Movie Reviews - 2024 posts

WARNING: SPOILERS

A few memories.

After Steve Martin hosted “Saturday Night Live” for the second time, so around Feb. 1977, I took the bus with my friend Peter to buy comics at Shinders in downtown Minneapolis. There was a shoe store across the street that we never went to, but on this day, for some reason, we stopped in. I think Peter needed something. And we began telling the salesgirl about this ad plan we’d concocted about how some shoe store—hey, maybe this one!—could team up with Steve Martin on a Happy Feet campaign. We probably did the little insane dance, too. Poor salesgirl. She didn’t know from Steve Martin (“Who's Steve Martin?” she said) and we didn’t know how the world worked. 

That same year (yes, just checked: Nov. 11, 1977), my brother Chris and I went to a Steve Martin concert at the 5,000-seat Northrop Auditorium on the University of Minnesota campus. I think we got Star-Tribune seats, because we were second row center. At one point, Steve asked for a volunteer with a big voice from the audience, and while I dithered in my head (“Oooh, I don’t know, that’s really putting myself out there…”), my brother shot his hand up. And was chosen. He talked with Steve Martin:

Steve: What’s your name?
Chris: Chris Lundegaard!
Steve [chuckles]: No, what’s your full name?

(I think that’s how it went. I wish Chris were here to corroborate.)

Here's why he was chosen: Steve had Chris pick a card, the King of Hearts, and Steve said he wanted everyone to concentrate on the card; and when the vibes were just right, Chris should shout as loud as he could, “KING OF HEARTS, COME DOWN AND DANCE!!” I think it was a kind of satire on the paranormal shit popular at the time. Because after my brother shouted the line, Steve took the card and danced it down his arm and around the stage, making dopey “Doop-de-doo” sounds.

A month later Steve made the cover of Rolling Stone (“Bananaland’s Top Banana”), and the following spring he was on the cover of Newsweek (“A Wild and Crazy Guy”). His album “Let’s Get Small” (1977) went platinum and his follow-up “Wild and Crazy Guy” (1978) went double platinum, while “King Tut,” reached No. 17 on the billboard singles chart. And suddenly all the kids in my ninth-grade class were huge fans. In English, I remember Tim F. imitating him ad nauseum: “Wild and crazy,” he’d say. “Wild and crazy.” He made the last word sound like creh-see. It drove me nuts. Guy was late to the party, his imitation sucked, and girls liked him better?

Anyway, that’s how Steve Martin broke from my perspective. “Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces” is how he broke from his. Basically, he kept butting his head against the massive indifference of the world until slowly it began to crack and something trickled out. And then it became a deluge.

Chaplin no Chaplin
Here’s that journey, per the doc:

• Young Steve had an early visceral need to be on stage
• His magic act seemed a dead end unless he added comedy
• He liked a girl who told him to go to college, where he applied the methodology of philosophy to stand-up comedy and became an early disruptor; he broke down the Bob Hope-ian elements, removing the cue to laugh; there was tension without release
• His onstage persona shifted to a parody of the overconfident untalented showman
• He struggled for 10 years

He struggled, in part, because he was doing the opposite of what everyone else was doing. This was a conscious decision. Everyone’s doing politics, so I won’t. Everyone’s serious, so I’ll be silly. Everyone dresses down, I’ll dress up. I’m curious what drove that urge. It’s so smart.

“I always thought of him as the door out of the’60s,” a talking head says in Part I. “You could be silly again.” Yes, but there were a lot of such doors. Our most popular TV shows went from working class and multi-ethnic (“All in the Family,” “Sanford and Son”) to white and cleavage-filled (“Three’s Company,” “Charlie’s Angels”), while our most popular movies went from serious and scary (“The Godfather,” “The Exorcist”) to safe and uplifting (“Star Wars,” “Superman”). That was the zeitgeist. That was the wave. Steve anticipated it and rode it. 

So why did he quit doing standup after he’d succeeded beyond his or anyone’s wildest dreams? When he’d become, per Jerry Seinfeld, the most popular comedian ever? I always assumed he got tired of it. But he also admits he didn’t have anywhere to take it. He’d spent 10 years creating this persona, this concept, and now everyone knew it. Audiences repeated it back to him. He didn’t see a path in standup—except out.

That’s part I—his search, rise and supernova status—and it’s a particular kind of documentary: historical footage and talking heads as voiceovers. We hear Jerry Seinfeld, Lorne Michaels and Adam Gopnik; we don’t see them.

Part II is a different particular kind of documentary. It’s recent footage, filmed by documentarian Morgan Neville (“20 Feet from Stardom”), of Steve living his life with his wife, a former New Yorker fact-checker, and their daughter, represented as a stick figure to protect her. He makes a poached egg. Martin Short comes over and they gibe each other and then work on their routines in which they gibe each other. They go to the dry cleaners, they go for a bike ride, they work on “Only Murders in the Building.” It’s not exactly wild and crazy, but it’s sweet and sometimes funny, and anyway Steve was never a wild and crazy guy. One of the big reveals of his great memoir, “Born Standing Up,” was, rather than being the hippest dude in the land, which is what he seemed to us in 1977, he was the squarest. That’s underscored here.

