Neo-Noir Watch: The Driver (1978)

Watched:  01/01/2023

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Walter Hill

I'm doing some prep work as SGH and I are in talks to do a podcast on Drive from about a decade ago.  At the time Drive came out, a lot of folks said "oh, this is influenced by The Driver from 1978."  And I'd always meant to go check that movie out.  

I think it's a definitive "well, maybe kinda sorta".  They are absolutely both movies about career criminal getaway drivers in LA.  Both are neo-noir.  But this is like seeing a movie about an assassin and seeing the next movie about an assassin and saying "well, clearly these two movies are same".  

Arguably, The Driver (1978) borrows from some of those assassin movies like Le Samourai or This Gun for Hire.  Rather than a hit-man, we have a guy with no past we'll ever learn about, who has locked up his life to protect himself and perfect his chosen profession - with the mechanisms he's used to protect himself actually creating a lockbox when things go sideways.  He has no friends, no family, no name.  He simply exists to do the job. 

The movie is clever about this - no characters have names.  Everyone is a role.  The Driver (Ryan O'Neal).  The Detective (Bruce Dern at his Bruce Derniest).  The Player (Isabella Adjani).  The Connection (Ronee Blakley).  And - and this is where this film deviates wildly from Drive - the film is about the game everyone is playing, openly acknowledged.  It's the world's greatest ARG.  There's no real stakes for the cops - win or lose, it's just spending tax dollars.  But for the folks playing on the high stakes criminal side, it's jail, death or being flat broke.  

Anyway - I enjoyed it.  I'd watch it again.  It's interesting in that it's both a bit more abstracted from a straight crime film, but also has nothing in particular that it's trying to say.  It's much more about how it's presenting a concept, and I'm down with that, too.  I suspect that when this came out, that approach was saying something, in itself.  But we've got a lot of water between 2023 and 1978.

My Opinions on 2022 Movies!

This is not an end-of-the-year list.  This is just a thing you are reading.  I watched 190 movies, and scanning the list as I was running numbers for 2022, these are movies I jotted down as remarkable one way or another.  

You are welcome to argue with me in the comments, I guess.  It may lead to me thinking you're a dumb-dumb, so go ahead and roll those dice.  

So, let's talk bad movies first.  

Television in 2022

Hoo-Boy.  Did we watch a lot of TV in 2022.

This list is in no way comprehensive.  I started a lot of series, watched 1-3 episodes and then bailed.  Those aren't listed here.  Watching an episode of Seinfeld on TBS, also not listed.  So its basically series I watched the season from start-to-finish.  What's shocking is how hard it is to remember what I watched when I have to surf across services to figure out what I watched.  So, I probably left off a few shows.  

It doesn't include one-hour specials, shark docs, and other time-fillers.  

Look, I don't do a lot of Important Dramas.  I don't do puzzle-box shows.  I am sure you will find your favorite show missing.  Tough noogies.  That's how we roll.  What are you gonna do, come over here and make me watch stuff?  NO DICE.

Most Watched Thing

Astronaut Walter Cunningham Merges With The Infinite

Walter Cunningham, one of the Apollo 7 Astronauts, has passed.  

Cunningham was key to the success of the Apollo missions, and after his tenure as an Astronaut, went on to support myriad technology and space-related ventures and was a prominent supporter of NASA and Houstonian.

Movies 2022 By the Numbers

For the most part, I use this blog to just keep track of the movies I've watched and jot down some thoughts on them.  There's no real reason for it, but I do it.  The PodCast is a lovely bit of product of this habit, and my desire to spend time chatting with pals.  

Since I have the blog, every year for the past few years I've logged how many movies I've watched, and looked at a few stats.  I'm not sure it's of any particular interest to anyone but myself, but there you have it.  

As always, you're welcome to review the spreadsheet yourself.  

So...  how many movies did we watch?

Total Number of Movies Watched

Doc/ Review Watch: That's Entertainment (1974)

Watched:  12/31/2022

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jack Haley Jr.

