"Burlesque" (2010)

Dwight Dekeyser rating: BBC

Dear Reader:

Here’s a riddle for you:  what do you call a movie about a cabaret modeled on another movie about a cabaret?  Why, you call it Burlesque, of course, unless you don’t want to be as obvious in your title as you were in your appropriation of its predecessor, Cabaret (1971).   It’s not so much the lack of accuracy that bothers me about the title, but the lack of honesty.  I’m afraid I have too much respect for cabaret and burlesque to allow these two exceptional forms of theater to be confused for the sake of providing a fig leaf for writer-director Steve Antin. 

Forgive me for being pedagogic, but cabaret is not burlesque.  According to the online dictionary at Answers.com, burlesque is “a variety show characterized by broad ribald comedy, dancing, and striptease,” whereas cabaret is a “floor show presented by a restaurant or nightclub providing short programs of live entertainment” (i.e., no striptease).  In short, cabaret may have been naughty, but burlesque was lascivious -- barely clad glamazons removed their flimsy costume to music, perhaps while singing, but never lip-syncing. "Legitimate” vaudeville acts, often comics, performed between displays of exotic dancing were cover to keep the cops out.  (Ever see Gypsy, 1962?)   In cabaret, the acts were presumed to be authentic. Burlesque was performed in a theater, cabaret performed in a club.  Got it?  This movie was about a cabaret.

Silly me, once again I believed what I was told.  Frankly, I was disappointed at not seeing reincarnations of the great burlesque queens: Gypsy Rose Lee, Lili St. Cyr, and Ann Corio or at least a little Dita von Teese.  (That would have been an original movie.)  However, I was astonished to find a shameless rip-off of the film Cabaret, directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, starring Liza Minnelli and Michael York.  Fosse’s direction and choreography were copied and transported from Weimar Republic Germany to twenty-first century Los Angeles, without much alteration.  The staging, costumes, and acts were a little déjà vu for my taste.  The bowler hats, the bentwood chairs, the silhouetted band were more of a flashback to that classic musical by Kandor and Ebb than anything current.  The “Two Ladies” number from Cabaret with Joel Grey was recreated with epicene Alan Cumming with less success than the original.  To cover his derriere, Antin threw in one token burlesque number, a sort-of hommage to fan dancer Sally Rand.  The contemporary dance numbers were more Broadway and Vegas than cabaret or burlesque.

The plot was perhaps the least original aspect of this movie.  It could have been written in the 1930s or 40s, starring Joan Crawford or Judy Garland:  a small town girl with a heart of gold runs away to the big city to become a star!  It’s not that easy: she gets a job as a cocktail waitress in a club and when one of the dancers becomes unavailable, she gets her big break and becomes a star!  In the meantime, she dumps the billionaire real estate developer to return to the open arms of her waiter-song writer roommate, and saves the club from foreclosure!  (I did not make this up.) Now, if our little runaway had become a Hollywood pole dancer, we might have had a credible story line.

Burlesque was designed as a vehicle to showcase the talents of Cher and Christina Aguilera, and to that extent, the picture succeeded.  Cher did her best performance of Cher to date.  The role was “not a stretch” as they say.  If you like Cher, you will like this movie.  Some of her opening repartee sounded like it could have been a rerun of The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour (1971).  (Cher always got the last word.)  There was a point in the movie when it came to a complete halt so that she could sing a solo for an impromptu rehearsal.   Stop the movie!  Cher has to rehearse!   She’s gotten older, but then so have her fans.  Let Cher be Cher, I say.  If you haven’t learned to like her by now, this movie will not change your mind.

Christina Aguilera was a little dynamo.  Her part required a lot of talent and she has it.  She’s a beautiful woman (under all those wigs) who acts and dances well.  Her singing is stupendous.  Her voice sounds pop, country, and soul all at the same time.  One wonders how so much volume could come from such a tiny lady.  In the movie, hardened club-owner and chanteuse Cher becomes the surrogate mother to hapless Hawkeye, Aguilera, a refugee from a dust bowl dive called "Dwight's Bar." (Don't go there!)  The make-up tutorial was touching. (Apparently, there is a shortage of make-up brushes in the Iowa.)  In fact, it appeared as if Cher were somehow passing her crown to the next super star -- a magnanimous act of Hollywood humility, don’t you think?   Could this mean that Cher is considering retirement?   Don’t bet the strip club.

