One of the disagreeable aspects of the COVID-19 shut-in has been suffering through endless movie reruns to while away the time.
Initially this was bearable, or at any rate better than mowing the lawn. But the more of it you endure, the more irritating Hollywood clichés become.
First, who came up with the idea that tough guys can project power by eating alone in the presence of subordinates?
For an example, see John Noble as Denothor in The Lord of the Rings, slobbering over his dinner while one of the hobbits looks on. (In passing, what should have been a first-class movie — actually a trilogy — was wrecked by directorial malpractice. Half the cast can’t act, and those who can are so intimidated by Peter Jackson’s insistence on canonical accuracy, they’re reduced to whispering their lines.)
Then, we have an infuriatingly prissy Jeremy Irons as the board chair in Margin Call, toying delicately with his lunch as Kevin Spacey, who has just fired half his staff, looks on mutely.
This doesn’t communicate authority. It communicates asking to get hit with a brick.
Next, there’s the apparent belief that having your star chew gum endlessly adds an element of edginess. No it doesn’t. It adds an element of the emetic.
See, for example, William Devane in the movie Space Cowboys, incessantly chawing like a demented rodent (as, to be fair, he does in most of his movies.)
Or more aggravatingly, Sam Shepard ruining a key scene in The Right Stuff where, playing test pilot Chuck Yeager, he climbs aboard the first aircraft to reach supersonic speeds.
All the time he’s masticating like a cow on crystal meth. I suppose that’s one way to break the sound barrier.
In passing, this, too, should have been one of the great movies of all time: Uniformly strong cast (unlike the pretty boys in Apollo 13), excellent special effects for the era and the unforgettable sight of massive rockets blasting off launch pads.
Yet all that is ruined by a director (Philip Kaufman) who fell in love with his project, and let it run to a yawn-inducing three hours.
Tinseltown notwithstanding, you don’t clean your teeth by sticking a toothbrush in your mouth, pursing your lips around it, and thrusting it in and out like a plumber wielding a roto-rooter. All that does is lubricate your tonsils.
More so, why the preoccupation with dental hygiene in movie after movie. Is this some kind of product placement by the American Association of Orthodontists?
Likewise, who’s impressed by a gangster with a gun in one hand and a lollipop in the other? I know. Telly Savalas got away with it in the TV series Kojak. But that should have been the end of it.
And while we’re at it, why has Hollywood yet to deliver a half-decent rendering of Alexandre Dumas’ masterpiece, The Three Musketeers? This was one of the great action/intrigue novels of the 19th century, arguably the first of its kind.
But although there have been at least half a dozen English language productions, they invariably descend into slapstick humour. See, for example (or better still, don’t see) the execrable 1948 version, with Gene Kelly turning in a clown act as d’Artagnan.
All right. This is admittedly a jaundiced view of things.
So what does a good film look like? Obviously it’s a matter of personal taste, but my vote goes to Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans.
Everything about this classic is perfect. The opening scenes of mist-filled valleys reaching far into the distance create exactly the intended sense of a remote yet threat-filled land. (The movie was shot in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. It portrays the American frontier during the French and Indian wars of the 1760s.)
The cast are all first rate. Had there been any justice, Wes Studi would have won an Oscar for his portrayal of the Huron warrior Magua, the scariest bad guy you ever saw.
There are numerous settings of breathtaking beauty, like the shots of a young English officer coming by coach to meet his intended bride (she has other ideas.) The coach is filmed crossing a hump-backed bridge over a glass-smooth pool, all perfectly mirrored in the water below.
Although you know, pretty well, the ending in advance, the tension never lets up.
And surprisingly, a line from Rudyard Kipling creeps in, when Hawkeye, explaining why pioneer families dwell in this “defenceless” land, tells Cora: “Out here, they’re beholden to none. Not living by another’s leave.”
I say “surprisingly” because this leaf out of libertarian philosophy would never pass muster in Hollywood today.
