FILM FILINGS 8-10-24

edited by Nathan Gilmore

JORDAN POSS: GLADIATOR II + MORE

Jordan M. Poss leads off this edition of “Film Filings” with his best films of the last year, giving Christopher Nolan’s biopic “Oppenheimer” pride of place. Poss finds it “brilliantly structured and penetrating”. Be sure to read the entire review on Poss’s site— his other picks are well worth watching. More recently, Mr Poss reviews They Live, John Carpenter’s comedy-thriller about a working man unmasking the secret ruling class of aliens who run the world with the help of an extraordinary pair of sunglasses.

Poss also anticipates the upcoming sequel to Ridley Scott’s 2000 historical epic, Gladiator. Will Gladiator II live up to its predecessor’s massive success? Poss observes that “Plotwise, this really looks like a rehash of Maximus’s story from the original. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I hate to see a great movie followed up twenty-four years later with the standard same-but-different sequel plot.”

CHRIS WITTY: “M” (1951) + MORE

If you’re a fan of crime noir, you’re doubly in luck— Chris Witty’s substack celebrates a few of
the lesser-known examples of the genre, including Noel Black’s Pretty Poison (starring a
post-Psycho Anthony Perkins) and Little Murders, directed by Alan Arkin. The latter he calls “rich in strong characterization” with a scene-stealing turn from Donald Sutherland as a New-Age priest.

Also of note is Mr Witty’s appraisal of Joseph Losey’s 1951 remake of Fritz Lang’s classic crime drama “M”. Witty writes:

Relocating the action from pre-war Germany to post-war America, the film loses the expressionist grime of Berlin in favour of a sun bleached downtown LA, shot by legendary noir cinematographer Ernest Laszlo. Released during the height of McCarthyism, the parallels between the scapegoating of a murderer and that of a Hollywood filmmaker are clear, and it's no surprise that Losey himself was one of many who was placed under investigation by the HUAC for displaying communist sympathies.

NATHAN GILMORE: WELLES’ AMBERSONS

Two movies in particular have delighted Nathan Gilmore (Sunday Movie Review on Instagram): Orson Welles’ “The Magnificent Ambersons” and James Marsh’s documentary Man On Wire on Philippe Petit’s death-defying tightrope traversal between the World Trade Center towers. More than just a straight documentary, “Man on Wire” touches on grander themes of art and dedication to one’s craft, of life and death and leaving one’s mark on the world.

The best performance of the last half-dozen movies belongs to Agnes Moorehead in Orson Welles’s  “The Magnificent Ambersons”.

If you thought of Moorehead as little more than a bit player based on her small role in “Citizen Kane”, you will be delightfully amazed at her role here. “The Magnificent Ambersons” is not as great as “Kane”— the editing wrought more havoc on it than “Kane”, but it retains much of the magic of the 1941 masterpiece, both in feel and in subject. The great Wellesian themes are here: great men undergoing great falls, the pitfalls of capitalist hubris, and the inscrutability of wealth and its effect on the human soul. This is a more serious movie than “Citizen Kane”, not as fun to watch,  and I missed some of the earlier movie’s sly humor and self-reflection. But it stands on its own. Deserving special mention and praise is Agnes Moorehead’s performance as the conniving, cold hearted Aunt Fanny.”

SAM STEPHENS: DAYLIGHT (1996)

Sam Stephens reviews “Daylight”, a 1995 disaster movie starring Sylvester Stallone. If most disaster movies devolve into “soap operas with explosions”, Stephens finds this one “full of interesting themes… somehow harmoniously blended into a story about a collapsed tunnel”.  Something different from Stallone’s usual oeuvre, with a story arc that Stephens notes as mirroring the characters’ evolving attitudes towards life and death. Stephens writes:

'Daylight' is a 1996 disaster film, made during the resurgence of that genre. Critically speaking, a film like this has no right to linger in the memory—like a bag of Cheetos, it's something you eat but would hardly remember on the list of things to tell your doctor.

Perhaps 'Daylight' stumbled onto its memorability. Maybe the director wanted a standard film and accidentally came out with something much better. Disaster movies, no matter the caliber of filmmaker and star, inevitably end up like soap operas with explosions. The details of peoples' lives from all walks of lives are presented as unbearably mundane and petty. The idea being to contrast this pettiness with the unthinkable disasters that fate throws our way. This film is not immune from tropes.

An underwater travel tunnel collapses, trapping our characters. We are introduced to them at the open: these kids are delinquents in a police van; this couple love walking their dog together; this young woman is a failing Broadway actress/playwright. Into the tunnel. Stallone wants to help save them, but the city is done with him. He gets in anyways. When the trapped citizens realize they only have a disgraced man who is only there on his own accord, they reject him. But the tunnel keeps collapsing and he says he knows how to get out.

But, there are a few key differences that set us on different footing. There is no Tommy Lee Jones to heckle our attention, no Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt throwing divorce papers at each other in the middle of a tornado. Sylvester Stallone, the headline star of 'Daylight', is on reflection a weird choice here—his entrance is undramatic and already upstaged by other characters. Even though the movie is an action set piece, Stallone is no cliffhanging bodybuilder—he's a dowdy cab driver and only a former rescue operator. The movie doesn’t reference the usual Stallone persona. No Rambo or Cobra, he’s just a guy who wants to...what? The movie drops hints, but keeps a lot to itself.

Part of the success of the movie is that Stallone’s character continues to gain their trust at different stages, not by being built up, trust upon trust, but after so many collapses. Symbolically (maybe a bit too obviously) the movie weaves in religious belief, as one escape is marked by a massive crucifix.

I watched this movie in late Spring, and obviously it's made a big an impression on me (despite the many more intellectualized films I've seen since then) because of its interesting themes which somehow are blended harmoniously into a story about a collapsed tunnel. It’s not high art…but is it?