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Maniac: The Lake of the Clouds (2018)
SNOOZE - EVERYTHING CAN'T BE MARVEL MORONITY. TRY OPENING YOUR MIND.
Exceptionally quirky, deep, funny. It takes the ability to accept something above the intellectual level of comic book characters to get into. Apparently "SNOOZE" ain't there
The Speed Merchants (1972)
A great documentary of the high-water mark of sports car racing, BUT...
This could have been a masterpiece of the final years of the Golden Era of sports-car racing, which reached its glorious but all-too-short culmination in the unintended consequences of the FIA/CSI's typically fat-headed re-write, in an effort to reduce speeds (that had been as high as 215-220mph at high-speed tracks like Le Mans, Daytona, and Spa), of the Group 4 Sports Car and Group 6 Prototype homologation rules, due to take effect in 1970. The CSI believed no team would spend the money to build anything but race-modified production sports cars to meet the 25-car minimum necessary for homologation in Group 5.
This supposition blew up in their faces when Porsche, in March 1969, introduced the most outrageous, esoteric, and glorious sports car of its time, and, perhaps, of all time, the pure-racing-car flat-12-cylinder Porsche 917, and they built the 25 necessary. Ferrari had to follow suit to stand any chance of winning anything, and responded with their ALMOST equally fantastic V-12 512S. The two years these cars ran, 1970 and 1971, that passed before the CSI could implement new rules, still stand as the summit of sports car racing. It is these years, and some of 1972, that Keyser attempts to sketch in 1972's "The Speed Merchants."
While the documentary has much to recommend it, including low-key and intelligent narration by two giants of the period, Mario Andretti and Vic Elford, the movie suffers badly from a couple of dated cinematic conventions of the time: choppy, "hip" montage editing that throws narrative continuity out the window, and the dreaded "French Jazz Racing Movie Soundtrack," which is also the curse of McQueen's contemporary, fictional "Le Mans."
No sports car racing fan should be without this movie, but it could have been SO much better, and should have been completely overhauled, adding footage and ditching the dreary music, during its remastering in 1999. Pity.
The Racers (1955)
Laughable script, excellent and rare '50s race footage
Yes, the plot and the dialogue are ludicrous. No, Bella Darvi (née Bayla Wegier) couldn't act, but the poor girl had had a very difficult life and a short and brutal movie career. Ironically, she died by her own hand, after several failed attempts, in, of all places, Monaco -- where, in the Racers, she meets our hero, Gino Borgesa (Douglas) when her poodle runs out in front of his sports car at Monaco, and he swerves to avoid the dog and crashes into the steps of the Casino. Great crowd control in those days. Yes, I said "Sports Car," for this movie, though released in 1955, has much glorious color real racing footage culled from the previous 2 or 3 seasons, and, in 1952, for the first and last time post WWII, the Monaco GP was run for sports cars (won that year by Vittorio Marzotto, the lesser known of the famed Marzotto brothers, in a Ferrari 225S).
Forget the idiotic dialogue -- the dying "Dell'Oro" (Gilbert Roland), to Douglas: "Gino, my crankcase is leaking!" as he clutches at his crushed chest; Douglas explaining to the lovely- but-crosseyed Darvi how race drivers consider it bad luck to wish a race driver "good luck": "'Into the lion's mouth!' we say, or "I spit in your crankcase!'" Forget all that and watch Fangio, Villoresi, Farina, Moss, Peter Collins, Robert Manzon and his doomed compatriot Pierre Levegh driving in real races: Spa, Nürburgring, the Mille Miglia. Check out how Maserati redecorated their cars to look like the mythical "Aquila," or whatever the hell they were, under the stern team management of Lee J. Cobb, whose turn as Maglio makes Kirk Douglas sound like a native-born Milanese.
