Robert Deniro Movie:

		List Price: $6.99		Label: Platinum Disc Salesrank: 62564 Released: November 26, 2002
		Our Price: $2.33
		Used Price: $1.60
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: DVD

Greetings Reviews:
DePalma's Postcards From The EDGE...
2009-12-08 - The early 1960's were a great era for films and filmmakers. Brian DePalma made a huge impression as a up-and-coming gonzo-guerilla-radical-rebellious-independant filmmaker. And, that was just with this one film, his 2nd feature.
Starring a very young, unknown Robert DeNiro, DePalma created a satirical farce that skewered practically everything society was dealing with at the time: Vietnam, draft dodging, racism, paranoia, the JFK conspiracy, Antonioni's "Blow Up", teenage angst, rebelliousness, young love/lust, voyeurism, and entertainment.
Telling this in the style of short stories, well, postcards, pasted together to tell one story, this is a very interesting, complex (yet simple) piece of film that is still fun and relevant today. Join Jon Rubin and his merry band of friends as they experience some really cool and off-the-wall things, from unrequieted love to trying to solve the JFK conspiracy. Funny as h*ll, and a blistering reflection of a more innocent time when America was in a uproarious upheaval state. Dizzying film styles and techniques, and with a very witty script help move this film along charged at a rate of very high velocity.
Highly recommended! Thanx! ;o)

An Odious Cure For Insomnia
2009-11-24 - Robert DeNiro is one of the greatest actors in film history, which is why "Greetings" made it to my viewing list. Unfortunately youthful exuberance cannot redeem this tasteless anti-Vietnam sketch comedy. The central story of the film involves three men in New York City who are trying to avoid the draft by any means possible, ethical or not. The film is offensive on almost every level, and features overt racism (particularly disparaging to the Chinese), a truly pathetic homosexual impersonation scheme ("You better use 'Nair'..."), an equally unappealing scheme to feign psychiatric disorders, a nauseating comedic treatment of the Kennedy assassination (seriously, could this get more tasteless?), and slimy voyeurism, just for starters.

The film wanders aimlessly and drags on forever while never engendering an ounce of sympathy for any of the characters: they are all equally loathsome. Along the way there are long, rambling tales about the conquests of various women that in no way furthers the plot (though it does pad the running time enormously), painful slapstick interludes, and numerous subplots that go nowhere. The film starts with a terrible theme song while the cast frolics in fast motion, much like a sequence from "The Monkees" only not as cleverly devised. (Jumping jacks in Central Park? Really?) The film definitely gets my vote for most unendurable and kazoo-intensive soundtrack in modern history (especially mind-numbing in the bookstore scene), and serves to support pablum like the pointless tap dancing-passport photo scene (don't ask); also enjoy the completely disjointed story of computer dating gone awry that (like many other distractions) does nothing to advance the plot of the film. The only conclusion to draw is that Brian DePalma discovered anti-plot shortly before making this drivel.

The long and embarrassing concluding scene of DeNiro as a soldier in Vietnam is an insult to those who actually served: a female Viet Cong guerilla-stripper is nether tasteful or funny, but why should the film start exploring either of those concepts at this point? The only thing this film accomplishes is making hippies look like self-indulgent, narcissistic idiots. I could not dislike or disrespect this film more.

A pretty bumpy ride
2009-10-21 - After enjoying its sequel-of-sorts Hi, Mom!, I decided to give this one a try. This is basically just a series of sketches centering around its three main characters, and only a handful of them really work. Somewhat predictably, De Niro's scenes are definitely the most memorable. The rest just meander around without producing very many laughs, and the subject matter feels very dated. Plus, the amateurish quality makes it pretty clear that De Palma hadn't quite found his feet by this point yet. The follow-up Hi, Mom! is absolutely worth checking out though.

The comedic side to De Palma
2007-11-13 - So this is what happened to a high-spirited, talented director who could in 1968 co-write, direct and edit this movie for $39,985 (I know I could of just rounded it out) yet 30 years later made Mission: Impossible? With this, his 3rd film, he was well entrenched in an underground style of low budget works with an element of humor and a vigour that was exciting in its own right, not for what it gorily displayed.

Depalma introduces us to three friends through a series of New York-based sketches that bear only tenuous relation to each other; if not for the film's intense forward velocity, all the raw materials would certainly fall apart. Paul (Jonathan Warden) is trying to dodge the draft while testing the waters of computer dating; Jon (Robert De Niro) is giving "amateur" filmmaking a shot; and Lloyd (Gerrit Graham) is a JFK conspiracy nut trying to ferret out the truth of the assassination. The three are introduced in a lengthy, bravura sequence where Lloyd and Jon provide increasingly ridiculous draft-dodging advice as they shift venues: from a clothing store to a zoo, a random apartment, a public bathroom and finally a bar. The first half-hour neatly captures a sense of early twenties aimlessness, where hanging out--wherever--is an end in itself; it's jovial and feels at times not unlike Godard's Band of Outsiders.

