Reeling Backward: "Life of Brian" (1979)

Is there more to Monty Python movies than a pastiche of loony sketches? "Life of Brian" seemed to be their most ambitious attempt to make a movie with a coherent story and theme -- in this case, ridiculing the notion of organized religion.

The setup is that a fictional Jew, Brian Cohen, is born in the manger next to Jesus' and ends up living a parallel life in which he is mistaken for the messiah, vexed by a horde of worshipers and eventually strung up by the Romans for his trouble. Many people believe it to by the comedy troupe's best film, though I consider it their weakest.

I should add I still haven't caught up with their first, "And Now for Something Completely Different," though that was just a remake of sketches already aired on British television.

For that matter, defining exactly what belongs in and out of the Python filmography is not as easy as it sounds. If you exclude "Now," their 1982 concert movie and 2014 stage show, there's really only three feature films: this, "The Meaning of Life" and their (imho) apotheosis, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

If you want to open up the definition, much of troupe member Terry Gilliam's early solo directorial efforts had a very distinct Python flavor and often featured fellow players, notably "Time Bandits," "Brazil" and "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen." Gilliam's one of my absolute favorite directors, so for me the humor of Python has no clear demarcation from his darkly absurdist fantasies.

And then there is "The Crimson Permanent Assurance," the 17-minute short film directed by Gilliam that opens "Meaning of Life," which for my money packs in the most Monty Python hilarity frame-for-frame.

There's a lot of good stuff in "Brian," though it works more as satire than as out-and-out comedy. The Romans are sent up with the easiest jokes: Pontius Pilate talks like Elmer Fudd, and his visiting friend, Biggus Dickus, sprays sibilant s's all over the place. The Jewish crowd, responding to Pilate's offer to release one prisoner from crucifixion as a gesture of goodwill, continually names starting with R or S to keep the party going.

It's interesting how times change. I also remember one of the biggest laughs in "The Princess Bride" is when the bishop opens the wedding scene: "Maiwwage is what bwings us togethaw today." I'm guessing it's only a matter of time before funny-sounding speech impediments go into the rapidly expanding chest of PC no-go zones for comedy.

The Jewish rebels are portrayed as penny-ante bureaucrats more concerned with activity than action. Calling themselves the People's Front of Judea, they throw about anarchist talk while never actually doing anything besides holding meetings and taking votes. In addition to the Romans they're also at odds with the various other factions, including the Judean People's Front, who eventually turn up and are equally unhelpful.

You know the Python shtick: the six members, who all co-write their material -- Gilliam, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Terry Jones (who also directs) -- each play multiple parts, without even bothering to try to hide the fact. They use chirpy voices, various accents of the British isles and even changes of gender to swap things up. The most notable drag player is Jones, who uses a signature screeching caterwaul to play matronly figures, in this case mother of Brian (Chapman).

One female character, a rebel named Judith, is played by an actual woman, Sue Jones-Davies. I suspect this is because of her frontal nude scene after bedding Brian (who also flashes his front naughty bits) and confronting his mother. I don't think even the Python fellows thought they could fake that.

Speaking of blurring gender lines, one member of the PFJ suddenly announces that he wants to be known as a woman from now on, and after some initial confusion, the others accept this openly. It may be the very first positive portrayal of a transgender person in mainstream film.

For me the best part of "Life of Brian" is when he first gains followers -- which he does after running from the Romans by hiding in a lineup of street prophets spouting off their various philosophies to the masses. Brian repeats some stuff he heard Jesus say in the Sermon on the Mount. Soon his newfound apostles are following him everywhere, mistaking his every word or action for heaven-sent wisdom and/or miracles, including when he loses a sandal. They pick up the smelly relic and declare it an artifact. One enterprising woman advocates for using a gourd as their holy symbol instead.

As Brian, Chapman is a nervous, kvetching would-be messiah, constantly wondering why people are so mad for their faith, or to crush another's. He spends much of the movie with his eyes bugged out and mouth set in a rictus of anguish.

