108. On the Waterfront

Another movie commits wrong by modern standards. Late in On the Waterfront, Terry Malloy goes to the apartment of a woman, Edie, and bangs on her door demanding entry. She repeatedly says “No.” He kicks through the door and forces himself on her as she resists, until she melts against his grip. He helped kill her brother, he is an idiot who can’t count and chews gum with his mouth open, yet she relents for kissing.

What to think? On the Waterfront is revered as a Hollywood classic. From its first scene – a murder – the conflict is deep and compelling. The mob, bossed by a maniac with a scar across his throat, is enriching itself while brutalizing blue-collar workers on New York’s docks. A priest resolves to lead a resistance. The man who could beat the mob in court with his testimony, Malloy, is a sad-sack self-described “bum.” Malloy’s brother helps run the maniac’s mob.

The famous scene is Marlon Brando, as Terry Malloy, in a cab with the brother. “I coulda been a contender.” He gave up glory, and his brain, for nothing. He personifies regret. Brando plays Malloy as twitchy, shifty-eyed, groping himself. The things he does with his body are distracting and strange, and he sounds drunk. Yet by the end he’s changed, chosen dignity, and those obnoxious mannerism are gone.

This flick has everything I (we?) could want. It won all the Oscars. It still lives near the tops of Best-of-all-time lists. It entertains and the themes are timeless.

But, God damn, why’d he have to assault Edie? Why’d she let him? (Possibly for her safety.) I don’t want to care, but here we are.

I (we?) can enjoy The Set-Up and On the Waterfront as (in part) time machines to less-enlightened eras. Artworks from 1949 and 1954 can’t change their minds like culture can. Knowing will have to be enough.

Chanting “Send her back” at Trump rallies is the act of idiots who chew gum with their mouths open. Even if they can’t come completely around, Trump’s followers, especially the kids, should evolve and save their souls.

107. The Set-Up

The Set-Up is wonderful and wrong.

We open on a clock. Then a boxing manager stands outside an Atlantic City arena. He strikes a match on a poster, across the name of the fighter he manages, Stoker Thompson. Stoker is 35 and well past his prime, and his manager tells a gangster that Stoker’s all set to take a dive against Tiger Nelson.

The manager doesn’t tell Stoker. He assumes Stoker will lose because Stoker always loses.

Subsequently, the film mostly follows Stoker, in a hotel with his nervous wife, in the locker room with other fighters, and in the ring. His fight against Nelson is epic, dramatic for its wild swings in momentum, ending with a punch that lifts both men off their feet. One gets up. It looks and sounds real, textured with details including colorful characters in the stands. It’s cramped and smokey. You can almost smell it.

As the movie ends, after the gangster issue has been resolved in life-altering ways and Stoker’s girlfriend cries tears of both sadness and joy, we see the clock again. Exactly one hour and 11 minutes have past. The (short) story unfolded in real time.

What I’ve just described should be debated as the best sports movie ever, but boo The Set-Up.

Fuck it, because one of the fighters in the locker room is a black man without much character; he’s only happy and smiling, his optimism brightening Stoker’s spirits. Watching Luther Hawkins warm up, it’s clear he’s the room’s best boxer.

The Set-Up is based on a poem by Joseph Moncure March, about a black boxer not named Stoker Thompson. Hollywood executives changed his race, angering March.

The change is no product of its time. This still happens.

In the summer when I wrote this, an audience at a rally for the president of the United States chanted “Send her back,” about a Somali-American woman in Congress who opposes him.

Some of those chanting “Send her back” may be generous and wonderful when not attending Trump rallies. You can be wonderful, and wrong. The Set-Up is wonderful, yet it’s wrong. Fuck it.

106. Pulp Fiction

preternatural / prēdərˈnaCH(ə)rəl / adj. 1. Exceeding what is natural or regular.

2. Inexplicable by ordinary means.

Pulp Fiction’s middle chapter, The Gold Watch, juxtaposes cheesy sweetness and brutality. Butch, a boxer played by Bruce Willis, goes hunting a MacGuffin and has an adventure that ends bloody, in a sex dungeon, with a samurai sword. Before this adventure are scenes in a hotel room with his girlfriend Fabienne. They croon sweetly, schmoopy-whooping, kissing and whispering about her desire for a pot belly.

Many conversations in Pulp Fiction are strange. A hitman describes eating at McDonald’s in Europe; a drug dealer’s wife explains her 18 piercings; a massive quote from the Bible is recited twice; the story of the gold watch is a five-minute monologue. Et cetera. This is a long movie, packed with scenes where characters talk at length about things that seem irrelevant.

Relevance, however, is inherent and brilliant.

When Pulp Fiction debuted in 1994, it was a sensation that other movies copied. Fictional gangsters became gabby, but the copies never worked because in Pulp Fiction (and probably all Quentin Tarantino movies) the gab serves higher narrative power.

