Broadcast News (1987)

 

I hope, when people look back at all the great comedy writers for the movies, they don’t forget James L. Brooks. Big names like Woody Allen, Neil Simon and Mel Brooks can rest easy, but Brooks always seemed to get lost in the cracks. Making it big during the comedy bombast of the 80s (Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop), didn’t help either, because Brooks is a quieter, gentler humorist. His first few films were character-driven, slice-of-life works, back before “slice-of-life” meant sanitized dullness. On the contrary, Brooks’ characters crackle with freshness and vitality – they speak words that somehow ring true yet simultaneously could only be created at the pen of a screenwriter. And of those early works, Broadcast News is his hands-down masterpiece.

And that’s largely because this is firm footing for Brooks, who started out as a newsroom writer and later created the iconic sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show. You could even think of News as a more serious version of Mary: imagine if Mary Richards, WGM assistant producer, falls head over heels for Ted Baxter, airheaded news anchor, while at the same time newswriter Murray gets the hots for Mary. Now imagine that Ted is bit smarter, realizing he’s just a talking head, and wants to learn more about news production from Mary, and that Murray yearns to get more credit for his work, and dreams of stepping out from behind is desk and working in front of the camera for the change. That’s all pretty much Broadcast News, minus the laugh track.

Ok, so obviously that’s not all it is, but it does show how familiar Brooks is with these archetypes. Mary is now producer Jane Craig (Holly Hunter), a bundle of neuroses but astoundingly good at her job. That’s because she takes her job seriously – the same reason she resents new hire Tom Grunick (William Hurt), handsome news anchor who wants to learn more about the news stories that are flashed in front of him on the teleprompter. Yet she’s still insatiably attracted to him, just as much, say, as coworking writer/reporter Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks) is to her, but it’s not mutual – even though both have immense respect for each other professionally. But network news is having hard times these days, and this particular Washington bureau is about to face some major cutbacks. Bill Rorish, head honcho anchor (played by an unbilled Jack Nichlsolson) visits the groundlings one last time before the firings – and it’s not pretty. Nearly everyone gets the axe, although Jane manages to get promoted to bureau chief, Tom gets transferred to London and Aaron realizes he’ll be strung along on the same salary doing more work. The former two realize they need to test their relationship, though – it fails before they even get on the plane for a vacation. It all boils down to her discovery that he faked tears during a news piece he had done earlier, an act that roils her down to the core of her journalistic integrity; for him, it’s part of the biz. We flash ahead seven years: all three have gone their separate ways but maintain a friendship. And they all still work in broadcast news.

And as I’m writing this synopsis I keep hearing Brooks’ lines in my head – the man can write dialogue. From “I buried the lead” to “What do you do when you’ve achieved everything you’ve ever dreamed of?” to “Well, I certainly hope you'll die soon,” this is about as perfect a screenplay can get. Yet what distinguishes News from so many other works of its ilk, and indeed from some of Brooks’ other, less successful efforts, is that the dialogue is anchored down. If Brooks has any flaw, it’s that sometimes his dialogue needs to be rooted in hard story, in structure; otherwise we get too glib and cutesy, so his characters just wind up trading “great lines” with one another until they just float off the screen. That doesn’t happen in News: just as soon as an interpersonal scene gets to be too much, we cut to a activity-based scene of intense news gathering and reporting – the nuts and bolts of these peoples’ lives.

I’ll always remember moments from this film, which is exactly the way I prefer to remember films. I’ll remember the lines, sure, but I’ll remember the pregnant pauses too, and the reactions, and the reactions to those, and the follow-ups. This is all of course a testament to Brooks’ ability to direct those lines that he crafted so skillfully. And there’s one particular skill he as in this regard that I’d like to mention: his observance that we’re all just a sentence away from hurting someone we love. In several scenes here we have moments where someone says just the wrong thing, often carelessly and it puts the conversation to a dead halt (Jane offends Tom this way in their first scene together, and Tom tosses off a “joke” insult that wounds Jane in one of their last). This happens all the time to us, doesn’t it, and yet few writers have the skill to tackle such emotional complexity, and sensitivity, and put it on the screen. Perhaps that’s why Brooks is so underappreciated – he’s holding up a mirror to us, one that lets us see our insides, and it’s uncomfortable.

