Well here we are, sitting on the cusp of a new dawn here at Castle RMWC. New format, new ‘tude and, uh, a new review. Not having seen 1981’s Stripes was another disconnect between me and the 80s comedy gestalt that I’m slowly patching gaps for, and really, it’s quite strange that it took so long for me to finally watch it. After all, it’s got Bill Murray and Harold Ramis in. That’s half of the Ghostbusters right there! Well, a few months ago I sat down with the Extended cut DVD to see what the fuss was about.
Story
Well, John Winger (Bill Murray), a slacker cab driver in New York gets fired, dumped and evicted on the same day. He decides to join the army to solve all three of these problems and talks his best friend, Russell Ziskey (Harold Ramis) into joining too. Amazingly they get accepted and shipped off to boot camp and join a ragtag bunch of misfits that also include Ox (John Candy) and some other guys with quirky personalities. Winger constantly pisses off their hardass drill sergeant, Hulk (Warren Oates). Hulka gets put in the hospital during an accident in a live fire test, the squad manages to pass and get assigned to a mission in Europe to protect a top secret EM50 Urban Fighting Vehicle under the command of the incredibly incompetent Captain Stillman (John Larroquette).
It’s an RV.
Winger & Ziskey of course steal the RV to hang out with their MP girlfriends Stella (P.J. Soles) and Louise (Sean Young from Blade Runner). Through a complex series of misfortunes the rest of the platoon gets captured in Czechoslovakia (back when it was Czechoslovakia) and it’s up to the gang in the RV (and a recovered Hulka running around behind enemy lines by himself) to rescue the squad, which is really one of those plots that sneaks up on you when you actually sit down and think about it.
The cast is solid across the board with Murray & Ramis bouncing off each other excellently. Ramis playing the straight man and Murray playing the funny man. Oates’ Sgt. Hulka is another standout character for the hamminess being thrown out there.
Visuals
Ivan Reitman (both Ghostbusters films) directed and Director of Photography Bill Butler. The movie looks fine, no problems. The extended cut definitely feels overly long in a few places (like the entire first AWOL sequence that has absolutely no bearing on the rest of the movie), but it makes up for it with an incredibly amusing climax with the EM50 storming the Iron Curtain and cutting loose. There’s also boobies. Mud Wrestling boobies.
Writing
Script by Len Blum, Daniel Goldberg & Harold Ramis. The story isn’t deep, but it does allow Bill Murray to cut loose and do his thing, which is exactly the point of a Bill Murray film.
Sound
Original music by Elmer Bernstein, which is always a good and welcome thing in a movie.
Conclusion Stripes is good. I liked it. Maybe not going to rise to the top of my list of 80s comedies, but it’s definitely a solid and satisfying effort. Recommended.
This one is a bit daunting because honestly, what can I possibly add that hasn’t been already said about 1942’s Casablanca, which is one of the most universally beloved films ever made? Oh well, let’s give it the ol’ college try.
Plot
WAR! It’s the early 1940s and the Third Reich is pushing its way through Europe like a hot knife goes through butter. France has fallen and a puppet government in Vichy has been established. This matters to us because in French-controlled Morocco, the authority of the Vichy government is somewhat weak and the city of Casablanca (DUN DUN DUN) has become a point of departure for countless fugitives and refugees trying to leave the horrors of the Second World War. In the middle of this tumult is an American who owns a nightclub/casino that is neutral ground for everybody. While professing not to give a damn about the war, he’s got a shadowy past that indicates otherwise. Then everything changes when an old flame of his enters his café one night looking for his help.
Characters Rick Blaine: Humphrey Bogart plays the owner and proprietor of Rick’s Café Américain. Cool, collected and totally the king of the little world he’s made for himself, Rick is an awesome guy who’s been emotionally wounded by a lot of stuff in the past and hides it all under a tough exterior. He gets a jolt when an old lover reenters his life, looking for help with her husband in tow. So now Rick’s torn in a bunch of directions: Does he give her the brush off for leaving him all those years ago? Does he help her and her husband escape German soldiers? Does he send her hubbie up the river in and abscond to America with her? Some fantastic drama comes out of the situation and while Rick gets challenged, he never really loses his competence or badass nature.
Ilsa Lund: The beautiful Ingrid Bergman plays the old lover. She and Rick had a whirlwind romance in Paris right before the War. She fell in love with him while she believed her husband had been killed by the Germans. When she found out about his survival, she left Rick without explanation. Understandably, his feelings were hurt. Now in Casablanca, some of that old romance bubbles up and causes no end of drama.
