retro movie review: A Countess From Hong Kong

A Countess From Hong Kong is a movie made by people who didn't know what they were doing. And by that, I'm not referring to general incompetence (this review will make the filmmakers sound incompetent, but considering their stellar work before and after this movie, that would be a hard case to make) but I am saying that people making this film didn't seem to understand what genre they were working in.

Before I get into exactly how this movie missteps, let me provide a quick overview: Marlon Brando -- not the old, mumbling Brando, but the young, sex-symbol Brando -- stars as Ogden Mears, a rising star in the United States Foreign Service. Ogden's combination of youth and prestige within the foreign service makes him an international media sensation, and as the movie opens, there is talk of him being appointed Secretary of State, although he quickly learns that that lofty position has instead been given to a rival, and Ogden is instead given the consolation appointment as ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Ogden sets out on a cruise ship from Hong Kong (where he has been vacationing) to the U.S., to formally accept his new position. However, his first morning at sea brings shock when he wakes up next to Natascha (Sophia Loren), a Russian countess and expatriate he has no memory of, thanks to a wild party the night before. Natascha is a stow-away, determined to make the trip to America, and although Ogden's initial impulse is to report her to the captain, his hands are tied, as he is a married man with a career and possible scandal to think about, while she is a beautiful, scantily clad woman who stowed away in the young diplomat's room.

Natascha and Ogden scheme to keep Natascha hidden in his room, but this proves complicated, as various members of his staff, the press, and the ship's crew keep finding reasons to enter Ogden's suite at the most inopportune times. The result is a lot of confusion, deception, improvised excuses, quick costume changes, and people ducking behind furniture and slamming doors, as everything gets further complicated by the fact that characters seem to fall in and out of love and lust at the drop of a hat.

What we have here is a fairly standard bedroom farce, and all of the material needed to make it a good bedroom farce is clearly present on the screenplay level. I wish that was enough to make it a good movie, but to praise this film because of its screenplay is like praising a condemned building because its blueprints were drawn well -- all of the potential for a well-constructed product may be there, but the result is still a wreck.

I took notes while watching this movie -- already a bad sign, since it means I wasn't too busy sitting back and enjoying what was playing out on the screen. The first note I made concerned the pacing. This is a story and a script which doesn't just require, but desperately cries out for madcap slapstick and rapid-fire delivery. Comedy often requires a fast pace, and farce demands it outright. Yet with A Countess From Hong Kong, every actor speaks with patient deliberation, and every shot lingers for a few beats too long -- just long enough to kill the comic potential in every scene.

Speaking of actors, this cast simply has no winners (with one very small exception I'll get to in a minute). The performances aren't bad as far as acting goes, so much as they are simply inappropriate for the genre; everybody in the whole movie makes the same mistake, delivering their lines with quiet earnestness when the dialogue so very clearly requires desperation and confusion. Marlon Brando is particularly miscast, providing an all-too serious interpretation of what should have been a funny character.

This is the movie that has finally convinced me that my friend Laurie is right about comedy necessarily stemming from frustration rather than anger. (Laurie insists that she got this theory from Norman Lear, but when I asked Norman Lear, he says he got the theory from Laurie.) Brando plays many of his scenes in this movie not with increasing frustration, which could have been hilarious, but rather with an undercurrent of intense, near-to-boiling-over fury. This was a trademark acting style for Brando, and in drama, it works wonders. In comedy, it completely destroys any attempt at light-heartedness. There is a scene, for example, in which Ogden finds Natascha wearing his pajamas without his permission, and he demands that she remove them immediately or he will take them off for her. The attempted humor to the scene -- the writer's intention is so clear, that it's a shame it doesn't play out as planned -- is that Ogden's frustration level is so through the roof that he doesn't realize the inevitable, sexual implications behind his demand that Natascha immediately remove her clothing. It occurs to Natscha, though, whose teasing comments go right over Ogden's head as he chases her about the room in an attempt to rip the clothing from her.

Had Brando played this scene with comical frustration, the result would have been a delightful mixture of eroticism and slapstick. But with Brando's barely contained rage, Ogden' doesn't come off as an oblivious innocent, but as a disturbed, possibly dangerous man. The extent to which Brando's choice is so wrong for this scene is exacerbated by the fact that Sophia Loren seems to understand the intent behind the humor, and has fun with it. The result is a really odd mismatch of stylistic interpretations of the same scene; on the one hand, you have Loren gaily laughing and cavorting about the room, and then you have Brando, who looks like he's going to tear her head off if he ever catches her.