Even though the "Greetings" theme song, a jangly Byrdsian creation, quickly negates the gravity of the opening LBJ Vietnam clip, the war hangs heavily over the film. (Hearing a president speak in 1968 about fighting terror abroad to help secure the homeland gave me chills.) "I'm not saying you never had it so good, but that is the case isn't it?" says LBJ, and the three draft-concerned friends do their best to prove him right. The sight of a young mustachioed Robert De Niro gallivanting through Central Park and goosestepping through the Lower East Side trying to figure out just how great of an actor he might one day become should be enough to warm the heart of even the most hardened cinephile. And De Palma himself is no slouch here, taking time to skewer the art world, tenuous race relations, JFK conspiracy nuts, the dating scene, radical liberalism, and the city of New York's own innate pretensions. Paul manages to dodge the draft by playing gay, but Jon's not so lucky. His plan to pose as an extremist arch-conservative with bloodlust only rendered him more worthy of the military, forcing him to abandoned his burgeoning "Peepers and the Peep" avant-porn masterwork Even if the film loses a bit of steam mid-way through, Greetings' coup de grace comes in an obviously staged Vietnam by way of Long Island where a newsman hooks up with a rifleman on the front line--none other than Jon Rubin. In the course of the interview Jon captures a young Vietnamese girl, seats her in front of the news camera and begins restaging his "Peepers" film as De Palma intercuts footage from the original taken in a Manhattan bedroom, effectively thumbing his nose at his audience, and the political priorities of the day.

I thought the cast (at the time) were fresh and in tune with his anarchy. He uses the story of a draft-dodger with an ingenious line in excuses to present a portrait of late-60s society. Rough and ready compared with later films, but minus the cynicism and contempt of those glossy works.



The Cinematic Technique of De Palma, fashioning Postcard of Distrust, Sexual Deviancy
2005-11-16 - During the last twenty-something years, Brian De Palma's films have featured themes of voyeurism and obsession, while the director himself has employed musical scores that resemble Bernard Hermann in the way they ratchet up suspense. In the service of dark, psychological thrillers, these flourishes have earned De Palma the distinction, or derision, of being an Alfred Hitchcock clone. This is an insinuation I have always felt was unfair.

Haven't we already seen what train wreck ensues when filmmakers simply ape Hitchcock's camera moves, which is what happened in Gus Van Sant's restaged "Psycho?" If that disaster proved anything, it's that cloning the technical aspects of an auteur does not alone guarantee success. The director must bring something of himself to the project; he cannot get away with simple plagiarizing.

What complicates matters is, the personal traits De Palma brings to his movies are the same ones Hitchcock brought. Both share a fear of women. They each made films featuring characters who become obsessed or paranoid. And in their heyday (the 40's and 50's for Hitchcock, the 80's for De Palma), both men pushed the boundaries of permissible violence and sexuality onscreen.

But De Palma also has a pretty strange sense of humor, which precedes his reputation even moreso than Hitchcock's did (maybe because Hitchcock's tended to be more subtle). In a movie like "Greetings," one of De Palma's earlier works, the bizarreness helps locate the film in the director's canon, despite the lack of a Hitchcock-style plot.

The movie opens with TV footage of President Lyndon B. Johnson, asking the American people during a speech, "Have you ever had it better than you do right now?" It's meant to be ironic, as the movie depicts a group of twenty-something New Yorkers who believe they are not living in the greatest era of their country's history. Paul (Jonathan Warden) worries about having to go to Vietnam; he has an interview at his neighborhood draft office coming up. His pals Lloyd (Gerrit Graham) and John (Robert De Niro, in his first credited movie performance) want to help him fail it, so they keep him awake for two straight days. That way, Paul can convince the Army psychologist he has insomnia, rendering him unfit to serve.

Lloyd, meanwhile, doesn't have to worry about being sent over to the `Nam. Any military official who spends five minutes talking to the lanky, wild-eyed JFK assassination aficionado would seek to have him committed. As for John, he seems confident he can fail the interview by convincing the recruiter of his involvement in a white-power militia group. After exhausting that plotline fairly early, John begins exploring his voyeuristic tendencies. He even starts to stalk unsuspecting women.

While the "peeper" portion may sound like familiar territory for the director, De Palma, who co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Hirsch, mostly plays that angle for laughs. John spends a lot of time following different women, but his compulsions usually lead to wacky hi-jinks, such as pretending to be an artist putting on a show called "Peepers and the Peeped." After convincing a shoplifter (Rutanya Alda) from the bookstore where he works that his faux show is for real, he brings her back to his apartment, and records footage of the woman performing what should be her pre-bed ritual.

