All The King's Men (1949): Eitan's Take

All The King's Men holds the dubious honor of being the only Best Picture winner to ever be remade (excepting Hamlet, which doesn't count for obvious reasons, and Around the World in 80 Days, which also doesn't count because the worthless Jackie Chan version was merely based off the same, oft-produced source material). Now, having seen it, I feel bad for Steve Zaillian, the director of the 2006 update; first of all, how did the talented writer of Schindler's List get suckered into recreating one of the worst Best Picture winners we've seen so far, and second, how did he (apparently) manage to make a film that was even worse than the original? I ask because there's a disturbing and frustrating artlessness to rookie director Robert Rossen's take on corrupt politics in the anonymous state (which everyone watching knows to be Louisiana, since Willie Stark is a carbon copy of the Kingfish, Huey P. Long). A film like Gentleman's Agreement shows how one can take a simple political parable and make it both accessible and gracefully crafted; All the King's Men proves that one can take a potentially interesting story about how politics transforms the lives of those swept up by its epic allure and present it as no more than a step by step story sloppily tossed onto celluloid and passed off as something "important," or, as claimed by its ad, "vital."

It's not just the film's bloated third act -- in which we discover that, wow, politics sure does make people do crazy things for money and votes and sex -- or its ham-fisted political message or its dumbed-down Machiavellian philosophy that make it a miserable watch. It's the film's relentless belief in itself as the most essential message film of its time that really bothered me, and its predictable plot turns hurtling toward painfully obvious and inevitable conclusions (hick gains populist support?! hick sells his soul to special interests?! hick becomes involved with corrupt backhanded dealings?! hick's onetime journalist confidante becomes jaded?! the film ends with a slow-mo assassination?! ya don't say!) don't do much to help its case. Maybe the story has just been told too many times, or maybe I just don't care enough about Southern politics, but I just couldn't bring myself to identify with the story one bit. Even the convincing acting of Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark fails to overcome weak, poorly-fleshed out dialogue -- which is often interrupted by bizarrely quick scene fade-outs -- and weaker direction and cinematography. I would've traded in my delicious movie snack (dark chocolate peanut M&Ms) for a hint that the movie yearned to be artwork and not just a recounting of the facts (an act Willie Stark undertakes early in the film, when he is inexperienced and struggling to be noticed), but I'm disappointed. Oh well, I guess the Academy can't score three years in a row -- Hamlet came before, and All About Eve is the next film on the docket. With respect to the efforts of Mr. Crawford and John Ireland, who strongly resembles Jude Law -- his replacement in the remake -- I give this absent-minded Academy choice a 4/10. It was spared a lower score by a fault of my own: I seem to have irreversably set the miserable low-standards bar at 3 (for Cavalcade), and this film, while rather awful, was not a shocking piece of pure cinematic trash.

By the way, Willie Stark really reminded me of Fred Thompson: a bloated sleazeball, high off ambition but low on ideas, fattened by the deliciously greasy taste of pork barrel politics. I fear for our country if this guy takes off in the polls.

Going My Way (1944): Eitan's Take

1944 was the last year that the Academy used painted plaster Oscars (instead of gold-plated ones), and I can't remember a film more deserving of a plaster Oscar than Bing Crosby's flat, clumsy 1944 "classic" Going My Way. Sure, I admire its warm heart and its ambition of telling a neat little story about a talented young priest and the people whose lives he influences, but not even Jesus Christ himself could save this dull film. Shifting clumsily from weird and uninvited musical scenes (including a wholly unnecessary rendition of "Habanera" from Carmen and the utterly lifeless title song) to scenes depicting the quaint (read: DULL) goings-on of a charmingly strapped-for-cash Catholic church in a sort of fantasy New York City where the only bad things happening are turkey theft and baseballs sailing through windows, Going My Way never really finds its soul. If it had shot for the moon and explored the way Crosby's Father O'Malley reconciled his love for music, art, and secular happiness with his religious life, the film could have been a hugely successful meditation on modern religion, as well as a charming musical backed by serious plot points that truly invited song into the story.

Instead, what we have here is a lifeless bowl of cinematic oatmeal: watery, loose, and begging for some spice. Yes, Crosby is charming. Yes, his chemistry with ornery old Barry Fitzgerald is commendable. And yes, "Swinging on a Star" is lovable and appropriately syrupy. But these elements do not a great movie make. I was thinking the entire time that Going My Way would have fit in better during the self-important run of Best Picture winners in the 1930's; it clearly wants to be a classic musical, but its notes fail to resonate and its feet fail to leave the ground. For Bing Crosby alone, I award this movie a 4/10.

Grand Hotel (1932): Eitan's Take

Not much to say about Grand Hotel. The tagline of the movie pretty much sums it up -- "Grand Hotel. People coming, people going, nothing ever happens." This was a truly painful movie to sit through. It was bloated, dull, and a waste of time for its astonishingly talented actors. You would think that if they got Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, John and Lionel Barrymore, and Wallace Beery in a film together, they would give them more to work with than a bunch of tawdry and uninteresting affairs, arguments about alcohol, business mergers, and a woe-is-me ballerina. Seriously. This film bumbled along from one lame set piece to the next, with occasional respites during which Lionel Barrymore's pathetic drunk of a character ruminated on life, death, and Louisiana Flips (a cocktail of some sort that he rattles on about for 5 minutes). Considering the sharp, intelligent screenplays of many of the other movies I've seen from this era, the Academy should have been ashamed to reward this bland snapshot of elitist German jerks whose pithy life concerns are more of a dull embarrassment than a genuine commentary on humanity or society.

I know that the Academy picked this movie because it was a "multi-faceted" experience with several intertwining storylines (a la Robert Altman and P.T. Anderson films, and in the dreary and vapid Crash) inhabited by gorgeous rising stars and the reverently-viewed veterans of the silent era -- the toast of Hollywood, to be sure. It's a shame that the movie is about as tasteless and undesirable as burnt toast. I am happy that the bloated egos of this era were lampooned so marvelously in Sunset Blvd., a truly great and dark movie about the stupid life of the rich and famous. If this movie had had any darkness, or any twinge of irony, or any sort of joking self-awareness, it might have been redeemable. Its skull-crushing banality and self-seriousness earn it my contempt. Those points were earned by a loving conversation between John Barrymore and a dachshund, as well as a late-in-the-game murder twist (that wasn't even explored very well.)

"You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave." 4/10