Apollo 13 (1995)

"HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM."

There was a time when the whole world looked to the skies in the spirit of adventure and hope, not for reasons of religion, but because mankind had shaken off the bonds of Earth and travelled beyond the limits of our atmosphere – space exploration had begun. Though this spawned the rather paranoia-tainted Space Race between the US and Russia, both trying to conquer the outer limits first, the advances of humanity were of greater import. In 1969, this led to one of the truly great achievements of the 20^th Century (or any Century) as the crew of Apollo 11 landed on the surface of the moon. There, astronaut Neil Armstrong produced one of the most famous quotes in history: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” In 1970, the world would receive another now famous quote from another Apollo space mission: “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

Less than a year after man first walked on the Moon, Apollo 13 was sent back on another lunar-landing mission. However, before the craft even got there, a catastrophic technical malfunction effectively crippled them. Stranded hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth, the Apollo 13 flight crew, Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) and Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon), and the NASA technicians fight desperately to bring the craft back to life and bring the astronauts home safely.

Before we even begin to look at the mission at the heart of this story, we are told of a previous mission that went horribly wrong, Apollo 1, which killed its three crew members. The point is being made very clearly – tragedy can happen at anytime, even to those who prepare for it. If there’s one thing that the film of Apollo 13 wants to do in the first forty-five minutes or so, it’s build up a sense of foreboding, a sense of sinister premonition, a sense that this mission was doomed from the start. It’s something that some of the superstitious folk among us have often said about the Apollo 13 mission itself. There’s the fact that it was the 13^th mission in the Apollo program, that it launched at 19:13pm (13:13 by North American Central Standard Time), that the rupture of the oxygen tanks occurred on the 13^th of April (again, Central Standard Time), that there was a change in the crew a week before blast-off. The film itself builds on this by highlighting other things, too. Crew Commander Lovell’s wife lost her wedding ring down the shower drain before the launch date. Lovell’s car had been having some technical difficulties recently and stalling without warning. These ominous concerns were not lost on the crew, who joked about breaking mirrors and black cats and walking under ladders in preparation for the flight. It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re a superstitious person or not (I’m certainly not), because the film does makes its point that some of these characters may be somewhat superstitious themselves, even if it’s merely a case of not wanting to tempt fate. For example, Gene Kranz, the no-nonsense flight director, maintains a simple ritual of wearing a crisp white waistcoat with mission patch on the lapel for the duration of the assignment.

Although these nods towards less rational sensibilities are important, they take up only a little bit of time in the build up to the film’s central crisis. Much more attention is paid towards the establishment of the characters who must deal with it when it comes. Working from a script by William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert, director Ron Howard develops a fine array of individuals for us to follow along this perilous journey. Jim Lovell was part of the Apollo 8 mission, the first to orbit the moon, though never got a chance to actually walk on its surface. We feel his awe of such a feat, his sense of mild disappointment that he got so close before without touching it, his humble joy at finally being given the chance to achieve his goal. His wife, Marilyn, is so loving and supportive of her husband and his dreams. She’s a veteran of watching her husband go off into space, so she also remains a firm support for other wives who are new to the whole experience, although she is still uneasy about it herself. Fred Haise is a family man and southern country boy, a fun guy of simple tastes, a little rough around the edges, but a fine pilot. Ken Mattingly is a straight arrow and a driven perfectionist, always pushing himself to get it right. Jack Swigert is a ladies man, a slight outsider as the late addition to the crew, and also with great flight skills and instinct. Gene Kranz is a man who commands respect, but through an understated resolve and calm under pressure. The film builds these characters, and their families (or lack of), so well that when things start to go wrong, you are completely invested and feel genuinely taken by their plight. As things progress, the characters are treated with a great dignity and respect, their actions developed with tight and utterly believable motivations. Even better is that no one is ever given to the overly dramatic bouts of hysteria, with someone eventually cracking up, screaming and crying that they don’t want to die up here. It’s made very clear that these people are who they are and where they are precisely because of their heroic levels of self-control, that they know their best chance to survive is to remain composed and work together. We should all be so controlled as these people.

Howard is also well aware that the greatest dramatic draw is the crisis itself. Of course, how could it not be? A less assured director would have perhaps tried to cram in more subplots and storylines underneath the main one in order to add even greater weight and complexity to the piece. It speaks greatly that Howard did not do such a thing. The film is complex enough, built out of a tight sense the technical issues that must be tackled on Earth, and the delicate relationship of the three men on board the ship. The level of technical detail itself is enough to create a heavy sense of realism, making it all so absorbing. The script is full of technical jargon and astro-speak, but it never overwhelms the audience, still remaining somehow accessible, even if just in a basic sense. It’s from this kind of realism and adherence to detail that we get some moments of drama and concern in the film. When the crew have to turn off most of their equipment in the hope of conserving battery life and fuel, the possibility for the condensation build-up to short out the electrical instruments becomes another concern to deal with. It’s really a case of one thing leading to another, and it makes for really great drama.

And it’s not even just in the technical side of things that there’s a great sense of detail. The period is evoked so well, with the fashions, the music, the cars. Lovell’s eldest daughter initially doesn’t want to watch her father’s flight broadcasts (all before the disaster strikes, of course) because she’s so upset that The Beatles have broken up. That actually happened, the day before Apollo 13 launched. It’s the small details throughout the film that make it all so immersive and wonderful to watch.

The cast do a superb job throughout. Tom Hanks is able to bring his typical Everyman-ness to Lovell, but yet still make him someone of great poise and character. Ed Harris’ Gene Kranz is a performance of superb control and reserve, delivering lines like “Failure is not an option” with great solid conviction. Kathleen Quinlan also gives a great show, steering clear of the weepy astronaut’s wife thing, showing a core of strength and restraint. She’s not above letting the tears come, but she knows better than to let them take over. Paxton, Bacon and Sinise provide great support, too.

Apollo 13 is a genuinely thrilling, tense and really rather emotional experience, which remains unaffected by whether or not you know how it all turns out. The direction is firmly controlled and incredibly well detailed, with solid performances from everyone involved. It’s often overlooked or forgotten about today, but this is an exhilarating experience and a fine tribute to those involved in a great pursuit of exploration.

Apocalypse Now Redux (1979/2001)

THE HORROR... THE HORROR...

