Tomas Alfredson
2008
Not that it ever went out of style, but it appears the vampire film is on an upswing with HBO's decent series "True Blood," the upcoming "Twilight" adaptation (sure to be a hit with nerdy teenage girls) and this dandy of an import from Sweden. This one goes the arthouse route being shot mainly in excellent shallow-focus closeups and distant longshots, with a muted/measured color scheme. Bullied blonde moppet Oskar gains a much needed friend in the form of Eli (sounds like Elly not E-lie), who's just moved into his apartment building. Eli may be a vampire, but that doesn't stop them from "going steady." Scenes of violence and supernatural happenings are handled exceptionally well with the preteen vampire scuttling up walls, a woman massively combusting in a hospital bed, and an acid-burn suicide attempt. Even at it's most grandiose, gory, and wicked Alfredson plays his big setpieces with an amusing deadpan frankness. The film benefits from ambiguity with an easily interpretable, yet not overtly stated epilogue. This knife cuts both ways however, as the more in-your-face elements like a pride of crappy CGI housecats on the attack, and Eli lifting her dress to reveal a disturbing lack of genitalia, end up doing more harm than good to a generally excellent effort.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Street of Shame
Kenji Mizoguchi
1948
The final installment in the "Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women" box is an accessible portrait of a gaggle of prostitutes living under the same brothel roof. This examination of the circumstances that have forced the hapless gals into hooking, and the psychological quirks developed as a result is framed with a political debate as to whether or not to outlaw the oldest profession in Japan. The sob stories on hand are effective but one dimensional - a prostitute works to support her sickly husband and child, another possesses a single minded drive to earn money as her current predicament is the result of family poverty, and the westernized brat refuses an invitation home when she realizes it's based less on familial love than on her father's desire to keep up appearances. The Mom and Pop proprietors of the best little whorehouse in Tokyo are pragmatic businessfolk, interested in the well-being of their charges as long as it contributes to the bottom line. They're an untrustworthy lot with their fuddy-duddie warmth belying a complete disinterest in the emotional life of the girls, and a careful eye on the iron-clad debt that keeps many of the girls in indentured servitude. Mizoguchi capably handles his favorite subject matter in this broad tragedy, but it lacks the righteous rage of the box's other entries.
1948
The final installment in the "Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women" box is an accessible portrait of a gaggle of prostitutes living under the same brothel roof. This examination of the circumstances that have forced the hapless gals into hooking, and the psychological quirks developed as a result is framed with a political debate as to whether or not to outlaw the oldest profession in Japan. The sob stories on hand are effective but one dimensional - a prostitute works to support her sickly husband and child, another possesses a single minded drive to earn money as her current predicament is the result of family poverty, and the westernized brat refuses an invitation home when she realizes it's based less on familial love than on her father's desire to keep up appearances. The Mom and Pop proprietors of the best little whorehouse in Tokyo are pragmatic businessfolk, interested in the well-being of their charges as long as it contributes to the bottom line. They're an untrustworthy lot with their fuddy-duddie warmth belying a complete disinterest in the emotional life of the girls, and a careful eye on the iron-clad debt that keeps many of the girls in indentured servitude. Mizoguchi capably handles his favorite subject matter in this broad tragedy, but it lacks the righteous rage of the box's other entries.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
A Face in the Crowd
Elia Kazan
1957
It's hard for me to dig on Elia Kazan what with his cowardly betrayal during the blacklist hearings, but historically he remains an undeniable cinematic heavyweight. "On the Waterfront" (1954) is an uncontested masterpiece, and "East of Eden" (1955) is nothing to sneeze at either, but this time around I found the heavy satire cloying, and the rise-and-fall narrative generally unsympathetic. Andy Griffith's braying media sensation 'Lonesome' Rhodes has the throaty roar of a busted engine, and his perpetual crowing quickly becomes fingernails-on-chalkboard shrill. This hard-drinking loose hipped country boy is more of a con-man than a folk-hero to begin with, just asking for his inevitable "Citizen Kletus" downfall. Patricia Neal provides the most interest with her square-jawed Southern sensibility at odds with her irrational (and self-desturctive) devotion to the Frankenstein's monster she's created. A pre-jowles Walter Matthau makes for the most interesting supporting character with his jaded television writer hopelessly pining after Neal. I've got to admit some surprise at not recognizing the majority of the supporting actors in this picture. Despite my ingrained distaste for Kazan on principle I've always been impressed by his treatment of character actors in smaller roles.
1957
It's hard for me to dig on Elia Kazan what with his cowardly betrayal during the blacklist hearings, but historically he remains an undeniable cinematic heavyweight. "On the Waterfront" (1954) is an uncontested masterpiece, and "East of Eden" (1955) is nothing to sneeze at either, but this time around I found the heavy satire cloying, and the rise-and-fall narrative generally unsympathetic. Andy Griffith's braying media sensation 'Lonesome' Rhodes has the throaty roar of a busted engine, and his perpetual crowing quickly becomes fingernails-on-chalkboard shrill. This hard-drinking loose hipped country boy is more of a con-man than a folk-hero to begin with, just asking for his inevitable "Citizen Kletus" downfall. Patricia Neal provides the most interest with her square-jawed Southern sensibility at odds with her irrational (and self-desturctive) devotion to the Frankenstein's monster she's created. A pre-jowles Walter Matthau makes for the most interesting supporting character with his jaded television writer hopelessly pining after Neal. I've got to admit some surprise at not recognizing the majority of the supporting actors in this picture. Despite my ingrained distaste for Kazan on principle I've always been impressed by his treatment of character actors in smaller roles.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
The Last Wave
Peter Weir
1977
Much like he would in 1985's Harrison Ford vehicle "Witness" (1985), Peter Weir employs an exotic and offbeat culture to color his drama. Whereas Ford lams it in Pennsylvania's Amish community, the lawyer at the center of "The Last Wave" deals with a group closer to Weir's own experience - urban Australian aboriginals. The picture maintains a degree of mystery and danger from the get-go, but the steadily spiraling cosmic freakout that ensues is enough to make Haruki Murakami smile. The use of water as apocalyptic agent is excellently conveyed in it's drearily constant menace. In the first few shots the dusty outback gets deluged before being pounded by fist-sized hail stones. Soon the downpour drifts to the city where it batters the windshields and roofs of Sydney's residents - and even more violently within the mind of hero Richard Chamberlain. Aboriginal lore gives the film a nice hook, but it's the visual treatment of the sullen tight-lipped natives that really ups the intrigue. It's a nicely offbeat film, but as far as Weir is concerned I still prefer "Picnic at Hanging Rock" (1975).
1977
Much like he would in 1985's Harrison Ford vehicle "Witness" (1985), Peter Weir employs an exotic and offbeat culture to color his drama. Whereas Ford lams it in Pennsylvania's Amish community, the lawyer at the center of "The Last Wave" deals with a group closer to Weir's own experience - urban Australian aboriginals. The picture maintains a degree of mystery and danger from the get-go, but the steadily spiraling cosmic freakout that ensues is enough to make Haruki Murakami smile. The use of water as apocalyptic agent is excellently conveyed in it's drearily constant menace. In the first few shots the dusty outback gets deluged before being pounded by fist-sized hail stones. Soon the downpour drifts to the city where it batters the windshields and roofs of Sydney's residents - and even more violently within the mind of hero Richard Chamberlain. Aboriginal lore gives the film a nice hook, but it's the visual treatment of the sullen tight-lipped natives that really ups the intrigue. It's a nicely offbeat film, but as far as Weir is concerned I still prefer "Picnic at Hanging Rock" (1975).
Monday, November 10, 2008
House of Usher
Roger Corman
1960
For cheapie studio American International Pictures, Roger Corman's take on the writing of Edgar Allan Poe (which would birth a cycle), is huge in budget with it's semi-lavish sets and real name actor in the form of Vincent Price. The great Richard Matheson pens an adequate feature-length screenplay from the short story, successfully incorporating new elements and ideas that gel with the original's spirit. Yet it remains fundamentally flawed with it's lack of action and proper atmosphere. Price has an undeniable screen presence, but his intendedly villainous Roderick Usher comes off as little more than a invalid sissy, and brylcreemed alpha male Mark Damon shows the charisma and acting chops of a lawn jockey. This leaves Myrna Fahey to put in the best turn with her wide-eyed bloody-clawed madness. Finally, the physicality of the slowly crumbling foundation is a powerful visual tool, but the lion's share of the effects budget clearly went into photographing the Usher mansion consumed in flames. It's an impressive ending to a mostly mediocre picture.
1960
For cheapie studio American International Pictures, Roger Corman's take on the writing of Edgar Allan Poe (which would birth a cycle), is huge in budget with it's semi-lavish sets and real name actor in the form of Vincent Price. The great Richard Matheson pens an adequate feature-length screenplay from the short story, successfully incorporating new elements and ideas that gel with the original's spirit. Yet it remains fundamentally flawed with it's lack of action and proper atmosphere. Price has an undeniable screen presence, but his intendedly villainous Roderick Usher comes off as little more than a invalid sissy, and brylcreemed alpha male Mark Damon shows the charisma and acting chops of a lawn jockey. This leaves Myrna Fahey to put in the best turn with her wide-eyed bloody-clawed madness. Finally, the physicality of the slowly crumbling foundation is a powerful visual tool, but the lion's share of the effects budget clearly went into photographing the Usher mansion consumed in flames. It's an impressive ending to a mostly mediocre picture.
Women of the Night
Kenji Mizoguchi
1948
In a struggling and shamed postwar Japan, Kenji Mizoguchi illuminates the hardships that drive his nation's women onto nighttime streets, and the dangers of this desperate life. Unlike the culturally-loaded world of "Sisters of the Gion" (1936), the genteel traditions, costumes, and courtesies are replaced with the hardscrabble realities of syphilis, defilement, and unwanted pregnancies. Sisters Fusako and Natsuko are reunited after suffering their fare share of wartime heartbreak in the form of dead parents, dead offspring, and forced rape at the hands of soldiers. The girls try and stick to the straight and narrow despite these scars, but are pushed over the edge after one-too-many emotional disappointments. While not a true noir, the picture borrows some of the genre's touches with a nifty jailbreak from lady prison, angry hooker street beatdowns, and the downfall of a seedy drug-dealing businessman. Mizoguchi gets a lot of mileage out of the skin trade, but the sisters are left with short shrift in character development - Fusako's transformation from innocent to bad girl is too quick, and the seemingly steely Natsuko devolves into victimhood at the drop of a hat. I couldn't help but feel this picture predicted or inspired some of Seijun Suzuki's output, particularly in the angry unrepentant whores ("Gate of Flesh" 1964) and the squalid semi-surrealistic finale complete with a hefty dose of Christian imagery.
1948
In a struggling and shamed postwar Japan, Kenji Mizoguchi illuminates the hardships that drive his nation's women onto nighttime streets, and the dangers of this desperate life. Unlike the culturally-loaded world of "Sisters of the Gion" (1936), the genteel traditions, costumes, and courtesies are replaced with the hardscrabble realities of syphilis, defilement, and unwanted pregnancies. Sisters Fusako and Natsuko are reunited after suffering their fare share of wartime heartbreak in the form of dead parents, dead offspring, and forced rape at the hands of soldiers. The girls try and stick to the straight and narrow despite these scars, but are pushed over the edge after one-too-many emotional disappointments. While not a true noir, the picture borrows some of the genre's touches with a nifty jailbreak from lady prison, angry hooker street beatdowns, and the downfall of a seedy drug-dealing businessman. Mizoguchi gets a lot of mileage out of the skin trade, but the sisters are left with short shrift in character development - Fusako's transformation from innocent to bad girl is too quick, and the seemingly steely Natsuko devolves into victimhood at the drop of a hat. I couldn't help but feel this picture predicted or inspired some of Seijun Suzuki's output, particularly in the angry unrepentant whores ("Gate of Flesh" 1964) and the squalid semi-surrealistic finale complete with a hefty dose of Christian imagery.
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Together
Lukas Moodysson
2000
Before he made bleak films about preteen Russian prostitutes and desperate amateur pornographers, Lukas Moodysson made this much warmer, much fuzzier picture about a battered mother and her two children taking shelter in a hippy commune run by her brother. The colorful cast of social misfits and radicals include a self-proclaimed lesbian, her bitter ex-husband, their amusingly named child (Tet), a homosexual with a Prince Valiant 'do, an overly serious Marxist, a couple of die-hard crunchies, and gentle leader Goran, who provides a perpetual doormat for his sexually adventurous girlfriend. Visually, Moodysson employs a curious device where nearly every shot of the quasi-documentary camerawork involves a zoom. This aesthetic choice isn't nearly as dreadful as it sounds, lending additional quirk to an already uncommon picture. The abusive husband is given a fair shake, and despite his alcohol fueled fuck-ups, is presented as a three dimensional individual worthy of sympathy. While the mother begins to seriously enjoy her consciousness-expanding time at the commune, cozying up with her new lesbian pal, the children miss eating meat and loathe being driven to school in the stereotypically painted VW bus. There's a lot of great situational humor in the character interactions, starting with a bang when the camera reveals that one of the women is naked from the waist down during a house discussion about dishwashing (fungal infections are a bitch). The film's conflicts tend to wrap up a little too easily, but this remains an extremely pleasant and satisfying picture.
2000
Before he made bleak films about preteen Russian prostitutes and desperate amateur pornographers, Lukas Moodysson made this much warmer, much fuzzier picture about a battered mother and her two children taking shelter in a hippy commune run by her brother. The colorful cast of social misfits and radicals include a self-proclaimed lesbian, her bitter ex-husband, their amusingly named child (Tet), a homosexual with a Prince Valiant 'do, an overly serious Marxist, a couple of die-hard crunchies, and gentle leader Goran, who provides a perpetual doormat for his sexually adventurous girlfriend. Visually, Moodysson employs a curious device where nearly every shot of the quasi-documentary camerawork involves a zoom. This aesthetic choice isn't nearly as dreadful as it sounds, lending additional quirk to an already uncommon picture. The abusive husband is given a fair shake, and despite his alcohol fueled fuck-ups, is presented as a three dimensional individual worthy of sympathy. While the mother begins to seriously enjoy her consciousness-expanding time at the commune, cozying up with her new lesbian pal, the children miss eating meat and loathe being driven to school in the stereotypically painted VW bus. There's a lot of great situational humor in the character interactions, starting with a bang when the camera reveals that one of the women is naked from the waist down during a house discussion about dishwashing (fungal infections are a bitch). The film's conflicts tend to wrap up a little too easily, but this remains an extremely pleasant and satisfying picture.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Family Plot
Alfred Hitchcock
1976
The last realized project by the Master of Suspense may not be considered among his finest, but it does have the same devilish sense of danger and black humor that many of his best films do. Fraud psychic Blanche (an easy on the eyes Barbara Harris) and her low-rent cabbie boyfriend (unlikely leading man George Lumely) do all they can to hoodwink little old ladies for extra loot when a whopper lands in their boat. All they need to do is track down jeweler/kidnapper Arthur Anderson (an exceptionally slippery William Devane) and his main squeeze (a two-Vicodin-too-many Karen Black). The film is part caper flick with high stakes ransoms, and part detective story with a mysteriously falsified grave marker. I remember reading (probably in Truffaut's famous interview book) that Hitchcock lamented the increasingly graphic depictions of sex and violence, as well as the use of courser language, in 70's cinema. However, Hitch seems to embrace these more risque elements with an unsubtly horny Babs Harris and some well placed cuss-words. The couples' parallel transgressions - petty scams vs. big time scores - pleasantly predicts Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989), and despite it's generally lighter tone, it's one of the better of Hitchcock's minor works. It's nice to see that the old bulldog never lost his touch, even after a handful of late career disappointments.
1976
The last realized project by the Master of Suspense may not be considered among his finest, but it does have the same devilish sense of danger and black humor that many of his best films do. Fraud psychic Blanche (an easy on the eyes Barbara Harris) and her low-rent cabbie boyfriend (unlikely leading man George Lumely) do all they can to hoodwink little old ladies for extra loot when a whopper lands in their boat. All they need to do is track down jeweler/kidnapper Arthur Anderson (an exceptionally slippery William Devane) and his main squeeze (a two-Vicodin-too-many Karen Black). The film is part caper flick with high stakes ransoms, and part detective story with a mysteriously falsified grave marker. I remember reading (probably in Truffaut's famous interview book) that Hitchcock lamented the increasingly graphic depictions of sex and violence, as well as the use of courser language, in 70's cinema. However, Hitch seems to embrace these more risque elements with an unsubtly horny Babs Harris and some well placed cuss-words. The couples' parallel transgressions - petty scams vs. big time scores - pleasantly predicts Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989), and despite it's generally lighter tone, it's one of the better of Hitchcock's minor works. It's nice to see that the old bulldog never lost his touch, even after a handful of late career disappointments.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Eaten Alive
Tobe Hooper
1977
Hooper's first directorial effort after his horror masterpiece "The Texas Chansaw Massacre" sees him returning to the fertile fields of rural psychos. Neville Brand runs a shabby motel deep in swamp country. When he's not mumbling to himself and scratching figures in a notepad, the wooden-legged nut feeds folks to the massive pet croc (from Africa!) on his property. This one gets off to a slow start with a by-the-books murder of a failed hooker, the evidence being promptly erased by Brand's reptilian garbage disposal. Luckily the picture picks up when a seemingly normal family is forced to bunk down in the menacing motel - the family dog has become crocodile chow, leaving their little girl traumatized. In private, the father proves to be a bonafide wackjob, and the mother a pill-popper. When the family's situation goes South, the daughter winds up beneath the motel porch hiding from a scythe wielding Brand. The sets are a touch wooden and the heavily colored lighting is tacky, but Hooper excels in instilling terror not from sudden scares, but in morbidly lingering on the horror of an unsound mind - the alien otherness of psychosis. The presumably animatronic crocodile prop works with varying success. At times it's terrifyingly large but appears comically small when the pooch gets mowed down. Top it off with Robert Englund (Freddy Kruger!) as the town stud and lots of lady toplessness and you've got a winning chiller.
1977
Hooper's first directorial effort after his horror masterpiece "The Texas Chansaw Massacre" sees him returning to the fertile fields of rural psychos. Neville Brand runs a shabby motel deep in swamp country. When he's not mumbling to himself and scratching figures in a notepad, the wooden-legged nut feeds folks to the massive pet croc (from Africa!) on his property. This one gets off to a slow start with a by-the-books murder of a failed hooker, the evidence being promptly erased by Brand's reptilian garbage disposal. Luckily the picture picks up when a seemingly normal family is forced to bunk down in the menacing motel - the family dog has become crocodile chow, leaving their little girl traumatized. In private, the father proves to be a bonafide wackjob, and the mother a pill-popper. When the family's situation goes South, the daughter winds up beneath the motel porch hiding from a scythe wielding Brand. The sets are a touch wooden and the heavily colored lighting is tacky, but Hooper excels in instilling terror not from sudden scares, but in morbidly lingering on the horror of an unsound mind - the alien otherness of psychosis. The presumably animatronic crocodile prop works with varying success. At times it's terrifyingly large but appears comically small when the pooch gets mowed down. Top it off with Robert Englund (Freddy Kruger!) as the town stud and lots of lady toplessness and you've got a winning chiller.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Saw III
Darren Lynn Bousman
2006
After viewing the first three Saw installments I've come to the conclusion that while these films aren't particularly good, they are definitely addictive. So far number three has proved best in the franchise, being on par or better than the first, and far superior to part two. The hokey cops are finally done away with for the most part, as they're either violently dispatched or shoved deep in the background. Crazy grandpa Jigsaw is still kicking around with his ex-junkie sidekick, and cooks up another overly elaborate plan involving a dedicated doctor and a revenge obsessed father. This being a Saw film there's a surefire twist ending (a little more far-fetched than usual) and a handful of nutty traps. Thankfully Tobin Bell gets to chew up the screen a little more, and is more involved in the action, receiving some frontier medicine in the form of a power-drill trephined skull. Gore aside, the most rewarding element here is the rocky sensei/pupil relationship between Amanda and Jigsaw, one in which the learning curve is severely hampered by an inoperable brain tumor. The ice-locker trap is a complete throwaway, but the pig-slop one - in which a man risks drowning beneath frapped pork bits - sufficiently makes up for it. Unlike the first two efforts this one seems far less sequel friendly, which is definitely making me interested in "SAW IV." I'm ready for another dose of cheap cinema crack.
