Bottom-Dweller: Seize the Day (1986)

Tags

Bottom-Dweller, Drama

 

“Seize the day,” the proverbs say,
But what if, trying to obey,
You find your hope
A slippery slope
That lets potential slip away.

Some days are high, while others die
In grief no matter how you try.
Your only hope
Those days, to cope,
Is that the next may dry your eye.

(If you don’t like this woeful rhyme,
You’ll find this film a waste of time.)
________________

MPAA Rating: Unrated (should be PG-13)

I’d almost forgotten about my Bottom-Dwellers, six films I personally loathe and wouldn’t mind forgetting entirely. Though I still have two left to excoriate eventually, it took the arrival of a seventh to get me to return to a truly negative review. This latest Bottom-Dweller worth despising is 1986’s Seize the Day, an early dramatic turn for Robin Williams before he made that line famous in Dead Poets Society. It was the presence of Williams that got me curious to see it, but even if he does well with the material, said material is not nearly worth his talent.

On the DVD case, Seize the Day is hailed as the only adaptation of respected author Saul Bellow’s works, and it doesn’t induce me to seek out the novel at all. Williams plays Tommy Wilhelm, a struggling salesman whose years of hard work for the same company resulted in his bitter unemployment. Having left his wife, he must pay alimony, even though she refuses to grant him a divorce, for which his girlfriend (Glenne Headly) is growing impatient. Tommy travels to the city, only to find a dearth of well-paying jobs, a reminder of how disdainful and unloving his father is (Joseph Wiseman), and a slight chance at pay dirt with the stock market advice of a poker buddy called Dr. Tamkin (Jerry Stiller). Things start out bad and then get worse and worse and worse, and then it ends.

I’m not necessarily opposed to depressing movies, but there’s usually some redeeming factor. Grave of the Fireflies makes me cry every time, but there are moments of light and sweetness sprinkled throughout. The Italian classic Bicycle Thieves is another example of a “worse and worse and then it ends” kind of movie, but at least there’s a potent social commentary at its heart. Seize the Day has nothing to recommend it, except Williams’ fine acting that makes you genuinely pity this poor man as his life is stamped into the dust of an uncaring world.

I suppose you could read a warning into it, like “Never fall for a con artist who eats like a pig,” but any lesson to be had pales next to just how pathetic Tommy becomes. Perhaps the point was for him to face up to his mistakes in life (not taking his father’s career advice, leaving his vindictive wife), but so much cold callousness piles on him that all he and the audience want is a tiny bit of relief that never comes. The author described Seize the Day almost as a dark comedy, but certainly nothing seems funny at the time. The closest thing to gallows humor is the final scene (which I’ll spoil since no one should waste their time on this movie), in which Tommy finds a funeral and uses the opportune setting to break down sobbing at his shattered hopes. And then it ends. Bad days happen; I had one just yesterday (which might explain why I’m going all medieval on this movie), but there are few things less appealing than watching someone else’s day and/or life ruined.

I’ve never read Saul Bellow’s novels, but if Seize the Day is any indication, it’s no wonder why others haven’t been adapted to film. As an old HBO movie, the quality of the filmmaking is also shabby, with choppy editing and uninspired direction. But beyond such practical complaints, Seize the Day is an oppressively bleak and dismal contrast to the American dream, a story whose only goal seems to be driving its main character to suicide, and considering what became of its star, this film’s purpose of hopelessness is in retroactive bad taste. Williams’ first scene in the film is of him giving another driver the finger, a sentiment also deserved by the film itself.

Best line: (a man in an elevator) “The truth is one parent can support ten children, but ten children can’t support one parent.”

 

Rank: Bottom-Dweller

 

© 2016 S. G. Liput
399 Followers and Counting

 

Bottom-Dweller: Urban Cowboy (1980)

Tags

Bottom-Dweller, Drama, Romance, Western

 

 

(Can be sung to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”)

 

Travolta went down to Houston,

He was lookin’ for a job to take.

He was young and dumb, just a country bum,

And he was waiting for his big break,

 

When he came across this young girl

Dancin’ round in a honky-tonk,

A promised land of beer and band

With a metal bull or bronc.

