The Weekly Gravy #95

This article is going up on July 8, which happens to be Nate’s birthday – so why don’t you give Words About Books a listen, whether you want to hear Ben suffer or Nate and Ben suffer together?

And, since the issue of abortion access is going to keep on being a pressing one, do please consider donating to the National Network of Abortion Funds.

Morbius (2022) – *

We’ve all heard “it’s Morbin’ time” more than enough times by now. And we all know how Sony, inspired by the film’s memetic status, gave a film which had already flopped (it set the record for the worst second-weekend drop in over 4,000 theaters) a modest re-release, which added a meager $550,000 to its already disappointing return. And, if you hadn’t heard, the film was critically shredded, with just 16% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 35 on Metacritic. #MorbiusSweep? At the Razzies, maybe – though thanks to the execrable 365 Days: This Day, it’s not even the worst film of the year. Which is fitting, as there’s nothing superlative about this crappy little film.

Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) has been suffering his whole life from a blood disease, and in searching for a cure developed an artificial blood which wins him the Nobel Prize. But it didn’t cure him, and it’s a cure that he’s after, and he’s bankrolled by old friend Lucian, nicknamed “Milo” (Matt Smith), who suffers from the same disease. Working with Dr. Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona), Morbius uses vampire-bat DNA to synthesize a serum which offers hope of a cure.

What it actually does is turn Morbius into a vampire, and he kills several hired guns on board the ship where he was conducting the experiment (for legal reasons, he had to do it in international waters) before fleeing; thanks to his new condition, he has incredible strength and endurance, but he needs blood to survive, and his artificial blood can only help for so long. Milo, meanwhile, takes the serum against Morbius’ advice and embraces his new, bloodthirsty life.

Like a lot of bad origin stories, Morbius is more about laying the groundwork for potential sequels than telling an especially good story in of itself. Not that I can imagine anyone would want a sequel after watching this film, since it fails to make any case for Morbius himself being a compelling character. He’s a pretty generic eccentric genius turned generic tormented monster, and Leto’s dull performance does nothing to help.

In fact, the only performance which makes much of an impact is Smith’s, and that because he embraces the camp factor and the relish with which Milo takes to being a vampire; after a lifetime of illness, superhuman abilities are irresistible, and after a lifetime of being cocooned by wealth, the lives and blood of a few random people are hardly worth worrying about. Smith is having fun, unlike Jared Harris as Morbius and Milo’s lifelong doctor or Tyrese Gibson as an FBI agent on their trail.

Not that the viewer is likely to have much fun either, since the story is a dreadful muddle from the get-go. Why does Lucian take to the name “Milo” (given because young Morbius saw so many fellow patients come and go that he stopped learning their names)? Why, if their friendship is so central to the story, is it so lazily established? Why does the experiment need to be in international waters? Is Harris supposed to be Morbius or Milo’s father? If not, why is he still hanging around them after all these years? Why are the rooms of Morbius’ patients right next to the lab where he’s experimenting with bats and blood?

Ultimately, it comes down to: why should we care about any of this? With a messy narrative (there’s no real flow or momentum), dull characters, a total lack of internal logic (the vampires’ powers are exceptionally ill-defined), a weirdly nasty tone (from the schoolboy bullies to the brutish hired guns on the ship to the obnoxious counterfeiters), and a pair of mid-credits scenes that make no sense whatsoever, it does just about everything in its power to push the viewer away.

Even the action scenes are bad, by turns utterly confusing (the big climax is so badly lit it’s incoherent at times), laughable (you have to love how the passerby during the subway fight barely pause to watch the superpowered brawl taking place before moving on), and off-putting (the vampires’ hyper-sensitivity is portrayed with tacky haze/fog/billow effects, while the vampiric faces look like bad werewolf masks). It’s just a laughable failure all around.

The filmmakers must’ve thought they were pretty slick, by the way, naming the ship Murnau – but if this film wants to be compared to Nosferatu, I think it needs a Sunrise to eradicate it, or at the very least, the whole thing needs to be declared Tabu, so the viewing public can have The Last Laugh.

