The Awful Truth (1937)

Cary Grant and Irene Dunne are Jerry and Lucy Warriner, bon vivant New Yorkers both who run afoul over suspicions over each others' honesty (Jerry) and fidelity (Lucy). As director Leo McCarey's comedy The Awful Truth opens, their marriage heads for divorce court -- in a hurry.

Court proceedings are fairly orderly until the issue of custody over the couple's dog, Mr. Smith (that would be Asta, canine star of the Thin Man movies). In true screwball comedy fashion, the judge allows the pup to decide, and Lucy pulls a fast one to get Mr. Smith to see things her way. But Jerry is granted visitation rights, and that tenuous connection to his soon-to-be-ex's life propels a big part of the story in this hilarious classic from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

It doesn't take long for Lucy to find a prospective new suitor -- right across the hall from the new place she shares with her very bored Aunt Patsy (Cecil Cunningham, in a terrific supporting turn). Dan Leeson (Ralph Bellamy) is a wealthy Oklahoma farmer and rancher who's in the city to see the sights with his mom. He's smitten with Lucy from the get-go, and while she isn't, she is most anxious to annoy Jerry every chance she gets.

In one classic scene, Lucy and Dan are enjoying a night of drinks and dancing at a lavish club -- where Jerry dances up to their table with a giddy gal (Joyce Compton -- not much screen time, but you won't forget her performance). Jerry's effort to make Lucy jealous backfires miserably ... until Jerry spills the beans that Lucy loves to dance to Dan, who loves it at least as much. Their rug-cutting shows off some masterfully subtle physical comedy, accented perfectly by Grant's delighted reactions.

As Lucy and Dan near engagement -- awaiting only the official date for Jerry's and Lucy's divorce -- Lucy starts to get cold feet. But Jerry's feet start to warm toward a single heiress, as Lucy discovers in a society page headline and photo. Meanwhile, D-day for the divorce nears, bringing more twists and big laughs at every turn.

Dunne was top-billed in this film (Grant was not yet a big star), and there can be little doubt why: She was a brilliant comedienne. Whether it's the small nonverbal flourishes or the big gestures of ribald humor, Dunne excels -- and manages the transitions between the two seamlessly. That she does all this while managing to create a character with a lot of heart is real testament to her genius. Grant, of course, is terrific -- a master of comic acting, he turns on the charm in just the right places and meshes perfectly with Dunne's zany energy.

The Awful Truth is packed full of gut-busting laughs, thanks to a crackling script, tremendous cast, and priceless little moments of hilarity (the cuckoo clock at the end is one of those wonderfully silly scenes from classic Hollywood that makes me laugh every time I think of it). It's rightly hailed as a classic, but it still hits the funny bone hard because it has aged so well.

Fight scene Friday: end the week in style!

I can think of no better way to enter the weekend than with more silly combat ...

Oh, you're quite welcome!

The Straight Story (1999)

True story: In 1994, a 73-year-old Iowan got on his riding lawn mower and left his small-town home to visit his brother ... in Wisconsin. The once-close brothers hadn't spoken in 10 years, dating back to an argument that had left both embittered. Alvin sought to change that. Rarely topping 5 miles per hour, Alvin Straight took 6 weeks to get to brother Lyle's home.

The story of Alvin Straight's 1994 journey to visit his also-elderly brother attracted plenty of media attention before David Lynch came along, but Straight declined opportunities to do the talk show circuit. The World War II and Korean veteran was known for his quiet demeanor and was uncomfortable with the attention.

So who better to direct the G-rated movie, The Straight Story -- to tell the story of this day laborer who decided to go his own way -- than, er, iconoclastic filmmaker David Lynch? What is perhaps somewhat more surprising is how straightforward (no pun intended) Lynch renders Straight's story in this achingly beautiful, family-friendly film. Lynch, it turns out, is the right director for this project, given his patience for letting the story's small elements grow at their own pace. Longtime Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti created a fantastic score to accent master cinematographer Freddy Francis's stunning shots of Iowa's natural beauty, along with the endless skies that range above the grain fields, rolling hills, and small towns along Alvin's back-road journey.

