Allied:  (2016)

Lake Delton AMC Desert Star.  6:40pm show.  Ticket Price: 10.53 + $4.25 for “small” water. 

If you have ever looked at your spouse, or significant other, boyfriend / girlfriend and thought to yourself…  This is not the person I thought they were…   Then, do not see this movie.  It will only confirm your darkest suspicions. 

(Spoilers alert!)

One of the dangers of viewing lots of movies… especially when putting on the “Movie Reviewers cap”, you notice you become hyper-critical about certain things in movies… certain themes or motifs where you roll your eyes and that completely interrupts the story.  

Anytime you go, “Oh, the director put that there because…”  takes you completely out of the story, and lessens the enjoyment of the play in front of you. 

Lately, at least the newly released films… I’m seeing this more often.  Which brings me to the Movie, Allied.  Starring beautiful Brad Pitt and beautiful Marion Cotillard.  They are both deep undercover agents in 1942 Casablanca, one a flight commander and the other a French Resistance fighter. They meet in a covert mission… fall in love, get married and move back to London.  There Max faces the possibility that the love of his life, and the mother of his child is a German spy. 

The good: Oh, my!  Marion Cotillard.  I think I have figured out what “my kind of woman” really means…  I’ve always said that I should have been born in another time and place, and now I know this is true.  She is the most amazing, beautiful woman I’ve seen on screen in a long time.  That underlying, smoldering French sexiness and sleepy eyes wrapped in a classic satin nightgown..  I am smitten!  oooh! La La! 

The fact that she is the love interest in the Midnight in Paris movie, helps too.  Ah, Paris!

Brad Pitt isn’t bad either, though he seems to have adapted that stoic, classic German look of stone-faced indignity a little too well.  Lost is his boyish, mischievous, gum-smacking grin (The Ocean movies) and in this movie, that suits him very well. 

In this movie, you can almost draw some parallels between the Mr. and Mrs. Smith movie with his now ex-wife.  Both secret agents.  Both consummate professionals (as such, professional liars).  Both hiding something from the other….

The Bad:  This is one of my pet peeves in modern movies lately.  Ever since The Hunger Games, it appears that young children and extreme violence in the same movie frame are a thing now.  Towards the end, when Max walks in and shoots the Nanny in the forehead, his 1 year old daughter is in the crib, within view.  Yes, I know… she’s only 1… but still.  Why?

I believe I know why you see this more often: Writers and directors have discovered that children in harm’s way provokes an emotional response from the audience.  Apparently, a child near violence is about the only thing we are not emotionally dead from, therefore they use it as a cheap plot device. 

And I hate it.  Seems to me kids are just having a rough enough time as it is, just being kids (in real life too).  This movie is smartly written and the plot was good enough, it certainly did not need this.  He could have shot the Nanny and then ran upstairs to retrieve the little girl.  See? Nothing lost but a few seconds of film.  Maybe that’s the problem, I guess. 

Same thing with asses.  Nudity in film is of course, nothing new.  But, I do wonder exactly who made the conscience decision to frame the love scene in both the bed and the automobile to feature the ass cheeks of Mr. Pitt.  It does make one wonder about some of the conversations that take place in certain Hollywood offices, doesn't it?

“Say Garland, please ask Mr. Pitt about the ass shots in the movie.  Is he willing to okay them, or not?  We need to know before the final cuts…” 

“Sure, JB.  I just did, and Pitt’s agent agreed that he is willing to feature the ass in the two shots we discussed earlier.  However, he would like an extra million for that.”

“One million for a man’s POOPER?  Well, I suppose… if it gets the “50 shades” bored horny housewives vote…  I have paid more….  Okay, just gently remind him that we can always get an ass double, to do the scenes.  Like they don’t get enough work these days…. “ (rolls eyes)

“Okay, JB, I’m on it!” 

The love scenes were certainly erotic enough without that. Especially in the automobile during the sandstorm…  I’m a doing it in a car kinda guy myself.  Something wild and uninhibited about that… If not a bit cramped…

The other thing is the gratuitous and obvious use of Casablanca as romance center point, rendezvous, or starting point.  The clothing, the style, and some of the scenes were copiously copied from the 1942 classic of the same name.  Oh, come on!  I’m sort of surprised they didn’t have the omnipresent white search light from the town square.

