The 100 Best Movies You've Never Seen (2 page)

In the 1960s and early '70s the duo of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore were Swingin' London's hippest comics. Their West End revues —
Piece of Eight
and
Beyond the Fringe
— heralded a new age of comedy that paved the way for
Monty Python's Flying Circus
and a new brand of satiric humor. No subject escaped their jaundiced eye — the Royal Family, social conditions, the BBC, even the Prime Minister. In 1967 they took on their most powerful subject ever, the Devil.

Bedazzled
is a comic reworking of the
Faust
legend. Stanley Moon (Dudley Moore) is a lonely and timid short-order cook at a London Wimpy Burger restaurant. He's hopelessly in love with waitress Margaret (Eleanor Bron) who is oblivious to his affections. Spurned, he writes a suicide note — “Dear Ms. Spencer, This is to say cheerio. Yours Sincerely, Stanley Moon. P.S. I leave you my collection of moths” — and tries to hang himself. Like everything else in Stanley's life, his suicide attempt is a miserable failure.

He makes the acquaintance of the sarcastic George Spiggot (Peter Cook), a smooth-talking gentleman who claims he's really the Horned One, Beelzebub, The Prince of Darkness — The Devil. George offers to exchange Stanley's soul for Margaret's love and seven wishes. To act on his dreams, all he must do is utter the magic words, “Julie Andrews” (who is apparently in league with the Devil). Should Stanley wish to cancel any of his wishes all he need do is blow a “raspberry.” Sounds like a win-win deal for a guy like Stanley, but Spiggot has a wicked sense of humor that prevents Stanley's wishes from turning out the way he wants them to. Stanley must be careful what he wishes for, because he just might get it. Enticed by the living personification of the Deadly Sins, embodied by Raquel Welch as Lilian Lust, Stanley begins his journey to win the heart of Margaret. Along the way his dreams are dashed over and over by the wily Devil, who always seems to be one step ahead of poor Stanley. Or so he thinks.

Bedazzled
, based on sketches written by Cook for the stage, rides the line between satire and blasphemy, although to my mind lands squarely on the side of humor. Taking on the church and re-examining the interaction between Satan and humans may have ruffled some feathers, but they do serve the higher purpose of revealing the true nature of Stanley's greed and the role of the Devil as an entity who exists to reinforce people's belief in God. Don't let the examination of religion scare you off,
Bedazzled
is also very funny.

Peter Cook (best known in North America as the priest from
The Princess Bride
) has never gotten his due as a comic mastermind. His script for
Bedazzled
bristles with inventive lines and irreverent situations. His Devil, for instance, isn't malicious, but more of a wise guy. As the Dark Lord he scratches record albums, sets wasps loose on picnickers, and rips out the final pages of Agatha Christie mysteries. Hardly the work of a fiend, but fiendishly clever nonetheless. On screen the Carnaby Street-clad Cook plays up his impish character beautifully, giving him an amusing, self-important air.

Dudley Moore works well with Cook; their verbal jabs fly hard and fast, played with a comic timing that comes only with years of practice. Amusing though his Stanley may be for most of the film, Moore seems to run out of steam near the end, when his role takes on a slightly more serious tone. Moore was not yet a seasoned screen actor, and seems to be relying on stage-bound sketch comedy tricks rather than “acting.” His onscreen performance technique would improve by the time North American audiences made him a star in
10
and
Arthur
.

Most notable among the supporting cast is the barely dressed Raquel Welch. As Lilian Lust (married to Sloth), she plays one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Not yet a major star, Welch adds an element of sex appeal to this comedy of (bad) manners.

Director Stanley Donen (
Singin' in the Rain
) handles the material with a nice light touch, and while
Bedazzled
may seem dated to today's audiences, the comic duo of Moore and Cook is well worth revisiting.

The Believer
is a controversial film starring a former mousketeer (who once shared the stage with Britney Spears), as a Jew who becomes an anti-Semite. Ryan Gosling plays Danny Balint, loosely based on the real-life Daniel Burros, a Jewish teen from Queens so confused and filled with self-loathing he joined the American Nazi Party and the KKK. In 1965 he was arrested after causing a disturbance at a KKK rally in New York City, and then killed himself when the
New York Times
disclosed that he was Jewish.

