CinemaRian Blog

Under discussion:

The Wizard of Oz  (1925)

First things first- let's all agree that the director of this movie has a very unfortunate last name.  Larry Semon was a famous comedian..filmmaker in his day, a la Chaplin or Keaton, but now he almost totally forgotten, partially because he died before sound came along and thus could never had the late career comeback that Keaton or Harold Lloyd did. 

According to Wikipedia, Semon was known for making very "expensive and extragavent" pictures as a director, that is certainly the case here.  Although this adaptation of L.  Frank Baum's classic novel is obviously going to be dwarfed in memory by the 1939 MGM version, it's a bit surprising a movie that looks this good is not better remembered.  Although he's not in Keaton's league artistically, it's clear that Semon clearly knew his stuff technically- there are a lot of really clever special effects here that hold well 80+ years later.

However, fans of both the book and the MGM version may be disappointed to learn that this picture bares little resemblance to either.  Semon (who also co-wrote the script with Baum's son and Leon Lee) chose to use the very, very broad template of the story as a vehicle for his own comedy, and his character the Scarecrow, has more to do then the protagonist of the novel, Dorothy (Dorothy Dwan, Semon's wife). 

In this version, Dorothy is a young adult who was abandoned as a child on the door step of "Aunt" Em (Mary Carr) and the obese "Uncle" Henry (Frank Alexander).  Along with her is envelope and a note saying that it must not be opened until her 18^th birthday or death will follow.  When the birthday roles around, Dorothy is about to open the envelope when a plane from the land of Oz arrives and some bad dudes jump out saying they need the envelope.  Turns out it contains the information that Dorothy is really the heir to the throne of Oz.  Through some comic hijinks, Dorothy, Uncle Henry, and unnamed three farmhands, played by Semon, Oliver Hardy and Spencer Bell, get whisked away to the land of Oz, where the former two disguise themselves as a Scarcrow and a Tin Woodman.  Dorothy later ascends to the throne but is threatened by Prime Minister Kruel (Josef Swickard).

Obviously, this plotline bares only the slightest resemblance to the novel and the much more faithful 1939 film.  The primary differences is that there is no magic in this film- Oz is just another foreign country.  There is also strong evidence that heavy alteracations were made in the editing room to favor Semon's comedy, as the Dorothy as Queen plotline disappears from the film almost entirely at the halfway point.

So is this movie worth seeing?  Well, on the plus side, it looks great, in the way that only silent movies can and Semon's brand of comedy is at times appealing.  The problem is that it's not always appealing and in the second half of the film becomes very tiring (a sequence set in a lions den goes on forever).  Plus, there is some vile racist comedy concerning Bell's character (who briefly masquerades as the Cowardly Lion in Oz).  For a look at an unjustly forgotten talent, The Wizard of Oz is worth a rental, otherwise, it's hit and miss.

Under discussion:

Milk  (2008)

 Milk is an essentially successful biopic, but I have to qualify that by saying that I am getting a little tired of seeing biopics in general. I am reminded of the works of Orson Welles, which seem devoted to the idea that we can never really know anyone. A human life is so multifaceted that even the major achievements in someone life can't really be portrayed accurately in a movie.

Yes, I know the counterargument with regard to Milk: the movie only recounts the last eight years of the life of the gay rights activists, from 1970 to his assassination in 1978, but even then the scope is too broad. Perhaps if it had narrowed its to only focus on his actions once he was elected to the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco in 1977, where he managed to lead a campaign to fight against an anti-gay ballot proposition, which made the statement that, yes, the was someplace in the world where it was not okay to discriminate against gays.

But Milk opens as its protagonist (Sean Penn) as he moves from New York City to San Francisco with his partner Scott Smith (James Franco) in the early 70's. The pair start a camera store and at first desire to only function as businessmen, but Harvey is outraged when a gay man is murdered and the police hardly even bother to look for the killer. He decides to enter politics and runs three losing campaigns in row until he is finally elected, becoming probably the first open homosexual the country to win public office.

The movie is best when it focuses on the incredible and ridiculous lobbied against homosexuals that Milk and his supporters had to fight and uphill battle against. As a heterosexual, it's hard for me to understand what it must be like to be gay, but watching this movie and the number of people who call gays deviants and pedophiles, among other things, was intense, which showed the movie was succeeding.

