David Vining's Blog, page 154

The President

Carl Theodor Dreyer had a history as a writer, and it shows in his first feature film as a director, The President. There’s a literary aspect to the production that emphasizes character and structure that gives the film’s final resolution a surprising amount of satisfaction. However, being the first film of a filmmaker so early in the history of cinema, there’s a roughness and simplicity to a lot of the production that ends up feeling a bit like a drag, especially from certain moments in per...

Life

A lot of people worked really hard on Life, the scifi horror film from Daniel Espinosa. Actors filmed extensively on wires on sets to emulate zero-gravity. Special effects were employed extensively to sell the ISS and the alien creature. And yet, the script was honestly just not there. Espinosa has said that he was trying to evoke Hitchcock’s Psycho to a certain degree, and the second I read that even more of the film’s failures became apparent to me. The final moments, though, were quite th...

Quai des Orfevres

Alfred Hitchcock considered one film director to be his equal in terms of suspense, and that was the French filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot. Most famous for his film Les Diaboliques about a dead master at a boarding school, he predated the French New Wave and was largely discarded by them. It was an unfortunate situation because Clouzot is easily one of my favorite French directors. His command of suspense really is on par with Hitchcock’s, and he created a marvelously twisty mystery that se...

Lost in Space

I don’t know what psychopath decided to spend so much money on a movie version of Lost In Space, but I can say that the completely heedless application of money, special effects, and ornate set design represents the only joys in this completely misguided first step in trying to create a new franchise from a quaint, old television show. The story itself is such a giant jumble of ideas and an ensemble all working in different directions that nothing settles into a groove long enough for an aud...

Wanted

I don’t really know why I own this movie, but I do.

I remember seeing it in theaters, thinking it was mildly entertaining, and then, for some reason, deciding that I would like to have a copy of it on my movie shelf for the rest of my life. Alcohol may have been involved. Things get hazy. It’s a serviceable Star Wars-type hero journey with a lot of swearing, blood, and gunplay. It fails to connect emotionally on any level and never rises above its innate silliness, but for two hours, thin...

Rio Lobo

#29 in my ranking of Howard Hawks’ filmography.

Howard Hawks’ last movie reminds me of Family Plot, Alfred Hitchcock’s last film. It’s a final film steeped in the well-worn conventions of an individual director’s work. Not exactly their best, it has a lot of the same charms of his best, even if it had been done better before. Also, Hawks completely ripped off Rio Bravo again for the film’s final act, much to the chagrin of Leigh Brackett, the co-writer brought on to fix the script start...

El Dorado

#18 in my ranking of Howard Hawks’ filmography.

I think that the commercial and critical failure of Red Line 7000 made Howard Hawks simply retreat. He effectively remade his most successful film of the previous twenty years, Rio Bravo, using some of the same cast, another established movie star, and the same basic premise for most of the film. It worked out, providing Hawks with a box office success and a solid film to add to his impressive body of work. This is the more plot driven ver...

Red Line 7000

#36 in my ranking of Howard Hawks’ filmography.

When talking about Red Line 7000, I think it’s required to talk about both Rio Bravo and Hatari! because the earlier two films point to what Hawks was surely trying to do in the latter. The two adventures with John Wayne were loose collections of character moments brought together by a central plot and premise that provided enough focus for everything to really feel of a piece. The throughline in Red Line 7000 barely exists, in contrast. I...

Man’s Favorite Sport?

#16 in my ranking of Howard Hawks’ filmography.

This is both a return to an older form of comedy for Howard Hawks as well as something new. This is almost as much a remake of Bringing Up Baby as A Song is Born was of Ball of Fire, and it would have been made even the more so if Hawks had been able to follow through on an early idea of having both Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn return to play the lead roles. It doesn’t seem like Hepburn was seriously considered, but Grant was offered t...

Hatari!

#11 in my ranking of Howard Hawks’ filmography.

The formula worked with Rio Bravo, so Howard Hawks went on vacation to Africa and made another movie chockfull of interesting characters in a dangerous profession with a bare minimum of plot starring John Wayne. It’s also the birthplace of one of Henry Mancini’s most famous pieces of music, the “Baby Elephant Walk”. The movie just steadily won me over, becoming, in my mind, the ultimate Howard Hawks film. Everything that he loved to tell s...