Toys (1992) – **
Toys is a collision, on a grand scale, between its own vices and virtues. It’s one of the stranger studio films I’ve ever seen, especially from the early 90s, a period of comparative stylistic restraint. Indeed, it seems to have been made with few restraints of any kind, either on the physical production or on its star, who clearly improvised a good portion of his dialogue. It’s not a good film, and in the strictest sense it’s a failure – it’s a little hard to say precisely what the message actually was, but it certainly doesn’t land, whatever it is.
At the same time, it’s so fascinating, both for its ambitions and its miscalculations, that it’s hard to dismiss. And as a child of 90s, I found a certain nostalgic comfort in its style and tone, even as I was cringing at most of the jokes and rolling my eyes at the attempted satire.
Ailing Kenneth Zevo (Donald O’Connor) has built a thriving firm, Zevo Toys, a reflection in every way of his own love of innocence and imagination. Knowing that his time is running out, he summons his brother, Lt. Gen. Leland Zevo (Michael Gambon), who finds himself adrift in the post-Cold War world, and asks him to take over Zevo Toys, as Kenneth’s son Leslie (Robin Williams) is not quite ready to do so. Leland accepts, rather reluctantly, and finds himself bored by the toy business and put off by the pervasive whimsy.
Energized by the chance to combat corporate espionage, Leland recruits his son, Capt. Patrick (LL Cool J) as his chief of security, and the once carefree Zevo factory becomes increasingly tense. Leland then does some research of his own and, seeing the popularity of war toys and video games, essentially hits on the idea of drone warfare (crossed with a bit of Ender’s Game). But his new plans, couched in secrecy, clash with the long-time values of Zevo Toys, and Leslie finds himself having to step up and fight for what his father believed in.
Once Leland started talking about “war toys,” I found myself reminded of Putney Swope (Putney declares that Truth & Soul will not advertise war toys), a film which, for all its faults, is a much sharper and funnier satire than this film. But is this film a satire? Or is it more of a surreal fable, set in a factory which looks like a giant playground, in the Zevo home which resembles a giant dollhouse, and amongst the rolling hills of the countryside which are so perfectly green and rounded as to feel like a fairytale?
Or is it a comedy for adult viewers, with jokes about the modern military, fragging (which another character assumes is sexual), voyeurism, Michael Jackson, and whatever popped into Williams’ head in the middle of a take? There’s a constant clash in the film between the timeless fable it looks like and the hip satire it sounds like (well, tries to sound like), made worse by how weak most of the jokes are. (Williams’ ad-libs are not among his best work.)
It’s all the more frustrating because the film does a lot of things very well. Ferdinando Scarfiotti’s production design is incredible; it’s like if Wes Anderson got a blockbuster budget at the age of 8. From the Zevo factory floor with its various stations capped by whimsical heads dispensing parts, to the undulating green hallway (with a crossing for toy ducks), to the Zevo home with its whimsical furniture, to the enormous, stylized model of Manhattan which features prominently throughout, it’s all delightful to look at, and fully deserved the Oscar nomination it received. Albert Wolsky’s costumes were also nominated, and they’re excellent as well, by turns whimsical and satirical (the outfits worn by Patrick’s security team, the brightly colored camo Leland wears); of note is Leslie’s electronic jacket, which was actually created by the actor Giancarlo Giannini.
It also boasts a great early 90s soundtrack, with my own favorite tracks being “The Mirror Song,” for which we get a video which takes the Magritte homage we’ve seen elsewhere to 11, and Tori Amos’ “The Happy Worker” and “Workers,” respectively reflecting the cheerful atmosphere of Zevo Toys at the start and the oppressive atmosphere which Leland and Patrick impose. Speaking of Leland and Patrick, Gambon and LL Cool J are actually quite good in the film and make an interesting duo; Gambon’s stuffy/zealous hamminess and LL Cool J’s tightly wound readiness provide this all-too muddled film with some focus and direction.
