Archive '05 - Bicycle Review (Il Postino)

This review originally appeared on the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation’s “Roll Film” movie review site (http://www.biketraffic.org/content.php?id=219_0_6_0). Each film was also reviewed by my CBF colleague, Greg Borzo, who focused more on the bike content.


IL POSTINO

4 Wheels

It is tempting to describe Mario, the titular postman of the 1994 Italian film, Il Postino, as simple. On one level this is accurate. Mario knows little beyond his Italian island fishing village. Concepts like poetry and politics are novel to him. Unlike most of his fellow villagers, however, Mario is a dreamer. Once exposed to poetry and politics, he embraces them fully. He's also a pragmatist. If becoming a postman is the best way to meet an internationally known poet, he'll be a postman. If poetry is the best way to win the love of the local beauty, he'll be a poet.

Mario defies simple classification because he is portrayed by Massimo Troisi with full three-dimensional humanity. Unfortunately, any discussion of Il Postino must also inform that the 41-year-old Troisi died of heart failure hours after filming wrapped. That he postponed treatment until he had completed this role hints at what an unforgettable performance he delivers. In many ways his mannerisms are reminiscent of a young Robert DeNiro, except that his performance is actually rather quiet and internal. Regardless, Troisi dominates every frame of the film.

As Mario is both an idealist and a pragmatist, Il Postino's use of the bicycle combines two separate traditions in bicycle films. Delivering the mail to the famous communist poet, Pablo Neruda, is central to Mario's goals and requires the use of a bike. This follows the tradition of bicycles providing a means of achieving success in such films as The Bicycle Thief, Beijing Bicycle, and City of God. More often bicycles represent the childlike innocence that Mario embodies (sometimes). We see this theme explored in movies as diverse as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, I ♥ Huckabees, or Pee-wee's Big Adventure.

In one of my favorite scenes of Il Postino, the postman and the poet stand on a mountain looking out to sea. Mario, holding his bike, asks Neruda to write him a love poem so that he can woo the beautiful Beatrice. It's a completely inappropriate request, but Mario's logic is so innocent and inspired—since Neruda's poetry lessons gave him the confidence to fall in love, it is now Neruda's responsibility to help him win Beatrice's heart. I can't help but think that it's not an accident that the bike is prominently displayed throughout this scene.

Philippe Noiret's performance as Neruda should not be ignored despite the extraordinary achievement of his co-star. Noiret invests the older poet with both humor and gravitas. Listening to Neruda try to explain metaphors to Mario is more entertaining than most Hollywood blockbusters.

I really like the message of this film. It not only makes the argument for poetry (and by extension, the arts) as an important tool in life, but it also says the arts are not just for artists. If poetry can change the life of a simple peasant postman, then can't poetry also inspire the rest of us, regardless of our station in life?

Archive '05 - Bicycle Review (I Heart Huckabees)

This review originally appeared on the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation’s “Roll Film” movie review site (http://www.biketraffic.org/content.php?id=219_0_6_0). Each film was also reviewed by my CBF colleague, Greg Borzo, who focused more on the bike content.


I HEART HUCKABEES

3 Wheels

I ♥ Huckabees is a very particular film. Its subject matter and tone will be appealing to some and alienating to others. I would guess that even those it may appeal to might need to be in a particular mood to enjoy it. I was in the right mood and was able to go along with the quirkiness and found it funny and engaging.

Among other things, it's about existential philosophy, which makes it, by definition, pretentious. This is not necessarily a bad thing because the filmmakers so thoroughly commit to this vision. The result is a bit of a mess, but unless they pulled Apocalypse Now out of their hats, this was an inevitable result of making a comedy study of the meaning of life.

Jason Schwartzman plays an open spaces activist fighting the giant Huckabees retail corporation over a tract of land targeted for development. He is consistently thwarted by the industry giant represented by a shallow spokescouple (Naomi Watts and Jude Law). Trying to understand his place in the universe, Schwartzman hires two "existential detectives" played by Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin.

