that’s cool,” after inviting said lover into Laura’s home and into her clothes during the latter’s wedding week.
Someone has just been murdered in Laura’s home, and this cop/admirer has invited people over to it for a gathering before she’d had time to sage it, obsessively clean it, or call a real estate agent to put it on the market.
Her aunt, Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson), has confessed–casually, I might add–that she’s toyed with murdering Laura herself.
And oh yeah, our heroine is still in grave danger from the best friend who tried to off her.
Our infatuated cop follows up this uproariously fun party by pretending he’s arresting her, ruining her reputation in front of her friends, because he can’t control his feelings without taking her into the police station. Ummm, what?
McPherson is right that Laura has surrounded herself by “dopes”–if by dopes he means a heartless group of friends and lovers, with some sociopathy in the mix. He’s just wrong not to include himself in the description. Andrews is quite handsome and feigns calm (with his trusty toy), so it’s easy to think of this detective as the hero in the beginning, but that impression soon wanes.
Right after returning home and shocking Bessie, Laura says gently, “I’m not a ghost, really,” and then jokes, “Have you ever heard a ghost ask for eggs?” But her claims ring hollow. Though she’s physically in the room, I would argue Laura still is a ghost through no fault of her own. Real/imagined impressions of her haunt her admirers and herself.
Actual men are also looming in her life, refusing to let her be who she wants to be, love whom she wants to love, or take five minutes to recover from life-altering trauma. And then there’s the method her best friend chose to kill her with: buckshot (interesting that Waldo doesn’t even reconsider that method during his second attempt). It’s not bad enough he wants to kill her. He wants to obliterate her.
If I were Laura’s true friend (or her therapist), I’d say, “Hey, honey. It time to hightail it out of town. A transfer overseas would be ideal. Also, you may want to keep that phone number unlisted.”
Today I’m starting a new series for this blog for all of us who haven’t slept in months and fear we won’t for some time: Gloriously Silly Scenes. We all need some sweetness and light right now, and luckily for all of you, I have been self-medicating on fluffy joy in movie form since two of my aunts, Betty and Ellen, introduced me to Teddy in Arsenic and Old Lace as a child. My two sisters and I would run around my aunt’s room, shouting “Charge!!” with one arm aloft as we watched the film, giggling hysterically.
My effort to seek silly films became a fully deliberate act due to two life-changing events in my teens: 1. My discovery of USA Up All Night. 2. The moment my good friend Carrie and I went to see Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) in the theater. To all of you who love cry-laughing in silent rooms, to all of you amused by what was never intended to be funny at all, and to all of you who embrace deeply weird and/or unabashedly ridiculous humor, you will understand that the impossibly grim opening credits of Joeversus the Volcano were a revelation to me. The choice of “Sixteen Tons.” The mud. The one flower. The evocation of old labor folklore (I kept thinking of John Henry). It wasn’t just silly. It was thrillingly so.
The whole film is a treasure. I could write a poem about the suitcase shopping sequence alone. But for this moment, I’d like to pause on comic gem Dan Hedaya, who would crack up an entirely different generation as the affectionate father/terrifying litigator/threatener of potential dates in Clueless. In Joe vs. the Volcano, he is the boss of three employees: one dour, but expressive silent man; the despondent Joe (Tom Hanks); and the almost deflated but somehow still chipper-while-sniffling assistant (Meg Ryan).
The office scene opens with the clatter of a typewriter and the buzz of failing overhead lights. The whole scene is bathed in sickening shades of yellow and blue. As you take in the comically awful office, with decor that brings back my impressions of “break rooms” in fast food restaurants in the 80s or those airport smoking lounges when the bans started taking effect, you hear the boss (Hedaya) in the background, talking on the phone:
“I know he can get the job, but can he do the job? Harry. Yeah, Harry, but can he do the job? I know he can get the job, but can he do the job? I’m not arguing that with you. I’m not arguing that with you. I’m not arguing that with you. I’m not arguing that with you, Harry! Harry, Harry, yeah Harry, but can he do the job? I know he can get the job, but can he do the job? I’m not arguing that with you….Who said that? I didn’t say that. If I said that, I would have been wrong….I’m not arguing that with you. Yeah, Harry. I know he can get the job….”