Apocalypse Now is, and probably always will be, one of the most notorious, infamous and legendary films of all time. Originally intended as a faux documentary to be filmed during the Vietnam War under the direction of George Lucas, it was constantly pushed back and rewritten and revisualised until it became a surreal and engulfing story directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The production was a nightmare, with the cast being changed or struck with illness; the sets being destroyed by storms; the budget more than doubling; and the intended four-month shoot extending to almost a year and a half. Coppola became almost maniacal in his push to complete the film, which took a further two years to edit, getting its release in 1979, three years after it had begun filming. In 2001, Coppola went back to the film and released a new edit of the film, reinstating scenes dropped from the original cut, adding a further 49 minutes to the already huge 153-minute running time. This was released as Apocalypse Now Redux.

Vietnam, 1969. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), an experienced Special Forces officer, is sent back into the jungle on a top-secret mission to find and kill renegade Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has set up his own army within the jungle. As Willard forges ahead into the jungle, he slowly descends into a state of border-line insanity brought on by his mission and the jungle itself, becoming more like the man he was sent to kill.

At the time of writing, it was perhaps only a couple of months ago that I had the good fortune to be able to see an all-new digital re-release of the original cut of Apocalypse Now on a big cinema screen. It had been years since I had seen it, and I would have kicked myself if I had missed it, particularly with the legendary sound design being played through big theatre sound. Some things genuinely do just need to be seen at least once on the big screen. The showing I went to was an early-afternoon Wednesday screening, the last in its run. When I came to two-and-a-half hours later, I was rather spaced out, walking through the streets back to my car in a mild daze, reeling from the spectacle I had just seen. I genuinely didn’t speak to anyone for around an hour and a half after the film finished. I can’t think of many ways to better describe it than that, other than perhaps this: as I sat in the theatre, which was only moderately busy, there were people around who, for one reason or another, couldn’t sit through the full running time like myself and some others could. Someone had to leave to go to the toilet, someone went to get another drink, the reasons varied. As I sat there, transfixed by the film onscreen, I did, on occasion, have my concentration broken now and then by one of those people moving from their seat. As they moved, I would glance at them, not contemptuously so, but simply because there was movement where there had been none before. My glance away from the film was momentary, less than a second, and I missed no line of dialogue nor visual metaphor. And yet, though I missed nothing of the film, for that split second of not looking at the screen… I missed looking at the screen. I was so absorbed by the action, by the visuals, by the enveloping soundtrack, that if I took myself out of it, even for a moment, I missed not being inside the atmosphere of the film. It was a comfortable bed that I was loathed to tear myself away from. Such is the strength that still remains in Apocalypse Now.

One of the truly great things about Apocalypse Now, and the 2001 re-edit Redux, is that I still can’t entirely decide if it’s one of the worst directed films ever or one of the best directed films ever. It’s ambitious, pretentious, flawed, vital, indulgent, incendiary filmmaking at its most extreme. Coppola himself says that, as the film progresses, the story itself becomes less important. He always said that it’s more of an experience than a film. There is the distinct impression that the film, at some point, ceases to be under the direction of Coppola and instead begins to direct itself, like a living entity trying explore itself in the same the way the characters in the film do. Off the top of my head, I can think of only one other film that has managed to achieve this sense that the film has come alive on its own and begun to dictate its own trajectory, beyond the control (and sometimes the understanding) of its original controller. That film is one I’ll eventually get to in this journey through my collection, but for now, I’ll keep my focus on Apocalypse Now Redux.

Most of what I already think about the original film remains intact in the light of the new material on show in Redux, despite some pretty sizable shifts in structure and flow. I’ll begin by talking about the original film, and then move onto other considerations developed by the new edit.

The original intentions of Apocalypse Now can generally be summed up with the same words that so many others, particularly film students, have used to describe their own projects – “I want to take a proper, realistic look at this, without the bullshit.  I don’t want the audience to watch it, I want them to feel it.” The Vietnam War is often described by those that were there as a truly grim and hazy experience, like a bad trip in a hostile place that never seemed to end. If this is the case, then Apocalypse Now truly is the closest thing to being there. Loosely basing itself on Joseph Conrad’s book Heart of Darkness, the film surges forward into a journey through corruption, amoral reasoning, madness and the dark soul that rests at the heart of every human being. Willard is sent to “terminate with extreme prejudice” Col. Kurtz, a brilliant soldier on his way to becoming one of the top brass in the country, because he has gone off the rails, has closed himself off from the outside world and begun to amass his own army of natives deep within Cambodia. To these less civilised people, he has become a deity, a god, an idol to whom they have given themselves over to completely. With this unwavering support, Kurtz begins fighting the war on his own terms, picking his own targets and ordering his new troops to kill them. That he seems to be getting some sort of results in his area is not the concern to the US military. To them, he has gone completely insane. Therefore, they formally charge him with murder (a notion both Kurtz and Willard find, in the context of where they are, insane) and assign Willard to kill him. On the journey, Willard reads over the numerous documents of Kurtz’s accomplishments, his multiple decorations, his many achievements, and comes to question the authority that would create such a brilliant and highly decorated soldier only to deem him mad for carrying out the duties of his command, but without their input and a ruthless efficiency that they find collectively disturbing. By the time Willard meets his intended target, his journey and his own dwindling mental state mean that he is more like Kurtz than himself.

That Kurtz is regularly alluded to as some sort of deity, and Willard’s journey towards him makes the Apocalypse Now something akin to a religious pilgrimage. People go on these types of journeys to feel closer to God, at least metaphorically. Willard’s journey is made more intense and intriguing because, not only does he know that he will have met God by the end of the trek, but it’s his job to kill him. Along the way, the more he reads of Kurtz’s exploits, both within the military and without, as well as letters from Kurtz to his family, the more Willard becomes indoctrinated into Kurtz’s way of thinking. He starts to buy into the cult of Kurtz. He begins to believe in him. The sense of the religious is scattered throughout the film at numerous instances, utilising religious iconography and imagery, both Western and Eastern, at various points to support this ideal. The whole voyage itself, often described as a descent into madness and Hell, is somewhat structured after a journey (albeit a meandering one) through the various levels of Hell suggested in Dante’s Inferno, with Willard acting as out Virgil. Willard begins in his Saigon hotel room, endlessly waiting on his next assignment – The First Circle of Limbo. As his boat sails down the river, he makes stops at regular intervals. There’s the famous helicopter blitz attack on a small village (Seventh Circle - Violence); there’s the USO show featuring three Playboy Bunnies (Second Circle - Lust); there’s stopping for mangoes, with Chef discussing food, before being chased away by a tiger (Third Circle – Gluttony, with the tiger acting as Cerberus). There’s even a possible allusion to the eternal torment of Greek character Sisyphus, who was condemned to spend eternity pushing a boulder to the top of a hill only to watch it roll back down and have to repeat the task forever. This point can be found in the scene where Willard’s boat happens upon a US Army outpost at a bridge with no commanding officer, which is under constant attack from Vietnamese troops. The US keeps trying to build the bridge; the enemy keeps destroying it. Kurtz’s appearance of a fat bald man (though much to the intense displeasure of director Coppola) actually extends this Eastern deity idea, making him look like some darkly perverted image of Buddha. And the final 15 minutes are a work of brutal ritual, figurative and literal.