Much philosophic musings follow, dealing with coincidences and the interconnectedness of the universe or lack thereof—some are thought provoking, but nothing you can't get in a freshman year college course.

For all its pretensions, I ♥ Huckabees succeeds because of its quick timing and appealing performances. Hoffman and Tomlin provide some of the funniest moments when their "detective" work requires them to spy on their subjects, yet they always seem to be in plain sight.

An unexpected surprise can also be found in Mark Wahlberg's debut as a character actor. Wahlberg has actually been in some fine films (Boogie Nights, Three Kings), but he's usually a straightforward lead, responding to other actors. Here, Wahlberg's fireman in crisis is a fresh character who manages to steal every scene he is in.

I ♥ Huckabees was directed by David O. Russell, who continues his streak of never making the same film twice. Russell's first film was a coming-of-age incest drama called Spanking the Monkey. His follow up, Flirting with Disaster, was a very funny and less disturbing look at dysfunctional families. His best film, by far, remains the Gulf War treasure hunt thriller, Three Kings.

With I ♥ Huckabees, Russell does a strange thing. He seems to have adopted the timing and style of another young director, Wes Anderson. Aside from using Schwartzman, best known from Anderson's Rushmore, Russell adopts the same underplayed deadpan humor that made Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums such a joy. The basic idea is to have the actors looking deadly serious in ridiculous situations—which does lead to some big laughs.

There's plenty of bicycle content to go around. As environmental idealists, Schwartzman and company consistently choose bikes as their mode of transport. A key scene also features the Wahlberg character racing his bike against a fire engine. It's not entirely clear, however, whether the filmmakers are admiring or mocking this idealism. It's probably best not to think too hard about it and just enjoy the ride.

Archive '05 - Bicycle Review (Quicksilver)

This review originally appeared on the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation’s “Roll Film” movie review site (http://www.biketraffic.org/content.php?id=219_0_6_0). Each film was also reviewed by my CBF colleague, Greg Borzo, who focused more on the bike content.


QUICKSILVER

1 Wheel

I didn't have high expectations for Quicksilver, but it looked like it might be a bit of goofy fun. I actually have an appreciation for cheesy, bad movies. My guilty pleasures include the killer whale revenge flick, Orca, George Hamilton's disco vampire in Love at First Bite, and Kevin Bacon's own dumb, but good natured dance-a-thon, Footloose.

Quicksilver is not a guilty pleasure. It's not goofy fun. It's just plain bad.I have rarely seen a film fail at so many levels. Every year around Oscar time, another award, called The Razzies, is given for the worst achievements in film. I would like to nominate Quicksilver in the flowing categories:

Worst Screenplay: There are a lot of sub-plots in this film and they are all clichés recycled from other films. We have the Wall Street hot shot, played by Kevin Bacon, who must redeem himself after losing his family's savings. He retreats into the simple life of the bicycle messenger. Then in another sub-plot, we have a love triangle with his stuck up girlfriend and an annoying, but cute, fellow messenger.

The Quicksilver Messenger Service is conveniently staffed by an assortment of every racial, religious, and ethnic stereotype imaginable. There's the Hispanic with a heart-of-gold who Bacon must help get a loan so he can open a hot dog stand, and, naturally, all this occurs at the same time the guy and his wife are expecting their first child. Then there's the stuttering drug dealer named Gypsy who uses a jive-talking African American bicycle messenger named Voodoo (played by Lawrence Fishburne no less) for his "deliveries."

Yeah, I left out Bacon's Jewish Wall Street buddy and the fat guy named Tiny, but my point is that this script, despite the presence of about twenty sub-plots, doesn't contain one original or even interesting idea. It's like some computer randomly generated movie clichés and came up with this.

Worst Acting: Kevin Bacon has proven himself a fine actor, especially in Clint Eastwood's Mystic River. At this early stage in his career, however, his method seemed to consist of employing the same wooden expression on his face, regardless of what emotions his character is supposed to be feeling. Oh, and he spends the opening wearing the fakest looking mustache since Groucho Marx.

