Quinoa1984

One thought right off the bat: this has just God-tier level cinematography. Such magnificent color schemes, like a few of these images of DeVito looking out at the sky from his office out of Gone with the Wind or some Expressionist apocalyptic landscape (and those shots of the aggrrssive cutting up of the steaks, perfection). Who shot this? Oh, Stephen H Burum! DoP of like ten Brian De Palma films. Still, this kind of got snubbed for that category at the Academy Awards.

The War of the Roses is quality artistry for a story and characters that are not particularly deep as far as satirical figures; for 1989 this was dark and edgy mostly for some of the lengths the married Roses go towards destroying one another in the second half of the film (up to and including an almost pre-Lorena Bobbit experience, minor spoiler I dont care this is now decades old). The movie holds up much greater when watching it after the recent film version from Jay Roach and Cumberbatch and Colman, but that is more in just having a set of teeth rather than full on characterization.

I do have some perspective now on that re-tooling... do we call it a remake? It is quite different from this original adaptation, not least of which when it comes to how the wife manages to create a much stronger workforce under her name and is the reason the husband can make his dream home - which was her idea to help him.out no less - and how this makes for a more potent conflict. The problem for that newer version is that for all of its ambition, it suffered in the way that Roach still wanted the audience to *like* the characters for as far as they are pitiful creatures.

DeVito and by extension Douglas and Turner never do that, they are the rich Yuppie upper middle class freaks that they appear to be, and the fact that Oliver won't let go of the house and just move on to get another one (which he can do as one of those super-powered Legal freaks who get paid hundreds of dollars an hour) makes him seem all the more unreasonable and a ripe and ideal comic protagonist. Meanwhile, Barbara is more sympathetic, but just barely; she is still a kind of human cartoon who manages to still have super-powered gymnastic abilities that we see early on in the "Good Old Days" of their courtship but like can you really keep that up for all those decades? Maybe there are secret hormones for that, but whatever...

The point is this War of the Roses works for me if only because, unlike not just the new adaptation but a number of recent Eat the Rich satires as of late in the 2020s, not only does it have teeth it has a point of view. You may not like how mean DeVito and his team get, but he does get there and that counts for something. It manages to get under the skin, despite it overall being a shallow delight because it does look with fire in the eyes at power, or people who are trying to attain it, and say "you guys with all your *stuff* are just nuts" (but then again what stuff do you and I have, like the little marble Humunculus that brings the Roses together, that we cling too?)

It still has an impact because it does, for the most part, push its characters into the parts of themselves that are possibly in all of us if we really got to the nastiest levels in a relationship, and if it does turn into a cartoon that is not a put down but an observation - watching what Mrs. Rose does to Mr. Rose's beloved antique vehicle (the one ironically she bought for him ages ago and as soon as you see it know is doomed) is a delight as is all of the manic and Maniacal camera moves and choreography in the stunts.

If anything, I think this would pair less wirh a full on Eat the Rich satire or even a latter Bunuel film than other grim comedies about suburban emotional rot like (also from 1989) the 'Burbs; there is only one place for the prosperous Just Say No White Yuppies to go, and it certainly ain't up!

Way Down East is a potent and often quite sad romantic melodrama full of tragedy, terrible secrets that should not be so but are because this is like 1850 and that Sanderson Lennox is one total sonofabitch. But Griffith's story is, via the character of David who falls for Anna so much, not knowing of her former life and baby out of not-even-real wedlock past who falls for her so much) just as often uplifting about the capacity for good in the human spirit.

It represents DW Griffith at the height of his powers as a maker of gigantic all capital letters MELODRAMA, and in particular in this film he shows an affinity for depicting how men and women have these attitudes about their roles that muddy the lines about who has power or who respects it.

You have in two dominating male characters Lennox and Squire Bennett, the former a n'er do well son of a well off person and the latter a farmer, with a decent home and land, and they each have very set ideas about what women should do; for Lennox, he can "marry" Alice if it means getting to sleep with her, and because of how the society treats an un-Wed mother it suits him just fine that he can walk away because he doesn't know what love is; for Squire, he firmly believes a wrong-doer should not go unpunished, that is until he is faced with one he has come to know and care for. You also have women being stuck: either they accept a man to marry or become the town gossip and spill all the tea on everyone else (it has to happen for the story, but that one gossiper character, yikes, man).

As much as Griffith gets to have some fun staging the barnyard dance and the more intense dramatic scenes - from the maker of Intolerance and Broken Blossoms, you say? My goodness and heaven of pearl! This is the Lillian Gish show, and Griffith knows it. She takes a somewhat thinly drawn character on paper and fills her to the brim with pathos and dignity. I also really liked her scenes with Richard Barthelmess, David who is the son of Squire and falls in his tender way quite hard for pretty and mysterious Alice.