Victor Laszlo: Paul Henreid plays a Czech resistance fighter who is like a cockroach the German’s can’t kill. He’s technically the hero of the film (and the most heroic), an idealist, but he’s also got a stick up his ass. Yes he loves Ilsa, but when you see the pain written on Rick’s face, you can’t really blame the guy for considering giving Victor over to the Germans.
Captain Louis Renault: Claude Rains (who is quickly becoming one of my favorite 30s-40s supporting actors) plays the affably corrupt chief of police. He’s a womanizer, takes bribes and is completely willing to arrest people on trumped up charges, but he’s also a pragmatic man with little love for Vichy or German interference. Renault is something of a wild card in the film, working toward his own benefit, but he also gets the lion’s share of funny dialogue, especially the banter with Rick. Captain Renault is awesome.
Major Strasser: Conrad Veidt (the sleepwalker Cesare from silent classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) plays the German officer who arrives in Casablanca looking for Laszlo. Tall, aristocratic and actually somewhat reasonable, he’s also unwavering in his pursuit of any kind of reason or excuse to arrest the freedom fighter and bring him back to Germany. Clearly the Villain, but nuanced enough to have a bit of sympathy.
Signor Ferrari: Sydney Greenstreet (The Maltese Falcon) plays a “rival” nightclub owner who has extensive underworld connections and information. Fairly minor, but Greenstreet does a great job of it.
Ugarte: Peter Lorre (also The Maltese Falcon) essentially has one scene, but it is crucial to the plot. He’s a shady character who gets his hands on some letters of transit, a legal, valid means for anyone who has them to leave Morocco, no questions asked. He hands them over to Rick for temporary custody while he lays low, but he gets arrested soon after, so Rick just keeps them for himself. These letters become the film’s maguffin.
And then there are the tertiary characters; the staff of Rick’s Café led by Dooley Wilson as the pianist Sam. While minor, they’re all well defined and have some great scenes & dialogue.
Visuals/Effects
Michael Curtiz (The Adventures of Robin Hood) with director of photography Arthur Edeson created one hell of a picture. You have some elements of noir in the lighting, but the atmosphere and exotic setting (through the miracle of soundstages) really give the film a completely unique feel. Masterfully done.
Writing
Based on the play Everybody Comes To Rick’s by Murray Burnett & Joan Alison and screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein & Howard Koch (and Casey Robinson uncredited). The plot, characters, dialogue and general interplay are all excellent. There’s a lot of quotability in this film and a lot of good turns and some outstanding scenes. Possibly my favorite is the one where Rick is in the bar after closing, bitter, confused and trying to drown the old wounds Ilsa just reopened. It’s powerful, and Bogart nails it with the right amount of pathos.
Sound
The original score by Max Steiner is excellent in every possible way, but a number of songs have huge parts in the success of the movie. The “theme” is “As Time Goes By” written by Herman Hupfeld for a Broadway show from the 30s and sung by Dooley Wilson, then hummed here and there and even worked into Steiner’s score. Then there’s a key character moment in Rick’s where the Germans led by Strasser sing “Die Wacht Am Rhein” and Laszlo rallies the rest of the bar to drown them out with the (Free) French anthem “La Marseillaise.” It could have easily been a cheesy scene, but here it works and is one of the classic moments of the film.
Conclusion
It’s Casablanca. It could have very easily been a cheap, cheesy melodrama/call to arms for the United States to get involved in WWII, but instead we get a tender, character driven Romance that uses the war as a grim backdrop that weighs heavily on every character. In blunt terms, this film is Art. Required viewing.
So The Silence of the Lambs was some heavy, well made and deeply disturbing cinema. Let’s wash that out with some comedic brain bleach. To that end, here’s 2008’s Tropic Thunder, written by Ben Stiller, directed by Ben Stiller & starring Ben Stiller.
Plot
So we start with a few fake ads and commercials featuring the characters of the film before getting into the plot. This is a movie about making movies, and the movie in question is an astronomically big budgeted Vietnam War movie “based on a true story” and starring three of the most egotistical and temperamental figures in Hollywood. The movie is over-budget and woefully behind schedule, and the producer gives the greenhorn director an ultimatum; get the movie back on track or he’s fired. The writer of the novel that the movie-within-the-actual-movie is based on (man, this is getting meta) suggests taking the actors off the grid into the jungle for some guerrilla-style filmmaking, at which point everything goes to hell when they enter the territory of a drug cartel called the Flaming Dragon and hilarity ensues.
Characters Damien Cockburn: Steve Coogan is the hapless director who is in way over his head and unable to get his actors under control. He does a good job of the role, though there’s not much to it.