The cast is filled with a few Lynch regulars (Everett McGill, Harry Dean Stanton), some lesser-known character actors who ply their craft wonderfully here, and the star leads: Sissy Spacek as Alvin's loving daughter, and Oscar-nominated Richard Farnsworth as Alvin. Farnsworth's so good it's easy to miss; his easy manner and muted style keep his character in focus appropriately, without ever slipping into the dangers of maudlin excess such a story is prone to. Not to worry here: Between the cast and Lynch's sure hand, understatement is the keynote.

The Straight Story may be the only time David Lynch makes a film for Disney. But wow, what a movie.

The Happening (2008)

When you’re a filmmaker who can create a taut, character driven ghost story and still manage to pull the rug out from under the audience, you’ve scored a hit. When you follow up with a film about comic book mythos, and still manage to spin a hypnotic tale, you’ve earned devotion. When you tell a story about an alien invasion and manage to capture Hitchcockian suspense, we’ll follow you anywhere. You can photograph cardboard and we’ll show up to watch. When you turn in something like The Happening, at best we’ll scratch our heads, and at worst, ask for our money back.

On a clear day in Central Park, the wind whispers across the grass and everyone freezes in place. They start talking gibberish. They begin to walk backward. Soon, they’re stabbing themselves with hair picks and leaping off tall buildings, all players in an escalating, mindless terror.

Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) learns of the devastating phenomenon as he wraps up his Pennsylvania high school science class. School is canceled. The phenomenon spreads, and all the larger cities across New England begin to empty. Moore meets up with his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel), his friend Julian (John Leguizamo), and Julian’s daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez) to hop a train out of town and join the exodus.

As their train zips across rural Pennsylvania, news of the terror widens. Half-heard phone conversations and anguished cries clue us to the growing chaos. When the train stops, Moore learns that the phenomenon has already reached the miles that lay ahead. Suddenly, there’s nowhere to run.

While that might read like an exciting yarn, several threads of the unfolding story distract more than they rivet.

One of the more obvious problems with the film, and they are myriad, is the rating. Trade reports told that upon reception of M. Night Shyamalan’s script for The Happening (then called The Green Effect), 20th Century Fox suggested it might work better as an R rated thriller. The R rating generally signals caution among family oriented types, but it does not always hint toward the kind of hyper-violent gore of, say, the Saw films. Some of Hitchcock’s greatest work later earned an R rating. The trick, as Hitch saw it, was to make the audience believe they could see more than what was actually there.

Spielberg employed similar tricks in Jaws, as did Ridley Scott in the original Alien. Shyamalan himself has used the technique in the past. The Happening ignores any such sensibilities, and does so to its detriment as Night seeks to find ever more creative and bloody ways for people to kill themselves. Thus, the tension he created in the first minutes wears thin upon endless repetition. The rating does compliment one shocking moment at the close of the second act, and Night manages, if briefly, to develop frenetic terror as the psychological aspects of the strange phenomenon unfold among the rural populace.

The cause of the phenomenon receives an airy exposition from a source best described as underwhelming. Dialog stumbles and trips over the narrative, a surprising aspect given the cast, as well as Night’s reputation for directing his on-screen talent. Wahlberg, Leguizamo and Deschanel have all proven their ability to read lines from a page without them sounding like lines from a page, yet nearly every line in the film receives treatment somewhere just above the level of a high school drama rehearsal. The misplaced cadences and pinched monotonous whines sound bizarre against such tragic and deadly events, so bizarre you’d have a hard time convincing me that it wasn’t deliberate.

Which brings up the real enigma: Shyamalan has proven his ability in the past. His talent is out of the question, and fan rants that admonish his capability as a storyteller remain nothing more than just rants. In the past, Shyamalan has presented himself as a director who asserts creative control over every aspect of a film, which would cause one to wonder why this film looks so uncanny.