And then there’s the ending, as heartbreaking as you’d come to expect from a Broks film, but also realistic. We have two potential soulmates, ostensibly perfect for one another barring one thing: their journalistic mantra. Ordinarily, perhaps, such is an obstacle easily overcome. But Brooks depicts is protagonists as job-consumed to the core: an act as simple as crying after the fact is a dealbreaker, or, heartbreaker in this case. And so the ending is inevitable, paving the way for an even sadder epilogue, straight out of The Way We Were. Sad, sure, but just like Terms of Endearment’s coda, a “life-goes-on” note of encouragement too.

I worked in news production myself, and I can testify that most of this stuff is accurate, particularly the persona of dogged news producer, striving to get that perfect story to air, whatever the cost (usually everyone’s blood pressure). I myself was on the technical side, so we were always at loggerheads with this type, mostly because we got the blame if a tape was loaded late. That scene near the beginning of Hunter editing the homecoming story down to the second is pitch-perfect, even if it does seem unlikely an news agency would have an edit bay that far away from the control room. And yes, every network has that monolithic high-profile anchor, making millions a year, and usually the one around whom everyone else genuflects, regardless of age, gender or seniority.

The performances go without saying – Brooks knows how to cast too, and that’s half the job. But I will say that Albert Brooks is particularly adept at Brookspeak; the dialogue fits him like a glove. That’s partially because Albert is a writer too, and his style isn’t that far removed from James’s.

This is a film, I think, that most people only pay lip service too, without actually seeing and enjoying. That’s how I was until I saw it again last week. And now I can appreciate it more than I ever did. I mean, dammit this is good writing. It was nominated for Best Screenplay, and would’ve surely won were it not for the fact that it was up against John Patrick Shanley’s Moonstruck, also one of the best scripts of the 80s. When it rains it pours.

Again, the my star system only goes up to four, and so I must be content with:

Rating:  ****

Less Than Zero (1987)

Yup, here I go again. I just have to include this one, Less Than Zero, because it’s sort of become a cult hit in recent years, in part for being a pretty good depiction of 80s youth, and featuring three stars who embody that decade and all its neon-glam associations (one was even a brat-packer).

So I decided to read the book by Bret Easton Ellis upon which the film is based, and that could either have been a brainchild or a mistake. The book is extremely reminiscent of The Catcher in the Rye: both are told drolly from the point of view of an ostensibly disaffected youth, yet when you peel away the layers you can detect some real hurt. In Zero’s case, the youth is a college student named Clay, who comes back home from the East to L.A., where his old high school friends are now clubbing it up, surrounded by booze and drugs, and desensitized to everything and anything of human value. This didn’t just happen – they all grew up in an environment of extreme wealth, which had the effect of cutting them off from their parents, their friends, and any concept of repercussion or responsibility. Life was all about the now, and who was sleeping with whom, and what kind of sports car they just got for Christmas. It was affluenza, years before the term was even coined.

The book is often maddening to get through, because Clay just casually goes from one social engagement to another, and the narrative doesn’t really seem to lead anywhere. Although he interacts with many characters, one in particular – Julian – gets greater mention, and as he seemed to be doing the most drugs, it’s only a matter of time before he O.D.s and dies from his addiction. But even that event is an anticlimax. What you really have to look at in Zero is Clay’s unreliable narration – he has a “girlfriend” named Blair, but it’s so off-again, on-again, and loveless that you have to doubt his sexuality (there are a few hints to support this speculation). And despite his participation in this hedonistic lifestyle we get snippets of doubt that this is really a path he’d like to continue treading.