Joking aside, there’s very little legitimately good here. Smith is solid, the score is decent, the production design is fairly good, and the neon imagery during the credits is nifty. But those are scraps of competence in a film which fails even at being mindless entertainment. Unless you’re a true bad-movie connoisseur, it’s not even worth taking the time to jeer at. It’s just a waste of time and money, and yet more evidence that Jared Leto needs to stick to character actor work – if he needs to be getting roles at all.

Score: 24

The Search (1948) – ***½

Fred Zinnemann, who’d go on to win two Oscars for directing (and be nominated an additional four times), got his first Best Director nod, and the only one not connected to a Best Picture nomination, for the story of a boy in a war-torn world, so traumatized by his experiences that he can’t remember his own name, the mother who searches for him, not knowing where to start but determined to keep trying as long as she has hope, and the soldier who cares for the boy and is ready to adopt him, despite all the red tape he’ll have to work through.

It’s a compelling premise, one that could be easily adapted to any number of contemporary conflicts – and indeed, Michel Hazanavicius did so in 2014, setting the story against the backdrop of the Second Chechen War (and changing a number of the particulars). The result, like most of his work after The Artist, was indifferently received, but it speaks to the enduring power of the story that he made it in the first place. And while the Academy’s writing categories in the late 40s were a bit messy, The Search‘s Oscar win for Best Story (a category that was finally retired after 1956) does make sense.

The film also won a special Juvenile Award (two, in fact; an Oscar and a Globe) for Ivan Jandl, the 11-year-old Czech boy who played Karel Malik (although he’s nicknamed “Jim” for much of the film). Sadly, the Czech government prevented him from accepting the awards in person, and after a few more film roles his acting career was over, possibly because he was seen as too friendly to the West. He worked in radio and theater, but died at the age of 50 of complications from diabetes – a sad end to a life thwarted by political meddling.

Montgomery Clift, who plays Steve, the sympathetic soldier, got his first of four Oscar nominations; it’s his only nominated role where he isn’t dead or horribly traumatized by the end, and it’s rather refreshing to see him playing such a genuinely happy character. Even when the circumstances are tragic, what stands out is Steve’s loving and empathetic nature. Clift’s own life was even more conspicuously tragic than Jandl’s, with his 1956 car accident, substance abuse issues, and struggles with his sexuality all playing into his death at 45.

Despite being up for Best Actor, Clift isn’t really the lead, Jandl is – Steve doesn’t even appear until 36 minutes into the film – but when they share the screen, the film comes most fully to life, and the warmth and humor of their dynamic, especially as Steve tries to teach “Jim” English, make their scenes together something special. Jandl does a decent job elsewhere – though Karel is more of a haunted blank than a three-dimensional character for much of the film – but Clift brings out the best in him, and vice versa.

There’s also Jarmila Novotná as Hanna, Karel’s determined mother, and Aline MacMahon as Mrs. Murray, the U.N.R.R.A. official who tries to reunite the children of Europe with their families, or find suitable homes for them. Novotná was mainly an opera singer (there’s a flashback showing a Malik family musicale which allows her to sing), and her performance is a touch stiff, but she’s all right; MacMahon, a veteran character actor, is quite good, deeply sympathetic to what the children have gone through (she provides narration early on to further explain the situation), but also pragmatic in matters of hope and faith. (Of course, this being a movie, hope and faith are validated in the end.)

In addition to winning Best Story, the film was nominated for Best Screenplay, both being credited to Richard Schweizer and David Wechsler. Perhaps it’s fitting that the story won but the script didn’t, since the script itself is just a bit thin, caught between being a docudrama about the problems of refugee children in postwar Europe and the organizations which try to help them and telling the specific story at the heart of the material.

It’s the acting and Zinnemann’s direction that really make the film work; he makes fine use of the shattered buildings, the autobahns, the fields and trees which somehow survived the destruction of the war, and the faces of the children who, having lived through so much, are slow to trust even those who want to help. Emil Berna’s cinematography, especially in the noir-ish nighttime scenes, and Robert Blum’s score, especially in the final moments, contribute a great deal.

And as effective as the film is – though it needed more powerfully visceral moments like the river sequence – it’s the ending, which comes dangerously close to contrivance but manages to stick the landing, that chokes you up and leaves you with the feeling that, with all the tragedy that has transpired, this story we have been given to follow ends the only way we could have wanted. Such is the magic of the movies.

