Sure I've Heard Of A Grit: My Cousin Vinny (1992)

Many a films end up standing the test of time because of their earnest simplicity and carefree attitude.  When set up against other like-minded works they often do not compare, however, it is something about their moment and a perfect combination of factors that allows for them to be absolutely mesmerizing even twenty years detached from their original inception, at least this is the case with My Cousin Vinny, a film that has more heart and sincerity than most pictures and manages to make viewers feel totally totally embracing towards the otherwise impish and virulent Joe Pesci.  I would venture to guess that much of the success and timelessness associated with this classic finds its place in the every popular fish-out-of-water narrative, particularly when the individual who is in the new setting is not necessarily of a level of cultural superiority, but is equally absurd for a different set of reasons.  It is a film that is firstly concerned with accruing a set of well-earned laughs and rolled eyes, but also exudes a certain degree of consideration for the underdog story, one in which the desire for the American Dream to be obtain proves quite challenging, not as a result of an individual's own lack of self-direction or motivation, but simply because a set of obstacles exist that are in no way logical or fair.  A film like My Cousin Vinny works, and continues to work two decades later because it is a familiar situation, all be it most people will not find themselves in the situation of having to defend a group of "yuffs" for a wrongful murder accusation, it is quite true that many have found themselves defending or justifying actions in front of a person or group in which they are clearly the one in the right, despite facing a very determined and detrimental mob rule.  Perhaps some of the humor in My Cousin Vinny does predicate it self on accidentally topical material and Joe Pesci certainly could not deliver this role today, but there is something poetically probable  and indirectly ironic of the scenario of a Yankee being forced to maintain justice in a backwards Southern town that is and always will be film perfection.

My Cousin Vinny begins with two young guys making their way through the backroads of Alabama on their way from a tough semester at college, the boys Billy (Ralph Macchio) and Stan (Mitchell Whitfield) stop off in a convenience store to buy a variety of different cheap foods to placate their hunger during the trip and it is is with his hands full that Billy accidentally pockets a can of tuna without paying for it, leading to a cop pulling them over only moments later.  Assuming that he has only been arrested for petty theft, Billy admits that "he did it" when the officers ask of his guilt, yet when Billy discovers that they are actually being pinned for a murder that happens moments after they leave the entire situation changes and the two kids attempt to contact everyone they know with the hopes that they can spring bail, unfortunately, the hefty price tag of $200,000 means they must call in a lawyer and the only person free at the moment is Billy's cousin Vinny (Joe Pesci), whose credentials are less than stellar, in fact, it is not certain whether the new lawyer has even passed his bar.  Along with Vinny comes Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) a foul-mouthed, young woman who possesses a surprising expertise in cars, as she has worked in a mechanics shop her entire life.  Vinny enter into the world of Alabama law only to realize that the minutia of procedural work, as well as the less than welcoming traditions of the town.  Of course, much of the narrative also revolves around Vinny and Mona attempting to navigate a town whose traditions and simplistic way of thinking are somewhat frustrating, particularly considering the incessant noise and distractions occurring at all hours in the town, although Vinny is from New York so this plot point seems a little unusual.  Regardless, Vinny continues to face insurmountable odds as the judge often rules against the northerner simply out of spite, while the jury clearly sides with local favoritism, yet when with the help of Mona, Vinny is able to provide the jury and the judge with the perfect set of evidence to prove his clients innocence the prosecution drops the case and the who gang flees from the town back to normalcy, although Vinny has certainly gained the respect of his peers and has successfully won a case in the process.