I get it, Casablanca equals a modern yearning for far-flung, romance and epic stylishness so missing in the modern world.  I long for that too.  However, this just seems so in-your-face… it’s like; okay, here’s where the hero invariably wins the day…   Here’s where he flagrantly disobeys orders…  

Still, if you could judge a movie on just stylishness alone, this one is truly amazing.  I just wish there wouldn’t have been so many of those Hollywood “reminders” that we are, indeed, in a MOVIE.  Never did I get lost in the story.  Not once. 

Also: So the lesbian sister..... You're saying in 1943 London...  Max's sister would be so caviler and open about her relationship with a woman?  Come on, now!!! I doubt it.  It almost seems like another (Yes, ANOTHER) Hollywood device to include our modern sensibilities into what is another plot device.  What other reason did this character exist, then? I'm not sure she did much other than this...   

Finally the ending.  How heartbreaking could you possibly make it?  I disliked the ending immensely.   I could have forgiven all the other movie techniques and clichés, if only it could have ended…..oh, I don’t know… differently. 

It didn’t need to end happily, but to have the woman put a bullet in her head?  Even in the movie Casablanca, the guy didn’t get the girl… but, you know Ilsa could have ended that way too…. Oh, I love Rick, but I’m going with Laszo… I know, I just kill myself. Click, click…boom.     

Like everything else in the movie, it felt like a cheap trick (and not the band, either)… 

I think this shows the inclination for Hollywood to finally pull the trigger, and do the remake of Casablanca that has been rumored for ages.  My only hope is they play it straight with the audience…  no twists, please.  As in, Casablanca as told from the point of view of Lazlo…. Oh, god....Please, NO! 

If Casablanca is re-made someday soon... Please consider Marion Cotillard for the part of Ilsa.  And I begging you... no making love ass-shots, okay? Let us use our imaginations...  

Out of ten stars, I would rate Allied a solid 6.  It’s not a bad date movie (as long they do not fit the description I listed at the top), but I would rent it, instead.  And if you're a single rent out Inglorious Bastards.. followed by The Dirty Dozen.  

If you are lucky enough to have a date… 

Please; make it Casablanca with a side order of Couscous and Champagne cocktails…

A short dissertation on “Casablanca” (The movie)

I don’t understand why movie writers these days’ pigeon hole romance (AKA “Chick flicks” OR “Rom-coms”) movies to become completely formulaic to the point where you can almost count the beats between where the two completely mis-matched people eventually make some excuse to go out to shop, look into each other’s eyes, deny what they see there, wreck everything, and then at the end…  Ah, love at last! (Blelch!) 

-And it happens just that way in real life, too – don’tcha know?

If anyone knows me very well, they know that I am a real movie hound. In that context, my all-time favorite movie is “Casablanca” (1943: Starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman And Claude Raines).  It annoys several of my dates because, well… it’s old and in Black and White (I’ve ignored the awful “colorized” version of the classic)..  But for me, Casablanca is the embodiment of the Perfect Drama and the Perfect Romantic Movie.

So, why would I think it’s the perfect drama? Well, first there’s Nazi’s..  They have become universal “bad guys” (Along with the Taliban)..  and living under their regime in German-controlled Europe and Northern Africa must have been extremely frightening and dangerous.

Enter one “Richard Blaine… American… Age 37… cannot return to his country for reason’s a little vague”…  Owner and manager of “Rick’s Café Americana” located in downtown Casablanca…  Which is a still “Unoccupied France” providence of Morocco, Africa… 1941.  Not too long before the American’s invaded French Morocco…  (In December 1941).

So, Rick is despondent and cynical and angry because the one woman he loved left him “standing on the train platform with a funny look on his face”. One of the few times a film actually shows a leading man crying….even if the shot was out of focus, in the rain on a train…. Ilsa Lund had left him at the train station… and it was only Sam (the notably black piano player… and obviously his best friend).. That got him hitched up and on the train and spirited away from the Nazi invaders.

Rick seems to be a well-regarded kind of guy in the cesspool of snakes that inhabit the questionable port of Casablanca.  Kind of like the wise guy that knows everyone’s secrets but won’t spill them to the authorities because his customers keep in Francs and the back-room roulette wheels spinning (“Gambling is illegal in Casablanca”).  The machinery behind the illegal squeaky wheel is the enigmatic (and…. well, horny) Captain Louis Renault, Prefect of Police. Renault has set himself up as “king of the city” sort of, helping himself to the desperate women going through his office hoping for a Visa and a quick trip out of the country.  He allows Rick to stay open because “I allow you to win at Roulette.”  That, my friends is what is known as a Quid Pro Quo.