A handful of moments in The Happening evoke the Shyamalan we pay to see. As he did in Signs, Night keeps the scope of his disaster intimate, focusing on fewer characters rather than, as Roger Ebert notes, blowing us away with impressive crowd shots of mass panic. Once more, collaboration with cinematographer Tak Fujimoto delivers some stunning, and sometimes haunting, photography. A few moments among the cast stick out as something to enjoy, particularly Leguizamo’s character Julian.

As Julian sets out to rescue his wife, caught somewhere in the middle of the event, he hands his daughter over to Elliot and Alma. Alma -- somewhat suspect in her character, given that she recently shared dessert with a friend in an act of quiet infidelity -- has earned Julian’s distrust. “Don’t take my daughter’s hand unless you mean it,” he utters. It’s a sharp hook that connects Julian to the audience. More tragic is that it’s a singular moment of meaning among many that only inspire guffaws.

There’s a genuine thriller here, tucked somewhere underneath the hammy lines and clichés. As a “message movie,” it knows little of subtext. Yet, the implications of Night’s apocalyptic myth remain somewhat stirring—that dreaded sense of sudden, inexplicable end. It’s just too bad that it received such a stiff treatment, riddled with logic errors.

Perhaps the awkward nature of the film was deliberate if Night wanted to capture the discomfited mutterings of despair we’d most likely espouse under duress. Not everyone can muster the strength to be a hero in the midst of disaster. Much of the time, our panic resembles the wails of frustrated children. I just wish I knew for sure that he was gunning for that target.

Tapping the profound beneath the fantastic requires characters round enough to explore those deep recesses of self, find what lives there, and confront it if necessary. Shyamalan has explored these notions before with characters up to the task. It seems as though this time, he gives us characters whose fiber isn’t as true. The experience is truly bizarre.

Fight scene Friday: first in a series!

Consider this the new tradition at Aspect-Ratios.com: A choice bit of martial arts tomfoolery on the week's last weekday!

To kick off ... A YouTube favorite, this unbelievably overwrought nonsense from Undefeatable:

... with apologies, and not a few giggles.

Confronting the dark past: the church and native Americans

Not picking on our neighbors to the north here at all, particularly since we in the U.S. have even more to be ashamed of in this regard. But the sorry treatment of North America's native peoples is a crime, and the Christian church has much to apologize for in this regard.

Former United Church of Christ minister Kevin Annett has, at great personal cost (including expulsion from the UCC), led the effort to recognize the enduring effects of the horrors visited upon native Canadians as their children were sent to boarding schools in order to purge them of their heritage. Annett believes that many were viciously abused and murdered. Others disagree, if only with the scope of Annett's claims. Regardless of what happened, getting to the bottom of it via an independent inquiry seems the only right course here.

And not just in Canada. It was a common practice here in the U.S., as well -- indeed, some boarding schools weren't even closed until the 1980s. This on top of forced sterilizations and other atrocities our government sponsored in the last century, and there is surely no need to revisit the litany of mass murder and ethnic cleansing visited upon native Americans in the previous centuries.

Within this awful history, the Christian church has much to apologize for. Too often these ethnocidal efforts to "kill the savage to save the man" were dressed in evangelism.

You can view the trailer -- and indeed, the entire film -- online for free. More information is available at the official website for Annett's ongoing efforts.

Dans ma peau (In My Skin, 2002)

I'll never forget the first time I saw myself cut open on an operating table. Actually, it was a picture from surgery I had when I was about 10 years old, one of many operations to graft and adjust muscle and nerve tissue on the right side of my face following a dog attack. The picture fell out of a folder the surgeon had with him as he discussed my case with my mom and I. And there I was, anesthetized, with my face pulled back to reveal the tangle of torn viscera within it. It was initially horrifying ... and then, absolutely fascinating. I begged the surgeon to show me again, which he did, reluctantly.