For a film that is set in The South, and involves the acting of Joe Pesci, My Cousin Vinny is considerably poignant on its advocation of challenging tradition and undermining normalcy in the face of obtaining truth.  While the film is in no way a hearkening back to the civil rights era, one cannot ignore that the two young men in question for a murder in this film are of Jewish and Italian-American identities respectively, two groups whose presence during the sixties freedom rides cannot be ignored.  Yet, the town in which the case is to be held does not appear to suffer from any surface racism, as the African-American and white community seem to intermingle just fine within the narrative, as is reflective of the jury in which the trial chooses, although anybody familiar with such towns in the rural south can attest to the performative elements at play in such a situation, yet for the sake of this film it is not a racial issue, it is purely a distrust of those not from their world, paired problematically with a death and a desire to find a culprit.  Yet it is not simply the issue of entrenched social mores, as they relate to things like "appropriate dress" for a courtroom, or is it about the language of litigation, it has so much more to do with the assumption of who can be a lawyer.  The prosecutor in the film Jim Trotter (Lane Smith) represents a traditional, genteel southern man whose whole family is tied to law and, as such, has nearly unquestioned sway in the towns affairs, both legally and perhaps politically.  Vinny represents a by-the-boot-straps young man whose career in law is less prestigious and certainly not part of some lineage, therefore, making him an outsider to the process and, as such, a victim to mocking and mistreatment.  This separation is two-fold when it comes to Mona who even Vinny deems as being irrelevant and useless when it comes to assuring the case is a success, yet in a last scene of challenging the tradition, Vinny, as well as the community, are forced to take notice of a woman's very real ability to serve as a key witness and an expert in something traditionally associated with the man's realm.

Key Scene:  The grits scene is quite good and a classic moment in comedy, and is, assuredly, the moment that sets up the jokes for the rest of the film, not to mention the inspiration for Vinny's turn of events within the courtroom.

This movie is cheap enough to obtain and well-worth having in your collection, buying a DVD will suffice and should make for a great viewing experience.

Straight Lick With A Crooked Stick: The Skeleton Key (2005)

Often movies fail to obtain a viewership worth any credibility, usually resulting in their being relegated to lesser value and they become buried within the discount bin at a variety of retailers.  Often this is a result of terrible advertising on the part of producers, a wrong label in terms of is genre category or simply not coming out at the proper time.  This seems to be a combination of factors when related The Skeleton Key, a film even I had dismissed, passing off a copy to by trade-in pile with little concern for every viewing it.  Thankfully, a glance at my stack of soon to be dismissed DVD's spurred my girlfriend to suggest revisiting the film as she thought I might enjoy it, despite my verbal dismissal.  Reluctantly I popped this film into the DVD player and within five minutes the sweeping cinematography and thriller oriented narrative had captured me and I found myself longing for more of this criminally underrated film.  The performances are spectacular and the story is somewhat predictable but, nonetheless, quite intense...also it does not hurt that the film is set in New Orleans, which for all intensive purposes may well lend to being of the creepiest places visually.  Think back to my discussion of Easy Rider and the drug trip sequence...this, of course, was filmed in the catacombs of New Orleans.  The film also manages to properly and earnestly incorporate voodoo and hoodoo into its narrative, which is easily one of the most obtuse, yet surprisingly ubiquitous religious/magical practices in the Western world.  Furthermore, The Skeleton Key does not shy away from a metaphor or two within its narrative, drawing clear ties and connections between notions of past oppressions and lingering cultural consciousness.  This film delicately walks the line between being a flat out horror film and an expertly crafted thriller, never giving way to definitions of either.  In a year that witnessed works like Howl's Moving Castle and Cache relegated to lesser than something like Crash or Batman Begins, it is pertinent to revisit 2005 works and The Skeleton Key is perhaps a great place to start, because it is truly a work deserving repeated mention.

