Movie Review (1992): Scent of a Woman

Scent of a Woman is a great film with a bad rep among Oscar pundits because it was the movie for which Al Pacino won the Oscar undeservedly. I personally think that Pacino deserved the Oscar and I don't care if I'm the only one in the world who thinks that. At the same time, I didn't think as highly of the movie as a whole, until when I rewatched it recently. Before rewatching it on TV last night, I had watched it once before about a decade ago. It's a typical "young man meets older man and he guides him through a coming of age" trial that's in the tradition of Dead Poet's Society, Goodbye Mr. Chips, and Good Will Hunting*. It stars Al Pacino as Colonel Slade, the old man who in this version has a pretty nasty exterior to get past, and Chris O'Donnell as the poor prep school student who must look after Pacino's character for a weekend so he can raise enough money to go home for Thanksgiving break. started out having three main problems with this movie.

First of all, Charlie (O'Donnell's character) is pretty asexual. Now, I think you're aloud to be asexual, and I don't think every protagonist in a movie has to be involved with a girl or something, but contrasted with so much talk about sex from the Colonel's character and the fact that Charlie who's in late adolescence when his hormones should be in full bloom, I found it rather curious. I wish he got to at least have danced with that pretty girl, rather than guided Al Pacino to dance with her in the tango scene. Nevertheless, it's still refreshing in the wake of some of the more oversexualized movies of the late 90s like American Pie and Cruel Intentions. My second problem lies in Al Pacino's character arc was from his impossible to get along with stage to his genuine self. I know it's necessary to create a certain progression for him, so he could've been so much more effective in his stubbornly likable personality, but still it was overdone and stretched out. My biggest beef, however, is that the boys who Charlie refuses to squeal on, have absolutely no likable traits whatsoever. They're ugly, uncharismatic, they rub it in how they're richer than him, and they're cowards. The pressure that one guy, George, exerts on him is cruel. It is true that the other headmaster is a jerk too, for picking on him, but I wasn't necessarily sure which was the lesser of two evils.

However, these three things were what lingered in my memory about the movie from the last time I saw it 10 years ago, but by the movie's end, I was left exuberant and moved, because those problems are more than cancelled out by what the film has going for it, which is the immeasurable chemistry between Pacino and O'Donnell's characters in this film. O'Donnell plays his part with a wide-eyed innocence and a guarded sense of caution that has the added effect of keeping the movie from being too corny, and Pacino is mesmerizing. The two create magic with every conversation they have. Also, the movie plays out like a series of short episodes and some of them like the car driving scene and the tango lesson are a lot of fun. What I also came to appreciate is that the film is a little harder to grasp because it doesn't follow conventional methods of storytelling. True, it would be easier for Charlie's peers to be worth standing up to, but the story never took the easy route.

The lesson learned? Star chemistry makes all the difference.

*Technically speaking, Good Will Hunting came after Scent of a Woman but you get my point

In defense of Batman Forever

Thinking of extending that trilogy past its prime? I think it's important to realize how an especially bad turn in a film series can hurt the legacy of the entire series to the point where it might damage the director's reputation and the retroactive reputation of films that come before it.

As a 12-year old kid, I loved Batman Forever and I recently went to look up reviews of it. Before looking them up, however, I had a preminition that because of the disaster of Batman and Robin, Batman Forever would be seen as much worse than it actually was.

While Batman and Robin extends those "campy characteristics" to an extreme, without extending any substance to them, I think it's important to note that Batman Forever had a stopping point to its corniness before it ever interfered with the story at hand.

Furthermore, It's important for everyone to realize that since Batman's creation in what I believe was the 1920s, there have been two parallel versions of Batman going on. One is the "dark knight" Batman, the mysterious force of good who no one knows about, and then there's the "camp" batman, who's more family-friendly, and more colorful, put it that way, his costume has blues and purples in it, rather than just plain black. The key difference, when you think about it, is Robin, because with Robin in the picture, Batman is nowhere near as mysterious and extraordinary because there is at least one other person doing the same things he is and there is at least one other person who is fighting the same battles he is, and also because Batman has to watch out for someone else, you know he's not selfless and evil. The people who like the "dark knight" Batman, are probably people whose prime hobby is comic book collecting over film watching, because that's where the dark knight first appeared.

Me, on the other hand am a film watcher who was born in 1983, so when Batman Returns came out I was 9, and while the depth of Burton's dark urban vision was so extraordinary even i could be amazed by it, I had a hard time with all the violence, seeing so many of Penguin's henchmen killed (a couple at the hands of Penguin, himself) or the scene where catwoman robs a store and kills a guy with her fingernails, etc. I'm not saying I needed a happy ending, but all the characters, even Batman, were just very depressing.

When Batman Forever came out, I was 12, and unlike its predecessor I really got on board the ride, because the movie had really great heroes and villains, which i could be engaged rooting for or against. In Batman Forever, Batman and the villains are all equally perverse and dark, I really didn't care much who won at the end, and maybe people who are harsh on Schumaker's films fail to take into account what these Batman movies are like for a kid's perspective.Visually, the movie was a marvel to watch. Tommy Lee Jones' make-up job is so great, i'd like to see someone tell me they weren't blown away, the first time we see the left side of his face in the film. Some people say that Tommy Lee Jones' portrayal of Two-Face wasn't true to the original character, who was a less hysterical individual, but I think a more composed and cool villain wouldn't have been as fun, simply put. The Riddler/Two Face partnership is the best mildly deranged villain/completely deranged villain chemistry in the series, I found (especially considering the other two partnerships never really had very much interaction with each other). Just look at the movie poster for this movie and the colors of the riddler's green, two-face's purple, robin's red, batman's dark blue/black. Like a John Williams score associates musical themes with each character, those colors with surreally bold hues draw out the characters throughout the movie. Also, Nicole Kidman blew me away too. This was long before she was in a stage where every movie role she took was basically crying out, "give me an Oscar." And as for Val Kilmer vs. Michael Keaton? Well, I think the best person to answer that question would be original Batman creator Barry Kane (did I get the name right?) who aid that Val Kilmer was the actor who played Batman closest to the vision he originally conceived it to be.