Three Films Having Nothing To Do With Each Other
Because I was away for a short time I didn't write about two movies I saw several days ago, The Dogs of War (1980) and Cry-Baby (1990). The latter was directed by John Waters, an independent Baltimore, Maryland, film director whose work has been characterized as outrageous, over the top, flamboyant. I realized to my surprise that Cry-Baby is the only Waters film I've seen to date. I've been aware of John Waters the person for a long time, seen him interviewed often. He's one of a small number of American "celebrity" directors, like David Lynch, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino. Waters' thin mustache, slicked hair, sharp wit have encouraged other directors to cast him in character roles, and late night TV talk show hosts like David Letterman would have him on fairly often.
While Waters' work seems not only light but also goofy, Cry-Baby depicts something deeper struggling inside its 1954 Baltimore setting, a world Waters must've been remembering from childhood. Two groups, the Drapes (led by Johnny Depp as the title character) and the Squares, who look normal but are filled with pent-up violence towards the Drapes and anything smacking of non-conformity, vie with each other in a society slanted towards Square Eisenhower-era values. A time when Richard Nixon is vice president, when Joseph McCarthy is a TV star taken seriously even as he ruins lives. The Korean War recently over with and to what meaning for those who participated?
It's the same American culture-scape explored in Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (1955) except that Cry-Baby, the character, is popular within his circle, even fawned over by a sweet as ice cream Square girl played by Amy Locane. In the film, teenage pregnancy, gang fights, the lone cowboy metaphor of the motorcyclist with an attitude (like Brando in The Wild One), of adults who just don't understand teenagers, of authority that demands respect even though it's the moral superior of no one...these themes come forth cloaked in a wacky presentation that's easy to digest and colorful, with lots of early rock and roll sounds and dances.
Former pornstar Traci Lords, an actress with great screen presence, plays a Drape whose parents, the mother played by actual famous kidnap victim Patricia Hearst, enroll her without her knowledge in a student exchange program. The Swedish girl who's supposed to stay with them can't speak English, while Traci is faced with the prospect of having to live in a foreign country where the Drapes, if they exist there, will speak another language, like the American Squares have their own wholesome lingo. She packs a suitcase and walks out of her house, defying a Swedish destiny.
The film has the tempo of a comic strip. Scenes are like sets of panels leading us eventually to the end, when Cry-Baby, singing all the while, plays chicken clinging to the top of his car as it races toward the lead Square's car. He ends with the Square girl in his arms, a uniting of rivalries, perhaps, or at least something the two groups will have to adjust themselves to.
The Dogs of War, directed by John Irvin, was made long before Christopher Walken became known for playing himself in films, as in acting on screen in such a Christopher Walken way it's at times funny. He plays a mercenary sent to a fictitious West African country run by an insular dictator similar to Idi Amin Dada of Uganda, a violent ruler who'd been overthrown not long before this film was made. The dictator has established a personality cult. The wealthy businessman who hires Walken to scout the place to get the lay of the political landscape wants to install his own leader who will grant him exclusive rights to the country's platinum riches.
This alternative leader is a selfish nasty shit not much better than the dictator, but that hardly matters to capitalism. Walken meets, in prison after being arrested by the country's security forces, a doctor who was the third leadership possibility in the last free election. Imprisoned by the current dictator, this doctor seems humane. After suffering a terrible beating and a few weeks' imprisonment, Walken is sent back to New York where the businessman, aided by a lot of money, convinces Walken to take his usual mercenary team to this country, along with twenty-five men supplied by the alternative president, to kill the dictator and subdue or wipe out his security forces in a surprise attack.
A significant portion of the film deals with the process Walken goes through to coordinate his plan, working in London, Geneva, and Paris before taking a hired merchant ship to West Africa for an amphibious landing. They succeed in taking out the security forces, a bloody, explosive affair. Casualties among the mercenaries are low, but the businessman and the new "president," having missed the agreed upon rendezvous time, run afoul of Walken's agreed upon conditions and his timetable. He's meanwhile installed the doctor as president, the one who treated his wounds in prison. The pompous would-be president begins to object just as Walken shoots him in the chest. So much for that plan.
The businessman has to figure out a new negotiating strategy to offer to the doctor-president as Walken and his men leave the compound in a jeep, a repeat shot of the same group from the beginning of the film, except that was Central America. Now, in Africa, one of their number is dead on a stretcher.
Grim, but quite the action film, with some interesting intrigue.
That leads me to another viewing of The Fast and the Furious, the saga of Brian O'Conner and Dom Toretto. Visiting a friend for two days, I wanted him to see this movie, get a sense of how he would react to it. He liked it, I think. It was fun for me to watch it again. Of the eight films in the series thus far, it has a unique feel to it. More work is done with character development. Another curiosity is the video game quality of many of the transition scenes, which always involve cars, whether they're in motion or not. Cars are jewelry in this film. I realized I liked it after another viewing and will probably, in a future year, watch it, partly as it fits in with my nostalgia for pre-9/11 America. As the only film in the series made before 9/11, it lacks the atmosphere of America Policing the World for Freedom that the other films resonate with in varying degrees.
