What I’m Watching: Buster Keaton and KongDate: 3/30/2017
In this month’s edition of “What I’m Watching,” I’ll share some of the movies I’ve seen in theaters, on home video and on streaming services.
On Home Video: Buster rides again
Any month during which four restored Buster Keaton silent comedies are released is a good month for me. Kino-Lorber has put out on Blu-ray a double bill of “Tthe General” with “Three Ages” and “Steamboat Bill Junior” with “College.”
The films have never looked so good and if you’ve heard about Keaton’s work, but never seen his silent films, these four films represent a very good start.
Keaton was one of the “Big Three” – critics called them” of silent comedy, along with Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd. The three men had distinctly different approaches to comedy and Keaton was the stranger in a strange land, always the underdog who has to prove himself. Unlike Chaplin, who craved the audience to love him and solicited their sympathy, Keaton’s characters earned our respect and admiration.
This approach, plus Keaton’s consistent effort to push the technical limits of cinema technology at the time, give his films a contemporary edge that make them more accessible to audiences today.
“Three Ages” is a parody of D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance,” as Keaton tells the same love story but in three time periods: the Stone Age, ancient Rome and the 1920s. Inventive with plenty of visual gags, the film is a treat and shows Keaton’s potential, as it was his earliest feature.
“The General” is considered his masterpiece and in terms of creating the look and feel of the Civil War few films do better. Keaton plays the engineer of the locomotive The General, which is stolen by Union spies. He risks everything to retrieve the train. Perhaps not as funny as his other films, “The General” is required viewing in any survey of great American films.
“Steamboat Bill Junior” features Keaton as the long-lost son of a cantankerous steamboat owner on a lazy river in the Midwest. He is not what his father hoped him to be – Keaton’s character wears a wispy mustache and a beret and carries a ukulele – but the younger man shows his ingenuity and courage during the amazing conclusion set during a tornado.
“College” is the lesser of the four films. A much more modest film, Keaton is a high school student who prefers academics to athletics, but changes his mind when the girl he loves declares he must be an athlete to win her. While there are some great gags and stunts, it’s difficult to suspend disbelief about the fit Keaton not being an athlete and to accept him as a high school student.
“Stake Land II”
It may not seem logical to put the words “contemplative” in the same sentence as “apocalyptic vampire movie,” but “Stake Land II” like “Stake Land” is just that.
In a film set in the near future punctuated with violent confrontations with both mindless vampires as well as a post-disaster cult, there are surprisingly many quiet moments that underline the struggle of the survivors to maintain their humanity.
The film is set 10 years ahead of the first film and the young man of the first film now has a stable life as well as family until they are slaughtered by vampires working with the human cultists. He knows he must find his mentor “Mister” to stop this latest effort.
The film reunites stars Connor Paulo as the young Martin and Nick Damici as the older “Mister.” Co-directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen do a fine job in keeping the action moving while maintaining the feel of the original film.
And thank goodness for a vampire movie in which the vamps are really monsters instead of beautiful young people engaged in some sort of soap opera storyline.
In theaters: Kong: Skull Island
A brief and earnest recommendation for this re-boot of King Kong that works in every way the bloated but well-meaning Peter Jackson remake of several years ago did not.
The film should be judged on its own terms as opposed to being compared to the 1933 classic. John Goodman plays a man who manages to get the government to fund a scientific expedition to the mysterious island in the waning days of the Vietnam War. His military escort is led by Samuel L. Jackson, playing the commander of a helicopter squadron who is depressed that so much was expended to fight a war that the United States clearly lost. He sees this new opportunity as a mission he could win.
Goodman is clearly the Carl Denham character, who like Denham, knows more than he is letting on. Brie Larson is a photojournalist who is recording the trip and Tom Hiddleston is a tracker hired to lead the group through the island.
The plan goes sideways pretty quickly. Kong, it turns out, is only one of their worries as the island is teaming with monstrous beasts.
This is an old-fashioned-no-apologies-extended monster film. Somehow the vintage nature of the story and how it is presented seems fresh in our jaded times.
I especially enjoyed the subplot involving a WWII fighter pilot who had crashed on the island in 1944 and managed to survive.
The film is chock full of knowing winks and asides to the first Kong film, which I greatly enjoyed. I wish my grandson were a bit older as this would have been a fine introduction to the genre.
Granted I would have loved to have seen at least one beast rendered in classic stop motion, which wouldn't have been too difficult, but the CGI worked well.
There is an after-credits scene that is worth staying to watch.
|