Zero is, by now, a modern-day classic, and it deserves to be one. But it took many, many years to attain this status. As it essentially trashed the mores of an entire decade, it needed time, and distance, for the public to fully digest its savage indictments. We can now apprehend its themes with all-too-crystal clarity.

But the movie version came out in 1987, two years after the publication of the book, which itself took place about a year before that. Clearly uncomfortable with several of the book’s elements, it overhauled nearly everything, save for a few key plot points. Clay is now a responsible, well-adjusted protagonist, played with straight-and-narrow preppiness by Andrew McCarthy. He arrives home from college, all right, but not as alienated wanderer. No, he’s a got a rock-steady romance with Blair (Jami Gertz), but less steady is their mutual friendship with Julian (Robert Downey Jr.), who’s been upgraded now to major character. Although all three do cocaine casually, he soon becomes a hardcore addict and indebted to his dealer for $50,000. Clay and Blair spend pretty much the entire film looking for Juilan, asking if he’s okay, trading concerned glances, looking for him some more, getting him out of parties and clubs, screwing, losing him, looking for him again, taking the drugs away from him, and finally crying over his death.

So really what we’re left with is a 98-minute anti-drug commercial, despite some interesting contrasts between their halcyon high school days and the fun-filled but empty existence that is now. Sure, the book features extensive drug abuse by characters oblivious to their excesses, but that’s only the mode they use for their escape. The real culprit is far more deeply rooted. The movie, on the other hand, lays the blame squarely on the drugs, despite a few scenes of parental apathy and neglect.

So what we have to do, then, is judge the film on those merits. Does it succeed as an ant-drug polemic? Yes and no. Siskel and Ebert were famously split on whether or not it glamorizes drug use (Siskel: yea/Ebert: nay), and I’m somewhere in the middle. A major studio film like this couldn’t have shown as much drug use as it does without taking a condemnatory approach (this was ’87, after all). And we do indeed get a few raw moments of Julian puking in a bucket and crawling around on all fours. But most of the film shows us glamorous stars shooting up in neon-let bathrooms or beside reflecting pools (in fact, the neon-pool seems to be the film’s ubiquitous image). It doesn’t want to get too ugly, say Trainspotting ugly, but it also wants to remind us to Just So No, ad so we get Jami Gertz tossing her cocaine down the sink near the end, and the “that’s what happens” death of Clay in an ending reminiscent of Midnight Cowboy.

And there’s another thing that’s a bit troubling but Zero, and it dates the film far more than the drug scenes: its homophobia. This is perhaps one of the most homophobic films of the 80s, as gay characters are the real boogeymen in the story. The book includes them only as an indicator of time and place – Clay’s dad has a gay lover, but there’s no real reason for it beyond California verisimilitude. And later Julian is forced by his dealer into prostituting himself to gay patrons to pay off his debt. But this is just a peripheral story, meant to show the seedy, smarmy life the boy had to involve himself in to get himself out of trouble. It slides by, if only because Clay as the narrator is so blasé about it, and were more concerned about him than hateful of his abusers.

But the movie, as movies tend to be, is more literal, and it exploits the homophobia so rampant in 80s cinema. Now, Julian’s day is gay, and his sexuality is made entirely to blame for his lack of paternity. And Julian’s prostitution is meant to be harrowing, conducted by evil predators, and it’s even implied that his dealer is gay. There’s a needless plot twist early on, in which Julian was discovered sleeping with Blair while Clay was away at school, and this is only thrown in to confirm Julian’s heterosexuality, so we understand that all that sex slavery must’ve really been horrible for him. Again, it’s in keeping with the literal-mindedness of the film that it feels like it needs a villain.