2006
After viewing the first three Saw installments I've come to the conclusion that while these films aren't particularly good, they are definitely addictive. So far number three has proved best in the franchise, being on par or better than the first, and far superior to part two. The hokey cops are finally done away with for the most part, as they're either violently dispatched or shoved deep in the background. Crazy grandpa Jigsaw is still kicking around with his ex-junkie sidekick, and cooks up another overly elaborate plan involving a dedicated doctor and a revenge obsessed father. This being a Saw film there's a surefire twist ending (a little more far-fetched than usual) and a handful of nutty traps. Thankfully Tobin Bell gets to chew up the screen a little more, and is more involved in the action, receiving some frontier medicine in the form of a power-drill trephined skull. Gore aside, the most rewarding element here is the rocky sensei/pupil relationship between Amanda and Jigsaw, one in which the learning curve is severely hampered by an inoperable brain tumor. The ice-locker trap is a complete throwaway, but the pig-slop one - in which a man risks drowning beneath frapped pork bits - sufficiently makes up for it. Unlike the first two efforts this one seems far less sequel friendly, which is definitely making me interested in "SAW IV." I'm ready for another dose of cheap cinema crack.
Sisters of the Gion
Kenji Mizoguchi
1936
The second film in the Criterion Eclipse "Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women" box is the most well known, with it's debate on the Geisha profession in a rapidly modernizing and militarizing Japan. The titular sisters are day-and-night opposites with older sis Umekichi willing to forfeit financial gain in the name of personal satisfaction in a job well done. The younger Omocha, embittered by a profession she finds degrading (her name literally translates to "plaything"), opts to con her clients and fleece them for all she can. Like the character motivations in the prior "Osaka Elegy" (1936), Mizoguchi imbues a rare quality of complexity in the depiction of his Geishas' philosophies. While Umekichi's humanity and sympathy for her downtrodden patron makes her the more appealing of the two, her unthinking servile self-sacrifice ultimately paints her as a bovine rube. Omocha's conniving verges on villainous - plying men with drinks and meddling in Umekichi's affairs behind her back - but her final sickbed howl evokes a genuine agony leveled against her forced servitude. "Sisters of the Gion" is not a subtle picture in terms of structure and drama, but is a powerful provocation for a strongly traditional society in transition. With this film, Mizoguchi poses a question he does not intend to answer.
1936
The second film in the Criterion Eclipse "Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women" box is the most well known, with it's debate on the Geisha profession in a rapidly modernizing and militarizing Japan. The titular sisters are day-and-night opposites with older sis Umekichi willing to forfeit financial gain in the name of personal satisfaction in a job well done. The younger Omocha, embittered by a profession she finds degrading (her name literally translates to "plaything"), opts to con her clients and fleece them for all she can. Like the character motivations in the prior "Osaka Elegy" (1936), Mizoguchi imbues a rare quality of complexity in the depiction of his Geishas' philosophies. While Umekichi's humanity and sympathy for her downtrodden patron makes her the more appealing of the two, her unthinking servile self-sacrifice ultimately paints her as a bovine rube. Omocha's conniving verges on villainous - plying men with drinks and meddling in Umekichi's affairs behind her back - but her final sickbed howl evokes a genuine agony leveled against her forced servitude. "Sisters of the Gion" is not a subtle picture in terms of structure and drama, but is a powerful provocation for a strongly traditional society in transition. With this film, Mizoguchi poses a question he does not intend to answer.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Mysterious Island
Cy Endfield
1961
Based on the Jules Verne novel of the same name, this adventure yarn proves dizzyingly entertaining due to the sheer weirdness of it's content. Things get rolling when a handful of Union POWs break prison and escape in a hot air balloon(!) with a Confederate soldier and a journalist in tow. Somehow the airborne gang travels all the way from the American South to a remote island in the Pacific...a mysterious island. Strange things begin to happen to the balloon-wrecked men as they find the titular isle populated by giant crabs, giant bees, regular sized goats, and British women. The giant animals (including a wicked flightless buzzard) are brought to screen by incomparable effects genius Ray Harryhausen. Unlike other Harryhausen efforts (all the Sinbad pictures come to mind) the stop motion wizardry is supplemental to the film as opposed to being the only attraction, making for a pleasantly well-rounded outing. The mastermind behind the island's mystery is the wily Captain Nemo (played by Herbert Lorn looking like a homosexual Peter Stormare), and if this movie doesn't already seem to be saturated with fantastic elements there's also marauding pirates, seashell-based scuba gear, a lost Atlantis-like civilization, an erupting doomsday volcano, and a malevolent seamonster. It's as if the script came straight from the fevered imagination of a hyperactive 12 year old boy.
1961
Based on the Jules Verne novel of the same name, this adventure yarn proves dizzyingly entertaining due to the sheer weirdness of it's content. Things get rolling when a handful of Union POWs break prison and escape in a hot air balloon(!) with a Confederate soldier and a journalist in tow. Somehow the airborne gang travels all the way from the American South to a remote island in the Pacific...a mysterious island. Strange things begin to happen to the balloon-wrecked men as they find the titular isle populated by giant crabs, giant bees, regular sized goats, and British women. The giant animals (including a wicked flightless buzzard) are brought to screen by incomparable effects genius Ray Harryhausen. Unlike other Harryhausen efforts (all the Sinbad pictures come to mind) the stop motion wizardry is supplemental to the film as opposed to being the only attraction, making for a pleasantly well-rounded outing. The mastermind behind the island's mystery is the wily Captain Nemo (played by Herbert Lorn looking like a homosexual Peter Stormare), and if this movie doesn't already seem to be saturated with fantastic elements there's also marauding pirates, seashell-based scuba gear, a lost Atlantis-like civilization, an erupting doomsday volcano, and a malevolent seamonster. It's as if the script came straight from the fevered imagination of a hyperactive 12 year old boy.
Osaka Elegy
Kenji Mizoguchi
1936
The first entry in Criterion Eclipse's four volume DVD box "Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women" is a prewar social issues picture similar to those made in the States by Warner Brothers. In order to prevent her embezzling deadbeat-Dad (fish faced Akira Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura) from being thrown in the clink, prim switchboard operator Ayako gives into her pervy boss's sexual advances, becoming his mistress. Unlike the aforementioned Warner Bros films this one retains a welcome element of subtlety and ambiguous character motivations. Ayako's sugar daddy is proved to be more than a simple manipulative fiend as we witness his badgering wife taunting his sexuality and pushing him towards adultery. Ayako herself seems to genuinely relish the fine apartment, clothes, and theater outings (Bunraku Puppet play!) bestowed upon her by her benefactors. Even Ayako's hunky "true love" interest shows himself to be a cowardly twerp when grilled by police. After saving her father, paying for her brother's schooling, and mending her ways, our heroine remains utterly shunned by a thoroughly hypocritical society, left to walk the nighttime streets alone in a trademark Mizoguchi shot.
1936
The first entry in Criterion Eclipse's four volume DVD box "Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women" is a prewar social issues picture similar to those made in the States by Warner Brothers. In order to prevent her embezzling deadbeat-Dad (fish faced Akira Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura) from being thrown in the clink, prim switchboard operator Ayako gives into her pervy boss's sexual advances, becoming his mistress. Unlike the aforementioned Warner Bros films this one retains a welcome element of subtlety and ambiguous character motivations. Ayako's sugar daddy is proved to be more than a simple manipulative fiend as we witness his badgering wife taunting his sexuality and pushing him towards adultery. Ayako herself seems to genuinely relish the fine apartment, clothes, and theater outings (Bunraku Puppet play!) bestowed upon her by her benefactors. Even Ayako's hunky "true love" interest shows himself to be a cowardly twerp when grilled by police. After saving her father, paying for her brother's schooling, and mending her ways, our heroine remains utterly shunned by a thoroughly hypocritical society, left to walk the nighttime streets alone in a trademark Mizoguchi shot.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Saw II
Darren Lynn Bousman
2005
Splat pack member Bousman takes the helm of this sequel as he would for the next two after it. This outing has little of the original's style and cleverness, though benefits greatly from plenty of face time with Tobin Bell's Jigsaw. The dreary and alienating industrial sets of the original are watered down here, with the majority of the action taking place in an abandoned house set that comes off as woefully artificial. The participants of this game suffer from the old horror flick problem of shallow characterizations and unsympathetic personalities. Once again, the cop drama angle is tired and cliched with Donnie Wahlberg as a central casting detective, and a gaggle of lifeless SWAT members along for the ride. Also, the use of Sarin Gas slowly permeating throughout the house, making it's captives vomit blood, is plain ludicrous. In low doses Sarin causes spasms, drooling, and loss of control of bodily functions, which would frankly have been a far more compelling gross-out than the occasional bloody loogie. I was a little disappointed at how few traps there were this outing, with more than a few of the prisoners/players falling at each other's hands. However, the hypodermic needle pit is handled well and the razor box (your hands can get in but won't come out) is pretty neat as well. For all it's numerous faults, the twist ending is solid and the film remains watchable. I'm definitely willing to give round three a chance.
2005
Splat pack member Bousman takes the helm of this sequel as he would for the next two after it. This outing has little of the original's style and cleverness, though benefits greatly from plenty of face time with Tobin Bell's Jigsaw. The dreary and alienating industrial sets of the original are watered down here, with the majority of the action taking place in an abandoned house set that comes off as woefully artificial. The participants of this game suffer from the old horror flick problem of shallow characterizations and unsympathetic personalities. Once again, the cop drama angle is tired and cliched with Donnie Wahlberg as a central casting detective, and a gaggle of lifeless SWAT members along for the ride. Also, the use of Sarin Gas slowly permeating throughout the house, making it's captives vomit blood, is plain ludicrous. In low doses Sarin causes spasms, drooling, and loss of control of bodily functions, which would frankly have been a far more compelling gross-out than the occasional bloody loogie. I was a little disappointed at how few traps there were this outing, with more than a few of the prisoners/players falling at each other's hands. However, the hypodermic needle pit is handled well and the razor box (your hands can get in but won't come out) is pretty neat as well. For all it's numerous faults, the twist ending is solid and the film remains watchable. I'm definitely willing to give round three a chance.
Fahrenheit 451
Multiple Viewings
Francois Truffaut
1966
Who better to commit Ray Bradbury's book burnin' dystopia to the screen than lifelong bibliophile Francious Truffaut? The shitty dead-end society of pacified drones that hero Montag becomes increasingly dissatisfied with is excellently illustrated in a "not too distant future" idiom - no rocket cars or robots here, but there are giant televisions, interesting architecture, and jetpacks. Oskar Werner's face subtly and effectively conveys his disillusionment with an inward melancholy, though its Julie Christie who steals the show in the dual role of Montag's living-corpse wife and seductive rebel bookworm. Truffaut liberally indulges in the cinematic allure of fire, meditating on engulfed libraries in closeup, and delights in presenting the ironically manipulative programming Montag's vapid wife views on the idiot box. There's plenty of memorable scenes straight from the book - Montag discovering his OD'd wife cold and blue only to have plumber-like EMT's resurrect her, and my personal favorite, the badass old woman going up in flames alongside her vast library. There's no mistaking the 60's counterculture vibe given off by the forrest-dwelling "book people" either, a timely touch that must have jived great with radical chick Christie. Seeing as how Truffaut was never able to learn English (though not for lack of trying), I'm curious as to how the direction of this English language picture went down on set. I also wonder if the director didn't have at least a twinge of guilt in burning what appears to be actual books, and not blank-paged film props. It's been over 5 years since I've last seen this one and was pleased to find it even better than I remembered.
Francois Truffaut
1966
Who better to commit Ray Bradbury's book burnin' dystopia to the screen than lifelong bibliophile Francious Truffaut? The shitty dead-end society of pacified drones that hero Montag becomes increasingly dissatisfied with is excellently illustrated in a "not too distant future" idiom - no rocket cars or robots here, but there are giant televisions, interesting architecture, and jetpacks. Oskar Werner's face subtly and effectively conveys his disillusionment with an inward melancholy, though its Julie Christie who steals the show in the dual role of Montag's living-corpse wife and seductive rebel bookworm. Truffaut liberally indulges in the cinematic allure of fire, meditating on engulfed libraries in closeup, and delights in presenting the ironically manipulative programming Montag's vapid wife views on the idiot box. There's plenty of memorable scenes straight from the book - Montag discovering his OD'd wife cold and blue only to have plumber-like EMT's resurrect her, and my personal favorite, the badass old woman going up in flames alongside her vast library. There's no mistaking the 60's counterculture vibe given off by the forrest-dwelling "book people" either, a timely touch that must have jived great with radical chick Christie. Seeing as how Truffaut was never able to learn English (though not for lack of trying), I'm curious as to how the direction of this English language picture went down on set. I also wonder if the director didn't have at least a twinge of guilt in burning what appears to be actual books, and not blank-paged film props. It's been over 5 years since I've last seen this one and was pleased to find it even better than I remembered.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Saw
James Wan
2004
I didn't catch the original entry of this tentpole franchise when it first hit theaters, since it didn't look all that exceptional to me. However, year after year, each successive installment lands front and center on the cover of my beloved Fangoria's October issue, and as a result my curiosity has steadily percolated over a four year period. Wan's film (his only directorial effort in the series) is loaded to the gills with sequel-friendly tropes. The graphic violence and body based horror echoes great Italian fright fare, and the liberal use of plot twists, while admittedly hit or miss, prevents things from getting dull. Serial killer Jigsaw's central conceit, that the majority of people take their lives for granted, and should therefore be tested, is quite compelling, and while the concept of gruesome "games" is hardly original for a horror flick, the masterfully measured unfolding of narrative sets this one apart. The predicament of Cary Elwes and Leigh Whannell being sadistically manipulated while trapped in a grimy industrial bathroom plays out brilliantly, the police investigation angle and endangerment of Elwes's family is trite filler in comparison. In this sense, the film may have been more successful as a short, but of course shorts don't end up as cash cow blockbusters.
2004
I didn't catch the original entry of this tentpole franchise when it first hit theaters, since it didn't look all that exceptional to me. However, year after year, each successive installment lands front and center on the cover of my beloved Fangoria's October issue, and as a result my curiosity has steadily percolated over a four year period. Wan's film (his only directorial effort in the series) is loaded to the gills with sequel-friendly tropes. The graphic violence and body based horror echoes great Italian fright fare, and the liberal use of plot twists, while admittedly hit or miss, prevents things from getting dull. Serial killer Jigsaw's central conceit, that the majority of people take their lives for granted, and should therefore be tested, is quite compelling, and while the concept of gruesome "games" is hardly original for a horror flick, the masterfully measured unfolding of narrative sets this one apart. The predicament of Cary Elwes and Leigh Whannell being sadistically manipulated while trapped in a grimy industrial bathroom plays out brilliantly, the police investigation angle and endangerment of Elwes's family is trite filler in comparison. In this sense, the film may have been more successful as a short, but of course shorts don't end up as cash cow blockbusters.
Lola Montes
Max Ophuls
1955
I can't say I was particularly impressed with this iconic classic, and left the theater puzzled as to why it retains such a prominent place in cinema history. "Lola Montes" is a would-be epic yarn about a fallen woman, strong willed and libertine, brought down by societal restrictions and emotional caprices. The soft candy colors and tendency towards theatricality is stylistically similar to many of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's productions, particularly "The Red Shoes" (1948), and "The Life and Death of Lolonel Blimp" (1943). While the sickly and broken Lola is left to whore herself out to gawking crowds under the bigtop, her supposedly scandalous and amazing life story isn't all that remarkable. Given, Martine Carol conveys all the stoic grace-under-fire required of the role, and her cigar smoking Lady-Godiva schtick is compelling, but it's unfortunately wasted in the face of unsatisfying dramatic conceits. Oskar Werner's wholesome and virginally youthful presence is all but wasted as Lola discloses to him that her true love is the half-daft near-deaf King of Bavaria that she's been living for as a kept woman. This purported passion is so unconvincingly conveyed as to make her confession comic. As far as Max Ophuls's ultra-genteel classical ouvre goes, I much prefer "The Earrings of Madame de..." (1953) to this.
1955
I can't say I was particularly impressed with this iconic classic, and left the theater puzzled as to why it retains such a prominent place in cinema history. "Lola Montes" is a would-be epic yarn about a fallen woman, strong willed and libertine, brought down by societal restrictions and emotional caprices. The soft candy colors and tendency towards theatricality is stylistically similar to many of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's productions, particularly "The Red Shoes" (1948), and "The Life and Death of Lolonel Blimp" (1943). While the sickly and broken Lola is left to whore herself out to gawking crowds under the bigtop, her supposedly scandalous and amazing life story isn't all that remarkable. Given, Martine Carol conveys all the stoic grace-under-fire required of the role, and her cigar smoking Lady-Godiva schtick is compelling, but it's unfortunately wasted in the face of unsatisfying dramatic conceits. Oskar Werner's wholesome and virginally youthful presence is all but wasted as Lola discloses to him that her true love is the half-daft near-deaf King of Bavaria that she's been living for as a kept woman. This purported passion is so unconvincingly conveyed as to make her confession comic. As far as Max Ophuls's ultra-genteel classical ouvre goes, I much prefer "The Earrings of Madame de..." (1953) to this.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Secret Ceremony
Joseph Losey
1968
Expat American director Joseph Losey offers this psychodrama with a remarkable and compact cast. Two women with deep seated emotional scars, (sad prostitute Elizabeth Taylor unable to let go of her tragically drowned daughter, and mentally stunted incest victim Mia Farrow as a woman-child in a babydoll dress) discover their neuroses perfectly complement each other. Hard up Taylor moves into Farrow's dusty old mansion and takes up the mantle of mommy, adorning herself in the furs and jewelry of her deceased doppelganger. This "Grey Gardens" idyll is threatened by pervy old Robert Mitchum, stalking the grounds in hopes of getting a little sugar from his former stepdaughter, and uncovering the impostor taking residency in his old home . The picture gets a lot of mileage out of it's atmosphere with the big drafty house providing a stage of expansive drawing rooms chock full of upholstery, and a yesteryear sense of decor perfect for arrested timelessness. Farrow's performance is a treat, if a bit campy, and Mitchum creates an expectedly imposing villain. Taylor's turn is less mannered than her costars,' and comes off as merely adequate. It's a decent picture that's sometimes rewarding, but nothing to get hot and bothered about.
1968
Expat American director Joseph Losey offers this psychodrama with a remarkable and compact cast. Two women with deep seated emotional scars, (sad prostitute Elizabeth Taylor unable to let go of her tragically drowned daughter, and mentally stunted incest victim Mia Farrow as a woman-child in a babydoll dress) discover their neuroses perfectly complement each other. Hard up Taylor moves into Farrow's dusty old mansion and takes up the mantle of mommy, adorning herself in the furs and jewelry of her deceased doppelganger. This "Grey Gardens" idyll is threatened by pervy old Robert Mitchum, stalking the grounds in hopes of getting a little sugar from his former stepdaughter, and uncovering the impostor taking residency in his old home . The picture gets a lot of mileage out of it's atmosphere with the big drafty house providing a stage of expansive drawing rooms chock full of upholstery, and a yesteryear sense of decor perfect for arrested timelessness. Farrow's performance is a treat, if a bit campy, and Mitchum creates an expectedly imposing villain. Taylor's turn is less mannered than her costars,' and comes off as merely adequate. It's a decent picture that's sometimes rewarding, but nothing to get hot and bothered about.
The Flower of My Secret
Pedro Almodovar
1995
I can't easily think of a director who's had as comparable a string of artistic successes as Almodovar has of late. Since 1999's "All About My Mother," every successive installment in his estrogen drenched ouvre has been a homerun. I don't have much experience with his earlier pictures though I found "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" (1988) to be intolerably campy compared to the mature melodrama's he's been churning out as of late. "The Flower of My Secret" appears to be something of a bridge to his recent work - not quite as accomplished or assured in craft and tone, but on the right track. Marisa Paredes stars as a disillusioned romance novel scribe, scratching away under the pen name Amanda Gris. Struggling with professional dissatisfaction and a crumbling marriage to military man Paco, Paredes takes a gig at a newspaper, slamming the sappy fiction that she has written. This being an Almodovar film there's plenty of performances both theatrical and musical, and plenty of adoration devoted to the pre-menopausal diva under fire. The picture's solid, though some of the plotting feels a tad clinical, not having the emotional weight of "All About My Mother," or the awkward honesty of "Talk to Her" (2002).