Chapman was an interesting figure who died very young at age 48. He was openly gay in the early 1970s, which was unheard of for a public figure, let alone a private one. Chapman had a long struggle with alcohol but, worried that he couldn't play the lead in "Brian" while drinking, gave it up shortly before production began. He never imbibed again.

"The Life of Brian" seems to argue not just against religion in general, but on the vagaries of morality. People who do ill are rewarded, and those who behave nobly befall horrid fates.

For example, during the march to crucifixion with Brian and other convicts, one spectator bravely steps forward to help one of them as he stumbles under the weight of his cross. The condemned man immediately skedaddles off to freedom, while the helper is forced back into line with the rest and ultimately crucified.

In typical English stiff-upper-lip form, he barely complains.

Similarly, when Brian's name is read after (eventually) being pardoned by Pilate, another fellow pretends to be Brian as a joke, which leads to all the other crucified men proclaiming that "I'm Brian!" in a send-up of the end of "Spartacus." Still, the jokester is the one freed, even after revealing the gag, while the real Brian remains.

"Life of Brian" is a classic example of a better idea for a movie than the one they actually made. In general I'm a Python fan, but here I'm their cinematic Judas.

Reeling Backward: "Silverado" (1985)

Emmett: "Blind Pete always said you'd hang. I guess tomorrow at dawn, he'll be proved right."
Sheriff Langston: "10 a.m."
Emmett: "Oh, right. I always thought they did it at dawn."

"Silverado" is a film that I've never quite been able to peg. All I know is that I've always adored it.

Made in the dark days of the Western between "The Wild Bunch" and "Unforgiven," it would appear at first glance to be an homage to the genre. Made by and starring Baby Boomers, it reads like a bunch of kids playing dress-up and mimicking the shootin' and ridin' of John Wayne and other cowboys they themselves watched on film and TV.

The plot is essentially a pastiche of every great Western trope -- revenge duel, cattlemen vs. farmers, a corrupt lawman, a hero in a black hat, a pretty woman who tempts a wandering soul into settling down, a young boy who idolizes the gunman who's known only a life of tragedy. There's even a modernist angle with a proud African-American standing up to a bunch of racist cowpokes threatening his family.

(About the only thing it's missing is a subplot involving Indians, of which there's not a one.)

And yet, director Lawrence Kasdan, who co-wrote the script with his brother Mark, often lets the proceedings wander into the territory of parody. The part I've never figured out is whether it's intentional or not.

Consider the quote above. That's just this side of pure comedy. When the cowpoke Emmett delivers the last line, that's not the stern pronouncement of a well-worn cowhand who's ridden everywhere and seen it all. It's the postmodernist quip of a guy in 1985 making a pun out of every movie he's seen that included a hanging.

(For that matter, who the hell is Blind Pete? He's referenced twice in the movie without any other information being provided. Presumably he's another familiar Western type, the crazy/smart old codger. This way Kasdan gets to summon his image without having to bother with actually creating and casting a character.)

Emmett is played by Scott Glenn, one of my all-time favorite "That Guy" movie actors. With his lean, creased face, rangy physique, squinty eyes and gruff voice, he was born looking like he wandered out of a Hollywood Western poster. Emmett has just finished doing five years in prison for manslaughter after killing the patriarch of the McKendrick clain, the local cattle barons. Taciturn and tough, Emmett comes closest of the film's four cowboys to the classic Western hero archetype.

Technically Emmett is the main character, though Glenn receives second billing to Kevin Kline. He plays Paden, a funny/sad gambler/gunman with a wise disposition and fatalistic bent. When we first meet him he's been robbed of everything he owns and left in his longjohns to die in the desert. After being rescued by Emmett, he proceeds to recover his beloved horse, hat and gun in subsequent shoot-outs with his robbers. Paden is a cynic who often takes on lost causes, and a romantic whose passions drift like a tumbleweed, until they stop in the most unexpected places.