One can’t help but wonder would’ve been like if directed by an indie director, like Gus Van Zant for example – someone who understands alienation and could’ve put the whole damned thing in context. But we got a slick music video instead, territory it feels more comfortable in. We know that because the soundtrack is loaded, with good songs too, and those scenes actually work pretty well. The smash hit “Hazy Shade of Winter” by the Bangles comes to mind – it’s played over the credits as Clay returns to LA to an empty house. It might well be the best scene in the film.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Downey’s acclaimed performance as Clay. Judging it entirely as a performance, and not as a bastardization of the character as originally written, I can only say that it’s okay. He’s got some heart-tugging moments toward the end, when he does elicit some concern about his physical well-being, but he e has just as many scenes near the beginning, when he acts so heedlessly, spouting would-be clever quips and jokes as he dangles off he back of a convertible, an you’re secretly wishing that his drug-induced death couldn’t come soon enough. I know – terrible. Not what the movie wants you to feel, but it’s how I felt.

The real eye-opener for me is Jami Gertz, whom I’ve always liked. I find her to be absolutely beautiful, but also has a provocative contrast – between her bitchy JAP exterior and a vulnerability underneath. Once those eyes glaze over they change from daggers to soft saucers, and you can’t help but fall in love. I did in this film, many times. When Julian died, I was more affected by her tears than by his passing.

Hmmm. Much to dislike, a few things to like.

Rating:  **1/2

(I think that’s fair.)

The Princess Bride (1987)

Yup, I’m at it again. Since the big gap between 1980 and ’85, I now feel the need to keep remediating Fox’s oversights in their 75^th Anniversary DVD collection. And so now, even though they’ve well represented 1987 with two titles (the two previous blog entries), I think they missed a couple more. Okay, three more, but who’s counting?

The first one is The Princess Bride, which, despite tepid box office and moderate critical acclaim, has grown into one of the biggest cult films of the ‘80s. It was sort of a harbinger of sorts too: 1987 was the year of the alternative fairy tale. Sure, now they’re all over the place, but the genre truly began 30 years ago, when The Charmings debuted on ABC, Shelly Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theater was still going strong on Showtime, Deadtime Stories came out in the movies and Steven Sondheim’s Into the Woods ruled the roost on Broadway.

And there was The Princess Bride, released to theaters in October, and the fourth film from director Rob Reiner, whose previous three works were unqualified successes. Actually, Bride had been long in the works; William Goldman’s screenplay, based on his children’s book, was floating around Hollywood for the better part of ten years, and only a few brave souls dared consider it as a viable project. But Reiner must have detected something special about the script, and indeed the dialogue does bristle with the sort of cheeky wit the man who penned Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was renowned for.

We begin, not during the Middle Ages, but in a child’s bedroom: a boy (Fred Savage), sick and home from school, gets a visit from granddad (Peter Falk), who proceeds to lift his spirits by reading a classic storybook “The Princess Bride.” The film whisks us away into the tale, as a fair maiden, Buttercup (Robin Wright), falls in love with the family farmhand, Westley (Carey Elwes). But their love is to be short-lived; he goes off to sail the world, only to be abducted and ostensibly killed by pirates, while she is engaged to marry a somewhat sketch royal prince named Humperdinck. Resolved to locate he true love, she escapes her betrothed, only to be kidnapped by a trio of circus performers: the nebbish ringleader, Vizzini; the soft-hearted giant Fezzik; and the Spanish swordsman Inigo Montoya. But lookout, the Man in Black is on their trail, and he fends them off one by one (in different manners of battle) to rescue his beloved.

Buttercup learns that the Man in Black is one other than Westley, and together they survive the perils of the Fire Swamp before getting captured by Humperdinck, who takes back his bride and sends Westley to an agonizing death in the pit of despair. Meanwhile, Inigo realizes that Rugen, Humperdinck’s right-hand man, is his father’s murderer, a man whom he is conducting a lifelong quest to search out and kill. Inigo allies with Vizzini and Westley (brought back to life courtesy a wisecracking medicine man) to rescue the damsel in distress. In the end, Inigo exacts his revenge, Westley is finally betrothed to his beloved, and Grandpa finishes his story. The boy, evidently feeling better, requests a rereading.