Score: 84

Brightburn (2019) – **½

It might say enough that, while James Gunn produced Brightburn and was mentioned prominently in the advertising, he didn’t write the script or even come up with the story—it was written by his brother Brian and cousin Mark. And he certainly didn’t direct it; David Yarovesky, who’d previously directed shorts, music videos, and a feature called The Hive that I’d never heard of, took care of that. That’s not to say those other men are necessarily untalented, but the film is considerably weaker than the three films directed by James that I’ve seen (I’ve still never seen Slither or Super), lacking their wit, heart, or sense of imagination. On the whole Brightburn feels rather slight and empty—not a bad film, really, but a lot less memorable than one would hope.

The basic premise, of course, is “what if Superman were evil?” To that end, we have a childless couple, Tori and Kyle Breyer (Elizabeth Banks and David Denman), living on a farm just outside a small town in rural Kansas (named Brightburn), who are startled by an object which crashes to Earth one night while they’re trying to conceive a child. Surprise, the object, a small spaceship, has an infant inside! They raise him as their own, and 12 years later, Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn) is the kind of child any parent could be proud of – good-natured, well-behaved, and an excellent student.

But then things start happening. Brandon is drawn, usually in the night, to the place in the barn where his spaceship is locked away. His behavior becomes suspect, as he displays willfulness and an increasing detachment from his humanity. And he begins to discover his extraordinary strength and powers, which he starts using towards destructive – and lethal – ends. Tori and Kyle are horrified, but how they can save the son they love from the supervillain he seems fated to become?

Is it much of a spoiler to say they can’t, and don’t? It’s pretty obvious that Brightburn was made with the hope that Brandon’s story could be continued in future films – there are scenes at the very end which even hint at a, for lack of a better word, Gunniverse (I know there’s an allusion to Super in there), but the disappointing reception for Brightburn probably precludes that. Maybe not; it does seem to have turned a profit by virtue of its low budget. But for my part, I don’t think this film makes a very strong case for starting a franchise.

Despite the intriguing premise, the actual film settles for a lot of standard horror beats, driven by the fact that Brandon’s race seems to have evolved to behave for maximum dramatic tension; in the scenes where he attacks his victims, he disappears and reappears so many times it turns into a running gag, and he spends an absurd amount of time swooping and crashing around, which wouldn’t seem to be the most efficient way of taking over the world.

To be fair, that reckless use of his powers could be ascribed to Brandon having the curious, casually destructive impulses children often display. But the film really falls short in failing to develop Brandon as a compelling character, and he turns from a pleasant, slightly nerdy kid into a megalomaniacal villain so quickly, with so little inner tension, that he might as well just be Damien from The Omen. But The Omen sucks, and while this film doesn’t, it’s not that good either; I can’t say I especially want to see another film of Brandon just swooping around causing chaos.

I suspect a lot of the questions raised by the film’s events were meant to be answered in the sequels. Where does Brandon come from? What are his powers? (The film doesn’t clearly establish them.) Are there others like him? Does he have a conscience? What’s his goal, or the goal of his race? With all the dead bodies piling up around him, how long before his villainy is just out in the open? But in leaving so much unexplained and unexplored, the film is more frustrating than enticing.

Again, it’s not bad – the acting is solid, it does a decent job at capturing the atmosphere of rural Kansas, it’s got some effective moments of tension and horror (when the budgetary limitations aren’t too obvious), and on a technical level, it’s certainly adequate. But there’s just not enough there beyond that basic idea. It comes back to the fact that James Gunn, whose name was used to sell the film, may not have had all that much to do with its creative decisions. It’s a film which I hoped would be something special, a legitimate twist on the superhero genre, but in the end, there’s not much to it.

Score: 61

San Francisco (1936) – ***

For a long time, San Francisco was regarded as something of a classic. Leslie Halliwell, who could be very stingy with his praise indeed, gave it his highest rating, noting that it “weaves in every kind of appeal.” I highlight that particular phrase because, even if I think Halliwell overpraised the film as a whole, I myself noticed how much of a four-quadrant film it really is. You’ve got music, both popular and classical; you’ve got romance; you’ve got social issues and a touch of politics; you’ve got religion and morality; you’ve got showgirls in racy costumes; you’ve got spectacle, excitement, and a little comedy, the first two most notably in the climactic depiction of the 1906 earthquake, which even the film’s detractors will readily praise.