The Skeleton Key begins by introducing viewers to Caroline Ellis (Kate Hudson) an overly zealous nurse in a retirement home, known for her close attachment to the aging patients, often sitting with them during their last moments.  After a realization that the retirement home does nothing more than treat their patients like customers, constantly trying to fill beds, as opposed to help their comfort, Caroline leave the job and applies to work in hospice at a house located on a remote portion of the bayou.  Despite the worries of her friend, Caroline sees this as an opportunity to properly help people, while also keeping hours more appropriate for her finishing her Nursing degree.  Also, it is revealed that Caroline had a problematic relationship with her late father, adding a layer of guilt to her wanting to help the elderly, particularly men, in their last days.  Upon meeting the man she will help Ben Devereaux (John Hurt) and his wife Violet (Gena Rowlands) it is quite clear that their house does not exist on a earthly temporal plane and appears to be possessed by something otherwordly.  Yet, at the pleading of Luke Marshall (Peter Sarsgaard), the Devereaux's attorney, Caroline agrees to stay.  It is only a matter of hours into staying there that Caroline realizes she is engaged in something very intense, specifically upon discovering a room full of voodoo materials and a recording of a chant, which is apparently related to transferring the soul of one person into a younger body to assure their continued existence.  Things fall apart around the Devereaux estate and Caroline becomes more paranoid, planning to save Ben from the house after it becomes apparent that he desperately wants to leave.  All the while the history of the house unfolds around Caroline in what reflects a history of brutality and darkness, resulting in a change of identity that becomes the point of centrality for the entire narrative, as such I will not spoil this here, suffice to say Caroline survives...to some degree.

The film clearly has a cultural commentary about it, one centered on racial tensions and past injustices, it is no coincidence that the film finds its narrative entrenched in New Orleans, perhaps one of the most intersected populations in The United States.  While the film is, on the surface level, concerned with notions of possession and hoodoo magical practices, a larger issue of cultural memory and acknowledgements of brutal pasts overarch the film.  It is no coincidence that the original procurers of the spell to transfer bodies were two assumedly former slaves, who were working as servants in the Devereaux household.  An incredibly violent scene of their lynching and burning after being caught showing the children hoodoo, suggests a larger narrative of Southern memories of racial violence.  Thus the failures of all characters to acknowledge these past injustices, lead to their cyclical involvement with the problematic possession.  The spectral force serves as a metaphor for passing on memories of injustice and oppression.  It proves difficult to possess or get Caroline to believe in hoodoo, not because she is susceptible to superstition, but because she refuses to play into the ignorant bliss of an idyllic Southern past, one invariably predicated on slavery.  Thus the presence of a spectral force transplanted via two black servants is intended to keep the tragedies of the past alive, because ignoring them allows for someone like Violet to continue in her racist ways, possessed or not.  It is when Caroline begins ignoring her own acts to sever racist ties to the past that she becomes open to the hoodoo, another layer of metaphor thus emerging, and if it is not all sinking in at this point keep in mind that the male servants name was Father Justify...a bit of an on the nose reference to retribution.

Key Scene:  When Violet initially explains the history of the house to Caroline, the film then cuts to a past which combines color and black and white imagery along with a slew of frame altering after effects, that make for one of the film most intense scenes, both in terms of what is being shown, as well as in how it is shown.

This is a film worth obtaining, it is super cheap.  I have a DVD copy, but plan to upgrade to Bluray as it is a truly spectacular film.

The Truth Is, We're All Fighting For Salvation: George Washington (2000)

My recent review of Beasts of the Southern Wild heralded it as something so uniquely its own that I praised it incessantly suggesting that it was indicative of something new in filmmaking.  While I still thoroughly enjoyed that work and still think it reflects a grand change in independent cinema, I had never had the great pleasure of viewing George Washington, a directorial debut by David Gordon Green, whose, unfortunate, movement into stoner comedies has led me to never look into his ouevre.  However, George Washington sat as one of the early works I desired from the Criterion Collection and thanks to a recent subscription to HuluPlus I was able to watch this poetic film.  As for critical opinions there seem to be two fields of thought towards this film, the first suggests that it is a prententious exploitative film that borrows far to heavily from the playbook of Terrence Malick to be considered artistic and a second group who finds the cinematography, storyline and sheer atmospheric magic of this film to be indicative of rural southern life during its movement into a new millennium.  I am firmly within the latter grouping and found George Washington to be an exceptionally beautiful film about coming-of-age in a world of absurdisms, one that causes an individual to have a magical realist outlook towards the world, while also dealing with some intensely real issues.  The images in this film melt off the screen, at times literally peeling away and flow so smoothly despite changing subject matter that the comparisons to Malick are obvious, yet to suggest that this film rips his work off is to both discredit Malick and to misunderstand Green's film.  There are things such as the breaking on the filmic space by causing the image to distort that do not fit within the stylings of Malick, while the poetics and free floating narration of the film are clearly similar.  Yet, where Malick seems to go further into pondering, Green finds answers in the present, all be it ones equally ambiguous.  Furthermore, there exists an underlying humor to George Washington that is currently extinct within the work of Malick, but from what I understand he is to be making a comedy in the coming year...so that could all change.  Regardless, George Washington is a thing of beauty and incredibly visceral, yet understated.  You may have seen moments of this film elsewhere, but its collective offering is purely its own.

