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11/28/2022 0 Comments Menace ii society (spine 1105) Menace II Society
Directed by: The Hughes Brothers 1993 Spine #1105 In the opening scene of Menace II Society, 21-year-old twin filmmakers Allen and Albert Hughes introduced themselves like a crack of lightning across the cinematic sky. In the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts, circa 1993, two young Black teens - Caine (Tyrin Turner) and O-Dog (Larenz Tate) - stroll into a convenience store, where the Korean owner and his wife hang on their every move, making little effort to mask their distrust (or disdain). At first it feels like a textbook case of racial profiling… until that initial sense of unease is trampled by a sudden and shocking eruption of violence that’s not unlike the tightly coiled jaws of a bear trap snapping shut. In that moment, the Hughes Brothers laser in on the uncomfortably hazy nexus between truth and stereotype (which Best Picture winner Crash would explore in far more ham-handed fashion years later). “After that,” Caine comments in matter-of-fact voice-over “I knew it was going to be a long summer.” It’s difficult to analyze Menace II Society without first passing through the lens of Boyz n the Hood - John Singleton’s landmark 1991 debut, which helped usher in the wave of Black urban dramas and crime thrillers that proliferated throughout the 90s. Boyz n the Hood was the more significant film, but one could argue that Menace II Society is the more cinematically accomplished, more aesthetically audacious, more immediate in its grit and verve. Boyz n the Hood, with its “increase the peace” messaging, was also a fundamentally optimistic film at heart (one that couldn’t help but stray into raw yet blunt social commentary - “Either they don’t know, don’t show, or don’t care about what’s going on in the hood”), whereas Menace II Society revels more boldly in its own clear-eyed nihilism. Cuba Gooding Jr’s Tre was essentially a good kid at heart, trying to avoid falling victim to his own circumstances… whereas the Hughes Brothers make clear that their film represents the battle for Caine’s troubled soul. Caine graduates from high school, which is initially a cause for celebration… but that quickly gives way to an aimless and volatile summer for him and his friends. He is portrayed as neither hero nor villain, sinner nor saint; he dabbles in drug-dealing and other petty crime, but has no particular taste for it… he simply exists in the moment, no vision of the future, no direction, no discernible passions or interests that might offer a glimmer of salvation. A carjacking results in the death of his cousin Harold, which in turn leads to vicious retribution. In the film’s eyes, Watts symbolizes a never-ending cycle of violence - almost Dante-esque in its sense of spiritual damnation and despair - and the Hughes Brothers aren’t remotely cryptic about the fact that Caine’s only hope is to escape… either with his friends Stacy and Sharif, who invite him to accompany them to Kansas, or his love interest Ronnie (an impossibly young Jada Pinkett-not-yet-Smith), who asks him to move to Atlanta with her and her young son Anthony. To stay is to end up dead or jailed - no other outcome is an option. Tyrin Turner is quite good as Caine (and many have puzzled over why he didn’t go on to a bigger career)… but it’s Larenz Tate, as the charismatic, baby-faced sociopath O-Dog, who sends jolts of electrical current shivering through the screen. His scenes are genuinely scary (“America’s nightmare - young, Black, and didn’t give a fuck” Caine offers, by way of description) - at one point, he puts a bullet in a desperate crack addict out of sheer annoyance, then casually asks his friends if anyone wants the dead junkie’s discarded cheeseburger. Unlike Caine, his destiny feels immutable - a damned soul locked on a path to oblivion before he’s even reached legal age. It’s still hard to understand why the Hughes Brothers never quite reached the cinematic stratosphere. Their underrated follow-up Dead Presidents led to From Hell - their indelible adaptation of Alan Moore’s Jack the Ripper graphic novel - which should have cemented their standing as directing superstars. Instead it took them almost a decade to make another movie - the Denzel Washington post-apocalyptic neo-Western The Book of Eli - and then they broke up. Both have continued to produce quality work on their own, but they were a far more formidable force together. The unflinching power of their debut feature continues to endure, however. At one point early on in the movie, Caine’s exasperated grandfather asks his grandson if he even cares whether he lives or dies, to which Caine is unsure how to respond. As the film reaches its harrowing climax, and Caine faces his reckoning, he thinks back to that moment and declares “Yeah… I do.” And we realize that we feel the same way.
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11/17/2022 0 Comments Double indemnity (spine 1126) Double Indemnity
Directed by: Billy Wilder 1944 Spine #1126 What is it about old movies that makes the craft look so damn easy? Double Indemnity was released almost 80 years ago, yet remains the gold standard for cinematic noir. From the moment Fred MacMurray’s slick insurance salesman Walter Neff arrives at the Los Feliz home of Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), the plotting and dialogue flow so effortlessly, it’s almost as if the script is writing itself (in actuality it was courtesy of Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler - not exactly a shabby duo when it comes to this sort of thing). Neff is only there to remind Mr. Dietrichson to renew his auto insurance… but instead fatefully crosses paths with his wife, a blonde Venus flytrap in heels, who innocently inquires about the possibility of purchasing accident insurance for her husband without his knowledge. Neff sees straight through her, but for all his bluster, he’s smitten (“I stopped at a drive-in for a bottle of beer, the one I had wanted all along, only I wanted it worse now, to get rid of the sour taste of her iced tea and everything that went with it”)… and before long he’s helping her plot the perfect murder. One that involves Dietrichson meeting his unfortunate demise on a train, thereby triggering his policy’s “double indemnity” clause, which means twice the payout. Not surprisingly, things don’t go according to plan. In fact, that’s never even in question, given Wilder’s bold decision to open the film with a gravely injured Neff staggering into the insurance office and recording his confession into a dictaphone as the story’s framing device. As good as the two leads are, the best performance might be courtesy of the man Neff’s confessing to - his boss, Barton Keyes, an insurance biz bloodhound played by the great Edward G. Robinson, who starts to pick at the threads of Neff’s ingenious plot (laying out the risk of two people committing a murder - “It’s not like taking a trolley ride together where they can get off at different stops. They’re stuck with each other and they got to ride all the way to the end of the line and it’s a one-way trip and the last stop is the cemetery.” Lord, who writes dialogue like this anymore?). Younger audiences, of course, might question the fuss (admittedly not all the dialogue is quite so ageless - if you took a shot every time Neff calls Phyllis “baby,” you’d be under the table within ten minutes). Double Indemnity portended the sort of stark cynicism that would flower in the coming postwar years, but there have certainly been darker and nastier examples of film noir. Likewise there have been more physically striking, more cold-blooded, more casually cruel, and more just plain hazardous-to-your-health femme fatales than Stanwyck over the years, but she - like the film itself - is the measuring stick (one thing that never was topped, however, is the cunning intelligence that glitters in Stanwyck’s eyes in each and every shot she’s in - in an industry that often favors girls, she’s most definitely a woman). And hey - Fred MacMurray’s pretty darn good too. For a movie about sordid subjects such as murder and fatalism, Double Indemnity - with its classic, black-and-white compositions and exterior shots of a 1940s Los Angeles that feels like the stuff of myth - is strangely comforting… the sort of movie you want to envelop yourself in, like the clouds of cigarette smoke that fill the screen. It makes Phyllis commenting “We’re both rotten,” to which Neff responds “Only you’re a little more rotten” almost feel downright romantic. |
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