Like Kasdan himself, Kline was just coming off the huge success of "The Big Chill." Jeff Goldblum was also in both movies, relishing a small part as turncoat card-dealer Slick. Technically, Kevin Costner was too, though as is well known in Hollywood lore, Costner's role as the dead friend being grieved was left on the "Chill"-y cutting room floor.

Perhaps that's why the role of Jake, Emmett's callow hot-head of a brother, is so deliberately showy -- Kasdan, perhaps sad over depriving an actor of his breakout role, decided to provide him another. All Jake really does is kiss girls, shoot bad guys with his fancy two-gun rig, and smile at the camera. Soon Costner was landing leads in big productions like "The Untouchables" and "No Way Out," and he was off to the races.

Danny Glover plays expert rifleman Mal, just returned from working in the slaughterhouses of Chicago, only to find his family plot overrun with McKendrick cattle, his mother dead of illness, his father soon murdered, and his sister run off to Silverado to become a whore. He gets a nice introductory scene where he's refused a drink of whiskey in a saloon because of his skin, and takes down three fat-faced white guys who try to enforce the unwritten rule.

He's run out of town by Sheriff Langston, a stiff Brit played for comic relief by John Cleese, who was also planning to hang Jake on trumped-up charges. When the boys break out of town, Cleese delivers the funniest line in the movie: After chasing them into a trap where they're pinned down by Mal's marksmanship, Langston decides to abruptly give up the chase. "Today my jurisdiction ends here," he announces, turning his horse around.

Cleese also got very high billing in the credits unwarranted by his limited screen time, though even he's beaten out by Rosanna Arquette. Billed third, she has maybe four total minutes in the movie, and only two dialogue scenes totaling 119 words. (Yes, I counted.) The character exists solely as a sweet-faced lure to the dusty rawhides who dream of a better, settled life.

If Arquette provides an unsatisfactory female presence, then Linda Hunt makes up any difference. Playing Stella, the pint-sized manager of The Midnight Star, the high-end saloon that bears her nickname, she has a small but solid role as a symbol of decency and workaday toughness. Accustomed to serving on the fringes of other people's indulgences, she's surprised to find herself the object of unexpected affections.

Hunt, having recently won an Oscar -- for playing a character of the opposite gender, still the only performer ever to do so -- shows what you can do with a tiny, tidy role that's well-written and splendidly played.

The rest of the cast is filled out by Brian Dennehy as Cobb, the smiling, winking bandit-turned-sheriff who's firmly in the McKendrick pocket; Jeff Fahey as the local crazy-eyed killer; Lynn Whitfield as Mal's sister Rae; Thomas Wilson Brown as Augie, Emmett and Jake's wide-eyed nephew; the inimitable James Gammon as a gravel-voiced outlaw leader; and Thomas Wilson Brown, a generic and throwaway villain as McKendrick.

Everything in "Silverado" is filmed in a precious way as if trying to recreate the best moments of classic Westerns. The movie opens with a shot from inside a tiny cabin out the doorway into the grand, valley-filled landscape beyond, a fairly deliberate borrowing from "The Searchers." The booming musical score by Bruce Broughton, replete with trumpets and other brassy brass, earned an Oscar nomination, as did the sound crew.

(It was Broughton's song, "Alone Yet Not Alone," that got an Oscar nomination for Best Song last year but got disqualified under some arcane rules of the Academy. Broughton sent out a few dozen emails to his friends in the movie biz asking them to give it a listen, which the Academy disallowed as "campaigning." Yet the annual suck-up-fest perpetrated for whatever Weinstein movie on tap trundles on.)

So is "Silverado" an homage, a parody or something else entirely? After seeing it again for perhaps the dozenth time, I confess I still haven't decided. My gut tells me it's a serious paean, a recreation of the cowboys-and-Indians games (minus the Indians) Kasdan & Co. grew up playing.