The problem is that Leland is the antagonist, and at the very least you’re not supposed to like the antagonist more than the hero. But Leslie is annoying, childish (and not in a charming way), and so passive that you just can’t root for him. Williams’ mugging and ad-libbing don’t help one bit; for my part, I shared in Leland’s exasperation. I haven’t even mentioned Joan Cusack as Leslie’s sister Alsatia, who’s even more whimsical and offbeat, and comparably tiresome; she’s also the subject of a last-minute revelation that’s totally irrelevant and rather confounding in retrospect. As Leslie’s love interest, Gwen, Robin Wright is wasted; Jack Warden has an odd cameo as Leslie’s ancient grandfather, and Jamie Foxx makes his film debut as a lecherous guard.
Barry Levinson, who co-wrote the script with Valerie Curtin, spent years trying to get this made, and while this is probably his most visually interesting movie, it’s also messy and chaotic, the Babes in Toyland-esque climax being a particular mess of confusing editing, disorienting cinematography, and some especially laughable uses of slow-motion to try and generate drama and pathos where none exist. At least it’s consistent with the attempts to generate laughs where there are none to be had.
Ultimately, Toys is a trainwreck, and fails at any sincere message it tries to convey, but it’s such a bizarre enterprise, and so visually impressive, that it’s probably worth seeing once.
Score: 54
Spirited Away/Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi/千と千尋の神隠し (2001) – ****
Watching a classic film for the first time is challenging enough, but watching a beloved film for the first time is truly daunting. And Spirited Away is most certainly a beloved film, up there with My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke as Miyazaki’s most cherished creation – and that’s saying quite a bit given his track record. I first watched the English dub, and while I found a great deal to appreciate, especially on further reflection, I had mixed feelings about the voice acting and found the lines added for the sake of American audiences to be simply intrusive. I decided to go back and start rewatching the film in the original Japanese – and the full power of the film began to come through.
I was already convinced of the film’s greatness on multiple levels. It has, as films for young viewers go, a really worthy and well-conveyed message. Sen, as much as she grows over the course of the story, displays admirable qualities from the start: she’s cautious about passing through the tunnel (how refreshing to see the child being wary and the adult being reckless), she refuses to eat the food (which her parents carelessly assume they can just pay for), she insists on a job in the face of repeated refusals, she shows compassion to the soot mites, No-Face, the river spirit, and Haku, she declines to scramble for the gold No-Face is throwing like confetti – all throughout the film, she behaves kindly and thoughtfully, but as a kind and thoughtful person would, rather than as the subject of a moral lesson.
It creates a rich world steeped in Japanese folklore, mythology, and religion, but filtered through Miyazaki’s imagination and dramatic skill, so that we have a bathhouse for all manner of spirits, only a few of whom we actually get to see (although those few are wonderfully realized – how can you not love the dry drollery of the radish spirit, or the hilariously gross river spirit before his much-needed bath?), along with the clownish attendants, the noble Haku, the lovable Kamaji, the snarky Lin, that grotesque old crone Yubaba, and her eternal infant (and those weird bouncing heads she keeps around).
Magic pervades the film, but Miyazaki never uses it as a crutch; Yubaba and her (kindly) sister Zeniba are not all-powerful, and can be thwarted or, in the case of Yubaba, outwitted. It’s a tool used by the characters, but the characters themselves, their virtues and failings, are what drive the story, and it makes the film all the more engaging and emotionally relatable.
It’s also simply a beautifully made film, with lovely locations (the glow of the red lanterns is a masterful touch), vivid characters (Chihiro/Sen’s faces throughout are fantastic), and a careful balance of the recognizable and the fantastic, as well as Joe Hisaishi’s magnificent score, bringing together delicate beauty (heavy on the piano), heroic fantasy (heavy on the trumpet), suspense (heavy on the strings), and bright humor. The original Japanese soundtrack, which is more restrained in its use of dialogue, allows the music to shine even brighter.