Here's the trailer:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC9LakXHgt0

From the vault:  How about two musicals this week?  Cabaret (1971), this movie will knock your socks off.  It takes place In Berlin between the world wars.  This movie has it all: Nazis, show people, transvestites, queers, prostitutes. (I am not being redundant.)  See how the cabaret acts reflect the political turmoil outside the club.  And then there’s Gypsy (1962), directed by Mervyn LeRoy, staring Natalie Wood and Rosalind Russell, and Karl Malden, music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.  The allegedly true autobiography Gypsy Rose Lee could not be more innocent or amusing.  (No mention of Gypsy's lesbian mother shooting her lover in a jealous rage at her women-only boarding house.  That was last pass she ever made at Gypsy.)  "You got sumpin’ against strippin’?!”

Best of luck in your movie selections.  Your faithful friend,

Dwight Dekeyser

© 2010 Dwight Dekeyser, Esq.  All rights reserved.

"The Social Network" (2010)

Dwight Dekeyser rating:  AAA

Dear Reader:

An historic moment – my first review of an AAA Dwight Dekeyser-rated movie!  (Deep breath.)  I hardly know where to begin.  This is an exciting intelligent movie for adults, so youth-oriented it will appeal to their college and high school kids.  The movie is a screen adaption of the fascinating true story of the founding of Facebook, and the ensuing fight for its credit and control.  This could have been the dullest movie ever: computer geeks and corporate litigation are unlikely topics of interest for most people unless algorithms and depositions are your preference.  What made this movie so exhilarating was its pace: the thrill of discovery, the edge of competition, its attractive characters, and glamorous settings.  This movie takes you places. (Ever been sculling with HSH Prince Albert of Monaco?)

The Social Network is in many ways a sophisticated Animal House (1978) for the online generation.  As the National Lampoon (1970) magazine was spawned at Harvard, so it appears, was Facebook, the internet social network.  The movie exposes aspects of undergraduate life from this hallowed Ivy League institution you may not have known existed.  It’s not something one would read in the college catalogue.  This place knows how to party!   The movie has the computer geeks go to some of the most exclusive, swank, get-down-and-dirty “socials” you have ever seen with some of the hottest boys and girls in higher education.   In fact, much of the success of the movie is the succession of fun and frisky parties that never get repetitious.  These geeks know how to live!

As Facebook became a tsunami success, the law suits began in what became the equivalent of Harvard Brat v. Harvard Brat.  What was unusual in this movie was the use of dramatic testimony given in depositions (pretrial discovery conferences under oath) and not the typical trial setting.  The reason, of course, is these law suits never made it to trial as they were settled out of court.  Nevertheless, the deposition scenes were gripping and emotional as these bright young men detailed the theft of their ideas and the betrayal of their friendships.  The law firm scenes provided a stark and sober contrast to the insouciant undergraduate bacchanals.  The intense and often personal interrogation of the youthful litigants by opposing counsel provided high drama and in the process presented an interesting legal issue in deciding the ownership of Facebook: how does one determine the contribution an individual makes to a business enterprise that was generated through the free exchange of ideas with co-creators?

The acting in The Social Network was universally outstanding, as the actors were cast to perfection.  Three actors (or four depending upon how you count) struck me as particularly noteworthy.  The male lead Jesse Eisenberg portrayed Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook.  He was so authentic a character, it never occurred to me he was not the real person.  While there was no “star quality” or charisma  in his performance, per se, Eisenberg's acting went beyond credibility; it was actual being -- an achievement not to be ignored.  

Arnie Hammer played a double roll as the uber-preppy (Neidermeyer?) identical twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.  I was unaware of this Patty Duke Show (1963) deception until I read the credits.  (I was disappointed to learn there were not two of him, but I have come to accept it.)  The grandson of industrialist Armand Hammer (is there no justice in this world?) is what I call old-Hollywood handsome -- he is a real knock out.  It is not simply his beauty that makes his performance so noteworthy, but the fact that he is so appealing in every way.  He is the type of leading man “all woman want to have and all men want to be” – without resentment.  He could be the next James Bond: stirred, not shaken this time.

A pleasant surprise was the performance of Justin Timberlake.  I never thought of him as appealing in any capacity, but I must admit he made a favorable impression as a legitimate actor.  I thought I detected a little Dennis Hopper in his approach to the role.  He had a certain look that I thought projected his character like a Greek mask.  ("We didn't need dialogue then, we had faces!"  Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, 1950.)  One scene I thoroughly enjoyed was at a California night club where the panning disco lights changed the color of his pale pallor from one gaudy hue to another, a reflection of his mercurial temperament.  It reminded me of “The Joker” from Batman (1966), BAM! POW!