 

When the misfit pair were married,

Things at first were going well,

But some stubbornness made a jealous mess

And the marriage quickly fell.

 

While the two just boozed and pined away

And rode that bucking bull,

I began to think that this movie stinks

And was near unbearable.

__________________

 

This is it, the original bottom-dweller. This is the first movie I sat through and immediately hated, or, to coin Roger Ebert’s quote from his review of North, I “hated hated hated hated hated this movie.” Urban Cowboy was yet another star vehicle for John Travolta, but with films like this, it’s a wonder he became a star at all. I don’t usually subject myself to terrible films, but never before have I asked “Is it over yet?” so many times.

It starts out with some promise: small-town wannabe cowboy heads to the big city to find his fortune, meets girl, marries girl. That storyline alone might have been worth seeing, but the relationship between Bud and Sissy is hardly one for the ages. They meet each other in the famous Gilley’s Club, a multi-acre theme park of booze and cowboy paraphernalia, and Sissy (Debra Winger) has to practically twist Bud’s arm to convince him to dance with her. After some dancing and an argument and a roll in the mud, they’re suddenly walking down the aisle. Did either of them really think a marriage starting like that would last? As it turns out, barely a week passes before Bud’s pride is hurt, and both go their separate ways to make the other jealous, with increasingly depressing results.

One of my biggest problems with Urban Cowboy is the character of Bud. Travolta isn’t appealing in the slightest; he’s a juvenile man-child so unconfident in his masculinity that the slightest hint that someone may be better than he throws him into a blind rage, especially if it’s his own wife. In addition, he’s the kind of bumpkin that gives country music a bad name, content to work (sometimes) during the day and wile away his nights at the bar, picking fights and slapping his wife when she disagrees too much (but not too hard, of course). Plus, he’s supposedly in Houston to work and save up enough money to buy land and become prosperous, yet never seems to realize that he’s pouring his paycheck down the drain every night on beer and bets and pointless mechanical bull rides. Oh, and let’s not forget that he doesn’t just pretend to cheat on Sissy to make her jealous; he freely sleeps around, too stubborn to actually care for the girl he uses (Madolyn Smith) and too dense to realize why Sissy isn’t running back to him with open arms. What exactly am I supposed to like about this guy?

A series of misunderstandings keeps the couple apart, and Sissy ends up with “real cowboy” Wes Hightower, played by a leery Scott Glenn, who’s just a slightly harsher version of Bud, hitting a little too hard and stealing what he can’t earn. If Bud and Wes are “real cowboys”, they’re the worst kind, selfish he-men just trying to prove their own toughness to girls they only moderately care about. By the end, Bud trains Rocky-style for a mechanical bull showdown, and he seems to think that winning it will win Sissy back. How so? A silly championship is not going to repair a relationship; all his training is pointless, since all he really needed to do was go and apologize for his own pigheadedness. While he ends up doing exactly this, it’s as if he can’t muster the effort until he’s once again proven his alpha male status. Of course, it all works out for a happy ending, where assault turns into just desserts and a whirlwind romance rekindles into a whirlwind reconciliation. And then, thank God!, it was over!

This just might be my most hated bottom-dweller, with hardly any redeeming value. The only bright point is the classic country music soundtrack, particularly Charlie Daniels’ “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” For reasons beyond my comprehension, my VC and many other critics actually liked the film itself, looking past its unlikable characters and petty squabbling. She tells me that she finds the movie “interesting for its dysfunctional lifestyle” and as compelling to watch as a car accident, while I’d prefer just to not look at all. I don’t plan to ever see Urban Cowboy again; I have much better things to do than watch white trash with superficial, totally screwed-up priorities cheating on each other.

Best line: (Bud) “All cowboys ain’t dumb. Some of ’em got smarts real good, like me.”