Butch’s insane sex-death adventure has greater impact because it juxtaposes with the scenes before: Those sweet crooning scenes establish a comforting positive – lovers in bed being cute – making the plunge into sex-death negative – “Bring out the gimp.” – longer, steeper, and more horrifying.

Conversations in Pulp Fiction that seem meaningless actually serve that higher power. Vincent Vega’s explanation of burger names in Amsterdam returns later when his partner wants to scare someone they’re about to kill. Mia Wallace describes all the aspects of the Fox Force Five TV show she acted in, and it comes back later to put a perfect ending on a different bloody adventure. The gold watch is an object of significance that motivates the protagonist. When Jody and her piercings reappear for the adrenaline shot, our knowing her makes that famous scene richer.

The lines feel conversational, like how real people talk, yet they drive an intricate movie about killers, drugs, and divine intervention that is happily unrealistic. Using dialogue this way is bold, preternatural filmmaking.

105. Terminator 2

1991. I’m 10, it’s summer, and Terminator 2: Judgement Day has hit theaters. My parents won’t let me see it because it’s rated R. My neighbor, who’s my age but with a trampoline, goes with his older brother, damn them.

I cannot get enough of what he tells me. There’s this liquid-metal terminator, he says, who turns his arms to blades to stab people through the face, and they show it. Dude, and he fuckin’ freezes at the end, and the original terminator shoots him and he explodes, but then the pieces melt and run together and he reforms.

I listen with my mouth open. It will be three more years until Pulp Fiction, when I become bold enough to buy a ticket intending to sneak into another theater. What I know about Terminator 2 is only what my neighbor describes. Yet when I finally see it, years later, I basically know everything that happens, and I love it.

Still do, but old me thinks it’s an inferior remake.

Many examples illustrate why, including a scene when the liquid-metal T-1000 rides his flaming motorcycle up flights of stairs, realizes his prey are escaping, jumps his motorcycle out a window, lands on a helicopter, headbutts through the glass, liquefies  himself and oozes into the seat beside the pilot, who jumps out.

T-1000 doesn’t do this because it’s required by the story. Whether John Connor lives or dies needn’t depend on the killer robot jumping his flaming motorcycle to a helicopter. He does it because it’s awesome. T-1000 subsequently flies after them, firing a machine gun, dodging overpasses, until the helicopter explodes, and he jumps into a Mack truck towing thousands of gallons of liquid nitrogen.

This is, again, awesome, but it’s also ridiculous. Spectacle prevails in T2, whereas T1 was more about the hunt.

This was always cyborg sci-fi, but The Terminator isn’t goofy like T2. With its smaller budget and necessarily less spectacular scenes, Terminator has a grittiness I prefer to over-the-top choreographed action in the sequel (that’s arguably a remake).

Young me, however, prefers T2, and every boy needs a terminator. John Connor is 10.

104. Die Hard

John McClane is afraid at the beginning of Die Hard, squeezing the arm rest as his plane lands in Los Angeles. McClane is a cop, and will be locked in a tower with bad guys who are trying to kill him. Between fights to the death he will talk to himself, because (it seems) yammering helps him cope when he’s scared.

Die Hard is a game between warriors with appealing personalities. McClane is certainly strong and brave, but he’s not a physical beast like Schwarzenegger or Stallone, nor as calm as Seagal in Under Siege. McClane is vulnerable, and what he’s doing looks beyond difficult. That opening scene on the plane also plants a seed to get McClane barefoot for most of the movie; he fights Hans Gruber and 15 goons without shoes, and runs over broken glass.

Hans, though, is also having a lousy Christmas Eve. The self-described “exceptional thief” had a meticulous plan to clear $640 million, but McClane is monkey-wrenching it, killing Hans’s men and stealing their bombs.

Die Hard is a game, with McClane and Gruber trading the lead, alternating small victories. These two occasionally talk trash over walkie talkies. They come face-to-face twice, both times involving guns.

McClane is obviously the hero. He is outnumbered, outgunned, barefoot and afraid, fighting because it’s right. Yet Hans cracks jokes and, despite murdering and kidnapping, presents as quite likable. Not only does the viewer root for Hans at times, the movie does too; why else would Beethoven’s triumphant Ode To Joy blare over the soundtrack when they crack the seventh lock on the Nakatomi Tower vault?

Die Hard invented (or perfected) the cop-locked-in-a-tower trick. Clock’s ticking; one night; every fight is to the death. The scenario provides the foundation upon which are layered a love story that feels real and comic relief that draws genuine laughs. (I always fucking giggle when the FBI commando pricks his finger on a rosebush and looks around like it really hurts.)

We needn’t laugh to enjoy an action movie, and the hero needn’t be afraid. Humor and vulnerability, however, elevate great to greatest.