Here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB95KLmpLR4

From the vault:  Animal House (1978), directed by John Landis, staring John Belushi, Tom Hulce, and Kevin Bacon.  College movies, it seems, have come along way.  This timeless coming of age comedy had more truth than fiction to it for the times.  It is also one of the most quoted films.  Dean Wormer to Flounder, “Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go though life, son.”  Ouch!  (The dean at Harvard wasn't much nicer.)

Best of luck in your movie selections, your faithful friend,

Dwight Dekeyser

© 2010 Dwight Dekeyser, Esq.  All rights reserved.

"RED" (2010)

Dwight Dekeyser rating: CCC

Dear Reader:

Last week, I made the acquaintance of a perky young college professor.  He was distressed to learn that I had just viewed SAW 3D – The Final Chapter (2010), for my blog.  Apparently, mistaking me for a student, he promptly offered some unsolicited advice.  He counseled that I should review “real” movies, and suggested that I see RED, one he had just seen and enjoyed. Trusting, I took his advice.  (He seemed cynical enough.)  Well, as the saying goes, there is no accounting for taste, even if he did have a Ph.D. in French literature.  While the movie may borne a passing resemblance to The Three Musketeers (1844), it was not a classic, not even a French one.

The theater billed Red as an “action/adventure/comedy” movie.   That’s a tall order for any picture.  It would appear that the producers felt that if they combined sufficient violence, special effects, catchy repartee, and an all-star cast they could pull off this spy-thriller opera buffa.  For me, at least, it did not work – not because there were not enough elements, but because they were not the right ones.   The critical missing component was style.

The movie is an updated James Bond movie commingled with some popular television situation comedies and movies of the 1960s and 70s.   (Sound doable to you?)  Our Bond in this case was the affable Bruce Willis.  Unlike the Bond portrayed by Sean Connery, Willis was not the suave, sophisticated metrosexual secret agent 007.  No, he was a sad, lonely, bald, middle-class, retired CIA hit man we see taking out his garbage in snowy suburban Cleveland.  (How far we have fallen!)  Don’t look for any martinis in this picture.  It’s all shots from here.

Willis quickly teams up with unsuspecting golly-gee-whiz Mary-Louise Parker, who bears a striking resemblance to Susan Saint James of McMillan & Wife (1971-77).  (She reads romance novels written by “Susan St. John,” – so clever).  Anyway, McMillan & Wife are one step ahead of trigger-happy government agents determined to make Swiss cheese out of the pair.  On their journey, they team up with psycho-comic John Malkovich, an ex-CIA agent like Willis. (Now, it really gets good!)  The three join forces to become a wacky all-white Mod Squad (1968-73), bent on foiling the forces of evil, in this case the United States government.

A couple scenes and cities later (there is no shortage of post card venues in this production), the Mod Squad teams up with yet two more quixotic ex-CIA agents Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren to add a little cool and class into what grows into a side-splitting Mission Impossible (1966-73) crew of misfits.   If that were not enough, they enlist a cantankerous old KGB crony, Brian Cox, for Mirren to add a little romance to this otherwise sexless picture.  (Did I mention missing components?)

There were “memorable” moments in the movie.  In one scene Freeman dressed like a Haitian Captain Kangaroo bitch-slaps bad guy Richard Dreyfuss (long overdue).  In another, Helen Mirren displayed her feminine firepower dressed in an evening gown and combat boots by outgunning Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) with her automatic weapon. (How far we have come!)

What the actors failed to realize was the way Sean Connery as Bond was able to pull-off those improbable scenes with those fantastic gadgets.  He played it straight.  It was assumed the audience possessed sufficient sophistication to pick up on the absurdity delivered with such style.  Instead, in RED we saw a movie of gags and gimmicks from situation comedy before the dawn of reality T.V.  Perhaps, this is what my perky young professor found so novel.

Here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fKr4JrCdMw

From the vault:  Goldfinger, (1964).  Directed by Guy Hamilton, starring Sean Connery, Honor Blackman, and Gert Frobe.  After the first three notes of the title music sung by sassy Shirley Bassey, “Gold-fing-gah!” you will be sucked in.  FYI, Ronald Reagan did not win the Cold War, it was Sean Connery.

Best of luck in your movie selections.  Your faithful friend,

Dwight Dekeyser

© 2010 Dwight Dekeyser, Esq.  All rights reserved.