VC’s best line:  (Bud’s Uncle Bob) “You know, Bud, sometimes even a cowboy’s gotta swallow his pride to hold on to somebody he loves.”  (Bud) “What do you mean?”   (Uncle Bob) “Hell, I know I pretty near lost Corrine and the kids a couple of times just ’cause of pride. You know, you think that ol’ pride’s gonna choke you going down, but I tell you what, ain’t a night goes by I don’t thank the Boss up there for giving me a big enough throat.”

 

Rank: BOTTOM-DWELLER!

 

© 2015 S. G. Liput

311 Followers and Counting

Bottom-Dweller: 5 Centimeters Per Second (2007)

Tags

Animation, Anime, Bottom-Dweller, Drama, Romance

 

(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was for a poem written in the form of a review. Perfect for a poet/movie reviewer, right? In this case, I combined my usual poem and review into the single rant below.)

For those who might think I like all animation,

I’ll simply refer to this dreadful creation.

I’ve mentioned before that I cherish the art

And story of Ghibli’s Whisper of the Heart,

And after I saw it, I searched on my own

For anime like it that might be well-known

For a similar quiet and intimate tone.

 

I read some good things about this little flick

From Makoto Shinkai and hoped it would click.

I watched it, this 5 Centimeters Per Second,

And found it was not at all what I had reckoned.

This Japanese drama with praise was anointed.

Did no critic see how delayed and disjointed

This tearjerker is? Was just I disappointed?

 

The film’s broken up into three distinct parts,

With each saying more of the breaking of hearts.

It starts off with promise; two thirteen-year-olds

Are both separated as each life unfolds.

By train, the boy Tono then travels through white,

Through blizzard and blockages to reunite

With distant Akari who waits through the night.

 

This first part alone could have stayed on its own

And is rather sweet, though it’s tedium-prone,

But Parts 2 and 3 are unduly depressing,

With one girl downcast by love she’s not professing,

And then we see Tono grown up, while Akari

Has moved on without him, with both feeling sorry

And gazing at petals and skies dark and starry.

 

The film lasts an hour, with a pace so not vital

It seems twice as long, with less speed than the title,

Which fondly refers to the unhurried crawl

At which cherry blossoms supposedly fall.

When all’s said and done, out of nowhere appears

A strange music video meant to draw tears

To recap this great waste of time for the ears.

 

The film’s greatest strength is the beautiful art,

A treat for the eyes if not quite for the heart.

The landscapes are lovely, replete with details,

But that’s not enough, for the story still fails.

There’s much symbolism with petals and birds,

With launches of space probes and unspoken words,

And some of it’s poignant, though broken in thirds.

 

The imagery may be the film’s biggest draw,

But how it’s employed is a signature flaw.

Most anime’s mingled with peaceful transitions,

A still or an object, like small intermissions,

But actions in this film are drawn out and laced

With tons of these images, ploddingly paced,

Which may bear some beauty but aren’t to my taste.

 

Yet what do I draw from these touching vignettes,

That love sure can stink when it’s full of regrets?

A drama needs more than some symbols about

The fact that some romances just don’t work out.

There aren’t even reasons implied to explain

Why two former lovebirds broke up in such pain.

I grieved by the end, for my hour spent in vain.

 

 

Rank: Bottom-Dweller

 

© 2015 S. G. Liput

302 Followers and Counting

Bottom-Dweller: One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

Tags

Bottom-Dweller, Drama, Triple A

 

 

When R.P. McMurphy gets bored,

He’s sent to a hospital board

To see if he’s nuts

Or just faking with guts

To reach the relaxed mental ward.

 

He starts to make unstable friends

And bucks what the nurse recommends.

Nurse Ratched cruelly

Won’t let him watch TV,

But Mac sees how far a rule bends.

 

Before ol’ Mac busts out, the bum

Carouses with each crazy chum.

When in comes the nurse,

Words and actions are terse,

But one inmate will not succumb.

___________________

 

Everyone has at least one hugely acclaimed movie that they simply do not like, for whatever reason. “It’s in black and white.” “It’s too boring.” “It’s got subtitles.” “It’s too violent.” “It’s got so-and-so I dislike in it.” “It’s too long or confusing or uninvolving.” Everyone has one, and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is mine. Based on Ken Kesey’s novel, this film is an excellent example of how a bottom-dweller can be a good film and still cause a personal distaste, at least for me.