Kirk Lazarus: Robert Downey Jr. blows the movie away with his portrayal of a belligerent Australian method actor who undergoes a skin darkening procedure in order to play the movie squad’s black sergeant, “Lincoln Osiris” and refuses to break character. Far and away the movie’s badass.
Jeff Portnoy: Jack Black plays a boisterous comedian famous for lowbrow comedies that are pretty clearly based on Eddie Murphy’s Nutty Professor films. He’s got a serious drug problem too.
Tugg Speedman: Ben Stiller plays a largely washed up action star who’s Scorcher films aren’t making the money they used to. He took the lead role in the shameless Oscar-fodder film Simple Jack which bombed because he went “full retard” for the part and this role is acknowledged as pretty much a last gasp attempt at saving his career.
Alpa Chino: Brandon T. Jackson plays a popular and highly commercial rapper famous for shilling products like “Booty Sweat” energy drink who is trying to branch out dramatically to prove he has range. Naturally, he’s not particularly fond of Lazarus playing a very over-the-top black man, but he’s also got some surprises.
Kevin Sandusky: Jay Baruchel plays a really young character actor who’s trying to get a big break in the business. As such, he’s more or less ignored by the rest of the cast, but also happens to have been the only one to attend the cast boot camp and has some idea of what he’s doing. Easily the most level-headed character in the film.
John “Four-Leaf” Tayback: Nick Nolte plays a full-blown crazy man and the author of the book that the film is based on. His hands were blown off during the war, so he has to use hooks, but there’s a lot more going on with him than he lets on.
Cody: Danny McBride plays the pyrotechnics chief for the movie, a boorish, crass pyromaniac who loves making stuff go boom. And boom stuff goes in this movie.
Rick Peck: Matthew McConaughey plays Tugg’s agent who’s been with him for years. Mostly, he’s concerned with getting Tugg a TiVo that was promised in the contract.
Les Grossman: Tom Cruise in a surprisingly entertaining glorified cameo as the executive producer of the film. Grossman is a foul-mouthed, amoral crazy pants who is funding the movie and steals the show when he’s on screen. If he & Downey Jr. were on the screen at the same time, I fear the television would magically transform into a ham and cheese sandwich fit for the gods.
Visuals/Effects
Ben Stiller directed with John Toll as director of photography. The film looks very, very good and when it goes into action-movie mode, stuff blows up real good while still remaining wickedly funny. The pacing of the film is also incredibly well done, with even the director’s cut moving along at a nice breezy pace.
Writing
Screenwriters Ben Stiller, Justin Theroux & Etan Cohen have a lot of characters to juggle, and the manage to do so well. Everybody important goes through some kind of arc and the dialogue is both incredibly well written and incredibly profane, so there’s not much I can quote here. Suffice it to say, the movie throws a lot at you, and it is very, very funny. Even the film’s point of controversy, the abundant usage of the word “retard” in discussion of the mentally handicapped is actually rather well handled, with the point within the movie being about Hollywood’s exploitation of such disabilities in order to create maudlin Oscar Bait tearjerkers.
Sound
Original Music by Theodore Shapiro, but that gets overshadowed by the excellent and appropriately placed licensed music, like Quiet Riot, M.C. Hammer, The Temptations, The Mooney Suzuki, The Crystal Method, Steppenwolf and others.
Conclusion
Not a whole lot to say other than I love the hell out of Tropic Thunder. It’s a smart, genre savvy skewering/tribute to big budget action movies that is one really successful action comedy. Totally recommended.
M*A*S*H, I’m sure you know all about it. After all, an episode from the TV series is probably playing right this minute on some channel. However, before the long-running series, there was a novel, and in between there was a 1970 Robert Altman film, which is where this little paragraph becomes relevant.
Plot
So in wartime setting that is basically Vietnam thinly veiled as Korea (it was released in 1970, after all), a couple of recently drafted doctors arrive at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. And then they proceed to do two things: operate on wounded soldiers while on duty and misbehave in a completely politically incorrect way while off duty. That’s pretty much the plot. Oh yeah, and they play a game of football at the end.
Characters Hawkeye Pierce: Donald Sutherland is our main character, a bespectacled, Boonie-hat wearing doc with a penchant for lady nurses (even though he’s married) and for saying “finest kind.” He also has a trademark whistle for when he’s surprised, or amazed or whatever. Extraordinarily laid back, he starts off his tour by basically stealing a jeep (well, Duke thought he was the driver for it and told him to drive) and, well, he’s awesome. I know I’m speaking blasphemy, but I prefer his Hawkeye Pierce to Alan Alda’s.
Trapper John McIntyre: Elliott Gould is a “chest cutter” surgeon and one of the best. He transfers in to the 4077 and gets bunked with Hawkeye & Duke in “the Swamp,” immediately making a good impression by bringing olives for martinis.