Steve talks through his post-standup life: the movies, the relationships, the depression. He recounts seeing “Flashdance” in a movie theater in London in 1983, and one of the characters, a standup, says he wants to be Steve Martin, and Steve Martin, watching, thought, “No, you don’t.” If part I is the search for success, part II is the search for happiness. It’s less deluge than revelation: “Oh, it’s right over here. I should’ve looked over here before.”

A lot of his unhappiness stems from his relationship with his father, Glenn, who was, like many fathers of the day, emotionally distant. He was also wary of the path his son was taking. “I always thought my father was a little embarrassed by me,” Steve says. “He couldn’t quite be proud of an unconventional showbiz act that he didn’t quite understand.” It’s a reasonable concern but oddly it doesn’t go away even when the son becomes a phenomenon. After the premiere of “The Jerk,” family and friends went out to dinner to celebrate, and one of Steve’s friends asked Glenn what he thought of seeing his son in the movie. “Well,” Glenn said, “he’s no Charlie Chaplin.”

Watching, I wondered if we all weren’t a little hard on Steve Martin’s movie career. There was this expectation that because he’d remade standup comedy he would remake movie comedy, too, and that’s a big ask. It’s a bit Paul McCartney after The Beatles. “What's this Ram shit?” Interestingly, or poignantly, Martin did become one of the most gifted physical comedians since Chaplin, particularly with his mid-80s output: “All of Me” and “Roxanne,” in particular. A personal favorite of mine was his insanely joyous and childish dance after his son makes a catch in a little league baseball game in “Parenthood.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen it without laughing. 

The wave
What I’d like to know that Neville doesn’t ask? Did Martin anticipate anything with film the way he did with standup? Did he try to do the opposite of what everyone else was doing? Or is that not possible in such a collaborative and established medium, where failure means millions of dollars rather than a rough night?

There’s no inkling in the doc of this grand irony, either: The less-serious, post-sixties wave Steve rode to massive success never ebbed; and it kind of stranded him in the 1990s as he tried to smarten up—doing essays for The New Yorker, Mamet on film and Beckett on stage. When, that is, he wasn’t doing meh reboots of “Sgt. Bilko,” “Cheaper By the Dozen” or “The Pink Panther.” (I know Scorsese talks about doing one of them and one for yourself, but those are some extremes.)

I’m also curious why the doc contains no mention of Carl Reiner, Robin Williams and Bernadette Peters. I could’ve used some discussion there rather than more shots of Steve putzing around the house. But we do get a poignant remembrance of a John Candy speech that was cut from “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” and that, even to this day, moves Martin to tears.

Is that his most beloved film? Seems like it. 

I am surprised that “Roxanne” is so ill-thought-of while “Grand Canyon,” which felt insufferable to me three decades ago, makes the cut. Maybe I should rewatch some of these.

WARNING: SPOILERS

Is Dune the text at the fulcrum of popular culture? Feels like it. It’s the midpoint of the journey of our heroic journeys.

Which go something like this. 

In David Lean’s 1962 Oscar-winning film, “Lawrence of Arabia,” a blue-eyed member of the elite goes native in a desert community and prospers; he winds up attacking his own empire and is exalted by the desert people. They chant his name.

Three years later, Frank Herbert published his novel, “Dune,” in which a member of the elite goes native and blue-eyed on a desert planet. He learns mind-control and the desert people exalt him as the long-lost messiah. They chant his name. He is deemed The One as he takes on the Empire—only to realize that he is related to his enemies.

Twelve years after that, in George Lucas’ “Star Wars,” a boy on a desert planet learns mind-control in order to take on the Empire—only to realize, mid-journey, that he is related to his enemies.

Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” movies really underline how much Herbert’s story owes to T.E. Lawrence, and how much “Star Wars” borrows from it. But the journey of our heroic journeys feels less than heroic to me. Once upon a time, our stories were grown-up and historical, rooted in life on Earth; then they gave way to childhood fantasy.

But these are good movies. This is arthouse “Star Wars.”

How do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mr. Death?
My favorite moment of revenge, by the way, didn’t have anything to do with the demise of Baron Harkonnen (though the insects on his corpse were a nice touch), nor making Christopher Walken’s Emperor bow and literally kiss the ring (because, like in “Star Wars,” the Emperor was unseen in the first film and a last-minute addition to the second). No, it was when Paul used THE VOICE against the all-powerful and shrouded Rev. Mother Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling), the seer who orchestrated most of the tragedy we’ve been watching for the past three years:

Rev. Mother: Consider what you are about to do, Paul Atreides …
Paul: SILENCE!
[The force of the voice knocks down the Reverend Mother]
Rev. Mother: [fearfully] Abomination.