“Saw 3D -- The Last Judgment” (2010)

Dwight Dekeyser rating: BBC

Dear Reader:

Sometimes, it is best not to know what to expect.  Too much foreknowledge could deter a sensitive soul from experiencing an otherwise entertaining and illuminating adventure.  Little did I know what I was in for when I decided to view Saw 3D – The Last Chapter.  (Don't let the King Kong-esque promotional poster fool you.  It's not that kind of horror movie.) It sounded ideal: a horror movie in 3D, and that is what it was. Perhaps the most gruesome movie ever made, it could have been produced by the creators of the OGRISH website of depravity, now kaput.  A movie with so much gratuitous torture, violence, and mayhem, it could have been written by Sir Richard Topcliffe and the Marquis de Sade.  It was a spectacle so heinous it was worthy of the Roman Coliseum under Caligula.  It was the French Revolution and the Spanish Inquisition with an all Rwandan cast.  All that was missing was a chorus of corpses singing, “That’s Entertainment!”  But this was not a musical.

Little did I realize that this picture was the last and latest sequel to a series of six sadistic SAW movies, and that this was to be the gory grand finale and fond farewell.  The film was a series of divertissements of cruel and creative butchery strung together by a theme of marital discord, a sort of “Portrait of a Marriage” in hell.  One could argue that the whole movie was a parody of the institution – it was funny at times.  I was convinced that more than one messy divorce or bad relationship had been the inspiration for this movie written by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, the Topcliffe and de Sade of this malignant masterpiece.  The execution scenes themselves resembled the most perverse game show ever imagined.  “Come on down!”  In the picture, an individual is compelled to rescue one or more restrained persons from certain death by performing some grotesque feat involving the freeing of the caged/chained/hog-tied under the unreasonable time constraints of a ticking stopwatch.  Like a sick casino, the odds were never on the players’ side.

Taken as a whole, the film was an elaborate snuff movie.  Like a pornographic movie, once the “action” started it was tantalizing until repetition and overexposure made the viewer inured to the forbidden.  The novel became banal.   That being said, the torture and debauchery were tantalizing – for a time.  It occurred to me that had the actors been naked during their demise it could have been a double-whammy for the audience.  But then, I am reminded that the cover of Larry Flynt’s Hustler magazine (June 1978), of a naked woman being put through a meat grinder was not exactly well-received by some.  For this movie, at least, that would have been tame.

The saving grace of the picture was its technical mastery.  The contraptions and instruments of torture and execution were so ingenious they looked as if they could have been engineered by Michelangelo, so elaborate Rube Goldberg would have been proud.  The shear graphic carnage was only redeemed by the artistry of the make-up and the special effects technicians that presented it so convincingly.  (I was tickled with the use a single flashing red light bulb to heighten the suspense in a scene before the coup de grace.)  3D was the perfect vehicle for this orgy of dismembered body parts – duck, flying flesh!  There was so much blood, the theater could have issued raincoats for the audience.

    

One obvious drawback to the movie was the lack of big stars.  (It is hard to care about the fate of underdeveloped characters.)  How much more interesting it would have been to have had well-known actors fall one-by-one under those sordid circumstances.  Take for instance the cast of the yet to be released Little Fockers (2010).  Can you imagine the movie trailer: “See Dustin Hoffman’s face blown off!  Hear Barbra Streisand’s swan song -- her throat slashed!   Watch helpless Blythe Danner, guillotined at the waist!  Robert DeNiro, as you’ve never seen him -- roasted alive before your eyes! And Ben Stiller, swinging on a rope!”  It could have been It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) of gore.  The cast was just as long, the killer was so prodigious.   Perhaps, there was not the budget to hire all big-name victims required.  BTW, Actor Tobin Bell was superb as “John.”

Oh, yes, Saw 3D is a murder mystery, too.  The ventriloquist did it. 

Here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP3mZe1s_nk&playnext=1&list=PLD34DF331269BB00B&index=8

From the vault: originally entitled, Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein (1974), it is now called Flesh for Frankenstein, directed by Paul Morrissey, starring Paul Dallesandro, unique Monique van Vooren, and Udo Kier.  (Warhol had zero to do with this movie.)  This made a big impression on me when I saw this in 1974. It, too, is a horror movie in 3D.  It was like Studio 54 habitués made a Universal Studio movie from the 1930s.  There is a little gore in this movie, but it’s the dessert not the main course.  Warning: sexual content.  Dr. Frankenstein fondles the internal organs of his pastiche patients.