Where the film fails is in its attempts to show Milk's personal life, which is so often tied to the classic biopic cliché: "Honey, please put down the work and come to bed." Milk breaks up with Smith and starts a new relationship with Jack Lira (Diego Luna), but both characters are ludicrously underwritten. There is a key scene late in the film between Milk and Lira that should be of crucial importance, but it comes out of nowhere and then is forgotten, creating a gaping hole in the film.

I am sure that Sean Penn will get an Oscar nomination for his role, and he is already receiving huge amounts of critical praise, but I don't think the performance is that good. For one thing, he doesn't look or sound much like the real Milk. For another (and more importantly) he doesn't seem to embody the essence of the person, in the same way, say George C. Scott, Sir Ben Kingsley, and Denzel Washington did Patton, Gahndi and Malcolm X, respectively. We are too self concionscess of his tricks and makeup to totally buy him as Milk, but his performance is passable, but nothing extraordinary. I have a feeling that the awards are going to ignore the real standout performance in the film - Emile Hirsch as Cleve Jones, a young man protégé of Milk who went on to found the AIDS quilt.

Yes, Milk has some moving moments, but it works best as a film of political and social advocacy and not one of screen biography. It's a good movie, but if you really want to learn about Milk, you're better off reading a biography.

Under discussion:

The Day the Earth Stood Still  (2008)

I was extremely skeptical about the idea of a remake of Robert Wise's 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still for two reasons: A.) The original's success was directly tied to its commentary on the political climate of the 1950's, and would be difficult to replicate today for a variety of reasons and B.) it had Keanu Reeves in the lead role. Of course, I still decided to fork over my hard earned money to see it.

To my surprise, the movie was better that I expected, but it's just a shade under a good movie. To describe exactly why new movie doesn't quite work means I'll have to give away some key plot material for both films, so you've been warned.

The remake begins as Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) a biologist is "detained" by the U.S. government, who is investigating some strange astrological readings. It turns out that those readings are alien spaceship, which lands in New York City's Central Park. The movie takes forever to get through these scenes, as the scientists and military men discuss what every single audience member knows from the trailer (the original had the scenes to avoid this pointless buildup, as the UFO lands in Washington, D.C. in the first scene).

A weird looking alien steps out the spaceship and is shot by a soldier acting without orders. After a giant robot emerges to protect the spacecraft and aid his master, Benson and the other medics rush him to the hospital where he sheds his outer skin and becomes a biological human named Klaatu (Reeves). The Secretary of Defense (Kathy Bates) insists that Klaatu be sedated for questioning, but he easily escapes, with the assistance of Benson, who gives him a placebo instead of the drugs she was ordered to.

After he leaves, he enlists her aid in getting around on Earth, and slowly reveals his mission. His original intent was to speak to the world's leaders at the United Nations to warn them of the impending environmental catastrophe to Earth, but after his attack he has decides that humanity is hopeless and must be exterminated. The reasoning is simple: if the planetary rape continues, humanity will destroy itself anyway, so eliminating humans will save the planet and give all the other species a chance to thrive.

And this is the biggest difference between the two pictures: in the original, the alien (played brilliantly by Michael Rennie) ceaseless tried to aid humans, even when they did not deserve it, here, Klaatu seems annoyed at humans the whole time.

Much of the pleasure of the original involved the fey and somewhat ethereal Rennie relating to human society forming a mentorship to a young boy, but in this picture the kid (Benson's stepson, played by Jaden Smith is annoying) and "fey" and "ethereal" are two words that I do not usually associate with Keanu Reeves.

As my friend Tracey Stephens pointed out, the movie also seems a little unsure of whether it wants to be an action thriller or a metaphysical, nearly Solaris like drama, and ends up doing neither very well.

Finally, the original had a rather obvious Christ metaphor (though Wise claimed otherwise) that was appropriate. In the remake, the comparisons between Klaatu and Jesus are made more explicit, but are less relevant. The scene where Reeves walks on water is more weird than spiritually moving.

But- the movie is not boring and is sort of fun, although that might be a failure as it seems to want to make some deep statement about something. Perhaps if I hadn't seen the original I would have like it more, but I can't really recommend a remake that adds nothing to an acknowledged classic. Nikto!

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)