Sunset Gun

Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)

Here’s something film lovers need to be reminded of in our Kill Bill, Resident Evil, The Brave One and dear lord..Charlie’s Angels movie-watching times: Tough babes have been gracing the big screen for a long time. Though fewer furious femmes (or rather, more obvious furious femmes) saw the light of celluloid in the earlier days of film than they do now, they were indeed around -- some with more grit, gusto and attitude than their modern kick-ass sisters.

Examples? Try curvy hand-to-hand combat killer Tura Satana in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! or karate-chopping Pam Grier in Coffy or beautiful crazy Tuesday Weld in Pretty Poison or tuff Babs Stanwyck in Forty Guns or Faye Dunaway’s iconic tommy-gun–wielding Bonnie Parker in Bonnie and Clyde. Even Bette Davis is something of a bad-ass in the spectacularly underrated Beyond the Forest in which she's an ace shot, knocking down an innocent little porcupine because, as she says: "porkies irritate me." But one of my favorites, a womanly wonder of big screen sexiness, came back in 1950 when the unforgettable Peggy Cummins shot her way through the classic film noir Gun Crazy.

With the more explanatory alternative title of Deadly Is the Female (Gun Crazy is a lot more hard edged and evocative, I think), Joseph H. Lewis’ seminal noir features a mild-mannered but gun-obsessed John Dall falling for ultimate bad girl Cummins after watching her sharpshooting skills at a local carnival. When you see this scene (which could also rank as one of the sexiest in cinema), you can’t blame his immediate infatuation. Clad in a cowgirl outfit, the mysterious blonde hits her targets, even, in the film’s most obviously erotic moment, between her legs. An ace shot himself, the lanky Dall challenges Cummins, and the two gun nuts fall swiftly in love, marry, and to their demise, go astray after the hotheaded babe convinces Dall to couple up on some robberies.

Though it certainly helps that the movie is so brilliantly filmed (that gritty back seat shot in the car after the robbery is stellar), is violently romantic, features nonstop action and, of course, loads of shooting, it's the presence of a female who, though toxic, asserts such authority, that's especially intriguing here. Beautiful femme fatale Cummins, whose affair with guns equals anger, sex and power, is a potent symbol of female frustration and eventual rage: you might not be able to beat a guy with your bare hands, but you sure as hell can fire off a round -- no muscles, no therapy, no self defense classes necessary. In this way, it makes more sense for a woman, and not a man, to feel enpowered by a gun. And at the risk of sounding like a typical turned-on man (which might sound strange coming from a woman -- but I often feel like a man or perhaps, want to be one), Gun Crazy oozes sex appeal. But not just from the kiss kiss, bang bang of guns, but guns in the hands of a troubled, possibly deranged woman. Cummins' character is complex and ultimately tragic but, oh...the crazy ones. I love a girl who goes out in a blaze of glory.

Five For The Ages: Tough Old Guys

Another Rambo? Yes indeed. And, in spite of the franchise's ridiculous sequels, I’ve got some hope. Sylvester Stallone proved last year with his surprisingly effective Rocky Balboa that revisiting a famous screen character needn't be one big fat paycheck (but perhaps I hope too much). Nevertheless, I’m anticipating that Stallone (who wrote and directed this new Rambo) will again think about what that character represents now as, more specifically, an older person. Because, let's face it, 61-year-old Sly is ripe enough for his AARP card and just a few years from official senior citizenship.

But that's not to say John J. Rambo is too old to kick some ass (or any 61-year-old for that matter). In this day and age, 60 is the new ... 50, especially on-screen (for men, few women are afforded that luxury). With an elder Indiana Jones in production, and actors like Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson and Gene Hackman showing that age only keeps one interesting, Rambo is working in the grand, grizzled tradition of rough and tumble oldsters. With that in mind, here are five of some of my favorite elder-statesman tough guys.

William Holden, The Wild Bunch (1969)

"If they move, kill ‘em."