In a sly move (or simple accident of fate) director Hathaway created a quite believable pairing that resembled WAY more than a little Juan Fangio and his constant female companion whom the contemporary press always referred to, chastely, as his "wife" (Fangio never married, and it wasn't until 4 years after Fangio's death that author Karl Ludvigsen, in his 1999 biography "Juan Manuel Fangio: Motor Racing's Grand Master" revealed the real identity of his companion (AND his hitherto unknown son). The drivers of the time certainly knew she wasn't his wife, but that was a different, in many ways more honourable time; no driver, mechanic, or pit hanger-on would have even dreamed of going to the yellow press to spread the story for money. Those men were professionals: what Fangio did off the track was his own business. Off-soapbox. The stalwart Katy Jurado was perfectly cast as "Maria Chávez," the wife of aging race driver "Carlos Chavez," played by Cesar Romero -- better known as "The Cisco Kid," and then for his defining role as The Joker in the Adam West/Burt Ward Camp-Fest "Batman" series of the '60s -- miles better than Nicholson, not nearly as dark as Heath Ledger.
Original -- though not very -- musical score by Alex North, who had done such fantastic work scoring "Spartacus" and the Burton/Taylor "Cleopatra."
The great American drivers John Fitch and Phil Hill did the stunt driving for this -- scraping the arch at Ravenna during the Mille Miglia at speed was pretty hairy stuff (done with a longish piece of wire and some fresh plaster). The overall Tecnical Adviser was the veteran racing warhorse, the Baron Emmanuel de Graffenried, AND this movie was also an early example of the title work of the incomparable Saul Bass, who made movie titling an art form in its own right with movies like "The Man With Golden Arm," "Exodus," "West SideStory," Spartacus, and the ingenious and ground-breaking title-credit sequence at the beginning of John Frankenheimer's "Grand Prix," still the greatest fictional racing movie ever made. McQueen's "Le Mans" COULD have been, but for McQueen's unbelievable and thoroughly unlikable ego and overweening insistence on his personal version of perfectionism, which, in the end, cost David Piper his leg and cost McQueen Solar Productions. When the budget went nuts and Solar Productions couldn't finance, or even FINISH the movie, let alone distribute it, CBS/Cinema Center stepped in, prolonged the sappy, wholly superfluous, and, of course, inevitable background "love story" (people ain't going' to the movies to see a bunch of goddam cars runnin' around a track, ya know!), and I believe CBS/Cinema Center were responsible for the movie-ruining 1970s-style "Carmina Burana"-meets-French-Jazz-a-la-Michel-LeGrand soundtrack. The CARS are the soundtrack, you meatheads! Off soapbox again.
Hans Ruesch, who wrote the novel and collaborated on the screenplay, had been a race driver himself, never achieving much, but even HE must have winced at "I spit in your crankcase." Skip over the Douglas-Darvi scenes and go right to the footage -- magnificent!
Starman (1984)
An amazing piece of acting
It's a great, timeless plot -- Odysseus desperately trying to get home to Ithaca -- with a lot of modern feel-good and comedy, but, for me, Jeff Bridges' portrayal of an alien trying to communicate through an unfamiliar body and language is simply and utterly believable... and Magical. That's a tough act to bring off, as so sadly manifested in countless portrayals of movie aliens from the '50s to the present day.
In my extremely humble opinion, it is Jeff Bridges' best performance, period. Karen Allen is her winsome self, first terrified, then confused, and finally resolved in love to the unique human form Bridges' alien has chosen to assume. Charlie Martin Smith, one of the most under-appreciated actors of his generation, is perfectly cast. Cameron's direction -- in a film you wouldn't have expected Carpenter to helm -- is some of HIS best work, and it all comes together as a hugely-satisfying and triumphal examination of what it is to be human, and how our innate humanity and love can extend even to the most unlikely and unbelievable circumstances and beings. Columbia may have ditched "E.T." and lost a pot of easy money thereby, but they got the better movie, by far. I can't recommend this film highly enough.
Bart