The Sheila Variations

Under-rated movies

I got this idea from Self-styled Siren - another awesome film-nut site I've becomed addicted to. Scroll through her archives. Try to resist her. You will not be able to.

So here is what THIS post is about:

"10 movies you consider overlooked, underrated, offbeat and in general deserving of not being forgotten." (Check out her choices - very very interesting.)

One limitation: The films chosen must not have won any major award - or been nominated for Best Picture.

I chose more than 10 - although I will just start off with 5 here. This has been a post I've been working on for a couple of days now - more to come! I also cheated, on occasion, with the award thing, as you will see. But I did not choose any movie that won for Best Picture- I kept that a solid rule.

So here you have it:

Movies you consider overlooked, underrated, offbeat and in general deserving of not being forgotten.

THE FIRST FIVE

1. Ball of Fire

One of the most delightful comedic and good-hearted films ever made. I saw it the first time last year, promptly bought it, and have since seen it probably once a month ever since. That trend shows no sign of abating. Written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, and directed by Howard Hawks (I mean, come ON!!) - it's the story of 8 professors, who live basically in an ivory tower - they have been comissioned to write an encyclopedia. The "head" of this group of professors is Bertram Potts, played by a wonderfully stuffy and awkward (and charming) Gary Cooper. He's a linguistics professor. He realizes he needs to understand more about modern slang, especially because he lives such a cloistered life. So he goes out onto the streets to find out how real people talk. In the process, he meets Sugarpuss O'Shea - YES. That is her name!! Sugarpuss O'Shea is a nightclub singer - who ends up having some pretty shady Mob connections - and she is played by Barbara Stanwyck in what is, in my opinion, one of her best performances. Even though; how does one choose, right? But she is so earthy, so lovable, so ... so HUMAN here. Sugarpuss ends up moving into the ivory tower with all of the professors (each one is played by a recognizable and beloved character actor - they are all so so funny and distinct!) - and they all basically fall in love with her. But no one falls harder than the bumblingly intellectual (what? Gary Cooper??) Professor Potts. It's a wonderful love story, it's got a bitingly funny script (which also has great heart) - Stanwyck has a monologue at the end about why she loves the goofball Potts and listen to the words:

"I love him because he's the kind of guy who gets drunk on a glass of buttermilk, and I love the way he blushes right up over his ears. I love him because he doesn't know how to kiss, the jerk!"

People just don't really write like that for the movies anymore. I mean, read that line again. God, it's so good.

And Gary Cooper plays what we might call the "Cary Grant part" - the stuffy kind of baffled awkward guy - who is loosened up by the female, who waltzes in (or rhumbas in, as the case is here) - and knocks over all his nice little chess pieces. Cooper and Stanwyck together just sizzle, and spark.

I know a lot of people love this movie - as a matter of fact it was a couple of readers on this here blog who told me I NEEDED to see this movie, seeing as I was so in love with Howard Hawks' stuff. So I know it has its defenders - but still - my wish for it is to have its place in the canon.

2. Only Angels Have Wings

Awesomely enough, this film was "Movie of the Day" on IMDB yesterday. And yes - it did win an Oscar for its special effects - an Oscar that was created BECAUSE of Only Angels Have Wings and its aviation scenes - which still have the power to stun today. And also, I realize that this film is generally accepted as one of Howard Hawks' best, and one of Cary Grant's sexiest performances - and if you Google around for old reviews of this film, you are hard-pressed to find a bad one. It works on every level it needs to work. The story is Howard Hawks' (he knew the people this film was about, he knew "those guys" - it was a REAL world he was describing) - and written by Jules Furthman - also a collaborator on other Hawks masterpieces: The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo, To Have and Have Not - and a ton more. The men had an affinity for one another, in their macho understanding of the world, the importance of male relationships, the craziness (and yet the fascination) of women, the centrality of ACTION - Hawks saw the world in terms of ACTION, what people DO. Anyway - I can't say enough about Only Angels Have Wings. It's a fantastic example of the whole "Howard Hawks woman" post I wrote in response to this film when I first saw it.

