To Live and Die in L.A.

I ran across:

To Live and Die in L.A. (1985),

and it seemed cool, so I watched it.

This movie is based on the novel of the same name by former US Secret Service agent Gerald Petievich, who also co-wrote the script with the director William Fridkin, yes he of Exorcist fame.

Our main protagonist is William Chance (William Petersen), a Secret Service agent with a love for recklessness. His partner Jim Hart (Michael Greene) is a few days from retirement when he is killed at a solo stake out hunting the notorious forger Eric Masters (Willem DaFoe). Chance swears to get Masters by any means necessary, and together with his new partner John Vukovich (John Pankow) they get to work blurring the line between justice and revenge.

All I wrote above is a huge cliché, but being made in '85, To Live and Die in L.A. kind of gets a pass on that. To be fair, the movie is a visual celebration of 80's cinema in general. Chance stares at the ocean while brooding on his partners murder. The sunset shots of L.A. are dime a dozen shots these days, but I think they work.

Besides the names I mentioned, To Live and Die in L.A. also stars John Turturro, Dean Stockwell, Robert Downey Sr, Steve James and more. The names might not mean much to you, but anyone who has watched movies from this era knows their faces well. All told, this movie has some sterling actors, and it shows.

A quick note about the music. If you like 80's music, To Live and Die in L.A. has a great score. Let's leave it at that. It works.

Now lets look at Friedkin. I've seen a handful of his movies by now; The Exorcist, The French Connection, Sorcerer, Cruising, the video for Laura Branigan's song Self Control, and now To Live and Die in L.A.

I've come to understand his style a bit, a gritty sense of realism overlaid with a gloomy, almost grim sense of doom. You get the feeling that, besides the obvious danger, there is something sinister just around the corner, something nasty hovering behind the camera waiting to pounce. With Friedkin you never know if things are going to be alright. They might not be.

To Live and Die in L.A. is no exception. Shots of palm trees swaying hard in the wind, silhouetted against a red smog gives the feeling that things are not well. There is a fair amount of nudity and sex in this movie, but it isn't erotic and exciting. Friedkin makes it all seem tawdry and a bit nasty. It's more about sating a need than emotion, like watching someone wolf down food. It's hunger more then enjoyment. There is also a fair bit of blood, but set against the rest of the movie, it seems almost trivial.There isn't really a good guy here as lines become more and more ill defined as the end increasingly justifes the means.

So, do I recommend this movie? Absolutely. To Live and Die in L.A. is not a masterpiece, it is absolutely an 80's action thriller, from its neon green credits to the music and the frankly cliché plot points, but it's also something more. Lots of movies do the 'tormented maverick out for revenge' thing, but I have rarely seen it done as well as Friedkin does it in To Live and Die in L.A.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great week!

 

Gotti

I decided to watch:

Gotti (1996).

This HBO movie has been called the most accurate mafia movie ever by former made man Michael Franzese and I can see why.

Starring in the main role as John Gotti, we have veteran actor Armand Assante, and his co-stars including William Forsythe, Anthony Quinn and no less than five future Sopranos members. Gotti was at the time the most popular movie HBO had produced and in fact became the springboard for The Sopranos.

The movie starts in 1973 and concludes in 1992 and takes us and Gotti from the boss of a small crew in the New York Gambino family to the very top. There isn't all that much more I can say about the plot. There is a lot of talking, even more shouting and some murders as one would expect. Surprisingly enough, Gotti isn't a very violent movie despite the killings.

With a cast like this, it is no surprise that the scenes are mostly pretty good, and the music is what it is supposed to be, but I have a big problem with this movie; there is no real coherent plot. Gotti is essentially a collection of scenes set in chronological order but the flow is almost non existent. It felt to me like the writers sat down and wrote out the isolated scenes and then the director filmed them and that is that. I wasn't expecting Goodfellas, but some cohesion would have been nice. In a movie that spans 20 years you get no proper passage of time. Sure, Gotti's hair gets a bit grayer and he dresses nicer, but otherwise the story feels like it took twenty months not years. It rushes through some events, and dwells on others and maybe I missed something, but I was genuinely surprised at the poor flow.

That said, Gotti is by no means a bad movie, but it would have benefited greatly from better editing. Do we really need to see the FBI agents drinking in a club, depressed at Gotti's latest acquittal? No, we don't. The feds can remain anonymous unless they are important as individuals like in Donnie Brasco. Did we need to see Gotti visiting his dying friend and crew member in a hospital and hand feeding him the filling in a cannoli? Again, no. Would I have liked to see more than one scene on the final decision to kill the current boss of the family? Yes. You get the point, I'm sure.

