I watched two classic 1970s New York City movies this week -- Taxi Driver and The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three. And I liked the latter a lot more than the former.

Pelham is by far the best Quentin Tarantino film ever made, and he was 11 years old when it came out. It's a classic thriller about the hijacking of a subway train -- identified by the location and time of its departure in the Bronx -- with a stellar cast and fantastic shots of early 1970s New York. Great scenes in Union Square and along Lafayette Street and Fourth Avenue, and a car crash staged next to the cube on Astor Place, when there was a "Gourmet Treats" store where the Starbucks is now.

And of course, a lot of wonderful subway footage from the era when subway signs were not color-coded, and were hand-cranked. And the fare was 35 cents. The best line (of many contenders), from an irascible train dispatcher: "Screw the goddamn passengers! What the hell did they expect for their lousy 35 cents -- to live forever?"

And one of the single best endings of any movie, ever. Oh! And a whiny egotistic mayor who is a dead ringer for Ed Koch, years before anyone had ever even heard of him.

Meanwhile, Taxi Driver is a disturbing film that's not much fun to watch. Aside from the nostalgia shots of the city, the part I enjoyed most was seeing Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel and Jodie Foster so young, long before they were superstars. The acting is superb, but they've all made much better movies and so has Scorcese. The writing and direction are heavy-handed, and I don't find the "grit" of 1970s New York all that romantic or interesting. These characters are nowhere near as compelling as Hoffman and Voight in Midnight Cowboy; they have no sweetness or innocence or depth. Overall you just want to take a shower after seeing it.

Tags: movies, subways

I saw Frost/Nixon last night with rednoodlealien and doodlegoat and was rather disappointed. On its own as a film it is in some ways magnificent -- Frank Langella in particular is very good -- but fails in that it sets up a story of the callow David Frost meeting the Goliath of Richard Nixon and after three days of failing miserably, finally succeeding in getting him to make an enormous confession. But it's not clear why. A bizarre (and entirely fictional) late-night phone call from Nixon causes Frost to suddenly get serious and, over a weekend, study up enough on Watergate to go toe-to-toe with Nixon. Really? Just three days made him able to challenge one of the smartest and most devious men in history?

Meanwhile Nixon, who in the film is shown as doing these interviews for the sole purpose of rebuilding his reputation, suddenly capitulates? Why? It's utterly arbitrary and therefore unsatisfying; you cannot believe that either of these characters would have made the transition that they did. Even as a film, without reference to the history, it does not work.

As history, it's much worse. There are a few important things left out of the film. First and foremost, Nixon didn't make that admission. The transcript of the interview is shamelessly edited to almost completely reverse what Nixon actually did say, as several commentators have pointed out.

Secondly, the film is set up as a gladiatorial battle, in which only one of the two combatants can come out victorious. This is not what happened. Nixon was not only paid for the interview, he was given a sizeable cut of the profits. So it was in his considerable financial interest to make them successful. So by offering up some juicy Watergate tidbits, he gave Frost the victory he needed and ensured some financial security for himself. It was good for both of them and Peter Morgan in fact said he could have written it to have Nixon "win" with as much historical justification.

I think the thing that disturbed me most, though, was that Langella portrayed Nixon as in many ways a likeable man. He wasn't. He was nasty and vengeful and probably as close to evil as any American President has been, and to portray him as a sympathetic character is not only dishonest but disturbing.

Tags: movies, politics

For the second time in a few weeks I went to see a movie based on a book I like very much, and watched a film with a new ending, written to suit the conventions of Hollywood, that significantly changed the entire point of the book.

But whereas I left The Golden Compass commiserating with friends over how bad it was, none of us walking out of I Am Legend could say anything for a few minutes. It's a terrifying and deeply disturbing film, with a brilliant performance by Will Smith, that does change the book significantly but does so thoughtfully, and in ways that sometimes actually improve on the original (which I wrote about a few posts ago).

( The below assumes you've read the book and seen the movie, and contains spoilers )

Side note to the filmmakers: Bob Marley made at least two (and maybe as many as five) albums that could arguably be considered the "greatest album ever made." But Legend, a shallow greatest hits collection assembled by his U.S. record company years after he died, is not one of them.

Tags: movies

M. Night Shyamalan's latest starts well, with a compellingly creepy atmosphere and hints of something Very Wrong in a small rural town. But once he exposes the central plot trick, it's all downhill from there.

( Beware spoilers... )

Tags: movies

Michael Moore has been bashing Pete Townsend in interviews for refusing to allow "Won't Get Fooled Again" to be used in Fahrenheit 9/11. (It would have been used in place of Neil Young's "Rockin In the Free World" at the very end of the film, following Bush's "Fool me once..." quote.) But according to Townsend, that wasn't what happened. Townsend says he was initially concerned because he felt Bowling For Columbine was a "bullying film," and points out that "Won't Get Fooled Again" is neither an anti-war song nor a rallying cry for an election. (And Moore himself expresses discomfort with the line, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.") Townsend concludes,

I greatly resent being bullied and slurred by [Moore] in interviews just because he didn’t get what he wanted from me. It seems to me that this aspect of his nature is not unlike that of the powerful and wilful man at the centre of his new documentary.

Is it inevitable that anyone capable of expressing appropriate outrage about what's going on must also indulge in some of the sins of the people who make us so angry?

Tags: movies, politics
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