I’d seen Bride years ago, upon its release on home vid as I was then working at the West Coast Video nearest my grandmom’s (it was my summer job). And my opinion now, having seen it again for this blog, is pretty much the same as it was then.

Meh.

And it pains me to say it too – I’m a big fan of all talent involved, from director Rob Reiner to writer William Goldman to executive producer Norman Lear. And Robin Wright, in her film debut, has never looked more beautiful. But the problem here is that I told find the movie particularly funny. Sure, it’s cute (I know, the worst praise you can give), and yes, the entire production is handsomely mounted. But it just doesn’t have the giant guffaws of a parody like This Is Spinal Tap, Reiner’s first film.

And perhaps that’s the problem: Bride just doesn’t know which tone to take. It has far too soft a touch to be a raucous comedy. And it’s really too lighthearted to be a dramatic exercise, and there are several intense sequences that put much of it in the latter category. The final result is something of a mishmash, with some many genre shifts it actually winds up being boring. I found myself checking the time remaining quite a bit for a 98-minute movie.

Of course, I ‘d be remiss in failing to acknowledge what a huge cult favorite it has become, and I think it has a great deal to do with the general public hunger for modern-day fairy tales. They were willing to overlook the flaws so they could embrace this generally irony-free fantasy. No historical baggage, very little “gritty” violence, just a sweeping medieval romance, with some Billy Crystal wisecracks thrown in for modernity. Every once in a while we get something like this, from Drew Barrymore’s Ever After to Heath Ledger’s A Knight’s Tale. And they always tend to do well, critically and commercially.

But it just doesn’t work for me. It didn’t then, and it still doesn’t really now.

But there’s far worse out there, especially now. So I’ll still give it….

Rating:  ***

Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

Not a full-length review on this one – I just wanted to catch the sequel to Wall Street (not part of the 75th Anniversary Collection), which I never saw, while the original was still fresh in my mind. It certainly helped: now that I’m more fluent in financial lingo (at least of the movies), I could better understand the events and actions with which Oliver Stone’s follow-up concerns itself.

But of course, I didn’t need a crash-course in economics to appreciate the return of Gordon Gecko, by now an archetypal character, and seeing him played by Michael Douglas, 23 years later, was a thrill that makes Wall Street 2 worth watching, even if it’s nowhere near as good as its predecessor.

In 2008, Gordon Gecko has just been released from prison. Insider trading, sure, but he got the most time – eight years – for far more nefarious dealings, busted by a now-wildly successful investor, Bretton James (Josh Brolin), the head of a firm named Churchill Schwartz. When he decides to crush a rival firm, Keller Zabel, by spreading false rumors about toxic debt, its director, Louis Zabel (Fank Langella) commits suicide. One of Zabel’s investors, a young upstart named Jake Moore (Shia LeBouf), takes the especially hard: he’d always been a protégée to Louis, and now he’s looking to get back at the one responsible.

Enter Gecko, now revealed as the father of Jake’s fiancé, Winnie (Carey Mulligan). Gecko and Winnie’s relationship is strained, to say the least: he blames her for not meeting him after jail and she blames him for her brother’s drug overdose death. But Jake arranges a deal – he’ll help repair their relations if Gecko can help him bring Bretton down. Jake does indeed get the word out on the firm’s illegal oil holdings, resulting in a 120 million dollar loss, but rather than fume Bretton offers the boy a job, which he takes, hoping in part to use his leverage to persuade the Chinese to invest in his pet project of alternative energy.

But then – the Crash of 2008 – and Bretton nixes the Chinese deal, firing Jake in the process. It looks as though Gecko will pony up the money, but he reneges last minute, flees to England and sets up a hedge-fund business. Meanwhile, Jake gets the skinny on Bretton’s double-dealings, exposes them on Winnie’s website, and costs the tycoon any chance of a government bailout. Gecko reconsiders his actions and wires his future son-in-law the money, reconciling with his daughter (the mother of his grandchild) in the process.