One night, Renault comes to Rick to warn him about a guy coming into town, a Victor Laszlo.  Victor (apparently) was a bad boy that “Printed scandal sheets in the basement”…an organizer and an eloquent speaker against the Nazi regime.  Victor escaped from a German prison camp with his traveling companion and has landed in Casablanca, where the Germans finally catch up to him. 

That same night, a sweaty and nervous character called Senior Ugarty (Played to the hilt by amazing actor and spooky-eyed Peter Lorre) comes to Rick with a request…  he has somehow gotten a pair of tickets out of the country (“Letters of Transit.  Cannot not be questioned.”)   He murdered a couple of German clerks to get his hands on the “Letters of Transit” (What Hitchcock called the “McGuffin”) and gave them to Rick for safe keeping.  The Germans are on to him and arrest him. 

Meanwhile, enter Laszlo and his traveling companion…one Ilsa Lund on his arm and looking very much in love with him.  Ilsa realizes she’s in THAT Rick’s café, when she spots Sam at the piano.  Oh, oh… 

Well, of course…  Rick spots her and before the sparks fly he’s introduced to Victor Laszlo.  It comes out that Victor was to contact Ugarty to purchase the letters of transit for him and Ilsa to leave.  But, of course.. Ugarty is dead (“Shot trying to escape… or suicide.  We haven’t decided which.”) and Rick has the letters. 

(The drunken scene where he privately confronts her is about as classic as it gets… I think all us guys have done that… at least in our heads).  

Well, cynical Rick is NOT going to give the letters to Laszlo and Ilsa of course.. not even for money…  She broke his heart, and now he will get his revenge… “Destiny lends a hand”  as they arrest Laszlow…

What follows is Rick showing why even we cynics have an inner core of good and light.  Rick Blaine gives guys like me hope for our future… change is possible.  And though we may not get the girl, perhaps we can save the world.  As I’ve said recently: There are those that are meant to live happily ever after.  And that leaves the rest of us; all we have to do is save the world. 

Okay.. that was the movie.  Now the reality: 

It was originally to be released in the summer of The Allies invaded Casablanca in real life on 8 November 1942. As the film was not due for release until spring, studio executives suggested it be changed to incorporate the invasion. It premiered in New York on November 26. It did not play in Los Angeles until its general release the following January, and hence competed against 1943 films for the Oscars.

It opened to Luke-warm reviews.

Humprey Bogart was somewhat shorter than Swedish beauty Ingrid Bergman… so he often stood on crates, pillows or sometimes wore lifts in his shoes!  (that’s one for us stubby guys!! YEAH!)

Humphrey Bogart's wife Mayo Methot continually accused him of having an affair with Ingrid Bergman, often confronting him in his dressing room before a shot. Bogart would come onto the set in a rage. In fact, despite the undeniable on-screen chemistry between Bogart and Bergman, they hardly spoke, and the only time they bonded was when the two had lunch with Geraldine Fitzgerald. According to Fitzgerald, "the whole subject at lunch was how they could get out of that movie. They thought the dialogue was ridiculous and the situations were unbelievable... I knew Bogart very well, and I think he wanted to join forces with Bergman, to make sure they both said the same things." For whatever reasons, Bogart and Bergman rarely spoke after that. (ILBD.com)

The script was based on the un-produced play "Everybody Comes to Rick's". Murray Burnett and Joan Alison wrote it. They were paid $20,000 for it by Warner Brothers.

In the 1980s, this film's script was sent to readers at a number of major studios and production companies under its original title, "Everybody Comes to Rick's". Some readers recognized the script but most did not. Many complained that the script was "not good enough" to make a decent movie. Others gave such complaints as "too dated", "too much dialog" and "not enough sex".   (ILBD.com)

No one knew right up until the filming of the last scene whether Ilsa would end up with Rick or Laszlo.  I remember reading that reportedly, she (Ingrid Bergman) barged into the producers office to demand “who the hell gets to have me, Rick Or Laszlow?”  (My favorite trivia).

Well.. that’s it for this review.  If you’re interested.. there are many other movies I adore, that come really close to this one.  I’ll be writing some reviews of them soon.  Next, I think I’ll do:

Gilda.  (Rita Hayworth and Glen Ford 1946)

Also check out: The Philadelphia Story.  Adam’s Rib.  To Kill a Mockingbird.  The Defiant Ones.  Lover Come Back.  Pillow Talk.  The long, long trailer.  And Du Barry Was a Lady (the last two Starring Lucy Ball). 

LATER!