And having seen it both ways, I really do think the original soundtrack is better. The dub is, as dubs go, quite well done, with the new dialogue being carefully matched to the original film. But that dialogue just never feels entirely natural, and the added lines – especially at the very end – spell out things that don’t need spelling out. And while there’s some good voice acting in the dub, especially Suzanne Pleshette as Yubaba and Zeniba and David Ogden Stiers as Kamaji, I far prefer Rumi Hiiragi’s Chihiro/Sen to Daveigh Chase’s; Hiiragi is far more believable as the girl who has the inner strength required to complete the magical journey.
It’s not a flawless film – I do think the final scenes (basically everything after the visit to Zeniba’s) feel somewhat rushed, possibly a reflection of Miyazaki’s method of developing the story during production rather than finalizing it beforehand. But then, it says a hell of a lot about his skills as a storyteller that it works so very well, and whether or not it’s his best film – I haven’t seen Princess Mononoke in many years, and I ought to rewatch Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service – it deserved its Oscar for Animated Feature and deserves its reputation as a modern classic.
Score: 92
How about some more short-film reviews?
- Visions of Ecstasy (1989) – This was featured on Mubi as part of a “nunsploitation” series, and it’s basically a porny music video, although the music – a quintessential example of late-80s synth by Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Steven Severin – is decidedly secondary to the images. The images are of St. Teresa of Avila (Louise Downie), her “psyche” (Elisha Scott), and a crucified Jesus (Dan Fox), and there’s lots of writhing, caressing, heavy breathing, kissing, and stigmatic bleeding. I have no idea if it’s an accurate representation of Teresa’s attitudes or if director Nigel Wingrove just wanted to make a 20-minute slice of softcore iconoclasm. It’s a bit full of itself and gets pretty repetitive at times (you could cut this by half and lose very little), but the music is solid, it is fairly well-shot (I especially liked the image of the falling candelabra), and if you’re looking for some (very) light erotica, it fits the bill. Historically noteworthy for being refused a BBFC certification on the grounds of blasphemy, but otherwise, I’ll stick with Benedetta. Score: 65 – ***
- Cosmic Ray (1962) – In a way, this is also a porny music video; here, the nudity is more cheerfully explicit (we see what seem to be several women stripping, dancing nude, and otherwise cavorting in little or no clothing) and the music (Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say”) was probably used without the artist’s consent or knowledge. There’s also flashes of stock footage, including marching armies, Mickey Mouse, and head leaders. I’m not really sure what Bruce Conner was trying to say here, and while the frenzied, dreamlike editing is kind of cool in of itself, this feels like a stunt more than anything. Score: 63 – **½
- Big Sur: The Ladies (1966) – Here, we’ve got what seem to be Larry Jordan’s home movies of himself and his friends/family hanging out at Big Sur, and yes, we see the ladies walking around, and occasionally vamping for the camera, whilst nude. But the rest of it is just them hanging out, playing music, and just enjoying the beauty of their surroundings. All this is set to the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows,” and the blend of fractured, sped-up imagery with normally paced footage reflects the song’s rhythms. There’s something friendly and happy about this one that puts it at least a notch above the previous two films, and Big Sur does look lovely. Score: 72 – ***
- Associations (1975) – Over a black screen, a narrator reads the text of “Word Associations and Linguistic Theory” by Herbert H. Clark, and after a while, images start to flicker by, most for only a few frames, which are loosely associated with the words or even just the syllables being spoken – the word “time” brings an image of thyme, the word “first” brings an image of a man drinking, and so on. It’s not completely unlike Zorns Lemma, but I found that much more stimulating and original. I understand what this is doing, but I didn’t find it especially thought-provoking in of itself. This was John Smith’s (and yes, that’s his name) first film; maybe his other works are more compelling. Score: 61 – **½
- Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc. (1966) – The title says it all – you get about three and a half minutes of a looped bit (a very small bit – a half-second at most) of color test footage, but set up so that you can see the holes and lettering on the side of the film, and played at enough length for you to take note of all the blemishes on the film itself. George Landow, better known as Owen Land, was a major structural filmmaker, and this is as structural as it gets – a meditation on film itself as an art object. Or at least that’s what it’s set up to be. I got the point after about a minute and wanted more variations, but some critics have commented on its profundity. Score: 60 – **½ (I guess – how do you rate something like this?)