Renowned for its shocking, innovative violence, Sam Peckinpah's bloody, brilliant Western is the ultimate aged-outlaw movie, featuring stellar performances by a bevy of wonderful, older actors and a turn by William Holden that remains one of his greatest. Now past the age of Norma Desmond, handsome Holden plays Pike Bishop, a grizzled outlaw suffering the consequences of his last big score. After an ambush by bounty hunters (notably a former Pike gang buddy -- an excellent Robert Ryan) causes Pike's robbery to go terribly awry, Pike and his Wild Bunch (perfectly embodied by Ernest Borgnine, Jaime Sanchez, Ben Johnson, Warren Oates and, later, an impressive Edmond O'Brien) head for Mexico, only to get entangled with a vicious Mexican general who'll cause them to enact their ultimate valiant vengeance. Living amidst the unrest of not only the dawning 1911 Mexican Revolution but also, importantly, the Industrial Revolution (the automobile is a perfect symbol for what will be many cultural transformations), the bunch's way of life is quickly fading -- and they know it. An unrelenting and complicated vision of a shifting West as well as a fresh, shocking picture far ahead of its time, The Wild Bunch is a strangely beautiful ode to the oldster, a movie filled with wrinkled faces marked by experience in both life and movies. All these guys are terrific, but it's Holden's touching Pike who gets the gang riled up for a last gasp of glorious loyalty that overrides safety or profit. Believe it or not, it's tough to not get choked up when noir stalwarts Ryan and O'Brien close the picture, riding off together, toward their unpredictable future.

Henry Fonda, Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

"People scare better when they're dying."

It was a stroke of brilliance when Sergio Leone cast the hard-edged though All-American actor Henry Fonda as one of cinema's meanest villains in his Western masterpiece, Once Upon a Time in the West, which had to have created a palpable shock for audiences used to the legend in pictures like The Lady Eve or Mister Roberts. And Leone didn't waste any time easing audiences into the idea -- Fonda's on-screen introduction plays shocking to this day: A young child is shot and killed; the camera pans up to gunman's face, right into the cold blue eyes of a remorseless Fonda, an actor who made us cry in The Grapes of Wrath. The entire epic picture is one elegiac, gorgeously composed scene after another with standout performances by Jason Robards, Charles Bronson and Claudia Cardinale, but Fonda's sadistic Frank (no last name needed) showed not only how versatile the Young Mr. Lincoln legend was, but also how much inner rage and turmoil he carried in other pictures (go back to his tortured performance in The Long Night for a gripping example). And the fact that the actor was in his 60s only made him more powerful -- those baby blue eyes staring back at us with an almost universal unease. Maybe our fathers don't really love us, they seem to say.

Charles Bronson, Death Wish (1974)

"Nothing to do but cut and run, huh? What else? What about the old American social custom of self-defense? If the police don't defense us, maybe we ought to do it ourselves."

Though known to many as an overly simplistic portrait of pro-vigilantism, there's more to this incredibly brutal Michael Winner picture, chiefly a disturbed look at a man who has absolutely flipped his lid. A weirdly yet perfectly cast Charles Bronson plays a mild-mannered architect who turns vigilante after his wife is killed and his daughter is raped. Taking to the streets of New York, he seeks out violent offenders, and makes a huge impression on the police and public after continually blowing away thugs (or positional thugs) in a sadness turned to fury. Death Wish was an important step for the fascinating Bronson, an actor who hadn't found huge success in America until this movie (he was a big star in Europe and known as “Il Bruto”). Showing that fame wasn't just a young man's game, Bronson became an unusual leading man, both in his offbeat looks (which were fantastic -- I love Bronson's face) and his ascending age. He would make five Death Wish movies of varied quality, but none was as powerful and controversial as the original. Watch it again -- it’s a lot more complex than say, The Brave One. And Bronson is (and this makes sense to me) violently touching.

Lawrence Tierney, Reservoir Dogs (1992)

"Dead as Dillinger."

One of the toughest actors on and off the screen, hard-boiled legend Lawrence Tierney was a notorious character with an edge of danger and menace (the man had a real record) that was tremendously powerful on-screen. Though the good-looking mad dog hit it big with Dillinger in 1945 and created some of noir's most intense villains via The Devil Thumbs a Ride and the splendid Born to Kill (where his rage is so strong and real, he doesn't appear to be acting) he is perhaps best known to more mainstream audiences from Quentin Tarantino's debut Reservoir Dogs. In all his bald-headed, gravel-voiced geezer glory, Tierney tore up the screen as gangster Joe Cabot, the man who was not only in charge of the various Misters' actions (“Let’s go to work”) but also the guy who assigned them their colors (to Mr. Pink Steve Buscemi's vocal disapproval). Tierney's Cabot was as bad-ass as they come, but still, like every good, tough old man, believed in tipping. I wish he had made more pictures, while young and old -- he was one truly frightening force of nature.