Jack Reacher: Never go Back.  AMC Desert Star cinema Lake Delton WI.  October 30^th.   Price: 10.56  (with the Wisconsin Dells 6% Tax)…. (Standard viewing)

As anyone can tell you, I think you can probably see any movie with Tom Cruise in it and you know you’ll get your money’s worth.  I mean, the guy is just a movie legend.  Hard to believe this is the same guy from “Losing It” and “The Firm” and “A few good men” and “Top Gun” and “Rain Man” and “Far and Away” and “Vanilla Sky” and “Jerry McGuire”… and Mission Impossible.. jeeze, nearly anything in films.  … And a personal favorite, a real gem from early in his career (The Color of Money) with legend Paul Newman, taking up the sequel 25 years later from The Hustler (Newman and Jackie Gleason in glorious B&W). 

In Reacher, he’s a loner/ ex-military man that just finished some sort of assignment (for whom, actually?), when he helps arrest a crooked sheriff.   He makes his way to Washington, DC to meet (and hopefully date) Major Susan Turner (Played by a kick-ass Cobie Smulders), the voice on the phone that assists him with the assignment.  When he finally gets there, he discovers that Turner has been arrested on espionage charges and is now imprisoned.  She was investigating two suspicious soldier’s deaths in Afghanistan. 

Of course, he smells a rat and tries to investigate what happened to Turner.  He starts poking around and hooks an unwanted warning from a shady lawyer to stay away. The lawyer produces an incentive in a new-found paternity suit and shows Reacher a picture of his supposed 15-year-old daughter, Samantha Dayton.  Reacher takes the picture of the girl.  

The lawyer is summarily killed by an assassin known only as “the hunter,” and frames Reacher for the murder.  Now fully committed into finding out what is going on, Reacher breaks into and out of a maximum security prison with Major Turner.  (Who knew it could be so easy to escape from a max-secure prison?)  Together, they try to evade the military police and the “hunter” whom is trying to kill her.   

Meanwhile, Reacher quickly finds possible offspring and tails her.  Of course, she is a worldly and street-wise fifteen year old that lives with foster parents (her mother is a recovering addict).  It seems like lately nearly every movie…we want all our 15 year-old girls to be very Katniss Everdeen-ish.   (More of this later)** 

One of the best parts of this movie is Samantha, played by Danika Yarosh.  Keep watching this young lady, as I predict she will do great things in future movies.  Her “Samantha” is plucky and inventive, sometimes she seems more aware of the situations than the adults in this movie. 

Unfortunately, the “Hunter” is able to put 2 and 2 together to realize that Samantha is Reacher’s daughter…  the same guy that keeps thwarting his efforts to get rid of Major Turner.  Vowing to “getting to” Reacher and killing Turner, he is now searching for “the girl.”  (Samantha)

Now, the three of them (Reacher, Turner and Samantha) are simultaneously running from the “police” (oddly just the Military police), the assassin and also trying to figure out why two of Major Turner’s soldiers were murdered in cold blood.  Eventually, they end up in a chase on the streets of New Orleans in which Turner kicks some ass (Actress Cobie Smulders shreds her “How I met your mother” TV image… and it was reported she did all her own stunts….wow!), and eventually the Hunter and Reacher reach a standoff as the assassin holds Samantha in harm’s way….

Of course, the girl is rescued, the assassin meets his end and Reacher is helped from a rooftop from Samantha and Turner. 

(Spoiler alert):  Major Susan Turner is restored to her job, the bad guys arrested for dealing “pure opium” and Reacher discovers that Samantha is not his daughter.  Turner and Reacher say a nice “maybe I’ll see you later” end.  Though she would like to stay connected to Reacher as he continues on his lonesome ways….  Maybe he found a daughter anyway…in a way….  A satisfying end. 

It’s a good movie.  Like I said, any movie watching Tom Cruise is going to be good.  Of course.  The guy is in great shape.  Cobie Smulders was utilitarian as she needed to be, a real modern woman, but certainly not a romance interest.  And again Danika Yarosh brought much light to an otherwise typical and formulated spy story.  Just watch any episode of NCIS LA for nearly the same material. 

My opinion:  If it’s a rainy Saturday night and you’re single and lonely….or….Sunday and you have nothing really better to do… and you have a ten-spot burning in your pocket… go see this movie at the theater.  It’s certainly better than many of the other movies offered this week.  However, maybe just wait until the rental comes out… and spend a little less money and enjoy it just as much. 