I understand that Brando did a good job in the farce Guys and Dolls, but in A Countess From Hong Kong, he is simply dead wrong as the comic leading man. Plug Sid Caesar or Dick van Dyke into this role, and you probably would have had something. But Brando? What comically-challenged idiot thought to cast Marlon Brando as the leading man in what should have been a wacky comedy?

The answer to that question is what's weird about this movie failing so completely, because it was directed, produced, and written by none other than Charlie Chaplin, one of the greatest comedy minds of his or any other generation. It's hard, even mind-blowing, to reconcile Chaplin's genius with his complete bungling of this movie. And yet Chaplin is responsible not only for the miscasting of Brando in the lead role -- a terrible choice that is hard to fathom -- but also for the incompetently drawn-out pace that kills so much of -- in fact, all of -- whatever comic potential remains.

I earlier mentioned that there was one small exception in this cast, and that is Chaplin himself, who has two very brief scenes as a porter. An old man at this point in his career, Chaplin gave himself very, very little to do in his scenes, which amount to nothing more than an unimportant cameo. But if you watch the movie, note how his energy and positivity give each scene a small boost. It's not nearly enough to make up for everything else that goes wrong in every scene, but it's a small something. It proves that, at least on a performer's level, Chaplin understood what was needed for the movie. That's precisely what makes such a mystery out of his complete failure to turn this potentially fun farce into anything other than a dull disappointment.

movie review: The Last Exorcism

The Last Exorcism is a horror film that is more intriguing than scary. It works in some ways and not others, but even when it fails, it often at least fails in an interesting way. I'd like to break the discussion down into several aspects of the film; skip the first paragraph only if you're hyper, hyper sensitive to spoilers, as I don't give anything important away, but I do discuss the ending in vague generalities.

The Ending -- I promised to speak in vague generalities to avoid giving anything away, so here goes. The way I see it, there are only three major types of twist endings a movie can have. There's the mind-blowing twist that forces you to reconsider significance of everying that has preceeded it (think The Usual Suspects, or almost anything written by M. Night Shyamalan), the "what a gyp!" twist that forces you to dismiss the significance of everything that has preceeded it (think "it was all just a dream!"), and, last and certainly least, the "huh, what?" twist that confuses everyone and explains nothing. Sadly, the ending to this film falls squarely in that latter category.

The Format -- The Last Exorcism is yet another faux-documentary style horror film. The concept, once both effective and intriguing, is now getting old and dated, as I've already explained in detail in my previous blog entry, "It Would be Scarier if I Actually Believed It" (and here's the link, if you're curious: http://moremoviemanmusings.blogspot.com/2010/06/it-would-be-scarier-if-i-actually.html). If you're not interested in reading another whole blog entry, the gist of my earlier entry was that the concept depends too heavily on convincing the viewer that the events in the film actually happened, that you're watching actual footage. The Blair Witch Project, for example, was a lot scarier for those who thought they were really watching the final, mysterious, terrifying days of three filmmakers lost in the woods. For many people who knew it was a hoax, it was downright laughable.

By now, even most otherwise guillible viewers are wise to the faux-documentary style. The Blair Witch Project inspired widespread speculation about its authenticity as a documentary. I doubt many people will speculate that The Last Exorcism is genuine. There are even stretches of the film when the camera work and editing are too Hollywood-smooth to be mistaken for an actual documentary, as if the filmmakers knew that the viewers wouldn't fall for the charade on any level, and so occasionally abandon the format they've established, hoping that we're so caught up in the narrative that we don't notice the obvious lack of spontanaeity. For all I know, this was the best way to tell this particular tale (it certainly provides an easy excuse for a lot of exposition). I would be really interested to ask the filmmakers why they chose this format.

The Scares -- Didn't really work for me. This is coming from someone who thinks The Exorcist and The Exorcism of Emily Rose are two of the most frightening films ever made, but the bottom line is that the exorcism itself, and the girl who is possessed, aren't really the most interesting aspects of the film, although they're clearly meant to be. We know that the girl is going to be alternately sweet and cruel, helpless and violent, both victim and villain. We know she will speak in strange voices, sometimes in laguages that (other characters will gasp) she couldn't possibly know, and when the possession reaches its height, she will contort her body horrifically and even exhibit telekinetic powers. This is less a formula than a checklist, and without adding anything new to the mix, the possession in The Last Exorcism simply lacks intrigue.