Jamie Gertz doesn't fair any better as the poor street urchin messenger who takes a liking to Bacon's character. Her Brooklyn accent, which comes and goes, is straight out of Welcome Back, Kotter. Then we have Rudy Ramos as the least threatening drug dealer prior to Jay and Silent Bob. There is no dramatic reason for him to be stuttering, but he does, distractingly, throughout the film.

Worst Direction: Quicksilver was made during the heyday of MTV and features a lot of bicycle chase scenes set to eighties synth-pop music. By 1986 these types of scenes were fairly common, but Quicksilver is so incompetently directed that the music and the action sequences don't even match up. A number of scenes are so sloppily edited and unclear that it seems like somewhere there's a three-hour director's cut of Quicksilver just waiting to be unleashed. It's enough to give eighties nostalgia a bad name.

Archive '05 - Bicycle Review (E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial)

This review originally appeared on the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation’s “Roll Film” movie review site (http://www.biketraffic.org/content.php?id=219_0_6_0). Each film was also reviewed by my CBF colleague, Greg Borzo, who focused more on the bike content.


E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL

4 Wheels

Young Dorothy opens the door of her black and white house to reveal a technicolor world of munchkins and a yellow brick road. A mafia boss consolidates his power by simultaneously ordering the killings of his enemies as he watches his son's baptism. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, an ominous star destroyer is revealed to be so large that it takes our breath away.

These are moments of absolute perfection in cinema, and they are few and far between. But there is another of these perfect moments in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and even better, this one features a bicycle. E.T. is such a perennial classic that I'm sure you already know the scene. If for some strange reason, you are one of the few who have not seen it, you're missing a wonderful experience.

Many creative elements conspire to etch into our memories the scene of E.T.'s granting Elliot's bicycle the gift of flight. The key, however, is composer John William's score. It is only here, more than halfway through the film, that the famous E.T. theme is revealed in full. This grand musical moment combined with the now iconic image of the bicycle riding in front of the moon is as close to perfect as movies get.

If you are unfamiliar with the name John Williams, just think of any bit of classical theme music you remember from a film. Chances are it's a John Williams score. He is responsible for the music in Star Wars, Superman, Harry Potter, and almost every film Steven Spielberg has made. E.T. may be his most powerful score because it so embodies its many moods. As E.T. begins, the music is dissonant and Spielberg is mostly using darkness, save for his trademark beams of light breaking through the fog.

In its original advertising campaign, the public was kept unaware of what the alien looked like. Try to imagine not knowing how heartwarming E.T. eventually becomes and the first 20 minutes plays as a quasi-horror film. Think of that glowing shed in the backyard and the little boy knowing that there's something inside, but not knowing what.

Some consider E.T. a children's film, but that's only because the camera is so adept at looking at the world through children's eyes. Aside from the mother, we see no adult clearly until the resolution. I still believe that Henry Thomas playing Elliot gives the best child actor performance I have ever seen. (Yes, even better than that kid who saw dead people a few years ago.) Drew Barrymore wasn't so much acting as being a natural little girl who happens to provide some of the best comic moments.

The 20th anniversary CGI additions were completely unnecessary because the alien is never less than fully convincing on both a technological and emotional level. Spielberg, who is responsible for so many masterpieces, was so skilled in involving us in this typical suburban family that the special effects were beside the point.

One consistent theme that keeps reappearing in bicycle movies is the connection of riding bikes to childhood, whether literally or symbolically. In E.T. a second scene of flying bicycles loses none of the magic from the first. Spielberg has hit upon so many truths of childhood and imagination that kids will always embrace this film and adults will treasure it as a reminder of what is was like to be a kid.

Archive '04 - Bicycle Review (American Flyers)

This review originally appeared on the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation’s “Roll Film” movie review site (http://www.biketraffic.org/content.php?id=219_0_6_0). Each film was also reviewed by my CBF colleague, Greg Borzo, who focused more on the bike content.


AMERICAN FLYERS

2 Wheels

In 1980, Steve Tesich won an Academy Award for his smart and compassionate script for the seminal bicycle movie, Breaking Away. It appears as if all it took was a few years in Hollywood to suck his creativity dry because, by the time he wrote American Flyers, he was on formula autopilot.

