Monday
6/22/04
The Movie Curmudgeon Returns.
As far as rules go, I have very few. Mostly I just do things the way I think they ought to be done, and that seems to work just fine with the rest of the household. There is of course the occasional boy rebellion when something terrible has happened, like the arrival of bedtime, but, as an act of fealty to my European heritage, such native uprisings are put down swiftly and without remorse.
I am, however, doing my best to impart the significance of one particular rule to the lads: Never, ever, feel that you have to like something just because people say you should. In short, if the emperor has no clothes, say so. And so, in just that spirit of honesty, I’m going to shout this little observation from the rooftops: NORTH BY NORTHWEST IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE! That’s right, Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and one very lost looking James Mason. That North by Northwest.
It’s one of those "classics" I had never gotten around to seeing, so you can imagine my excitement when it arrived at my door the other day, all wrapped up in its bright red Netflix envelope, coy as a new bride. Shortly thereafter my lovely wife and I popped some corn, dimmed the lights, and settled in for a spine-tingling evening with the master of suspense. (Well, we didn’t really make popcorn, but it sure sounds like it would have improved the Rockwell-like domesticity of the scene.)
Anyway, a mere 136 minutes later, although it seemed like many more, the lights came up and the credits began to roll… just as my eyes had been doing throughout the entire showing. Now I’m as skilled at suspension of belief as the next media consumer, but I have old baby blankets that hang together better than this plot. Nothing, and I mean nothing makes any sort of sense. We learn, for instance, that Kaplan, the man for whom Cary Grant is mistaken in the beginning of the film, is a fictional creation of the FBI. So since Kaplan never existed, how could James Mason’s henchmen possibly have mistaken Grant for him in the first place? For Heaven’s sake.
And yes, the well-worn ‘crop duster chasing Cary Grant scene’ starts out just fine, but by the end the pilot turns himself and his plane into a fireball when he inexplicably flies straight into a waiting gas truck. Why? Maybe the pilot just suddenly lost his will to live. Or, maybe James Mason had just hired the most incompetent pilot/assassin in the world. Either way, we’ll never know for sure because that bad old Mr. Hitchcock sure isn’t going to give up any of his secrets.
Anyway, even though I could blather on about the movie’s countless other surreal plot elements, I think I’ll just leave well enough alone. Suffice to say that my position as reigning Movie Curmudgeon stands unchallenged. All hail Movie Curmudgeon! Huzzah!
|
The Movie Curmudgeon Returns.
As far as rules go, I have very few. Mostly I just do things the way I think they ought to be done, and that seems to work just fine with the rest of the household. There is of course the occasional boy rebellion when something terrible has happened, like the arrival of bedtime, but, as an act of fealty to my European heritage, such native uprisings are put down swiftly and without remorse.
I am, however, doing my best to impart the significance of one particular rule to the lads: Never, ever, feel that you have to like something just because people say you should. In short, if the emperor has no clothes, say so. And so, in just that spirit of honesty, I’m going to shout this little observation from the rooftops: NORTH BY NORTHWEST IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE! That’s right, Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and one very lost looking James Mason. That North by Northwest.
It’s one of those "classics" I had never gotten around to seeing, so you can imagine my excitement when it arrived at my door the other day, all wrapped up in its bright red Netflix envelope, coy as a new bride. Shortly thereafter my lovely wife and I popped some corn, dimmed the lights, and settled in for a spine-tingling evening with the master of suspense. (Well, we didn’t really make popcorn, but it sure sounds like it would have improved the Rockwell-like domesticity of the scene.)
Anyway, a mere 136 minutes later, although it seemed like many more, the lights came up and the credits began to roll… just as my eyes had been doing throughout the entire showing. Now I’m as skilled at suspension of belief as the next media consumer, but I have old baby blankets that hang together better than this plot. Nothing, and I mean nothing makes any sort of sense. We learn, for instance, that Kaplan, the man for whom Cary Grant is mistaken in the beginning of the film, is a fictional creation of the FBI. So since Kaplan never existed, how could James Mason’s henchmen possibly have mistaken Grant for him in the first place? For Heaven’s sake.
And yes, the well-worn ‘crop duster chasing Cary Grant scene’ starts out just fine, but by the end the pilot turns himself and his plane into a fireball when he inexplicably flies straight into a waiting gas truck. Why? Maybe the pilot just suddenly lost his will to live. Or, maybe James Mason had just hired the most incompetent pilot/assassin in the world. Either way, we’ll never know for sure because that bad old Mr. Hitchcock sure isn’t going to give up any of his secrets.
Anyway, even though I could blather on about the movie’s countless other surreal plot elements, I think I’ll just leave well enough alone. Suffice to say that my position as reigning Movie Curmudgeon stands unchallenged. All hail Movie Curmudgeon! Huzzah!