The main sequences remain as big and powerful as always. The opening scene with Willard is still a supremely evocative sequence, stirring up the beginnings of the dark hysteria and tragedy that the rest of the film will build on. From the moment Lt. Col. Kilgore, played with a vigorous bravado by Robert Duvall, shows up, the whole film seems to run on a more intense heat, almost like the character makes the film itself stand more at attention. The helicopter attack on the village and school are masterworks of editing, of music, of frankly epic sound design. The Sisyphean bridge scene is something of a deliberate eeriness and shell-shocked horror, scattered with examples of aimless aggression and paranoia. Particularly disquieting is the unblinking soldier who blows up the remains of a Vietnamese squad hiding in the jungle, judging the aim and distance by ear, with an almost supernatural calm.

Kurtz’s compound of death is also still deeply unnerving, decorated with heads, skulls, corpses and words scrawled onto a wall – “OUR MOTTO: APOCALYPSE NOW”. Dennis Hopper’s jittery and intense photojournalist is a rather unsettling presence, but mainly because he’s such enthusiastic believer in Kurtz and his doctrine. He’s a fanatic. He really believes the man is a genius, a god, because when he says things, he has the strength and will to carry them out. As he tells Willard:

Photojournalist: I wish I had words, man. I wish I had words... I can tell ya

something like the other day he wanted to kill me. Somethin’ like that...

Willard: Why’d he wanna kill you?

Photojournalist: Because I took his picture. He said “If you take my picture

again, I'm gonna kill you.” And he meant it.

That he delivers that last line with more than a little awe, as if he’s honoured he should be so regarded by Kurtz, is unsettling.

Many people find the scenes with Brando to be the point where the film wanders too far, goes off the rails too much. Honestly, I disagree. I think it left the rails long before. Now the journey has come to an end and therefore Willard must finally come to make his choice… kill the man, or join him. Brando, for all of his weird dialogue (most of which he made up) and his grotesque appearance, is still a forceful and imposing presence in the film. There’s no doubting that this rambling maniac is capable of doing these terrible things, but there’s equally no doubting that he could inspire the following to do it. Brando has always been possessed of great charisma, indeed that’s why he became the idol to so many in real life. And that’s just exactly what cult leaders need – presence, charisma, the ability to command an audience’s attention. And the way he delivers the monologue about the enemy soldiers that inspired Kurtz to become what he is is still remarkably chilling, made more so because it’s somewhat understandable. That’s what makes Kurtz really horrifying, that he arrived at his mania with a logical clarity that’s difficult to deny.

The new changes made to the film in the Redux cut are mostly small ones, but feature two pretty large additions to the story. One is a return of the Playboy Bunnies from the USO show who had to leave quickly in their helicopter after the audience got too rowdy and started to storm the stage. Willard’s boat comes across a mostly abandoned medevac site that the Bunnies’ helicopter landed. Here, Willard trades two barrels of fuel so the other men on the boat can have one hour with two of them. The girls are now as druggy as most of the soldiers in the film (one absently talking about birds; the other how she feels more like a plaything than a person), so they seem completely unaware that they are being undressed and positioned. It’s a rather unsettling addition, furthering the impression that anyone lost in this morass will become instantly corrupted, be they soldier or civilian.

The other main addition is the French plantation scene, where Willard and his fellow travellers happen upon a plantation run by a French family and protected by French soldiers. This is a far more surreal sequence. Welcomed by the owners, the American soldiers are brought in and cleaned up, fed a proper meal in a very expensive and well-kept house. The family discuss politics and history, with things becoming more heated amongst themselves when Willard asks when they plan on returning to France, given the war that rages around them. They say that they shall never leave, because this is their home, this is their land. For the whole scene, we remain as well informed on the discussion as Willard, which is to say, not very. We get no subtitles to tell us what they say amongst each other, with only some of the conversation being in English and directed at Willard. When people begin seriously disagreeing, leaving the table, sometimes in tears, it’s rather awkward, for us and for Willard. Willard is eventually left at the table with a young woman, who never said a word during dinner. The two eventually go off, smoke some opium, and she tells him, “There are two of you, can’t you see? One that kills, and one that loves,” thus echoing this continued sense of moral duality in the piece. As it is, this particular sequence is one I’m inclined to say isn’t real, that it exists in a peculiar fantasy world, one into which Willard retreats for a sense of perspective. It’s not even just because the scene is bookended by a thick white mist, but because this whole sequence has such a different feel about it. It feels antiquated, outside of the rest of the film. Even the music suggests a period some forty years prior.

Overall, Apocalypse Now is still a film of immense power, liable to leave most people a bit punch-drunk after seeing it, though in the best possible way. The Redux version is one of the few films that has been served better from its reconstitution of old scenes. It’s still the dark, chaotic, living film as before, but now with extra moments of surreal vision, of bleak pontificating, of genuine emotional power. The original cut is still not an inferior one by comparison; it just serves to have its points made a bit better in the newer cut.

The Apartment (1960)

MOVIE-WISE, THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT - LAUGH-WISE, LOVE-WISE, OR OTHERWISE-WISE!

There’s a school of thought that suggests that Billy Wilder is the best director of all time, the reasoning simply being that he, arguably, mastered every genre he touched. If you were to ask someone what the best film noir of all time is, a regular answer is Double Indemnity. Asking about the best comedy ever, many will say Some Like it Hot. Many cite Sabrina as on of the best romantic comedies of all time, and Stalag 17 one of the best war pictures. In 1960, he released what many believe to be his best work, which won him three Oscars in the process – The Apartment.

C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a mid-level insurance clerk looking to rise through the ranks of his company, and who loans his apartment to company executives to use as place to take their mistresses. Things become more complicated when he develops a crush on a fellow employee Fran Kubelick (Shirley MacLaine), who is having an affair with the man who controls the promotions, Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray).

