2001: A Space Odyssey

From director Stanley Kubrick, 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey is generally regarded as one of the all-time great movies to ever come out of Hollywood. I point this out with my introductory sentence because I have no freaking idea what to write about. I watched Kubrick's film for the first time recently, and I don't even know what to say. I don't know what it was trying to achieve or show, and I came away vastly disappointed.

It is a film that to me seems to defy all description or plot synopsis. I apologize now before we get into the guts of the review because I've got a feeling this might get a little on the rambling side. There is no real plot to follow, just four extended divisions of a loosely linked narrative. Throughout time, we as viewers are shown immense black monoliths in different places and locations around the universe. Somehow and some way, it is all connected. What do these monoliths represent in the bigger scheme of things? Are they responsible for human evolution, both good and bad? Do they mean anything at all? Are we even supposed to find an answer?

I think that's what I found most disappointing about Kubrick's classic film. I resent so many reviews that state 'One has to be highly intelligent to comprehend and appreciate this movie.' Condescending and pretentious much? It is a film that requires the viewer to engage and watch everything, come up with your own conclusions. That's fine. I don't need a movie to spell out every little thing for me, but even a hint here and there would be nice. I'm not sure what Kubrick wants to say here. Is it something as simple as the circle of life, a progression of mankind over millenniums from an ape to a space-exploring human? Okay, that's fair and definitely interesting. The story though is anything but.

Kubrick's film is broken into four loosely tied together segments. The first follows a group of almost human-like gorillas living in a quasi-desert environment. One ape discovers an animal bone and realizes he can use it as a weapon. It's a profoundly cool moment, symbolically sending mankind down a path that cannot be reversed. The second segment follows a doctor (William Sylvester) as he prepares to visit a space station on the Moon where a black monolith has been discovered deep beneath the Moon's surface. Next up, fast forward 18 months later as astronauts Dr. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) are in deep space heading to Jupiter with the help of the HAL-9000, a brilliant, possibly free-thinking computer. The last segment takes Dr. Dave into some sort of deep space portal on the far side of Jupiter.

Of the four, the opening ape/gorilla segment is especially effective. The follow-up, the doctor's trip to the Moon lets the momentum get tripped up, ending on a mysterious note that leads into Dave, Frank and HAL's segment. This is the most iconic, memorable segment of the movie. HAL begins to think for himself, making decisions that the human doctors don't agree with. HAL's iconic, eternally memorable "I'm sorry, I can't do that, Dave' manages to send a chill right up my back. Then, the finale is the trippiest and most visual of all the segments.....and the most mysterious. There are moments that work on an epic scale; the transition from ape to space, a monolith screeching, the realization that HAL is reading lips and thinking for himself, but there aren't enough.

I just don't know what to say here. As a visual medium alone, this is an incredible movie. As an interesting story, not so much. The musical score, including the Blue Danube (listen HERE), is probably the best thing going here. But overall, the movie is so schizophrenic I have trouble deciphering it. The story is too slim with nothing more than the thinnest of connections. The visual is amazing to watch, but it gets lost in a sea of monotonous, tedious shots of space ships floating through space. The same for the people. Seeing Frank run around the ship? Not interesting to watch. I can't put my finger on why exactly this universally accepted classic didn't resonate with me in the least. At the same time, it's hard to pick one fault and really explain it. What I do know is simple. I didn't like it....at all.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968): ** 1/2 /****

They Came to Rob Las Vegas

In the late 1960s over a span of about three years, Gary Lockwood seemed to be a rising star in Hollywood. So what happened then? By the 1970s, he worked mostly as a guest star on television and B-movies. He's still kicking at 75 years old, but he hasn't been in a feature film since 1998. Whatever the reason, I'm still a fan, and I was glad to see a recent TCM airing of one of those late 1960s movie, 1968's They Came to Rob Las Vegas.