Wall Street 2 is a perfectly serviceable sequel. It brings back Douglas as Gecko, and the fact that the actor was battling cancer at the time just makes his effort that much more admirable. He delivers a speech early on that resembles his classic “Greed is Good” oration from the original, and it reflects the same, albeit for the post-Recession times. “It seems that now, not only is greed good, but it’s also illegal.”

But he delivers the speech somewhat ironically, and that’s because Gecko is now a reformed man. Sure, he still knows how to play the market, and his thirst for the good life is quite very much intact, but he plays it cool these days, prefeering to watch and analyze the market rather than participate in it. And he’s even written a book about it, somewhat of a cautionary tome, presumably to exhort others not to make the same mistakes he did. In fact, aside from one third-act plot twist, Gecko is, for al intents and purposes, a nice guy.

Perhaps that may be what the man should do, but it also robs Wall Street 2 of its theme. The original was not simply a rollicking financial drama, but it had something vita to say – that modern businesses are now being run, and destroyed, by profiteering investors and shareholders, who care not a thing about their holdings, and would sell everything right away if they had to. The pint was so vtal, in fact, that it was prescient. That same year was the Crash of 1987, and then later the Internet Bubble of 2000, and still later…

The surrogate baddie this time is James Brolin, but his takedown isn’t nearly as satisfying as Gecko’s was in the original. And also, Jake, an alt-energy idealist, doesn’t quite seem credible as a trader. Why is he one? I suppose one could argue he needs the money for his Fusion project, but aren’t there other ways short of selling your soul? And again, we don’t get really get the theme of high-level corruption, and perhaps one reason is the absence of a Martin Sheen character, who represents he nuts-and-bolts, albeit less glamorous, side of things.

But still, even though Wall Street 2’s language gets a bit thick (it doesn’t explain things in quite the same, engaging way as the original), it’s still good to see this character again, and even director Stone uses some restraint from his usual indulgences to tell the story. (Oh, and don’t miss the Charlie Sheen cameo, reprising Bud Fox; this scene alone is worth the price of admission.)

No, it’s not a necessary sequel, but it is entertaining, and it doesn’t diminish the original in any way. For those reasons alone, I can recommend it.

Rating:  ***

Wall Street (1987)

As Wall Street director Oliver Stone notes in the audio commentary for the film, not many films about big business as the central topic have ever been made. It’s a tough nut to crack, to be sure: most films either go overboard with the nomenclature of the trade, shooting way over the audience’s heads (Rollover), or they just deal with it peripherally, as window dressing for easier-to-grasp (and write) subjects like love (Trading Places, Working Girl). And some movies, like he much overrated Inside Job, pretend to examine it, but actually just pay lip service. And then, even if it works, there’s no guarantee the audiences will agree.

But Wall Street is the exception, practically the lone exception in my opinion. It straddles the balance between tight, smart accuracy and immensely satisfying entertainment. With a razor sharp screenplay by its director, Oliver Stone, and Staney Weiser, it darts from scene to scene, character to character, in a flurry of deals, mergers, breakups, valuations, buying, selling, acquisitions and liquidations. It really all does feel like you’re on the floor of the NY Stock Market, and Stone’s human story is in keeping with his usual recurrent, archetypal theme of a neophyte who must chose between good and bad, and grow regardless of which path he chooses.

Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) is a Wall St. stockbroker, working like a dog but loving the rush of buying and selling – and making money. Opposite him is his dad, Carl (Martin Sheen), a union foreman for the airline Bluestar. But restless Bud wants to meet with multi-millionaire corporate raider Gordon Gecko (Michael Douglas), and lures him in with the inside scoop (learned from dad) that Bluestar stocks will rise after a favorable court ruling. They do, and now an impressed Gecko takes Bud under his wing, showing him the in’s and out’s of the trade, and a few tricks that might not necessarily be legal. He has the boy trail his British archrival, Larry Wildman, and learns as a result that a steel company is a comer. Wildman fumes, sensing foul play, but for Gecko it’s all in the game – nothing is right or wrong, only what you can get away with.