From a formulaic writer; the original story is from a novel…number 13 from Lee Child; “Never go Back,” in the Jack Reacher series.  Sigh.  I don’t know why modern writers get the idea they have to strangle a good idea until it pukes blood.  Can you imagine Casablanca IV: The invasion?   Ugh! 

*Other notes:  The movie was to begin at 7:25…  but the previews lasted nearly 16 minutes past this!  Amazing!  I noted 3 years ago, the previews lasted 12 minutes… now, it’s pumped up to 16 minutes.  What’s the point in having a starting time at all?

**Children in peril in movies:  A troubling trend I see in modern movies is children being put in “harm’s way” for the sake of the story.  Here (In Reacher) we have a fifteen-year-old girl both psychologically and physically threatened in the worst possible terms.  Yes, I know it’s just a movie…. But… maybe, just maybe we need to admit to ourselves it’s just one more line crossed that leaves us, call it less humane.  I think kids, regardless of how plucky and resourceful they are having enough on their hands just growing up… why must we make them the center of our evil universe? 

I noticed this front and center in The Hunger Games.  The very idea that we get to see a very young girl bleed out slowly in front of our eyes really sickened me.  Of course, I know that is at the heart of the story…but, still. 

It’s all due to what I call the white hat/black hat syndrome, or more closely: the “good gulf” which is the distance necessary between the good guy and the bad guy to make a convincing narrative drama.  In old westerns, the good guys always wore white hats, the bad guys, black.  Good guys…always good. Bad guys, always BAD. 

Of course, the rise of the anti-hero approximated with our real-life experiences that most people are not either “all good” nor “all bad.”  As we have become a more jaded and ragged society, the more we realize the “good guy” with the gleaming white teeth and the heart of gold is more camp than believable.  The anti-hero is not new… I really believe Bogart (and a few others) probably started it, in several of his movie portrayals. 

However it began, it has become commonplace now.  A fact most clearly reflected in our Superman movies.  No one would except the besotted Superman of the George Reeves TV shows as “silly.”  Even the “gee willikers” platitudes of the mighty Christopher Reeves seems flat and dated.  Now we seem to like our Superman not so super…in many ways as jaded and awful as we feel. 

Of course, the problem with having the anti-hero as…well, the hero; you have to have the negative to that for the equation.  In the parlance of the movie, The Matrix: “Who is he?  He is your opposite, your negative.  The equation trying to balance itself out.”

Since you’ve got a negative already… you have to get downright evil to be the Bad part of the equation.  That leaves….The Devil, of course as the ultimate evil.  But this is a spy drama.  Megalomaniacs, of course are good…but also overdone.  Man vs. Machine, of course.  Nope.

That leaves man vs. man, in which the conflict becomes personal.  And it has to be deeply personal.  Not just threating to kill the man is enough, it has to be his whole family.  Visa vi, what is worse than that?  A daughter or a son.  Personal revenge taken out on a daughter is one of the most distasteful, evil and vile things one man can do to another.  Therefore, that’s how a movie can balance the negative “good guy” with a much more negative “bad guy.” 

The result?  Movies that now feature (possible) slaughter of children for our entertainment.  And I do not like that, one bit. 

I hope Hollywood writers find more appropriate ways of showing the conflict between good and evil in storytelling.  But then again, maybe we really have run entirely out of ideas.  

Movie Critiques:  Greetings!  I invite all movie lovers to enjoy any of the movies that I review here…. And participate in discussions of such.  Remember, everything regarding “art,” be it movies, painting, sculptures, or even certain Architecture, is in the eye of the beholder.  So, what might be inspiring to me, could be insipid to you. 

All I ask….no, actually, I demand, that you behave yourselves.  If you cannot do just that little thing, then I shall be forced to evict you from the island forever.  This is not freedom of the press… these are my opinions.  If you don’t like them… that’s cool.  Start your own page. 

I plan on covering every kind of movie here; in theaters, in the 5 dollar bin, on cable, on cable, television, old black and white movies, concerts, documentaries, and even…yes, even…musicals!  (laughing).  About the only thing I probably will not cover here will be silent movies. 

There will also be some ruminations about interesting books or novels I’ve read that intersect with these movies.  For example:  is the book better than the movie?  And if so, why? 

In any case, I hope you enjoy my page… and take the time to enjoy some of these movies.  Though Shakespeare has told nearly every human interest story there is… sometimes, it’s good to be surprised by a movie that moves you.  Of course, there is a difference between “moving” you and using your emotions to sell a product.  We’ll try and weed out the chaff from the incredible, and the durable from the passable.  Here we go!