Planning the perfect robbery of an armored car headed for Las Vegas, aging crook Gino (Jean Servais) sees his plan fall apart in execution, and he's killed in the robbery. His nephew, Tony Ferris (Lockwood), is hurt hard by the news because he chose not to take part in the robbery, leaving family out to dry. Knowing what the plan was though, Tony picks up where the previous effort failed, working with a small team of friends and fellow crooks to take down the supposedly impregnable armored trucks of Alex Skorsky (Lee J. Cobb), a businessman trying to get a government contract. What Tony doesn't know though is a dogged insurance investigator, Douglas (Jack Palance), is also on Skorsky's trail, and the three men are on a collision course.

I stumbled across this flick several years back poking around at the IMDB but was never able to track down a copy until this recent airing on Turner Classic Movies. I was intrigued by this heist movie with an above average cast that I'd never even heard of. So why has it been brushed aside all these years? For starters, it is a tad leisurely paced at 124 minutes, countless scenes of the armored truck driving around to the amazingly bad jazz-themed soundtrack. It's hard to describe how bad the soundtrack is, but what's funny is that at other times it is spot-on perfect. Listen to part of it HERE. Even at two-plus hours, the story drifts too much, key background going unexplained, new situations and developments seemingly coming out of left field. And you know what's most surprising? I really liked it.

All bad to lousy things considered, this heist movie with U.S.-Spanish-French-Italian backing is a hell of a lot of fun. Yes, it is fun in that guilty pleasure, so bad it's good department, but the end result is the same. It's fun and entertaining, reeking of that suave, groovy late 1960s style. With backing from so many countries, we've got the feel of a modern spaghetti western -- bad dubbing galore -- with an international cast and Spanish filming locations and then we've got on-location shooting in Las Vegas, a city dripping with sleazy style. Seeing it in 1968? That's just an awesome city. Like the Bond movies or the B-movie Euro crime thrillers, there's just an unexplainable charm and style to 'Las Vegas.' Either you go along with it or you don't, and your take on the movie will probably hinge on that reaction.

What originally drew me in was the heist angle coupled with the casting. Lockwood is a worthwhile anti-hero, quiet and confident as he puts his plan into motion. He also gets the love interest, the very beautiful Elke Sommer as Ann, his girlfriend and inside source at Skorsky's headquarters. Not a great actress, but I don't think she was cast for her acting chops. Cobb and Palance aren't given a ton to do, but they get some points for just being there. Cobb's Skorsky is into the mob for money laundering and generally looks worried/nervous, building up for some large outbursts. Palance is Palance, a high-strung ball of energy just waiting to explode.

As a fan of heist movies and men-on-a-mission movies, I came away disappointed with one aspect of 'Las Vegas' and that's Tony's team of crooks. They include Leroy (Georges Geret), the smooth talking, suave veteran thief, Cooper (Fabrizio Capucci), the young hothead, Sal (Gustavo Re), the machinist with the acetylene torch, Merino (Daniel Martin), the lookout, Clark (Maurizio Arena), the chopper pilot, and Baxter (Enrique Avila), the quiet, assured thief. One quick scene with Tony laying out the plan shows this group has worked together before, but we never hear about it...at all. The team is cool because the story requires it, but when they inevitably turn on each other, it lacks any real punch. Interesting enough, but never developed enough either. A whole movie could have been devoted to Tony's crew.

That said, the heist and the aftermath -- no spoilers here -- are the highlights of the movie. The first 45 minutes are a tad on the slow side, but things pick up with the desert heist; Tony's crew attacking the heavily armored car in the middle of nowhere. The ending doesn't quite pay off like I'd hoped, leaving too much unanswered, but for some reason, I fell for this one. Not a classic and maybe not even that good overall, but worth a watch.

They Came to Rob Las Vegas <---Youtube montage (1968): ***/**** 

R.P.M.

Before I start ripping this movie, I'll say this.  I like director Stanley Kramer and most of his films. Mad, Mad World is one of my favorite comedies, Judgment at Nuremberg is a classic, On the Beach an underrated gem, and many, many others are worth watching for one reason or another.  As a director though, Kramer was sometimes guilty of trying to hard to teach, to deliver a message, to show what was wrong with the world.  Usually those issues came in the context of a well-made movie so it didn't bother me.  If anything, it aided the movie's cause.  That wasn't the case with 1970's R.P.M..

