Quinoa1984
Joined Mar 2000
Welcome to the new profile
We're still working on updating some profile features. To see the badges, ratings breakdowns, and polls for this profile, please go to the previous version.
Ratings14.5K
Quinoa1984's rating
Reviews5.3K
Quinoa1984's rating
All That Money Can Buy sits as a wonderful sort of accessible middle ground between the ultra German Expressionism of like Murnau's Faust (you reading this might go, a silent film, heck I need sound in my cinema movie) and something a little more like a Fairy Tale as a piece of Gothic Americana like Night of the Hunter. While I'm not sure I could argue this film being greater than either of those, this is worth watching still to this day for anyone who wants to dig deeper into the world of Folk Horror. I wont claim to be an expert on that sub genre, but this definitely feels like it has an essential place in that pantheon.
Probably that's because of how rich and starkly the filmmaker William Dieterle takes the sides of Good and Bad, and how easy it is for a man to go towards corruption because of money, sure, but also influence and power and just stuff in general. We see naive and stalwart Jabez (Craig, who looks so All American as they can get I wouldn't be surprised if he was an understudy for Gregory Peck or Gary Cooper at one time or another) fall prey to Mr Stitch (Walter Huston in his second greatest work after Sierra Madre), who promises him riches for seven years after Jabez has a dire moment in his barn over giving up his soul for two cents.
He gets riches but he also loses all the heart and love that he has with his true love, Mary (Anne Shirley, quite good in a tricky role where she puts up with a lot and really tries to understand Jabez even, specially when, he turns even more foolish and pals around with the maid-cum-harlot Belle), and with his mother (Darwell, fresh off the Joad farm and so pure in her line readings and performance you hang on every syllable she's that good) doubting his bad ways most of all. There is a lot of speeches and clunky dialog in the middle of the film that date things a little much and I was worried that the movie would possibly get bogged down in exposition over Jabez's blasted soul and the sides of bad and good.
I was still with the film though and always impressed by the emphasis on shadows and almost early film-noir level Expressionism in the lighting and framing if many scenes - like Night of the Hunter it's a film that straddles the line between Noir and Horror like any piece of Folsky Americana, though this is New England vs the South - but then Edward Arnold as Daniel Webster, Man of New Hampshire, comes more into focus and comes to the defense of our poor lead, and the film clicked into a stronger place. Some may even make the criticism I just did that the final monologue is just one overlong speech, but Arnold at that defense in the court is so powerful because he is speaking to what is in the proverbial National Character and he's got dialog that you want to believe in.
Is it possible to be too cynical and on the side of Mr. Scratch? Sure. But that's what the movie is at heart about; being tested and really facing the fact that without a soul life has little meaning, past the shallow facade of things and immediate wants and gluttony, is a challenge and one that many are going to face in their lives, and the opening text speaks to that (more for men than women but likely them sometimes too). It's easy for Devil and Daniel Webster to turn into sentimental tripe, but Dieterle latches on to something that, and I'm sure Darwell being there isn't all a coincidence, John Steinbeck did as well in Grapes of Wrath: men who work the farms and plains and spend their lives having to work for a living will be tempted by sin, maybe have to be, and some are also going to fail. Will someone come back from it?
This is classic Gothic Americana and I'm glad I finally got around to it, up to an including that Bernard Herrmann score (won the Oscar for that instead of Kane, which is funny as some of the themes are slightly, if you listen carefully, just like the eerie tones from Kubla Khan... don't forget it isn't a trick to make money if all you want... is to make money).
Probably that's because of how rich and starkly the filmmaker William Dieterle takes the sides of Good and Bad, and how easy it is for a man to go towards corruption because of money, sure, but also influence and power and just stuff in general. We see naive and stalwart Jabez (Craig, who looks so All American as they can get I wouldn't be surprised if he was an understudy for Gregory Peck or Gary Cooper at one time or another) fall prey to Mr Stitch (Walter Huston in his second greatest work after Sierra Madre), who promises him riches for seven years after Jabez has a dire moment in his barn over giving up his soul for two cents.
He gets riches but he also loses all the heart and love that he has with his true love, Mary (Anne Shirley, quite good in a tricky role where she puts up with a lot and really tries to understand Jabez even, specially when, he turns even more foolish and pals around with the maid-cum-harlot Belle), and with his mother (Darwell, fresh off the Joad farm and so pure in her line readings and performance you hang on every syllable she's that good) doubting his bad ways most of all. There is a lot of speeches and clunky dialog in the middle of the film that date things a little much and I was worried that the movie would possibly get bogged down in exposition over Jabez's blasted soul and the sides of bad and good.
