Reeling Backward: "Reds" (1981)

"God, what a time it was, huh?"
                                --Jack Reed

Well, not really.

"Reds" has an impeccable cinematic resume. It was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and won three -- director Warren Beatty, supporting actress Maureen Stapleton and cinematography by Vittorio Storaro. It took a year to shoot and cost a bunch of money... and made a surprisingly decent amount, too. It occasionally crops up on various "best of" lists, including the American Film Institute's roster of best epics.

And it's a dreadful, overlong bore.

The film's greatest value is in highlighting the lives and work of two relatively unsung American writers and leftist activists, John "Jack" Reed and his erstwhile wife, Louis Bryant (Diane Keaton). They were unabashed socialists in the 1910s who not only wrote sympathetically about the Russian Revolution from a front-row seat -- including Reed's seminal book, "Ten Days That Shook the World" -- but advocated for its spread to American and other shores.

Reed founded a splinter communist party in the U.S. and traveled to Russia to beg for its recognition, wound up in a Finnish prison and traveled the globe on behalf of the nascent Soviet Union, trying to spread communism. He is one of only three Americans buried in the Kremlin.

It was (and still is) a touchy subject for a mainstream movie, especially arriving in theaters in the same year that Ronald Reagan's presidency began along with a resurgent sense of national patriotism. Although I think Beatty, who co-wrote the script with Trevor Griffiths, isn't so much advocating a specific political view as offering a portrait of people who were very passionate about their beliefs.

We can argue about whether history has borne out the value of Reed and Bryant's advocacy of Marxism/Leninism -- as a center-right guy, I would offer an emphatic "no" vote -- but ultimately the film is about the people, not the politics.

The movie's biggest problem is that it can't decide if it's Louise's story, Jack's story or the story of the American communist movement. It starts out as very much from Louise's perspective, as she abandons her stable, safe life in Portland, Ore., as the wife of a prosperous dentist to follow writer/rabble-rouser Jack to New York to live a bohemian life in Greenwich Village.

We've seen this sort of thing before in the movies: intellectuals gathered in cafes or stuffed into apartments, downing booze and talking, talking, talking. Everyone's supposed to be penniless yet they always have money for rent, lavish dinners, alcohol, posh clothes and white lilies, which Jack is continually lavishing upon Louise.

She's resentful of his constant comings and goings, to either write about the labor movement or actively participate in it. Louise feels she can't found her own identity as a writer in Jack's shadow. She hates being known as just "Jack's girl" -- especially since there's been a long line of them.

Louise is mortified when she's dismissed as an intellectual lightweight by Emma "E.G." Goldman (Stapleton), a notable anarchist and guiding light for the communist movement, who later became disillusion by its implementation in Russia.

Eventually, the film leaves along with Jack on his various excursions, and it becomes his movie. The part after the intermission is a long, interminable series of meetings and rallies as characters repetitively spout revolutionary jargon at each other. First it's in New York, then in Petrograd and later in the Mideast.

An attack by counterrevolutionary forces on the train Jack is traveling aboard seems tossed in just to give the film one bona fide action scene.

Louise more or less disappears during this part of the film, other than a few snippets that show her on various journeys to come to his aid. By the time she reaches Finland, he's been gone for months. She and Jack finally reconnect in the end, just in time for him to die of typhus and deliver the quote at the top of this article as his last words.

The film was marketed as a love story, focusing on the ménage à trois involving the pair and playwright Eugene O'Neill. He's played by Jack Nicholson in a sly performance, a man who very much wants to be seen as a hard-hearted intellectual but is really a vulnerable romantic at his core. 

In truth, Nicholson is barely in the movie. He essentially has one significant sequence in which he's romancing Louise, which mostly plays out as a wordless montage of canoodling. Then he shows up again for a couple more brief scenes near the end where Louise seeks his help in rescuing Jack from his accursed Russian adventure. He has perhaps a total of 10 minutes of screen time in a very languid 3¼-hour-long movie.

