Annie Hall (1977)

Director: Woody Allen
Writers: Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman
Duration: 93 mins
Available: on DVD
Genre: Cynical Romantic Comedy
Rated: PG
Actors: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Carol Kane, Shelley Duvall, Janet Margolin
Comparable Films: (500) Days of Summer, High Fidelity, London, Up In the Air
Movie in a Sentence: A neurotic comic analyzes his past relationship with a free-spirited woman, and by extension examines his life in general.
Should You Watch: Yes. You should. That's it. Just watch it.
RATING: I'll go 9 out of 10. It's quotable, wry, and annually rewatchable.
Walken Content: A mere minute and a half. But wowzers, what a memorable scene. Word on the street is that Walken got his role in The Deer Hunter because of this little monologue.

 FUN FACT: His scene was originally cut from the movie for "pacing"

Walken Quote:  "Can I confess something? I tell you this because as an artist I think you will understand. Sometimes when I'm driving on the road at night, I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast, I have the sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly head on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The flames rising out of the flowing gasoline."     ~ Duane Hall

General Thoughts: Classic Woody Allen. One of his best, surely. He's sarcastic, yet still tender. Self-deprecating but narcissistic. Such deliciously human contradictions for a misanthrope to embody. And the film is introspective but it never gets stagnant, it's always moving. That is why he can get away with moping around the whole time. This is such a high energy movie - even if it is mostly people talking.

There's always movement and conflict. Whether it's an invasion of spiders, the last-ditch escape attempt of lobsters, Annie driving insanely fast in traffic, or the cacophony that is Woody's childhood family, the audience is always being taken somewhere, so I never get impatient with all of the tangents and digressions that Woody goes off upon.

And then he's interviewing random people on the street and getting painfully honest responses. Suddenly he's been cartoon-ized and he's having a lover's spat with Snow White's Evil Stepmother. Always moving, always surprising.

From what I gather, this film is a bit biographical, both for him, and Diane Keaton (who played Annie). Supposedly, Diane's real name is Diane Hall and her nickname used to be Annie. Huh! Isn't that's funny! Also, her and Carol Kane (Alison Porchnik) have been friends since they were young. So. There's that.

Listen. Everyone knows this is a great film. I'm not saying anything new here. And Walken is perfection in it. Quiet, intense, barely contained, bat-shit-crazy perfection. Walken was given a tiny throwaway role, the crazy-brother-of, and he nailed it so hard that people are still talking about it thirty years later. Cheers.

The Sentinel (1977)

Directed: Michael Winner
Written: Jeffrey Konvitz
Duration: 92 mins.
Rated: R. For sex and violence. I don't think anyone swears in it, but there is a plethora of bloody, gory scenes and a healthy number of nipples.
Available to Own: on DVD
Genre: Supernatural Horror
Actors: Chris Sarandon, Cristina Raines, Ava Gardner, Burgess Meredith, Jeff Goldblum, Eli Wallach
Comparable Films: The Exorcist, The Omen, Rosemary's Baby
Movie in a Sentence: The Gates of Hell is in an apartment in Brooklyn, and the Catholic Church wants a bored fashion model to be the next sentry, so they move her in and let the demons and ghosts convince her.
Should You Watch? Eh. Not seriously, no. It is unintentionally funny, though.
RATING: I'll go 7 out of 10, and I'm being generous because I like Burgess Meredith in this.
Walken Content: He's got maybe three minutes and most of those he's just listening to someone else. Move along, no Walken for you here.
Walken Quote: Nothing worth repeating.

An ancient, blind, albino, Catholic priest (John Carradine) stands silent guard at the The Gates of Hell, which just so happens to be located in an apartment building in Brooklyn. It's a nice place, really. Good neighborhood, close to the market, tastefully decorated. Too bad it's haunted by the ghosts of dead murderers, criminals and (gasp!) LESBIANS!! Yes, that's right: evil, monstrous, lust-filled lesbians.

Ahh! Oh, sorry, I thought you were Lesbians. Ahh!

Scary, right? This movie demonizes (literally! DEMONIZES!!) lesbians, and does it in this kind of offhand, casual manner, like 'Hello! Meet the Axe Murderer, Satan, and the Lesbians. Nice to meet you all.'   ... Well, it got a chuckle from me. And that's about the most response this late 70's horror film brought out of me, a chuckle. Sure, it was good in the way adequately "bad" movies are good: quotably awful lines, quirky characters, bits of 70s culture, and a parade of nudity, although it's not always a good parade if you know what I mean. It was interesting to see all the actors I recognize from other films, like the nefarious Prince Humperdinck from The Princess Bride, Clark Griswald's wife in the National Lampoon's Various Vacations, and Mickey, Rocky's cantankerous curmudgeonous trainer/manager. There are more, but why ruin it.

the creepy kind of nice

 But is that enough? Odd characters? Stilted lines? Nipples?

Perhaps if Walken had more screen-time I would be forgiving of the rest of it. Perhaps. But he doesn't. And I'm not.

Chris plays Detective Rizzo, a name we would not know if it didn't say so in the closing credits. Eli Wallach is the lead detective here, and Rizzo is just his shadow. Walken gets to bounce a few expository lines off of him, but nothing of substance occurs, nothing of notable charm. He wears a tie, he says a few words, and then he disappears, hardly a character at all.

Someone threw away a perfectly good Walken.

Rizzo, allegedly

I was going to talk about the horrible acting of the star, the vacuous Cristina Raines, and maybe segue that into an observation about the film's paternal and condescending attitude towards women, and its laughably Catholic outlook on sexuality, and possibly explore how those things undermine the attempt at scaring its audience.