So, do I recommend this movie? If you are interested in the subject matter, then yes I do. We are talking about the real events that surrounded a mob boss who was made Time Magazines Man of the Year after all, and that is fascinating, but if you only want an entertaining mob movie, there are others that are just better films. Gotti is not a bad movie, but disappointingly it's not great either.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!

 

The Conversation

For once I watched a movie that I haven't looked forward to, in fact, I can't remember where I heard of it, but I watched:

The Conversation (1974).

This thriller was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and has a pretty good cast. I'd even argue it has an unnecessarily good cast. Gene Hackman is our main star, Harry Caul, which is fine, but his assistant, Stan, is played by John Cazale yet only appears in three or four scenes. Harry's sort of girlfriend is played by Teri Garr and only appears in one scene. Robert Duvall appears in one and a half scene and is uncredited for some reason. Harrison Ford is well cast and has decent screen time. Please understand that I'm not really complaining, but these wonderful actors are wasted in such short scenes. Practically any actor that looks the part would do, and yes, I do get that we're talking early 70's, and some names weren't that big yet, but both Cazale and Duvall were in The Godfather, so it's not like they weren't well known.

Oh well, we're here to talk about The Conversation. Harry Caul is the preeminent electronic surveillance expert in the country. His legendary skills have landed him a job for The Director (Duvall). Harry and his team photograph and record a couple talking in a busy square and their conversation turns very serious. The job done, Harry contacts the client but only gets to meet The Director's assistant (Ford) who pays him, but in a fit of pique Harry refuses, stating he'll only hand over the tapes to the Director personally.

Harry's problem is that he is a very moral man, or at least he tries to be. He is also extremely private and somewhat paranoid. A famous job he did in the 60's led to three people dying, and he feels responsible. He is worried that the couple is in danger, and he becomes torn between his professionalism and the money it brings and his religion and conscience. That is all I'm willing to say to avoid spoilers.

The Conversation clocks in at just under two hours, and despite being a typically slow 70's movie, it isn't boring. There are scenes that I wondered about, feeling that they seemed a bit unnecessary, but there is no wasted space in this movie. Every piece of the puzzle is important, even though they don't make sense at first. Remember, The Conversation was made in a time when the audience was assumed to be watching the movie instead of playing with their phones.

With Coppola's direction and the cast we have, The Conversation is absolute quality, no doubt about that. However, it is a very different creature that either The Godfather parts one and two or Apocalypse Now. It is realistic, almost unpleasantly so, but at the same time it grabs you and demands to watch Harry's conflict to the end.

The sound is also worth mentioning. The music itself is fine, nothing out of place but there is a lot of other sounds as well. There is electronic interference picked up by microphones and this eerie panicked noise that raises the tension mirroring Harry's anxiety perfectly. Superb work there.

So, do I recommend this movie? Absolutely, if that wasn't made clear by the fact that my only “complaint” is that the actors are too good. The Conversation is not made for passive background watching, but if you pay attention, it is a great movie.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great week!

 

The Decembrists

Today we're jumping into history again, this time with the 1800's Russian revolutionaries, The Decembrists.

This is a two part documentary on The Decembrists who plotted against the Russian Tsar over at the Epic History Youtube channel.

I really don't have that much more to say except enjoy and that's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!   

 

The Battle of Algiers

I finally sat down and watched:

The Battle of Algiers (1966).

First off, this Italian-Algerian movie is black and white and apart from one line delivered by an American journalist, it is completely in French and Arabic. Unless you are fluent in these languages, you will need the subtitles. The Battle of Algiers is not a movie to have on in the background, you need to pay attention.

The movie takes place over a period of time (1954-62) in Algiers, then a French colony. We meet Ali La Pointe, a young street punk who gets by on scams. He gets sent to prison where he becomes radicalized and joins the fledgling FLN (National Liberation Front).

The FLN begins by killing French police officers and soon graduates to bombing cafes, despite checkpoints and police crackdowns. The increasing violence brings the French paratroopers to Algiers, troops who were used to fighting insurgents in French Indochina. The paratroopers, led by Lt. Col. Mathieu (Jean Martin, the only trained actor in the movie) soon turn the tide on the FLN and things get very ugly incredibly quickly. Colonel Mathieu has no qualms about using torture to crack the FLN cells, believing in the simple fact that to win, you need to do what must be done.