To be sure, just because San Francisco checks all those boxes doesn’t mean it checks all of them remarkably well. Aside from the earthquake sequence, the wonderful title song which has become one of the city’s anthems (“San Francisco, open your Golden Gate”), and the lovely “Would You?” which was put to even better use in Singin’ in the Rain, it’s a fairly standard period drama, well-crafted by the standards of MGM in the 30s (this is the kind of thing they excelled at), but not really that memorable, whatever Halliwell might say.

It’s about Blackie Norton (Clark Gable), who owns the Paradise Club on the Barbary Coast. He hires Mary Blake (Jeanette MacDonald), a preacher’s daughter from Colorado, to sing at the Paradise, both because she’s got a great voice and because Blackie is immediately drawn to her. She’s rather prim by the standards of the Coast, but maybe that’s part of why Blackie likes her. It’s not surprising, however, that she becomes close to Fr. Tim Mullin (Spencer Tracy), Blackie’s best friend, who’s been trying to save his soul for years.

Blackie’s got other problems, many of them wrapped in Jack Burley (Jack Holt), a member of the Nob Hill upper crust; when his fellow bar owners want Blackie to run for city office and fight for better building standards (many of the buildings on the Coast are firetraps), Burley tries to dissuade him, and when Burley hears Mary sing, he wants her to appear at his opera house – and he wants her, as well. A personal and professional triangle develops, and while Mary loves Blackie, his arrogance and stubbornness might be too much for her.

And then the earthquake hits. Buildings crumble to pieces, crushing people under the rubble. The streets break open. Fires break out, and because the water mains are shattered, the fire department can’t fight them. Instead, many buildings are dynamited, leaving the city a shattered wasteland. And as Blackie searches for Mary, we see so much of the devastation, thanks to a combination of effective special effects and sprawling sets. You can see why the sequence was so celebrated – and why the film won the Oscar for Best Sound, with the rumblings of the quake, the screams of the people, and the booms of the buildings being blown up.

Of course, we end with Blackie and Mary reconciled, Blackie finding a bit of religion as Fr. Tim looks on approvingly, and the people of San Francisco singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” as they determine to rebuild, the final shot of modern-day Frisco proving that they did. (Originally, the film ended with a montage which included shots of the Golden Gate Bridge being built; the film now ends with a single shot of the wholly rebuilt city.)

It’s a solid, splashy entertainment. Gable is charming and arrogant, MacDonald is charming and tuneful (although evoking Al Jolson during the Chicken’s Ball sequence was an odd choice), Tracy is charming and pious, the sets and costumes are lavish – and some of the sets were built so that they could realistically sway and shake during the earthquake sequence, which they do – the music is good, and by and large it keeps you watching. That doesn’t mean I didn’t get a little tired of the Blackie-Mary-Burley triangle or roll my eyes at Fr. Tim’s priggishness (I think of what Tracy said to Cecil Kellaway in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner: “You’re a pontificating old poop!”) or cringe a bit when Blackie falls to his knees in prayer (though kudos for making his prayer realistic; he simply thanks God as if God had done him a quick favor).

And while the Oscar for Best Sound was an excellent choice, the other nominations were a mixed bag. I can’t speak for Best Assistant Director (be nice if D.W. Griffith, who helped with the crowd scenes, had received that nomination, or even screen credit), but Best Original Story? Not really. Best Actor for Tracy? He’s a supporting role and he’s not that good (he was better in Fury that same year). Best Director for W.S. Van Dyke? Well, it’s better than the same year’s The Devil is a Sissy, but outside of the quake sequence, it’s pretty standard direction. And Best Picture? Not really. It’s a solid movie, but it’s not better than Fury or Modern Times (or My Man Godfrey).

Score: 73

The Rose Tattoo (1955) – ***½

1955 was a rather odd year for the Academy. Only two of the Best Picture nominees were up for Best Director, and only one of them was nominated for its writing (that being Marty, which naturally won Picture, Director, and Screenplay); despite receiving Director and Screenplay nominations, neither Bad Day at Black Rock nor East of Eden were allowed into the Picture race, and despite being based on successful stage plays, neither Mister Roberts, Picnic, nor The Rose Tattoo were nominated for their writing. But all three of them won Oscars nonetheless, and Rose Tattoo won three – most notably Best Actress for Anna Magnani.

