Bite The Bullet - Rewatch

Second Viewing
After re-watching Bite The Bullet - all I can say is that I was in a very forgiving & generous mood in my 2011 review. This time round, I was struck at how FAKE it is. There's nothing genuine about the movie. The characters are 1970's Hollywood stereotypes, the violence is badly done, the story is boring, and there's not one *real* emotion in the whole damn thing. Somehow Brooks got the reputation as a Western director because of "The Professionals" but there are huge differences between The Professionals and this 2 hours 11 minute piece of crap:

• The Professionals was adopted from a novel - Bite the Bullet was written by Brooks while filming - and it shows. 
• The Professionals stars three of the greatest Hollywood Western actors of all time: Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, and Burt Lancaster. Bite the Bullet has only one true Western star: Ben Johnson in a small role. 
• The Professionals is full of action. The group has to "rescue" a kidnapped woman from a Mexican Bandit and fight their way back to the USA. Bite the Bullet isn't. Its about a horse race.
• Bite the Bullet is full of preachy attitudes and phony characters. Bergen is a "You-go-girl feminist", Hackman beats up people for being cruel to animals & doesn't like Guns. Vincent is the opposite: the "Cowboy" villain who likes guns and is cruel to horses! Coburn is fake-tough and tosses off quips like a Beverly Hills screenwriter. Ian Bannen shows up to boost UK Ticket sales, and we get a nice super-cool Mexican who must deal with RACISM.
• Bite the Bullet concern for animal rights is fake. The movie self-righteously bangs the drum endlessly against cruelty  to horses. Yet the movie has *real* horses being dropped in a lake, ridden almost till they drop, and tripping over wires. That's reality! And even in the movie, Hackman, "Mr. Animal Rights" almost rides his horse to death in order to reach the finish line. 
• The Racing in Bite the Bullet is completely fake. Yes, there were 700 mile horse races in the Old West. But they were marathons. To cover the distance, the horses had to be given plenty of rest, and their riders walked more than they rode. In Bite the Bullet, we RARELY see anyone walking their horse. Instead, the horses are always racing over the roughest terrain, with their rider tall in the saddle. We reach peak stupidity, when Bergen rides in from the Desert, so parched with thirst, she tosses down a galleon of water from a flask. So what about the horse? There aren't any water troughs! And what the hell was the horse drinking while speeding through the Desert!
• The Ending in the Professionals is cool. We get a great quip and a surprise ending. The ending in Bite the Bullet is just plain dumb. After 700 miles, Coburn and Hackman are still neck and neck, and both riders and horses are so exhausted they can barely cover the last 100 yards. So they get off and walk together to the finish line. A good thing the finish line wasn't 100 yards even further, then Hackman/Coburn would've died!

Summary: Ignore my first review. Bite the Bullet comes up lame and should be put out of its misery. Its completely fake and Brooks didn't even care enough to write the script before he started filming. Rating *

Jazz - A Film By Ken Burns (2000)

I recently got interested in Miles Davis and Jazz music  - so I decided to check out the Documentary by Ken Burns. And unsurprisingly, it turned out to be your standard, awful, Ken Burns/PBS production. We get all the usual Ken Burns' tropes:

• Endless liberal social commentary from a white POV. There's a real Margaret Mead "Hello Pygmies!" tone in the production when discussing Black people.
• Reduction of complex individuals to Social symbols 
• Pretentious talking heads/critics telling us what to think
• Pompous narration
• Celebrities giving us their silly "Layman's Opinions"
• Focus on a few "Big Names" while everyone else is ignored

It was so bad during Episode 8 "Risk" - I just stopped watching**. Burns reduces the entire Bebop movement and story of Jazz from 1946-1959 to Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, with a few minutes expended for Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck. Absurdly, Gillespie is written off as a failure who couldn't make Bebop massively popular, while Parker (Bird) is portrayed as a "Junkie" who did some mysterious magic on the bandstand.