Also - Cary Grant is so good, in general, that he is taken for granted. Check him out here. Never has he been so CRANKY (although crankiness is one of his defining characteristics - whether it be in a comic situation - Bringing Up Baby - or a dark situation - Notorious) - but in Only Angels Have Wings he takes the crankiness to another level, an almost MEAN level. Cary Grant? Mean? Watch him. He also seems like he has never had so much fun as an actor. He owns every moment. It's his sexiest performance.

All the secondary characters are fantastic - Dutchie, the Kid, Kilgallen (the pilot who ruined his reputation when he bailed out of his burning plane - leaving his mechanic to die in the crash), Bonnie Lee (played by the funny Jean Arthur) - the showgirl stranded in the banana republic for a week - who falls helplessly in love with Cary Grant's character - they are all real people.

And watch Rita Hayworth, man, in her first big part after escaping from the OCD clutches of Howard Hughes' control. She's a classy and a smart DAME - the kind of woman Hawks adored, and chased, and fantasized about - in his real life, and in all of his films. Howard Hawks "got" the whole Rita Hayworth woman thing. Not too many men did. They only saw her boobs, and tried to exploit her sex appeal (look at how she was badly used in other films - except for Gilda which was another film that "got" her). Rita Hayworth was NOT a sexpot - when she was cast just as a sexpot, she suffered and was not good. But when she was cast as a mature woman, who happened to be that sexy - she just GLEAMS off the screen. Why do you think all those GIs plastered her posters all over their walls? The body, yes - but lots of girls have great bodies. Great bodies are a dime a dozen in Hollywood. It was that OTHER thing, that sensuousness. For example, when she takes off her gloves during her song in Gilda -- it is a shockingly revealing and erotic moment - and all she is doing is taking off her GLOVES. (Oh I forgot - someone posted a link to that clip a while back - here it is - watch all the way to the end) Her sexuality wasn't a joke, or something to be toyed with. She appeared to OWN it. And that always makes certain types of men very very nervous - and so they needed to demonize her, and cast her as trash. Hawks was, of course, interested in her boobs, too - no surprise there because the woman was, frankly, a babealicious babealolio - but beauty or sex appeal NEVER did it for him alone. He needed the brains, the insolence, the smarts as well. Think about it - Hawks is responsible for Slim in To Have and Have Not - a woman MORE insolent than Bogart, who gives as good as she gets. THAT was Hawks' ultimate fantasy, and in film after film after film, he was searching for that "type". He finally found her in Bacall - but it was an ongoing thing for him. He was macho. Tough. He wanted a woman who could keep up.

A dame like Rita Hayworth was all woman, but she could keep up.

AWESOME film, one of my favorite films ever made. If you haven't seen it yet - do yourself a favor. It's wonderful.

3. Dogfight

It's just one of my favorite movies, that's all. So I feel protective of it. I hover over it. I remember when I lived with Jen, my roommate for a gazillion years - she somehow hadn't seen it, and I kept using it as a reference point - until finally she said, "Okay. Let's rent it. I need to see it." It was SO fun introducing her to it. She said early on in the film, "God ... I want him to start liking her! This is painful to watch!" I was like: "Wait ... just wait ..."

I've known people who wouldn't see the film based on a brief plot synopsis - and I understand that, I really do. A bunch of Marines hold a "dogfight" - where the contest is: who can bring the ugliest girl? Sounds pretty mean-spirited and sexist, and it is. But the movie uses the Dogfight to launch itself into another realm - where two random strangers - a Marine and a lonely girl who wants to be a folk singer - connect, over one long LONG night ... the night before he ships out to "this place called Vietnam." It's 1963. A couple of weeks before Kennedy is assassinated. The film is obviously about loss of innocence. But in some respects, it's also about what we GAIN when we lose our innocence.