On the other hand, just as this film would be a lot more effective on novices to the overused format, it might be terrifying for someone who is unfamiliar to exorcism/possession films.

The Supporting Characters -- There are a few supporting characters, but the two most prevalent are Caleb and Louis, the possessed girl's brother and father. For inexplicable reasons, the writers chose to depict Caleb and Louis with every redneck cliche in the book. They've both got closed-minded, stereotyped, and strong views on the church, medicine, psychology, psychiatry, and, of course, city-folk. Caleb wears an army hat. Louis carries a shot-gun and demonstrates that he's a little too eager to use it. The viewer shakes his head and wonders whether the writers even tried to put any imagination at all into either character. If so, it certainly, certainly doesn't show.

The Main Character -- The main character, Reverend Cotton Marcus, is so believable, complex, intriguing, and original, that he almost makes up for all of the other film's shortcomings. The writers could have gotten away with making Marcus simply a charlatan (Rev. Ernest in Repossessed), a doubting Thomas (Father Karras in The Exorcist), an earnest believer (Father Moore in Emily Rose), or a jaded but seasoned pro (the main character in Constantine) and, because the main attraction is supposed to be the possessed girl rather than the exorcist, they would have gotten away with keeping him one-dimensional without much complaint from critics or viewers. Instead, they chose to provide Cotton Marcus with aspects of all of these characteristics.

Marcus's back story is just credible enough to be intriguing. Marcus comes from a long line of evangelical preachers and exorcists; both he and his father boast to having performed hundreds of exorcisms, and Marcus himself has been preaching the Word of God since he was a little boy. Then came a crisis of faith -- not from a bad event, which would be the cliche, but from a good event: Marcus's son had a very difficult birth, and, for a while, his survival was touch-and-go. When the kid managed to recover, Marcus was stunned to find that his first thought wasn't "thank God!" but "thank the doctors!" This led to a chain of thought that caused Marcus to question not only his current belief in God, but his past alleged belief as well. Had he ever really believed in God? Or has he just been operating on auto-pilot, acting out the role his father had laid out for him?

Still preaching despite his continually increasing lack of faith, Marcus soon realizes that his congregants are equally on auto-pilot; he even tests this suspicion by sneaking a banana bread recipe into one of his sermons, and his parishioners, sure enough, cry out "amen" and "hallelujah" but fail to notice Marcus's test.

His biggest crisis of faith is a sudden disbelief in the validity of possession and exorcism. The Last Exorcism is about Marcus's determination to discredit possession by faking an exorcism. His methods for faking an exorcism (or, at least, his planned methods, before the possession turns out to be genuine) do an excellent job of demonstrating to the film's audience how easily an exorcist can fake paranormal events, in an attempt to use the power of suggestion to exorcise a believer's demons -- which, Marcus insists, are purely psychological, not supernatural.

All of this adds up to a very interesting character. Marcus may be arrogant, but his arrogance lacks condescension or cruelty. He may be more than a bit too full of himself, but his motivation to mock a solemn Christian belief is well-intended, as he is reacting with sincere concern to a newspaper story in which a boy was recently killed in an attempted exorcism. "If I can manage to expose the falsehoods at the heart of exorcism," Marcus hopes, "no innocent child should ever have to die again at the hands of a misguided, would-be exorcist."

Of course, since this is a horror movie, Marcus's best laid plans, and his assertion that demonic possession is bunk, quickly go out the window. But I loved how, even as evidence in favor of actual possesion continues to mount, Marcus continues to insist that it's all just psychological in nature. He used to take the supernatural for granted, and now he's clearly overcompensating in the other direction.

You know what? Leave out the cliched supporting characters, the ineffective scares, and the stupid twist endings, and this movie would border on genius. I could watch a whole movie about this character alone, without all the gimmicks. The character of Cotton Marcus makes the movie worth watching. The rest is just window dressing.

How to Survive the Oregon Trail -- 5th ed.

Rule @1 -- There are no guarantees. You could do everything right and still die along the way. Be emotionally prepared for that, lest you fall into an "it's not fair" funk. Heck, that's how the Oregon Trail really was -- misfortune could strike even the ablest of travelers. So I can not guarantee that following my advice will get you safely to your destination. However, after playing the game more times than I care to admit, I have made some observations about what choices will greatly increase your chances of survival while playing the fifth edition of the Oregon Trail computer game.