First of all, I want to point out that this film is a great one in terms of strictly filmmaking. It deserved every one of its awards and probably more. Jack Nicholson as R. P. McMurphy and Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched won Best Actor and Actress, and the uniformly excellent cast is a who’s who of thespians known for looking rather unhinged or crazy, such as Brad Dourif, Christopher Lloyd, and Vincent Schiavelli (the subway ghost in Ghost). Will Sampson as Chief, William Redfield as Harding, and Danny Devito as Martini are also marvelous, and Sydney Lassick as Cheswick is especially expressive with his psychosis and deserved a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nom that only Dourif received. Cuckoo’s Nest remains one of only three films to win the Big Five: Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director (Milos Forman), and Screenplay. My objections do not involve its acting or quality, but its characters and how its message is presented.

I suppose the most troubling aspect of the film is its chosen hero and villain. The film’s sentiments obviously lie with McMurphy because he’s got a personality and enjoys the World Series, and someone with a name like Mildred Ratched must be a wretched villain, right? Yet McMurphy is established as a crook and a rapist, lazy and belligerent, right from the beginning, and he’s clearly only there at the asylum to fake his way to an easy confinement (he thinks). He’s meant to represent bucking the system, a rebel to inspire the inmates to try, yet what does he ultimately inspire them to do: chug booze, have sex, cuss like sailors, lose control, euthanize the catatonic? That’s hardly what I would call heroic. In certain scenes, he seems to care about the patients more than the cold nurses, yet he doesn’t help them any more than the staff does, except to have a bit more enjoyment through debauchery.

On the other side of the conflict is Fletcher’s Nurse Ratched, who I consider an antagonist, not a villain. She’s certainly hard-nosed, manipulative, and prone to unwise remarks that make bad situations worse, but when you think about it, she’s simply doing her job as she knows how, even displaying a sense of responsibility to her patients. Her worst moment comes near the end, where she crushes Billy Bibbit’s budding individuality under a domineering thumb, yet she couldn’t know the tragic results of her words. Plus, Billy’s fate is as much McMurphy’s fault for putting him in a situation sure to cause embarrassment in the long run. With her little devil-horn hairdo and glacial demeanor, she’s meant to represent the evil system, but the unstable people she cares for are little more than big children, unable to handle the outside world, and, in my opinion, people in need of the system. I find it laughable that AFI placed her at #5 on their list of movie villains, above truly evil characters like the Joker, Amon Goeth from Schindler’s List, or the demon in The Exorcist. Even at her worst, she’s nothing compared with them.

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a film I can admire for its acting, but every time I think of it, the words “I don’t like it” come to mind. The painting of the irresponsible, foul-mouthed antihero as the good guy and the cold but overly demonized nurse as the bad guy makes it a distasteful experience overall. A much better example of McMurphy’s kind of “inspiring” character would be Andy Dufresne from The Shawshank Redemption. From the beginning, the audience knows (or at least assumes) that he is innocent, and his uplifting rebellion against authority is that of a wronged man yearning to be free rather than a guilty man yearning to play the system so he can continue his criminal life. Perhaps my complaints don’t matter to most. My VC agrees with most of my points, yet still finds much to enjoy, mainly in the performances. She may not classify it as such, but for me, this Oscar-winning classic is still a bottom-dweller.

Best line: (McMurphy, speaking of his shock treatments) “They was giving me ten thousand watts a day, you know, and I’m hot to trot! The next woman takes me on’s gonna light up like a pinball machine and pay off in silver dollars!”

 

Rank:  Bottom-Dweller

 

© 2015 S. G. Liput

297 Followers and Counting

Bottom-Dweller: X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

Tags

Action, Bottom-Dweller, Drama, Sci-fi, Superhero

 

 

X-Men United? Well, not all that much.

There’s six or so heroes, and Rogue who can’t touch.

The rest of the mutants unfortunately

Line up with Magneto or stay absentee.