The contentious subject of
The Believer
kept it off multiplex screens despite winning the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and critical raves for its star Gosling. At the Toronto International Film Festival distributors were heard commenting that it is a great film, but they couldn't — or wouldn't — touch it with a 10-foot pole. Gosling's performance was compared to Ed Norton's turn as a neo-Nazi in
American History X
, but there was a difference — Norton's character seeks redemption, Gosling's doesn't. His Danny Balint constantly questions the roots of his faith, even as he faces death. This ambiguity led Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to publicly condemn the film.

The overriding problem with the movie is also one of its great strengths. Screenwriter Henry Bean (
Internal Affairs
,
Enemy of the State
) has nailed the language of hate practiced by skinhead groups almost too well.
The Believers
could be seen as a how-to handbook for anti-Semites, an idiot's guide to neo-Nazism. The character of Danny is articulate and charismatic, and if seen through the wrong eyes, a poster boy for hate. By casting Gosling, an appealing, talented young actor, Bean may have inadvertently made hate sexy.

The wrong-headed anti-Semitism in
The Believer
skims the surface of Danny's character, whereas the difference between what he says and what he believes lies at the core. As a child we see an impassioned Danny arguing with his teachers about the story of Abraham, who was asked by God to kill his son Isaac as a test of faith. In the end Danny decides God is a power-drunk madman, and Isaac will be “traumatized, a putz the rest of his life.” It's the first step in his tormented relationship with his faith. “Let him crush me like the conceited bully that he is. Go ahead,” he dares.

As a teenager he attacks Jews on the street and subway, beating one person to a bloody pulp. His rage and hatred are born from the misguided belief that the Jews did not fight back during the Holocaust, and therefore are a weak race. Eventually his journey leads him into the welcoming arms of Lina Moebius (Theresa Russell) and Curtis Zampf (Billy Zane), leaders of a Fascist organization who see Danny as a natural leader to take their message to the mainstream.

Lina's daughter, Carla (Summer Phoenix), is drawn to Danny, attracted by his sexuality and his intellect. After Danny and a group of skinheads vandalize a synagogue and destroy the Torah, he steals and repairs the document. With Lina he explores both sides of his ideological fence, preaching hate by day while secretly studying the Torah by night. At the film's climax a final act of skinhead terrorism in a synagogue leaves Danny with a choice between life and death.

“The thing I thought was beautiful, an interesting idea, is the line in the movie when Danny says to Carla, ‘Do you think people ever commit suicide out of happiness?'” says Gosling. “That was really important to me because I felt at the end of the movie — and this is the disturbing part — that Danny was happy. Probably never would be as happy as he was at that moment in his life because he was a Jewish Nazi. He was both. He had a girlfriend who was a Nazi, who was reading the Torah and learning Hebrew, who was making Yom Kippur dinner for him and going to shul [school], and he is daven [a prayer leader] at a Yom Kippur service on a bimah [altar where the Torah is read] in which he has placed a bomb. He's got them both. He was happy, and decided, Why can't I choose the day I die? Why can't I die out of happiness? It's a hard thing to come to terms with.”

The Believer
is a murky, unsettling film that offers no easy answers. “The reason I think it is a testament to the beauty of Judaism and the strength of his faith,” says Gosling, “is that he could give you every reason not to believe it. And he does. He can tell you everything that is wrong with it, and he is so learned as to why you should hate it, but at the same time he loves it.”

Danny is a complicated, profoundly troubled character, so in love with his faith that it makes him feel weak, and therefore must destroy it. “He's just one of those people who couldn't help what he thought,” says Gosling. “He felt two ways about it.” It's a confounding philosophy — the idea of showing love by embracing hate — and the product of an unstable mind. “He just wanted to feel strong, and as a confused kid he went in a confused direction.”

The real find here is Ryan Gosling, an Ontario native who broke into show business following an audition for
The Mickey Mouse Club
. At age 12 he moved to Orlando, Florida, and performed with fellow mouseketeers Britney Spears and members of 'N Sync. His television work included lightweight syndicated fare like
Breaker High
and the lead in
Young Hercules
, and his lone film role before
The Believer
was as the thirteenth-billed Bosley in
Remember the Titans
.
The Believer
is a quantum leap forward for Gosling. In a powerhouse performance as the steely-eyed Danny he lends humanity to a paradoxical character. At no time does the performance hit a false note. It's a commanding performance that deservedly won the Best Actor award at the Independent Spirit Awards.

