Review for Harold and Maude

Director: Hal Ashby

Released: 1971
Genre: Pitch Black Comedy

Harold and Maude was released in 1971 that has since become a cult fixture of the New Hollywood movement. It is very similar to the 1967 work The Graduate, in that it seeks to portray the generational conflict occurring at the time- specifically the disconnection from convention many members of America's youth sought in search of their identity. I thought The Graduate was an excellent movie, but I personally liked Harold and Maude even more; I now consider it to be my personal favorite of the pre-Godfather New Hollywood movies.

I say this because I have always been drawn to the macabre and morbid elements of art and literature, and Harold and Maude is at heart a scathing, pitch black comedy. It captures the dull and affluent lifestyle of its main character, Harold, who epitomizes the term "gothic." He stages various suicides around the house in an attempt to provoke a reaction from his mother. When asked by his therapist what he does for fun, Harold responds with, "I go to funerals." Later on in the film, Harold is given a new audience with which to indulge in his theatrics; the girls his mother brings over in an attempt to set him up with a date. What ensues are darkly hilarious performances involving gasoline, severed hands, and a mock sword ritual.

Harold and Maude is also a love story- an old lady named Maude shadows Harold at the funerals he attends, much to the chagrin of the surrounding mourners. In many ways, Maude is the polar opposite of the boy; she is spontaneous and extremely vivacious for her age, and drives around in whatever car happens to be closest to her when she decides to go somewhere. The two soon become very close to one another, rescuing ailing curbside trees and going for drives on the windy backroads they live by. Later on in the movie, Harold decides to marry Maude, which elicits hilarious reactions from his mother, his uncle (a one armed military General), his therapist, and above all a Catholic Priest. By the end, Harold is brought to his senses by Maude, and in a wonderfully symbolic fashion, decides to abandon his obsession with death and start his life anew.

I urge everybody to see Harold and Maude at least once in their lifetime- everything about the movie is enjoyable, from the characters (both resoundingly eccentric and unbearably conventional), to the soundtrack by Cat Stevens, to the wonderfully shot cinematography. It serves as a wonderful commentary on the social upheaval that America's reactionary, upper crust society was experiencing at the time, and is a good story about personal growth and discovery to boot.

4.00/4.00

Review for The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

Director: Seth Gordon

Released: 2007
Genre: Documentary

The key to making a good documentary is picking a compelling subject to capture with your camera lens. The topic being covered may not seem very interesting to most, but cohesive pacing and narration can win an audience over. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters achieves this, documenting those in pursuit of highest ever score on the original 1981 Donkey Kong arcade game. On the way, we learn not must about competitive gaming, but about human nature as well- and how the true difficulty lies not with reaching the top spot in a profession, but staying there.

The King of Kong focuses primarily on two people: Steve Weibe and Billy Mitchell. Steve is on a mission to beat Billy's record score of 874,000 on Donkey Kong, which was set in 1982 and has stood for over two decades. He works on deciphering the game's physics with his own arcade version (which he keeps in his garage), and has everything down to a fine science. In one scene, we see him marking out the different paths of barrels he must avoid with chalk; he waits for the bouncing obstacles to line up with a certain sequence of parabolas, and only then attempts to climb the final ladder in a stage. Such a seemingly mundane task sounds boring to watch, but director Seth Gordon is able to show how riveting it is to see.

Gordon also chronicles the history of arcade game competition, which revolves around a record keeping and competition hosting company called Twin Galaxies. Walter Day, the founder of the business, referees games and validates scores with several assistants, who watch thousands of hours of videotaped footage people send in to establish new high scores. We're also shown a video game convention held at Funspot in New Hampshire, the place where Steve sets the highest publicly attained score on his beloved game- a score just short of a million points. What ensues is a battle for the top spot, with Mitchell sending in a video tape of him attaining a score of 1,047,000 points and offering to pay anyone who beats him a total of ten thousand dollars.

I will not reveal who winds up with the high score in the end (be it on video tape or in public), but needless to say the competition is intense. During this, Gordon shows many of those who are fixtures in the circle of arcade gaming devotees, from Billy Mitchell's clingy underling Brian Kuh, to Doris Self, an eighty year old woman who holds the record score for the game Q-Bert. What we get as a result is a very cooky but rewarding film.

3.00/4.00

Review for Troy

Director: Wolfgang Peterson

Released: 2004
Genre: Sword and Sandal Epic

Troy was directed by Wolfgang Peterson and released in theaters in 2004. Peterson has a fairly wide range of movies to his credit, including the spectacular WWII drama Das Boot and the fastasy film The Neverending Story. I have always admired Peterson's collaboration with cinematographer Jost Vocano; together they have produced a masterpiece and a near miss. Vocano has shot the majority of Paul Verhoven's works (including Starship Troopers), and has not been associated with Peterson's direction since The Neverending Story was completed in 1984. Since then, Peterson went on to direct a string of average films in his attempt to produce another Das Boot. These include Air Force One, The Perfect Storm, and Poseidon. I have watched all three of these, and I can say for certain that none top any critic's "best of" list. I had not seen Troy, however, but last night I was willing to give it a shot- after all, I voluntarily rented The Wicker Man remake a few days ago, so I felt I was prepared to waste a few hours of my life.

Of course, I did not think that "a few hours" would translate into 163 minutes, but since I was going to see Troy with a group of fellow movie enthusiasts, I decided not to think much of it. From the title alone, I knew it would be a very streamlined retelling of Homer's The Iliad. I also knew from the cover art of the DVD case that there would be a lot of glory shots of Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, and Eric Bana. I was right on both counts.

Troy effectively tells the most spectacular segment of The Iliad, which is the part that begins with Helen, Queen of Sparta, falling in love with Paris, Prince of Troy, and ends with the sacking of Troy itself and the death of the great warrior Achilles. The story is told in (of course) English, and there are several epic battle scenes. The whole movie reminded me of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in terms of the enormity and number of battles. This was especially true when I saw Orlando Bloom's character trying to fight off the Greeks as the latter bashes down a very narrow wooden door. Every now and then the camera stopped shifting and bouncing, and we were able to see Brad Pitt and Eric Bana pull off some pretty spectacular moves, usually involving the killing of many enemy soldiers. I will admit that such niceties were fun from time to time.

Less fun was the length of the film- by the end I just wanted Paris to get it over with and fire an arrow through Achilles' heel. Brad Pitt is lovely and all (although proper lighting and flattering camera angles can do that for anyone), but by the end I had tired of the score, which is similar to but less impressive than the soundtrack to Gladiator, and the money shots of the leading characters... with the exception of Peter O'Toole as Priam, of course.

All things considered, Troy capitalizes upon Gladiator's success in reviving the "sword and sandal" spectacles of the 1950s and early 1960s, and is entertaining in parts. But if I wanted to see an unnecessarily long dramatization of ancient warfare, I would see Spartacus- at least that one has Kirk Douglass and Laurence Olivier.

2.25/4.00