Duke Forrest: Tom Skerritt is Hawkeye’s immediate buddy for the movie and he’s the more lewd of the duo. Essentially, Duke, Hawkeye & Trapper John are our three anti-heroes who are just trying to get by in a place they don’t really want to be.
“Hot Lips” O’Houlihan: Sally Kellerman plays the chief of nurses who’s a firm believer in the Army and following proper protocols. This of course does not sit well with our heroes, who end up pulling a lot of pranks on her in compromising situations. One of which is how she gets the nickname “Hot Lips.”
Major Frank Burns: Robert Duvall is the first roommate Hawkeye & Duke have, and he’s a sanctimonious, self-righteous ass with a holier than thou attitude. He also blames some of the younger staff for patient deaths, so that really gets him on our anti-heroes bad side.
Colonel Henry Blake: Roger Bowen is the commander of the 4077, and he’s mostly an absent-minded, lazy, harmless fool who doesn’t know (or willfully ignores) what’s going on in the camp and usually gets walked on by characters more clever than him.
Father John “Dago Red” Mulcahy: Rene Auberjonois (who’s done a ton of voice over work and was Odo on Deep Space Nine) is the Catholic chaplain of the camp. In contrast to Maj. Burns, he’s a friendly, cheerful and helpful guy, but also out of place because there's not much he can do. The other characters tolerate him fairly well, they just keep him out of the loop for their more naughty antics.
Corporal “Radar” O’Reilly: Gary Burghoff (who was also Radar on the series) is the bespectacled assistant to Col. Blake, and basically the guy who really runs the day-to-day workings of the camp. He finishes the colonel’s sentences, knows all the loopholes, and frequently participates in and makes sure Blake doesn’t know the kind of shenanigans going on behind his back. Radar is badass.
Dr. Oliver Wendell “Spearchucker” Jones: Fred Williamson is a black doctor who transfers to the camp, but that’s not the reason why they get him. He was also an all-star football player, and the 4077 needs him as a ringer for the game at the end against another Army unit.
“Painless” Waldowski: John Schuck plays the staff dentist who’s got a reputation for being well equipped. He kind of loses it when said equipment fails to function properly during an intimate moment, and he becomes despondent, convinces himself he’s suddenly homosexual and then starts thinking suicide. Hawkeye & the gang decide to snap him out of it by indulging his suicide fantasy, throwing an extravagant wake for him (coffin and everything) and giving him a sleeping pill, and then hooking him up with a nurse who’s leaving for home in the morning. I don’t think I could’ve made that up if I tried.
Visuals/Effects
Robert Altman’s visual aesthetic for the movie is a very gritty style with muted colors. It’s a comedy, so that kind of stuff takes precedence, with lots of sight gags and dialog. However, you never lose sight of the fact that this is a military camp during a war; and while you never see any actual combat stuff, the constant barrage of wounded that filter into the hospital and the completely nihilistic tone (and behavior of the staff) makes a very strong statement without being preachy about it. There’s also some boobies.
Writing
Novel by Richard Hooker, screenplay by Ring Lardner, Jr. (one of the in/famous Hollywood 10 that were blacklisted in the 1950s), which is kind of funny when you think about it, since Hooker’s novel swings to the right and the movie swings to the left. So, really, there’s a M*A*S*H for everybody, dirty communists and dirty fascists alike. Lardner won an Oscar for the screenplay, which is funny as well, since most of the dialog was improvised. The movie is also famously accepted as the first to say “fuck” in a major motion picture. Watch it yourself and try to find it.
Sound
Score by Johnny Mandel, which works fine, but M*A*S*H is probably most famous for its moody theme song, “Suicide is Painless” with its extraordinarily bleak lyrics (that they understandably kept out of the TV version). What’s more notable? The lyrics were written by Robert Altman’s then 14-year old son, Mike.
Conclusion
The thing about M*A*S*H is that it’s an incredibly dark black comedy. Sure, none of the main characters are in any real danger, and not a whole lot actually happens, but the comedy comes from trying to cope with the stresses of civilian professionals being drafted and shipped off to a place they don’t want to be and working under very difficult conditions, and they can’t just leave. And these people don’t exactly rise to the occasion through clean living and virtuous acts. Though these questionable ethics lead to some truly wicked comedy. This is probably the best anti-war movie I’ve ever seen, because you never see the cool explosions and lovingly choreographed action scenes, only the bloody harvest that results from it. Honestly, I like it better than the TV series. Totally recommended.
Be aware that this trailer is kinda/sorta/close to being NSFW.