There is story that’s often recounted about The Apartment, that Billy Wilder got the initial idea for the film when watching David Lean’s bittersweet tale of unconsumated love, Brief Encounter. So it goes that the thought occurred to him of a character we never actually see in that film, a friend of Alec’s whose home they go to for some physical congress, only to be interrupted by the friend’s unexpected return home. Wilder considered this character, someone who would climb into his own bed, which has only just recently vacated by two lovers… I know, kind of creepy, right? It’s not exactly the kind of light-hearted notion that rests at the heart of many films described by many as “romantic comedy.” Still, using this singular idea as the basis, Wilder and co-writer I.A.L. Diamond constructed the story of C.C. Baxter, a lonely bachelor trying to climb the corporate ladder by, essentially, loaning out his home and bed to a few company executives for illicit trysts with women who aren’t their wives. Really, in the hands of anyone else, this is the kind of thing that could go horrendously wrong and wind up starring Rob Schneider. It could have been too schmaltzy, too sordid or just incredibly depressing.

Thankfully, Wilder is much smarter than that. Clearly, he knew that, like all projects, it’s the rendering of the characters and how they would find themselves in such a situation that will help sell the film entire. Characters in The Apartment spend their time effectively compromising their own morals or their own current happiness, deferring to the whims of someone else, The Boss, hoping that it will lead to something better down the line. Once that’s been achieved, they can get on with their real lives. Baxter is a relatively faceless employee at the company, just another body sitting at a desk on the 19^th floor (the shot of the vast sea of people at similar desks shows just what kind of odds Baxter must rise above). Owing to a simple favour to someone long ago and snowballing from there, he has begun to basically pimp out his own home as some sort of quick-stop motel to his superiors, who each make endless promises to put in a good word for him come promotion time. Baxter is so poor at confrontation, so susceptible to vague threats of not being considered for executive positions that he literally puts himself out constantly, sometimes even after he’s gone to bed.

Fran Kubelik is of a similar ilk, in that she is willing to sacrifice her own happiness, her own personal standing and self respect, all in the hopes of achieving something more down the road amidst promises from callous and rather despicable people. In the same way that Baxter wants to one day be the boss, Kubelik wants to be the boss’ wife. Again like Baxter, this puts her at the mercy of the rather insensitive personnel director Sheldrake, a married man who peppers her with promises of leaving his wife, just as soon as the time is right. It’s certainly not like Baxter or Kubelik are stupid people who can’t recognise that they’re unhappy or that they’re being walked on. They see it, but they’ve made the conscious decision to enter into these engagements because they genuinely believe that they can benefit from it later. And they do get some reward, so they’re not just operating on blind hope. They think it's just something they'll have to put up with for now.

The performances go a long way balancing out what could be a small gaggle of rather cynical and unrelatable characters. Baxter would actually be somewhat repellent as an individual if not for Jack Lemmon’s performance, which makes him appear so likable and sympathetic that you really feel like he’s being taken advantage of. That’s really the greatness of Lemmon here – he makes Baxter seem like the put upon Everyman. Shirley MacLaine is superb as Kubelik, taking her away from the kind of ditzy, naïve girl she could have been, and giving her a quiet dignity and intelligence which in turn gives her a great depth. Just watch how she plays out the whole Christmas scene with MacMurray’s Sheldrake. Most of it is done with just her eyes, but it’s a torrent of emotion writ in quiet expression. Fred MacMurray himself is on fine form as Sheldrake, a loathsome and unfeeling swine who’s gotten used to holding influence and power over people to his advantage, as his string of past workplace conquests can attest.

What has always rather troubles me about the legacy of The Apartment is that it is remembered and regarded as one of the great all time comedies. The American Film Institute put at number 20 in its list of 100 Laughs, and, in 2006, Premiere voted it as one of the 50 greatest comedies ever (the list itself was unranked). Don’t get me wrong, there is some wonderfully wry humour going on in the film, and it can be genuinely very funny, but all of this somewhat negates the more tragic side of things. I just always have visions of people sitting to enjoy their first watch of a classic comedy and being so completely blindsided by a mid-film suicide attempt of one of the main characters that they turn it off. It’s not even what you’d easily regard as a black comedy since they don’t really try to wring humour from these moments of sadness or moderate bleakness. It’s a drama, with a wide scope reaching into comedy and tragedy with equal focus and equal success. The funny stuff is funny, but the tragic stuff is tragic. In the same kind of way that it seems a little unfair to class American Beauty, which was greatly influence by The Apartment, simply as a comedy, this classification seems to be doing it a slight disservice. What should really be taken from this is the amazing skill and deft touch that Wilder is able to use to achieve these two very distinct modes and bring them together so beautifully and seamlessly.

The Apartment is a great and steady mix of wit, charm, and humour, but also pathos, sadness and a dose of cynicism. The script is tight and wonderfully written; Wilder’s direction is so delicately, but firmly controlled; the cinematography is crisp; and the performances are all excellent. It’s misleading to just call it a comedy, since such a description would belie the moments of tragedy and darkness it holds, but it is an absolutely wonderful film to take in precisely because of this excellent blend of comedy and sorrow. Whether or not you will agree that Wilder is the greatest director ever, there is no denying his great talent here.

Any Given Sunday (1999)

PLAY OR BE PLAYED

Oliver Stone is often regarded as something of an enfant terrible in filmmaking. He’s driven, talented, opinionated and confrontational. He wants to say things about what’s happening in the world. Indeed, this is sort of the right kind of temperament you want from an artist. Someone who wants to engage, challenge, comment and discuss various topics important to him or herself within society at large. He regularly takes swings at war (Born on the Fourth of July, Platoon), politics (JFK, Nixon, W.), the media (Talk Radio, The Doors, Natural Born Killers) and corporate America (Wall Street). In 1999, he selected a new subject for his own brand of scrutiny and dissection – professional sports.

Tony D’Amato(Al Pacino) is the head coach of the Miami Sharks, and is driven by the legacy of the game. Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz) is the owner, and is driven by profit. The team’s in a bad way when, after a four-game losing streak, the star quarterback Cap Rooney (Dennis Quaid) gets injured, bringing in third stringer Willie Beamen (Jamie Foxx), a relative rookie whose ego starts to become a problem in his new role. It falls to D’Amato to try to keep the team from imploding.