I have to think she must have been a muse for Griffith on a great level (better her than... well, Birth of a Nation for another review and I digress); notice when he approaches her by the riverside to profess his love and then she turns him down gently, it is poetic in its composition, as though the shot could inspire a poem on the spot with the way the light hits the water and actors and how everything is placed just so. And there is this trust in what she is doing and how for as much as Alice is a product of her time she doesn't ever make Alice into a sort of "victim" kind of character or someone who is weak; she is kicked around emotionally by Lennox, and it is through bad luck and timing that he is still around her tangentially but in a real way.

Oh, it does go into a hysterical state of things by the climax, and there is little doubt that director and star are in sync with taking all of the big revelations into overdrive, as if the set piece with Alice on the sheets of ice had to be as a symbolic point where this all would lead. It is almost like nature takes over to fill in the space that is there from all of the emotional dead-weight that the character is carrying, and the chase to find her and her struggle to survive on those sheets. It is just such an incredible sequence that, indeed, it helps to cover over some parts of the film that are just fine or okay, like the supporting characters of the townies who are more like bumbling comic relief who have aged about as well as... well, not that well at all really!

This is memorable work from everyone involved, and if it has some faults with the comic relief it is made up for with everything else and the empathy that Griffith manages here. Lastly... and wow there is also an actual "Why did the chicken cross the road" joke told by a fool side character and a man and woman who hear this and roll their eyes. Even back then!

Caught Stealing is not anything that goes much deeper than what, if you have seen a trailer or ads (and how could you not if you've been to the theaters once this summer or passing any given billboard), this appears to be on first sight as a crime drama filled with colorful characters and a gritty (but still fast-moving) sheen and setting with downtown Manhattan as largely where this is set, with Flushing, Queens and east Brooklyn getting time in the second half. I am fine with that sort of approach to genre as long as the filmmaker knows what he or she has, and Darren Aronofsky does the most important thing which is to accentuate the "I'm in waaaaay over my head" kind of chaotic storytelling that we have seen more or less since the 1980's.

Sure, this is no After Hours, but then again else what is (incidentally both featuring Griffin Dunne, here as probably my choice for the low-key MVP of the supporting players, of which there is a heavy line-up of pros); this has more of the pull of, easy reference if not totally accurate, a post-Tarantino 90's riff that I would have definitely seen and gushed over had it come out at the time in 1998 like it is set in, but moreover it really has its feet set in classic Film Noir tropes in terms of the protagonist/sorta Anti-Hero Hank (a totally-on-fire Austin Butler, probably his best work yet) who has to become a proactive character as s*** keeps flying at him from this or that criminal element, be they Russian, Orthodox Hassidic or, you guessed it, the Fuzz, and there is a Dame in the middle of it all (Zoe Kravitz, pretty good as well as everyone is here) who is in more danger than she knows.

I liked that Aronofsky doesn't get in the way, and probably encouraged I'm sure, how dark this story goes, though I do wonder if another director with, not to be totally dismissive, a more experimental/improvisational sense of what possibilities of humor could be available could have done here, like with a Scorsese or even Guy Ritchie at his peak (Schreiber and D'Onofrio and Kane do get what awkward comedy there is with a bowl of Matzoh Ball soup). And while one is tempted to say this is a "Normal" Aronofsky movie, that is in comparison to some of the most transgressive and visually as well as morally tumultuous films in the Western world by anyone in this century; he still has a morbid understanding, if not fascination, of the ways the human body can be punished, and the trauma that Hank revisits is palpable and just that image of the car breaking apart is one that sticks in your teeth, so to speak.

The important thing is we are with Hank on this journey through a hell that comes all thanks to That Darn Cat and That Darn Punk Rock Stereotype, and Butler sells his bewilderment and pain on multiple fronts, and I liked that his Hank understands, eventually, just how much of a boondoggle it is with these opposing sides on the hunt for these millions and that he can play some of them off one another... until he can't. There's intense turns, break-neck and shocking bouts of violence, irony placed in just the right doses and a few genuinely keen plants and pay-offs in the script.

So, despite the fact that I don't think you should look to this necessarily as an accurate depiction of Russian and Orthodox Jewish street criminals, for the sake of the big bag of PULP that this is and how much seeing Hank get through Skin-of-his-Teeth style entertains, it serves for a very good time and that is enough at least for this first viewing. I may also be an easy mark for Scuzzy NYC Crime Cinema in general (and in fiction, nache), so take my recommendation with some salt if you must.

And that Cat: maybe the best Cat Actor since Inside Llewyn Davis? (Hope I am not forgetting a later Agnes Varda since then, but I digress).