Now immersed in the world of insider-trading, Bud’s wealth grows staggeringly, He hooks up with Darien (Daryl Hannah), an upscale interior designer, and buys a posh new apartment on the Upper East Side. But he also starts to understand the insidious side of Gecko’s machinations, and what he does to companies after he acquires then. When Gecko outlines a “restructuring” of Bluestar, Carl sees it for the ruse that it really is; only too late does Bud realize what he has allowed when he learns of plans to liquidate the company, selling off planes, busting unions, firing scores and eliminating pensions. But Bud isn’t defeated yet – he hatches a plan to get the airline back by leaking the liquidating plans, causing a mass buyout of its stocks followed by a mass sellout when they peak. He then has the unions tell Gecko they’re pulling out, compelling him to sell his shares, but no one wants to buy. Before long, he dumps everything, at a huge loss only to learn his rival Wildman had scooped everything up, promising to retain unions and company integrity.

As revenge, Gecko calls the SEC and the feds on Bud, who goes to jail, but not before wearing a wire to final talk with Gecko. His fate is now sealed as well.

Douglas, of course, won an Oscar for his portrayal of Gecko, the unctuous profiteer whose “Greed Is Good” speech has by now become just as famous as its orator, but for me the real star is the screenplay. Loaded with sharp, knowing dialogue, it transcends the genre to become not just one f the best scripts about high finance ever written but one of the best scripts period. (Only major flaw: overuse of folksy metaphors to convey points; a little goes a long way – best kept to Hal Holbrook’s character.) David Mamet tends to get more credit – particularly with his Glengarry Glen Ross play and screenplay, creative wordplay and all – but Stones is just as good at handling the mechanics of his fiscal language.

But I mustn’t overlook his direction, either, which allows his thick dialogue breathing room (something few wordy films do nowadays), while offering some kinetically charged visuals to go along with them (thanks in part to Robert Richardson’s fantastic camerawork). And I got a little nostalgic too, seeing something by Oliver Stone back when the director could still make a coherent film. Clearly things changed for him by the mid-90s, but during this period he was on a epic roll, starting with 1986’s Salvador and ending with JFK in 1991. Can’t think of another director with a roll like that.

And then, of course, seeing Wall Street in 2017 is a thoroughly different experience than it was for me back in 1987. I remember I saw it in theaters first, then worked at a video store the following summer when it was a heavy rental. I loved it because it felt like an “adult” film to me, and I was a big Charlie Sheen fan too (second only to Michael J. Fox). It was one of my first movie reviews too.

But now, it has fresh resonance, and not exactly more positive. By now we have a different outlook on its time period – the moneygrubbing frenzy of Reagan 80s, Black Monday and all – left us a legacy of joblessness, poverty and lack of accountability by those corporate raiders (see Roger and Me). And then, Enron, and later, the Recession of ’08, caused by those corporations “too big to fail,” gave me a different perspective of those stylish, tie-wearing smoothies who bragged about “bagging the elephant.” Or maybe I’m just smarter now about what they were doing.

And, of course, now we have a Gordon Gecko in the White House. The leader of the free world is also conniving wheeler-dealer, whose avarice, and the duplicity with which he uses to trounce his opponents into the ground, knows no bounds. So now seeing Wall Street makes me angry, because I can’t just be angry at the characters ike Gecko; I’m angry with whom they represent as well.

But I’m sure that’s what Stone would have wanted.

A classic, and my favorite Stone film. See it. Get mad too.

 

Rating:  ****

P.S: More prescient than I thought. Keep your eyes peeled for a hand-held TV (Early iPhone), an immersion blender and sushi. Gecko should’ve invested in these.