Just look at the love scene. After some brief courting involving a french fry and ketchup (don't ask), our hero and his new girlfriend's scenes of passion are intercut with the national anthem playing on the TV—so we get literal fireworks as well as the launching of the space shuttle. This is about the level of subtlety maintained throughout.

For some reason Tesich has chosen to fill his screenplay with a series of "cute" setups and "clever" payoffs. For example, the main characters are told that they need to watch out for the fearsome Eddie, who will be joining them on their practice ride. Eddie turns out to be, get this, a dog! These attempts at hilarity through misdirection dominate the first half of the movie. This same technique is used to try to confuse the audience as to the identity of the character that is dying of a brain aneurysm, thereby removing any possible tension and leaving us with melodrama, but no drama.

That's right. American Flyers is not just a sports film; it's a disease-of-the-week movie. Kevin Costner plays Marcus, a doctor and bicycling champion. His younger brother, David, is played by David Marshall Grant as a misdirected youth (though he looks about Costner's age) who also has great racing potential. Together, they compete in the "Hell of the West" race as the specter of disease hangs over them.

The racing sequences themselves are only adequate. They just don't have the same kinetic energy as the bicycle scenes in Breaking Away. What the movie does have is some gorgeous Colorado mountain scenery, especially a barren area known as the Moonscape. Unfortunately, all that is gained from the photogenic scenery is undone by the annoying synthesizer music played throughout the riding scenes.

The only thing preventing American Flyers from becoming a total disaster is the dedicated effort of the cast to make an actual movie out of this jumble. Most of the actors were able to project enough likeability to keep the movie watchable, but certainly no one was in danger of being considered for an Oscar.

Kevin Costner gives a solid and earnest Kevin Costner performance. We've seen this style before in much better films, but since this is one of his earlier efforts, it's fun to see him developing his screen persona. Another pleasant surprise is that the brothers' girlfriends, played by Rae Dawn Chong and Alexandra Paul, have actual personalities. Too often, in films like these, the girlfriend role is reduced to eye candy and nothing more.

Less successful is the generic sports movie villain named, of course, Cannibal. For no reason whatsoever, he is also Costner's girlfriend's ex-husband and, at one point, he tries to push another rider off the mountain with his chin.

American Flyers was directed by John Badham, whose place in film history is secure as the director of Saturday Night Fever. An early scene of David primping in his room is reminiscent of a similar Travolta scene in Fever. This kind of "in joke" ain't much, but in American Flyers, there ain't much more.

Archive '04 - Bicycle Review (Stephen King's It)

This review originally appeared on the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation’s “Roll Film” movie review site (http://www.biketraffic.org/content.php?id=219_0_6_0). Each film was also reviewed by my CBF colleague, Greg Borzo, who focused more on the bike content.


STEPHEN KING'S IT

3 1/2 Wheels

The big bicycle moment in Stephen King's It occurs at the very end, so it would be unfair to discuss it in detail. I can tell you that the redemption of the hero depends on this bike, not for its speed, but for its ability to connect a middle-aged man to his inner child. Here, a bike named Silver represents the power of being a kid, especially when playing cards are placed in the spokes to make that funky noise when ridden.

The theme of childhood and how much we change as we become adults is central to the plot, but this is not a coming-of-age drama in the vein of King's Stand By Me. This is a horror film—and an exceptional one at that. The film was made for network television, and although that may seem like a disadvantage because of limits placed on levels of violence and gore, these limitations are used to their best advantage, giving us scares that are psychological and inventive, instead of the usual clichés. Another reason TV made sense for this project is that it's a sprawling story that runs about three hours.

Stephen King's It is about a monster that resurfaces every thirty years to kill the children of Derry, Maine. It can read victims' minds and take the form of whatever frightens them most. Usually it takes the form of a clown. We follow the stories of seven kids around the age of 11, all outcasts, who must bond together to fight this creature, first as children and then, thirty years later, as adults.