1995
I can't easily think of a director who's had as comparable a string of artistic successes as Almodovar has of late. Since 1999's "All About My Mother," every successive installment in his estrogen drenched ouvre has been a homerun. I don't have much experience with his earlier pictures though I found "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" (1988) to be intolerably campy compared to the mature melodrama's he's been churning out as of late. "The Flower of My Secret" appears to be something of a bridge to his recent work - not quite as accomplished or assured in craft and tone, but on the right track. Marisa Paredes stars as a disillusioned romance novel scribe, scratching away under the pen name Amanda Gris. Struggling with professional dissatisfaction and a crumbling marriage to military man Paco, Paredes takes a gig at a newspaper, slamming the sappy fiction that she has written. This being an Almodovar film there's plenty of performances both theatrical and musical, and plenty of adoration devoted to the pre-menopausal diva under fire. The picture's solid, though some of the plotting feels a tad clinical, not having the emotional weight of "All About My Mother," or the awkward honesty of "Talk to Her" (2002).
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
MIke Nichols
1966
Mike Nichols brings Edward Albee's original Lockhorns from stage to screen expertly in this Hollywood classic. Boozy beefy Elizabeth Taylor and elegantly wasted Richard Burton bring a green young couple into the perpetual bad-trip of their marriage during a hooch-fueled nocturnal crawl towards day. George Segal and Sandy Dennis play the entrapped couple with cocksure blonde swagger, and awkwardly accented naivety (respectively). Haskell Wexler's lighting and photography is a masterpiece in black and white. The DVD I viewed was stunningly beautiful and I can only imagine how this would look on Blu-Ray. On the surface it appears to be an actor's film as the principals chew up the screen with their dizzy dialogue and breathless tension, but the camera moves frequently and with balletic panache to keep up with the grand gestures and proclamations. There's definitely a somewhat shocking quality in the intensity of cruelty employed by all the characters save passively bovine Honey, and a surprisingly risque quality in the flaccidly aborted adultery perpetrated by Taylor and Segal. Nichols picture is quite the accomplishment and transcends the "filmed play" quality suffered by many theater to cinema adaptations.
1966
Mike Nichols brings Edward Albee's original Lockhorns from stage to screen expertly in this Hollywood classic. Boozy beefy Elizabeth Taylor and elegantly wasted Richard Burton bring a green young couple into the perpetual bad-trip of their marriage during a hooch-fueled nocturnal crawl towards day. George Segal and Sandy Dennis play the entrapped couple with cocksure blonde swagger, and awkwardly accented naivety (respectively). Haskell Wexler's lighting and photography is a masterpiece in black and white. The DVD I viewed was stunningly beautiful and I can only imagine how this would look on Blu-Ray. On the surface it appears to be an actor's film as the principals chew up the screen with their dizzy dialogue and breathless tension, but the camera moves frequently and with balletic panache to keep up with the grand gestures and proclamations. There's definitely a somewhat shocking quality in the intensity of cruelty employed by all the characters save passively bovine Honey, and a surprisingly risque quality in the flaccidly aborted adultery perpetrated by Taylor and Segal. Nichols picture is quite the accomplishment and transcends the "filmed play" quality suffered by many theater to cinema adaptations.
Night of the Lepus
William F. Claxton
1972
"Psycho" shower victim Janet Leigh and DeForest Kelley (Dr. Bones!) somehow make their way into this drive-in chiller about bloodthirsty cattle-sized rabbits run amok in the American Southwest. Despite the seemingly goofy subject matter the flick's played poker-faced serious and boasts high quality special effects, camerawork, and acting. The carnivorous rodents in question are effectively brought to the screen in a variety of ways, mostly relying on live rabbits with miniature backgrounds(!), and the occasional matte shot. The attacking bunnies usually pounce in puppet form, and there's gloriously grisly quantities of blood used in the assaults, and scenes of grim aftermath. This one reminds me of 1959's "The Killer Shrews," which is also fairly serious in spite of it's seemingly comical titular monsters. Of course the big difference between "Lepus" and "Shrews" is the vast gulf in visual sophistication - these wascally wabbits are head and shoulders above the dressed up dogs (with prosthetic chompers) passed off as shrews.
1972
"Psycho" shower victim Janet Leigh and DeForest Kelley (Dr. Bones!) somehow make their way into this drive-in chiller about bloodthirsty cattle-sized rabbits run amok in the American Southwest. Despite the seemingly goofy subject matter the flick's played poker-faced serious and boasts high quality special effects, camerawork, and acting. The carnivorous rodents in question are effectively brought to the screen in a variety of ways, mostly relying on live rabbits with miniature backgrounds(!), and the occasional matte shot. The attacking bunnies usually pounce in puppet form, and there's gloriously grisly quantities of blood used in the assaults, and scenes of grim aftermath. This one reminds me of 1959's "The Killer Shrews," which is also fairly serious in spite of it's seemingly comical titular monsters. Of course the big difference between "Lepus" and "Shrews" is the vast gulf in visual sophistication - these wascally wabbits are head and shoulders above the dressed up dogs (with prosthetic chompers) passed off as shrews.
Monday, October 20, 2008
W.
Oliver Stone
2008
Oliver Stone directs the film he was born to make: one that takes the piss out of a failed unpopular President, and released while said President is still in office. The depiction of Bush Jr. is expectedly snide and glib, hiding under the guise of straight biopic. Josh Brolin does a magnificent job inhabiting a man in constant struggle, whether it be against familial expectations and growing pains, to the loneliness of a personal conviction at odds with common sense and public opinion. While there was plenty of snickering in the theater at Bush's fumblings and reliance on rhetoric, I found the whole affair extremely depressing considering this comedy of errors has cost a butt-load of American lives, and all but ruined the reputation of the United States. The triumph of the picture comes from it's impeccable casting and styling. Nearly all the recognizable public figures are done well, but Richard Dreyfuss as Cheney, Toby Jones as Karl Rove, and Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice are pitch perfect. Unfortunately, James Cromwell's turn as George HW Bush leaves plenty to be desired, as the eminently recognizable actor fails to play the former President beyond the page - a shame considering the dramatic importance thrust upon the role. The film is also flawed in the sense that it plays directly to the national nightmare Americans have suffered the last eight years. "W." relies just as heavily on our contextual experience as it does on it's script's take on history - an interesting cinematic milestone from a cultural standpoint, but one that cannot stand up on it's own weight.
2008
Oliver Stone directs the film he was born to make: one that takes the piss out of a failed unpopular President, and released while said President is still in office. The depiction of Bush Jr. is expectedly snide and glib, hiding under the guise of straight biopic. Josh Brolin does a magnificent job inhabiting a man in constant struggle, whether it be against familial expectations and growing pains, to the loneliness of a personal conviction at odds with common sense and public opinion. While there was plenty of snickering in the theater at Bush's fumblings and reliance on rhetoric, I found the whole affair extremely depressing considering this comedy of errors has cost a butt-load of American lives, and all but ruined the reputation of the United States. The triumph of the picture comes from it's impeccable casting and styling. Nearly all the recognizable public figures are done well, but Richard Dreyfuss as Cheney, Toby Jones as Karl Rove, and Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice are pitch perfect. Unfortunately, James Cromwell's turn as George HW Bush leaves plenty to be desired, as the eminently recognizable actor fails to play the former President beyond the page - a shame considering the dramatic importance thrust upon the role. The film is also flawed in the sense that it plays directly to the national nightmare Americans have suffered the last eight years. "W." relies just as heavily on our contextual experience as it does on it's script's take on history - an interesting cinematic milestone from a cultural standpoint, but one that cannot stand up on it's own weight.
Ed Gein
Chuck Parello
2000
This abysmal throwaway effort is a sad biopic on America's most interesting maniac. Fellow ghouls out there probably know all about Gein, and how he provided partial inspiration for "Silence of the Lambs," "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho." Parello's film is amateur hour all around, with crappy production values, hammy acting, and unnecessary low-budget CGI effects. The flat/dull cinematography lacks any sort of inspiration (let alone style), and is aesthetically more reminiscent of an episode of "The Gilmore Girls," than a horror flick. I do appreciate the stock footage that bookends the film with Plainfield, Wisconsin residents interviewed about their community monster, and the actual Gein, looking benign as milk, being lead around in handcuffs. Gein's reputation as one of America's most insidious serial killers has always interested me considering he only actually killed two women, and made most of his macabre arts and crafts projects from materials dug out of the local graveyard. The picture does a disappointing job of depicting farmer Gein's chamber of horrors with the matter-of-fact discovery of skullcap soupbowls and salted noses. It's a an emotionless and distant finale, in which the seemingly uninterested tone makes the props look even more like latex flesh and resin bone than the ghastly crimes deserve. I'm a little curious if 2007's "Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield," starring Kane Hodder (Jason Voorhees!) is any better, though something tells me it's not.
2000
This abysmal throwaway effort is a sad biopic on America's most interesting maniac. Fellow ghouls out there probably know all about Gein, and how he provided partial inspiration for "Silence of the Lambs," "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho." Parello's film is amateur hour all around, with crappy production values, hammy acting, and unnecessary low-budget CGI effects. The flat/dull cinematography lacks any sort of inspiration (let alone style), and is aesthetically more reminiscent of an episode of "The Gilmore Girls," than a horror flick. I do appreciate the stock footage that bookends the film with Plainfield, Wisconsin residents interviewed about their community monster, and the actual Gein, looking benign as milk, being lead around in handcuffs. Gein's reputation as one of America's most insidious serial killers has always interested me considering he only actually killed two women, and made most of his macabre arts and crafts projects from materials dug out of the local graveyard. The picture does a disappointing job of depicting farmer Gein's chamber of horrors with the matter-of-fact discovery of skullcap soupbowls and salted noses. It's a an emotionless and distant finale, in which the seemingly uninterested tone makes the props look even more like latex flesh and resin bone than the ghastly crimes deserve. I'm a little curious if 2007's "Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield," starring Kane Hodder (Jason Voorhees!) is any better, though something tells me it's not.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Futurama: The Beast With a Billion Backs
Peter Avanzino
2008
was happy to hear that Matt Groening's Futurama would live on after it's network cancelation as a string of feature-length direct to video outings, but actually seeing one really highlights this proposed format's shortcomings. The writing is generally solid, though there's a weak reliance on slapstick humor. Due to the extended running time nearly every bit character in the universe gets trotted out for a joke or two, though these efforts would be much better spent in developing the story or making funnier situation based jokes instead of lame character hooks. The semi-amusing title is mostly apocryphal with David Cross providing the voice of an inter-dimensional monster looking for love in our universe. Everything here is passable, but it'll definitely make fans of the series nostalgic for the superior 30 minute broadcast. Still, you could do a hell of a lot worse with an hour and a half
2008
was happy to hear that Matt Groening's Futurama would live on after it's network cancelation as a string of feature-length direct to video outings, but actually seeing one really highlights this proposed format's shortcomings. The writing is generally solid, though there's a weak reliance on slapstick humor. Due to the extended running time nearly every bit character in the universe gets trotted out for a joke or two, though these efforts would be much better spent in developing the story or making funnier situation based jokes instead of lame character hooks. The semi-amusing title is mostly apocryphal with David Cross providing the voice of an inter-dimensional monster looking for love in our universe. Everything here is passable, but it'll definitely make fans of the series nostalgic for the superior 30 minute broadcast. Still, you could do a hell of a lot worse with an hour and a half
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Strait-Jacket
William Castle
1964
It doesn't get much better than schlockmeister William Castle teaming up with a waning "crazy era" Joan Crawford, and turning the former Hollywood heavyweight into a reformed axe murder recently released from the funny farm! As expected, Castle lays the tension on thick with hilariously unsubtle symbolism and jittery Joan's nervous tic of slicing inanimate objects to ribbons. Heads roll with a ballsy amount of onscreen violence, whether it be a silhouette of a recently severed melon, or a direct hatchet job complete with arterial gushing. The garishly basic low-budget lighting provides the perfect B-movie look and ups the pulp ante of Castle's cheapie sensibilities. While Joan Crawford may not have been a tinseltown high-roller at this point of her career, she's definitely still got chops. The most unforgettable scene comes when mommy dearest is introduced to her daughter's beau. The meek and skittish Crawford 180's into a provocatively sexual predator (I loathe to use the term "cougar," but it's kind of unavoidable in this case), swilling whiskey, swiveling her hips, and laying hungry hands on the blonde country boy. The twist ending may be visible a mile off, but works satisfactorily as an expected genre convention. This one is DVD worthy.
1964
It doesn't get much better than schlockmeister William Castle teaming up with a waning "crazy era" Joan Crawford, and turning the former Hollywood heavyweight into a reformed axe murder recently released from the funny farm! As expected, Castle lays the tension on thick with hilariously unsubtle symbolism and jittery Joan's nervous tic of slicing inanimate objects to ribbons. Heads roll with a ballsy amount of onscreen violence, whether it be a silhouette of a recently severed melon, or a direct hatchet job complete with arterial gushing. The garishly basic low-budget lighting provides the perfect B-movie look and ups the pulp ante of Castle's cheapie sensibilities. While Joan Crawford may not have been a tinseltown high-roller at this point of her career, she's definitely still got chops. The most unforgettable scene comes when mommy dearest is introduced to her daughter's beau. The meek and skittish Crawford 180's into a provocatively sexual predator (I loathe to use the term "cougar," but it's kind of unavoidable in this case), swilling whiskey, swiveling her hips, and laying hungry hands on the blonde country boy. The twist ending may be visible a mile off, but works satisfactorily as an expected genre convention. This one is DVD worthy.
Cemetery Man
Second Viewing
Michele Soavi
1994
Definitely one of the weirder horror flicks I've seen in it's unfocused meandering, alternately humorous and melancholic tone, and obsessively self-conscious camera moves/angles. Rupert Everett puts in a chilly performance as the eponymous caretaker of a small town graveyard - a job requiring him to bury the dead twice, once upon arrival, and again after the dead rise and are put down with a bullet to the head. The zombie makeups are only so-so, heavy on the grey pancake look, but Soavi makes up for it with some pleasantly bizarre undead encounters: an entire troupe of boyscouts, the talking/floating severed head of the Mayor's daughter, and a (literally) hellbound biker riding his trashed hog beyond the grave. The visuals are hyper-stylized and owe a lot to the mid 90's music video aesthetic. You could make a very successful drinking game out of this movie by knocking one back every time the camera peers out from inside something: a zombie's jaws, a smashed television, and the many 6-feet-deep holes. The film's unusual indulgences are primarily what make it great, particularly in the three-time resurrection of Everett's love as different women (all played by actress Anna Falchi), and the cemetery man's foray in cold blooded murder. This one's pretty damn unique.
Michele Soavi
1994
Definitely one of the weirder horror flicks I've seen in it's unfocused meandering, alternately humorous and melancholic tone, and obsessively self-conscious camera moves/angles. Rupert Everett puts in a chilly performance as the eponymous caretaker of a small town graveyard - a job requiring him to bury the dead twice, once upon arrival, and again after the dead rise and are put down with a bullet to the head. The zombie makeups are only so-so, heavy on the grey pancake look, but Soavi makes up for it with some pleasantly bizarre undead encounters: an entire troupe of boyscouts, the talking/floating severed head of the Mayor's daughter, and a (literally) hellbound biker riding his trashed hog beyond the grave. The visuals are hyper-stylized and owe a lot to the mid 90's music video aesthetic. You could make a very successful drinking game out of this movie by knocking one back every time the camera peers out from inside something: a zombie's jaws, a smashed television, and the many 6-feet-deep holes. The film's unusual indulgences are primarily what make it great, particularly in the three-time resurrection of Everett's love as different women (all played by actress Anna Falchi), and the cemetery man's foray in cold blooded murder. This one's pretty damn unique.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Ballast
Lance Hammer
2008
This much ballyhooed debut feature won the director's prize at this year's Sundance festival, and considering the festival's long suffering decline in quality standards, it's nice to see a worthy picture take a big prize. The film would mainly be a three person chamber drama were Hammer not so taken with the bleak and muddy expanse of winter in the Mississippi Delta. Some dangerous social cliches are skirted here, with an adolescent boy in deep to local drug dealers, a mother with an addict past, and a predictably broken family. However, Hammer succeeds in letting these dramatic moments breathe to at least a quasi-reslolution. The youth is able (if momentarily) to escape drugs, and mother and brother-in-law are able to manage a believably uneasy truce. Michael J. Smith Sr.'s performance is the cornerstone of the film with his unflappable gentleness and soulful sorrow belying a massively imposing frame. The intensity of attempted suicide and drug abuse in the first act gives way to a rockily recuperative second and third - an unorthodox move that provides a vague blueprint for the complex tone and rich atmosphere of the picture's world. Unfortunately, the cinematography's leaves a little to be desired with it's overly blue coloring and murky, low-contrast palette. Still, this is one of 2008's better films.
2008
This much ballyhooed debut feature won the director's prize at this year's Sundance festival, and considering the festival's long suffering decline in quality standards, it's nice to see a worthy picture take a big prize. The film would mainly be a three person chamber drama were Hammer not so taken with the bleak and muddy expanse of winter in the Mississippi Delta. Some dangerous social cliches are skirted here, with an adolescent boy in deep to local drug dealers, a mother with an addict past, and a predictably broken family. However, Hammer succeeds in letting these dramatic moments breathe to at least a quasi-reslolution. The youth is able (if momentarily) to escape drugs, and mother and brother-in-law are able to manage a believably uneasy truce. Michael J. Smith Sr.'s performance is the cornerstone of the film with his unflappable gentleness and soulful sorrow belying a massively imposing frame. The intensity of attempted suicide and drug abuse in the first act gives way to a rockily recuperative second and third - an unorthodox move that provides a vague blueprint for the complex tone and rich atmosphere of the picture's world. Unfortunately, the cinematography's leaves a little to be desired with it's overly blue coloring and murky, low-contrast palette. Still, this is one of 2008's better films.
The Giant Claw
Fred F. Sears
1957
While it fits pretty squarely into the 1950's red-scare communist-anxiety horror genre with it's emphasis on military men, scientists, and an obsessive preoccupation with national security, "The Giant Claw" is one of the more surprisingly unique entries in the trend. The film is nothing if not for it's monster: an invincible and enormous bird from outer space - remarkably ugly with a naked turkey's head, curved beak full of jagged teeth, and mohawk like haircut(!). Thanks to this solid creature design, the dirty bird gets a generous amount of screen-time, and the majority of the effects shots are of a similarly high quality, particularly those in which the cosmic chicken swoops in to chow down on parachuting servicemen. While the puppet may be the star of this show, television vet Jeff Morrow and female lead Mara Corday exchange some genuinely clever dialogue in a romantic back-and-forth that's much better than the usual filler-between-action scenes. While it may not be of the same caliber as films like "Them!" or "The Thing From Another World" It's definitely in the same ballpark.
1957
While it fits pretty squarely into the 1950's red-scare communist-anxiety horror genre with it's emphasis on military men, scientists, and an obsessive preoccupation with national security, "The Giant Claw" is one of the more surprisingly unique entries in the trend. The film is nothing if not for it's monster: an invincible and enormous bird from outer space - remarkably ugly with a naked turkey's head, curved beak full of jagged teeth, and mohawk like haircut(!). Thanks to this solid creature design, the dirty bird gets a generous amount of screen-time, and the majority of the effects shots are of a similarly high quality, particularly those in which the cosmic chicken swoops in to chow down on parachuting servicemen. While the puppet may be the star of this show, television vet Jeff Morrow and female lead Mara Corday exchange some genuinely clever dialogue in a romantic back-and-forth that's much better than the usual filler-between-action scenes. While it may not be of the same caliber as films like "Them!" or "The Thing From Another World" It's definitely in the same ballpark.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Amarcord
Multiple Viewings
Federico Fellini
1973
One of the lighter, easier digested films in Fellini's career, this one makes for a good introduction to the director's work. Ostensibly a collection of episodic remembrances from Fellini's childhood during Mussolini's regime, made cohesive by the communal nature of small town life and peppered with the maestro's signature flights of fancy. The best moments tend to come from the sexual hysteria of the male teenage mind: hilarious anti-masturbation lectures from the priest, the horn-dog obsession with ladies butts plopping down on bicycle seats, the fixation on a massive breasted tobacconist, and a puppy love yearning for town beauty Gradisca, clad in red with a frequently wiggling booty. The natural insubordination of the students towards their teachers is a treat as well, and in this respect makes Amarcord the most Truffaut-like of Fellini's films. There's lots of good stuff here, and it's definitely required viewing, but this rewatching made me really appreciate the mastery of some of the director's more complex and challenging pictures. Weirdest moment of the film: when the gargoyle-ugly melon-seed vendor winds up in the harem of a visiting Sheik.