What *exactly* Parker did that was so amazing is never really explained. We don't have enough time for that because Burns is talking endlessly about Heroin and Parker's private life. We also waste time on irrelevancies like (a) Dizzy had a female trombone player and (b) Armstrong played at an integrated club in 1947.

Summary: Every Ken Burns documentary seems made for a middle-aged woman who reads the NY Times and lives in Boston or SF.  I had hoped "Jazz" would be different - but I was wrong. If you liked Burns' other Documentaries you might like this one. If not, and you want to learn about the history of Jazz - just google it, and listen to some CD's. Rating **

**So, if Episodes 9 or 10 were the series highlight, I'm out of luck.

The Only Game in Town (1970)

Man, this is one slow, talky movie.  A one-act play blown up into 2 hour movie- the story is very thin. Liz is a lonely 30-something showgirl - Warren Beatty a compulsive gambler & lounge singer. Both are unhappy and want to leave Las Vegas - but love conquers all.

The wordy script is made worse by the miscast leads. Taylor is too old/short to be a Las Vegas showgirl and sports a weird hairdo. Beatty is a bad fit for a world-weary piano player**. Neither is a good enough actor and there’s little charm or romantic chemistry. Unsurprisingly, it was a box-office bomb. To those under 30 it was an “old person’s movie.” The over 30 considered it “old hat” - or couldn’t buy glamorous Liz Taylor as a poor showgirl.

Direction? Not much is required. Its all talk, with 80% of it set in Liz’s apartment or Beatty’s piano bar. We get a few good external shots of Las Vegas, but most of the $11 million budget must have gone for salaries.

Worst Scene:  We get an incredibly fake “fishing on Lake Meade” sequence with Beatty on a Sound Stage holding a fishing pole against the rear projection of a lake.  Afterwards, we spend five minutes in a grocery store. Did Stevens think it was still 1938?

Summary: Stay away from The Only Game is Town - its for suckers. A boring two-character movie. Studio-bound, overlong, and underacted. One of Warren's worst.  Rating * 

**Sinatra (who had to drop out) makes more sense

Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954)

Don Siegel's short (80 minutes) well-directed, low-budget film about Neville Brand (in a good performance) leading a prison revolt to improve living conditions. Its fast moving and predictable - except for its hard push for prison reform.

Unfortunately, that's let down by some implausible attitudes and characters. The "Good" Prisoners are impossibly decent/honorable - and the movie roots for Brand even after he kidnaps 9 Guards and  threatens to kill them!  Even more absurd, we're supposed to feel sad when Brand has to stand trial for leading the riot. Why would anyone honor a "get out of jail free card" that's given under duress* ?

 Summary: If you're in the mood for a Prison film, this is a good one of its kind. But I doubt its Criterion material. Rating **1/2 

* = Imagine an employee putting a gun to your wife's head and then demanding a pay raise and a written agreement that you won't call the police! Would that be legally binding?

New York New York (1977)

Plot:  A Saxophonist and Big-Band Singer have a tumultuous relationship while trying to make it big.
Stars: Liza Minnelli, Robert De Niro
Alternate Title:  Raging Bull - The Musical
Best Negative Comment: Occasionally repellent but mostly tedious and trite... Liza Minnelli, difficult to like at best, comes out looking like a giant rodent en route to a costume ball..

An Interesting Failure
Scorsese's DVD commentary tells you - unintentionally - why New York, New York was a box-office bust and currently has mediocre 6.7 IMDB rating. Martin talks endlessly about the look of the film, the set design, and his desire to do a revisionist musical.  What's rarely discussed?  The characters, dialogue or music! But that's what people want in a musical - good story, good songs, and engaging characters. And a few laughs never hurt.

Instead we get  the most unlikable Musical Leading man - ever
For the first  2 hours  the movie is dominated by De Niro, playing "Jimmy" -  a hot-headed, obnoxious, unstable motor-mouth. He's a walking poster-boy for Sexual harassment and childish egotism.  His most "endearing" scene shows him posing as a disabled vet - to get out of paying a hotel bill.  And he has 60% of the dialogue.