Vic Neptune
Because I was away for a short time I didn't write about two movies I saw several days ago, The Dogs of War (1980) and Cry-Baby (1990). The latter was directed by John Waters, an independent Baltimore, Maryland, film director whose work has been characterized as outrageous, over the top, flamboyant. I realized to my surprise that Cry-Baby is the only Waters film I've seen to date. I've been aware of John Waters the person for a long time, seen him interviewed often. He's one of a small number of American "celebrity" directors, like David Lynch, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino. Waters' thin mustache, slicked hair, sharp wit have encouraged other directors to cast him in character roles, and late night TV talk show hosts like David Letterman would have him on fairly often.
While Waters' work seems not only light but also goofy, Cry-Baby depicts something deeper struggling inside its 1954 Baltimore setting, a world Waters must've been remembering from childhood. Two groups, the Drapes (led by Johnny Depp as the title character) and the Squares, who look normal but are filled with pent-up violence towards the Drapes and anything smacking of non-conformity, vie with each other in a society slanted towards Square Eisenhower-era values. A time when Richard Nixon is vice president, when Joseph McCarthy is a TV star taken seriously even as he ruins lives. The Korean War recently over with and to what meaning for those who participated?
It's the same American culture-scape explored in Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (1955) except that Cry-Baby, the character, is popular within his circle, even fawned over by a sweet as ice cream Square girl played by Amy Locane. In the film, teenage pregnancy, gang fights, the lone cowboy metaphor of the motorcyclist with an attitude (like Brando in The Wild One), of adults who just don't understand teenagers, of authority that demands respect even though it's the moral superior of no one...these themes come forth cloaked in a wacky presentation that's easy to digest and colorful, with lots of early rock and roll sounds and dances.
Former pornstar Traci Lords, an actress with great screen presence, plays a Drape whose parents, the mother played by actual famous kidnap victim Patricia Hearst, enroll her without her knowledge in a student exchange program. The Swedish girl who's supposed to stay with them can't speak English, while Traci is faced with the prospect of having to live in a foreign country where the Drapes, if they exist there, will speak another language, like the American Squares have their own wholesome lingo. She packs a suitcase and walks out of her house, defying a Swedish destiny.
The film has the tempo of a comic strip. Scenes are like sets of panels leading us eventually to the end, when Cry-Baby, singing all the while, plays chicken clinging to the top of his car as it races toward the lead Square's car. He ends with the Square girl in his arms, a uniting of rivalries, perhaps, or at least something the two groups will have to adjust themselves to.
The Dogs of War, directed by John Irvin, was made long before Christopher Walken became known for playing himself in films, as in acting on screen in such a Christopher Walken way it's at times funny. He plays a mercenary sent to a fictitious West African country run by an insular dictator similar to Idi Amin Dada of Uganda, a violent ruler who'd been overthrown not long before this film was made. The dictator has established a personality cult. The wealthy businessman who hires Walken to scout the place to get the lay of the political landscape wants to install his own leader who will grant him exclusive rights to the country's platinum riches.
This alternative leader is a selfish nasty shit not much better than the dictator, but that hardly matters to capitalism. Walken meets, in prison after being arrested by the country's security forces, a doctor who was the third leadership possibility in the last free election. Imprisoned by the current dictator, this doctor seems humane. After suffering a terrible beating and a few weeks' imprisonment, Walken is sent back to New York where the businessman, aided by a lot of money, convinces Walken to take his usual mercenary team to this country, along with twenty-five men supplied by the alternative president, to kill the dictator and subdue or wipe out his security forces in a surprise attack.
A significant portion of the film deals with the process Walken goes through to coordinate his plan, working in London, Geneva, and Paris before taking a hired merchant ship to West Africa for an amphibious landing. They succeed in taking out the security forces, a bloody, explosive affair. Casualties among the mercenaries are low, but the businessman and the new "president," having missed the agreed upon rendezvous time, run afoul of Walken's agreed upon conditions and his timetable. He's meanwhile installed the doctor as president, the one who treated his wounds in prison. The pompous would-be president begins to object just as Walken shoots him in the chest. So much for that plan.
The businessman has to figure out a new negotiating strategy to offer to the doctor-president as Walken and his men leave the compound in a jeep, a repeat shot of the same group from the beginning of the film, except that was Central America. Now, in Africa, one of their number is dead on a stretcher.
Grim, but quite the action film, with some interesting intrigue.
That leads me to another viewing of The Fast and the Furious, the saga of Brian O'Conner and Dom Toretto. Visiting a friend for two days, I wanted him to see this movie, get a sense of how he would react to it. He liked it, I think. It was fun for me to watch it again. Of the eight films in the series thus far, it has a unique feel to it. More work is done with character development. Another curiosity is the video game quality of many of the transition scenes, which always involve cars, whether they're in motion or not. Cars are jewelry in this film. I realized I liked it after another viewing and will probably, in a future year, watch it, partly as it fits in with my nostalgia for pre-9/11 America. As the only film in the series made before 9/11, it lacks the atmosphere of America Policing the World for Freedom that the other films resonate with in varying degrees.
Vic Neptune
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