Rose, played beautifully by Lily Taylor, is an idealist. She has a big bouffant hairdo. She lives with her mother. She is plump. She has no life. She lives in a dream world of folk singers - Odetta, Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez ... she is passionate, yet she has no experience.

Eddie Birdlace, on the other hand, played by River Phoenix in one of his best and most nuanced performances, is all muscle, brawn, and rage. He's defensive, pissed, and arrogant. He thinks the dogfight is hilarious. He picks Rose to go - only because he struck out with every other "dog" he asked. But he gets a bit more than he bargained for with Rose. She gets dressed up to go to the party (not knowing it's a dogfight) - and although she may look kind of silly to contemporary eyes (with her teased hair, her silly pouffy dress) - Eddie looks at her and realizes she is no dog. But instead of being attracted to her, he's just pissed because now he'll lose the dogfight. Eddie greets the entire world with anger.

But over the course of this one whole night - these two change one another. That sounds so goopy. But it's not handled goopily in the film. They go out to dinner, they talk, they argue about all kinds of things - the war, movies, folk music - and slowly, they start to actually HEAR what the other person is saying. Eddie stops seeing her as a "dog", or as a folk-singer wannabe loser. Rose stops seeing him as a war-mongering asshole who gets his kicks out of a DOGFIGHT. She doesn't like things about him, he doesn't like things about her - but over the course of this night, they begin to find unbelievable comfort in one another's presence. Their first kiss (picture above - and it's her first kiss ever in her life) is eleeeeeeeeectric. Sizzle shazam!!

Roger Ebert writes in his review:

I wonder if you will like the final scene in "Dogfight." Some people have found it tacked on. I feel the movie needs it - grows because of it. I won't reveal what happens. I will say it is handled with great delicacy, that the buildup is just right, and that Savoca and Comfort were right to realize that, in the final moments, nothing needs to be explained.

It's one of the sweetest love stories ever put on film. See it. If you haven't seen it, see it.

4. Zero Effect

Uhm, Zero? Whatcha doin' up there on that bed?

David Cornelius wrote, in his review:

As played by Bill Pullman in his best performance to date, Zero is both the model of insanity and the model of genius. Pullman manages to make the character work by believing so deeply in him; his Zero is not a caricature, although he may do cartoonish things. He’s the straight man and the comic sidekick rolled into one. He says the weirdest, silliest damn things you’d ever heard, only he has total faith that every word he speaks is serious business. (Making things more complex, some of the stuff he says is serious business, and the contrast of the serious stuff to the goofy stuff only makes his character’s thoughts all the more profound.)

Yes, yes, and yes.

And he ends his review with:

And so “Zero Effect” works in so many ways. Its comedy is sharp, its mystery sharper. Its characters are bright and lively and endlessly watchable. This underrated, hidden gem of a movie could very well be the best mystery you’ve never seen (unless, of course, you’ve seen it, in which case it becomes one of the best you have seen, but I digress). Zero is Holmes, and Fletch, and so much more, but most of all, he’s describable only as himself. Daryl Zero is a movie character for the ages.

"Underrated hidden gem" indeed. I was very pleased to see, after my Bill Pullman extravaganza, how many people referenced Zero Effect. It has a cult following - which means, by its very definition, that it is underrated.

Show me a better performance by an actor that year, or any year, come to think of it. The 5 best actor nominees in 1998 were Roberto Benigni (Life is Beautiful), Tom Hanks (Saving Private Ryan), Ian McKellen (Gods and Monsters), Nick Nolte (Affliction), and Ed Norton (American History X). Some fine performances, a couple of mediocre performances (in my opinion), and only one great performance (Nolte's, if you're interested in my take on it). Bill Pullman's work in Zero Effect is up there with Nolte's - although the material isn't as wrenching (which is what the Academy loves - wrenching material) - Pullman's acting is as believable, as intense, as fanTASTIC as Nick Nolte's fierce and unforgettable turn in Affliction. And yet for all intents and purposes, Bill Pullman's work was completely ignored - except by the critics, and the small group of fans who continue to support this film.