The late 1960s and early 1970s, a time of political and cultural upheaval as Americans grew more intensely frustrated with the direction our country was taking.  A sub-culture of people grew that was frustrated with the ways of the world, and maybe nowhere was that more evident than any college campuses, grounds for free thinking and free thought. Students were taught to think for themselves, not blindly go along with what older, powerful authority figures told them.  That didn't always end well with public protests ending violently, and even shootings in some cases.  A ripe picking ground for a movie if handled correctly.  If. 

At Hudson University, a large group of students led by two grad students, Rossiter (Gary Lockwood) and Steve (Paul Winfield) has peacefully taken over an administration building that holds key information necessary to the university. The only way they'll leave the building is if a list of their 12 demands are met, each and every one of them.  For starters, the students want popular sociology professor, Franklin 'Paco' Perez (Anthony Quinn), to take over as university president. Curious to see if all the things he's learned and taught over his years as a professor are in fact true, he takes the job.  Meeting and negotiating with the students, Perez is able to comply with nine of their 12 demands.  But the students won't budge on the three, and no matter what the acting president thinks or wants, it doesn't seem like there is a way to compromise.

One of the biggest struggles this movie goes through is finding an appropriate, consistent tone throughout.  Is it a folksy, out of the norm look at noble students trying to impact their world?  Maybe.  Singer-songwriter Melanie has a couple songs used in the soundtrack used over some montages of Perez walking around campus, painting a picture of an idyllic college with no problems. Or on the other hand, is it an indictment of the system, condemning both the students leading the charge and the board of directors trying to limit the damages done?  Yes and no, because both sides are criticized if in a somewhat unbalanced way.  For this story to work better, a stronger stance needed to be taken and not that gray area in the middle.

Instead of choosing, the tone and indictment leads more to painting the rebelling students as the heroic saviors of society.  The board of directors are portrayed as old fogies who have no knowledge of what bothers their student body.  A painfully obvious dig has Perez listening to the board, imagining them as clowns and jokers blathering on and on about the money, the stigma, the dilemma being caused.  We get it. They're old and don't understand the younger generation.  You don't need to hit us over the head with a mallet to get the idea across.  Conversely, the students are presented as somewhat heroic, but in the end they just come off as pretentious know-it-alls, not noble idealists.  They spout off all sorts of nonsense about their ideals and principles, ripping to pieces the one guy -- acting President Perez -- who's genuinely trying to help them because he sees their struggle.  Good choice, make both sides look like idiots.

So in a pretentious, very talky movie, something good has to be going on at some point, doesn't it?  Yes, and his name is Anthony Quinn.  Even in some of the lower quality movies he starred in over the years, Quinn always seemed to rise above the dreck.  The popular professor who makes his students think and question what they know is a somewhat cliched character, but it's based in the truth. I'd wager every college and maybe every department has a professor like that, one students seek out as opposed to avoiding them like the plague. Quinn's Perez comes from a modest background having had to work his way up through the ranks.  He legitimately wants to help the students but knows almost from the start he's fighting a losing battle. The character does border on being too perfect, too likable, but amongst all the annoying, downright obnoxious characters, I didn't mind.

Also worth mentioning in supporting roles are Ann-Margret as Perez's grad student girlfriend, Rhoda, and Lockwood as Rossiter, the leader of the student revolution. At the height of her sex kitten days, Margret is wasted. She has to look sexy, strip down a couple times, and wear slinky outfits, at times serving as Perez's conscience and sounding board.   A legitimately talented actress, she's just not given enough to do.  Lockwood as Lossiter is the bright spot among the students, a thinker and an idealist who genuinely wants to accomplish something.  A late scene between him and Quinn is a high point as they discuss the detours and turns the route has taken to get where they are.

The ending is what bothered me most though, one more not so subtle attempt to deliver a message.  Pushed to the breaking point, the university has the police evacuate the building with tear gas and cops armed with billy clubs.  The police chief (Graham Jarvis) expresses his concern that the plan won't go off as planned. Well, it goes off as well as expected. The takeover is riddled with slow-motion and extreme close-ups of pained students being tackled or hit by police.  Oh, great, one more attempt to dig the system.  A wasted effort from a typically very solid director.

R.P.M. <---one of many talky scenes (1970): * 1/2 /****