Lee Marvin, The Big Red One (1980)

"You’re going to live, even if I have to blow your brains out!"

Like the crusty Robert Shaw, ultra-cool cat Lee Marvin always seemed older than he really was. From his coffee hurling psycho in The Big Heat (where he was 29) to his drunken gunfighter in Cat Ballou (41) to his laconic gunman in Point Blank (43), the actor's deep voice, whitening hair and almost overwhelming one-of-a-kind masculinity belied an experience that was more than likely forged from his own, eventful life. It was perfect casting then when Samuel Fuller placed Marvin (who fought in World War II and received a Purple Heart) in his tremendous, semi-autobiographical WWII epic The Big Red One, which followed the U.S. Army's First Infantry Division thick in the tour of duty. Marvin plays the squad leader, the Sergeant (he's never given a name) a no-nonsense, tough-as-nails badass who kicks his young squad members into shape. Marvin gives one of his greatest performances as the paternal Sarge, adding to the picture's reality and tough honor. Never for one second would you question Marvin's authority in playing such a role, in part because he was so talented and subtle but also because he knew the real-life material so well. It almost makes you sad watching the great man in one of his last screen roles -- there will never be another Marvin.

Read my other five oldsters at MSN Movies.

Heath Ledger: 1979-2008

There's a moment in Heath Ledger's far too short, sometimes brilliant film career that makes me so teary eyed, so filled with wistful emotion, that no matter how many times I watch it, I'm still taken aback by its deceptively simple power. No, it's not a scene from Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (his transcendent performance there makes me weep -- for more obvious reasons); rather, it was his final scene in Catherine Hardwicke's Lords of Dogtown, that underrated skater picture featuring one of Ledger's most poignant performances.

As Skip Engblom, the crusty, aging uncle/father figure to the kids of Team Zephyr, young Ledger played beyond his years with sublime, quirky effortlessness. As in most of his performances, Ledger imbued what could have been a one-note aging stoner dude with sympathy and soul, dignifying Skip with a disarming, surprisingly heart-wrenching end note: Sanding a surfboard in the back of what was once his kingdom, in what could have been an easy, here's-where-he's-at-now scene. Instead, Ledger fills us with a compelling mixture of sadness and a glimmer of hope that Skip will at least survive this life OK. After his boss orders him to finish a surfboard for some kid, the past lord dutifully, but bitterly, complies. Glumly sitting down, Skip slowly perks up to the lovely opening of Rod Stewart's "Maggie May." Pounding to that infectious double drum beat preceding Stewart's passionate "Wake up, Maggie, I think I got something to say to you," Skip, in a flash of understated joy and release, turns up the radio and sings along. Ledger is so in the moment and so naturally bittersweet that in mere seconds, he makes one remember just how much those little things in life can affect you -- those times or sensations that either make you crash hard or for one wonderful, ephemeral moment, lift you higher.

And Ledger could work those powerful sensations in all of his performances, whether he was gleefully laughing at himself in the giddily entertaining A Knight's Tale or silently, desperately pining for his beloved in Brokeback Mountain. It seems silly to say he was underrated since he received an Academy Award nomination for his tortured cowboy Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback, but in many respects he was underrated. Given that much of his earlier work was looked upon as the standard, hot young thing pabulum many actors slog through before reaching critical credibility, Ledger was often underappreciated for always being interesting, 10 Things I Hate About You, The Patriot and all.

Moving his career to his own fascinating frequency, the Australian Ledger eschewed the predictable romantic comedy/action hero leading man roles that could have followed his splashy, sexy 2000 Vanity Fair cover, anointing him as the latest stud du jour. It reads like a terrific career move, an initial sacrifice but ultimately a rewarding step toward serious movie stardom. But watching Ledger skillfully slip into the skin of a depressive, soft-hearted young man in Monster's Ball or embody a brash, sexy rake in Casanova, I can't imagine the actor having any kind of choice. He was just too sensitive, too interesting, too intelligent an actor to not make any part uniquely his own. And exciting. Watching his psychopathic, perfectly hideous Joker in the trailer for Christopher Nolan's upcoming Batman chapter The Dark Knight gives me chills, not only for the dual thrill of seeing two of cinema's greatest, chameleonlike talents (Christian Bale and Ledger, who were also terrific in Todd Haynes' stunning Dylan meditation, I'm Not There) pitted against one another, but for Ledger's maniacal, edgier take on the legendary supervillain. Ledger's ability to create a Joker that'll out-do Jack Nicholson appears to be unquestionable, and this was clearly yet another important transformative moment in the actor's career.