God, that was great. And maybe my reaction is indicative of the true power in this universe. It’s not with this bloated man, nor that decrepit old one, nor the young, bald psychopath. It’s with the women. The seers. The Bene Gesserit. And now a man has joined them.

“Dune: Part Two” totally worked. It’s a great story, the visuals are amazing, and while it’s long (nearly three hours) I felt like it wasn’t long enough. I felt like, to truly tell this story, you need a miniseries. Maybe we’ll get that someday. Though I do recommend watching the first movie again before you see this. Unless, of course, you already know the story. I just know it helped me.  

Hell, even with rewatching it, I missed the part where Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) survived. I thought he bit it along with Leto (Oscar Isaacs) and Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa).

So, in our last episode, the Atreideses were assigned by the Emperor to replace the Harkonnens as fiefholders on the desert planet of Arrakis, the source of “spice,” a psychotropic substance that also allows for interstellar travel. It’s as if LSD also powered automobiles, I guess. But it was less promotion than set-up. The Emperor feared Leto’s growing power and wanted him eliminated. The Harkonnens do just that. But Paul Atreides (Timothy Chalamet) and his Bene Gesserit mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), escape into the desert.

There, they meet, and are almost killed by, the native Fremen peoples, who know how to fight and survive in the desert. Jamis, the warrior, challenges Paul, Paul wins. That’s where we left off.

Now they’re going native. And as Paul goes through various rituals and adopts the name “Muad’Dib” (Desert Mouse), and his eyes keep getting bluer from the spice and he keeps outfoxing Baron Harkonnen’s inept nephew (Dave Bautista), we periodically cut to other planets, where we see:

• Baron Harkonnen plotting ponderously amid the mudbaths designed to excrete the poison inhaled in the last movie
• Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) journaling, and realizing that Paul Atreides may be alive, and that her father, the Emperor, caused the whole fiasco
• The rise of the youngest Harkonnen nephew, Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), who is pale, hairless, brutish and insane

Lady Jessica also goes through rituals, drinking yadda yadda, and oh no, she shouldn’t have done that when she was pregnant! But whatevs.

Increasingly, and via Fremen leader Stilgar (Javier Bardem), amusingly, or maybe heartwarmingly, the natives think Paul is the return of the Messiah. This is particularly true in the south, which is why Paul doesn’t want to go there. Lady Jessica does. She figures, hey, nothing safer than being considered the Messiah. But Paul is disturbed by visions: millions dying in his father’s name. He doesn’t want that. Or that Paul doesn’t want that.

I’d forgotten he gets corrupted. Is that why I never finished the trilogy? The hero stopped being the hero? Watching this, I was also disappointed when Paul reunites with Gurney Halleck. I liked him alone with the Fremen.

Eventually, though, he’s forced to flee south, where for some reason he drinks the Water of Life, goes into coma, comes out of it, and now he’s less Paul than he was before. He can see the future clearer and he believes in the prophecies more. Or does he merely use them? I’m unclear. How much is calculated and how much is he buying into everything? Or maybe he should be buying into it all, since he is what he is. 

Anyway, massive forces move against each other, Paul and the Fremen overwhelm the Harkonnens and retake the planet, and Paul kills the Baron. Then he agrees to fight Feyd-Rautha, who, I don’t think, the movie played up enough. His one big battle before Paul is with three creatures in an arena, but the decks are stacked—two of them are drugged. He seems less menacing than pampered. Or he’s menacing for being pampered. Either way, he proves a tougher battle for Paul than anyone else in these movies. But he loses. 

A lot of what happens in the last hour I was confused by. Why does he demand Princess Irulan’s hand in marriage? To unite families? He’s already defeated her family. Is he trying to avoid the holy wars he sees in his visions or doesn’t he care about that anymore? Maybe he’s a big fan of journaling. 

Books of Thomas, Paul, Luke
I shouldn’t make fun. I liked it. I particularly liked Javier Bardem’s Stilgar: the crumbling of his curmudgeonly nobility as more and more he wants to believe. Chalamet is great, too, in a tough role for such a skinny malink. Zendaya works as Chandi, the Fremen guide and love interest. Lea Seydoux is in this too? What a cast. Anya Taylor-Joy even shows up in a vision as Paul’s grownup sister. Yes, like Luke, Paul has a sister. Maybe this one will prove more useful. (Sorry, Leia fans.) 

I’m interested in seeing where this goes. Maybe it goes to places the “Star Wars” movies should have but didn’t. And I’m curious how this, the outsider in the desert, the T.E. Lawrence story with superpowers, became the heroic journey of all of our voyeuristic lives. Not enough has been written about that.