Review of Woodstock (1970) by Jim S — 01 Aug 2004

First, [i]Woodstock[/i]: fuck, I hate hippies. Dirty, stupid, and spaced the fuck out most of the time, they're a waste of fucking space. But, that said, some damn good music was made by some long-hairs, and this doc surely captures what it must have been like to be that generation lost in space. But John Sebastian... god damn what a nutjob.

Now onto [i]The Manchurian Candidate[/i]. Spoilers lie within, so if you haven't seen either, beware.

John Frankenheimer's 1962 film is superb in every way. Paranoia permeates from the screen in a tale of Communists posing as McCarthyists (is that the word for it?) in trying to get a foothold in the U.S. presidency. It's a brilliant satirical jab at McCarthyism and how it was just as dangerous, if not moreso, than Communism to American freedom. Sinatra is at the top of his acting game, Laurence Harvey manages to make the cold and distant Raymond Shaw likable, Angela Lansbury is in a world all her own here, and Janet Leigh does everything she can in a role that is underwritten, but underwritten in a good way. Her moments with Sinatra add a certain unease to the whole picture. Is she in on the conspiracy? What's with her bizarre dialogue? It's absolutely brilliant, and if you haven't seen it, what are you waiting for.

Johnathon Demme's remake sucks my ass. It's pointless, toothless, and a complete waste of time. It's a waste of Denzel Washington's time, of Liev Schreiber's time, a waste of Meryl Streep's time, a waste of Johnathon Demme's time (though, following [i]The Truth About Charlie[/i] with this, I'm beginning to wonder...), and more importantly, a waste of MY time. There is absolutely nothing at risk here. About an hour in I suddenly realized I was just watching another cliched conspiracy movie where Denzel Washington stars as the man who knows the truth, but no one believes and shoves off as crazy. There are nods to the original, but they only made me wish I were watching it instead. The movie at least tries to be different and does modernize it appropriately by making the baddies evil corportations (but, wouldn't it be easier to just BUY the presidency than to waste time and effort on this brainwashing scheme?). One scene in particular rankled me. Liev Schreiber kills off a pair of characters just as Laurence Harvey did in the original. I guess in this version we were supposed to feel the same pathos over the murder, but the filmmakers forgot some important things. Like, oh, developing an actual relationship between these people so that when Raymond kills them in a brainwashed stupor, it feels quite tragic, which of course leads us to believe some of the actions Raymond eventually takes near the end of the original film. Here he just arbitrarily kills these characters and it has no real bearing on anything. It seems they just killed them because, hey, he did it in the first film, may as well do it here. Ugh... there's more I can bitch about, like what they did to the Rosie character, but I'm done ranting against this dog turd.