I was going to, but the severe lack of Walken in this film has sapped my will to continue. You could watch this for Burgess Meredith's performance as the super nice but increasingly creepy eccentric neighbor. You could watch this for the brief scene where a mute, spandexed Beverly D'Angelo rubs one out to breathless climax in front of a shocked and flustered stranger. Pervert. You could be a Jeff Goldblum fan looking for his brief and bland role as a photographer. You could even watch this for Eli Wallach's Columbo-esque performance as the kooky but sharp detective trying to piece it all together before its too late. Or for the slimy skeazy sleaze that Chris Serandon slides upon so well.

Iocane powder! I'd bet my life on it!

There are other reasons, surely, but none of these 'parts' are quite compelling enough to warrant sitting through the 'whole' of this awkward mess. Watch it on fast-forward. Get medicated and/or drunk. Maybe keep a book nearby to read during the slow/dumb/confusing parts.

But don't bother if you are just looking for some more Walken. You'll just be disappointed.

Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976)

Directed and Written: Paul Mazursky
Duration: 111 mins
In: color
Available to Own: on DVD
MPAA Rating: R
Genre: Coming-of-age Drama
Actors: Lenny Baker, Shelley Winters, Ellen Greene, Lou Jacobi, Jeff Goldblum

Comparable Films: The Graduate, A Bronx Tale, Annie Hall*(Walken Film)
Movie in a Sentence: A young New York Actor and his friends deal with the complications of leaving home, falling in and out of love, suicide and other existential dilemmas.
Should You Watch This: Yes, just be in the right mood for it.
RATING: Objectively 7 out of 10, but Walken's presence bumps it up to an 8
Walken Content: Just under a quarter of the film is Walkenized. But it's a shiiiny quarter!
Walken Quote:  "I did run away from home. When I was 15. I knew I wanted to be a writer. I knew. I also knew I wanted to sleep with a lot of different women. What can I tell you? People get hurt."

General Thoughts: Next Stop, Greenwich Village is a coming-of-age drama set in 1953 about the people in an aspiring actor's life when he moves out of his parents' house and into a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village.

Larry has an overbearing mother (Shelley Winters in an almost cartoon-like performance of THE Jewish mother) who can't let go of her son, and a pregnant (spoiler?) girlfriend (Ellen Greene, remember Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors: "Oh Seemowah!") who doesn't want the baby and may in fact not want Larry either. This is a well-written, well-acted period-piece that explores themes of personal identity, Jewishness, monogamy, abortion, acting (both on the stage and amongst friends), Jewishness, and suicide.
Oh and it's funny too.

Though Larry Lapinsky is the main character, it is the myriad of colorful secondaries that make this film work as well as it does. His boss at the juice bar, Herb, played by Lou Jacobi is great in this. I remember him as Murray from Amazon Women on the Moon, but he was also in Roseland with our own Mr. Walken just a year after this was released. He seems to play the same uber-Jewish oldish-man caricature in everything (and by everything I mean these three films) and that's fine by me because I delight in the rhythms and quirks of that accent. Everything's a question and an accusation simultaneously. He bullies, yells, and goes on tirades, but there's something inherently avuncular about his bull-dog manner. Interestingly, he's like a male version of Larry's mother, but without the screeching.

A shockingly young-looking Jeff Goldblum has a whopping 3 minutes of air-time, but I triple-must mention it because he is a such an endearingly self-righteous ponce in this. He is playing an actor who is flabbergasted that he has to audition for a role, and he isn't afraid to voice his objections or  his opinions with anyone. Wonderful stuff, but oh so brief.

If you don't blink, a sombrero-ed twenty-something Bill Murray is on the screen for all of two seconds as the camera pans across a crowded bar. He is Nick Kessler, the subject of an anecdote Larry tells his girlfriend. I was all like, "What the?! Was that Bill Muray!! Nawwww, it couldn't be." And yet, it was. Uncredited, fleeting, yet undeniably:  Bill Murray.

A lot of the scenes revolve around the friends that Larry has acquired in the Village. But the more I think about them, and their group dynamic, and their back-story, I think I will just let you find out about them yourself, cause let's face it: you've already decided whether or not you're going to track this movie down and watch it. So whaddaya WANT for my life? ... Eh? What's that? More Walken? Agreed.

Though it could be argued that Walken's character, the poet Robert Fulmer, is one of 'the friends,' I would say he is really more of a friendly acquaintance. And when I say 'friendly', I mean he smiles patiently at their jokes and he is playful with them, but Robert is not one of them.

He is like a handsome prince traveling with a motley circus troupe. His clothes are expensive and his poise is elegant, but it is his outspoken pragmatic morality that most noticeably clashes with their liberal sensitivities. He is certainly a minority amongst this group of starry-eyed idealists, but he is chock full of confidence and never misses an opportunity to test the integrity of their opinions. And he does it all with such charm! They love him for it. He uses accents in his anecdotes and quotes William Blake on a whim. Robert is so unwaveringly worldly, charming and well-spoken that he almost seems supernatural standing next to these flawed and emotional young bohemians.

Though I was generally annoyed with Larry and his enthusiastic portrayal of a bad actor and a self-centered boyfriend, I loved his girlfriend, and the friends and everyone else, so in the end, not too shabby. It was funny, and touching, and interesting to see that area of New York in that particular moment of history.

Thirty of the 111 minutes in this film are Walken-filled goodness. He is the antagonist, but he is no villain, and he is not without his own sympathies. Even if you don't buy my opinion of the rest of it, Walken's performance in this film is certainly enough reason by itself to watch it. He conga-dances, Yiddish-talks, and Chaplin-walks out of a cafe. He is a smooth-talking scoundrel and a dastardly bastard.

And he's great.