As his boss talks, Joe walks in and tries to hang his hat on the coat rack, but it breaks. He attempts to make coffee with that awful chalky powdered creamer, empty cups everywhere.
The boss’s infuriating refrain (awesomely comic, thanks to Hedaya’s delivery) couples perfectly with Joe’s return from his lunch break, where he received dire news about his health. We aren’t surprised that Joe finds his workplace repellant afterward (he describes it as a “sink”). What’s ridiculous is that it took him four and half years to recognize it.
After he quits and the boss belittles him in response, Joe says, “I should say something,” the catalyst for the film. The fact that Joe says this aloud, the fact that anyone who spent five minutes in that room would need a moment of insight to leave, the boss’s and assistant’s befuddlement that anyone would quit–any one of these things would be hilarious. In concert, they are genius.
There really is nothing like Tom Hanks in breakdown mode, as anyone who has seen The Money Pit knows. And after Joe decides to quit, he begins a funny rant about his job, claiming that the fluorescent “zombie” lights are “sucking the juice” out of his eyeballs and that the coffee “tastes like arsenic.” His transition from lethargy to energy is exhilarating, as is his combination of giddy physical comedy and dry, understated truth-telling.
In case you don’t have time for the whole film and need the laughs, here’s the start of the scene and the moment Joe quits. This was my pre-Office Space bad job film, and it has never been supplanted in my affections.
If you can, watch the whole film. It’s an oddly philosophical story (written by the man who penned Doubt). The Ossie Davis cameo is amazing. It’s that rare film that lets Ryan flex her full comic muscles instead of making her ride on charm. And the film reveals Hanks at his comic best.
As for the rest of the film, airtight suitcases, orange soda, and brain clouds. What’s not to love?
(If you have any gloriously silly scene requests, let me know!)
Episode 2 of the femme fatales season of Nobody Knows Anything is up!! Dangerous Liaisons, a film that pits the dueling wits of Glenn Close and John Malkovitch against each other in a fight over love and power . . . . and also, Keanu Reeves is there, being strangely perfect in eighteenth-century dress. We ask this critical question: Can the femme fatale ever win? (Just why Close didn’t get the Oscar for this is a big mystery.)
My new podcast season on femme fatales with Brian Wilkins and Michael Gutierrez releases today, and we begin with one of my favorite films, Leave Her to Heaven.
We chat about the strange canoe launch that begins the film, Tierney’s impossible beauty, the unfathomable hero–who wanted to marry this brilliant, fascinating beauty but never share her bed–and her troubling response to that marital issue. Join us here!
The first time you see Van Heflin (Lord Gerald Waring Gaythorne) in A Woman Rebels (1936), his debut role, you do a double take.
I had to look closer, to make sure it was indeed Van Heflin and not Leslie Howard. A word I never thought I’d apply to him is slight. He’s quite slender in it, but it’s not so much his form as his lack of presence–such a strange first impression of a gravely-voiced, burly sailor-turned actor who is riveting as a farmer in Shane, a suffering family man in 3:10 to Yuma, a powerful adventurer in Green Dolphin Street and hero in The Three Musketeers. The actor who would later fairly sing with physicality and gravitas seems so forgettable in his first moments onscreen, even timid. Luckily, he has a promising second act late in the film.
The story begins with Heflin playing the rake who tempts a Victorian heroine, Pamela Thistlewaite (Katharine Hepburn). We don’t see the charm and sex appeal that are so seductive and sinister in The Prowler and charming in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. (It seemed fitting that the repeat scene of his seductions is literally Madame Tussauds wax museum.) Later love interest Thomas Lane (Herbert Marshall) comes across as more attractive than Heflin. Read that sentence again. Yeah, that bad.
But late in the film, Lord Gaythorne returns as a bitter middle-aged man who despises his wife (who is not Pamela). And suddenly, in a lounging jacket of all things, you see it: THERE HE IS.
The slow confidence of Heflin’s stroll. HIs measured way of speaking. His intensity as he describes his hatred of his spouse. There is the compelling actor I fell hard for in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. The always naturalistic performer whose moments onscreen are so believable, visceral and real. The man who isn’t conventionally attractive, yet is so sensual because he’s so confident and alive. The kind of actor he will be is not fully on the screen yet, but you see his promise.