Raising Arizona (1987)

Raising Arizona may be a 20^th Century Fox film, but there can be no doubt that it paved the way for the indie comedy as we know it today – you know the type: quirky, smart, fast and loaded with irony. There were times during he film, in fact, when I couldn’t believe this came out in 1987; it pioneered such an archetype for contemporary filmmakers, primarily Wes Anderson and the Coen brothers themselves (who made Arizona), that for this reason alone it should be considered a American classic.

But it as marked the end of an era too. Gone were the broad, raucous comedies of the early 80s, films like Airplane!, Stripes, Caddyshack and Ghostbusters, now replaced by gentle, often more intellectual fare like Crocodile Dundee, Big and When Harry Met Sally. (In fact, two of the biggest bombs of the late-80s were the sequels to Caddyshack and Ghostbusters.) Arizona wasn’t exactly the biggest hit in the world but it’s hard to imagine ever getting released during the SNL-era; by ’87 the waters had cooled, and the time was ripe for edgier humor.

And yet, Raising Arizona was ridiculously funny – just as uproarious as those other films I mentioned. From its 11-minute, pre-credit opening, which sets up the entire plot, to the final, elegiac coda, which offers us a fitting meditation on its theme, the film is loaded with mile-a-minute laughs, thanks to the Coen brothers’ trademark droll dialogue, their trademark kinetic camerawork and trademark tight-as-a-drum editing, which packages everything together in a flurry of charged energy, a work of such wit and imagination that it was small wonder the Coens would go on to a career in film that continues to this day.

Nicholas Cage plays “Hi” McDunnough, a serial robber (who uses unloaded guns) that just can’t stay out of jail, until he falls in love with a cop, Edwina, whom he nicknames “Ed” (Holly Hunter). They marry, but Ed discovers she’s barren, and with Hi’s criminal history adopting is out of the question. The solution? Kidnap one of the Arizona quintuplets (babies of Nathan Arizona, of Unpainted Arizona, the area’s largest distributor of furniture) because they have “more than they need.” It all goes mostly according to plan, and it loosk like the McDonnough’s have they own progeny at last, but trouble soon starts when the Snoats brothers break out of jail, and decide to crash with Hi and Ed. And then Ed’s friends, Glen and Dot, start some trouble with the former’s suggestion they swap spouses. Finally, the mean mother to end all mean mothers, Leonard Smalls, bullies Arizona into paying him an inflated ransom for the return of his baby. Ultimately, everyone seems to want collect the ransom for the tyke, but the McDunnough’s do the right thing and return their erstwhile babe to his rightful owners, but finding their own relationship potentially salvageable.

I already mentioned how funny Arizona is – idiosyncratic dialogue, yokels using heightened vocabulary, over-analysis of minor things, ironic cuts, visual jokes, etc. – but I was surprised this time by its serious side. There are several scenes that reveal the emotions and deep-seated desires of its characters – something fellow ironist Wes Anderson was never able to completely accomplish. You can feel Ed’s achy turmoil over not being able to bear a child, then having one, the making the hard choice to give it. And through Hi’s dreams we emphasize with him too, particular in his final, heartbreaking dream of the future. And then there’s the scene in which the McDonnough’s return the child to Arizona – completely jokeless – but heartwarming in a way unexpected in a film this rambunctious. But then, that’s the way the Coens operate: all of their comedies are tinged with drama and all of their dramas are tinged with comedy.

And I mustn’t exit this review lest I forget to praise Holly Hunter’s performance. She is pitch-perfect here, using her Southern drawl for idiosyncratic effect (one is reminded of Carol Burnett in those Eunice sketches), and shuffling comfortably between irony and heartfelt emotion. One could easily see her as the Coens’ female actress of choice were it not for their selection of Francis McDormand (it helped that she married Joel).

If you’ve never seen it, see it, and if you have, see it again. You’ll amazed at how dateless it is.

Rating:  ****