- Brutal (1980) – This is much more my cup of tea. It’s also a meditation on the nature of film, in this case film as an economic expenditure: “This 7-minute film does not aim for quality. It is mainly about money.” Namely, it’s about the money provided by the Swedish Film Institute, and how much it costs to create even 1 meter (about 5 seconds’ worth) of film; when the image of a lake is shown for 20 seconds, the narrator notes that it could be seen not as 20 seconds of film but as 5,750 kronor (“A scandal”). This leads to reflections on the nature of art as a consumer product and the question of value vs. price. A dryly funny (it’s very Swedish) little documentary, and still relevant given the ongoing debates over public funding of the arts. Score: 78 – ***½
- Shoeshine (1987) – A middle-aged shoeshine chats up a Wall Street yuppie on the Staten Island Ferry, and they talk about the market, their families, the value of hard work, and the importance of a good pair of shoes. Oh, and the shoeshine is played by Jerry Stiller and the yuppie is played by Ben, who’s almost unrecognizably young. A pleasant little dialogue with an obvious twist at the end, but very watchable on account of Jerry, who radiates authenticity. Nominated for an Oscar; written and directed (solidly but not brilliantly) by Tom Abrams, who’s mostly worked in various writing capacities since, on projects ranging from Rugrats to The Painted Bird. Score: 74 – ***
- Volleyball (Foot Film) (1967) – A volleyball rolls into a corner. A person, seen only from the hips down, walks into the frame. The ball comes to rest against their feet. Sometimes, it bounces off their feet and rolls away. Sometimes it rolls around, almost suggesting it has a life of its own – and the fact that we never see the person move the ball reinforces this possibility. Yvonne Rainer is best known as a choreographer, but she’s made a few films, this being the second. I’m not really sure what to make of it; Mubi suggests it’s “a playful study in subjectivity and Beckettian frustration,” but the only frustration I felt was at how this was drawn out for 10 minutes – five minutes would’ve been fine, but at 10 it gets self-indulgent. Rainer’s other films sound rather more interesting. Score: 58 – **½
Marooned (1969) – ***
I’d tried to watch Marooned at least a couple of times in the past and found myself more than a bit bored by it, but this time around I got through it pretty well, even if the restrained tone and deliberate pacing make it a bit sluggish at times. The premise may remind you of Apollo 13 (the film eerily predated the real mission by only a few months) or The Martian, but it’s considerably less entertaining than either, while the dialed-down, procedural approach may remind you of The Andromeda Strain, but where that film felt realistic, this film tends to feel a bit drab.
Three men are sent into space for a seven-month mission on a space station: commanding officer Jim Pruett (Richard Crenna), astronaut Buzz Lloyd (Gene Hackman), and scientist Clayton Stone (James Franciscus). After five months, the men are visibly worn down, especially Lloyd, and NASA’s director of manned spaceflight, Charles Keith (Gregory Peck) decides to bring them home. But their spacecraft, Ironman One, fails to retrofire, and ground control struggles to troubleshoot the problem while they try not to use up their limited oxygen.
Chief Astronaut Ted Dougherty (David Janssen) suggests using an experimental Air Force craft to reach Ironman One and bring the men home, but Keith refuses to take the risk – at least until the President personally urges Keith to do so. They cut every possible corner, but between an approaching hurricane and the dwindling oxygen aboard Ironman One, rescuing any of the men, let alone all of them, will come down to the wire.