So, with that, a warning, and one I'll repeat later just to be on the safe side: In My Skin is a movie about the raw fascination of seeing yourself cut open, of seeing your body in a new way. This movie is not for weak stomachs or anyone who has a pronounced reaction to self-mutilation. It is not by any means an easy film to watch, even for jaded viewers.

Esther (writer-director Marina de Van) is a successful, bright, lovely young woman on the fast track at her economic analysis job who joins a friend at a party one evening while her boyfriend (Laurent Lucas, who seems to thrive in the odd, viscerally distressing film role) is working late. It's a sumptuous shindig at a beautiful upper-class home. Esther indulges a moment of wanderlust, which sends her careening through the backyard into a trash heap where she injures herself. She dusts herself off and limps back into the house, where she discovers that she's more injured that she thought -- her right shin is deeply gashed. She cleans up a little and joins friends for a nightcap, eventually winding up at the hospital ER, where a mystified doc tries to understand why she didn't seek treatment immediately. But Esther is far more attentive to the strange appearance of her stitched gashes, and can't seem to leave them alone that night ... or the next day.

In fact, Esther is so drawn to her injuries that she begins to replicate the sensation by continuing to cut herself. Over the course of a few days, Esther will pursue this sudden obsession right down to its breathless, bloody conclusion, where Esther seems to be staring into the maw of oblivion itself.

All this happens as Esther loses control of her life. It's like a David Cronenburg theme in reverse: The external wound creates the inner reality in de Van's film. What that inner reality is ... very hard to say, actually, as even Esther struggles (between making excuses and outright lying) to explain why she does what she does. Certainly, the cutting didn't start with the injury, as one conversation at the apartment of her soon-to-be-estranged friend Sandrine (Léa Drucker) reveals.

Again, that warning: de Van gives a very compelling performance in her lead, and much of the camera work dwells on her body contortions and facial expressions as she discovers the weird satisfaction of beholding (and even creating) one's wounds. But sometimes the camera shows "it" -- Esther cutting, gouging, etc. And it is very hard to watch, even for those of us who have a higher tolerance for direct violence.

At least in part, In My Skin is about self-mutilation, and it is perhaps more successful as a horror film (albeit not one that would cater to the usual horror enthusiast) than it is as a psychological drama, particularly since Esther's motivation is (necessarily?) inscrutable.

But self-mutilation is more the vehicle of discovery here, rather than the focus. The real horror, perhaps, is discovering the reality of just how fragile the body is -- even one as young, vibrant, and healthy as Esther's. As someone currently fighting cancer, and with a lot of injury and surgery in his past, that's where I found de Van's film particularly compelling and utterly unforgettable, as horrific and unflinching as it is.

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Now playing: The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter
via FoxyTunes

Son of Rambow (2007)

Coming-of-age movies are a tricky lot. It's easy to let the emotions of childhood (as filtered through an adult filmmaker's sensibilities) drive too much of the story, and this pitfall has leveled a few such movies in the past. But when the story drives the emotions and the cast is up to the task, good things happen.

The new British entry in this genre, Son of Rambow, takes a slightly different tack. Rather than grounding itself entirely in familiar experiences, writer-director Garth Jennings (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) explores the budding friendship between two outcast boys in the early 1980s as they make their own backyard movie -- a part-remake, part-reimagining of First Blood, the original Rambo movie. Lee Carter (Will Poulter) is a troublemaker without parental supervision who meets William Proudfoot (Bill Milner) in the hallway, where Lee is awaiting punishment and William is biding time until a classroom film concludes -- his family belongs to a Plymouth Brethren congregation, and movies are strictly forbidden. What begins as Lee's bullying becomes a friendship when Will not only shows interest in helping Lee with his Rambo remake (mostly by taking on dangerous stunts), but brings his own daring imagination to the story. Making the film binds the boys more closely as friends, even though Lee is exactly the sort of boy Will's widowed mom Mary wants him to avoid at all costs. Meanwhile, Lee is eager for his older brother's guidance, but instead is ignored or bullied in his own right.