If there is a regular concern and focus that Oliver Stone returns to time and again throughout his film choices, it’s the corruptive and corrosive influence that these various topics have on the individuals involved. With Any Given Sunday, Stone considers the world of American football and the effect it has on the various people involved, from the coaches to the owners to the players to the doctors to the families. What makes it especially interesting is that it takes in all of those topics I mentioned before and considers them in the context of this world. There’s the internal politics of the team’s management, with D’Amato and Pagniacci constantly butting heads over the best way to run things, with D’Amato having to argue with players and other coaches on how to run a simple play, with players arguing with each other over differing plays. There’s the business side of things, with Pagniacci trying to strong-arm the mayor into getting a new stadium and promising a bright future for the city, with Julian Washington (LL Cool J) trying to make big endorsement deals. There’s the influence of the media on how things are run, with John C. McGinley’s obnoxious sports reporter Jack Rose shining a light on every bad call and flaw in the team’s play and management, forcing everyone to affect a media-friendly persona for the sake of the money and politics side of things. And as for the fourth one, well, they do say that sport is preparation for war. In fact, the film opens with a quote from legendary football coach Vince Lombardi: “I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour - his greatest fulfilment to all he holds dear - is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.” These are more like the words of a general, not a sports coach.

Well, such is this world that they are one and the same. Several times throughout the film, Stone compares the players on these teams, both directly and by implication, to gladiators, the warriors of old, pitching battle against one another for glory and honour and the entertainment of the baying crowds. In this context, the need for a strong leader is great, someone who can command such respect that their followers will literally risk life and limb for their leader. People seem to be aware of this need in the film, with everyone demanding that someone step up, take charge, be a man. Pagniacci wants D’Amato to show himself as a leader, but brings in someone to hang over him and question his plays and decisions; D’Amato needs a leader on the field, but his go-to guy, Rooney, is on the way out and his replacement, Beamen, may have the playing skills, but he’s too egocentric to learn how to lead. This is a complicated world, with complex relationships, and not just with those on the team. Everyone has an influence on how things could go. There’s even a minor nod towards Macbeth when Rooney confesses to his wife that he wants to step back, but she harangues him into pushing further, reaching higher. Granted, it’s not exactly done with the same great delicacy or punch, but it’s there.

The script is a wide-spreading creature, acknowledging the various aspects at play in each character, with motivations and influences hanging over their heads, pushing them in on direction or another. It really has tried to include everyone in its meditation on the nature of where the drive and desire to win comes from in each character. It does a fine job in defining each role well, so you never really get anyone confused with anyone else, which is a quite a feat when several of them wear the same uniform. It’s also done a rather good job in being able to sum up a few of these characters with a choice phrase, something that acts as their personal motivational mantra. Pagniacci - “Whatever it takes.” D’Amato - “On any given Sunday you’re gonna win or you’re gonna lose. The point is - can you win or lose like a man?” Beamen himself carries a line that is something of a paraphrase of another sporting legend (albeit one from golf), Walter Hagen - “No one remembers who came in second.” Strong words for people that need to be able to motivate quick and hard. It’s not something lost in the film.

Oliver Stone’s direction is, as those of you familiar with his work will know, about as subtle as a charging tackle. There is some subtlety to the writing, but Stone wants to really drive home his point. He’s not one to leave an ambiguous impression. This is achieved often by Stone and his team of four editors, Stuart Levy, Thomas J. Nordberg, Keith Salmon and Stuart Waks. When Pagniacci are arguing over the best way to run the team and make the rights player calls, footage of the team practicing are occasionally ghosted over them, punctuated their clash of words with the clash of bodies. Like I said, it’s not exactly subtle, but it goes beyond simple metaphor. It’s also to drive home the point that what these two are arguing about go beyond a difference of opinion. What these two are talking about has very real and physical repercussions on the team, that D’Amato wants to protect, but Pagniacci just wants to bring in ticket money and good media attention. The comparison between the old times of the Coliseum and the new times on the Gridiron are also nicely played to further D’Amato’s building sense falling out of step with the game he loves, that it long ago moved on without him. His regular run-ins with Beamen are scattered with references to the big age gap between the two, though it sometimes runs a little clichéd (they actually briefly discuss their differing music tastes: Beamen likes rap; D’Amato likes jazz). Stone’s heavy use of metaphor is strewn throughout the whole piece, with clouds and weather being a regular signifier of trouble, either on the horizon or clearing. Again, it’s not subtle, but neither is Stone.

The casting is somewhat interesting, though it’s amazing looking at it now (hell, back then, too) just how many very well known people are in it. Al Pacino, Cameron Diaz, Dennis Quaid, James Woods, Jamie Foxx, LL Cool J, Matthew Modine, Jim Brown, Lawrence Taylor, Bill Bellamy, Lauren Holly, Ann-Margret, Aaron Eckhart, Elizabeth Berkley, John C. McGinley… Christ, that’s a cast. And some of it is great. Jamie Foxx is on fine form, as is Dennis Quaid, LL Cool J, Jim Brown and James Woods. Hell, even Lawrence Taylor, a former NFL star himself, does some excellent work here. There’s even a brief cameo from Charlton Heston, another nod to gladiators, since we see clips from Ben-Hur, in which Heston starred.

Cameron Diaz is okay, but not exactly great as Pagniacci. She’s always had much better luck with roles of a more comedic nature, since she is a gifted comedienne. The lack of assurance occasionally even works for her, since Pagniacci is someone that you feel like shouldn’t really be running this team, so it is awkward fit to the character. However, most of the time, she comes across as genuinely struggling with some moments. Then, there’s Al Pacino. Pacino is a giant in the film world, we know this. That said, I will be honest and say that his D’Amato is pretty good, but hardly the classic work we know he’s capable of (he’s way better in …And Justice For All, as mentioned not long ago). It’s certainly not that he’s bad, because he’s not. He’s just occasionally outshone by others. Again, this rather fits with the idea that he’s a coach struggling to maintain his stance as the leader of this pack, but it just feels like a resurgence of Classic Pacino at the end would have given more kick than is there. Not to mention that, in an Oliver Stone movie, rarely is anyone a bigger star than Oliver Stone.

So, Any Given Sunday is richly conceived, written and directed with the usual gusto of metaphorical swings from Stone, and certainly holds performances of a good enough standard to be convincing for the most part… then why do I feel I little cold about the whole thing? I’m still not sure where to pin this feeling down. It could be that I have no interest in the game itself, and therefore have less of a chance to connect to the material being discussed, simply because I don’t know what they’re talking about sometimes. However, that’s a bit of a cop out, since I should be able to lose myself in the rather effective human drama of it all. Honestly, I think it has to do with the games themselves. Though well-shot and visceral enough, there’s a distance to it somehow. The world in which these games play out seems to so small, so remote, so trivial. If we’re to believe that so much rides on these games and this world, I need to feel the weight of these games. It could all stem from the fact that we see relatively few shots of the crowds, or that there’s little in the way of establishing a tense and passionate atmosphere at the games. It just so rarely feels like they’re playing in big expensive stadiums. It feels smaller, like these are just college games, instead of the big national leagues.

I don’t know, perhaps you’ll feel different.