But I'm discussing Ledger's career in the past tense, something I'm having a tough time wrapping my mind around. He was one of my favorite working actors, an actor I've been advocating and arguing for as someone special and different since his earlier roles, and an actor I now find myself cherishing. Like many of you, I was absolutely stunned and depressed to learn of his death. I can barely grasp the realization as I write this right now. He was only 28 years old. He was in the middle of Terry Gilliam's newest picture, an admirable task since, in spite of how great he was in Gilliam's otherwise messy The Brothers Grimm, you know someone must have advised him against it. But Gilliam, as troubled as some of his productions have been, is an artist. And so was Ledger.

Thinking of the last movie I saw Ledger in, as the beautiful, romantic but flawed and human "live fast, die young" James Dean-inspired Dylan persona in I'm Not There, I was filled with sadness, recalling the enchanting, idyllic scenes between Charlotte Gainsbourg and Ledger tuned to Dylan's "I Want You." What bliss. What joy to simply watch Ledger engaging in such bliss. And what a magnificent, soulful talent he was, with so much more to give movies and life. To paraphrase Dylan, we want you, we want you, we want you back, so bad.

From my piece originally published at MSN Movies

Reading, Writing, Romance And Rage

With the Writer's Strike marching on, I'm revisiting one of my favorite pictures about a Hollywood screenwriter -- Nicholas Ray's masterpiece, In a Lonely Place.

Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place is one of the most heartbreaking love stories ever committed to film. It's certainly one of the most poignant pictures (violently poignant at times) within the canon of filmn noir, a genre haunted by doomed love.

Noir love -- the kind that causes characters to throw that "Baby I don't care" caution to the wind -- is frequently a cynical fancy that won't survive the angst and ugliness inside the man or outside the world. Its happiness is typically intense, but brief. Love or lust often motivates action in noir, particularly via a femme fatale (as in Double Indemnity or Out of the Past). But it also holds up a mirror to myriad themes, largely existential, that hang over characters with profound malaise.

Ray approaches the torments of Camus and Sartre with In a Lonely Place (1950) showing, not only the delicacy of true love, but the delicacy of creativity, violence, trust, and a person's own position in an often ugly, alienating world and the nausea it creates. Here, that shabby world is Hollywood, where screenwriter Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart) lives a lonely, stressed-out life while struggling to create a bankable screenplay. He's talented, but troubled and disdainful. As he eats at his haunt, Paul's Restaurant, Dixon sneers at a colleague working for the "popcorn business," but in turn punches a hotshot for cruelly taunting a sad, alcoholic, washed-up screen actor. Immediately, we recognize Dixon as a humanist -- sympathetic, but deeply cynical. Given the job to adapt a novel, he invites a hatcheck girl (Martha Stewart) who's read the popular book to his Spanish-style apartment for help (an apartment modeled on Ray's own past residence). She's attractive, and he's probably interested in something more than mere adaptation, but she rattles on insufferably and Dixon sends her away in a taxi.

That same night she's found on the side of a road, murdered. With Dixon's reputation for abuse, he becomes a prime suspect. But struggling actress Laurel Gray (the perfectly cast Gloria Grahame), a new neighbor in his complex, witnessed the young woman leaving Dixon's place. She becomes his alibi, and soon his lover. Dixon and Laurel's chemistry in the police station is subtly thrilling and sexy, but distinct from the usual noir fireworks -- it almost looks healthy. When police ask Laurel why she noticed her neighbor's actions, she answers bluntly "Because he looked interesting. I liked his face." And when Dixon catches up to her at the complex, he admits that when meeting her "I said to myself, there she is. The one who's different. She's not coy or cute or corny." Its easy to see these two are perfect for each other, the sharp, world-weary but sunny actress, and the brooding intellect who's probably surprised he actually likes a woman in this town. Wounded, but nourishing each other with their very adult, no-nonsense love, Dixon begins writing again with Laurel feeding him, fluffing his pillows, and typing — "for love," as she says.

But their bliss can't last, even with this seemingly sturdy pair of survivors. Dixon can't control his inherent rage, which becomes so bad that Laurel (understandably, especially considering the film's original ending, which Ray didn't like and removed) begins to suspect her lover. And the more she distrusts him, the worse his anger fumes. No one, not even a detective who defends Dixon as "superior" and "an exciting guy," wants to believe the writer is a sociopath.