I was still with the film though and always impressed by the emphasis on shadows and almost early film-noir level Expressionism in the lighting and framing if many scenes - like Night of the Hunter it's a film that straddles the line between Noir and Horror like any piece of Folsky Americana, though this is New England vs the South - but then Edward Arnold as Daniel Webster, Man of New Hampshire, comes more into focus and comes to the defense of our poor lead, and the film clicked into a stronger place. Some may even make the criticism I just did that the final monologue is just one overlong speech, but Arnold at that defense in the court is so powerful because he is speaking to what is in the proverbial National Character and he's got dialog that you want to believe in.
Is it possible to be too cynical and on the side of Mr. Scratch? Sure. But that's what the movie is at heart about; being tested and really facing the fact that without a soul life has little meaning, past the shallow facade of things and immediate wants and gluttony, is a challenge and one that many are going to face in their lives, and the opening text speaks to that (more for men than women but likely them sometimes too). It's easy for Devil and Daniel Webster to turn into sentimental tripe, but Dieterle latches on to something that, and I'm sure Darwell being there isn't all a coincidence, John Steinbeck did as well in Grapes of Wrath: men who work the farms and plains and spend their lives having to work for a living will be tempted by sin, maybe have to be, and some are also going to fail. Will someone come back from it?
This is classic Gothic Americana and I'm glad I finally got around to it, up to an including that Bernard Herrmann score (won the Oscar for that instead of Kane, which is funny as some of the themes are slightly, if you listen carefully, just like the eerie tones from Kubla Khan... don't forget it isn't a trick to make money if all you want... is to make money).
Black Bag is a sleek and inscrutable Espionage Thriller with such a tried and true idea at the center - John LeCarre of course cooked this up, but so did the franchise writer Koepp was involved in at the start, Mission: Impossible, which is: someone has this list, someone has this special formula that will tear apart this or that country and what will become of the operatives, who will turn on who - that the filmmakers understand and take full opportunity that this set up really is an excuse to get some great actors some sharply written characters.
It's also a crackling-good example of how Hitchcock did it to the point of a whole type of film being named after him: what *that* part of the story is about isn't anywhere near what the audience cares about - it's about what, say, Grant and Bergman are going to do talking around it and in kissing one another until, ok fine, back to the story and the MacMuffin or whatever it's called. Black Bag has one of those, and it has oodles of style, but more than anything it has a terrific - but execution-dependant - script, a game cast, and a director returning to and finding new life and ideas in material he's explored before, chiefly: how does a marriage work when put under the strain of trust?
And it's interesting to see that Soderbergh wasn't sure initially how to pull off two very long and essential dinner set pieces hosted by the main married couple, George and Catherine (Fassbinder and Blanchett, as playful and deadpan and funny and deathly serious as they've ever been, and romantic to boot), who are spies in an agency where one may watch the other and the other watching them, but now that it comes down to this all-sacred Lives at Stake list, their marriage will be tested.
Those dinner scenes could be stock and dry in another or lesser director's hands. What Soderbergh shows and how he rises to the challenge there, as throughout this quite talky but always engaging story, is to ask himself and then answer through camera and editing just this: what is the scene about, yes, but what is this next moment or exchange about (Burke and Marisa Abela, wow), who's point of view do we need to recognize now, and what will become significant so that if we return to it later it's not just repeating for the sake of it all? There are plenty of quiet moments here too, times where it's Fassbender thinking on a lake with his fishing line, but even there notice when he cuts back to the fishing line, the subtle ways to give Mary Ann Bernard what she needs on the edits.
And then there are those Polygraph scenes late in the film. By the time we get to those beats between Fassbender and the other actors, Soderbergh and Koepp have set everything up with these players (not counting Catherine, who George of course is not including in the lie detection test because, after all, they're even tighter by that point than ever), it's all so masterful and delightful because it's less about story and more about behavior. Did I also mention much of this is as funny as anything in an Ocean's movie, albeit at a dry-as-sandpaper level? Even a shot of a live fish about to be cut open feels like a set up to something that is paid off seconds later.
I could perhaps presume, as with Soderbergh's long-ago debut film, Sex Lies and Videotape, that there's something personal being worked out in this story, or just something the director sees in this material on some deeper level that hasn't been explored through this genre in such this way (having Fassbender in an icy-cool manner through much of this is meaningful too, especially because there are times that his George does get unnerved and uneasy and even scared, maybe at himself and how he may react more than his fears over Catherine).
