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Topkapi (1964)
Who killed the caper flick?
It's been many decades since Topkapi or the wonder of Peter O'Toole and that apogee of chic herself Audrey Hepburn delighted us in How to Steal a Million. These are exceedingly clever movies starring very attractive people wearing seriously good clothes while hanging out in exotic and/or luxurious locations and driving autos as erotic as the white Lincoln suicide-door convertible in Topkapi or Peter O'T.'s mint XKE sportster.
Hey, life was good! Not only that, the dialogue was witty and multi-leveled. I'd forgotten the homoerotic subtext in Topkapi, made pretty damn explicit in the Turkish Wrestler sequence, which is not even remotely gay, but definitely hot, and a hoot, to boot! Observe Melina Mercouri struggle to contain herself watching the big oiled-up dudes in leather pants writhe about as the Turkish secret police are equally preoccupied. We're almost talking NC-17, but happily Topkapi predates that absurdist system. Most contemporary comedies—even the dominant gross-out variety—seem old-maidish by comparison.
Both mastermind Maximilian Schell (never more handsome) and the hunky gymnast Gilles Ségal flirt with everybody in sight irrespective of gender. Even the bumbling, Oscar-collecting "schmo" Peter Ustinov gets an ardent male admirer. Nor is there a whiff of homophobia to dampen the mood. It may have been 1964, but these people are way more hip and sophisticated than, say, George Clooney, to cite a typical example from the current talent pool.
Gilles Ségal never speaks a word in the English language Topkapi, yet he deftly steers clear of mime's clichés for an eloquent performance. Albeit unknown in the States, he's terrific, yet but one of many pleasures in this classic of the caper genre.
The formidable Melina Mercouri usually gets all the attention, and very true: movie stars of the stratospheric Sophia Loren variety have vanished from the cinematic heavens. Still, it's the men who not only pull off the heist, but likewise effortlessly do the heavy lifting that keeps this picture as satisfying as good champagne.
Here's a conversational gambit for a phellow philm phreak: How would you cast the remake? What about your choice for a director? I'd say Topkapi is at least as ripe as Ocean's 11 for a revisit. Just don't give Clooney the Maximillian Schell role. For one, he's too old, and for another, it really should be a Euro. How about Nicolas Cazalé? Or Jean Dujardin was brilliant in the OSS-117 spoofs, which hardly anybody saw outside of France or pre-Artist. Then again, Tom Hardy seems like he can do anything, especially a slightly dangerous sexuality.
I'm stumped, though on the Melina Mercouri, and my best guess so far is Angelina Jolie. Don't snicker. She was amazing in Salt.
Peaceful Warrior (2006)
honorable intentions, not polished results
While all movies—even documentaries—require some deferral of disbelief to succeed, this one stretches us even further to demand a hiatus from our sophistication about New Age (or "Alternative," or God help us, "Spiritual," or whatever they used to call it back in the last millennium) platitudes that now ring all too hollow and tiresome in the contemporary ear.
Beginning in 1991, author Dan Millman turned his Peaceful Warrior series of inspirational self-help books into quite the lucrative franchise of a dozen or more titles (Hmm. Maybe the guy really is on to something.), but this movie didn't come out until 2006, by which time it was pushing a little too hard on its sell-by date.
Nonetheless, Nick Nolte does a remarkable job at keeping a straight face while delivering lines the likes of "This moment is the only thing that matters." Yeah, right. Been there, done that, and long since sent the t-shirt to the Goodwill.
IF, huge IF, one can put aside one's critical knowingness and allow that all the crypto-shamanistic psycho-babble might still be fresh, potent stuff worthy of mindful consideration, then a remarkable thing happens: Peaceful Warrior becomes a beacon of hope and motivation, an entirely positive reinforcement of the notion that it is indeed possible to pass through life's slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and emerge a fuller, stronger person. It might help if one happens to be experiencing one of those pesky setbacks at the moment, and consequently feeling more susceptible to the hokey, but nonetheless entirely valid message.
(Full disclosure: it's not a very well made movie, and to judge from Nolte's apparent age, this flick languished on the shelf for some while before finding distribution. It's not hard to understand why. True, there is a lot to forgive here, but it's worth the mental exercise to give it a try. The stars are more for honorable intentions, than a polished product.)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
somewhat less thrilling than canned peas
Unless you were an aficionado of the spy vs. spy genre fiction routinely found on airport paperback racks in the 70s, I defy you to make sense of the narrative of the 2011 movie version of Tinker Tailor Solder Spy on the very simplest of whodunit levels. Reportedly the press at preview screenings were supplied with cheat sheets. Having seen neither the 1979 BBC mini-series nor read the 1974 mega-bestseller, I was lost. After a second run through with the English subtitles turned on, I still had to look on Wikipedia for the plot outline, and this remake STILL adds up to a convoluted muddle.
Remarkably, Tinker Tailor &c. was the top grossing film in the U.K. for its first three weeks in release. One can only imagine all those Brits had a leg up from the viewing the well-regarded BBC series, or that they intuitively resonate with 1970s Cold War cloak-and-dagger machinations literally hashed out over the tea table, or perhaps simply tend to read more spy novels. 21st Century American sensibilities, however, generally lack these advantages, which should not be an impossible feat of cinema to overcome. Period espionage films like The Third Man (1949) by British director Carol Reed continue to pack a powerful punch. This flick, however, is somewhat less thrilling than canned peas, which, appropriately, the cinematography's consistently muted tones closely resemble.