The Battle of Algiers is directed by Gillo Pontecorvo who also co-wrote the soundtrack with Ennio Morricone. Pontecorvo basically chose to make the movie look like a newsreel, despite there being no actual news footage in the entire film. He chose to use normal people to heighten the sense of realism, with Jean Martin being the only exception. Despite playing such a ruthless character, Martin lost his standing as a French actor for signing a petition to give Algiers its independence.

Being two hours long, The Battle of Algiers is not boring but at times it is slow. Perhaps patient is a better term for it than slow. The screenplay is based on the book Souvenirs de la Bataille d'Alger by Saadi Yasef who was a real FLN freedom fighter and has a role in the movie. With all this going on, it is no surprise that the movie was banned upon release in France. It stayed banned until 1971. Despite its controversy in France, it won several awards internationally, including the Golden Lion in Venice and three Oscars; Best Foreign Language Film in 1966 and Best Screenplay and Best Director in 1968, being the only movie to have managed several Oscars in non consective years.

The Battle of Algiers is a brutal movie. The uncut version even shows the “interrogation” techniques used by the French, which is not fun to watch. The movie was even used to teach American forces how to handle insurgencies, make of that what you will. What is interesting is that the character Ali La Pointe is a pretty unpleasant person, and Col. Mathieu is quite charming. I'm assuming that this is to illustrate that a bad person can fight for a good cause (freedom) and a pleasant person can fight for a bad cause (tyranny). I'm not educated enough to analyze such a heavy matter with any precision, you'll have to make up your own mind.

So, do I recommend this movie? Absolutely! The Battle of Algiers is a hard hitting film that pulls no punches and gives no apologies. It just shows you what went on. The Battle of Algiers only focuses on the struggle in the city, with the greater national struggle being only referenced in passing, creating a more focused narrative. I don't think I'll rewatch it, but I am very glad I saw it. The Battle of Algiers is a brilliant but unpleasant movie.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!

 

The Swiss Guard

Everyone has presumably seen a picture of the Pontifical Swiss Guard who guard the Vatican and the Pope, both at home and abroad. They have been doing this since 1506, and are they are still going strong, and that is what today's documentary is about; what it takes to join the ranks of the Pope's army.

My only complaint about the documentary is that the voice over is text to speech which gives it a flat tone, instead of using actual voice over actors, but beyond that it is pretty interesting, whether you are religious or not.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great week! 

 

 

 

 

Whistle and I'll Come to You

I have on two separate occasions watched videos on movies and shows that traumatized British viewers, either unintentionally or entirely on purpose.

Both videos featured:

Whistle and I'll Come to You (1968).

This 42 minute long TV movie is based on “Oh, whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad” by M. R. James who wrote many acclaimed ghost stories in his time.

It stars Michael Horden as Cambridge Professor Parkin who we meet as he arrives at a hotel somewhere on the English east coast. The professor is there on a small walking holiday, unlike the few other guests who are there for golf. On his first outing, as he walks briskly around, muttering and humming to himself, he finds a crumbling grave in an old cemetery. The grave is half exposed due to the erosion of wind and sea, and upon closer inspection he finds and pockets an ancient flute, or whistle. After dinner, he cleans it up and blows it. That night as he falls asleep he hears a vague fluttering noise. The next night, the noise is louder and almost sounds like a heartbeat, and as he falls asleep, he is constantly disturbed by dreams where a spectral figure chases him along the beach. Something is coming closer, but that is all I'm going to reveal. Watch it yourself if you want to know the ending.

It is worth noting that this story was first published in 1904 and this was shown in 1968, so it's not incredibly scary. If you are a horror aficionado, you may even find it a bit dull, but they managed to make something very atmospheric with very little. Whistle and I'll Come to You is a proper ghost story, not a gore fest.

Whistle and I'll Come to You was remade in 2010 starring John Hurt but I haven't seen it yet.

So, do I recommend this movie? Yes, absolutely. As I said, it isn't super scary, but I did get a couple of quick chills, which is more than enough. It is a bit slow and very old fashioned, but they really did a great job building the atmosphere from the very beginning. Being so short, I would urge any and every fan of ghost stories to give a go, in fact, I'll embed it below.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!