Marooned has the dubious distinction of being the only Oscar-winning film to be featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, albeit in a heavily cut version retitled Space Travelers. From what I’ve heard, the episode isn’t one of the series’ best, which makes sense; Marooned is competently made, it’s just dry and sluggish. I suppose you could joke about the fact that Peck, Janssen, and Franciscus – actors with reputations, however deserved, for being rather stolid and wooden – were brought together in this deliberate, methodical film, but is that much to go on?
Or maybe you could joke about the special effects, which won the Oscar; compared to 2001 the year before, they’re pretty stiff and obvious, especially the shots of moving spacecraft. They’re still solid effects for the time, and there wasn’t much competition that year, but then, it would take until the one-two punch of Star Wars and Close Encounters to really move effects forward. It was also nominated for its cinematography – there are some good shots, some moments of effective lighting, but most of it is pretty standard – and its sound, which does effectively capture the stillness of space, the bustle of Mission Control, and the crackle of the radios used to communicate with Ironman One.
To be sure, Marooned has some genuinely effective moments. Hackman in particular brings a raw humanity to his scenes which clashes with the polished professionalism of his co-stars; it helps that he gets the juiciest role, as Lloyd spends much of the film suffering from a nervous breakdown, but Hackman is clearly on a different level than his co-stars, and it’s fitting that he would become a full-fledged star (and Oscar winner) within a couple of years. Not that the rest of the cast are bad by any means – Crenna is actually quite effective, and Franciscus is well-cast as a man without strong emotions, though Peck and Janssen definitely err on the side of stiffness (Janssen’s bursts of anger are especially unconvincing) – but Hackman’s performance looks ahead to the 70s while the rest are firmly stuck in the 60s.
I should mention the subplot about the astronauts’ wives – Mrs. Pruett (Lee Grant), Mrs. Lloyd (Mariette Hartley), and Mrs. Stone (Nancy Kovack) – who come straight out of the mid-century-housewife playbook. Grant does bring an extra bit of personality to her role, and her scene with Crenna – where they both tiptoe around the possibility that they’ll never see each other again – is one of the film’s best. But otherwise, they’ve got little to do but look worried.
I’ve always liked films about procedure, and there are some solid moments of problem-solving and preparation here, but again, it’s hard nowadays not to see how much better Apollo 13 and The Martian are at balancing procedure with character. Marooned had a solid budget for the time, and it shows in the extensive special effects, the star cast, and the sets, but in trying to be serious and restrained, it too often undermines the human aspect, but doesn’t go quite far enough with the scientific aspect to compensate.
I’m not sure if the absence of a full score hurts the film or not. Instead, we get a lot of low humming and pulsing and a very few moments of subtle music here and there. It gives the film a distinctive sound, but it also adds to the overall lack of excitement, culminating in the strange final scenes, which Leonard Maltin said, without great hyperbole, “produce agony, not excitement.” The use of a Russkie ex machina is amusingly hamfisted, even more than the scenes of the Chinese space program in The Martian, which were as emblematic of 2015 as these scenes are of 1969.
John Sturges made some classic action films, like The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape, and Mayo Simon wrote some interesting science-fiction films, namely Saul Bass’ intriguing Phase IV. Here, neither of them are at their best, in a film without enough action or ideas to bring out their strengths. It’s not as bad as I once took it for – it’s perfectly watchable. It’s just not all that stimulating either. One can only imagine what it might’ve been like had Frank Capra, who’d tried to get it off the ground years earlier, succeeded in doing so.
Score: 67
Vengeance (2022) – ***½
I was born and raised in a college town in Kansas, decent-sized by the standards of the region, but very small compared to Chicago, where my father was born and raised; in fact, until he found out that the college in question was looking to establish an English department, he’d never heard of the place. My mother, on the other hand, lived her whole life there. As such, I’m familiar with the cultural tension between city and country – and as the only Jew in my class, and of very few in my hometown, I’m familiar with what it’s like to be a Jew in a thoroughly Christian context.