The film itself is not great but ahead of its time, based on a 1930 novel by brave feminist Netta Syrett, who also had feminist artist sisters–or, as they were called then, “new women.” And while everyone around her is lackluster, Katharine Hepburn nails the role.
Pamela has a child out of wedlock, passes it for her sister’s, and then has a stunning career as an outspoken writer/editor speaking out for women’s rights and other issues. In between, she has a funny meet-cute scene with Thomas.
The film and many of the characters (I won’t reveal which) refuse to shame Pamela for her actions, even when her secret threatens her and her daughter’s happiness. The movie falls in the same camp as Hepburn’s other intriguing feminist roles from the 30s, such as Christopher Strong.
The story is unevenly told with some weird plot holes, and you have to suffer through some weak female performances and the aforementioned drags-down-everything Marshall. He doesn’t have quite as sleep-inducing of an effect as George Brent, but close. Sadly, this may be his most charming performance, and yet–look at this expression and tell me you don’t feel like you took a sedative.
You have to wonder with some smoother plotting and better acting around her whether the film could have really been something, as fascinating and unconventional as it was, instead of yet another bomb that got her in box-office-poison trouble. It doesn’t help that Hepburn has zero chemistry with either of her love interests.
Luckily, there’s enough in Hepburn’s performance and the surprises of the story to keep you watching. And to see that beginning of Heflin’s allure is quite fun. You have to love Hepburn recommending Heflin’s casting after seeing him in a play. (And how much would you have liked to have seen them perform on stage together with his version of the Jimmy Stewart character in The Philadelphia Story?) She knew even in the mid-30s what he had in him. Yet another of the thousand reasons to adore the great Kate.
Check out other striking debuts and final acting performances in the Classic Movie Blog Association’s Screen Debuts and Last Hurrahs blogathon this week!
I’ve ranted about the films I didn’t watch–and didn’t want to–but three of the films nominated for Oscars this year are great films.
NO spoilers.
American Fiction. Clever, funny, and original, this satire/dramedy delivers genuine laughs while also addressing heartbreak. We also experience a mature commentary on race we so rarely see on film. Great performances: Jeffery Wright is dead on, nuanced and believable; Issa Rae is fun; and Sterling Brown is compelling. I particularly loved that scene when he dances with his mom. Great acting all through. I still haven’t seen Rustin and suspect Colman Domingo definitely deserves the Oscar. But of those I have seen who are nominated, I wish Wright would get it for his subtle, winning performance. Of course, it won’t happen.
As someone who has been in higher ed, writing, and publishing, I loved the way the film skewered these professions. Clearly, Cord Jefferson knows what he is talking about. I kept wondering how the film would end–there’s no real way to tie this one in a bow without trivializing the problems with racism that are aired, so I liked that Jefferson didn’t take the easy way out. This one is likely to be a film I watch over and over. Obviously, Jefferson should have been up for best director. I suspect of all the films up for Oscars this year, this one will endure the longest.
TheZone of Interest. How clever to focus a Holocaust film not on the evil doers’ atrocities, but on the simpler, more everyday trait of turning a blind eye to others’ tragedies. There’s an uneasy feeling as you watch, of how many times you shut off the news, how many times you try not to think about others’ suffering throughout the world. This film, unlike the bloated movies that are nominated for best editing, is VERY well edited, with perfect, often unexpected choices. It’s relentless in its focus and powerful in its impact. It has a documentary feel to it, and I love how true director Jonathan Glazer, made the choice to fictionalize less than the source material, relying on actual letters and histories to authentically capture this horrifying family.
Anatomy of a Fall. First of all, Sandra Hüller deserves an Oscar for this role. What a performance! Many people have said that this film is really about a marriage. And it is–a very complicated, intensely believable marriage. If that were all that this movie did, it would deserve an Oscar nomination. But it does something more. This film is truly about a child and what he lives with, not knowing if his mother might be guilty of killing his father. This is a perspective we too rarely see on film (or even on documentary coverages of crime), and it’s devastatingly captured here. Wow. Also, this kid is something. The director, Justine Triet, definitely deserves this nomination.
And, while I’m here, one final wish denied: Andrew Scott gave a stunning performance in All of Us Strangers. Actually, Claire Foy deserved a nod for that film too. Definitely worth the watch if you can take a little weirdness.