Liza  and the Puzzling Love Affair
Meanwhile, Minnelli is given a passive character - who just reacts to De Niro. Sometimes she fights back, but mostly she's just looking at De Niro with her mouth open in a smile or shock.  And what does Liza see in him? It's never made clear. When they break up, you aren't sad - just relieved.   As you'd expect,  Liza and De Niro have zero romantic chemistry.

Supporting Characters? Who needs 'em
Even worse, De Niro and Liza are the whole movie.  They have 90% of the dialogue and every scene is about them. Unlike your typical 40's musical, there is no love triangle, subplot, or "Best Friend".  The three main supporting actors are just cardboard cutouts:  Liza's agent, Liza's backup singer, and the guy who buy's De Niro's band.

The Positives
The set design and direction are great. Scorsese wanted an "old fashioned MGM musical" look and gets it.  He uses back projection, realistic costumes, and the same montages and colorful nightclub signs you'd see in a 40's musical. As for the music, we get an excellent long sequence, some old standards, and New York, New York. You can't blame the failure on Minnelli's singing or even De Niro's acting. Its a script/story that's the problem.

The Horrible Dialogue
Two and half hours long, and not one memorable line. According to Scorsese, most of it was "improvised" which probably accounts for the verbose and repetitive quality of so many conversations. Sample:

Liza -I'm going to back to New York 
De Niro -What do you mean?
Liza - I want the baby to be safe. I need to go back to New York
De Niro -You're going back to New York?
Liza - Yes, I need to go back - for the baby
De Niro - I'll get you a car.
Liza - I don't want a car.

Worst Scene -  De Niro and Minnelli argue with 2 nobodies over a parking space.
Best Music Scenes -  First, the Happy Endings movie within a movie. Second, Liza sings "You brought a new kind of love to me" to win them a new band gig.

Summary:  163 minutes long with 40 minutes of Liza singing and  2 hours of De Niro playing Jake Lamotta with a Saxophone.  Here, quantity doesn't mean quality -  and we needed a better story, better dialogue, and a lot more charm. Sure, it looks great and has a few good musical numbers, but there's too much unlikable drama to slog through.

Mickey One (1966)

Plot: A Night-club comedian fears for his life when he owes the Mob $20,000
Stars:  Warren Beatty, Alexandra Stewart,  Hurd Hatfield
Best Quote: What are you guilty of? 
Mickey One: I'm guilty of not being innocent

You've got to give Arthur Penn some credit, this is one interesting movie for about 20 minutes. Beatty's on the run and lives a downscale existence. There are striking images, grotesque character actors, and crisp B&W photography. I loved the location shots of skid-row Chicago.  But once Beatty hooks up with Alexandra Stewart (who's a bore) the movie goes into a repeat loop and the amount of pretentious twaddle becomes unbearable** Penn uses Fellini's techniques*** - without his talent.

Best Scene:     Hatfield tries to convince Mickey One to leave town -  but Beatty wants answers.
Worst Scene:  Every single one with the Damn Mute Clown.

Why was this movie made?
Given the script/story, this movie could never have been more than an art-house curiosity. Yet it was bankrolled for $1 million and Arthur Penn given complete artistic freedom.  Why? I'd love to see a film on *that*.

Warren Beatty
Often described as Beatty's worst film performance, I think that's unfair. He's miscast. The part calls for energetic rage, paranoia, and deep-seated fear.  But Warren can't supply those kinds of fireworks - he's too controlled and mannered. Nor is he flamboyant/funny enough to be a credible nightclub comedian.  Or to put it more simply: The film needed Gene Hackman or George C. Scott and it got Warren Beatty.

Summary:  Different doesn't always mean good as Mickey One shows. While interesting at first and beautifully photographed -, its badly cast.  And without a strong story, the movie gets bogged down in pretentious symbolism and repetitive situations. After the half-way point it became an endurance contest.  Mickey One - Audience zero.