 

A cure for mutations has been synthesized,

And soon its great risk is sensationalized.

Meanwhile, Jean Grey has returned from the grave

To murder the friends that she perished to save.

 

As evil Magneto initiates war,

The X-Men fight back, as they’ve all done before.

For those wishing for Bryan Singer on hand,

This thankfully isn’t the X-Men’s last stand.

___________________

 

When it comes to movies, I’m fairly easy-going. Even in films that others tear apart, I tend to see the positives and end up liking them to some extent (Spider-Man 3, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). Yet there are a select few movies that I honestly despise, six special films that carry my cinematic slur of “bottom-dweller.” Not all of these are bombs; some were even critically lauded. Yet they all have something in common. They disappointed me deeply, and no film exemplifies this fault like X-Men: The Last Stand, a film that seemed at the time like a franchise killer.

Having seen it again, I believe it had the potential to be a worthy follow-up to the truly great sequel X2. The plotline involving a mutant cure poses a divisive “what-if” development that offers both hope and fear, and the characters’ reactions to it are believable for the most part. Except for some scenes with Angel’s wings, the special effects are top-notch, particularly Magneto’s hijacking of the Golden Gate Bridge. (I remember once seeing this movie the same day as Monsters vs. Aliens and noticing that both featured the same bridge’s destruction.) Had The Last Stand focused solely on the “cure” plot thread, it may not have gone so wrong, but its greatest mistake is the maddeningly disappointing adaptation of the famous “Dark Phoenix Saga” from the comics. (Spoilers ahead.)

Perhaps the Honest Trailer (a satirical YouTube video series) for the X-Men trilogy summed it up in stating that, after Brett Ratner’s taking over for original X-Men director Bryan Singer, we get to watch him “kill off your favorite characters, leave out your favorite characters, and depower your favorite characters.” The worst aspect of the film is its treatment, or rather mistreatment, of these characters. X2 ended with Jean Grey’s heroic sacrifice to save her teammates from certain death, and it offered a bittersweet conclusion that left room for more. Putting aside all the action of The Last Stand, this film essentially resurrects her, only for her to disintegrate her lover Cyclops, her mentor Professor X, and a whole lot of other people until she is finally taken down by Wolverine. Not only does this diverge from the comic source material, but it makes for an entirely unsatisfying superhero film, one in which major character deaths are given no nobility and the few hints at future film prospects are woefully deficient, considering the damage already done to the franchise.

Other complaints could range from the overstuffed, underdeveloped host of new characters (including [Lost alert] Ken Leung as a punk with retractable quills) to the underwhelming face-off between Iceman and Pyro to the continuity-clashing prologue in which Charles can walk and he and Magneto are still on good terms (First Class pretty much ignored this film). Plus, even if Magneto is the villain, he always seemed to have a misguided yet understandable reason for his villainy, but his abandonment of Mystique after she saved him makes him unnecessarily shallow and selfish. Despite the welcome additions of Kelsey Grammer and Ellen Page as Beast and Shadowcat, respectively, every single character was given short shrift and deserved so much better.

After this film, most subsequent X-Men films had to hearken back to the origins of its most popular characters since this film left little to work with, yet this movie certainly wasn’t a worthy conclusion to the original characters’ story. Ultimately, it took the return of Bryan Singer with X-Men: Days of Future Past to clean up the mess left by The Last Stand and give us the happy ending this bottom-dweller never could.

Best line: (Storm’s eulogy, one of the few genuinely poignant moments) “We live in an age of darkness: a world full of fear, hate, and intolerance. But in every age, there are those who fight against it. Charles Xavier was born into a world divided, a world he tried to heal… a mission he never saw accomplished. It seems it’s the destiny of great men to see their goals unfulfilled. Charles was more than a leader, more than a teacher. He was a friend. When we were afraid, he gave us strength. When we were alone, he gave us a family. He may be gone, but his teachings live on through us, his students. Wherever we may go, we must carry on his vision, and that is a vision of a world united.”

 

Rank: Bottom-Dweller

 

© 2015 S. G. Liput

295 Followers and Counting