King Kong (2005)

 

The second (better but still unneeded) remake of King Kong lasts more than three hours, yet it tells what is, essentially, the same basic story as the original version from 1933, which clocked in at a comparatively terse 100 minutes. Director/cowriter Peter Jackson, fresh from his success with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, seems to have decided that what the first King Kong needed was more time on each element of the plot. We all know that Jackson does like to think of film as long-form entertainment. Thus, it takes almost twenty minutes for movie director Carl Denham (Jack Black, tamped down a bit from his usual boisterousness) and his potential star, Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), to board the ship that takes them to Skull Island and their encounter with Kong. We spend another thirty minutes aboard the ship before we get to the island itself, and it’s almost an hour into the film before we first hear Kong’s roar and another ten minutes before he himself appears onscreen. That’s a long time for an audience to wait in order to see the star of the movie. Thankfully, about half of King Kong takes place on Skull Island as we intercut between two storylines. One has us watching as Ann initially tries to escape from Kong, who seems bewitched by her blonde hair when he first captures her, only to have her turn to him as her protector from three rather acrobatic dinosaurs intent of having her as a snack. The other plotline follows Denham, playwright/screenwriter Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), and other men from the ship trying to find Ann to rescue her from Kong. Ann’s relationship with Kong is, of course, complicated by the weird idea that this is all some sort of metaphor regarding interracial relationships – although this is somewhat less emphasized here than in the original and the horrid 1976 version. Still, it’s fun to watch Watts performing some of Darrow’s familiar vaudeville tricks to entertain Kong, and it’s certainly breathtaking to watch the carefully choreographed extended sequence involving Kong protecting yet almost failing to protect Ann from what appear to be three Tyrannosaurus Rexes. Seeing two of the dinosaurs and Kong and Ann entangled in vines and swinging to catch or avoid each other is a highlight of the film, and I laugh aloud each time I watch as one of the dinosaurs chases after Ann, who is rather tiny by comparison, when he has a huge dead dinosaur in his mouth already. Does he want some sort of small appetizer or after-dinner treat? Finish your dinner before you go hunting for more food. As for the men trying to find Ann, well, they’ve picked a crazy island to visit. A stampede by a group of brontosauri and what appear to be velociraptors, a valley filled with nasty bugs, including giant spiders that are meant to be inspired by those in a sequence that was removed from the original for being too gruesome – it’s an astonishing series of encounters with more than a few sad deaths along the way. You should be familiar with the outline of the story already if you’ve seen either of the earlier versions. Kong get captured (this time with the help of chloroform) and taken to New York where he is put on display as the Eighth Wonder of the World. He escapes, finds Ann, and climbs to the top of the Empire State Building. The last line of the 2005 King Kong is the same as the one from 1933: “It was beauty killed the beast.” So why does it need to be twice as long if we’re going to hit the major plot points and end the same way? Perhaps it’s so you can have a lovely sequence in New York after Kong and Ann are reunited, involving him sliding around a frozen river with her in hand, and so you can perhaps spend more time on Skull Island, which is, as Ann says to Kong, quite beautiful when you aren’t about to be devoured by a dinosaur or attacked by enormous (hungry) crickets or being hoisted aloft by what appear to be giant bats. We also get to see more of the development of the relationship between Ann and Jack aboard the ship before they land on the island, so there is more of a sense of his desire to protect her. Sadly, having more time to tell the story doesn’t mean that this version of King Kong does a better job in its depiction of the natives of Skull Island. They’re just as dangerous and scary as they have been in previous versions, and even the performers who portray the “natives” in Kong’s New York show are stereotypically “savage” (and, it appears, in blackface, at least some of them). Watts and Brody are, of course, talented actors and do fine work here, and Black does allow us a few moments of levity, just as you would expect. Kyle Chandler shines as the vain Bruce Baxter, an actor who seems to believe he’s really the center of everyone’s attention. It’s all very entertaining, but it does beg the question as to whether or not we need more of a story (albeit expertly filmed) that we already know. Why not just watch the original again? By the way, the original did not receive any Oscar nominations. None, not even for its groundbreaking visual effects. Meanwhile, the 1976 version, as bad as it is, chalked up three nominations and one win, and this version received four nominations and three wins. Astonishing, really, when you consider it.

Oscar Wins: Best Achievement in Sound Mixing, Best Achievement in Sound Editing, and Best Achievement in Visual Effects

Other Nomination: Best Achievement in Art Direction

Foul Play (1978)

 

