The Final Take with Parker Mott

Don't go into "Room 237"...but "The Shining" still keeps its doors wide open.

The Shining is probably Stanley Kubrick’s most mind-boggling film, certainly not his best but not far from what its poster heralds as “a masterpiece of modern horror.” Watching the film for maybe the seventh time the other day – but the first ever on the big screen, in a gloriously crisp 35mm print at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox – the film registered to me as droll. Many scenes, thanks to Kubrick’s craftsmanship, sink their hooks in you, while others hang loosely with pin-dropping bemusement. (continue reading…)

Peter Ustinov as Nero in Mervyn LeRoy's "Quo Vadis".

You could not get enough of Peter Ustinov. His full-bodied, full-toned presence often commanded the viewer’s eyes away from the action to solely on him. Ustinov also tended to be elusive in his acted films, particularly the sword-and-sandal ones, intermittently sashaying in and stealing the show. In them, he often played supporting roles, but diversity made it impossible to typecast him. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(130 minutes)

"It's a Wonderful Life": A story of a man who finds himself, and in the end his family.

Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life is a film that keeps smiling throughout the ages. Part of its charm (and triteness) is its unceasing happiness. But why see a movie called “It’s a Wonderful Life”? If everything is simply wonderful, then why bother? Normally, we are raised to watch movies for the conflict they produce and the stakes raised that act as counterpoints to the characters’ equilibriums. It’s a Wonderful Life defies this notion, creating a film that only veers into a path of conflict self-inflicted by the diffident mind of George Bailey (James Stewart, one of his finest performances). (continue reading…)

3.5 Stars out of 4
(128 minutes)

Drummond (Tracy) makes the prosecutor, Brady (March), the witness in Inherit the Wind.

Stanley Kramer’s Inherit the Wind is probably a masterpiece for atheists and cheap, portentous evolutionist’s propaganda towards Christians. It’s a film that talks a lot, using very little visual detail and commenting on the state of society through its characters. Like Billy Wilder, Kramer is fascinated more with characters than style, and that is just as well if Inherit the Wind is to be taken seriously as a humanized foray on creationism, not just an empty tirade. (continue reading…)

2 Stars out of 4
(90 minutes)

Ace Ventura (Jim Carrey) is back. Oh dear.

We get the over personality treatment in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, a film that’s title inspires me to use the bathroom more than it does make me laugh. It is the sequel to the very abysmal and somehow (and sadly) “classic” Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. It stars Jim Carrey as the egomaniacal Ace who – if you found him funny before – he will continue to amuse you here. I noticed I was not as irked by Ace’s personality here, but that could just be me getting used to the stink. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(191 minutes)

The skies flare red with passion in Titanic.

April 15, 1912 was a shocking day of ironic tragedy. The great RMS Titanic – the unsinkable ship – perished at the hands of an iceberg. A structure of modernity fallen to one of nature. It resulted in 1500 casualties with a survival rate of near thirty percent. I wonder if people were more in shock than sadness to see such a vessel of strength collapse on its maiden journey over how many people fell victim to this mishap. Regardless, the sinking of the Titanic is a fascinating but tragic landmark in history teaching us that advanced machinery does not always prevail in the face of nature. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(125 minutes)

Hands up: like father, like son.

Steven Spielberg lightens up in The Last Crusade. After the notions of child slavery and racism in Temple of Doom (of which I still enjoyed), The Last Crusade kicks it up a notch with an opening that is so genius it belongs in even a better film than this third instalment. The opening is of course an action frenzy but it serves the purpose of reminding this is – again – a story of wild adventure, but Indiana now has a father. Wicked. (continue reading…)

3.5 Stars out of 4
(115 minutes)

Spielberg calls Indiana Jones "James Bond without the hardware."

It was maybe a decade or so after the Western had been revised replacing the Classic Westerns of Howard Hawks and John Ford. Two visionaries of the 1970s, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, combined their creative talents to consummate another Western genre that embraced cliché over complexity and action over drama. Lucas thought of Indiana Smith in 1973, but would soon be convinced that “Smith” did not have the right punch to it. Jones, Lucas then submitted. Jones it would be. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(124 minutes)

Cinema Paradiso.

Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso is such a fascinating film about movies but not quite its characters. In fact it is such an interesting study on the ecstasy of cinema that we can forgive the film for yielding to melodrama. I wished it was more a romance of the theatre, than a romance of people. Those films have already made their mark.

Still, it is an engaging story of a boy’s, Salvatore, life behind the projector. Unlike 81/2, this is not about the painful process of creating film, but the riveting sensation of watching it. Yet both films celebrate virtuosity, cinema’s surreal power, and the passion of the arts. And of course, they both conclude on a much-needed, tearful sequence of yearning. (continue reading…)

4 Stars out of 4
(93 minutes)

The father and son in Bicycle Thieves.

Bicycle Thieves is a simple masterpiece. To bloat it into a film of big messages, learned-transforming characters, and schematic symbolism would minimize its power. It was released in 1948, by a well-respected director, Vittorio De Sica, most notable for his Chaplinesque comedies. To see Bicycle Thieves then would be a jolting wake up call – it was for De Sica. It defines 1940s Italy as a highly populated tragedy. Sometimes all we have are our cherished possessions. Cue the bicycle.

It was written by a venerable Italian wordsmith – Cesare Zavattini – and starred an amateur – Lamberto Maggiorani, playing the hustling and bustling Ricci, working with a regular queue. This is a story about a man’s transition from loss of property to loss of awareness to loss of happiness to loss of dignity. In case you do not get it, he loses everything. It is a frightening thought for 1948, even though Europe had just been through a cataclysm that did quite just that. (continue reading…)