Any Given Sunday is a fine film, with obvious effort put into the conception of the project and consideration given to the sprawling nature of the game. I didn’t quite get the real rush of what I think they tried to convey, but it certainly still got some punch as an intriguing human drama in a high-pressure world of sports.

Annie Hall (1977)

A NERVOUS ROMANCE

One of the most commonly held criticisms of romantic comedies is that they’re all the same, that they all follow the same basic structure and fall into the same basic conclusions. What exactly can people take from this constant slew of generic output? How can you make any kind of personal connection to a story that is so wilfully generalised that it could have been written by a photocopier? It’s not often that you see a romantic comedy that feels like the person that wrote it actually knew what it was like to be in a relationship. That they understand all of the pain and joy that comes with the back and forth of a love story, and are still able to make it both honest and funny and personal. In 1977, one of the world’s most idiosyncratic filmmakers, Woody Allen, gave the world his romantic comedy – Annie Hall.

After breaking up with his girlfriend Annie Hall (Diane Keaton), comedian and perpetual ball of neuroses Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) looks back over their relationship, taking a stream of consciousness journey through the past and his own personality flaws trying to find out where it all went wrong.

I’m going to say it off the bat… I think Annie Hall is one of the best scripts ever. At the film’s opening, Alvy addresses the audience directly, telling two jokes that sum up how he feels about life (“full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly.”) and relationships (“I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.”). This is frankly one of the most impressively concise and economical openings in film. In less than two minutes, Allen has touched on comedy, tragedy, name-checked Groucho Marx and Sigmund Freud and summed up his main character with a depth and simplicity that’s rarely come across these days. It’s already identified itself as being intelligent and sincere, funny and cynical. The influences are clear and the heart equally so. It’s a hell of a start.

This precision is strewn throughout the film, and is full of so many great lines and memorable characters, that it’s truly something to behold. A scene in which Alvy mentally revisits his old school, recalling the beginnings of his fascination with girls and all they represented to him in later life, is brilliance and sheer comedy gold, especially as some of his classmates announce where they are when all grown up. If you’ve seen the film, you know what I’m talking about… If you haven’t seen the film, I’m not spoiling it for you. Just watch it and thank me later.

The intelligence on display is so striking that it’s almost a bit intimidating, which is perhaps why we really don’t get stuff like this anymore. Characters openly and eruditely discuss art, film, history, death, psychology, media theory, politics, war… and the amazing thing is that you never feel beaten down by it, or left behind by it, because it’s all related back to the central relationship so well that it seems like the most natural thing for these people to do.

And it’s so damn funny. You could blindly point a finger at any page of the script and find a great line, from the very dark (“My grammy never gave gifts. She was too busy getting raped by Cossacks.”) to the satirical (“they don’t throw their garbage away, they turn it into television shows.”) to the oft classics (“Hey, don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with someone I love.”). Christ, the rate of jokes being fired off could almost rival Airplaine!.

The original title of Annie Hall was meant to be Anhedonia, which is the inability to derive pleasure or joy from anything, and is most definitely the thing that defines Alvy. Annie herself is described as polymorphously perverse, which means she can derive pleasure or joy from anything. The fact that the title was changed shortly before release because it would have been too difficult to explain is neither here nor there. This so wonderfully sums up the nature of the central relationship of the film. It identifies why these two, given their track record, find each other so appealing, but also why it can never work for them. She’s open to everything new; he’s open to nothing new. She sees the glass half full; he sees no point in discussing the contents of some glass because we’re all going to die someday. The fact that Alvy tells us at the beginning that this relationship never works out still doesn’t detract from our hopes as we watch it grow. They look they’re having such fun with each other, they seem to compliment each other so well in that ‘opposites attract’ kind of way. It may be clear that it never works out, but… how can it not work out? And who hasn’t been there in a relationship? This is what I was talking about earlier, about the feeling you get that the person talking to you in the film knows the realities of relationships. The giddy awkwardness of first attraction, the comfort of the intimacy, the gradual dulling of intensity, the sense of restlessness of at least one half of the couple, the bitterness and pain in the break-up… it’s a hell of a roller coaster when you look back on it all, full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly.

Allen’s direction is as rich and dextrous as his script, and is something of scattergun genius because of it, always alive and engaging. The whole film is a flashback as recounted by Alvy, whom we know to be someone so full of splintered thoughts and half- contained neurotic diatribes that it’s a wonder he can get anything done without working himself into knots. Allen’s direction, therefore, matches this sensibility perfectly. The film is a melting pot of filmic techniques and methods that help to tell the story: split-screen; flashbacks within flashbacks; subtitles to show what character’s are really thinking during a conversation; Alvy dragging other people into his story for help and advice; Alvy directly addressing the camera; other characters addressing the camera; and scenes of fantasy, from dragging in intellectual theorists to settle arguments to a straight animated sequence where Alvy can’t even hold a decent relationship with the queen from Snow White. This sounds like an absolute torrent to deal with, but it remains so absolutely approachable that we never lose the train of Alvy’s thoughts or his heartache. It also goes without saying that Wendy Green Bricmont and Ralph Rosenblum’s editing is rock solid.

The acting is above reproach, even in the little roles. Christopher Walken damn near steals the whole show as Annie’s seriously unnerving brother; Paul Simon makes a convincingly slimy L.A. douche type; and Shelley Duvall and Carol Kane make a great, but understated impression as past girlfriend’s of Alvy. Allen himself is on top form, though it’s often said that he presented himself no great challenge since he’s playing himself. However, that’s just it, he’s not playing himself, not really. He’s playing a heightened version of himself, more shambolic and nervous, more prone to brazen self-importance. His half-apologetic defiance of a police officer in L.A. is great to watch. Above all, you can see and feel Alvy’s sincerity when he talks about himself or his views or, most importantly, Annie. And it’s not hard to see why. Diane Keaton is utterly superb as Annie, every inch the smart, ditzy, frustrated, radiant woman in Alvy’s heart. There’s not a moment where you don’t fall for her a little yourself every time you see her. And Allen and Keaton work so damn well together.

The true wonder of this wonderful film is found in how it ends. Yes, we know they don’t wind up together, even though you may spend the whole film wishing it so. Despite this, the film ends on a hopeful note. It’s hopeful because even though Alvy is still obsessed with death and a paralysed with self-analysis and psychosis and he didn’t get the girl, he came close. He got to see and feel genuine love for someone else and if he can do it, anyone can.

To this day, Annie Hall remains as funny and sad and poignant as it was when it was released, and is still one of the best examples of what a romantic comedy can be when done right. I love this film, and I do hope that you will give it a try if you haven’t already.