 **- what's up with the endless shots of a  mime in a wagon?  And why do we see him set fire to an art exhibit?
*** - depending on who you read, Penn was either imitating  Godard's non-linear plots, Fellini's surrealism, or Antonioni's preference for mood/image over narrative. Other's have called the movie Kafkaesque while Penn later stated the movie was an attack on McCarthyism ( well, okey-dokey).

Kaleidoscope (1966)

Plot:  Comedy/Crime Caper. A Rich Gambler helps Scotland Yard ruin a Global Narcotics Kingpin
Stars:  Warren Beatty, Susannah York

An Arabesque/Charade knock-off.  Set in “Swinging London” we get the standard 60's comedy/caper tropes: a clever/suave hero, villains in tuxedos, sexual banter, opulent Casinos, and lavish technicolor. The whole thing ends with a long chase and a happy ending. The supporting British actors - Clive Revill and Eric Porter - are a real positive.

Problems? The script/story is extremely thin and can barely fill the short 104 minute run-time. To stretch out the action, we get some very long Poker games (card players  may consider that a plus).  And York is beautiful & funny - but given little to do.

Best Scene:  The Scotland Yard Inspector blackmails Beatty into helping the Police
Worst Scene:  A way-too-long, meaningless poker game between Beatty and a minor character.

Warren Beatty.  No serious acting is required and while he's no Cary Grant - Warren is sufficiently charming and "cool". Per his biography, Beatty took the undemanding role to save his energy for Bonnie and Clyde.

Summary:  A critical and box-office flop, the film sank like a stone in 1966, and hasn’t been heard of since. But Kaleidoscope isn’t that bad.  It’s a fun/frivolous 60’s caper – but utterly mediocre. ** 1/2

All Fall Down (1962)

Plot: A family feuds over their worthless, good-looking son and his love affair with an older female border.
Stars: Warren Beatty, Angela Lansbury, Karl Malden, Brandon De Wilde

An overly familiar Inge family drama with some good acting, All Fall Down has a great first 15 minutes as we follow Berry-Berry’s (Beatty) antics in seedy Key West. However, once the film moves to Cleveland it becomes Berry-Berry boring. The focus shifts to the parents (Lansbury/Malden) and De Wilde. Only the Eva Marie Saint-Beatty affair livens things up. The ending is abrupt. There’s nothing really wrong with the script, we’ve just seen it all before: the dysfunctional family, the coming-of-age writer, the dissolute son, the alcoholic Dad, etc.

Acting – Acting honors go to Eva Marie Saint for her portrayal of an old maid (age 31!) in love with Berry-Berry. De Wilde is surprisingly effective and carries the movie. Poor Angela Lansbury (12 years older than Warren) is stuck with another Old Mom role. Beatty does well at being the lady-killer/drifter, who likes to hit women, less well when dramatics are called for.

Most Annoying thing:  That damn name:  Berry-Berry.  Why not Kumquat? At least its one word.

Best Scene:  De Wilde goes to a downscale Key West bar, is hit on by a Stripper, and gets kicked out once its known he's Beatty's brother. 

Summary: Too bad All Fall Down didn't stay in Key West and focus on Bad-Boy Beatty. He should have been the lead actor - not De Wilde. But that movie wasn’t made. Instead, we get a well-done family drama. Unfortunately, those kinds of movies bore me and All Fall Down seemed very old hat. A box-office failure, probably due to its downbeat nature and hollow conclusion. Rating **1/2

The Fortune (1975)

Plot: A Comedy. In the 1920's, two scam artists try to bilk a millionaire heiress out of her fortune.
Stars: Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Stockard Channing

Man, what a mess!  Only 88 minutes long with only 8 amusing minutes. Not only are Channing, Warren and Jack borderline adequate -the movie lacks everything that makes a successful comedy:  good jokes, clever slapstick, likable characters, plot movement (we spend 30 minutes in a California Bungalow), or a decent supporting cast. The leisurely direction is surprising given the short run-time.  Good things? Jack’s three-stooge’s haircut. Plus, the 1920’s set design is excellent.