But then I watch again scenes like Emmett practicing his gunplay, and I wonder still. There's one part where he's aiming at a cactus plant with his rifle from maybe 50 yards away. Not only does he hit the plant, he shoots off individual spines, one at a time. This is so absurdly ridiculous that I can't believe the filmmakers taking it seriously, or imagining anyone in the audience doing so, either. It's stuff like this that makes me think the movie has just gone momentarily goofy.

Sometimes I laugh at "Silverado," and sometimes I just sit back and admire its fanboy, fetishistic take on the Western. What I do know is, whenever I watch this film, I'm grinning as wide as the dusty plains.

Video review: "Planes"

It’s not just that “Planes” isn’t a very good movie -- because it isn’t.

The very existence of this movie ends up devaluing the brand of Pixar Animation and Disney. This quasi-sequel to the “Cars” movies, animated largely in India, looks and feels like a straight-to-video quickie that somebody decided to shovel into theaters at the last minute. Unsuspecting parents would dutifully take their kids to see it, expecting the same high level of storytelling they’ve come to expect from the gang behind “Finding Nemo” and such.

Instead they got the tepid tale of Dusty Crophopper (Dane Cook), a humble crop-dusting plane who dreams of competing in the Wings Around the Globe race. It’s a familiar litany of just-be-yourself pabulum, goofy sidekicks and whiz-bang action scenes.

Dusty must face off with Ripslinger, the snarly champion, and bond with new friends from Mexico and India. He’s also got a grizzly older military plane (Stacy Keach) offering reluctant advice, and a dim-witted fuel truck (Brad Garrett) to supply comic relief.

The outcome is never really in doubt, and for that matter the beginning and middle are as predictable as a take-off checklist.

“Planes” is a by-the-numbers movie from a studio that once took pride in being the very best.

Video extras are rather slim, perhaps reflecting the down-market ambitions of this picture.

There are deleted scenes, a “Meet the Racers” feature, a brief look at the greatest real-life aviators, a 15-minute documentary following director Klay Hall’s aviation dreams and how they led him to making this movie, and a new music video featuring a minor character.

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Review: "Planes"

Pixar Animation has been a wondrous success story, churning out hit after hit that pleased children while stirring the emotions and intellects of grown-ups. "Finding Nemo"? "Wall·E"? Those weren't just great pieces of entertainment for kiddies; they were works of great art.

Lately we've seen the inevitable doldrums period, where ideas are being recycled and productions are being handed over to a new wave of creators. "Cars 2," "Brave" and "Monsters University" were pleasant enough, but missing that spark of creative flourish that had been the Pixar hallmark.

This is the first time, though, that it feels like they just weren't trying very hard.

I suppose "Planes" isn't really a Pixar movie, since it doesn't carry the label and comes out of the larger Disney umbrella corporation -- with an animation arm from Mumbai, India providing much of the heavy lifting.

But it's a direct continuation of the "Cars" universe -- "From Above the World of Cars," to use the poster tagline -- was executive-produced by Pixar kingpin John Lasseter, and features the voice talents of some key Pixar veterans (Brad Garrett, John Cleese, John Ratzenberger).

Those who would like to quibble about me knocking Pixar for the lackluster qualities of a movie that's technically not a Pixar product are missing the point. The very fact that the once-infallible geniuses would be willing to spin out a down-market clone of their intellectual creation is a demonstration of how the studio has lost its stamp of specialness.

"Planes" feels like a made-for-TV flick with a higher-than-average budget for CG animation. Overall the looks of the film are decent, although the humanizing of aircraft doesn't work quite as well as it did with cars. With their windshields as eyes and propellers as noses, their outstretched wings make them seem like they're perpetually telling you how they did something thhhiiiisss muuuuuuuch!

Alas, the storytelling is not on par with the visuals. Screenwriter Jeffrey M. Howard and director Klay Hall, who both got their start with Disney "Tinkerbell" videos, approach the material with preadolescent assumptions and mindset.