Federico Fellini
1973
One of the lighter, easier digested films in Fellini's career, this one makes for a good introduction to the director's work. Ostensibly a collection of episodic remembrances from Fellini's childhood during Mussolini's regime, made cohesive by the communal nature of small town life and peppered with the maestro's signature flights of fancy. The best moments tend to come from the sexual hysteria of the male teenage mind: hilarious anti-masturbation lectures from the priest, the horn-dog obsession with ladies butts plopping down on bicycle seats, the fixation on a massive breasted tobacconist, and a puppy love yearning for town beauty Gradisca, clad in red with a frequently wiggling booty. The natural insubordination of the students towards their teachers is a treat as well, and in this respect makes Amarcord the most Truffaut-like of Fellini's films. There's lots of good stuff here, and it's definitely required viewing, but this rewatching made me really appreciate the mastery of some of the director's more complex and challenging pictures. Weirdest moment of the film: when the gargoyle-ugly melon-seed vendor winds up in the harem of a visiting Sheik.
Nobody Knows
Hirokazu Koreeda
2004
Painting an un-sensationalized portrait of child abuse (something rare in the cinema), this Japanese picture presents a neglect that is innocuously un-monstrous and quotidian. While no lashing belts or overt emotional cruelty is inflicted upon the four Fukushima kids, the heart of the mother's crime remains, and director Koreeda's relentless scrounging for beauty in the children's freedom gives way to the painful realities of having to collect rainwater and handouts for sustenance, and burying your little sister in a suitcase coffin on the outskirts of Haneda airport. The child actors are the core of this reverse Lord of the Flies with "breadwinning" oldest child Akira, sullen big sister Kyoko, goofball brother Shigeru, and button-cute 'lil sis Yuki. The film mostly concerns itself with Akira's experience which seems a bit unfair considering he's the only child allowed to leave the house while the other three rot away in forced captivity. However, as the increasingly truant mother (played with disturbing ditziness by the singularly named You) becomes more of a ghost the rules are broken as the children freely leave the apartment, plant an ersatz garden on the balcony, and cover the walls in crayon scrawls. For all the visual poetics and meditative tone, it seems like a missed opportunity that Koreeda mostly glosses over the difficulty of surviving without utilities - no water equals no working toilet after all.
2004
Painting an un-sensationalized portrait of child abuse (something rare in the cinema), this Japanese picture presents a neglect that is innocuously un-monstrous and quotidian. While no lashing belts or overt emotional cruelty is inflicted upon the four Fukushima kids, the heart of the mother's crime remains, and director Koreeda's relentless scrounging for beauty in the children's freedom gives way to the painful realities of having to collect rainwater and handouts for sustenance, and burying your little sister in a suitcase coffin on the outskirts of Haneda airport. The child actors are the core of this reverse Lord of the Flies with "breadwinning" oldest child Akira, sullen big sister Kyoko, goofball brother Shigeru, and button-cute 'lil sis Yuki. The film mostly concerns itself with Akira's experience which seems a bit unfair considering he's the only child allowed to leave the house while the other three rot away in forced captivity. However, as the increasingly truant mother (played with disturbing ditziness by the singularly named You) becomes more of a ghost the rules are broken as the children freely leave the apartment, plant an ersatz garden on the balcony, and cover the walls in crayon scrawls. For all the visual poetics and meditative tone, it seems like a missed opportunity that Koreeda mostly glosses over the difficulty of surviving without utilities - no water equals no working toilet after all.
Friday, October 10, 2008
The Godfather: Part II
Multiple Viewings
Francis Ford Coppola
1974
I was always of the opinion that part two of this 70's cinema phenomenon was the best in the trilogy, but after watching the Coppola restorations of both this and the original, I might have to rescind that opinion. Beginning with an ascendant Michael Corleone, things begin to fall apart in a karmic undoing which leaves him utterly isolated in his lonely position of power. To keep this mephistophelian decline from being a total drag Michael's evolution towards sad robot is intercut with his father's exile from Sicily and immigrant experience in New York, leading up to his own criminal blossoming. This father and son dichotomy makes for an almost embarrassingly nostalgic view as Vito's rise is all romanticized morality-in-gangsterism while Michael's modern mafioso life involves dodging assassins' bullets while your understandably freaked out wife walks out on you. It's nice to see Diane Keaton and perennial player of losers John Cazale get meatier roles in this outing, but the real treat is the inclusion of acting genius Lee Strasberg as Jewish gambling scion Hyman Roth. Coppola isn't exactly known for his restraint, and the wildly indulgent 200 minutes of running time hurts the overall impact (also: ending the film on a flashback?), but this still remains one Hollywood's best films of the 70's.
Francis Ford Coppola
1974
I was always of the opinion that part two of this 70's cinema phenomenon was the best in the trilogy, but after watching the Coppola restorations of both this and the original, I might have to rescind that opinion. Beginning with an ascendant Michael Corleone, things begin to fall apart in a karmic undoing which leaves him utterly isolated in his lonely position of power. To keep this mephistophelian decline from being a total drag Michael's evolution towards sad robot is intercut with his father's exile from Sicily and immigrant experience in New York, leading up to his own criminal blossoming. This father and son dichotomy makes for an almost embarrassingly nostalgic view as Vito's rise is all romanticized morality-in-gangsterism while Michael's modern mafioso life involves dodging assassins' bullets while your understandably freaked out wife walks out on you. It's nice to see Diane Keaton and perennial player of losers John Cazale get meatier roles in this outing, but the real treat is the inclusion of acting genius Lee Strasberg as Jewish gambling scion Hyman Roth. Coppola isn't exactly known for his restraint, and the wildly indulgent 200 minutes of running time hurts the overall impact (also: ending the film on a flashback?), but this still remains one Hollywood's best films of the 70's.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
The Man From Laramie
Anthony Mann
1955
A guy whose name rhymes with "Ron Gord" takes the title for my favorite director of westerns, but Anthony Mann comes in at a close second. His frontier America is serious as a heart attack and peppered with complex character motivations and morality. Jimmy Stewart stars here as he does in others (Winchester '73, The Naked Spur) delivering supplies to a town thoroughly under the yoke of bigwig beef baron Alec Waggoman (Donald Crisp, making little effort to mask his British accent). Waggoman's a decent sort but his kid's a spoiled brat verging on psychotic, and his seemingly level-headed right hand man Vic proves a scheming back-dealer. Unglamorous revenge and ugly americans abound in the picture - repeated hallmarks of Mann's westerns. Not only does Junior burn down Stewart's wagons for accidentally trespassing on Waggoman ranch land, he takes it upon himself to personally murder the mules as well. I've always thought Stewart was at his best when his avuncular folksiness gives way to seething rage, and seethe he does. There's a great scene early on in which Jimmy fistfights with the bullies who wronged him, kicking up a diaphanous cloud of dust in the Cinemascope frame while the tightly packed cattle bellow away. Of course, it's a little dicey that the Apache Indians are presented as a MacGuffin of mass destruction, and the female lead is tacked on and superfluous, but overall The Man From Laramie remains a solid picture.
1955
A guy whose name rhymes with "Ron Gord" takes the title for my favorite director of westerns, but Anthony Mann comes in at a close second. His frontier America is serious as a heart attack and peppered with complex character motivations and morality. Jimmy Stewart stars here as he does in others (Winchester '73, The Naked Spur) delivering supplies to a town thoroughly under the yoke of bigwig beef baron Alec Waggoman (Donald Crisp, making little effort to mask his British accent). Waggoman's a decent sort but his kid's a spoiled brat verging on psychotic, and his seemingly level-headed right hand man Vic proves a scheming back-dealer. Unglamorous revenge and ugly americans abound in the picture - repeated hallmarks of Mann's westerns. Not only does Junior burn down Stewart's wagons for accidentally trespassing on Waggoman ranch land, he takes it upon himself to personally murder the mules as well. I've always thought Stewart was at his best when his avuncular folksiness gives way to seething rage, and seethe he does. There's a great scene early on in which Jimmy fistfights with the bullies who wronged him, kicking up a diaphanous cloud of dust in the Cinemascope frame while the tightly packed cattle bellow away. Of course, it's a little dicey that the Apache Indians are presented as a MacGuffin of mass destruction, and the female lead is tacked on and superfluous, but overall The Man From Laramie remains a solid picture.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
A Nightmare On Elm Street
Wes Craven
1984
When I was growing up the two biggest screen baddies on my radar were Freddy Kruger and Jason Voorhees. Years later I'd come to find that many (if not most) of the the franchise entries for these two horror heavyweights are bigger on schlock than they are on scares. Craven's dream-haunting child killer lends himself more to expressionistic psychological terror, and benefits from surreal touches like a phone receiver turning into Kruger's flicking tongue. On the surface it's scarier than Friday The 13th with it's free form lack of rules and unpredictability, yet once the film's atmospheric nightmare fantasy ends (this time with one of those cop-out "no resolution" endings) a more traditional hack and slash teen killer seems closer to home - it's plausibility far more unsettling. Johnny Depp makes his debut here as the quintessentially vacuous 80's teen male, a far cry from the eccentric wizard he's become, and his character definitely seems to set the template for the window crashing best bud Sam of Clarissa Explains it All. In addition to the nocturnal frights Craven injects some real-life social bummers as the heroine suffers a distant workaholic father (John Saxon!) and a vacant souse mother. With folks like these its a surprise that Nancy's prematurely grey hair didn't develop before Freddy came calling.
1984
When I was growing up the two biggest screen baddies on my radar were Freddy Kruger and Jason Voorhees. Years later I'd come to find that many (if not most) of the the franchise entries for these two horror heavyweights are bigger on schlock than they are on scares. Craven's dream-haunting child killer lends himself more to expressionistic psychological terror, and benefits from surreal touches like a phone receiver turning into Kruger's flicking tongue. On the surface it's scarier than Friday The 13th with it's free form lack of rules and unpredictability, yet once the film's atmospheric nightmare fantasy ends (this time with one of those cop-out "no resolution" endings) a more traditional hack and slash teen killer seems closer to home - it's plausibility far more unsettling. Johnny Depp makes his debut here as the quintessentially vacuous 80's teen male, a far cry from the eccentric wizard he's become, and his character definitely seems to set the template for the window crashing best bud Sam of Clarissa Explains it All. In addition to the nocturnal frights Craven injects some real-life social bummers as the heroine suffers a distant workaholic father (John Saxon!) and a vacant souse mother. With folks like these its a surprise that Nancy's prematurely grey hair didn't develop before Freddy came calling.
Monday, October 06, 2008
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
Raja Gosnell
2008
I saw this one on a lark expecting little more than a bananas amount of camp and some uncomfortable inadvertent racism, but amazingly this talking-dog flick is a million times better than it has any right to be. Being mostly canine-centric, and wisely keeping the humans, particularly shrill enormous-mouthed Piper Perabo, out of the majority of the action, the doggie drama delves into such lengths of endearing absurdity as including an evil assassin Doberman, police film cliches, Cheech Marin as a CGI rat, and an encounter with an ancient society of warrior chihuahuas. There's more than enough here to make a stoner's head explode, yet Beverly Hills Chihuahua succeeds beyond it's tacky ironic pleasures and sticking to a weirdly ambitious script in which all the hoary Hollywood cliches seem distinctly fresher and more genuine when played out by a ragtag group of pooches. The computerized chicanery of moving mutt mouths looks great, but there's a weird disconnect with the dogs calmly chatting while their bodies heave like a bellows because they're panting. Cheech Marin's rat is disappointingly cartoonish looking, but his iguana pal is rendered remarkably well. CGI animals have come a long way since Cats & Dogs. This is honestly the most fun I've had in a theater all year. I am completely serious about this.
2008
I saw this one on a lark expecting little more than a bananas amount of camp and some uncomfortable inadvertent racism, but amazingly this talking-dog flick is a million times better than it has any right to be. Being mostly canine-centric, and wisely keeping the humans, particularly shrill enormous-mouthed Piper Perabo, out of the majority of the action, the doggie drama delves into such lengths of endearing absurdity as including an evil assassin Doberman, police film cliches, Cheech Marin as a CGI rat, and an encounter with an ancient society of warrior chihuahuas. There's more than enough here to make a stoner's head explode, yet Beverly Hills Chihuahua succeeds beyond it's tacky ironic pleasures and sticking to a weirdly ambitious script in which all the hoary Hollywood cliches seem distinctly fresher and more genuine when played out by a ragtag group of pooches. The computerized chicanery of moving mutt mouths looks great, but there's a weird disconnect with the dogs calmly chatting while their bodies heave like a bellows because they're panting. Cheech Marin's rat is disappointingly cartoonish looking, but his iguana pal is rendered remarkably well. CGI animals have come a long way since Cats & Dogs. This is honestly the most fun I've had in a theater all year. I am completely serious about this.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Supervixens
Russ Meyer
1975
While it doesn't have the hell-bent hard edge of Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! or the trash-epic sweep of Beyond The Valley of the Dolls this Russ Meyer classic is plenty watchable considering it concerns itself mainly with glorifying and exhibiting large breasts. The throwaway plot is a bit dull, but maintains an episodic structure in which framed fugitive good-guy Clint (Charles Pitts) is forced to fend off horny buxom women at every turn in the road. Unsurprisingly, the starlets in question are gorgeous and the cheesecake good-times breeziness of the picture's tone makes it perfect for any beer-soaked lazy-Saturday viewing. It's particularly strange that while violence against women tends to be a corner stone of much of exploitation and horror cinema (The Gore Gore Girls anyone?), the ills inflicted upon gals in this schlocky outing, which amounts to one prolonged murder and one quasi-torture scene, are presented in a genuinely disapproving fashion. After all , sex can bee all fun and games, but murder is a serious bummer. The wanton lust of the supervixens in question is heavy on male fantasy, but also gives credence to the revisionist feminist view that Meyer is something more than a scumbag, by flaunting a bevy of willfully sexual women oppressed or manipulated by a lineup of goofy and uptight males.
1975
While it doesn't have the hell-bent hard edge of Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! or the trash-epic sweep of Beyond The Valley of the Dolls this Russ Meyer classic is plenty watchable considering it concerns itself mainly with glorifying and exhibiting large breasts. The throwaway plot is a bit dull, but maintains an episodic structure in which framed fugitive good-guy Clint (Charles Pitts) is forced to fend off horny buxom women at every turn in the road. Unsurprisingly, the starlets in question are gorgeous and the cheesecake good-times breeziness of the picture's tone makes it perfect for any beer-soaked lazy-Saturday viewing. It's particularly strange that while violence against women tends to be a corner stone of much of exploitation and horror cinema (The Gore Gore Girls anyone?), the ills inflicted upon gals in this schlocky outing, which amounts to one prolonged murder and one quasi-torture scene, are presented in a genuinely disapproving fashion. After all , sex can bee all fun and games, but murder is a serious bummer. The wanton lust of the supervixens in question is heavy on male fantasy, but also gives credence to the revisionist feminist view that Meyer is something more than a scumbag, by flaunting a bevy of willfully sexual women oppressed or manipulated by a lineup of goofy and uptight males.
Friday, October 03, 2008
Total Recall
Paul Verhoeven
1990
Nobody treats a firearm quite like Paul Verhoeven. His depiction of guns, particularly machineguns, is an action-centric cinema of well-oiled industrial menace, and thanks to effects genius Rob Bottin (The Thing!), when the bullets hit the gruesomely messy impact squibs bear ample witness to the consequences. Total Recall offers an excellent story inspired by a Philip K. Dick short, but is sadly bogged down by the cheesy inevitabilities of big budget Hollywood filmmaking. Meathead hero Arnie Schwarzenegger fails in the charisma department while the overblown futuristic production design feels like a Miami lawyer's cocaine hangover. It's a hoot to see Sharon Stone decked out in an early 90's frizz 'do, and Michael Ironside achieves his metier in the role dickhead henchman, but there's far too much convention - business as usual - to make the picture memorable. Of course Rob Bottin's prosthetics are above reproach, particularly with mutant parasitic twin come rebel underground leader Kuato, and there's a fair amount of color in touches like the inclusion of a dwarf prostitute and plenty of futuristic carnage. My reading of the film favors an interpretation in which Schwarzenegger is stuck in a medical chair with his brain fried, living in his dreams as a vegetable. In retrospect this looks more like a warmup for Verhoeven's brilliant return to the sci-fi genre with Starship Troopers, a movie where his glorious machineguns chatter freely.
1990
Nobody treats a firearm quite like Paul Verhoeven. His depiction of guns, particularly machineguns, is an action-centric cinema of well-oiled industrial menace, and thanks to effects genius Rob Bottin (The Thing!), when the bullets hit the gruesomely messy impact squibs bear ample witness to the consequences. Total Recall offers an excellent story inspired by a Philip K. Dick short, but is sadly bogged down by the cheesy inevitabilities of big budget Hollywood filmmaking. Meathead hero Arnie Schwarzenegger fails in the charisma department while the overblown futuristic production design feels like a Miami lawyer's cocaine hangover. It's a hoot to see Sharon Stone decked out in an early 90's frizz 'do, and Michael Ironside achieves his metier in the role dickhead henchman, but there's far too much convention - business as usual - to make the picture memorable. Of course Rob Bottin's prosthetics are above reproach, particularly with mutant parasitic twin come rebel underground leader Kuato, and there's a fair amount of color in touches like the inclusion of a dwarf prostitute and plenty of futuristic carnage. My reading of the film favors an interpretation in which Schwarzenegger is stuck in a medical chair with his brain fried, living in his dreams as a vegetable. In retrospect this looks more like a warmup for Verhoeven's brilliant return to the sci-fi genre with Starship Troopers, a movie where his glorious machineguns chatter freely.
Opening Night
John Cassavetes
1977
You know it's a Cassavetes film when the majority of the camera's intimate affections are dedicated to a boozy Gena Rowlands flitting about on the verge of hysteria. So goes Opening Night, another sweetly sadistic and painfully human installment in the working relationship between John Cassavetes (who also appears in front of the camera in this outing) and wife Gena. The "last straw" opening of an adoring fan, accidentally slain by an automobile, sets up Rowlands's mid-career crisis in heavy-handed cornball fashion, though thankfully this device transmutes into an eerily complex and menacing doppelganger - Gena at 17. This portrait of a slapped actress manages to be even more hackle raising than Rowlands's previous turn as a mentally ill housewife (A Woman Under the Influence) due to the suspenseful live performances that can so easily go to hell based on the whims of the unbalanced leading lady. The majority of the picture is a distressed potboiler leading up to the titular event where a late Rowlands shows up completely blotto - barely able to speak or walk let alone perform. Once onstage this trainwreck of trainwrecks evolves into a black coffee infused passion play complete with epic apotheosis.
1977
You know it's a Cassavetes film when the majority of the camera's intimate affections are dedicated to a boozy Gena Rowlands flitting about on the verge of hysteria. So goes Opening Night, another sweetly sadistic and painfully human installment in the working relationship between John Cassavetes (who also appears in front of the camera in this outing) and wife Gena. The "last straw" opening of an adoring fan, accidentally slain by an automobile, sets up Rowlands's mid-career crisis in heavy-handed cornball fashion, though thankfully this device transmutes into an eerily complex and menacing doppelganger - Gena at 17. This portrait of a slapped actress manages to be even more hackle raising than Rowlands's previous turn as a mentally ill housewife (A Woman Under the Influence) due to the suspenseful live performances that can so easily go to hell based on the whims of the unbalanced leading lady. The majority of the picture is a distressed potboiler leading up to the titular event where a late Rowlands shows up completely blotto - barely able to speak or walk let alone perform. Once onstage this trainwreck of trainwrecks evolves into a black coffee infused passion play complete with epic apotheosis.