But is he a sociopath? Certainly his rage and frequently selfish behavour are troublesome but Dixon's flashes of tenderness betray a clear definition. And yet Ray's film leads everyone (including the viewer) to wonder if he really did kill that hatcheck girl. We don't want him to be guilty, we want the romance to work out, and we believe (perhaps, delusionally) there's hope for Dixon -- hence, the tragedy that concludes the film. Ray, whose pictures like Rebel Without a Cause, Bigger Than Life, and On Dangerous Ground all contemplate a man's lonely, often horrifying position in his world, is in archetypal mode with In a Lonely Place. Much like the protagonists in Ray's other films, Dixon is not a loser (like so many characters in noir), but rather a talent who would be productive if not for the obstacles in his way, including his own neurotic, repressed, enraged self.

Ray wisely worked with Bogart, who plays Dixon with a genuine rawness, mixing toughness and vulnerability, self-loathing and romanticism, contempt and warmth in one compelling stew of a man. When he recites a line from his script to Laurel ("I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.") we recognize it as not only the film's motif, but also exactly what we find attractive about Bogart. And yet the line, though true, is as laden with irony as the iconic image of Bogart himself, who exposes a rabid underbelly that's both frightening and unbearably sad. One of Ray's finest pictures, In a Lonely Place is also Bogart's greatest performance on film.

Truth Or Illusion? Seven Different Biopics

There's a line in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in which the alcoholic, game-playing Martha spits this doozy at her barb-swapping, history professor husband: "Truth or illusion, George; you don't know the difference." According to Martha, such ineptitude is his weakness (a shared weakness, but also a buffer), but, since part of their lives is built on a questionable history (the baby? George's story with his parents?), I think she's on to something pertaining to the general human condition, especially the human condition on-screen: What is the difference exactly? And how should we process or perceive such truths or illusions? And maybe the blending makes one even more honest about their lives.

This is where the biopic, a genre that tells stories of real people, can be messy. Always a problematic genre, pressured by running times, whitewashing or the tedium of by-the-book generalities, biopics frequently become stale exercises in a series of facts. Or half-truths. Which is why any tweaking of the biopic is exciting. The most recent example, Todd Haynes' ambitious Bob Dylan study I'm Not There, in which six different actors took on the Dylan persona, was thrillingly unique. And Jake Kasdan's goofy hit-and-miss Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a comedy poking fun at all those Oscar bait, "real" musical stories (Ray, Walk the Line) should have made for a nice satirical diversion from so-called truth.

So with that in mind, I'm looking at seven refreshingly off-kilter biopics, movies that approached their real-life subjects without the usual "and then this happened" turning of the page. For these movies, sometimes not knowing truth or illusion is part of the point -- and more true to life than anything else.

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

There are moments in Michael Curtiz's Yankee Doodle Dandy that are so shamelessly patriotic, the chipper biopic lauding Broadway legend George M. Cohan becomes almost freakishly surreal. Indeed, so all-American was the picture that, released not long after the attack on Pearl Harbor, it reportedly served as a great morale booster as the United States entered World War II. And how could it not? "You're a Grand Old Flag," "Over There," and its signature tune, "Yankee Doodle Dandy," were such wartime classics that some forget that the lovable "Give My Regards to Broadway" was one of the picture's most famous songs. The musical biopic (an interesting subgenre that includes movies ranging from Mervyn LeRoy's entertaining Gypsy to Ken Russell's gloriously insane Lisztomania) starred an inspired James Cagney as song and dance man Cohan, who begins his story as an oldster, ready for his comeback Broadway hit and gaining acceptance from none other than President Roosevelt himself. Using flashbacks to tell the story (some of it true, some not), we watch Cohan's rise to fame and prominence all the way to receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor. Yes, Cohan achieved a lot. And, yes, he was quite cocky, which in Cagney's able hands (and feet) is played to glorious, almost dizzying perfection. It also plays as a terrific double feature with another bizarre, all-American story, Patton.