Animal Factory (2000)

ON THE INSIDE THE RULES ARE BRUTAL AND THE STAKES ARE HIGH

If there’s one place that I don’t know about, it’s prison. And if there’s one place that Eddie Bunker does know about, it’s prison. Bunker used to be a criminal, a seriously bad egg convicted of vandalism, armed robbery, numerous assaults, including jamming a fork in another boy’s eye at age 15 and stabbing a prison guard at 17. He was, for a while, the youngest inmate in the California penal system. However, on the inside, he became a novelist, writing No Beast So Fierce (about armed robbery) and Animal Factory (about life in prison). He also became friends with people in the business, including James Ellroy, Michael Mann and Danny Trejo. He’s also appeared in many films, most notably as Mr. Blue in Reservoir Dogs. As can be expected, some of his books, those mentioned above, were eventually turned into films.

Ron (Edward Furlong) is privileged young man, sentenced to a stretch in prison on marijuana charges. On the inside, he is taken under the wing of 18-year prison veteran, Earl Copen (Willem Dafoe). As Ron serves his time, he becomes part of Earl’s gang, so Earl can keep him out of trouble. However, with prison being the place that it is, filled with violence, drugs and the constant threat of assault, it might not take long before Ron succumbs to his environment.

I’ve actually got the novel for Animal Factory, although I’ve never got round to reading it. No real reason as to why, I’ve just been busy reading other things. I will say, though, that if the novel is anything like the script for Animal Factory, which Bunker co-wrote with John Steppling, a sporadic writer of crime films and TV, then I hold out less hope for the book than when I first acquired it. The script is quite poor. Although it is filled with some nice details of prison life that could only have come from someone with firsthand experience, the script that it produced is remarkably clumsy. The major problem is that Bunker and Steppling seem to have confused gritty brutality with a lack of subtlety. Often characters, particularly Ron, say what’s on their minds in an awkward attempt to convey information. You can understand the necessity for it, of course. The prison system is a complex thing, and the rules of conduct are as important as the rules of basic survival. Like Ron, we are a stranger to these walls, so we need someone to tell us what’s happening, who’s who, how to behave if you want to stay alive and… well, intact. Ron isn’t alone in this. Some of Earl’s conversations have the distinct air of mere exposition and explanation, so the feeling of being spoon-fed is hard to ignore. There are also quite a few plot holes, such as Ron’s father’s attempts to get him out and the film’s open-ended and weak denouement.

Some of our principle characters are rather poorly drawn, too. Ron’s relationship with Earl is meant to be something akin to a father-son dynamic, but neither character is sufficiently built to explain the reason for this. The only scene we have to think that there may be a problem between Ron and his real father, played by John Heard, is that his dad missed Ron’s court date, so he got sentenced on his own. However, every other time we see him, Ron’s father is attentive and loving and incredibly self-sacrificing. It’s also never properly determined why Earl would care one bit about Ron. Does he remind of him of himself when he was young? Does Earl have a son that won’t speak to him, and so Ron becomes a surrogate? Is he doing someone other than Ron a favour? It’s never really addressed in a way that offers a satisfactory explanation for his actions. Given that this is the central relationship of the film on which the film rests, it’s just not good enough to warrant any kind of investment from the viewer.

Sadly, the direction does little to rectify this situation, which is a real shame because it’s directed by Steve Buscemi. There is just no atmosphere to this prison. Given the title of the film and its very clear thesis (that prison is a place for breeding criminals, not rehabilitating them), there should be a palpable air of threat behind these bars. Scenes of violence seem to have such a distance to them, even when they involve our main protagonist. And everything just seems so blocky. There’s no sense of nuance or delicacy to the visuals. Just because we’re in a harsh place, doesn’t mean the images have to be so rudimentary. The environment isn’t even that harsh. One of the major obstacles to this lack of atmosphere is the cinematography from Phil Parmet, and the general lack of grit on everything. The lighting is so pleasant that the surroundings actually look quite comfortable. Hell, say what you want about Prison Break, at least that place looked grim and the characters were defined and somewhat threatening.

One of the more frustrating things about the film are the occasional hints at something interesting, a story that may be worth picking up on, or a character that clearly has some depth just waiting to be explored, but they never get picked up. At best, it’s a glimpse and a single line of dialogue and then we move on. For example, near the beginning of the film, Ron briefly talks to a black kid, another young man going to the same prison for the first time. They occasionally spot each other as they serve their sentence, but there’s one instance where we see the different positions they find themselves in. Passing each other in the hallway, it’s clear that the other young man has had to become the property of a much larger prisoner for protection; he’s become a “punk”. Thanks to Earl, Ron has not been broken down by the place in the same way, so he’s remained free of violation. This opens up an interesting notion, whereby we could much better see the kind of toll prison takes on a young man new to the system, compared to the relatively easy road Ron has. However, we so rarely see this other kid, and when we do he’s actually in decent shape, so the whole point is rather moot.

There are some things that are good. John Lurie’s music has an interesting edge to it, a bluesy feel streaked by metallic grindings that offset the surroundings better than the lighting or direction. There’s also a surprising and welcome cameo from Antony Hegarty, from Antony and the Johnsons, as a prisoner singing for other inmates at a performance night. The performances are okay for the most part, many trying their best to cope with such poor character development, Furlong and Dafoe included. Two performances stand out, however, as being the closest thing to having actual depth or presence, something tangible. Typically, they are both bit parts. The first is Mickey Rourke’s Jan, an effeminate transvestite prisoner who has taken to modelling himself after Liza Minelli, albeit a very butch Liza Minelli. Ron’s original cellmate, Jan talks incessantly, and very amusingly, about what he wants to do when he gets out, where he’ll go and how hard he finds it being so pretty in such a nasty place. It becomes clear that he is very lonely, and needs a sympathetic ear to listen to him because he feels so alone. It’s simply from how well Rourke plays Jan that we get a sense of the character’s place in prison and the world. It’s also absolutely typical that we never see or hear about him again after Ron is moved to another cell. He's just abandoned. The other good show comes from Tom Arnold, who plays Buck Rowan, a regular of the prison system, new to these parts and a thoroughly nasty individual. Arnold is a big, imposing guy, so Buck is actually the only person in this whole prison who makes any kind of impression as a threat, and Arnold does it with little more than a hard stare. Every time he’s onscreen, he’s very menacing, making no secret of his desire to rape Ron, despite his supposed protection. Once again, the film dispatches Buck quickly and, though we hear about him afterwards, it’s a very unsatisfying conclusion and leaves the film feeling hollow once again.