I'm not clear on where this first showed - I guess wide release?  It has a box office take listed, so I guess it was put out in theaters.  Which is pretty wild.  The movie is essentially a review/ clip show of MGM musicals and the greatest generator of a punchlist for movie nerds I can think of.  

What's even wilder is that the movie was released as a 50th Anniversary celebration of MGM - and we're about 50 years from the release of this film.  Time.  It does roll on.  

The film is hosted by an array of folks who were still living and vibrant, from Frank Sinatra to Bing Crosby to Elizabeth Taylor to a Mickey Rooney (who'll de damned if he's gonna shoot in the sun and manages the worst lighting you'll see in a major release as he wanders down a tree-lined sidewalk).  But it's all a celebration of what made the movie musical great - and it makes a stunning case for the idea.  Spectacle, talent, artistry and a bit of hokum all combine in an electric mix across about 100 clips supporting the thesis and the arguments presented for the musical. 

Clips cover everything from the Depression-era Busby Berkley opuses to Andy Hardy films to Eleanor Powell, Ann Miller and of course Fred and Ginger (and Fred and Cyd).  And a reminder that the most insane Hollywood may have ever gone was staging Esther Williams movies.  It's impossible to imagine happening in the past 40 years.  

1974 - the year of release - is an interesting inflection point.  Liza Minnelli appears to remind you she's the daughter of Judy Garland and Vincent Minnelli and that she just won an Oscar for a musical.  It's the promise of a new generation taking on musicals, which may have seemed possible in '74.  But, clearly, that's not what happened.  Sure, these days we get one or two a year, and most Disney cartoons are musicals for all intents and purposes, but as much as westerns would fade, musicals became a novelty.  And, frankly, it seems like people my age feel weirdly threatened by musicals that don't start as Broadway shows.*

Trotting out the old guard is a fine idea for a retrospective, but in 1974, there's no home video.  They weren't going to re-release 45 years of musicals, I don't think.  So what was this for?  One last hurrah and a trip down memory lane?  The stars walk the now clearly dilapidated sets, around a decaying MGM lot, and I have to ask "why?"  Why would MGM show their own sets in such a state of disrepair?  I don't know what happened to MGM in the 1960's, but the story of MGM by the 1980's was about purchases, mergers, real estate sales...  the company had gone from being a force of nature to a has-been.  Even today, MGM seems to exist to put out Bond movies and not a whole lot else.  If this film hoped to push people to clamor for musicals, I guess - not so much.

That said, it's a stunning reminder of what Hollywood - at least MGM - did on the regular to deliver wildly imaginative productions, the kind of talent they had on staff, and what movies can do.  And maybe what we lost when the 1970's taught us to rely on "realism" in film, or at least pivoted us to space epics for our visions of flights of fancy.  

Clearly Broadway tells us there's still an audience for musicals, and you do wonder - with today's techniques - what would an Esther Williams film look like?  Who could star in it?  Can an audience sit for a tap number?  Do people still get swept up in ballroom dancing by the best, or just when it's a reality show with D-level stars trotted out for two minute numbers and people pretending to be judges?

And, honestly, even TCM doesn't play musicals like it used to.  I'm sure the numbers track better to other kinds of films for whatever reason, but it would be nice to have some play of those big spectacle flicks.

MGM produced enough of these musicals that it spawned several sequels - That's Entertainment 2 and 3, as well as That's Dancing.  So clearly they were making some money off of these things.  

*I will never get the hostility to La-La Land

PodCast 227: "The Sea Wolves" (1980) - A SimonUK Cinema Selection - w/ Ryan

Watched:  12/27/2022

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing: First

Decade:  1980's

Director:  Andrew V. McClagen

For more ways to listen

Simon and Ryan return for one last mission.... AGAIN! It's a based-on-a-true-story adventure of old dudes leaping into action for King and Country and to protect the sea-ways of the Indian Ocean from duplicitous Germans in WWII! Join our band of adventurers and let's blow some @#$% up!