It plays out as a pretty standard be-who-you-are message, with Dusty Crophopper as a lowly crop-dusting plane who dreams of competing in the Wings Around the Globe race.

He's sort of a diametrical opposite of Lightning McQueen, who suffered from too much confidence. But the familiar roles of curmudgeonly older mentor and humorous truck sidekick are filled by Skipper (Stacy Keach), a brokedown Navy legend, and Chug the goofy fueler (Garrett).

Dusty faces some setbacks, but manages to get into the race and make a serious run at it, impressing the doubting crowds and surprising sneering longtime champ Ripslinger (Roger Craig Smith). He also befriends El Chupacabra (Carlos Alazraqui), a Mexican stunt plane with an outsized personality, and Ishani (Priyanka Chopra), the Far East champion.

Rounding out the cast are Cleese as an unctuous Brit flyer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a French Canadian racer and Teri Hatcher as Dusty's mechanic/coach.

There are few surprises in the plot, including some nefarious schemes by the villain and the facing of fears by the good guys. In Dusty's case, this includes a phobia of heights -- funny stuff for a plane, huh? Right?

Dane Cook, a rather generic comedian and actor, makes for a pretty generic vocal stand-in for Dusty. He doesn't have a particularly memorable voice, and doesn't infuse the character with any distinct inflections or personality.

Bland and too afraid to soar for the heights -- much the same could be said for "Planes." Whether you want to label it Pixar or not, it's like watching a play in which all the stars broke their legs at once, and the audience has to make do with the understudies.

Review: "Planet 51"

As animated films go, "Planet 51" is like the food purchased at the theater concession stand: Empty calories, consumed by people barely aware of what they're stuffing in their faces, and soon forgotten.

The set-up is a comedic take on the old alien invasion theme, but with the little green men as the natives and humans as the evil invaders. It's a neat twist ... except it was already done earlier this year in "Battle for Terra," a superior animated flick that few people saw.

"Planet 51" has some nice ideas, but it never really escapes orbit. The humor is aimed at very small children, who may enjoy the slapstick physical comedy and goofy critters. If you count your age in double digits, though, you're apt to find it quite tedious at times.

The in-joke is that the aliens of the town of Glipforg are stuck in the equivalent of our 1950s, with ducktail hairdos, rock 'n' roll and plenty of paranoia about an invasion from beyond the stars. The most popular film franchise is the "Humaniacs," which features creatures with a single giant eye turning people into mindless zombies.

Of course, there are a few differences from Earth. The denizens have antennae and frond-like things for hair, no noses, four fingers, and an aversion to pants and shoes. They've got hovercraft instead of cars -- although they resemble '50s Chevys and Cadillacs -- and instead of dogs they've got little domesticated pets that look like the creatures from the "Alien" movies. One, joke-ily named Ripley, pees acid.

The hero is Lem (voiced by Justin Long), a teen with things starting to go his way: He just landed a job at the astronomy observatory, and summoned up the courage to ask out the girl of his dreams, Nera (Jessica Biel). His life gets thrown into turmoil when an American astronaut lands a spacecraft in his backyard, setting off a flurry of panic.

Turns out the spaceman is Charles T. Baker (Dwayne Johnson), a solitary explorer who thought the planet was uninhabited, "not full of giant sea monkeys dancing to the oldies," as he puts it.
Lem lends Charles a hand, which brings about the ire of the army general (Gary Oldman) determined to do the invader in before he melts their tanks or whatever.

Rounding out the cast are Seann William Scott as Lem's nerdy best friend, Alan Marriott as a proto-hippie who wants to give peace a chance, and John Cleese as the head scientist whose prescription for every problem is a brain-ectomy.

Directed by Jorge Blanco from a script by Joe Stillman, "Planet 51" has pretty impressive animation considering it didn't come out of either of the 'toon powerhouses, Disney and DreamWorks. Too bad these good looks are wasted on such a dull and derivative movie.

2 stars