Somewhat similar to Ishtar
An unfunny comedy with Beatty and a famous co-star, written by a successful female writer, and riffing off an old-time movie genre (here, Screwball comedy - with Ishtar, the Road Pictures).  The only difference is the budget.

Summary:  This "forgotten film" is best forgotten. Rating *

A Place in the Sun (1951)

Plot: Based on Dreiser's An American Tragedy.  A young man is torn between his factory-worker girlfriend and a lovely debutante.
Stars:  Montgomery Clift, Shelly Winters, Elizabeth Taylor, Raymond Burr
Best Quote: Men are so disgustingly prompt. I think they do it just to put us women in a bad light.

I'm shocked at how highly rated this is (7.8 IMDB rating).
Yes, Liz Taylor is impossibly lovely. Yes, Clift gives a great performance.  And yes, they make a great couple. But the Monty-Liz relationship is only about 25% of the movie - the rest is pure melodrama. Mostly its about Monty working in a factory, his relationship with Winters, her murder, and the trial/conviction. And I didn't care that much.  The whole story seemed sluggish and predictable.

Those Puzzling Oscars
Given the stodgy direction and bland screenplay, the Oscar wins are amazing. That Stevens' won over Kazan’s Streetcar is even more incredible. Were politics involved? And how did Winters ever snag a “Best Actress” nomination?! Meanwhile, Liz Taylor - the 2nd best thing in the movie - got bupkis.

Why am I supposed to care about these Characters? 
Clift gives it a good try. But George (his character) is a weak-willed, amoral loser. Greedy, and desperate to "get ahead", he breaks the rules (don't date the factory girls), stupidly gets Winters pregnant, and then tries to kill her. If  Lee Marvin had played him, would anyone sympathize?  And Winter's character is no prize. A drab whiner, she feebly tries to get an abortion, then blackmails George into marriage*.  In fact, she’s so unlikable, she's forgotten the minute she dies.

A Place in the Sun vs. An American Tragedy
And yet, the movie is much better than the novel.  We're spared Dreiser's ham-fisted prose and sluggish never-ending plot**. Instead, Stevens keeps the meat of the story and cuts out the first half of the book, most of the trial, and almost all of George’s “born again” Christianity***.

 He also changes Dreiser's “Moral”. The novel is as an attack on Capitalism. Impressionable George is so dazzled by the Bourgeois he’s led to murder. Under socialism - Dreiser believed – this wouldn’t happen. In the movie, its more about George wanting super-hot Liz Taylor over dowdy Shirley Winters. That Liz has some $$$, doesn't hurt though.

Summary: I suppose you couldn't film Dreiser's awful novel**** better than A Place in the Sun.  But the sizzling Elizabeth Taylor- Montgomery Clift pairing can't overcome the dullness of the story.

Notes:
*At no time is adoption mentioned, although that would've allowed Winters to stay single and not be burdened with a kid.
** Per Mencken: "..a vast, sloppy, chaotic thing of 385,000 words - at least 250,000 of them unnecessary".
*** Having Commie Ann Revere play the Bible-thumping Mom must have been a Stevens’ inside-joke.
**** - The real tragedy is I read all 859 pages.

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

Stars:  Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Max Von Sydow,  Clift Robertson
Plot. After his entire CIA "Section" is murdered, Redford tries to stay alive. And, because its the 1970's - the killers aren't KGB, they're with the CIA! Other main characters? Emotionally damaged "civilian" Faye Dunaway  and slimy CIA bureaucrat Clift Robertson.

Analysis. Robert Redford was on a roll in 1975, not only did he star in the critically acclaimed All the President's Men,  he teamed up with Sidney Pollack to produce this -still popular- film. Two hours long, its an above-average spy/political thriller, helped by all-star cast, and hurt by an overly talkative script and some extremely implausible characters and situations* .  Redford goes from scooter-driving bookworm to James Bond in a flash**, while the professional assassins alternate between incredible brilliance  and mind-numbing incompetence.