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Burn After Reading
Coen Brothers
2008
The usual criticism leveled at the brothers Coen is that their slick cinema lacks "heart." Yet even at their most insect-unfeeling they manage to keep things interesting by lacing their pictures with masterful filmmaking gestures and cartoonishly exaggerated characters. This time around the Coens neglect their usually colorful characterizations with an unconvincingly alcoholic John Malkovich ranting ceaselessly in his distinctive diction, Tilda Swinton scowling about as a British ice queen, and Brad Pitt hamming it up as a one-note gym rat boob. Also, the conceit that Frances McDormand's lovelorn character is willing to risk life and limb for fake tits and a tummy tuck is preposterous. The only characters that really get the royal (read proper) treatment are George Clooney's philandering internet Cassanova and puppy-dog-eyed saddie Richard Jenkins. The biggest disappointment comes from the impression that a sendup of the flourishing National Security/CIA genre seems like the ripest of plums - something Carter Burwell's over the top score taps into nicely. The D.C. milieu makes a great backdrop for the action with its crowded urban parks and gorgeous townhouses, and suggests a high stakes game of power and wealth even if its a mirage. The only part of this generally unremarkable film the Coens nail are the two briefings (one of which acts as a coda) to a CIA bigwig (played perfectly by J.K. Simmons). These absurdist meetings are examples of the brothers at the top of their game - its a shame it couldn't carry over to the rest of the picture.
2008
The usual criticism leveled at the brothers Coen is that their slick cinema lacks "heart." Yet even at their most insect-unfeeling they manage to keep things interesting by lacing their pictures with masterful filmmaking gestures and cartoonishly exaggerated characters. This time around the Coens neglect their usually colorful characterizations with an unconvincingly alcoholic John Malkovich ranting ceaselessly in his distinctive diction, Tilda Swinton scowling about as a British ice queen, and Brad Pitt hamming it up as a one-note gym rat boob. Also, the conceit that Frances McDormand's lovelorn character is willing to risk life and limb for fake tits and a tummy tuck is preposterous. The only characters that really get the royal (read proper) treatment are George Clooney's philandering internet Cassanova and puppy-dog-eyed saddie Richard Jenkins. The biggest disappointment comes from the impression that a sendup of the flourishing National Security/CIA genre seems like the ripest of plums - something Carter Burwell's over the top score taps into nicely. The D.C. milieu makes a great backdrop for the action with its crowded urban parks and gorgeous townhouses, and suggests a high stakes game of power and wealth even if its a mirage. The only part of this generally unremarkable film the Coens nail are the two briefings (one of which acts as a coda) to a CIA bigwig (played perfectly by J.K. Simmons). These absurdist meetings are examples of the brothers at the top of their game - its a shame it couldn't carry over to the rest of the picture.
Mr. Freedom
William Klein
1969
This is the product of inputting politics into the category 5 hurricane that is William Klein's brain. The manic, meth injected, satire is low on any sort of nuance, subtlety, cogent message, or political thoughtfulness, and it's clear that Klein couldn't care less, instead putting all his OCD meticulousness into an expressionistic explosion of superhero jingoism, frothing cheerleaders, and bullets a-go-go. Klein must have pulled a decent amount of water in Paris as the impressive cast features an over-the-hill yet still sexed up Delphine Seyrig, big brother Donald Pleasance, and inflatable evildoer Philippe Noiret, amongst other wacky cameos and bit parts. The film comes off as a synthesized outputting of Klein's new found political convictions, and takes its distinctly lynch mob/carnivalesque pep rally form from his essence - the guy isn't Chris Marker, Ken Loach, or Sergei Eisenstein - he's the director of Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? Considering how gloriously elaborate and powerful Mr. Freedom's costume is (it makes the Power Rangers look like pussies) it's a little disappointing that his nemeses are so underdeveloped: Moujik Man is little more than a red foam blob while Red China Man (clever name) is nothing more than a Macy's Thanksgiving Parade mylar balloon. There is something distinctly late 60's about the ubber-shrill gatherings with their (not so) latent violence and sexuality, which is made all the more heady with liberal dollops of bodypaint and skimpy athletic costumes.
1969
This is the product of inputting politics into the category 5 hurricane that is William Klein's brain. The manic, meth injected, satire is low on any sort of nuance, subtlety, cogent message, or political thoughtfulness, and it's clear that Klein couldn't care less, instead putting all his OCD meticulousness into an expressionistic explosion of superhero jingoism, frothing cheerleaders, and bullets a-go-go. Klein must have pulled a decent amount of water in Paris as the impressive cast features an over-the-hill yet still sexed up Delphine Seyrig, big brother Donald Pleasance, and inflatable evildoer Philippe Noiret, amongst other wacky cameos and bit parts. The film comes off as a synthesized outputting of Klein's new found political convictions, and takes its distinctly lynch mob/carnivalesque pep rally form from his essence - the guy isn't Chris Marker, Ken Loach, or Sergei Eisenstein - he's the director of Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? Considering how gloriously elaborate and powerful Mr. Freedom's costume is (it makes the Power Rangers look like pussies) it's a little disappointing that his nemeses are so underdeveloped: Moujik Man is little more than a red foam blob while Red China Man (clever name) is nothing more than a Macy's Thanksgiving Parade mylar balloon. There is something distinctly late 60's about the ubber-shrill gatherings with their (not so) latent violence and sexuality, which is made all the more heady with liberal dollops of bodypaint and skimpy athletic costumes.
Friday, August 08, 2008
The Wackness
Jonathan Levine
2008
Full disclosure: I fully expected to hate The Wackness. The graffiti themed promotional materials displaying a hip-hop loving whiteboy pot-dealer, who pays his troubled shrink in weed, appeared to be the absolute zenith of trite indie-film posturing. Add a heap of Sundance buzz, an Oscar winning legend, and a young actor in a crossover bid and you’re asking for a perfect storm of self-consciously “edgy” cinema. Yet despite my preconceptions The Wackness manages to be a seriously well-crafted effort, and an earnest piece of storytelling. The film is also a bit of a period picture, set in New York City’s summer of ’94, with a great rap soundtrack featuring some of the era’s most classic jams.
College bound Luke Shapiro (Nickelodeon vet Josh Peck) has just graduated high school and is in the throes of some mondo teenage angst. His extracurricular drug dealing makes him the life of parties he’s not invited to, and like most young men, he’s far more concerned about losing his cursed virginity than his family’s looming financial problems. Friendless Luke vents his woes to off kilter shrink Dr. Squires (Sir Ben Kingsley), a shaky and conflicted man stuck in a loveless marriage. It’s the doc’s stepdaughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby) that Luke is after, and thanks to the typically desolate New York summer this admittedly “out of his league” girl unexpectedly latches onto him. Meanwhile, the specter of Rudy Giuliani’s citywide crackdown serves as an ominous harbinger of things to come, and the suicide of Kurt Cobain still hangs like a pall in the air.
Not to be overly cynical, but this sort of film seems made for Sundance success. Its the ultimate shout-out to wiggerdom – where black music and culture are celebrated and glorified, but made easily digestible by filling the bill with a lovably dopey white kid. It would appear that the only thing keeping The Wackness from multiplexes would be the inclusion of sexually active teenagers and some heavy drug use. Otherwise, the romance between Luke and Stephanie, and Dr. Squire’s midlife crisis could easily be the stuff of Hollywood focus-groupthink.
The film’s biggest problem comes from Kingsley’s character and performance, which for starters is complicated by a completely unconvincing and inconsistent accent. It would seem that Jonathan Levine has never put in face time with a real shrink considering that nothing even close to psychiatric help transpires in Luke and Squire’s meetings. Instead the office acts more as a crucible to both exercise and conjure up the generation gap’s demons. Squires wants to escape while Luke wants to fit in, Luke wants mind-numbing meds while Squires wants Luke’s youth. In a wonderfully clichéd move, the doc flushes his many medications and goes on a much needed bender with Luke which culminates in a night in jail and a makeout session with a ridiculously dreadlocked druggie (Mary Kate Olson in a jaw droppingly weird bit part). This emancipation isn’t particularly ridiculous from a scripting standpoint as Squires is stuck with a stepdaughter that barely tolerates him and a wife who treats him as if he were invisible (Famke Janssen with a cigarette perpetually glued between her fingers), but Sir Ben’s performance is so over the top as to leave the impression that the older actor is having a blast on the job, leaving Levine too intimidated to bring him down.
That said the film is quite well done overall. Peck’s performance as Luke in particular, is played with a mouth-breathing stoner charm that isn’t so much stupid as enthrallingly naïve and sincere. There’s also a pleasant level of sophistication in the depiction of Luke and Stephanie’s families. Both are troubled and imperfect, yet there’s no direct claim that either is abusive or “bad,” and despite the seemingly inflammatory moral shortcomings of the kids (promiscuity, the distribution of illegal drugs), you’d be hard pressed to consider either of them as truly bad seeds. The film’s sex scenes range from genuinely hilarious to embarrassingly overwrought, and while the drug use is generally handled with an elegant naturalism, there are a few scenes in which the actors are guilty of overdoing it. Still, Levine shows tremendous aptitude for depicting teenage pathos in a way that’s simultaneously amusing and honest.
Review by Brett A. Scieszka
2008
Full disclosure: I fully expected to hate The Wackness. The graffiti themed promotional materials displaying a hip-hop loving whiteboy pot-dealer, who pays his troubled shrink in weed, appeared to be the absolute zenith of trite indie-film posturing. Add a heap of Sundance buzz, an Oscar winning legend, and a young actor in a crossover bid and you’re asking for a perfect storm of self-consciously “edgy” cinema. Yet despite my preconceptions The Wackness manages to be a seriously well-crafted effort, and an earnest piece of storytelling. The film is also a bit of a period picture, set in New York City’s summer of ’94, with a great rap soundtrack featuring some of the era’s most classic jams.
College bound Luke Shapiro (Nickelodeon vet Josh Peck) has just graduated high school and is in the throes of some mondo teenage angst. His extracurricular drug dealing makes him the life of parties he’s not invited to, and like most young men, he’s far more concerned about losing his cursed virginity than his family’s looming financial problems. Friendless Luke vents his woes to off kilter shrink Dr. Squires (Sir Ben Kingsley), a shaky and conflicted man stuck in a loveless marriage. It’s the doc’s stepdaughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby) that Luke is after, and thanks to the typically desolate New York summer this admittedly “out of his league” girl unexpectedly latches onto him. Meanwhile, the specter of Rudy Giuliani’s citywide crackdown serves as an ominous harbinger of things to come, and the suicide of Kurt Cobain still hangs like a pall in the air.
Not to be overly cynical, but this sort of film seems made for Sundance success. Its the ultimate shout-out to wiggerdom – where black music and culture are celebrated and glorified, but made easily digestible by filling the bill with a lovably dopey white kid. It would appear that the only thing keeping The Wackness from multiplexes would be the inclusion of sexually active teenagers and some heavy drug use. Otherwise, the romance between Luke and Stephanie, and Dr. Squire’s midlife crisis could easily be the stuff of Hollywood focus-groupthink.
The film’s biggest problem comes from Kingsley’s character and performance, which for starters is complicated by a completely unconvincing and inconsistent accent. It would seem that Jonathan Levine has never put in face time with a real shrink considering that nothing even close to psychiatric help transpires in Luke and Squire’s meetings. Instead the office acts more as a crucible to both exercise and conjure up the generation gap’s demons. Squires wants to escape while Luke wants to fit in, Luke wants mind-numbing meds while Squires wants Luke’s youth. In a wonderfully clichéd move, the doc flushes his many medications and goes on a much needed bender with Luke which culminates in a night in jail and a makeout session with a ridiculously dreadlocked druggie (Mary Kate Olson in a jaw droppingly weird bit part). This emancipation isn’t particularly ridiculous from a scripting standpoint as Squires is stuck with a stepdaughter that barely tolerates him and a wife who treats him as if he were invisible (Famke Janssen with a cigarette perpetually glued between her fingers), but Sir Ben’s performance is so over the top as to leave the impression that the older actor is having a blast on the job, leaving Levine too intimidated to bring him down.
That said the film is quite well done overall. Peck’s performance as Luke in particular, is played with a mouth-breathing stoner charm that isn’t so much stupid as enthrallingly naïve and sincere. There’s also a pleasant level of sophistication in the depiction of Luke and Stephanie’s families. Both are troubled and imperfect, yet there’s no direct claim that either is abusive or “bad,” and despite the seemingly inflammatory moral shortcomings of the kids (promiscuity, the distribution of illegal drugs), you’d be hard pressed to consider either of them as truly bad seeds. The film’s sex scenes range from genuinely hilarious to embarrassingly overwrought, and while the drug use is generally handled with an elegant naturalism, there are a few scenes in which the actors are guilty of overdoing it. Still, Levine shows tremendous aptitude for depicting teenage pathos in a way that’s simultaneously amusing and honest.
Review by Brett A. Scieszka
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Mongol
Sergei Bodrov
2007
Award winning director Sergei Bodrov’s Mongol is a research-informed cobbling of the early life and rise to power of the boy/man who would eventually become the infamous Genghis Khan. Genre nuts will be delighted to see Tadanobu Asano (Ichi the Killer, Vital) taking over the role of the famed barbarian king. Filmed in the same windy steppes in which Genghis himself was reared Bodrov strives for an earnest verisimilitude in depicting the life of twelfth century Mongols in a film of Russian production, subtitled from Mongolian, and starring a multiethnic cast.
Ostensibly, the film takes the form of the historical epic with its sweeping, omnipresent landscape and tale of a hero rising from dire circumstances. However, there’s only one large-scale battle, and Temudgin’s (Genghis Khan’s birth name) presumably Machiavellian rise to power is glossed over in a few title cards. What’s left is the many hardships suffered by a thrice enslaved boy, a complicated and competitive relationship with his blood brother Jamukha, and most prominently, a romance between him and wife Borte. Think Braveheart minus all those expensive battle scenes.
Of course, the stereotypical view of Genghis Khan is that of a loin-clothed brute surrounded by a harem of slave wenches, wolfing down a mutton shank and sucking liquor from a wineskin (you remember Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, right?). This is the old legend that Bodrov intends to rectify. There’s a tremendous remoteness in Asano’s performance that’s also in opposition to the classic Khan myth. The hedonistically rampant Id of legend is played as a soft-spoken introspective man who frequently prays, and appears completely unimpressed by material gain.
No attempt has been made to candy-coat Mongol life, in which prepubescent boys pick out their wives for marriage and men raid other tribes when they’re not drunkenly wrestling before the bonfire or heading to a nearby kingdom to unload slaves. Yet the rule of law remains vital and is oft mentioned (though sometimes broken), while the dual bonds of family and society hold together a certifiably bona fide culture. It is in this milieu that Temudgin marries for love in youthful defiance of his father, and secretly breaks Mongol law by going to war over a woman when his wife is apprehended by a rival tribe. There’s definitely a degree of tried and true movie magic in Bodrov depicting Temudgin as the sentimental Casanova in a decidedly unsentimental culture – an exaggeration in favor of provocation.
The majority of the film takes place outdoors, making the foreboding hard-scrabble landscape a perpetual backdrop to the action. The cinematography devoted to the steppes is a bit of a letdown, adequate, but by no mean awe inspiring. Instead the empty land acts as a brilliant stage for the audio in which the pound of every hoof cuts through a nearly oppressive stillness. This amplified sense of sound lends a tremendously visceral nature to the storytelling too, as Temudgin runs from would-be captors his fatigue doesn’t come so much from the weary look on Asano’s face, but from the sound of his ragged footsteps.
Out of the three battle scenes the first two, smaller in scale, feel much more satisfying than the final climax. The use of CGI blood has really come a long way and looks excellent here as Temudgin hacks away at masked assailants from a rival tribe and litters the ground with the corpses of Jamukha’s army in another. A particularly effective device is used in the latter of these two fights in which a time cut brings us to the end of a battle to find the ferocious Temudgin still making mincemeat out of enemies after all his comrades have bought the farm. The final showdown is much less exciting in its predictability with aerial shots full of little CGI ants on each side against a sandy, unconvincing CGI backdrop.
Bodrov does a hell of a job in inventing a new mythos for an established historical figure. Considering the film is supposed to be the first installment of a trilogy on Genghis Khan it will be particularly interesting to see what the director does with this unique take on a man whose empire covered half the globe.
2007
Award winning director Sergei Bodrov’s Mongol is a research-informed cobbling of the early life and rise to power of the boy/man who would eventually become the infamous Genghis Khan. Genre nuts will be delighted to see Tadanobu Asano (Ichi the Killer, Vital) taking over the role of the famed barbarian king. Filmed in the same windy steppes in which Genghis himself was reared Bodrov strives for an earnest verisimilitude in depicting the life of twelfth century Mongols in a film of Russian production, subtitled from Mongolian, and starring a multiethnic cast.
Ostensibly, the film takes the form of the historical epic with its sweeping, omnipresent landscape and tale of a hero rising from dire circumstances. However, there’s only one large-scale battle, and Temudgin’s (Genghis Khan’s birth name) presumably Machiavellian rise to power is glossed over in a few title cards. What’s left is the many hardships suffered by a thrice enslaved boy, a complicated and competitive relationship with his blood brother Jamukha, and most prominently, a romance between him and wife Borte. Think Braveheart minus all those expensive battle scenes.
Of course, the stereotypical view of Genghis Khan is that of a loin-clothed brute surrounded by a harem of slave wenches, wolfing down a mutton shank and sucking liquor from a wineskin (you remember Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, right?). This is the old legend that Bodrov intends to rectify. There’s a tremendous remoteness in Asano’s performance that’s also in opposition to the classic Khan myth. The hedonistically rampant Id of legend is played as a soft-spoken introspective man who frequently prays, and appears completely unimpressed by material gain.
No attempt has been made to candy-coat Mongol life, in which prepubescent boys pick out their wives for marriage and men raid other tribes when they’re not drunkenly wrestling before the bonfire or heading to a nearby kingdom to unload slaves. Yet the rule of law remains vital and is oft mentioned (though sometimes broken), while the dual bonds of family and society hold together a certifiably bona fide culture. It is in this milieu that Temudgin marries for love in youthful defiance of his father, and secretly breaks Mongol law by going to war over a woman when his wife is apprehended by a rival tribe. There’s definitely a degree of tried and true movie magic in Bodrov depicting Temudgin as the sentimental Casanova in a decidedly unsentimental culture – an exaggeration in favor of provocation.
The majority of the film takes place outdoors, making the foreboding hard-scrabble landscape a perpetual backdrop to the action. The cinematography devoted to the steppes is a bit of a letdown, adequate, but by no mean awe inspiring. Instead the empty land acts as a brilliant stage for the audio in which the pound of every hoof cuts through a nearly oppressive stillness. This amplified sense of sound lends a tremendously visceral nature to the storytelling too, as Temudgin runs from would-be captors his fatigue doesn’t come so much from the weary look on Asano’s face, but from the sound of his ragged footsteps.
Out of the three battle scenes the first two, smaller in scale, feel much more satisfying than the final climax. The use of CGI blood has really come a long way and looks excellent here as Temudgin hacks away at masked assailants from a rival tribe and litters the ground with the corpses of Jamukha’s army in another. A particularly effective device is used in the latter of these two fights in which a time cut brings us to the end of a battle to find the ferocious Temudgin still making mincemeat out of enemies after all his comrades have bought the farm. The final showdown is much less exciting in its predictability with aerial shots full of little CGI ants on each side against a sandy, unconvincing CGI backdrop.
Bodrov does a hell of a job in inventing a new mythos for an established historical figure. Considering the film is supposed to be the first installment of a trilogy on Genghis Khan it will be particularly interesting to see what the director does with this unique take on a man whose empire covered half the globe.
Reprise
Joachim Trier
2006
Joachim Trier’s debut feature Reprise is a solid art house import with an incisively penetrating tendency towards character study – a film that elegantly portrays the youthful condition in which anything is possible, both for better and for worse. Despite the remarkable display of candor and insight there is an unpleasant degree of filler in the form of woefully conventional and hackneyed devices: the party scene music video, the young protagonist meeting and receiving advice from his hero, the boorish fratboy eventually sucking face with a girl he had previously offended, and a wedding epilogue. Ironically these are all clichés that the two young authors at the center of Reprise would find genuinely hokey.
Fast friends Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman-Hoiner) chide each other and giggle nervously as they are preparing to send out their first manuscripts to publishers. A self-conscious zoom into the mailbox-slot heightens the couple’s anxious optimism and zips ahead in time to where the butterflies have subsided and we find that gaunt, beaky Phillip’s book has achieved a minor cult success leading to a heavy dose of insecurity and psychological damage. Erik, disappointed but undaunted by his manuscript’s rejection, continues plugging away while becoming increasingly wary of Phillip’s fragile wellbeing.