Foul Play is a bit of a cross between a romantic comedy and a thriller/suspense movie featuring repeated references to (much better) Hitchcock movies. It’s also a bit of a mess, frankly. Goldie Hawn plays Gloria Mundy (the pun on “worldly glory” doesn’t get used to full advantage here), a librarian who is recently divorced. Thanks to encouragement from a friend who tells her to take more chances in life, the normally shy Gloria picks up a guy whose car has broken down. Scottie, the guy she picks up, hides a roll of film in a pack of Marlboro cigarettes that he leaves with Gloria, promising to meet her for a date later that night. A group of criminals wants the film, and after killing Scottie, they make Gloria the object of repeated kidnapping attempts and apartment break-ins to retrieve the film. Chevy Chase plays a police lieutenant who helps her (and who falls in love with her, of course – this is a Hollywood film, after all). However, he is initially unable to be much help because the bodies keep disappearing. It takes a while before he and the other police and even Gloria’s friends begin to believe her. The film is set in San Francisco, much like Hitchcock’s Vertigo, and the climax occurs at the San Francisco Opera House, circumstances similar to the climax of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Foul Play never reaches the artistic heights achieved by any of the Hitchcock films it references, though. In fact, Mel Brooks does a better and funnier homage in his High Anxiety from 1977, just one year earlier. Foul Play doesn’t even restrict its allusions to Hitchcock. In another twist, Chase and Hawn have a rough fast drive through the streets of San Francisco that is reminiscent of the centerpiece chase in What’s Up, Doc? from six years earlier (although that film does it better). The plot unfolds a few clues at a time, and aside from the romantic relationship between Hawn’s and Chase’s characters, it winds up being about some weird, convoluted plot by a group called the Tax the Churches League to kill the Pope during a performance of The Mikado. However, the plot is rather beside the point. It’s the performances here that are key to whatever success the film has. In addition to Hawn and Chase (was he really this cute back then?), the cast includes top-notch actors such as Burgess Meredith at Gloria’s landlord with a rather unbelievable past and some amazing martial arts skills for an old guy, Rachel Roberts as one of the leaders of the Tax the Church League who matches Meredith’s martial arts skills pretty well, Brian Dennehy in an early role as Chase’s police partner “Fergie,” the great Billy Barty as a Bible salesman in a very funny sequence, and character actress Marilyn Sokol as Stella, Gloria’s coworker who’s prepared for any male-initiated crisis (mace, brass knuckles, etc.). However, it’s Dudley Moore who almost steals the movie as Stanley Tibbetts. Hawn’s Gloria picks up Stanley in a singles bar, hoping to escape from her potential kidnappers by hiding out at his place. Stanley, though, thinks he’s about to get lucky and starts revealing some ridiculous “modifications” to his apartment, including a Murphy bed with lights and sound effects and a cabinet with a couple of fully inflated sex dolls. He’s almost down to just his heart festooned boxer shorts before Gloria catches on to what’s been happening while she’s been looking for her potential kidnappers through Stanley’s window. Moore gets two more scenes, one of them in a massage parlor, the other at the opera, and he’s hilarious in each one. He would star in 10 the following year and in Arthur three years later, achieving superstar status. It’s hard to forgive the use in Foul Play of language like “dwarf” or “albino” to describe people, and the portrayal of a couple of Japanese tourists is both unnecessary and teeth-grindingly offensive. I know that these terms and depictions were not as heavily criticized in 1978, but they should have been. And I can’t quite forgive the film’s pretending that the famed Nuart Theatre is in San Francisco since any resident of Los Angeles knows better. Foul Play marked Chase’s first leading role after he left Saturday Night Live for movie stardom and Hawn’s first movie in two years. They do have a fun chemistry, but all I could recall from having seen it in the theaters during its initial release was Barry Manilow’s “Ready to Take a Chance Again” playing over the opening credits as Gloria drives her yellow convertible Volkswagen Beetle along the coastal highway. That was fun to revisit. The rest of the film? Aside from Moore’s standout performance, not as much.

Oscar Nomination: Best Original Song (“Ready to Take a Chance Again”)

Varsity Show (1937)

 

Varsity Show is an Oscar nominee thanks to just one musical number that lasts about ten minutes. Its finale was nominated for Best Dance Direction, a category honoring choreographers that lasted for just three years (1935-1937). Of course, the finale is spectacular given that it was choreographed by the legendary Busby Berkeley. To get to the film’s end, though, you have to go through a very tepid narrative that keeps throwing somewhat ridiculous obstacles in the path of a group of students who just want to have a great annual show for the Quadrangle Club at Winfield College. The show they’ve been working on is very old-fashioned and dull, thanks to their faculty director, Professor Biddle (Walter Catlett, hamming it up to the film’s detriment). He doesn’t want any contemporary (i.e., swing) music in the show, so the students turn to a famous alumnus, Chuck Daly (Dick Powell, much the same as he was in almost every other film). Daly, now a theatrical producer, has just had one of his shows flop miserably in New York, and his friend/manager (Ted Healy, providing a few strong comic moments) convinces him to return to campus for a promised thousand dollar payday. Let the complications begin. First, naturally, they need to get rid of Biddle so that Chuck can take over direction of the show. Healy’s William Williams contracts mumps from a night with a coed, and he agrees to spread the mumps to Biddle. He shows up at the professor’s home, asking, “Can’t we kiss and make up?” Biddle’s reply is “I’ll make up. That’s as far as I’ll go.” They enter the home for a cup of tea, and we next see them in side-by-side beds. It seems like Biddle (and Williams) will go farther after all. The college then schedules a bunch of exams with the condition that any students who don’t pass cannot participate in the show. So everyone has to study hard in order to stay in the show. And so it goes… Even when the students get the bright idea to take over a theater in New York in order to make a hit for Chuck—perhaps the silliest plot turn of them all—the obstacles keep coming. The theater owner keeps going up the city’s and state’s hierarchy to get the students thrown out, but two waves of police officers and even the National Guard wind up being more interested in watching the rehearsal than in stopping the show. There are a couple of romances, just as you would expect in a musical from this time period, but they truly aren’t essential to the plot or even depicted organically. Chuck falls in love with Babs (Priscilla Lane), a college senior with a lovely singing voice, and even Williams gets a romance with a glasses-wearing female nerd, Cuddles (Mabel Todd, matching the hamminess of Healy as much as she can). Varsity Show features Sterling Holloway, later to be famous as the voice of Winnie the Pooh, in a supporting role, but he and the other players really don't add very much to the film. Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians provide lovely musical accompaniment to the various numbers throughout the movie, particularly shining in the finale. And about that finale? It’s ten minutes of marching band music, baton twirlers, synchronized dancing, and performers spelling out the insignia of various famous colleges, among them Yale and the University of Southern California (one of my alma maters). The finale also includes one of two performances by the singing-and-dancing duo of Buck and Bubbles. They are great, but then you realize that their numbers are shot so that they could be excised for showings in Southern theaters, which often did not permit scenes with talented African American performers except in servile roles. How sad that some moviegoers were not able to see these numbers, truly some of the best parts of the film overall. You can just watch the finale below, and you’ll truly see the highlight of Varsity Show.