SoundCloud 

The Signal Watch PodCast · 227: "The Sea Wolves" (1980) - A SimonUK Cinema Selection - w/ Ryan

YouTube

Music:

The Sea Wolves Opening Titles - Roy Budd

Precious Moments - Matt Monro 

SimonUK Cinema Series

The Signal Watch PodCast · SimonUK Cinema Series

Marvel Watch: Captain America - The First Avenger (2011)

Watched:  12/31/2022

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  ha ha....  no idea

Director:  Joe Johnston

This was actually the last movie I watched in 2022.  I have cedar fever something fierce, so it was not really time to watch something new I'd never seen before.  So in between naps, I watched a favorite.

The movie has flaws, and maybe even feels like it's part of a wave of movies that came before the Marvel-era, which makes sense.  Directed by Hollywood staple Joe Johnston and with an eye toward what I'd consider the 1960's-era of WWII movies which inspired the Howling Commando comics it borrows from, it's also got a terrific old school story about a guy with a good heart and the girl who believes in him.  I recall concern when the movie was being made and headed to release that Captain America was too old fashioned and not in line with the view of today - not like hip, wise-cracking Tony Stark - and that's missing the point of Cap.  And the line Cap draws from what we know and acknowledge as outright evil in humanity worth fighting, and that that brand of heroism and clarity of purpose is something that absolutely makes sense in any era.

It's a Marvel villain who is truly villainous, not someone with a perspective worth considering - from the comics, I have wanted to hit the Red Skull with a sledgehammer for years before the movie, and the movie *nails it*.  

The pacing of the movie is also flatly incredible.  A two-hour run-time, it covers over a year of time, something other Marvel films don't ever really do, even if they include flashbacks (see: Captain Marvel).  I kept trying to find a place to pause the movie to do things that needed doing, and suddenly I was looking at the flying wing and knew we were in the last twenty minutes.  

And, of course, an all-star cast, which is maybe the secret-sauce to Marvel Phases 1 and 2.  Sure, Chris Evans was somewhat known, and Sebastian Stan, Hayley Atwell and Dominic Cooper unknowns here, but Tommy Lee Jones, Toby Jones, Stanley Tucci and Hugo Weaving?  Not a bad foundation of talent to make sure the kids knew what was what.  Throw in Neal McDonough as Dum-Dum and the rest of the Howling Commandos, and it's a fascinating mix.  

Anyway - this movie also produced one of the longer podcasts we did early on.  

Barbara Walters Merges With the Infinite

Journalist and television personality Barbara Walters has passed.

By the time I was aware of who was on TV, Barbara Walters was already an institution.  What I didn't really appreciate til college was what a pioneer Walters was.  There were other women in the newsfield, certainly, but Walters had become a national figure, hosting the national news and then becoming the person who had the most important interviews on television (that used to be a thing that was part of journalism before Oprah made soft-ball interviews her bag).  

Through countless stories delivered, interviews, and - of course - establishing the TV hot topics program The View (back before the show was about talking about the show itself, it was intended to discuss current events) - Walters brought the world to people's living rooms for decades.  

Mystery Watch: Glass Onion (2022)

Watched:  12/29/2022

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Rian Johnson

I don't really know how to talk about this movie.  A podcast would be better.  

This was a very, very good film.  But we knew that going in, I think.  

Look, I've never seen a movie by Rian Johnson I didn't like.  His turn to becoming the cinematic Agatha Christie of the 21st Century is more than welcome in a landscape of movies that - in lieu of being about superheroes - have mistaken drudgery and being sad and/ or tortured as film for grown ups.  Sometimes you just need a clockwork mechanism of a mystery movie with deeply charismatic talent, an amazing backdrop, and a satisfying ending.  

But the movie isn't just (remarkably) well written.  It's hard to argue with the cinematography and choice of locations, which gives the movie a unique multi-level perspective.  And, of course, editing.  There are a lot of characters, a lot of parts, a non-sequential timeline and a sprawling geography to the main location.  It's a remarkable feat to see how this all still makes perfect sense.

Anyway, I'll either podcast it later or give it a go with a longer write-up.  Maybe.  

In the meantime: recommended.