Napoleon (1927)

So visionary, so experimental, so richly complex, so long is Abel Gance's silent epic Napoleon that attempting to write briefly about one of cinema's first biopics feels like an undertaking in itself. There's so much to tell with both its dazzling, innovative cinematic techniques -- from handheld camerawork, sometimes strapped to horses, to superimposed images, to the use of split screen, to the inspiration for CinemaScope, to its editing style and its revision-heavy production history (the picture has gone through a series of restorations since its initial release supervised by film historian Kevin Brownlow) -- that the picture remains radical, even today. Though the story itself is somewhat straightforward (the fascinating life and times of Napoleon Bonaparte from childhood to French Revolution and on), Gance's ambitious, almost raving embrace of the medium is so incredibly stunning that many believe the filmmaker aligned himself with the grandiloquence and determinism of his subject -- a "Man of Destiny." Though Gance has been accused of falsities regarding the French emperor and taken to task by some for showing Napoleon, gleefully, as something of a fascist, the picture remains one of cinema's most exceptionally unique and breathtaking biopics.

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1975)

Werner Herzog's approach to "the truth" has always been a fascinating one and I love his grand yet entirely down-to-earth theories about "reality." A firm believer in what he calls "ecstatic truth," Herzog claims that his approach toward filmmaking, whether in his documentaries (like Little Dieter Needs to Fly or Grizzly Man) or biographical pictures (like Aguirre: The Wrath of God or Fitzcarraldo) reveals "something deeply inherent, where you recognize yourself as a human being again, where you find images that have been dormant inside of you for so many years and all of a sudden it becomes visible and understandable for you -- you read the world differently, your perceptions change." For Herzog, truth is not something relegated to one genre of film, as the filmmaker freely admits to even writing dialogue for some of his documentary figures, while famously undertaking mammoth real-life tasks in making fiction or biographical features (like really dragging a boat over a mountain for Fitzcarraldo -- no CGI necessary, thank you). One of Herzog's most fascinating examples of "ecstatic truth" is The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, a picture that won the German director the Grand Jury Award at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival and helped establish his reputation as a cinematic innovator. It stars non-actor Bruno S. as the real-life Kaspar Hauser, a boy/man who is forced to contend with civilization after living 17 years of his life in a cellar, isolated from humans, his only contact being a mysterious "Man in Black." Watching Kaspar adapt and grow is an intriguing, moving process, but Herzog's haunting, non-simplistic approach to a person's identity marks the picture uniquely like its title -- enigmatic.

American Splendor (2003)

The life of underground artist Harvey Pekar could not have been told, well, normally. Not that the man is weird, he's actually quite sane -- he's just a lot more honest than most people about the injustices and indignities of day-to-day life. Or how annoying food allergies can be. Mixing fiction with documentary and, in some more inspired moments, the real-life Pekar with actor Paul Giamatti (who's so perfect you can't think of anyone else aping Pekar -- even if he looks nothing like the man), directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini allow American Splendor an honest, complex kind of messiness that reflects the tumultuous life Pekar more than likely continues to lead. An acolyte of Robert Crumb, the jazz-loving, lonely Pekar, a file clerk in Cleveland's VA hospital, discusses his neo-Dostoyevskian underground man existence in comic-book form via the ironically titled American Splendor. This brings him to fellow neurotic Joyce Brabner (Hope Davis), with whom he is married and raises a child. And then there's the cancer. Steering clear of disease-of-the-week, triumph-over-adversity pabulum, American Splendor manages to tell the story of an American eccentric without making him cutely quirky or everyone's favorite curmudgeon, but rather as a truly interesting person. Imagine that.

The Elephant Man (1980)

How often does a movie like Eraserhead (you know the story...about a mutant baby ... and a lot more) lead to a filmmaker's first shot at mainstream success? And a mainstream success that respects the director's unique, evocative style? Not often. But then there's no other filmmaker like David Lynch, whose work remains (as they say) in a class by itself, even within the usually standard genre of the biopic. The Elephant Man might be one of Lynch's most accessible films, but it's still a challenging work that's so artistically interesting that it manages to meld its aesthetic vision with the inner complexities of its protagonist's moving, almost unbearably sad story. Telling the true story of John Merrick (John Hurt), a man suffering from a disease that left him so physically deformed he was sold to the circus and paraded as a sideshow freak for most of his life, Lynch crafts a picture of heartbreaking sympathy. But he never panders to the man, giving him the dignity he deserved while, importantly, making viewers face their own feelings about the character's supposed grotesqueries. In one of the most gorgeously photographed (by cinematographer Freddie Francis) biopics ever made, Lynch allows viewers to understand the real beauty of Merrick, both on the inside and, yes, the outside. The famed line "I am not an animal" might be quoted ad nauseam, but Merrick's desire to feel like a "human being," a "man," never loses its power.