Best of luck in your movie selections, your faithful friend,

Dwight Dekeyser

© 2010 Dwight Dekeyser, Esq.  All rights reserved.

 

"Hereafter" (2010)

Dwight Dekeyser Rating: ABC

Dear Reader:

I like to think of a motion picture as an amusement park ride.  The great ones just carry you away emotionally and intellectually.  Like riding a roller coaster you are rocked and shaken out of your senses.  In a true spellbinder one becomes so engrossed by the characters and their dilemma you are afraid to blink for fear of missing a clue, a look, or a nuanced gesture.  A viewer must be intrigued by the circumstances surrounding the hero; the tension building until the storm breaks overwhelming the viewer by the sound and fury flashing before them.  Without realizing it, the viewer becomes concerned for his own safety, anxious for the danger to pass and their nerves restored.  It’s a fantastic ride with a safe landing. 

Hereafter started with sound and fury but, never mounted the second or third wave of excitement equaled to the first.  There were attempts, but they were predictable accidents or occurrences as the film meandered down the road of mystical intrigue and mundane romance.  In short, the movie became a psychic soap opera.  After the terrifying plunge of the roller coaster, the car careened through the lives of three unrelated morbid people to a cozy and comforting end shared by all.  The story takes place simultaneously in exotic Asia, upscale Paris, “blue-collar” San Francisco, grimy London, and a quick detour to the Alps for spectacular scenery.  The London scenes in particular reminded me of the EastEnders, the cockney British serial, as the scenes rotated between the story lines without any real connection.

If we are to believe studio publicity,  Hereafter is “[a] drama centered on three people who are haunted by mortality in different ways. George (Damon) is a blue-collar American who has a special connection to the afterlife. On the other side of the world, Marie (de France), a French journalist, has a near-death experience that shakes her reality. And when Marcus (Frankie/George McLaren), a London schoolboy, loses the person closest to him, he desperately needs answers. Each on a path in search of the truth, their lives will intersect, forever changed by what they believe might-or must-exist in the hereafter. Written by Warner Bros. Pictures” [tortured prose, theirs].

As if death and the afterlife were not enough, there were other compelling emotional issues to amuse oneself along the way: pain, loss, loneliness, separation, drug addition, professional crisis, child molestation, incest, identical twins, a book deal, and a cooking competition.  (I thought they would never stop chopping tomatoes.)  It seemed a long road to get to boy meets girl (in this case psychic meets near-death survivor) in front of Pizza Express with Clint Eastwood’s ersatz music in the background.  A haunting original score could have moved the story along and added atmosphere.  What we got was an occasional classic: Puccini, Chopin, Eastwood. 

 

Matt Damon was Matt Damon in the movie.  You could tell he was blue-collar because he sometimes wore a construction helmet.  Otherwise, one might have confused him for a handsome, middle-aged, Harvard-educated bachelor in San Francisco wearing construction boots, taking cooking classes, and listening to Dickens. “Stella!” Cecile de France, is a French actress who portrayed a French (dead) woman convincingly.  Warning: most of Mlle. de France’s scenes are subtitled, as in “foreign film.”  The tsunami scene with her bobbing about was a computerized special effects tour-de-force.  I know I was carried away.

From the vault:  Vertigo, (1958), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring James Stewart and Kim Novak.  Like Hereafter, it too, takes place in San Francisco and deals with death and the afterlife.  No tsunami, but there are other ways to kill a co-star, although Novak and Stewart do take an overdressed plunge into San Francisco Bay. This film even has a young Miss Ellie and a younger Grandma Walton, “you know?”   

Here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dal7PJotEKo

Best of luck in your movie selection, your faithful friend,

Dwight Dekeyser



© 2010 Dwight Dekeyser, Esq.  All rights reserved.

The Dwight Dekeyser Rating System

Movies are stories and most stories have three parts: a beginning, middle, and end.  This is the basis of my rating system: I rate the beginning, middle, and end of each movie.  In this way, as the reviewer I need not balance competing or conflicting qualities of a movie to create a single mark.  The three-letter rating can give the reader more information than any single thumbs-up/thumbs-down or five-star seal of  approval possibly could.  One can see at an instant the trajectory of the films progress.  In any case, a review by its very nature is subjective  As a result, my ratings are merely a reflection of my personal reaction to a motion picture. Caveat emptor. 

© 2010 Dwight Dekeyser, Esq.  All rights reserved.