In an interesting fluke of casting, the members of the self described "Loser's Club" as adults are almost all played by television regulars, including Richard Thomas (The Waltons), John Ritter (Three's Company), Tim Reid (WKRP in Cincinnati), Harry Anderson (Night Court), and Annette O'Toole (Smallville). Also among the ranks is bicycle movie veteran, Dennis Christopher (Breaking Away).

The standout performance is clearly Tim Curry as Pennywise the Clown. A word of caution: if you are one of those folks that are a bit wary or disturbed by clowns, this movie will put you right over the edge. It would not be an exaggeration to say that what Jaws did for sharks, It does for clowns. Curry plays one hell of a creepy clown!

So is Stephen King's It a horror masterpiece? Not quite. It loses its way near the end when it tries to show the monster in its natural form. I won't say what that is, but the effect is underwhelming. Suspense builds for almost three hours and then the filmmakers drop the ball with the climax. This is a small complaint, however, compared with the rewards of the rest of the film.

Another of the film's accomplishments is that it is the most faithful to the language and style of Stephen King's novels (It being one of his finest). King has never been just about the scares. His characterizations are always specific, funny, and real. Too many directors lose these elements and only concentrate on the violence. Fortunately, It stands with Carrie, The Shining, The Dead Zone, and Misery as among the best of the Stephen King adaptations.

Archive '04 - Bicycle Review (2 Seconds)

This review originally appeared on the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation’s “Roll Film” movie review site (http://www.biketraffic.org/content.php?id=219_0_6_0). Each film was also reviewed by my CBF colleague, Greg Borzo, who focused more on the bike content.


2 SECONDS

3 Wheels

A breathtaking shot at the beginning of 2 Seconds shows a steep mountain drop from the point of view of a bicycle wheel. The scenery is beautiful, but the dizzying incline of the drop might cause one to pause. In fact, it causes Laurie, an intense, young downhill racing pro, to pause for exactly two seconds. These two seconds cost her the big race and her position on the team.

Turns out, this movie isn't about downhill racing at all, which is somewhat disappointing because these initial shots are something to see. Instead, Laurie relocates to Montreal to pursue a life as a bike messenger. As we meet her fellow messengers, I had expectations that perhaps we would get the inside story on the bike courier culture and what makes them risk life and limb to get a delivery there on time.

2 Seconds isn't really about that either. The movie's flaw is that it seems to want to be about so much that it keeps introducing themes only to abandon them soon afterwards. Its charm is that one of these story strands works so well that it does make the film worth seeing.

Charlotte Laurier plays Laurie as a dedicated athlete with a childlike innocence. Her performance struck me as slightly familiar, and I realized that she reminded me of Audrey Tautou in the wonderful French film, Amelie. Besides both performances being in French, both actresses have the ability to express many emotions just through their eyes. Laurier has the added advantage of a crew cut to ensure focus on her large eyes.

Laurie's bike is not only her livelihood, but her life. When it begins to break down, a regular repair shop will not do, so she takes it to an out-of-the-way shop run by a stern old man. This is Lorenzo, a former cycling champion himself, who would sooner throw a customer out than tolerate a less than respectful attitude towards the bicycles he loves.

Lorenzo is played by Dino Tavarone, who has such great chemistry with Laurier that all their scenes together make the film come alive. While Lorenzo starts out by testing Laurie, eventually they develop something close to a father-daughter relationship that allows them to share their passion for cycling and philosophies on life. These conversations are the real meat of 2 Seconds. Lorenzo and Laurie discuss bicycling with an enthusiasm sure to please any aficionado. I was fascinated by the way they embraced not only the exhilaration of the sport, but also the unavoidable pain and sacrifice it entails.

Finally, 2 Seconds is about those two seconds where an instant decision can completely change one's life. Lorenzo shares his own story of fate, through which he forms an even stronger bond with Laurie. But even though Lorenzo and Laurie's conversations are enjoyable, the film never really comes together as a whole. Still, there are some great scenes—not enough to make a great film, but enough to make a good one.