Stapleton has even less of a presence, and her beating out Jane Fonda for "On Golden Pond" for the Academy Award feels like a massive error in retrospect. But it's not the first time the Oscars have gotten it wrong.

The other noteworthy thing about the movie is the inclusion of "The Witnesses." These are various contemporaries of Bryant and Reed, now very elderly, who were brought in for video interviews. They chat about their affairs, their lifestyle, their politics, the significance of their actions in the broader historical context -- a lively mix of analysis, remembrance and gossip.

Beatty weaves these interviews into the narrative cleverly, at times acting as segues from one sequence to the next, but even as narration that sets up or comments upon scenes as they're happening. They range from author Henry Miller to congressman Henry Fish, the son of Alexander Kerensky, various socialists, journalists and proto-feminists.

At times I wondered if Beatty's vision to tell the story of Jack Reed would have worked better as a documentary. If they were going to stick with a narrative work in today's cinematic climate, I'm sure the project would've ended up as a Netflix or HBO limited series. 

For me, the movie's highlight is the time Louise and Jack spend in Russia during the revolution, as they reconnect as writers and as lovers. They live, breathe and eat journalism, firing off first-hand accounts of one of mankind's most pivotal moments in history. They edit each other's stories, insisting they keep the good stuff in and cut the weaker prose out.

I can only wish the filmmakers had followed this model themselves. A much shorter movie that focused on this period would have been considerably more effective, I think. 

In addition to those I've mentioned, "Reds" has a superlative cast of supporting performers, many of whom only get a brief moment on camera. They include Edward Hermann, Paul Sorvino, M. Emmet Walsh, Gene Hackman and George Plimpton.

Beatty never intended to star in the film -- he was already 12 years older than Reed was at the time of his death when "Reds" came out -- and reportedly wanted to cast John Lithgow in the lead. (If you look at photos of Reed, his soft, cherubic features are nearly a perfect match for Lithgow's.) 

After the tremendous success of his directorial debut, "Heaven Can Wait," Beatty was a man who found himself at that rare moment in Hollywood where he could write his own ticket. In this context, "Reds" registers much as the "very important artist" moment of his career. 

He wouldn't act in another movie until 1987's notorious "Ishtar," then had a bit of a career resurgence in the '90s with "Dick Tracy," "Bugsy" and "Bullworth," and then has more or less disappeared from filmmaking and the public view while very much remaining a pop culture figure. His more recent forays, with the barely-seen "Rules Don't Apply" in 2016 and flubbing at the Oscar ceremony for "Moonlight," have somewhat dimmed the luster of his star.

Personally, I don't blame Beatty for his itinerant work. It's better to do things you truly believe in, rarely, than a whole bunch of mercenary stuff for a paycheck. But just because you have a lot of passion doesn't ensure the work is going to be any good.

Perhaps that's the ultimate, unwitting message of "Reds."

Reeling Backward: "Blood Simple" (1984)

I really thought I'd like "Blood Simple" more than I did. Pre-Lebowski, when the films of Joel and Ethan Coen finally broke into the pop-culture mainstream, I was the lonely nut going around telling everyone how great they were. "Miller's Crossing" remains one of my all-time favorite films.

We parted ways at "No Country for Old Men" -- ironically, the moment when they achieved the pinnacle of their career with multiple Oscar wins. I found "A Serious Man" and "Burn After Reading" to be unworthy trifles, though they redeemed themselves with the mighty remake of "True Grit." But somehow I had never gotten around to seeing their first feature, a neo-film noir set in Texas.

I found "Blood Simple" to be really pretentious and forced. It registers as exactly what it is: the jittery fumblings of promising first-time filmmakers. The Coens' over-reliance on cock-eyed camera angles and moves seems like a transparent attempt to wow the audience by making the director(s) the star of the show.

The film's heightened mood is often strung out too long, resulting in scenes that are languid rather than suspenseful. (The Coens would seem to agree, later issuing a director's cut that was actually shorter than the original -- possibly a first in modern cinema.)

The lead actor can't act. The lead actress isn't given anything to do. And much of the various twists of the plot depend on the characters not saying the most obvious thing a person would say in a given situation.