She plays Serafina Delle Rose, a Sicilian immigrant living in a coastal town in the South (it was shot in Key West), who works as a seamstress and worships her truck-driver husband, Rosario. But Rosario is cheating on her with another woman and using his truck for (it’s implied) drug-running and is killed in a crash while being chased by the police. Serafina is utterly devastated and spends the next three years in seclusion and mourning, which frustrates her teenage daughter Rosa (Marisa Pavan). Shortly before Rosa graduates from high school, she meets Jack Hunter (Ben Cooper), a young sailor, and they quickly fall in love.

Serafina and Rosa butt heads on her graduation day, with Rosa calling her mother “disgusting.” Serafina is deeply hurt by this, and her misery is compounded when an obnoxious customer (Jo Van Fleet, who had a hell of a year between this, I’ll Cry Tomorrow, and her Oscar-winning role in East of Eden) reveals Rosario’s infidelity, which Serafina refuses to accept. Later, she’s visited by Rosa and Jack, and she makes Jack swear to protect Rosa’s innocence.

Serafina then goes to church to ask Fr. De Leo (Sandro Giglio) if Rosario was unfaithful, having a meltdown when he refuses to tell her, citing the sanctity of the confessional. She’s helped home by truck drive Alvaro Mangiacavallo (Burt Lancaster), and as she mends his shirt (which she ripped in her anguish), they hit it off, with Alvaro’s boisterous nature proving more than even Serafina can resist. But he might just be a bit too boisterous – or a bit too eager to make himself a replacement for Rosario – for a real relationship to take root.

Although it’s not generally considered one of Tennessee Williams’ best plays, The Rose Tattoo won the Tony for Best Play and has been revived several times, most recently with Marisa Tomei. It was actually written for Magnani, but she felt her English wasn’t strong enough to appear in the original production, which starred Maureen Stapleton instead. But she most certainly starred in the film, sinking her teeth into a role which allows her to display lust, grief, rage, and snarky wit, often at a very high pitch –

Although she goes a bit over the top at times, there’s no denying how forceful she is, and for the most part, she really is very strong indeed, relishing Williams’ dialogue and situations, embodying the worshipful wife, the emotionally drained widow, the frustrated mother, and the woman excited by the prospect of something new but still haunted by the memories of the past. I really can’t argue with her Oscar at all. And I won’t much argue with the Oscars for Black-and-White Cinematography and Art Direction either; James Wong Howe shoots it fairly well (not brilliantly, but fairly well) and Serafina’s house, a bit run-down but full of character, is quite convincing.

As for the other nominations, Alex North’s score is pretty good – if a bit unsure of when to play up the drama and when to play up the comedy – while the editing is nothing special. Pavan was up for Supporting Actress, and she’s solid – there’s a real sweetness to her scenes with Cooper, and her chemistry with Magnani rings true, whether they’re screaming at each other or doting on one another. And then there’s Picture, which isn’t a terrible choice, but doesn’t quite seem justified given what else was in the running that year.

It wasn’t nominated for Daniel Mann’s direction (which is okay), or the script by Williams and Hal Kanter, which I’m guessing does a modest job of opening up the play, which as I suggested isn’t one of Williams’ best, but even second-tier Williams is pretty fair. And it wasn’t nominated for Lancaster, who’s really a supporting role (he doesn’t even appear until almost halfway through), and plays slightly against type, using his great toothy grin to play a character who’s almost childish in his giddy good nature (although there’s a darker edge to his free-spiritedness that the film arguably doesn’t fully contend with). It’s a strange performance, but you may find yourself bowled over by his charm – a bit like being tackled by a large, friendly dog.

All in all, The Rose Tattoo is a solid film. It’s not Streetcar or Baby Doll; there’s a maybe a little too much shouting, a little too much comic chaos (the running gag with the neighbor’s goat is a bit silly), a little too much hysteria which is too quickly moved past. It’s not a great film, just a solid one bolstered by strong acting. That’s certainly more than most films can claim.

Score: 77