Will has a story in mind: He's the son of Rambo, eager to rescue his dad from the clutches of the evil scarecrow. It's a story he's been peacing together in his sketchbook (and on the school's bathroom walls) from his own boyhood experiences and his fervent imagination. Lee latches onto Will's story, and the film's ambitious reach only grows.

But challenges aplenty intervene, giving the boys much to face in completing their movie. A foreign exchange program brings French students to the boys' school, among whom is Didier (Jules Sitruk), a tall, lean boy with new wave cool to spare. Didier effortlessly amasses a following of starstruck kids, but grows bored with all the adulation -- until he learns that Lee and Will are making a film. Soon the "Son of Rambo" is joined by "the Wolf" as they battle ninjas and evil scarecrows en route to rescuing "Rambo." Between Didier's entourage taking increasing control over the film, the stunts and effects gone horribly awry, and the conflicting pressures of family (and in Lee's case, the utter lack thereof), it seems the film may never get made. But in the world(s) of childhood imagination, wonders truly never cease. Writer-director Jennings, to his credit, allows imagination plenty of free rein throughout.

Son of Rambow isn't the best movie about growing up ever made, but it's a worthy addition to the canon. The boys deliver solid performances, keeping their reserve when appropriate to the drama and handling the comedy without sinking into silly excesses. Those excesses are left to Jennings hilarious set pieces, particularly the filming of the special effects for the boys' Rambo remake.

One note: The reason for the title's misspelling of "Rambo" is revealed as the end credits roll, and it's a joke worth waiting for (and savoring).

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Now playing: 16 Horsepower - I Seen What I Saw
via FoxyTunes

The (good) business of sequels

Last summer was marked by the dominance of thirds -- Shrek 3, the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and Spider-Man 3. This summer we get another Hulk and another Batman. Last night, I saw a trailer for another Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movie.

It's no mystery that sequels do well; we wouldn't keep seeing them if they didn't. But they do even better than I thought, according to new research published in the Journal of Business Review:

According to a recent joint study by Binghamton University, State University of New York, and Florida Atlantic University, sequels do not match the box office revenues of the parent films. However, week-by-week, they do better than non-sequels – more so, when they quickly follow the original.

That doesn't mean that a long delay can kill a sequel's chances of bringing in good box office returns, though:

However, as [Binghamton University marketing professor Subimal] Chatterjee points out, it is not to say that delays will invariably kill a sequel’s chance of success. “For example, people were quite willing to wait for over ten years to see Bruce Willis back in Die Hard or Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones,” he said. “There is something to be said about star power in keeping the franchise alive.”

Sequels also show a faster drop in weekly revenues relative to non-sequels. “One can surmise that sequels attract a disproportionate number of curious consumers in the opening week,” said Suman Basuroy, assistant professor of marketing at Florida Atlantic University. “Unfortunately, many sequels are not able to sustain this interest past the initial draw.”

Thus, a good sequel that keeps the franchise's integrity intact can be a better long-term value, even if its opening weekend box office isn't as good, for the franchise as a whole.

I'm guessing this means that we'd all best get use to more sequels, all the time. Let's just hope we get a few good ones sprinkled in with the inevitable dreck.

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Now playing: Caedmon's Call - Share In The Blame
via FoxyTunes

The Strangers (2008)

An isolated cabin. A couple having problems. And a threatening trio of visitors who, for no apparent reason, seem intent on terrorizing the couple. It's the makings of an excellent scare-fest, and it's the setup for The Strangers, young filmmaker Bryan Bertino's first film, a promising foray into horror-suspense.

Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler are a young couple who've come to this vacation home to get away for a bit -- for Scott, to celebrate what he has assumed will be a successful proposal of marriage. But it isn't; we know from the get-go that all did not go according to plan. Indeed, the first section of The Strangers plays like a good personal drama, gently building tension through the obvious disappointment and jarring interruption of a knock on the door. That's the beginning of the taut second passage of this film, and unfortunately, it's as good as the getting gets here.