The ill-fated lovers, Ray and Abby (John Getz and Frances McDormand), each come to suspect the other of murder, but fill their interactions with pregnant pauses instead of useful exchanges of information.

How it would have gone in a logical world: "Why did you kill Marty?!?" "I didn't kill Marty!" "...Oh." And the film ends at the 47-minute mark.

And I'm still trying to wrap my head around the part where a gun fires simply by being stepped on. Does dynamite also explode if you stare at it balefully?

All this isn't to say it's a bad film -- just not the great one I'd been led to believe.

There are many things to admire about "Blood Simple," starting with its economy of scale. The movie has only four important characters, with one other (Meurice the bartender) existing simply to help connect the dots between the other people. I believe there are only two other speaking parts beyond that, plus a voice on an answering machine that I swear is Holly Hunter.

I also liked how it seems as if every object we see is important in some way -- a lighter, a stack of catfish, a shovel, a shoe. Early on we see Abby fumbling in her purse for a box of bullets, finding exactly three. Each one of them will have a momentous future in the story.

Marty (Dan Hedaya) seems out of place, an obvious Northeastern ethnic type stuck in Texas running a latter-day saloon/strip club called the Neon Boot. He wears cowboy boots to fit in with the locals, but he seems to regard them as vile hayseeds, and mostly stays inside his office in the back, emerging only to dispense threats to his employees.

Abby is his young, pretty kept wife who, as the story opens, is running away from Marty. Ray (Getz) is the good-looking bartender who works at the bar, giving her a car ride and letting Abby now that "I've always liked you." This leads to a quick bedding, which is photographed by a seedy private eye.

McDormand is so young and smooth-faced here that she actually comes across looking rather generic, like just another Hollywood starlet getting her big break, instead of starring in a movie directed by her husband, Joel. Her face has definitely gotten more interesting as she's grown older. She's a completely reactive character, seeming rather dim and sad, and indeed she disappears from the story for long stretches, finally getting her moment in the clever final showdown with the private eye.

And Getz ... well, he seems to be trying to do an impersonation of a "speak softly and carry a big stick" type of guy, except he misplaced his stick. His line deliveries are drawled and grating, practically a parody of a big Texas lunk. He sounds like John Wayne coming off a really groovy high with The Dude.

Most of the cast, in fact, speaks in a very deliberate way. The late, great Pauline Kael said it best: "The actors talk so slowly it’s as if the script were written in cement on Hollywood Boulevard."

Anyway, it turns into a convoluted dance of betrayal, with the private eye shooting Marty, who's paid him $10,000 to kill his wife and lover. Ray comes to the bar to collect his back pay and finds Marty seemingly dead. Assuming Abby shot him -- the private dick has conveniently left the .38 revolver Marty bought for her at the crime scene -- Ray takes the body to dispose of, and discovers Marty's still alive.

Ray buries the still-breathing Marty and tells Abby "I took care of it," without ever coming right out and saying what happened. Each ends up believing the other murdered Marty. Meanwhile, the private eye returns to clean up any loose threads, putting them both in his sights.

About that P.I.: M. Emmet Walsh is the film's saving grace as Loren Visser -- which is a terrific movie character name, though I'm not sure we ever actually get to hear anyone call him that. The Coens wrote the part specifically for Walsh, and he invests it with every ounce of creepy, nervous energy at his command. Visser has a tendency to break out into a high jackal's laugh at the most inopportune moments.

Sporting around in an ugly polyester suit, bit Texas hat and dilapidated VW Bug, Visser seems like he wandered in from another, better movie.

Fans of "Blood Simple" have pointed to the intricacy of the plot, the way every move each person makes just sinks them all in deeper. As Roger Ebert wrote in his original review, "Every individual detail seems to make sense, and every individual choice seems logical, but the choices and details form a bewildering labyrinth."

That's accurate only if you buy the notion that these characters would only talk to each other in circuitous arcs utterly devoid of key facts, relying on intimation and intimidation instead. It's understandable when Ray calls Abby on a payphone after burying Marty to be circumspect, since someone could be listening in. But their in-person confrontation a little later is an unbelievable waltz of screenwriter misdirection.