Chances are you haven't seen
The Believer
on the big screen. It played briefly in independent theaters, but found its main audience on specialty channels like Showcase.

“We had a hard time with it, but a beautiful time as well,” says Gosling. “The film is about contradiction, and that is the response to the film. It's been a real rollercoaster. It went from Henry and I and a small crew stealing shots in New York with a very low budget, trying to make a movie that nobody really wanted us to make. Not thinking that anybody was ever going to see it, but just sort of wanting to tell the story. We never thought we'd get into Sundance, let alone win Sundance. That was such a high, and then everybody wanted the movie. And then everybody realized
what
they wanted, and got scared, then nobody wanted the movie. We couldn't find a home for the movie. Then we thought this movie is never going to be seen, and that was it, and then we found a couple of homes for it and alternative ways of getting it seen. That became more important than anything, making sure people saw the film.”

The Believer
is a very difficult film. Some will find the subject matter offensive, and while that is an understandable judgment — the anti-Semitic ravings of the skinheads are particularly difficult to watch — it is also an ambitious film that sometimes overreaches, but is anchored by a great performance by Gosling. We follow his progression from idiosyncratic self-hatred to liberation; all the while the camera never judges him, but merely observes him. Perhaps if director Bean had been less tolerant of Danny's Nazism the film might have had more appeal, à la
American History X
. It's a hot-potato topic, and certainly not for every taste.

The 1980s: the heyday of
Donkey Kong
, parachute pants, Cabbage Patch Dolls, New Coke, breakdancing, and of course, deliciously funny teen comedies. Hollywood still pumps 'em out by the cartload, but the Golden Age of adolescent humor dates back to the days when a new Brat Pack film was guaranteed to play to sold-out houses. Dozens were released, but only a few had the impact of
Pretty in Pink
,
The Breakfast Club
, and
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
, which became classics of the genre and cultural touchstones of the Reagan years.

One forgotten classic,
Better Off Dead
, is a gem of surrealistic teen comedy directed by Savage Steve Holland, best known for helming television shows like
V.I.P.
and
Eek! The Cat
. Nineteen-year-old John Cusack plays sad-sack Lane Myer, a 16-year-old with serious problems. His soulmate Beth (Amanda Wyss) has recently dumped him, with the brutally honest observation, “I really think it's in my best interest if I went out with someone more popular.” He should be glad to get rid of her, but, frankly, she was the best thing in his life. His father (David Ogden Stiers) means well, but seems slightly disconnected from reality. Mom (Kim Darby) is a terrible cook, who subjects her family to the creepiest, crawliest entrees ever seen on film. Brother Badger (Scooter Stevens) is a creepy mad scientist who doesn't speak, and can't look anyone in the eye. On top of all that his best friend snorts Jell-O and a demonic paperboy (Demian Slade) endlessly harasses him for a two-dollar payment.

Despondent, and brimming with teenaged angst, Lane attempts a series of feeble suicide attempts. When a poorly timed leap off a bridge lands him in the back of a garbage truck, a witness comments, “Man, now that's a shame when folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that.” Lane's salvation comes in the form of Monique (Diane Franklin), a cute foreign-exchange student determined to save his life and win his heart.

Much of
Better Off Dead
is typical teen underdog fare — Lane is in love with Ms Wrong, but ends up with the right girl by the time the credits roll — but there is an irreverence on display that sets it apart from the average kid flick. Holland seems to really understand the sense of isolation and displacement typical of the difficult teen years, but more importantly, also knows how to lampoon it. Everything about this movie has an off-kilter feel, as if reality has been tilted 45 degrees, creating a crazy world that is both unique and delightful.

At the core of this strange suburban tale is John Cusack, who puts in a performance ripe with the vulnerability of youth. Cusack's baby face reads all the awkwardness and self-doubt that occurs when you mix teen boys with raging hormones and high school girls. The blend of Cusack's charming performance with timeless gags, a killer soundtrack, and some really bad '80s fashions makes
Better Off Dead
a fun time capsule from the Me Decade.