I think sensing that personal touch, especially when it comes to what one holds in and holds back and then let's out emotionally, in Black Bag is enough and what is so awesome is because of what the script has to say about a marriage, how much trust is bent in one way and then comes right back around the other way. It's a story of X chemical winding up in Y's hands (though even here there is some taut and relevant political commentary as well visa vi Russia and its war in Ukraine with barely showing more than... two Russians?) And we are riveted because on one level Page can deliver exposition like nobody's business as well as Harris can give a good diagnoses and all these characters form this set (Side Effects comes to mind too).
It's also about how compelling a dynamic is between a couple and anyone who has been together long enough know how strong that dynamic has to be to endure. Or, to put it in my own way, when you're married you'll understand the importance of giving/receiving a back scratch. So, do come to Black Bag for what we come to hope Soderbergh/Andrews/Bernard will deliver on stylistically (wonderful score too, by the by, taut and clever on its own), but stay for a sharp and biting and ultimately really heartfelt examination of how to be in a relationship and how the act of spy-craft itself becomes a sort of metaphor for that.
As the kids say, a "Banger."
It's also a crackling-good example of how Hitchcock did it to the point of a whole type of film being named after him: what *that* part of the story is about isn't anywhere near what the audience cares about - it's about what, say, Grant and Bergman are going to do talking around it and in kissing one another until, ok fine, back to the story and the MacMuffin or whatever it's called. Black Bag has one of those, and it has oodles of style, but more than anything it has a terrific - but execution-dependant - script, a game cast, and a director returning to and finding new life and ideas in material he's explored before, chiefly: how does a marriage work when put under the strain of trust?
And it's interesting to see that Soderbergh wasn't sure initially how to pull off two very long and essential dinner set pieces hosted by the main married couple, George and Catherine (Fassbinder and Blanchett, as playful and deadpan and funny and deathly serious as they've ever been, and romantic to boot), who are spies in an agency where one may watch the other and the other watching them, but now that it comes down to this all-sacred Lives at Stake list, their marriage will be tested.
Those dinner scenes could be stock and dry in another or lesser director's hands. What Soderbergh shows and how he rises to the challenge there, as throughout this quite talky but always engaging story, is to ask himself and then answer through camera and editing just this: what is the scene about, yes, but what is this next moment or exchange about (Burke and Marisa Abela, wow), who's point of view do we need to recognize now, and what will become significant so that if we return to it later it's not just repeating for the sake of it all? There are plenty of quiet moments here too, times where it's Fassbender thinking on a lake with his fishing line, but even there notice when he cuts back to the fishing line, the subtle ways to give Mary Ann Bernard what she needs on the edits.
And then there are those Polygraph scenes late in the film. By the time we get to those beats between Fassbender and the other actors, Soderbergh and Koepp have set everything up with these players (not counting Catherine, who George of course is not including in the lie detection test because, after all, they're even tighter by that point than ever), it's all so masterful and delightful because it's less about story and more about behavior. Did I also mention much of this is as funny as anything in an Ocean's movie, albeit at a dry-as-sandpaper level? Even a shot of a live fish about to be cut open feels like a set up to something that is paid off seconds later.
I could perhaps presume, as with Soderbergh's long-ago debut film, Sex Lies and Videotape, that there's something personal being worked out in this story, or just something the director sees in this material on some deeper level that hasn't been explored through this genre in such this way (having Fassbender in an icy-cool manner through much of this is meaningful too, especially because there are times that his George does get unnerved and uneasy and even scared, maybe at himself and how he may react more than his fears over Catherine).
I think sensing that personal touch, especially when it comes to what one holds in and holds back and then let's out emotionally, in Black Bag is enough and what is so awesome is because of what the script has to say about a marriage, how much trust is bent in one way and then comes right back around the other way. It's a story of X chemical winding up in Y's hands (though even here there is some taut and relevant political commentary as well visa vi Russia and its war in Ukraine with barely showing more than... two Russians?) And we are riveted because on one level Page can deliver exposition like nobody's business as well as Harris can give a good diagnoses and all these characters form this set (Side Effects comes to mind too).
It's also about how compelling a dynamic is between a couple and anyone who has been together long enough know how strong that dynamic has to be to endure. Or, to put it in my own way, when you're married you'll understand the importance of giving/receiving a back scratch. So, do come to Black Bag for what we come to hope Soderbergh/Andrews/Bernard will deliver on stylistically (wonderful score too, by the by, taut and clever on its own), but stay for a sharp and biting and ultimately really heartfelt examination of how to be in a relationship and how the act of spy-craft itself becomes a sort of metaphor for that.
As the kids say, a "Banger."