The scene's humor derives from her horrendous acting, and the way she exaggerates her routine (Do most women wrap their stockings around their necks, then preen in front of their bedroom window...?). At the same time, the first-person perspective of the camera, representing John's p.o.v., and the sound of his voice manipulating the subject, make the sequence feel uncomfortably voyeuristic. But for the most part, De Niro, who would later achieve iconic status in "Mean Streets" and "Taxi Driver" gives a solid comedic turn.

De Niro's gift, which has served him well in countless, more serious roles, is the emotional investment he can put in every scene. When he finally shows up to the recruiter's office, looking and sounding the way B.D. from "Doonesbury" would in the same situation, his façade initially seems way out there. However, De Niro's genius is not playing the situation as comedy. On the contrary, he plays this junior jingoist as seriously as George C. Scott would later undertake George Patton. He inhabits the character, and I only wish Hirsch had scripted, and De Palma had filmed, the full interview which would have followed the introduction.

Graham and Warden do good work, too, embodying the mistrust that characterized the Vietnam War era, and the confusion that accompanied sexual liberation. Lloyd is obsessed with finding out the identities of the police officers who pulled up in front of the boarding house where Lee Harvey Oswald had a room. Supposedly, the cops honked their horns twice, then drove off. What was their relationship to one of history's most famous assassins? Will the unexpected appearance of someone claiming to be the son of the boarding house owner finally break the case "wide open...?"

Paul, meanwhile, tries to find love through computer dating. His amusing vignettes (each proceeded by a psychedelically purple title card) feature women who want to use Paul-for sex without intimacy, as surrogate father, as religious inductee-without providing him with what he really wants. What is Paul looking for? Not mere sexual release, evidently. Why else would he turn down the attractive, mildly hostile Bronx secretary, who accused him of just wanting to get into her pants, but left him a trail of bread crumbs to where she lay naked in the bedroom...?

Well, one obvious reason is to let Lloyd sleep with her instead. This allows for "Greetings'" most brilliant moment of morbid lunacy: a long, single take where Lloyd, addressing the camera directly, disputes the FBI's official ballistics report detailing President John F. Kennedy's assassination wounds. As Lloyd rants on and on about the discrepencies, he uses a magic marker to plot the impact of every bullet fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. However, Lloyd plots this information on the naked, sleeping body of the woman he just had sex with.

Naturally, drawing on a nude bedfellow becomes trickier when said figure lies on her back, which Lloyd needs access to. Lloyd addresses this problem with the confidence of someone who has done this sort of manipulating before. Whenever he needs her to lift an arm, or turn over onto her stomach so he can figure out the angle that the bullet exited out of the president, he simply plants kisses on a strategic location. The slumbering body inevitably moves, and Lloyd can continue with his work.

"Greetings" has an improvised, madcap energy, which sustains the movie while Hirsch and De Palma flail about for a plot. Indeed, the first half feels particularly aimless, like a collection of interesting montages and trick shots in search of genuine purpose. Granted, the filmmakers could have intentionally structured the movie that way, in order to reflect the lonely, listless, stuck-in-a-rut feeling that pervaded the country during the late sixties. But, in reflecting artfully on a quagmire, Hirsch and De Palma may have created their own morass, one which modern audiences may not have the patience to slog through.

Luckily, the dual appeal of De Niro and De Palma is considerable. "Greetings" gradually focuses more of its attention on John, as his penchant for falling into absurd situations make him the poster boy for his time. Perhaps De Palma was struck by the intensity De Niro brought to the peeper. Or maybe he recognized a star being born before his eyes. Cinematic history, as well as a peerless list of classic roles, certainly vindicates De Palma's decision to spend more of the film's second half following John. As for the director himself, there are moments when his sense of playfulness comes to the forefront. Take, for example, the scene where John chats up the shoplifter. As he describes "Peepers and the Peeped," the camera slowly pulls back, and a woman can be seen undressing in her ground-level apartment window. It's the perfect peepshow.

A book on Hitchcock's films appears as a prop in Paul and Lloyd's apartment. But I thought I recognized more of the influence of Antonioni, if anyone, in the montage sequences that occur during many of Paul's couplings. Meanwhile, it's fascinating to see that, back in 1968, De Palma was already proficient with cinematic sleight-of-hand. Initially, when the shoplifter performs the act which earns her her assignation, other voices distract us, and events happen so fast we can't be sure what she did. Later on, however, when John meets her on the street, he mentions what happened. De Palma then cuts to the same clip; indeed, she shoplifted that book.

Throughout his career, De Palma has enjoyed leaving clues in plain sight. Then, as the mystery unfolds, he doubles back upon them. He encourages active audiences; he used sleight of hand in "Dressed to Kill" (1980), "Mission Impossible" (1996), as recently as "Femme Fatale" (2002). Perhaps Hitchcock also did the same trick in his time. But the thing to remember is De Palma used them in a genre Hitchcock wasn't particularly known for.