The aptly named Hardy and Strong are the sole actors showing any signs of testosterone in the bloodstream. Tinker Tailor comes alive during Tom Hardy's brief scenes wherein he radiates a palpable sense of the extreme jeopardy entailed in playing for high stakes. (Hardy would make a really interesting Bond, come to think of it.) Mark Strong similarly emanates an aura of danger and consequence, yet both players are hamstrung by the script's failure to delineate neither the stakes nor the consequences.
The remainder of the consistently saturnine, mostly male cast are not only as uniformly bland and boring as British cuisine of the period, but appear to be suffering authentic gastro-intestinal consequences, as well. Colin Firth fails to demonstrate a range stretching the distance from A to B, while Gary Oldman never strays an inch off A. His is definitely a contender for the most everlastingly drab one-note performance outside a Mike Leigh movie in the entire depressing history of the British cinema.
Le fils de l'épicier (2007)
the subtle changes in tone and reflectiveness as paint dries . . .
Nicolas Cazale is an interesting actor to watch, and if you are the sort of person who finds the subtle changes in tone and reflectiveness as paint dries fascinating, you may find this sweet little movie equally absorbing.
Otherwise, the flick's chief fault is an excess of sentimental charm. The scenery in and around the French mountain village where the story takes place is gorgeous. No doubt it would be a lovely place to rent a cottage for a week or two and take long walks before curling up with a good book to stave off the boredom because the story here is much too slight to otherwise keep one occupied.
If you understand enough French to get by without looking at the subtitles, The Grocer's Son could make for entirely tasteful images to have on the TV whilst you go about the house doing something else. Don't worry if your French is not all that fluent. There's still plenty of charm to fill the void left by less than scintillating dialogue.
Cazale, btw, is even more interesting playing a bad boy in Three Dancing Slaves.
Shame (2011)
the ultimate 100 minute cinematic buzz-kill
Shame is THE definitive sexual addiction movie. The media gush around Michael Fassbinder's incarnation of a sex addict is, for once, accurate and his performance one of the more brilliant we've seen lately. While Carey Mulligan struggles extravagantly to hold her own as his pathologically messed up wannabe singer sister, the picture remains Michael Fassbinder's from first frame to last.
Sexual addiction is an inability to find satisfaction, those few moments of post-orgasmic repose that allow—however briefly—a fleeting balm of peace within ourselves and a truce with the world to settle around us and—just for right now—for everything to be o.k. Therein lies the problem. Shame perfectly captures the relentless, desperate yearning for a mere breath or two of minuscule relief, the micro-timeout, that never, ever arrives. Godot has already come and long since blown this scene.
Perhaps in your life, you've not yet had to ponder the hell realm of sexual—or of any flavor, for that matter—addiction. If so, this could be fascinating unknown territory to explore. But if you've ever tasted utter despair, there's really no need to submerge yourself in a 100 minute cinematic buzz-kill that goes absolutely nowhere, never mind how cunningly rendered by British film and video artist Steve McQueen.
There is likewise a surfeit of neo-noir New York streets punctuated with the gritty angst of lost subway lust. The textures are as authentic as they come.
Right. All that nudity. Should the titillation of semi-soft-core full frontal attract, this is not the place for gratification. Sure, there's plenty of skin, and the bodies are all nice enough, but it's 180° opposite from a turn-on. Unless, say, you are the sort who gets off on a cinéma veritié shot of a buck naked Fassbinder's backside as he pisses into his own toilet without bothering to raise the seat (Yes, his sister is staying in his apartment at the time. Passive-aggressive? You think?), then jiggles the post-penal drip from his dangling dick. A telling moment, definitely, but nothing I personally care to contemplate, given my mental state after macerating my mind in those 100 minutes of Shame.
The Fall (2006)
wildly passionate love letter to the magical mystery powers of The (capital C) Cinema
Only once in every generation of filmmakers, there appears such a wildly passionate love letter to the magical mystery powers of The (capital C) Cinema. Tarsem Singh's insanely idiosyncratic phantasmagoria The Fall makes such justly celebrated films as Day for Night, The Stuntman and most recently, The Artist look pale and languid by comparison.
The cinematography in The Fall is as dazzling as any you'll see, and keep in mind there's zero cgi slight of hand. It all happens in the camera on gloriously color-saturated film. If you are a filmmaker yourself, you've got to grimace imagining what that crew endured to maintain something resembling continuity when a single sequence can stretch across three continents from locations in South Africa to Jodhpur, The Blue City of Rajasthan, onward all over India, China and beyond to include Buddha and Allah and Krishna only know whatever other ultra-exotic locales snagged Tarsem's huge and generous heart in a total of twenty countries.
It's an extravagantly ambitious feat of seriously hard work by a cast and crew who clearly loved the movie every bit as much as Tarsem, who, by the by, prefers just his first name. Plus, if you know the film business at all, you'll appreciate that Tarsem has got to be a shaman with some serious ju-ju to have successfully persuaded somebody to keep signing the checks to bring this wild, unruly movie across the finish line after he'd already turned his own pockets inside out.
Astonishing work, everyone! I know I am far from alone in my gratitude.