Oscar Nomination: Best Dance Direction

RoboCop (1987)

 

RoboCop has a lot of villains. Set in a future dystopian Detroit, the film reveals a city filled with criminals and crime, a dangerous and deadly place to be a police officer. On his first day in a new precinct, Murphy (Peter Weller) gets brutally killed by a gang of criminals led by Kurtwood Smith’s Clarence Boddicker. (Yes, the guy who played the father on That 70s Show is a criminal mastermind/crime boss.) Murphy’s body is modified by OCP, a corporation that has taken control of the police department, and he becomes the cyborg RoboCop. He proves to be remarkably effective at police work, stopping a liquor store robbery, an attempted rape, and a tense hostage situation involving a political loser. Given that he’s a cyborg whose body is mostly metal and machine, he also can’t be easily hurt or killed either; he just needs to recharge now and then. During one of those recharging sessions, he has a series of flashbacks; his makers apparently didn’t erase everything. He remembers his wife and son, and more importantly, he remembers his murder. That sends him off on a quest to capture Boddicker and his accomplices, one of whom is played by Ray Wise before the TV shows Twin Peaks and Fresh Off the Boat, another of whom is played by Paul McCrane after the movie Fame but before the TV show E.R. The film actually includes quite a few reliable actors, including Nancy Allen as Murphy’s partner who witnesses his murder and tries to connect to him personally after he becomes RoboCop and Ronny Cox as the OCP executive whose failure to create a mechanical cop leads to the RoboCop program’s success, a move that makes him incredibly bitter and prone to a desire for revenge. In other words, he’s another villain. With all of its emphasis on crime, RoboCop is a very, very violent movie at times, and we aren’t spared from watching the grisly demise of several characters. Murphy’s death, for instance, is quite gruesome. It’s little wonder that the movie initially received an X rating due to its violent content; what we have now is the “softer” version, and it’s still quite shocking. The film is also much campier than I remembered from the last time I saw it decades ago. Weller’s deadpan reading of the line “Dead or alive, you’re coming with me!” alone is laugh-inducing each time he states it. The director, Paul Verhoeven, isn’t known for his subtle touch; his later films include Basic Instinct, Showgirls, and Starship Troopers, none of them exactly masterpieces of keeping their moments from being laughable. On a side note, RoboCop shares with Starship Troopers the use of commercials that are sometimes funnier or more interesting than the rest of the movie. The one for a vehicle called the 6000 SUX is especially hilarious. I will admit that it’s a bit surprising that the film wasn’t nominated for Best Visual Effects, especially in a year with only two nominees in the category: Innerspace and Predator. (You might still be surprised to learn that Predator was NOT the winner.) If there’s a “deeper” message to RoboCop, it might be the warning against corporations taking control over police departments, the military, hospitals, etc. Of course, we haven’t heeded that warning at all, given how much those functions have become increasingly privatized since 1987. You’d think after watching OCP’s first attempt at a fully mechanized robot cop (Cox’s invention), we’d know better. Watching the ED-209 malfunction and kill a OCP executive is what actually provides the opportunity for Miguel Ferrer’s Morton at OCP to create RoboCop (and become a higher-ranking executive and turn into yet another villain and be targeted by his former boss and…). Maybe it’s also trying to suggest that no matter how mechanized or mechanical we might become, it’s our humanity or whatever is left of it that might save us. I doubt many viewers gave the film’s narrative a great deal of deep thought; they just enjoyed the fun of watching Weller as the former cop who can’t be stopped now that he’s a cyborg. It is a shame that the actor’s face and those hypnotic eyes are covered up for most of the film.

Oscar Win: Special Achievement Award for Sound Effects Editing

Other Nominations: Best Film Editing and Best Sound