(I also had a roommate in college who played “Red Solo Cup” incessantly, and the opening scene made me think of him.)
This is all to say that much of Vengeance rang very true to me, as a New York Jew, Ben Manalowitz (B.J. Novak) is contacted by Ty Shaw (Boyd Holbrook), a West Texan whose sister, Abilene “Abby” (Lio Tipton) had been one of Ben’s many casual flings during her attempt at making it a musician in New York. Abby has been found dead, and her death was declared a drug overdose, but Ty feels differently, and after pressuring Ben to fly to rural Texas for the funeral (the family assumes they were a devoted couple) pressures him to stick around and help avenge her death.
Ben is skeptical about Ty’s theory of murder but makes a pitch to podcast producer Eloise (Issa Rae), proposing that he immerse himself in the Shaw family and join in Ty’s efforts to investigate Abby’s death, not for the purpose of solving a crime but for exploring how people cope with loss by seeking answers beyond the obvious – how we invent stories to expand beyond the limitations of reality. But the deeper he digs, the more he comes to care about the Shaws, the more he laments not actually getting to know Abby, and the more he suspects there might be something to Ty’s notions.
On one level, it’s a film which wears its heart and mind on its sleeve by being about people who wear their hearts and minds on their sleeves. Ben is the kind of guy to constantly wax philosophical about the nature of society, of art, of reality, of anything that comes into his head, and while I won’t presume to say Novak shares all of Ben’s views, I think he respects at least a few of them. At the same time, the Shaws are quite ready to make pronouncements of their own – they’re very happy to be recorded for Ben’s podcast – and so is Quinten Sellers (Ashton Kutcher), the music producer who has his own part to play in the story.
And at or just below the surface is the theme – a tried-and-true theme, to be sure – about the hip, sophisticated urbanite who comes to realize that the rural hicks he looks down on aren’t quite such clowns as he thinks. Not that the Shaws aren’t a funny bunch, with Ty being especially wacky, but the film definitely takes the piss out of Ben as much as out of the Texan characters; they aren’t necessarily better than him, but they’re not worse. (A monologue where Ben regresses into judgmental arrogance is one of the film’s weakest scenes.)
On another level, it’s simply a compelling story about grief, missed connections, economic depression, the fascination of true-crime culture, conspiracy theorizing, and the attempt to preserve some part of ourselves, as Abby sought to do with music and Ben seeks to do with his podcast. It has well observed characters, and while some of the turns it takes along the way don’t completely land (the final act has some contrivances which betray this being Novak’s first screenplay, though he’s written a good deal of television), in the end it remains true to itself.
Novak’s direction is quite solid, mainly in his command of tone and his way with actors, though Lyn Moncrief’s cinematography and the editing are commendable. Novak’s performance is strong, conveying Ben’s awkwardness and self-conscious intellectualism in a realistic fashion, but he gives the rest of the cast plenty of room to shine. Best are Holbrook, as the giddily heartbroken Ty, and Kutcher, as the casually profound impresario, but Rae offers a crisply witty counterpoint to Novak’s sheepishness, Tipton (who’s been doing quietly solid work since Whit Stillman’s great Damsels in Distress) conveys warmth and life in only a few in-universe clips, Louanne Stephens is crotchety fun as Grandma Shaw, Elli Abrams Bickel is dryly amusing as Abby’s offbeat little brother, and J. Smith-Cameron is quietly effective as her mother, who’s no one’s fool.
Vengeance is at once a hard film to pigeonhole and a film which constantly explains what it’s about, or at least what it’s trying to be about – but then, how often do we try to say just who and/or what we are, but must constantly amend our attempts at self-reduction? It’s not a perfect film and it won’t work for everyone (I think I laughed more than anyone else at my screening, though there weren’t many others present), but it worked for me. It rang true. That makes up for a lot.
Score: 84
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