The majority of the film’s success lies in the tremendous performances of these lead roles. Erik’s “straight-man” is full of youthful yearning and a palpable striving for greatness, which Trier takes to task by imbuing the blonde moppet with a harmlessly comic does of pretension. The film starts in earnest with Phillip being released from the pysch-ward after a suicide attempt, and the core of Danielsen Lie’s performance suggests a jaded world-weariness so profound that becomes no longer a question of whether he’ll publish another novel, but whether he’ll make it through the night. Its a show-stealing performance in which nearly every scene involving Phillip is so charged with tension, so riddled with anxiety, that there’s a strong element of classic suspense ingrained within the drama.
On the periphery of these sad young literary men are friends, girls, and the humdrum lull of life in Oslo. Phillip’s girlfriend Kari (Viktoria Winge) is primarily, though unintentionally, responsible for his growing dementia, and their mutual refusal to let go is a constant source of concern. Its not hard to see how one could lose his mind over such a gal considering that Winge’s radiant beauty is frequently and hungrily meditated upon in Trier’s starry-eyed lens. If there’s such a thing as “screen presence,” than she’s got it in spades. Most of Erik and Phillip’s leisure time is spent with a small coterie of friends, mostly ex-punks who’ve eased into advertising jobs and chronic beer swilling. These are the kind of guys who will keep one grounded, a colorful and necessary entourage of jokesters that adds a sense of fun and lightheartedness to a film mainly concerned with a pair of heavy-minded boys.
While many of the stylistic devices in Reprise verge on annoying, (superfluous use of flashbacks, an amateurish reliance on voiceover) the use of sound in key emotional scenes is stunning. Many conversations between Phillip and Kari are imbued with a poetic disjoint between sound and image, with conversation taking place while the screen presents tender touches, and close-ups of neck napes, hair wisps, and furtive glances. It would be the stuff of cheesy romance fiction were it not handled with Trier’s exuberant heart-on-sleeve sensibility – the kind of openness and vulnerability presented by many great authors.
While all the cutesy male bonding and quasi-macho pose is funny and familiar, the depiction of women is a bit troubling. When Phillip flies Kari to Paris in an identically retrace of the trip where they fell in love, she’s subjected to some of Phillip’s most unhinged mental malaise yet acts fairly oblivious to the awful position she’s been thrust into. Its an outrageous display of passivity, more the fault of the script and direction than that of the actress. Meanwhile Erik’s long-suffering girlfriend is used more as a device then presented as a real character. Finally, there’s plenty of discussion between the boys about how women are the bane of male creativity. None of this proves to be much of a deal-breaker however, as Trier’s light touch prevents things from becoming a royal PC bummer.
2006
Joachim Trier’s debut feature Reprise is a solid art house import with an incisively penetrating tendency towards character study – a film that elegantly portrays the youthful condition in which anything is possible, both for better and for worse. Despite the remarkable display of candor and insight there is an unpleasant degree of filler in the form of woefully conventional and hackneyed devices: the party scene music video, the young protagonist meeting and receiving advice from his hero, the boorish fratboy eventually sucking face with a girl he had previously offended, and a wedding epilogue. Ironically these are all clichés that the two young authors at the center of Reprise would find genuinely hokey.
Fast friends Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman-Hoiner) chide each other and giggle nervously as they are preparing to send out their first manuscripts to publishers. A self-conscious zoom into the mailbox-slot heightens the couple’s anxious optimism and zips ahead in time to where the butterflies have subsided and we find that gaunt, beaky Phillip’s book has achieved a minor cult success leading to a heavy dose of insecurity and psychological damage. Erik, disappointed but undaunted by his manuscript’s rejection, continues plugging away while becoming increasingly wary of Phillip’s fragile wellbeing.
The majority of the film’s success lies in the tremendous performances of these lead roles. Erik’s “straight-man” is full of youthful yearning and a palpable striving for greatness, which Trier takes to task by imbuing the blonde moppet with a harmlessly comic does of pretension. The film starts in earnest with Phillip being released from the pysch-ward after a suicide attempt, and the core of Danielsen Lie’s performance suggests a jaded world-weariness so profound that becomes no longer a question of whether he’ll publish another novel, but whether he’ll make it through the night. Its a show-stealing performance in which nearly every scene involving Phillip is so charged with tension, so riddled with anxiety, that there’s a strong element of classic suspense ingrained within the drama.
On the periphery of these sad young literary men are friends, girls, and the humdrum lull of life in Oslo. Phillip’s girlfriend Kari (Viktoria Winge) is primarily, though unintentionally, responsible for his growing dementia, and their mutual refusal to let go is a constant source of concern. Its not hard to see how one could lose his mind over such a gal considering that Winge’s radiant beauty is frequently and hungrily meditated upon in Trier’s starry-eyed lens. If there’s such a thing as “screen presence,” than she’s got it in spades. Most of Erik and Phillip’s leisure time is spent with a small coterie of friends, mostly ex-punks who’ve eased into advertising jobs and chronic beer swilling. These are the kind of guys who will keep one grounded, a colorful and necessary entourage of jokesters that adds a sense of fun and lightheartedness to a film mainly concerned with a pair of heavy-minded boys.
While many of the stylistic devices in Reprise verge on annoying, (superfluous use of flashbacks, an amateurish reliance on voiceover) the use of sound in key emotional scenes is stunning. Many conversations between Phillip and Kari are imbued with a poetic disjoint between sound and image, with conversation taking place while the screen presents tender touches, and close-ups of neck napes, hair wisps, and furtive glances. It would be the stuff of cheesy romance fiction were it not handled with Trier’s exuberant heart-on-sleeve sensibility – the kind of openness and vulnerability presented by many great authors.
While all the cutesy male bonding and quasi-macho pose is funny and familiar, the depiction of women is a bit troubling. When Phillip flies Kari to Paris in an identically retrace of the trip where they fell in love, she’s subjected to some of Phillip’s most unhinged mental malaise yet acts fairly oblivious to the awful position she’s been thrust into. Its an outrageous display of passivity, more the fault of the script and direction than that of the actress. Meanwhile Erik’s long-suffering girlfriend is used more as a device then presented as a real character. Finally, there’s plenty of discussion between the boys about how women are the bane of male creativity. None of this proves to be much of a deal-breaker however, as Trier’s light touch prevents things from becoming a royal PC bummer.
Mr. Lonely
Harmony Korine
2007
For a long time I've been fairly dismissive of Harmony Korine, but after recently reexamining his work I was pleased to find that my relationship to the auteurist art punk has become more of a love/hate affair than one of total disinterest. Korine's latest film, clearly his most mature and arguably most accomplished, now threatens to tip the scale in his favor. Mister Lonely may be the director's turning point from sleazy quasi-exploitative youth shockers, to well crafted adult cinema.
Barely successful Michael Jackson professionally impersonates the King of Pop, but has been relegated to honing his craft in Parisian parks and hosting the occasional gig at the local old folks home. After a flirtatious run-in with a Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton) impersonator Michael is swept away to a castle in the Scottish highlands, and is introduced to a seemingly utopian community of celebrity impersonators ranging from James Dean to the Queen of England - from The Pope to the Three Stooges. Theirs is a childish fantasy world marred by the love triangle between Michael, Marilyn, and her capricious and abusive husband Charlie Chaplin. These impersonators' well meaning escapism is further complicated by the stony realities of diseased livestock and an apathetic public. After all, what's a performer without an audience?
For Korine, this is a remarkably restrained film in which the signature white trash/ghetto-fab freak show is replaced with competent acting and believably honest sentiment. In dealing with a cultural phenomenon like celebrity impersonation Korine benefits by bringing forth a host of characters that create certain presupposed impressions. Therefore unsurprisingly, both Michael and Marilyn have a childlike naivety, James Dean and Sammy Davis Jr. are preoccupied with style, while Abraham Lincoln and the Pope are prone to spout off in blustery bouts of public address.
The major roles are superbly acted, with Morton's Marilyn as the proverbial cherry on top in a performance that trumps the real McCoy in its delicate vulnerability. Her imperfect looks and non-cover-girl figure lend her a satisfying accessibility: the cinematic equivalent of comfort food. Along with Marilyn, Diego Luna's Michael is given more dimension with characterization beyond his self-assumed identity. At times he seethes with the quality of an awkward tween in a man's body, something like a low self esteem Peter Pan. Denis Lavant as Chaplin effectively creates a two-faced clown with his tomfoolery and pratfalls masking a wickedly pitted face, and cruel dark eyes. Also of note, Werner Herzog puts in his second appearance in a Korine film, after his turn as the maniacal patriarch of Julien Donkey-Boy. This time he plays Father Umbrillo, a wisdom imparting missionary priest who leads a troupe of flying nuns. As an actor, one can only expect Werner Herzog to play Werner Herzog - not necessarily a bad thing considering his powerful presence and subtly comic delivery.
Seeing as it hardly pertains to the main action, Father Umbrillo's clucking and kibitzing is the kind of superfluous indulgence that could weaken or muddy the film, however Director of Photography Marcel Zyskind's photography of miraculous nuns falling through clear blue is genuinely breathtaking, and ads a playful layer to the wide-eyed tone. Much of the cinematography is effortlessly intimate with probing closeups and candid performances. Sammy Davis Jr. practices his routine on the castle parapet, and Buckwheat swoons over the chickens he's charged with caring for.
Mister Lonely is not wholly without its detractions. Abe Lincoln possesses a notably foul mouth, and his frequent cussing is played more for cheap laughs than worthwhile characterization. Michael's jaunt in the old folks' home gives us a hefty dose of Korine's standby anthropological gawking, as the near-catatonic elderly grotesques are wheeled up to the camera lens. Admittedly this scene is played with a degree of playful fun as opposed to the bratty pretensions of Gummo's (1997) "Down Syndrome beauty," but nevertheless the scene retains a hokey element of misplaced comic relief.
It would be trite to say that Mister Lonely is a coming of age picture, yet it has many of the genre's trappings, and many familiar tropes are used. Questions of identity, longing, and confusion with one's place in the world are core themes of the film, and if that doesn't speak volumes of the modern teenage experience I don't know what does. The film ends with an uncertain future for the commune, and not all characters make it through. Michael has returned to the Parisian streets Marilyn found him on, but his Scottish adventure has created a sea change in his identity which provides a new set of challenges and a new purpose. For Korine, like Michael, this appears to be a step towards a change in his identity as an artist. He's the same man at heart, just a little more grown up now.
2007
For a long time I've been fairly dismissive of Harmony Korine, but after recently reexamining his work I was pleased to find that my relationship to the auteurist art punk has become more of a love/hate affair than one of total disinterest. Korine's latest film, clearly his most mature and arguably most accomplished, now threatens to tip the scale in his favor. Mister Lonely may be the director's turning point from sleazy quasi-exploitative youth shockers, to well crafted adult cinema.
Barely successful Michael Jackson professionally impersonates the King of Pop, but has been relegated to honing his craft in Parisian parks and hosting the occasional gig at the local old folks home. After a flirtatious run-in with a Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton) impersonator Michael is swept away to a castle in the Scottish highlands, and is introduced to a seemingly utopian community of celebrity impersonators ranging from James Dean to the Queen of England - from The Pope to the Three Stooges. Theirs is a childish fantasy world marred by the love triangle between Michael, Marilyn, and her capricious and abusive husband Charlie Chaplin. These impersonators' well meaning escapism is further complicated by the stony realities of diseased livestock and an apathetic public. After all, what's a performer without an audience?
For Korine, this is a remarkably restrained film in which the signature white trash/ghetto-fab freak show is replaced with competent acting and believably honest sentiment. In dealing with a cultural phenomenon like celebrity impersonation Korine benefits by bringing forth a host of characters that create certain presupposed impressions. Therefore unsurprisingly, both Michael and Marilyn have a childlike naivety, James Dean and Sammy Davis Jr. are preoccupied with style, while Abraham Lincoln and the Pope are prone to spout off in blustery bouts of public address.
The major roles are superbly acted, with Morton's Marilyn as the proverbial cherry on top in a performance that trumps the real McCoy in its delicate vulnerability. Her imperfect looks and non-cover-girl figure lend her a satisfying accessibility: the cinematic equivalent of comfort food. Along with Marilyn, Diego Luna's Michael is given more dimension with characterization beyond his self-assumed identity. At times he seethes with the quality of an awkward tween in a man's body, something like a low self esteem Peter Pan. Denis Lavant as Chaplin effectively creates a two-faced clown with his tomfoolery and pratfalls masking a wickedly pitted face, and cruel dark eyes. Also of note, Werner Herzog puts in his second appearance in a Korine film, after his turn as the maniacal patriarch of Julien Donkey-Boy. This time he plays Father Umbrillo, a wisdom imparting missionary priest who leads a troupe of flying nuns. As an actor, one can only expect Werner Herzog to play Werner Herzog - not necessarily a bad thing considering his powerful presence and subtly comic delivery.
Seeing as it hardly pertains to the main action, Father Umbrillo's clucking and kibitzing is the kind of superfluous indulgence that could weaken or muddy the film, however Director of Photography Marcel Zyskind's photography of miraculous nuns falling through clear blue is genuinely breathtaking, and ads a playful layer to the wide-eyed tone. Much of the cinematography is effortlessly intimate with probing closeups and candid performances. Sammy Davis Jr. practices his routine on the castle parapet, and Buckwheat swoons over the chickens he's charged with caring for.
Mister Lonely is not wholly without its detractions. Abe Lincoln possesses a notably foul mouth, and his frequent cussing is played more for cheap laughs than worthwhile characterization. Michael's jaunt in the old folks' home gives us a hefty dose of Korine's standby anthropological gawking, as the near-catatonic elderly grotesques are wheeled up to the camera lens. Admittedly this scene is played with a degree of playful fun as opposed to the bratty pretensions of Gummo's (1997) "Down Syndrome beauty," but nevertheless the scene retains a hokey element of misplaced comic relief.
It would be trite to say that Mister Lonely is a coming of age picture, yet it has many of the genre's trappings, and many familiar tropes are used. Questions of identity, longing, and confusion with one's place in the world are core themes of the film, and if that doesn't speak volumes of the modern teenage experience I don't know what does. The film ends with an uncertain future for the commune, and not all characters make it through. Michael has returned to the Parisian streets Marilyn found him on, but his Scottish adventure has created a sea change in his identity which provides a new set of challenges and a new purpose. For Korine, like Michael, this appears to be a step towards a change in his identity as an artist. He's the same man at heart, just a little more grown up now.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Son of Rambow
Garth Jennings 2007
Read my review for the Knoxville Metro Pulse!
http://www.metropulse.com/news/2008/may/28/second-blood/
Read my review for the Knoxville Metro Pulse!
http://www.metropulse.com/news/2008/may/28/second-blood/
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Paranoid Park
Gus Van Sant
2007
With the release of Paranoid Park Gus Van Sant sadly caps a cinematic hat trick that started with 2002's Gerry and ended with 2005's Last Days. A hallmark of this trilogy (that also included the superb Columbine meditation, Elephant) was the participation of Director of Photography Harris Savides, whose lensing skills are noticeably absent from this production. In breaking this fruitful partnership, and opting for Christopher Doyle to shoot instead (also a prior collaborator), Van Sant's film suffers from an aesthetic confusion unbecomingly amateurish in light of his prior achievements.
The picture borrows its story from the YA book of the same title, a teenage Crime and Punishment in which skater Alex is wracked by guilt over his part in the accidental murder of a railway security guard. The simple plotting is complemented by a fractured chronology that provides a measured and candid view into Alex's inner life. His mundane interactions with parents, adults, and peers comprise the bulk of the picture, and are far more deft and illuminating than the hokey murder mystery anyway. Van Sant's been good with youth actors in the past, but unfortunately only Gabe Nevins' lead performance comes off as something more meaningful than the cloying quality a failed non-actor performance always seems to possess, though to be fair, Lauren McKinney's bleach-streaked alternateen has charm to spare.
The Oregon grey and copious amounts of concrete on display add to the muted and washed out aesthetic, creating a cliched look which screams "disaffected youth." This drab-by-default palette is puzzling considering the look is directly at odds with the anti-fashion, anti-buzzword portrait Van Sant attempts to bring out of his subjects. Additionally, the practice of filming skate sessions in super-8 (or some identical looking process) and co-opting skateboard video devices is an appallingly trite riff on the subculture. Its a cheesy cop-out that places the filmmaker's age squarely and unnecessarily on his sleeve.
What seems most frustrating is that this is ground Van Sant has previously trod, and done so with sincerity and panache. It feels as if something's missing this time around, an amorphous discord between direction and performance, photography and tone. I can't help but imagine what may have been were Savides behind the camera. For an accomplished and increasingly admirable artist, this feels like two steps back.
Review by Brett A. Scieszka
2007
With the release of Paranoid Park Gus Van Sant sadly caps a cinematic hat trick that started with 2002's Gerry and ended with 2005's Last Days. A hallmark of this trilogy (that also included the superb Columbine meditation, Elephant) was the participation of Director of Photography Harris Savides, whose lensing skills are noticeably absent from this production. In breaking this fruitful partnership, and opting for Christopher Doyle to shoot instead (also a prior collaborator), Van Sant's film suffers from an aesthetic confusion unbecomingly amateurish in light of his prior achievements.
The picture borrows its story from the YA book of the same title, a teenage Crime and Punishment in which skater Alex is wracked by guilt over his part in the accidental murder of a railway security guard. The simple plotting is complemented by a fractured chronology that provides a measured and candid view into Alex's inner life. His mundane interactions with parents, adults, and peers comprise the bulk of the picture, and are far more deft and illuminating than the hokey murder mystery anyway. Van Sant's been good with youth actors in the past, but unfortunately only Gabe Nevins' lead performance comes off as something more meaningful than the cloying quality a failed non-actor performance always seems to possess, though to be fair, Lauren McKinney's bleach-streaked alternateen has charm to spare.
The Oregon grey and copious amounts of concrete on display add to the muted and washed out aesthetic, creating a cliched look which screams "disaffected youth." This drab-by-default palette is puzzling considering the look is directly at odds with the anti-fashion, anti-buzzword portrait Van Sant attempts to bring out of his subjects. Additionally, the practice of filming skate sessions in super-8 (or some identical looking process) and co-opting skateboard video devices is an appallingly trite riff on the subculture. Its a cheesy cop-out that places the filmmaker's age squarely and unnecessarily on his sleeve.
What seems most frustrating is that this is ground Van Sant has previously trod, and done so with sincerity and panache. It feels as if something's missing this time around, an amorphous discord between direction and performance, photography and tone. I can't help but imagine what may have been were Savides behind the camera. For an accomplished and increasingly admirable artist, this feels like two steps back.
Review by Brett A. Scieszka
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Criterion Eclipse Series 7: Postwar Kurosawa
I've taken quite a shine to Criterion's Eclipse line series of reasonably priced (for Criterion) DVD sets highlighting a specific era of a noted or overshadowed director's work. Series 3: Late Ozu goes down like pure cinematic opiate, and Series 5: The First Films of Sam Fuller is nothing short of required viewing. One of the more recent volumes takes a look at 5 films Kurosawa made over a roughly ten year period follow Japan's WWII defeat. Its an interesting crop of films, made all the more interesting because they're not all that successful. Its also worth taking into account that the best Kurosawa films of that period have already been released in proper Criterion DVD editions. Still, the Eclipse series is a very watchable portrait of a young director just starting to hit his stride.
No Regrets For Our Youth
1946
Fans of Yasujiro Ozu will be shocked to see his perennial star Setsuko Hara, leave behind her crisp kimono and prim shyness for dirty peasant rags and manual rice paddy labor. Centering on bourgeoisie Hara's journey from activist, to the wife of a radical, to filial daughter-in-law, to a champion of rural labor, the film is splintered in focus and poorly paced, missing the mark until its satisfying third act. Hindsight being 20/20 it looks a little disingenuous of Kurosawa to make a film celebrating student protests in the face of imperial Japan's rising fascism considering he was complicit in the war effort. The film instead provides a too-late apology from a defeated and occupied country. I'm curious as to how the film's final message, which has all the gooey sweetness of communist propaganda, made it through U.S. occupation censors.
One Wonderful Sunday
1947
This is a nice Capra-esque social-realist comedy that does a great job of conveying the stifling poverty and frustrations of postwar Japan, spiced with a youthful glimmer of a brighter future. A young couple, essentially broke, meet on their Sundays for cheap dates. He's mopey, she's sunny, and the two go back and forth between enjoying their time together, and lamenting their current situation. Kurosawa in no way skirts harsh reality and presents it memorably onscreen in the form of a lost-soul child beggar, and an upscale nightclub that fronts a low-rent yakuza whorehouse. This down and dirty approach pleasantly contrasts and justifies the schmaltzy Disney-like sequences of hope, as the young man pantomimes running his own imaginary cafe amongst a literally ruined cityscape, and conducts a nonexistent orchestra in a desolate venue. This unexpected treat is one of the better films in the box.