George Washington centers around everything but the first president of The United States, and while the main characters name is indeed George (Donald Holden) nothing else about him is presidential, of course this is 2000 well before the election of Barack Obama.  George is a young African-American boy who lives with his fiery-tempered uncle and subdued mother, and voyages around his rural Southern town wearing a football helmet, because of a rare skull condition that makes heavy contact and wetness detrimental to his survival.  His friends include the wise-cracking Buddy (Curtis Cotton III), who has an unusual penchant for wearing a velociraptor mask, Buddy's off and on girlfriend Nasia (Candace Evanofski) and Vernon (Damian Jewan Lee) a large boy who uses his authoritative figure in very few situations.  Aside from the young groups explorations and pontifications we are also provide a semi-regular glimpse into the some of the lives of working class young adults in the community, focusing specifically on Rico (Paul Schneider) who is often seen engaging in conversations with the youth.  The life they young people lead is not particularly easy and constant references to their lower-class living pop up throughout the film and, as such, their adventures often lead them to unusual places whether it be conversations in the pews of churches or the recitation of Shakespeare in a dilapidated community recreational hall.  One of these unusual encounters occurs in a bathroom, in which, George furious at Buddy for knocking him into the wall, pushes Buddy back, ultimately, causing him to slip on some water and bust his head open, an accident that proves fatal.  Panicking the group attempts to hide the body of Buddy in an abandoned house outside of town, only for George to feel guilty and eventually place the body in the river to be later discovered.  While the group never confess to their accidental murder, Vernon, along with a young girl named Sonya (Rachael Handy), who was also present at Buddy's death attempt to steal a car and escape from the city, with terrible results.  On the other hand, George attempts to counter his actions by going out of his way to save lives, donning a wrestling leotard, cape and his helmet he becomes a super hero in his mind.

George Washington manages to catch so many social reflections and philosophical inquiries within what appears to be a rather limited narrative net.  We as viewers are asked to ponder both the state of social equity as it relates to class, race, gender and even regional difference, but most importantly what role one's age has on their ability to confront the tragedies of the world, both affecting them and their loved ones.  George's room is by no accident adorned with a photograph of a smiling George H.W. Bush who appears to linger over his every reflection and action.  As is now well known, Bush, and his successor, failed to properly provide concern for the southern rural poor, despite playing heavily on this identity to earn votes.  By extension, however, George learns of these oppressions by not experience them himself, but seeing them through the pain and suffering of his psychologically troubled uncle, brilliantly named Damascus (Eddie Rouse).  Even George's interactions with Rico problematize notions of oppression, because while Rico is certainly quite open-minded in his race relations, even dating a black girl during the film, his progressive ideals do not necessarily reflect that of his entire town.  When George saves the life of a young white boy, the mother comes to thank George personally, and it is impossible to ignore her trepidation as she approaches the house that to her clearly houses the other.  Yet these elements of the film are entrenched within the eyes of the youth who are its subject, death, poverty and racism are not facts to them, but moments of uncertainty that are better explained by notions of fantasy and humor than grounded reason.  It is perhaps Nasia's professing on challenging god or Buddy's brilliant dinosaur Shakespeare monologue that manage to show that not all their ignorance is unintentional, instead; they choose when to ignore tragedy in life, as some awful things simply must not be acknowledged because no amount of explanation and maturity can justify their existence.

Key Scene:  The film has many, but I will constantly remember the one of Buddy quoting Shakespeare in a velociraptor mask.  It is forever burned into my memory, quite welcomely I do admit.

I watched this on Hulu and while it was a great introduction I cannot wait to purchase a copy and neither should you.