But it's not just Pullman that makes this movie good. It's got a great plot, really good supporting characters, and a script (written by Jake Kasdan - who also directed it) that would make any actor DROOL to say those lines.

Zero does a voiceover throughout - telling us his philsophy on life, and how it is that he is "the world's greatest detective." Zero's drawling cynical alert voice could fit in in any 1940s film noir. He's Sam Spade on amphetamines. If Bill Pullman had been working in the 1930s and 1940s, I truly believe he would have been one of the biggest and most bankable stars. Imagine him in a screwball comedy. Can't you just see it?? Imagine him in a smouldering Big Sleep noir. It fits perfectly. But in this day and age? Bill Pullman usually gets TOTALLY miscast as the Wasp-y boring boyfriend the lead actress leaves for the REAL leading man. But in Zero Effect we get the full scope of what I am not ashamed to call Pullman's genius.

Listen to how Pullman does that voiceover. Not for one SECOND do you not think it is Zero speaking.

"A few words here about following people. People know they're being followed when they turn around and see someone following them. They can't tell they're being followed if you get there first."

Pullman doesn't "act" this part. He inhabits it.

5. Manhattan Murder Mystery

When the films of Woody Allen are discussed - this title rarely comes up. I'm not saying it's on par with Annie Hall or Radio Days - but this is a post about under-rated films - and I think Manhattan Murder Mystery was so under-rated as to be completely ignored. Some people don't like it when Woody Allen gets silly. I think he should get silly more often.

This is Woody Allen at his silliest. Diane Keaton and Woody Allen play a married couple, who are openly getting a tiny bit bored in their relationship. Not enough to have an affair, or to divorce ... but juuuuust enough to make the two of them a bit restless. Diane Keaton becomes CONVINCED that their kindly elderly next-door neighbor has murdered his wife. She begins to "investigate" the crime, even going so far as to break into this man's apartment to "look for clues". Let me make something clear: Diane Keaton's character is not a licensed detective. She's not a cop. She is a bored housewife, skulking around inappropriately in someone else's apartment..

Meanwhile, Woody Allen, who plays a book publisher, is "courting" an author - played to the HILT by Anjelica Huston - a woman who says, "I put myself through college playing poker." A woman who never takes off her sunglasses. A woman who stalks into rooms wearing head-to-toe black leather, who uses words like "perp" in casual conversation ("So the perp then says ..."), sucks up all the male attention, and stares other women down, making anyone in the room who happens to have a vagina feel TOTALLY irrelevant and invisible. She is so so so funny in this film.

The married couple -Diane and Woody - are kind of growing apart ... and eventually it is this "murder" that brings them back together.

I saw this film on a rainy afternoon in Chicago, with Mitchell - when it first came out. The movie theatre was nearly empty. And Mitchell and I howled and howled with laughter, as the hijinx ensue in this film. There's one insane 6-way scene - where the group of friends (who are now involved in the "homicide investigation") try to trick the "murderer" by playing him a fake spliced-together tape-recorded phone call that accuses him of the crime. It's Woody, Diane, Anjelica, Alan Alda (who is at his smarmy funniest best here), Ron Rivkin and Joy Behar ... all of them wrestling with 6 separate tape recorders, Anjelica Huston acting as the conductor - It's one of the most comedic scenes in a film since What's Up Doc. And I'm not talking about American Pie or Something About Mary which is what passes for humor nowadays. I'm talking about true COMEDY - comedy that comes from out of the situation, comes from characters who are desperate ...

The movie has perfect pitch. It's Woody at his most optimistic, his most kind.

It's also an undiscovered comedic gold mine.

More under-rated movies to come ... whenever ... this will be ongoing ...

Posted by sheila