Scandal
1950
The weakest selection in the set features Toshiro Mifune as a hunky painter who is inadvertently caught up in tabloid notoriety after an innocent encounter with a famous chanteuse at a rural inn. Taking a quasi-courtroom drama form, the picture has almost none of the genre's signature tension and feels woefully rote in its plotting. Pocketed lawyer Takashi Shimura's legal and moral predicament is fairly interesting but predictable, and the depiction and inclusion of his angelic, tubercular daughter as a sickly sweet golden child makes for near unforgivable cliche. Its hard to believe that this weak effort is bookended in Kurosawa's career by the genuinely intriguing (and very postwar) Stray Dog and the utterly classic Seven Samurai.
The Idiot
1951
A very decent adaptation of Dostoevsky's novel considering the overly ambitious production ran into trouble with the studio and thus Kurosawa's grand vision was compromised (the original cut was supposed to run close to three and a half hours). Its fairly remarkable how the easily 19th century Russian characters are altered to fit Japanese ones in a snow-blanketed postwar Hokkaido. Fans of Ozu will again be shocked to see goody-good Setsuko Hara's image twisted under Kurosawa's direction into a vampy kept-woman of the world. Lead actor Masayuki Mori's subtly un-Japanese features aid the "pure soul" outsider innocence his performance . The film has several great setpieces chock full of the rich turmoil and laden with all the madness of some of Dostoevsky's most fevered writing, particularly a defiant Setsuko Hara chucking a hefty bundle of Yen into a fireplace, and Mifune and Mori's addled chatter as they share a cold room with Mifune's murder victim.
I live in Fear
1955
The most well known film in the box also contains one of Toshiro Mifune's best roles as the overly-physical young actor transmutes his trademark swagger and growl to the bent stoop and clipped terseness of an elderly magnate. The deep seated nuclear terror of Hiroshima/Nagasak has convinced Mifune that he must move his family, mistresses and bastard children included, to the remote safety of the Brazilian countryside. Unsurprisingly, the Nakajima family has little interest in this proposed displacement and takes the issue to family court which eventually leads part-time lawyer Takashi Shimura to examine his own atomic fears. Mifune's cockeyed plan smacks of male fantasy. His vision of Brazil is a polygamist Eden that he can dictate and preside over as a wise, greying patriarch. While Nakajima senior's personal a-bomb demons tend to manifest theatrically in tortured expressions and manic fits during thunder storms, Takashi Shimura's dread is more realistic in its chilling inward contemplation. Disturbingly, the fear of these characters is not the simple vestigial zeitgeist of 50's Japan, as we continue to, and will most likely always, live in a world mere push-buttons away from annihilation.
Review by Brett A. Scieszka
No Regrets For Our Youth
1946
Fans of Yasujiro Ozu will be shocked to see his perennial star Setsuko Hara, leave behind her crisp kimono and prim shyness for dirty peasant rags and manual rice paddy labor. Centering on bourgeoisie Hara's journey from activist, to the wife of a radical, to filial daughter-in-law, to a champion of rural labor, the film is splintered in focus and poorly paced, missing the mark until its satisfying third act. Hindsight being 20/20 it looks a little disingenuous of Kurosawa to make a film celebrating student protests in the face of imperial Japan's rising fascism considering he was complicit in the war effort. The film instead provides a too-late apology from a defeated and occupied country. I'm curious as to how the film's final message, which has all the gooey sweetness of communist propaganda, made it through U.S. occupation censors.
One Wonderful Sunday
1947
This is a nice Capra-esque social-realist comedy that does a great job of conveying the stifling poverty and frustrations of postwar Japan, spiced with a youthful glimmer of a brighter future. A young couple, essentially broke, meet on their Sundays for cheap dates. He's mopey, she's sunny, and the two go back and forth between enjoying their time together, and lamenting their current situation. Kurosawa in no way skirts harsh reality and presents it memorably onscreen in the form of a lost-soul child beggar, and an upscale nightclub that fronts a low-rent yakuza whorehouse. This down and dirty approach pleasantly contrasts and justifies the schmaltzy Disney-like sequences of hope, as the young man pantomimes running his own imaginary cafe amongst a literally ruined cityscape, and conducts a nonexistent orchestra in a desolate venue. This unexpected treat is one of the better films in the box.
Scandal
1950
The weakest selection in the set features Toshiro Mifune as a hunky painter who is inadvertently caught up in tabloid notoriety after an innocent encounter with a famous chanteuse at a rural inn. Taking a quasi-courtroom drama form, the picture has almost none of the genre's signature tension and feels woefully rote in its plotting. Pocketed lawyer Takashi Shimura's legal and moral predicament is fairly interesting but predictable, and the depiction and inclusion of his angelic, tubercular daughter as a sickly sweet golden child makes for near unforgivable cliche. Its hard to believe that this weak effort is bookended in Kurosawa's career by the genuinely intriguing (and very postwar) Stray Dog and the utterly classic Seven Samurai.
The Idiot
1951
A very decent adaptation of Dostoevsky's novel considering the overly ambitious production ran into trouble with the studio and thus Kurosawa's grand vision was compromised (the original cut was supposed to run close to three and a half hours). Its fairly remarkable how the easily 19th century Russian characters are altered to fit Japanese ones in a snow-blanketed postwar Hokkaido. Fans of Ozu will again be shocked to see goody-good Setsuko Hara's image twisted under Kurosawa's direction into a vampy kept-woman of the world. Lead actor Masayuki Mori's subtly un-Japanese features aid the "pure soul" outsider innocence his performance . The film has several great setpieces chock full of the rich turmoil and laden with all the madness of some of Dostoevsky's most fevered writing, particularly a defiant Setsuko Hara chucking a hefty bundle of Yen into a fireplace, and Mifune and Mori's addled chatter as they share a cold room with Mifune's murder victim.
I live in Fear
1955
The most well known film in the box also contains one of Toshiro Mifune's best roles as the overly-physical young actor transmutes his trademark swagger and growl to the bent stoop and clipped terseness of an elderly magnate. The deep seated nuclear terror of Hiroshima/Nagasak has convinced Mifune that he must move his family, mistresses and bastard children included, to the remote safety of the Brazilian countryside. Unsurprisingly, the Nakajima family has little interest in this proposed displacement and takes the issue to family court which eventually leads part-time lawyer Takashi Shimura to examine his own atomic fears. Mifune's cockeyed plan smacks of male fantasy. His vision of Brazil is a polygamist Eden that he can dictate and preside over as a wise, greying patriarch. While Nakajima senior's personal a-bomb demons tend to manifest theatrically in tortured expressions and manic fits during thunder storms, Takashi Shimura's dread is more realistic in its chilling inward contemplation. Disturbingly, the fear of these characters is not the simple vestigial zeitgeist of 50's Japan, as we continue to, and will most likely always, live in a world mere push-buttons away from annihilation.
Review by Brett A. Scieszka
Monday, February 25, 2008
Diary of the Dead
George A. Romero
2007
I entered George Romero's latest undead opus with a fair amount of trepidation. Diary of the Dead takes its form from the Blair Witch/Cloverfield school of passing off edited first person "documentary" footage as a fictional film. Let's call it for what it is: a gimmick. However, after having seen the film I'm a bit ashamed I ever doubted the maestro as Diary is not only brilliantly executed in its chills and satirical relevance, but is also on par with the best installments of the series, Night of The Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead.
We open with the first reported case of the rising dead, as the victims of a family's murder/suicide spring from their gurneys to prey on witless EMT and news-crew workers. When a group of film students (shooting a corny mummy movie) catch wind of the rising panic they decide its high time to get the hell out of Dodge, and begin trekking across Pennsylvania in a Winnebago with the hopes of returning to their parents' homes. Diary of the Dead becomes a road movie, an apocalyptic travelogue in which the film's "director" becomes singularly obsessed with documenting society's disintegration for posterity.
At 68 Romero shows more understanding of our technologically aided information saturation than most Youtube brats and "new media" propagators. Student director Jason Creed's impulse to record isn't presented preciously as a moral or philosophical imperative, but instead as a sick impulse, leaving the zombie ass-whooping to his proactive gal-pal Debra. Romero has always used diagetic media to brilliant effect in the form of radio broadcasts, televised punditry and government spin, but its never been quite so satisfying as it is here, at the conception of the crisis. As expected, Romero keeps things fun with the creative juxtaposition of fantastically macabre subject and ho-hum reality. Treats include a zombie birthday clown, the undead siege of an opulent mansion, a squad of no-nonsense Black Panther-esques stockpiling supplies, and the oft referenced "acid head" shot.
What sets Diary of the Dead apart from prior installments in the series is its (comparatively) positive tone.
Whereas prior pictures tended to focus on precarious survival situations unraveling through human selfishness, stupidity, greed, and a general pall of "ugliness," this time we're introduced to a younger, more appealing human race, one that actually seems worth saving. Land of the Dead may have opened Romero up to a scope of Hollywood filmmaking previously unavailable to him, but now, back on the outside, he's closer to his creation's pulse.
Review by Brett A. Scieszka
2007
I entered George Romero's latest undead opus with a fair amount of trepidation. Diary of the Dead takes its form from the Blair Witch/Cloverfield school of passing off edited first person "documentary" footage as a fictional film. Let's call it for what it is: a gimmick. However, after having seen the film I'm a bit ashamed I ever doubted the maestro as Diary is not only brilliantly executed in its chills and satirical relevance, but is also on par with the best installments of the series, Night of The Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead.
We open with the first reported case of the rising dead, as the victims of a family's murder/suicide spring from their gurneys to prey on witless EMT and news-crew workers. When a group of film students (shooting a corny mummy movie) catch wind of the rising panic they decide its high time to get the hell out of Dodge, and begin trekking across Pennsylvania in a Winnebago with the hopes of returning to their parents' homes. Diary of the Dead becomes a road movie, an apocalyptic travelogue in which the film's "director" becomes singularly obsessed with documenting society's disintegration for posterity.
At 68 Romero shows more understanding of our technologically aided information saturation than most Youtube brats and "new media" propagators. Student director Jason Creed's impulse to record isn't presented preciously as a moral or philosophical imperative, but instead as a sick impulse, leaving the zombie ass-whooping to his proactive gal-pal Debra. Romero has always used diagetic media to brilliant effect in the form of radio broadcasts, televised punditry and government spin, but its never been quite so satisfying as it is here, at the conception of the crisis. As expected, Romero keeps things fun with the creative juxtaposition of fantastically macabre subject and ho-hum reality. Treats include a zombie birthday clown, the undead siege of an opulent mansion, a squad of no-nonsense Black Panther-esques stockpiling supplies, and the oft referenced "acid head" shot.
What sets Diary of the Dead apart from prior installments in the series is its (comparatively) positive tone.
Whereas prior pictures tended to focus on precarious survival situations unraveling through human selfishness, stupidity, greed, and a general pall of "ugliness," this time we're introduced to a younger, more appealing human race, one that actually seems worth saving. Land of the Dead may have opened Romero up to a scope of Hollywood filmmaking previously unavailable to him, but now, back on the outside, he's closer to his creation's pulse.
Review by Brett A. Scieszka
Friday, February 22, 2008
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
Cristian Mungiu
2007
Ok kids, playtime's over. I know you had lots of fun learning to live and love and appreciate the foibles of life with the recent pregnancy comedies Knocked Up and Juno, but now its long past due to change out of the fuzzy jammies and see unplanned pregnancy for what it is for most people: a huge fucking nightmare.
Set in Ceausescu's oppressive late 80's Romania, University student Otilia agrees to aid her friend/roommate, frail and skittish Gabita, to illegally procure an abortion, a crime for which even casual collaborators are sent to the clink. An already shaky plan is made worse through Gabita's weak-willed lying, and a callous abortionist.
What's most successful about the picture is that while the gray cement, and beige linoleum of Bucharest is plenty bleak, our heroines are prominently middle class. The waters are never muddied by the maudlin poverty depicted in so many films on totalitarian regimes, leaving clear and unfettered view of the drama. Otilia's resilience and sacrifice is in some ways reminiscent of Lars Von Trier's "golden hearts" girls, yet her unemotional nuts-and-bolts practicality eschews all his uncomfortable melodrama in favor of uncomfortable reality. Otilia's faultless alpha-female quality provides a strange and moving contrast to the understandably flawed people surrounding her. Gabita's sniveling reticence is irritating, but innocent, and one feels a touch of sympathy for Otilia's boyfriend as he's blindsided at his mother's birthday.
The decent cinematography is at times marred by cliched shaky-cam, though many of the exterior tracking shots do a brilliant job of heightening the tension. The use of static long takes, frequently centered on Otilia's face are by far the best cinematic touch, particularly during a scene in which she's stuck at a hellish literati dinner party, with no escape and no idea how Gabita's post procedure is shaping up. The camera's unflinching stare is also brought to bear on the terminated fetus, a sadly lame looking prop that is nonetheless successful in conveying the tragedy of body horror. A date movie, this certainly is not.
Review by Brett A. Scieszka
2007
Ok kids, playtime's over. I know you had lots of fun learning to live and love and appreciate the foibles of life with the recent pregnancy comedies Knocked Up and Juno, but now its long past due to change out of the fuzzy jammies and see unplanned pregnancy for what it is for most people: a huge fucking nightmare.
Set in Ceausescu's oppressive late 80's Romania, University student Otilia agrees to aid her friend/roommate, frail and skittish Gabita, to illegally procure an abortion, a crime for which even casual collaborators are sent to the clink. An already shaky plan is made worse through Gabita's weak-willed lying, and a callous abortionist.
What's most successful about the picture is that while the gray cement, and beige linoleum of Bucharest is plenty bleak, our heroines are prominently middle class. The waters are never muddied by the maudlin poverty depicted in so many films on totalitarian regimes, leaving clear and unfettered view of the drama. Otilia's resilience and sacrifice is in some ways reminiscent of Lars Von Trier's "golden hearts" girls, yet her unemotional nuts-and-bolts practicality eschews all his uncomfortable melodrama in favor of uncomfortable reality. Otilia's faultless alpha-female quality provides a strange and moving contrast to the understandably flawed people surrounding her. Gabita's sniveling reticence is irritating, but innocent, and one feels a touch of sympathy for Otilia's boyfriend as he's blindsided at his mother's birthday.
The decent cinematography is at times marred by cliched shaky-cam, though many of the exterior tracking shots do a brilliant job of heightening the tension. The use of static long takes, frequently centered on Otilia's face are by far the best cinematic touch, particularly during a scene in which she's stuck at a hellish literati dinner party, with no escape and no idea how Gabita's post procedure is shaping up. The camera's unflinching stare is also brought to bear on the terminated fetus, a sadly lame looking prop that is nonetheless successful in conveying the tragedy of body horror. A date movie, this certainly is not.
Review by Brett A. Scieszka
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Teeth
Mitchell Lichtenstein
2007
While relieving myself in the mens room following a screening of this nifty genre oddity I realized how easily this dangerously campy picture could have teetered into complete schlock, causing theaters full of NYU jocks to grab their crotches in mock agony and hoot and holler at the screen. As I stood there pissing contentedly I smiled as I heard a card-carrying bro turn to his friend and say "dude, that was awkward."
Teenage Dawn is an allstar speaker in her local abstinence club, and her wholesome life is rounded out by a loving mother and stepfather. Home-life would be perfect were it not marred by the presence of her sodomy-obsessed metalhead step brother (complete with spike labret piercing!). While crushed out on a hunky fellow abstainee, Dawn confusedly stumbles headfirst into sexuality and realizes something's not quite right with her ladyparts.
Teeth's admittedly corny spin on the Vagina Dentata myth throws us some none-too-subtle hints as to why Dawn's unmentionables seem to be harboring some nasty chompers. First there's the ubiquity of the nuclear cooling towers looming above the suburban idyll, as well as a classroom discussion regarding Darwinism, Creationism, and freak mutation which comes off gracefully as a sucker punch. All the menfolk who lose digits and members to these titular teeth are certainly deserving of feminine retribution, but the pictures suffers for lack of a truly satisfying villain. Even the cause of big bro's monstrous priggishness is illuminated in flashback.
Instead, Teeth acts as a quasi coming of age tale through the introspection and depth of Jess Weixler's performance (rare for a fright flick) combined with Lichtenstein's sly tone. The abstinence kids are an easy target, ripe for pratfalls, yet while they are treated to a fair amount of ribbing there's a noticeable absence of malicious mockery. The film is fun, but its not exactly a balls-out riot either, relying on solid ironic humor and jittery suspense scenes. There's a genuine sense of satisfaction in Dawn's eventual acceptance, and appreciation of her unique form, and while there's plenty to be said about the psychological implications of womens' body and sexuality issues as presented in the film, I'll leave that to Freud and continue to chuckle as our blonde heroin looks on dispassionately at a hungry Rottweiler scarfing up a freshly mutilated penis.
Review by Brett A. Scieszka
2007
While relieving myself in the mens room following a screening of this nifty genre oddity I realized how easily this dangerously campy picture could have teetered into complete schlock, causing theaters full of NYU jocks to grab their crotches in mock agony and hoot and holler at the screen. As I stood there pissing contentedly I smiled as I heard a card-carrying bro turn to his friend and say "dude, that was awkward."
Teenage Dawn is an allstar speaker in her local abstinence club, and her wholesome life is rounded out by a loving mother and stepfather. Home-life would be perfect were it not marred by the presence of her sodomy-obsessed metalhead step brother (complete with spike labret piercing!). While crushed out on a hunky fellow abstainee, Dawn confusedly stumbles headfirst into sexuality and realizes something's not quite right with her ladyparts.
Teeth's admittedly corny spin on the Vagina Dentata myth throws us some none-too-subtle hints as to why Dawn's unmentionables seem to be harboring some nasty chompers. First there's the ubiquity of the nuclear cooling towers looming above the suburban idyll, as well as a classroom discussion regarding Darwinism, Creationism, and freak mutation which comes off gracefully as a sucker punch. All the menfolk who lose digits and members to these titular teeth are certainly deserving of feminine retribution, but the pictures suffers for lack of a truly satisfying villain. Even the cause of big bro's monstrous priggishness is illuminated in flashback.
Instead, Teeth acts as a quasi coming of age tale through the introspection and depth of Jess Weixler's performance (rare for a fright flick) combined with Lichtenstein's sly tone. The abstinence kids are an easy target, ripe for pratfalls, yet while they are treated to a fair amount of ribbing there's a noticeable absence of malicious mockery. The film is fun, but its not exactly a balls-out riot either, relying on solid ironic humor and jittery suspense scenes. There's a genuine sense of satisfaction in Dawn's eventual acceptance, and appreciation of her unique form, and while there's plenty to be said about the psychological implications of womens' body and sexuality issues as presented in the film, I'll leave that to Freud and continue to chuckle as our blonde heroin looks on dispassionately at a hungry Rottweiler scarfing up a freshly mutilated penis.
Review by Brett A. Scieszka
Monday, February 11, 2008
10 Best Films of 2007
10.) Hot Fuzz
The exemplary duo of Wright and Pegg manage to hit another fanboy pastiche out of the park. This action film parody remains firmly rooted in comic soil, yet delivers the "fuck yeahs" as rapidly and readily as any installment of the Die Hard franchise. A supposedly "surprise" ending will seem ironically believable to anyone whose grown up in upper/middle class suburban America. Meanwhile, the welcome inclusion of graphic violence is at times surprising, but always entertaining, which seems to be the bottom line for these two. Wright/Pegg have all the makings of Quentin Tarantino's logical evolutionary leap forward: a film-history obsessed duo eager to reflect our popular cinema in a decidedly more commercial way, without all the foot-fetishism and stray navel-gazing.
9.) Grindhouse
Its a bit embarrassing that this gutsy, synthetic B-movie hybrid was marketed with creased, weathered posters, and a digital patina of scratch and wear considering that, for the most part, these pictures stand up admirably on their own. Rodriguez's Planet Terror is the belle of this ball with a biohazard induced zombie outbreak that is liberally peppered with such charming genre touches as a prominently featured jar of severed testicles, and the lovely Rose McGowan outfitted with a high caliber pegleg. Tarantino's Deathproof is definitely the more "meta" of the two with its heavy hot-dose of hipster babble, and meandering auteurist approach to the grindhouse ethos. His first outing as Director of Photography is not to be trifled with however, as the fresh compositions and color treatments convey all the exuberance of the motormouthed director himself. The faux trailers, guest directed by some of genre cinema's best, are the icing on the corpse...er, cake.