Rule #2 -- Be a banker. Period. Before you set out on your journey -- heck, before you even start preparing for your journey -- the game offers you scores of different professions your wagon leader could be. The game will confuse you by explaining that each profession has its pros and cons. A doctor, for example, allegedly has a better chance of curing sick family members (and yes, as the journey goes on, people will get sick, it's unavoidable), while a carpenter has a better chance of, say, fixing a broken wagon wheel. Don't be fooled. How often party members get sick or injured, or how often your wagon breaks down, and so on, seem to be purely random events. More to the point, your ability to cure the sick or injured party member or fix the wagon also seems to be random, regardless of what skills your chosen profession provides. Now, for all I know, there may be some probability matrix that is part of The Oregon Trail's gaming program, but I've played this game dozens of times now, and if being a doctor really makes your character more likely to cure someone, or a carpenter more likely to mend a broken wagon wheel, or a butcher more successful at properly cutting up your hunted meat -- I haven't seen any evidence. Besides, if you really want some of these skills, you can choose them as "extra" skills that your banker has somehow learned before setting out for Oregon. It still doesn't seem to make any difference one way or the other, but I tend to stock up on extra skills, more out of superstition than anything else.

"So," you may ask, "if the skills of your profession don't make a lick of difference, why does it matter if you're a banker?" Because, my inquisitive friend, bankers start out with more money. A lot more. And if you really want to be cynical (i.e., "realistic") about it, this game reflects the real world in one glaring way: Success in life depends a lot less on your skills, and a lot more on how much money you've got when starting out. Yes, much of the events that occur in your journey across the Oregon Trail will be random, but for the events that aren't random, money seems to be a decisive factor nearly every time. Note that every single remaining rule in this guide has money at the center of it.

Trust me, running out of money in this game sucks big time. If you have money, every city, fort, store, town, and trading post is a place where you can stock up on much-needed supplies that can literally bring you and your family members back from the brink of death. Without money, you simply have to make do with whatever little you already have or can scrounge from the wilderness. And it would be a mistake to put too much faith in the bounty of the wilderness.

Rule #3 -- Stock up on food, firearms, and ammunition. You can survive without anything else, but without food, you will get sick and eventually die. So before you set out, and again at every place that sells it, stock up on as much food as you can, because it will always run out more quickly than expected, often at the most inconvenient times. (If you're a day away from a trading post, no big deal, but if it's the middle of winter, and you're weeks away from civilization, a sudden discovery that you're low on food can be a deadly problem.) Personally, I enjoy stocking up on a variety of foods just for the heck of it, but unless your characters are starving to death, the only foods that make any practical difference during game play are meat, fruit, and vegetables, so if you have to make a choice while food shopping, always buy more meat, fruit, and veggies, and less of other food products such as bread, crackers, etc.

If you're starving to death, the bread and crackers are certainly better than nothing, but you can have a mountain of such foods and still start to suffer from ill effects if your characters go too long without meat, fruit, or veggies. My advice: If you have to make a choice, buy more fruits and veggies than meats. Why? Two reasons. First, nearly every trading post seems to have some kind of meat for sale, while fruits and veggies are surprisingly rare. Second, you can always hunt for more meat, and hunting is kind of fun, sort of like a game within the game. Gathering plants in the wilderness, however, is a pain in the neck. You have to look up every plant in the guidebook to prevent poisoning, and no matter how many plants you gather, they never seem to last more than a day or two. Furthermore, while hunting can be done in any climate, plants grow increasingly scarce in colder weather, and a long winter can spell disaster for the traveler who hasn't brought enough vegetables with them.

And speaking of hunting, stock up on firearms and all kinds of ammunition. I know nothing about antique firearms in real life, but I know that in this game, the use of any kind of firearm depends on the availability of buckshot, bullets, and gunpowder; you need all three (as well as the firearm itself, of course) for any given weapon to work. This is vital, because no matter how well stocked you try to be, you will eventually run out of meat, and hunting is often the only way to get more. Having a knife is cool, but the game doesn't allow you to hunt with it.