The film's "Morality" is questionable.
Paid killer Von Sydow is presented as such a super-nice guy and uber-professional - you'd let him baby-sit your kids, Meanwhile, CIA guy Robertson (trying to protect the USA) is profanely told off by Redford***  Not much acting is required but everyone does well enough. Dunaway and Redford are too low-key to generate much heat, but make a very attractive couple.

Best Scene:  Redford fights a professional hit-man in Dunaway's Apartment.
Worst Scene: We spend 10 minutes seeing Redford going to work on  a scooter, getting lunch and hobnobbing with his co-workers. Since all these people are killed immediately after, and that's disclosed in the trailer, why waste our time?

Notes
* -  For example. Dunaway leaves a dead body in her apartment,  falls in love with Redford 8 hours after he kidnaps her, and has no problem finding Robertson at massive (and Top secret) CIA HQ.
** -  Redford is so good with a gun and his fists/wits, Von Sydow offers him a job as a professional assassin.
*** - Redford smugly tells Robertson that he's finished. Why? Because Redford's told the whole story to the  New York Times, who (unlike the US Government) is completely trustworthy!

Lilith (1964) - Rossen

Plot: Set in a Rich Sanitarium,  an occupation therapist becomes obsessed with a beautiful mental patient called Lilith**.  
Stars:  Warren Beatty, Jean Seberg, Kim Hunter, Peter Fonda, Gene Hackman
Best Quote:  If I Die, it will be Warren Beatty who Killed me - Robert Rossen

Movies about crazy people attract three kinds of fans (i) crazy people (ii) people fascinated by crazy people and (iii) people who see crazy people as a metaphor for society.  Unfortunately, I'm none of these (I’ll ignore my Wife and assert my sanity) and found Lilith a bit of a slog.

At 114 minutes, it’s outrageously padded out and digressive. Did we really need a picnic, bike ride, mentally ill spiders, an unfaithful wife, a town fair, and pony ride? However, it becomes more interesting when we focus on the main plot: the seduction of Beatty by Seberg.  The direction by Rossen is good - and the B&W photography exquisite – but Lilith is really an actor’s movie, and it needed much better lead actors.

Acting:  We can start with Hackman – I’ve never seen him worse.  He’s miscast as a bland Babbitt with a paunchy stomach and a bad southern accent.  Warren Beatty is, well, adequate.  He doesn’t embarrass himself, but his performance is an inch deep. The same is true of Jean Seberg.  Her face glows with beauty, but she’s more naughty UCLA co-ed - then a siren luring men to death/insanity.  There’s not much chemistry there.  OTOH, Peter Fonda is surprisingly good as the suicidal twit.

Most Risqué Scene (for 1964): Beatty finds Seberg in a Lesbian tryst, throws out her lover, calls her a “Dirty Bitch” and then closes the barn door for a literal “roll in the hay”.

Dullest Scene: We spend 5 minutes on Beatty walking up to the Sanatorium and having a job interview.

Summary: More interesting than good.  Justly forgotten –it needed more energy/depth, and better acting. I wouldn’t bother unless you like the Stars.

** -  In 19th Century German/English Literature "Lilith"  is a long-haired seductress  

Murder My Sweet (1944)

A Short review.  Well-done film noir based on Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely.  Well directed ( I love Marlowe first seeing "Moose" in a window reflection), and full of Chandler's witty dialogue, I can't be more enthusiastic.  Why? Dick Powell.  He's a mediocre Marlowe and lacks the necessary toughness.  Other flaw? The move tries to cram too much of the book's convoluted plot into 95 minutes.  I lost track of who was beating up Marlowe  -and why.  The supporting cast is good, with  Esther Howard as the standout.  She's boozy "Jessie Florian" and she's a hoot..  Rating ***