8.) I'm Not There
This year Todd Haynes gave us a film as baroque and unkempt as the mop (more of a mistreated broom really) atop Dylan's head. Eight incarnations of the singer are stitched together in what thankfully results in a complex engagement with celebrity in lieu of cowardly hero worship. The more far-out Dylans, a black blues-playing youth, the poet Rimbaud, and an age-mellowed Billie the Kid, are nicely anchored by the familiar rockstar/actor, and Cate Blanchett's stringy-hiared artist under duress. Special note is deserved for Charlotte Gainsbourg who has the tremendous ability to switch between potently appealing feminine confidence, to haggard, defeated weakness, not just from scene to scene, but from shot to shot. Hers is the best performance of the film, and is sadly buried beneath the ensemble.
7.) Eastern Promises
In its simplest terms, David's Cronenberg's Russian Mafia flick is an auteurist stab at the gangster genre - a tantalizing prospect since the viscera-loving Canuck's later work is more marked by its stylization than categorization. While A History of Violence had its mob elements, these were presented more as dress-up and pastiche: a foil to coax out Viggo Mortensen's dark side. This time around, thanks to an orphaned-baby Macguffin, a (rather bland) Naomi Watts wades into a scuzzy world where the viewer is treated to secretly kept women, grotesque stiffs stowed away in freezers, and an epic, nude bathhouse battle. The latter scene, with a brazenly vulnerable Mortenesen locked in mortal combat with two gorillas definitely lives up to the critical hype. Let's see perennial big-boxoffice actioners Bruce Willis, or Jamie Foxx try and pull of a scene that raw. Here's looking forward to a Cronenberg western, or even a Cronenberg musical. One can hope after all.
6.) Persepolis
The most beautifully animated film this year springs forth from Marjane Satrapi's illuminating life story and her larger than life ego. From the heartbreaking hardships suffered under hardline regime and violent revolutions, to alienating languish in exile, Satrapi evokes sympathy for herself and her country generally free of maudlin theatrics. Simultaneously, her rebellion (innocent and unsophisticated though it may be) is illustrated in a most endearing and honest fashion. Through Iron Maiden cassettes and leather jackets, through booze-fueled underground parties with shed burqas, dancing, and makeup comes an earnest defiance, and meaningful rejection of authority. It may have a little of that Bon Jovi cheese-factor, but kicking out the jams proves to be an inspiring weapon against Sharia: Spuds MacKenzie meets Che Guevara.
5.) Margot at the Wedding
I'll admit a soft spot for that specific type of East Coast intellectual melodrama, ideally directed by a nebbish in hornrimmeds. Myopic or not, Noah Baumbach seems to have picked up those frames, and carries them admirably with Margot at the Wedding. Watching the Baby-Booming "me" generation flounder in coping with the mediocrity of an ordinary existence is delectable in its schadenfreude, yet also provides the kind of embarrassingly solipsistic release us regular Joes/Janes don't always have access to. Its a vicarious kind of pleasure, whose Bergmanesque grievances are always most appropriately played along the coast of Long Island's grey ocean. Baumbach revels in muddy character morality, and while I think the cruelty of Kidman's Margot is overly exaggerated, there's still a recognizability that goes all the way down to her stupid fuchsia hat. The biggest wart here is Jack Black, who I've yet to see fully succeed in a non-comedic role, as his overbearing quality tends to betray a subtle or nuanced performance. Finally, the film's expired-stock aesthetic is a surprisingly inspired choice. A dark, grainy existence is only fair for characters that can't, or chose not to, see the forrest for the trees.
4.) The Host
I'll happily raise my glass to fresh blood and vitality in the worn-out monster movie genre. And what a reinvigoration it is! Focusing on a central family that is hopelessly dysfunctional yet limitlessly endearing, director Bong doles out unctuous globs of comedy and pathos in equal measure to create a film with as much emotional verism as madcap fantasy. The multi-mandibled amphibioid biohazard springing from the Haan may not be rendered in the best CGI money can buy, but he Animators deserve kudos anyhow for their ballsiness in bringing this beastie's rampage against humanity in cold, clear daylight. As if the monster weren't a formidable enough foe, the real baddies come in the form of pasty-faced Orwellian americans in banana-yellow suits (several shades of Romero's The Crazies). How remarkable and telling that an American audience embraced a foreign film in which the U.S. plays the villain (veiled or otherwise). Novel and fresh use of cliched slo-mo, a cattle-driving score, and velvety tracking shots put the polish on a picture that appeals to the fragile, narcoleptic, fuck-up nodding off in all of us.
3.) There Will Be Blood
PT Anderson delivers his first mature film in the form a dry and dirty American epic culled from the muckraking of Upton Sinclaire and made flesh by the world's (arguably) most important actor. Daniel Day Lewis' Daniel Plainview is certainly a cad, but his twinkle-eyed charisma, moustache-wax and boot-polish slickness, and animal cunning speak to our collectively suppressed Nietzschean bully. And we love him for it. Robert Elswit's visceral cinematography is a soiled valentine to barren, inorganic climes - the photography of fingernails that stay dirty in defiance of soap and water. Paul Dano's characterization of a small-town preacher whose questionably trained sermons inherit a rich vein of backwoods gothic, is superb. While diminutive in size he's Plainview's peer in spirit and provides the perfect lightning rod for Lewis to crash against. Of course Plainview's relationship with his son is of interest, but babying audiences with a flashback shot after the final confrontation between father and son does the film no favors. Anderson always seemed to have talent in working with actors, and its encouraging that he's finally done something worthwhile with it.
2.) No Country For Old Men
The Coen Brothers' latest picture is a neo-noir Western existing in a nearly wordless vacuum with the inhospitality of the moon. Joel and Ethan again prove their mastery of stylistic, yet surprisingly unsensational violence in this cooly casual cinema of the local butcher hacking away at a side of beef, or the matter-of-fact presence of roadkill. This year Rob Zombie was supposedly directing Michael Myers, but it turned out to be "in name" only as the blank evil of Javier Bardem's bogeyman was easily the more terrifying portrait of singularly driven malevolence. The brothers Coen love a sordid morality play, and as Tommy Lee Jones' tired sherif rhapsodizes on the copious amount of blood spilled into dry earth it brings to mind Fargo's Frances McDormand's attempts to rationalize the seemingly inhuman brutality of Peter Stormare's character. No Country For Old Men is a return to that disillusioned melancholy, the realization of what horrors our fellow man is capable of, for such insignificant rewards.
1.) This is England
This Is England is an odd and lovely duck indeed, an arthouse picture indifferent to the visual poetics of a Terrance Malick or a Lynne Ramsay, and a period picture that uses its time frame in service of narrative as opposed to cinematic spectacle. This celebration of an admittedly photogenic subculture rarely devolves into fashion fetishization, and the ugly, perpetually snarling antagonist is presented as something beyond a one dimensional monster, a believably vulnerable human. The scene in which a shoe shopping trip ends with Shaun unable to get a pair of the archly coveted Dr. Martin's boots is a prickly bit of close-to-home nostalgia, bringing back memories of that developmental stage where you know (or at least think know) what's cool, though your body hasn't caught up to the fit.
Compiled by Brett A. Scieszka
The exemplary duo of Wright and Pegg manage to hit another fanboy pastiche out of the park. This action film parody remains firmly rooted in comic soil, yet delivers the "fuck yeahs" as rapidly and readily as any installment of the Die Hard franchise. A supposedly "surprise" ending will seem ironically believable to anyone whose grown up in upper/middle class suburban America. Meanwhile, the welcome inclusion of graphic violence is at times surprising, but always entertaining, which seems to be the bottom line for these two. Wright/Pegg have all the makings of Quentin Tarantino's logical evolutionary leap forward: a film-history obsessed duo eager to reflect our popular cinema in a decidedly more commercial way, without all the foot-fetishism and stray navel-gazing.
9.) Grindhouse
Its a bit embarrassing that this gutsy, synthetic B-movie hybrid was marketed with creased, weathered posters, and a digital patina of scratch and wear considering that, for the most part, these pictures stand up admirably on their own. Rodriguez's Planet Terror is the belle of this ball with a biohazard induced zombie outbreak that is liberally peppered with such charming genre touches as a prominently featured jar of severed testicles, and the lovely Rose McGowan outfitted with a high caliber pegleg. Tarantino's Deathproof is definitely the more "meta" of the two with its heavy hot-dose of hipster babble, and meandering auteurist approach to the grindhouse ethos. His first outing as Director of Photography is not to be trifled with however, as the fresh compositions and color treatments convey all the exuberance of the motormouthed director himself. The faux trailers, guest directed by some of genre cinema's best, are the icing on the corpse...er, cake.
8.) I'm Not There
This year Todd Haynes gave us a film as baroque and unkempt as the mop (more of a mistreated broom really) atop Dylan's head. Eight incarnations of the singer are stitched together in what thankfully results in a complex engagement with celebrity in lieu of cowardly hero worship. The more far-out Dylans, a black blues-playing youth, the poet Rimbaud, and an age-mellowed Billie the Kid, are nicely anchored by the familiar rockstar/actor, and Cate Blanchett's stringy-hiared artist under duress. Special note is deserved for Charlotte Gainsbourg who has the tremendous ability to switch between potently appealing feminine confidence, to haggard, defeated weakness, not just from scene to scene, but from shot to shot. Hers is the best performance of the film, and is sadly buried beneath the ensemble.
7.) Eastern Promises
In its simplest terms, David's Cronenberg's Russian Mafia flick is an auteurist stab at the gangster genre - a tantalizing prospect since the viscera-loving Canuck's later work is more marked by its stylization than categorization. While A History of Violence had its mob elements, these were presented more as dress-up and pastiche: a foil to coax out Viggo Mortensen's dark side. This time around, thanks to an orphaned-baby Macguffin, a (rather bland) Naomi Watts wades into a scuzzy world where the viewer is treated to secretly kept women, grotesque stiffs stowed away in freezers, and an epic, nude bathhouse battle. The latter scene, with a brazenly vulnerable Mortenesen locked in mortal combat with two gorillas definitely lives up to the critical hype. Let's see perennial big-boxoffice actioners Bruce Willis, or Jamie Foxx try and pull of a scene that raw. Here's looking forward to a Cronenberg western, or even a Cronenberg musical. One can hope after all.
6.) Persepolis
The most beautifully animated film this year springs forth from Marjane Satrapi's illuminating life story and her larger than life ego. From the heartbreaking hardships suffered under hardline regime and violent revolutions, to alienating languish in exile, Satrapi evokes sympathy for herself and her country generally free of maudlin theatrics. Simultaneously, her rebellion (innocent and unsophisticated though it may be) is illustrated in a most endearing and honest fashion. Through Iron Maiden cassettes and leather jackets, through booze-fueled underground parties with shed burqas, dancing, and makeup comes an earnest defiance, and meaningful rejection of authority. It may have a little of that Bon Jovi cheese-factor, but kicking out the jams proves to be an inspiring weapon against Sharia: Spuds MacKenzie meets Che Guevara.
5.) Margot at the Wedding
I'll admit a soft spot for that specific type of East Coast intellectual melodrama, ideally directed by a nebbish in hornrimmeds. Myopic or not, Noah Baumbach seems to have picked up those frames, and carries them admirably with Margot at the Wedding. Watching the Baby-Booming "me" generation flounder in coping with the mediocrity of an ordinary existence is delectable in its schadenfreude, yet also provides the kind of embarrassingly solipsistic release us regular Joes/Janes don't always have access to. Its a vicarious kind of pleasure, whose Bergmanesque grievances are always most appropriately played along the coast of Long Island's grey ocean. Baumbach revels in muddy character morality, and while I think the cruelty of Kidman's Margot is overly exaggerated, there's still a recognizability that goes all the way down to her stupid fuchsia hat. The biggest wart here is Jack Black, who I've yet to see fully succeed in a non-comedic role, as his overbearing quality tends to betray a subtle or nuanced performance. Finally, the film's expired-stock aesthetic is a surprisingly inspired choice. A dark, grainy existence is only fair for characters that can't, or chose not to, see the forrest for the trees.
4.) The Host
I'll happily raise my glass to fresh blood and vitality in the worn-out monster movie genre. And what a reinvigoration it is! Focusing on a central family that is hopelessly dysfunctional yet limitlessly endearing, director Bong doles out unctuous globs of comedy and pathos in equal measure to create a film with as much emotional verism as madcap fantasy. The multi-mandibled amphibioid biohazard springing from the Haan may not be rendered in the best CGI money can buy, but he Animators deserve kudos anyhow for their ballsiness in bringing this beastie's rampage against humanity in cold, clear daylight. As if the monster weren't a formidable enough foe, the real baddies come in the form of pasty-faced Orwellian americans in banana-yellow suits (several shades of Romero's The Crazies). How remarkable and telling that an American audience embraced a foreign film in which the U.S. plays the villain (veiled or otherwise). Novel and fresh use of cliched slo-mo, a cattle-driving score, and velvety tracking shots put the polish on a picture that appeals to the fragile, narcoleptic, fuck-up nodding off in all of us.
3.) There Will Be Blood
PT Anderson delivers his first mature film in the form a dry and dirty American epic culled from the muckraking of Upton Sinclaire and made flesh by the world's (arguably) most important actor. Daniel Day Lewis' Daniel Plainview is certainly a cad, but his twinkle-eyed charisma, moustache-wax and boot-polish slickness, and animal cunning speak to our collectively suppressed Nietzschean bully. And we love him for it. Robert Elswit's visceral cinematography is a soiled valentine to barren, inorganic climes - the photography of fingernails that stay dirty in defiance of soap and water. Paul Dano's characterization of a small-town preacher whose questionably trained sermons inherit a rich vein of backwoods gothic, is superb. While diminutive in size he's Plainview's peer in spirit and provides the perfect lightning rod for Lewis to crash against. Of course Plainview's relationship with his son is of interest, but babying audiences with a flashback shot after the final confrontation between father and son does the film no favors. Anderson always seemed to have talent in working with actors, and its encouraging that he's finally done something worthwhile with it.
2.) No Country For Old Men
The Coen Brothers' latest picture is a neo-noir Western existing in a nearly wordless vacuum with the inhospitality of the moon. Joel and Ethan again prove their mastery of stylistic, yet surprisingly unsensational violence in this cooly casual cinema of the local butcher hacking away at a side of beef, or the matter-of-fact presence of roadkill. This year Rob Zombie was supposedly directing Michael Myers, but it turned out to be "in name" only as the blank evil of Javier Bardem's bogeyman was easily the more terrifying portrait of singularly driven malevolence. The brothers Coen love a sordid morality play, and as Tommy Lee Jones' tired sherif rhapsodizes on the copious amount of blood spilled into dry earth it brings to mind Fargo's Frances McDormand's attempts to rationalize the seemingly inhuman brutality of Peter Stormare's character. No Country For Old Men is a return to that disillusioned melancholy, the realization of what horrors our fellow man is capable of, for such insignificant rewards.
1.) This is England
This Is England is an odd and lovely duck indeed, an arthouse picture indifferent to the visual poetics of a Terrance Malick or a Lynne Ramsay, and a period picture that uses its time frame in service of narrative as opposed to cinematic spectacle. This celebration of an admittedly photogenic subculture rarely devolves into fashion fetishization, and the ugly, perpetually snarling antagonist is presented as something beyond a one dimensional monster, a believably vulnerable human. The scene in which a shoe shopping trip ends with Shaun unable to get a pair of the archly coveted Dr. Martin's boots is a prickly bit of close-to-home nostalgia, bringing back memories of that developmental stage where you know (or at least think know) what's cool, though your body hasn't caught up to the fit.
Compiled by Brett A. Scieszka
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Grindhouse
Robert Rodriguez / Quentin Tarantino / Guests
2007
Initially the biggest issue with 'Grindhouse' is the sheer impossibility of completely recreating grindhouse cinema. Not only were ambitions and production values (rightly) set high, but in an all but DVD-driven market there is no hope of audiences flocking to theaters for basic, low-budget exploitation . In this sense, 'Grindhouse' is a paradox in origin. Pastiche and parody become the best one could hope for, but Tarantino/Rodriguez achieve more than that, which makes me wish they had opted for a more fine arts, gallery-oriented film, an exploration of the history, an evocation of the grindhouse feel.
Wistful pretension aside, both films on this double bill manage to deliver. 'Planet Terror,' Rodriguez's opener, is the better of the two. The film contains, but is not limited to, flesh-eating zombies, a renegade military squad, a jar full of severed testicles, and of course, Rose McGowan with a machine-gun pegleg. This fantastic genre outing is high on cheeky style, chock full of gross-out makeup effects (all hail Greg Nicotero!), and full of wink-wink references for the nerds. Its almost embarrassing that a gutsy genre plot like this needs to be marketed in such a self referential package, considering the film stands up fine on its own.
Tarantino's production is more problematic. In it, Kurt Russell stalks various groups of girls in his tricked-out muscle car, eventually killing them in collisions. Its quite a sexual thrill for him after all. 'Deathproof' is far more meta in terms of a grindhouse style film. For a flick about high octane automotive mayhem, it is extremely slow paced, which is a lot to ask from an audience that has already sat through one feature. The real failure here is in the seemingly endless dialogue scenes, completely uninteresting, and hackneyed. I don't want to say that the 'Tarantino style' has shot its wad, but most of the hipster talk comes off as a bad parody of the guy who directed 'Jackie Brown.' Ole' Quentin went behind the camera himself for this one, and while the footage is absolutely gorgeous in its freshly amateur compositions, and treated colors, I think this could be the cause of the story's shortcomings.
As a package 'Grindhouse' really shines with its small touches. The retro 'coming attractions' and 'feature presentation' title cards and the unforgettable faux trailers, made by some of the finest names in genre filmmaking, are highlights in and of themselves. A special mention should go to Eli Roth for his 'Thanksgiving' trailer, its not to be missed.
Review by Brett A. Scieszka
2007
Initially the biggest issue with 'Grindhouse' is the sheer impossibility of completely recreating grindhouse cinema. Not only were ambitions and production values (rightly) set high, but in an all but DVD-driven market there is no hope of audiences flocking to theaters for basic, low-budget exploitation . In this sense, 'Grindhouse' is a paradox in origin. Pastiche and parody become the best one could hope for, but Tarantino/Rodriguez achieve more than that, which makes me wish they had opted for a more fine arts, gallery-oriented film, an exploration of the history, an evocation of the grindhouse feel.
Wistful pretension aside, both films on this double bill manage to deliver. 'Planet Terror,' Rodriguez's opener, is the better of the two. The film contains, but is not limited to, flesh-eating zombies, a renegade military squad, a jar full of severed testicles, and of course, Rose McGowan with a machine-gun pegleg. This fantastic genre outing is high on cheeky style, chock full of gross-out makeup effects (all hail Greg Nicotero!), and full of wink-wink references for the nerds. Its almost embarrassing that a gutsy genre plot like this needs to be marketed in such a self referential package, considering the film stands up fine on its own.
Tarantino's production is more problematic. In it, Kurt Russell stalks various groups of girls in his tricked-out muscle car, eventually killing them in collisions. Its quite a sexual thrill for him after all. 'Deathproof' is far more meta in terms of a grindhouse style film. For a flick about high octane automotive mayhem, it is extremely slow paced, which is a lot to ask from an audience that has already sat through one feature. The real failure here is in the seemingly endless dialogue scenes, completely uninteresting, and hackneyed. I don't want to say that the 'Tarantino style' has shot its wad, but most of the hipster talk comes off as a bad parody of the guy who directed 'Jackie Brown.' Ole' Quentin went behind the camera himself for this one, and while the footage is absolutely gorgeous in its freshly amateur compositions, and treated colors, I think this could be the cause of the story's shortcomings.
As a package 'Grindhouse' really shines with its small touches. The retro 'coming attractions' and 'feature presentation' title cards and the unforgettable faux trailers, made by some of the finest names in genre filmmaking, are highlights in and of themselves. A special mention should go to Eli Roth for his 'Thanksgiving' trailer, its not to be missed.
Review by Brett A. Scieszka
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