And that's the big problem with this movie: the magician hadn't yet mastered his skills, so we know when he palms a card, or where the ball is under which cup. Everything is so deliberate and paced; the stitch marks are too garish to ignore.

Obviously, the Coens went on to much greater things. They're known as masters of genre-hopping, taking a specific set of expectations and standing them up on their head while also offering their own homage. I prefer to look upon "Blood Simple" as their training ground, and leave it at that.

Review: "The Odd Life of Timothy Green"

Bad movies are less pleasant to watch than mediocre ones, but it’s a lot more fun to review a terrible film than one that you were totally indifferent to.

With a stinker, you just hone in on what you hated. Movies like “The Odd Life of Timothy Green,” sort of lie there, inert. It’s like the difference between complaining about a food you detest and trying to describe eating something that is completely tasteless.
I had absolutely no emotional connection to “The Odd Life of Timothy Green” -- and that’s not a good spot for a touchy-feely modern fable to be in.

The tale of a childless couple who literally dream up their ideal kid, this is supposed to be one of those laughing-through-the-tears deals where the audience walks out feeling wistful and, most of all, moved. I’m all up for a good mushy movie, but this one is softer in the head than the heart.

Writer/director Peter Hedges has made some quality films -- “About a Boy,” “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” “Pieces of April” – but loses his way here with some often lazy storytelling. The screenplay is like a Cliff’s Notes version of a real one, skimming over important events or exchanges as if it’s describing what happens rather than actually showing it.

This movie doesn’t earn its moments.

Often, the film feels like it’s going over a checklist. That’s perhaps inevitable, since Cindy and Jim Green (Jennifer Garner and Joel Edgerton) write down the qualities of their ideal child and put them into a box they bury in their garden. One magical storm later, Timothy appears, covered in mud and 10 years old, and he starts marking off all the moments of the life his parents have written for him.

What’s really odd is that no one, from the school principle to the Greens’ family members, questions the sudden arrival of Timothy. Things move along so hurriedly that 45 minutes into the film, Timothy has already experienced birth, bullying, true love and a death in the family.

The person who perishes is played by a veteran character actor, and it’s a cheap moment -- it feels like he was cast just so he could die.

I liked CJ Adams as Timothy. He has a frank, intelligent way of looking at the other characters, as if daring them to prevaricate or dissemble. Timothy was born with a bunch of bright green leaves growing around his ankles, so he has to keep his socks pulled up to prevent the discovery of his Big Secret.

Not surprisingly, it’s a girl who does. Joni (Odeya Rush) is several years older than Timothy and a loner, cruising around on her bike near the soccer games attended by seemingly everyone in the small town of Stanleyville, “The Pencil Capital of the World.”

Like the other relationships in the movie, their connection is more a marker for a deep bond than the actual depiction of one. We see them hanging around together, going off into the woods to do what not, and we’re supposed to assume something meaningful has passed between them.

Certainly the adults are not any more fun to hang around. Hedges has constructed a sprawling cast of grown-ups who all behave in petty and juvenile ways. Cindy’s sister loves to rub her perfect trio of children in the Green’s faces. Jim makes Timothy join the soccer team because his own dad (David Morse) never came to his games when he was a kid.

The soccer coach (Common), recognizing how terrible Timothy is at sports, makes him the water boy and, when forced by circumstance to put him in the big game, instructs him not to move.

There’s a whole distracting subplot of how the Stanleyville pencil factor is in danger of going under, due to the tired leadership of the Crudstaffs, the town royalty (including Ron Livingston and Diane Wiest).

Better to erase the whole thing.

The final fate of Timothy is never in doubt. The framing story has the Greens talking to some adoption officials, where they use the story of their time with Timothy as evidence of their earnest qualification to be parents. So we know from the outset he’s just some kind of enchanted practice child.

Perhaps that’s why this movie feels like nothing is at stake.

1.5 stars out of four