All That Jazz (1979)

So nakedly honest and gloriously ballsy was, my favoritie, Bob Fosse's ambitious, over-the-top, ingeniously meta auto-biopic All That Jazz, one actually wonders if the man really summoned his own death by crafting such a creation. Imagining his slip into the sweet hereafter as an elaborate musical number set to the tricked out tune of the Everly Brothers' "Bye Bye Love" (for Fosse it's "Bye Bye Life"), Fosse's alter ego, Joe Gideon (a brilliant Roy Scheider), has not only talked to death (in the beautifully creepy angelic form of Jessica Lange) but also overtly flirted with her -- and even she's not immune to his charms. Famed choreographer, writer and director Fosse mused on his relationship with show -- from his past days as a young hoofer, to his tumultuous marriages and affairs, to his work on stage and in the movies (the film has Gideon laboring over a picture he's made about a stand-up comic, clearly referencing his biopic Lenny) to his drug use, Fosse's direction is brave, vain and morbid all at once, and so brilliant you won't know whether to smile or cry at that famously insane end number. I'm sure Fosse wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Oh Mr. Fosse, why did you have to go so early?

Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993)

Part documentary, part biopic, part music lesson, part enigmatic character study, Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould remains one of the most fascinating portraits of a musical genius ever created. Directed by François Girard (and scripted by Girard and Don McKellar), the picture eschews typical biopic trappings by, quite literally, telling the musical prodigy story of Gould (played brilliantly by Colm Feore) in 32 short films -- fascinating vignettes that wander through the eccentric Canadian pianist's life with reverence, mystery, amusement and a touch of sadness that (like real life) is never resolved. You're only charmed and intrigued by the man even more. Some of the pieces run less than 60 seconds, others several minutes, but each is subtly told, allowing an inside look into Gould's background, process, intellectualism and his unique relationship with music -- something he quit performing live at age 32 because, "I just don't like the sound of piano music very much."

Every film is a standout, with highlights including Gould enjoying the unexpected (for him anyway, though he loved her) musical pleasure of pop songstress Petula Clark, a beautiful trip through the wires and hammers of his Steinway during the moment of his last concert, and discussions with those who chatted up the reclusive man on the telephone (Gould loved the phone). Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould is a triumph in that not only do you learn a few things about the man himself but you also truly feel his deep alliance (and combativeness) with music. And you'll never want to hear Bach's "Goldberg Variations" played by anyone else. As you shouldn't.

From my Twisted Biopics story at MSN Movies.

I Stand Alone, Dix Ans Après

This may sound a bit odd, and perhaps to dissenters out there, a little sick, but I miss Gaspar Noé.

The French enfant terrible who helmed one of the greatest pictures of the 1990’s, I Stand Alone, and who placed Monica Bellucci in a situation that angered even those OK with Susan George’s episode in Straw Dogs, has been absent from the screen far too long. Yes, he’s made a short for the sexually explicit Destricted project, and yes there are the condom commercials from years back, but Mr. Noé needs another full length feature under his (whipping) belt.

The director, heavily influenced by '70s cinema, William Castle shock-a-tude, pornography, Godard, Céline, Nietzsche and (as I have argued, whether he knows this or not), even Thomas Hardy, was the great Gallic hope for a new generation of savage filmmaking. Unlike some current filmmakers who traffic in mere shock, or art house directors striking a transgressive pose, Noé is a genuine artist, but unpretentious -- a man who loves nothing more than upsetting his audience (or, in the case of Irreversible, making some faint), while injecting his screaming compositions with substantive thought, intelligence and philosophy.

So hearing that Noé will be directing a new picture (Enter the Void) got me all excited, and in the mood to re-visit his debut blast of brilliance, ten years later, 1998’s I Stand Alone.  This is the movie that caused a daily critic to walk out during the screening I attended, this is the movie that bonded me with my sister (long story), and this is the film that I told a colleague to see on a date. That advice didn’t work out so well.

When first reviewing the blisteringly brilliant picture, I quoted an anecdote by director Paul Schrader. Schrader said:

“I had an interesting lunch recently with a French director named Gaspar Noé who wanted to do a film with me, something with violence and pornography and all that. And I said to him, 'I don't think anyone's shockable anymore.'"