Bolstered by a solid cast (Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler in the leads), The Strangers should pack a wallop for fans of this sort of thing (and that would be me). So explaining why it doesn't isn't so easy, but here goes ...

There are some serious problems with the film's simple logic (and simple logic is one of its virtues). The baddies apparently have total mastery over time and space, managing to appear and disappear repeatedly within seconds, always without making a sound. Indeed, sound doesn't seem to travel at all around this cabin; several other events that should've created a noisy ruckus seem to have occurred silently.

And as good a job as Bertino does in creating some sympathy for the protagonists initially, he stumbles over some shopworn horror-flick clichés as the movie drags on. Yes, we're talking about the slow-to-recognize-the-threat realizations of the otherwise very bright protagonists; the female lead who falls and twists her ankle; the failure to see the most obvious way out of a trap that is anything but airtight.

Basically, this is a nifty (though hardly original) idea for a 45-minute episode of a scary TV show (say, Showtime's Masters of Horror) stretched out to an hour and a half. To get there, of course, the killers have to take their sweet time. And yours. Which should at least leave ample opportunity for suspense, but it's just not forthcoming from these three antagonists.

Part of Bertino's problem is timing. Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke handled very similar material far more intriguingly with Funny Games, which he recently remade (practically shot for shot) for U.S. audiences and released in 2007. Funny Games is, of course, an entirely different experience; Haneke confronts the viewer directly with the cruelty on-screen as the malevolent visitors taunt the audience, assailing the "fourth wall" while visiting real harm on the vacationing family. That has its own pitfalls, and Haneke doesn't avoid them in either version of his film, either.

The horror of random violence is a reality for many people on this planet every day. It's a shame there aren't more movies that tap into that real terror as effectively as they should. The Strangers squanders its considerable promise, but Bertino is a talented young writer-director worth keeping an eye on, all the same.

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Now playing: Jesu - Wolves
via FoxyTunes

How acting works, per Sir Ian

I was sorry to see that Ricky Gervais' most recent series, Extras, concluded with its second season earlier this year. But it is a pleasure to go back and watch some of the absolutely choice moments from Andy Millman's search for meaningful acting work over the course of those seasons -- including this casting session, in which Millman (Gervais) tries out for a part Sir Ian McKellen is casting for the stage:

"How did I know what to say? The words were written down in a script!"

To my eyes and ears, part of what makes this scene work so well is McKellen's spot-on comic timing and knack for self-parody. It would be delightful to see him do more comedy, in fact.

The Talk of the Town (1942)

Looking for a delightful Sunday afternoon movie you might have overlooked before? Please allow me to suggest The Talk of the Town, this gem from writer-director George Stevens, particularly for those who enjoy Cary Grant at his Grant-est, a terrific supporting cast, and a script laced with delightful bon mots and some appropriately serious overtones.

Grant is Leopold Dilg, a man accused of a very serious crime -- burning down the town's mill -- by the mill's owner. Dilg breaks out of jail one rainy night and eludes police long enough to find his way to a rental home being readied by Nora Shelley (Jean Arthur) for a distinguished guest, law school dean Michael Lightcap (Ronald Colman), a stuffy scholar who arrives early -- just as Shelley is trying to figure out what on earth to do with the fugitive who's stumbled into her basement.

It's a juicy setup, and the three leads are simply delightful as they manage this comedy of errors. Both Dilg, an opinionated man from the lower classes with a keen sense of right and wrong, and Lightcap, an upper-crust standard-bearer for right and wrong in his own way, have much to learn from each other about what really makes the law just. Shelley, for her part, has much to learn about living her life, rather than watching from the sidelines.