Animal Factory should really be much better than it is, but it simply isn’t. The script is weak, the direction is short-sighted, the cinematography is wholly inappropriate and most of the actors spend their time trying make up for the weakness in the writing. Plus, in this film, prison just seems so inconsequential. There’s no real feeling of lasting threat, from guards or other prisoners, or that this is the kind of place that can change a person forever. This isn’t an animal factory… it’s a Build-A-Bear Workshop.

Animal Crackers (1930)

THE MADDEST COMICS OF THEM ALL!

The Marx Brothers. Some of the funniest and most enduring comedy stars ever. A thoroughly gifted family, particularly in music, they quickly found their way to the stage and became a very successful vaudeville act. Like others who had achieved great success on the stage, Hollywood came calling, with Paramount snatching them up for the new turn of “talkies” that was sweeping the industry. Their first two feature projects (a short called Humor Risk was filmed but never released and is believed to now be lost) were adaptations of plays that had been Broadway successes. The first was The Cocoanuts, released in 1929. The second came a year later - Animal Crackers.

Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding (Groucho Marx), the famous explorer, returns from Africa and is invited to attend a gala party held by Mrs. Rittenhouse (Margaret Dumont), during which a famous painting will be displayed. During the party, the painting is stolen, so Mrs. Rittenhouse turns to Spaulding for help to find it and save her reputation.

I love the Marx Brothers, I truly do. Growing up watching their movies, seeing Groucho deliver his rapid-fire one-liners to an utterly bewildered Margaret Dumont, ended up having something of an effect on the way I talk to some people. It’s like him, just nowhere near as funny. I say all this because it’s important to me that you understand that I’m a big fan of these guys. And it’s with that in mind that I say that Animal Crackers, despite the success at the time and the classic status it holds today, is actually not that good…

I know, I know. It’s a controversial position to take. I wish for it to be clear that I don’t consider this a fault of anyone on screen that much. They all give what they can. The real problem comes from two things: a weak script and lousy direction.

I can’t speak for the original Broadway play, but the script here is appallingly bad. The major conflict of the film rests on the disappearance of a very valuable painting. You see, Mrs. Rittenhouse’s daughter’s boyfriend is a talented artist, and he is convinced to swap the real painting for a copy he made to show off his skills as an artist and become famous… I’m not sure that’s the smartest of plans. On top of this, two of the party guests, one of whom is also an artists, but a bad one, decide to swap the real painting for their own copy, really just because they think it will be funny. They manage to convince Mrs. Rittenhouse’s head butler to do it, because… it would seem he used to be that guest’s old butler and they asked a favour… what? Never mind the ridiculously convoluted nature of this whole thing, what kind of weak motivations are these for all this? It doesn’t even have the good sense to devolve into a hilarious comedy of errors, with each party trying to figure out which painting is real or not before the police arrive. Honestly, by the end, you won’t care. Plus, is it just me or does whole bit about a famous explorer being invited to a swanky society party to regale the guests with hunter’s tales before having to save the reputation of the hostess from plans of two scheming guests sound a bit familiar? In fact, it sounds quite close to the rough premise of Harold Lloyd’s 1921 short Among Those Present, which I talked about last week. Weird.

The other real bad spot of the film is the direction from Victor Heerman. Heerman was more regarded as a writer in Hollywood. Either as part of a team or on his own, he is credited with writing Golden Boy in 1939, Magnificent Obsession in 1935 and Little Women in 1933, for which he won an Oscar. He was also a director, but going by Animal Crackers, this is not where his skills lay, at least not with comedy. He has absolutely no sense of any kind of visual style on show, so the camera is just aimed at the actors and left running in the hopes of catching something. The fact that the project was originally a play, with predominantly the same cast, has clearly factored into Heerman’s thinking, so it feels like someone has just filmed the stage show, rather than made a film out of it. This has a catastrophic effect on how the film unfolds. The play clearly got laughs in theatres, and so the actors would leave the occasional pause before they continue. These pauses are still there, as if their playing to an audience that isn’t there, so there are dozens of times when a joke is followed by a rather awkward silence before the action continues. As such, there is a dreadful lack of energy and pace to the whole project, so it also feels very slow. One of the most fondly remembered scenes is one where Chico and Harpo play Bridge with Dumont and Margaret Irving… good God, it’s slow, made worse by the fact that it’s mostly done in a single, long, unedited take. I’m sorry, but it’s just not funny.

There are numerous technical issues with the film, too, although many of these are a product of a studio still trying to come to terms with the new technology being used. Sound films had really only been around for four years at this point, and many still felt a little resistance to this new way of making films. Microphone positioning was clearly still an issue, with the sounds of footsteps clomping around occasionally competing with dialogue. Also, the editing is rather choppy. Honestly, these would actually be rather mild concerns, easily overlooked if other aspects of the filmmaking weren’t so poor.

However, this is still a Marx Brothers film, so there is still some enjoyment here. There are still some cracking lines from Groucho (“One morning I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How he got in my pyjamas, I don’t know” is still a classic); Harpo’s physical work is still great (a moment at the end when he’s discovered stealing silverware is absolute gold, no pun intended); and the musical interludes from Chico and Harpo are still very impressive. It also contains several instances of Groucho talking directly into the camera, breaking the fourth wall before they even had a chance to build it. (A bit of me suspects that the reason he did this was because Groucho could feel the lack of energy because of the lack of audience, so decided to fill the gap in the only way he knew how, by playing to them even though they weren’t there.)

There is another thing that rather bothers me about Animal Crackers. It could be a sign of how times have changed, but the film is, probably unintentionally, kind of racist. It’s more likely that it’s just them trying to make jokes without thinking too much about it, but by modern standards, it cuts really close to the bone on a few occasions. When Groucho makes his big entrance, he’s being carried in a sedan by four African men. Okay, so he’s just making a joke that this is like an African taxi and no malice was intended, I guess. Then, there’s a later line, “I wish I was back in the jungle, where men are monkeys.” Again, he’s probably just making an unfortunately worded joke, but still… and then there’s another line, “Africa is God’s country, and he can have it.”… again, I honestly don’t think he’s being consciously mean-spirited with any of this, and maybe few people would have questioned any of this back then. Nevertheless, it’s a little bit uncomfortable nowadays.

Despite holding some of Groucho’s most famous jokes, Animal Crackers is not a particularly good film, largely because the central story is so weakly written and the direction is so painfully lacklustre. The Marx Brothers do give what they can, and they still wring some laughs in this, but it remains something to get through rather than something to really enjoy as intended.