There are plenty of other things you can buy. Some, such as furniture, games, and musical instruments, are clearly pure extravagance, whose only practical use in the game is for boosting morale. Other items, such as blankets, winter clothes, and medicines, would seem to be necessities. Don't be fooled; just because something would be vital for survival in real life, doesn't mean it's necessary in the game. In the harsh winters of The Oregon Trail, someone with three extra layers of clothing may freeze to death as quickly as someone in their everyday outfit. And as for buying medicines, remember what I said about the pure randomness of how this game treats illness and injury? The bottom line is you will end up never needing most of the medicines that are sold in this game. Other medicines, such as laudunum, seem to be always available whether you buy them or not. And whether your patient will get worse or recover depends less on your medical supplies and more on your decisions along the way. (Should the concussion patient exercise or rest? Should the snake bite be cleansed or tourniqueted? Etc.) In short: Spend your medicine money on food instead. Many illnesses encountered on the trail, such as scurvy, stem from malnutrition.

I'll give this game credit for being sneaky. The first few times I played this game, I dismissed games and musical instruments with a laugh every time I saw them on sale at a store. Then I noticed that the game constantly monitors morale, and the guidebook claims that games and instruments can keep morale up. So I started buying this stuff to boost morale, only to learn that the potential morale boosts that allegedly come with having games and instruments never came into play. Why not? Because when morale dips, it's typically because of either a lack of food, or due to health problems (which, in turn, are also usually due to a lack of food). In short, if you're budgeting, spend your morale money on food, since a lack of food will devastate morale, while a lack of games and music barely makes a dent.

(Despite all of this, I personally like to spend money on medicines, winter clothes, and extravagances anyway, despite the knowledge that they will never be of any practical use in the game. But that's just me. What can I say, I just like getting into character, and my character would want that stuff!)

One more thing about keeping your supplies stocked: The game allows you to trade with other travelers and townspeople at almost any given time. The nearly constant opportunity to trade is misleading. Unless you are absolutely desperate, do not, do not, do not depend on this as a method of getting what you need to survive. People who are willing to trade with you rarely have the exact item you need, and when they do, their prices are often steep. If you must trade, keep an eye on your supplies, and make sure that you're not trading away something that you need. Twice now, I've been tricked into trading away an ox, only to realize that I now couldn't go anywhere, because my remaining oxes weren't strong enough to pull the wagon without their comrade.

And speaking of oxen, that leads me to . . .

Rule #4 -- Use oxen, not horses or mules. The game's "helpful" guidebook will go on and on about how each of these animals has their pros and cons as pack animals, but it simply ain't so. Horses may be faster, but unfettered speed don't mean a damn thing if they're tied to a wagon that's too heavy for them to pull. Oxen can carry a heck of a lot more (and they will have to, since any properly stocked wagon is going to weigh an awful lot) than horses or mules, they cost a lot less, and, unlike their more equestrian cousins, oxen can be more easily turned into edible meals should they die along the way. Considering how much more useful they are than horses, I can't figure out why oxes cost about a tenth as much. Maybe horses are just for suckers?

Rule #5 -- When crossing a river, use bridges and ferries whenever you can. Yes, it costs money, so you may sometimes find yourself asking, "how do I know if I can afford it?" Let me put it this way: If the ferry costs three dollars, and all you have left is three dollars, spend the three dollars on the damn ferry. Whatever money you spend on the bridge or the ferry will be worth less than all of the supplies you will lose if you try to cross the river on your own, and you end up tipping over. After careful study, I've learned that caulking the wagon and attempting to float across the river has a roughly 50% chance of success, while attempting to ford or wade across is even less likely to succeed. Crossing on a ferry has an almost 100% rate of success. Use the damn ferry.

Rule #6 -- Check the hill before ascent or descent. Remember what I said about there being no guarantees, and that these rules were more about increasing your chances? This rule embodies that statement more than any other. Yes, it's possible to blindly careen forward and still avoid tipping over, and it's equally possible to take the time to make careful preparations, only to smash the wagon on the rocks anyway. Shit happens. But I've learned that taking the time to evaluate a hill's rockyness, slipperyness, and steepness does increase your chances of getting the wagon over a hill in one piece.

Rule #7 -- donations: Occasionally, you may run into other travelers who ask for charity -- they need food or other supplies, and can not (or will not) offer anything in return. Be generous if you want to feel good about yourself, but keep in mind that there is no practical or karmic pay-off; it is charity, and the game never reverses the situation; no matter how desperate you get, nor how dire your situation may be, no one you encounter on the trail ever, ever offers to give you anything for free.