Now I admire, sometimes revere Paul Schrader, and I would probably agree with him at that moment, but with I Stand Alone (and the latter Irreversible) he was positively wrong.  For Noé had not only made one of the most shocking pictures in decades, but also one of the most stylistically impressive, emotionally challenging, thematically intimidating, astoundingly touching and, in its own warped way, weirdly funny. I Stand Alone, or Seul Contre Tous (Alone Against All) is a hair grabber that drags you around the muck and pushes your face into its world so far that -- and this is rare with such hard cinema -- you’ll experience moments of such bizarre, hideous beauty that you’re left significantly moved. It attacks one's senses with such transgressive power that by its end, one feels flustered, simultaneously full and empty. I Stand Alone rattles in your brain long after the movie's disquieting end. 

As I mentioned before, with nods to Céline, Dostoevsky, Schrader, Godard and even William Castle, I Stand Alone chronicles, as the film's titles claim, the "tragedy of a jobless butcher struggling to survive in the bowels of his nation." As the picture opens, the nameless butcher's entire life is inventively, humorously revealed via a slideshow. It describes how a French World War II orphan became a butcher, and is sent to prison after stabbing a guy he thought raped his daughter. The movie jettisons us to 1980 and into the head of said butcher (embodied magnificently by Philippe Nahon), who, now released from prison, is living an emasculated life with his pregnant girlfriend and her obtrusive mother in a depressing housing tract in France. His current domestic predicament only escalates his alienation and rage, feelings made clear in angry interior monologues that grow more bile-ridden as the film continues (the man, like the film, isn't subtle). When his refusal (or inability) to smile causes him to lose a job at a supermarket deli (have we felt this? I sure have), the butcher becomes a night watchman at a home for the elderly, where in one stirring moment, he assists a woman's euthanization. Afterwards, he visits a porn theater and, during a hardcore penetration close-up, he muses inwardly, "If you're a cock, you gotta stay hard to be respected; [otherwise] your only role and purpose is to be reamed." (Oh Gaspar, you're such a romantic! Sigh).

Soon after, he argues bitterly with his mistress and, in one of the film's most brutal moments, beats her, kicking her pregnant stomach (this is when the aforementioned female critic left the theater). This sick underbelly we have witnessed with amusement and detachment has, now, in fact been literally reamed. And it is at this point, that the film's existential loathing gives us our first challenge: The man we felt immediate sympathy for, the cantankerous oldster who has made us laugh with his stark philosophical observations, has finally committed a sickening act of violence. And he doesn't regret it. Confronting his modern audience, hardened from years of on-screen violence, Noé essentially asks: How do you like your underground hero now? Are you still cheering him on?

Somehow, in many ways, we are -- which points to the film's mind spinning, confusing power. With dwindling money, no job prospects and a gun, the butcher grows increasingly disgruntled over everything -- class, race, love, sexuality -- and his thoughts become both clear-headed and garbled. In the hands of a more simplistic filmmaker, this could be tedious or predictable. Noé , however, is not here just to shock. Like Taxi Driver, I Stand Alone represents a national reflection, here it’s France entering the 1980’s, personifying such unease with an unrelenting, furious protagonist. And Noé crafts a film that is so aesthetically violent--sharp gunshot sounds are used as jarring, disarming tangents, illustrating a shift in scenery or thought--that it’s surprising to realize just how little blood is actually shed onscreen. The movie deals almost entirely in thoughts of violence, rather than acts. The butcher rattles on about this or that problem, but mostly remains stuck in states of fantasy or inertia.  But he is so potently angry and the filmmaking so unyieldingly ferocious, it simply feels violent.

And Noé never slips once in this assault, even testing the viewer’s typical film sensibilities. In the picture's most infamous moment, a title card flashes on screen and cautions: “You Have 30 Seconds to Leave the Cinema.” It's a bold move, one filled with humor and horror (one part Godard, one part Castle), and despite the shocking images and words that come before it, Noé manages to back up that warning with a sequence that sent my emotions into a tailspin of sadness, distress and an unsettling amount of confusing compassion (you just have to see the ending).  I Stand Alone is true savage cinema -- a grim, exciting, nerve-wracking work of art that doesn’t just stick in your brain, but finds a way to get all five fingers up there too. Seul Contre Tous? Sous le soleil exactement, Mr. Noé.