In the midst of the zaniness, Stevens scores some remarkable dramatic points about the nature of friendship, loyalty, and both the letter and the spirit of the law -- not once without derailing the comic thrust of the film. The corruption at the heart of his town's political machinery has put Dilg in the position he's in; Lightcap only wants to write his book, but Shelley and Dilg's lawyer, Sam Yates (Edgar Buchanan), conspire to pull him into Dilg's plight. Along the way, the truth comes out, and one twist yields seamlessly to another, leading up to an ending that should be better known than it is.

Grant and Colman both shine in the leads, conveying a growing friendship rooted in mutual respect and admiration by dint of their spot-on performances. But Arthur more than holds her own with these two titans of the era, expertly balancing a ditzy manner with a native intelligence and fierce drive to see justice done no matter what. She has too many choice scenes to detail here, but in one delicious one, she borrows Lightcap's pajamas, then uses her hair to affect his upper-crust manners in a mirror moment that simply must be seen (as Lightcap does, to his considerable amusement). It seems to me that she's the glue that holds the whole thing together, in fact.

It's hard to imagine films tackling thorny political subjects with such a light, deft touch as Stevens exhibits in this screwball classic. He makes his points gently, keeping the film on course and trusting his actors to do what they do so well.

The Talk of the Town is an absolute delight, a reminder of how great Hollywood comedies once were: fun, funny, warm, and witty, all without dredging up cynical chuckles from the gutter.

A favorite trailer

A few weeks back, Travis posted the excellent trailer for City of Ember. Like Travis, I'm a trailer lover; got a few old videotapes lying around that are filled with nothing but, primarily of cheesy horror and sci-fi (which always excelled at hyperbole). One of my all-time favorite trailers is the spot-on parody of Hollywood trailer hyperbole for Comedian (2002), Christian Charles' documentary of Jerry Seinfeld's standup tour. Here you go:

"No! I like it in here!"

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007)

I'm a sucker for documentaries about odd cultural corners. Or not so odd, in this case, given the ever-fervent popularity of what is now called "computer gaming" -- or, back in the 1970s and early 1980s, playing video games.

As in an arcade, with quarters at hand, and only a few games to choose from.

It was in this environment that such classic games as Defender, Missile Command, Pac-Man, and several others captured the imagination of an entire generation of youngsters and young-at-heartsters alike. Some more than others, of course; some, in fact, pursued the passion of video gaming with a vengeance, going so far as to establish internationally recognized high scores, and a record-keeping body to sanction those scores.

In the midst of all this, a rivalry emerged over what was considered to be one of the most difficult of all the early '80s video game classics: Donkey Kong. That rivalry is at the heart of The King of Kong, and it's a very compelling one at that: The cocksure, broadly acknowledged champion, vs. the faltering, humble upstart. The champ, Billy Mitchell, is quite a character -- tall, with a tightly coiffed Kenny Loggins 'do (circa 1982, including trimmed beard) and an ego well out of proportion to the dimensions of his accomplishments. The challenger is Steve Wiebe, a good-natured schoolteacher from Washington state who got hooked on Donkey Kong after he lost a job (another in a series of disappointments for him) and wound up overturning Mitchell's record score in the game.

But Wiebe's new record is only the beginning of this melodrama. What follows is an interesting story about Wiebe's efforts to directly challenge Mitchell in a live competition, controversy over the official sanctioning body's rulings on both men's scores, and the efforts of record-holders on other classic arcade games to get their share of the limelight in the midst of all this.

Director Seth Gordon does a masterful job of letting his interview subjects speak for themselves while keeping the context and personalities front and center. This is no "gamer's documentary," per se; Gordon keeps his cameras focused on the strange quirks and obsessions of his subjects without once sinking into irony or ridicule. He obviously respects the personalities involved here, and that makes the tale all the more fascinating.

The DVD features some handy extras, including additional interview footage, a brief documentary on the history of Donkey Kong, and a follow-up short on what happened as Gordon, Wiebe, and others toured with the film to festivals nationwide -- as well as the ongoing record-breaking by Mitchell and Wiebe.

A new film based on this documentary is in the works. It's hard to imagine the fictionalized version topping this fascinating account, though.