Ten recent reviews

Grand Hotel (dir. Edmund Goulding, 1932) -

Excellent ensemble drama, with Garbo fine enough, but even her role as a diva ballerina is upstaged here by both John Barrymore and Joan Crawford in less flashy roles given sharper dialogue. But this one's more about ensemble acting than any individual's role, fine as many of those individuals may be. A ritzy hotel in Berlin is the epicenter of several stories that intertwine and tangle together, including the two most compelling: that of a refined thief after a wealthy (and moody) ballerina's jewels, and a secretary who can't stand the businessman she works for but is too professional to let him realize it. Drama and comedy build out of there, both pretty damn brilliantly, I might add, with neither one taking the dominant role in the proceedings, each always making room for the other. It's just another great one from Golden Age Hollywood, and this is the sort of film that helps you understand why it's called that.

Phantom (dir. F.W. Murnau, 1922) -

Like Val Lewton's Ghost Ship, I could not hide my initial disappointment over the fact that I was watching a film by an acknowledged master of suspense, horror, and the otherworldly and the current viewing had nothing to do with dead spirits. But just as with Lewton's film, this one won me over with its drama of a deluded would-be poet lead on by a mentor to believe that he's a surefire success and can proceed directly from dire poverty to the high life. Needless to say, things don't work out as planned, and Murnau's expressionistic approach to showing the poor guy's mental collapse (OK, it's not quite as extreme as that) is fine filmmaking. Don't go in looking for a sinister follow-up to Nosferatu and you'll do just fine.

Let the Right One In (dir. Tomas Anderson, 2008) -

As with any film combining vampire mythology and coming-of-age stories - oh wait, there aren't any beside this one! That alone of course is not reason to praise this and for a good half hour of the film I wasn't sure I liked it, but as it adds on layers, gets to know both central character and vampire better, as it reveals its sly sense of humor, I really got there with it. The visual sense of the film is probably my least favorite aspect - it's somewhat cold and flat, though that's also something of the tone of the drama for the first portion, so I guess it's fitting. Let me rephrase - a vampire film/coming-of-age story shot like a police procedural film imbued with a subtle humor that masks the cold reality of the central relationship is what the film promises. And accomplishes nicely I'd say. A good one.

Il Bidone (dir. Federico Fellini, 1955) -

Broderick Crawford is the best part of the film - the sorta leader of a group of hustlers who mostly prey on hicks in the rural regions who fall for their shenanigans. I wish Fellini had taken the time to develop his relationship with his daughter more - it provides such a turning point for his character that it feels a little underbaked to me. Crawford makes the best of what little screen time he has across from her though, saying almost enough just with his pained look that maybe if Fellini had even just lingered on him with one more heartbroken shot it might have made the whole third act development totally believable for me. Even so, I can accept it in the context of the film and move on - it's very nearly an excellent film even in spite of this. Maybe this is why he stopped relying on plot to move his characters around, realized that they were interesting enough in his hands that we're fine just spending the time being around them and that their problems got through to us by osmosis without having to be spelled out.

The Cars That Ate Paris (dir. Peter Weir, 1974) -

Part of Weir's weird (not-exactly)-trilogy, preceding both Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave and far stranger than either. Far less successful, too, though certainly not for lack of ambition. Here's a film about a small town in a remote area of Australia where the entire GNP of the town seems to stem from running strangers off the road and salvaging their belongings, lobotomizing those who happen to survive the "accidents." That's quite enough for a weird little film, but Weir wants more - there's some sort of odd, 18th century quality to the way things are run in the town with its paternal mayor; there's an undeveloped story in which said mayor wants to "adopt" one of the survivors as his own, possibly grooming him for future leadership of the town's enterprise; and there's also a brewing conflict between the town's elders and the rambunctious youth of the town who participate in the running of things, but seem to be brewing their own Mad Max styled gang of costumed thugs and souped-up vehicles loaded with weapons (though this precedes George Miller's film by about 5 years). I mean, it's not that it's not an interesting mix of ideas, it's just that they never jell into a cohesive whole - it'd be nice if Weir picked one of these ideas and ran with it, saving the others for future films or just paring it down to the strongest stuff and letting it lie. Fun, sure, and really strange, but not great - Weir got better quickly.

Shadows (dir. John Cassavetes, 1959) -

Same year as Breathless, much of the same hand-held immediacy, ground-level realism, and somewhat amateur charm, though Cassavetes still wants you to remain within his drama - no Brechtian address to the audience to remind you you're watching a film. Also no Raoul Coutard to aestheticize the experience, making it - for me - impact that much more. I've seen Breathless maybe twenty times and I still think it's a revolutionary piece of work, seen this only once and I'm absolutely blown away that in a completely separate country, with a different set of principles - though one that very well could have been informed by the writings of the Cahiers du Cinema crowd - Cassavetes and his group have made a work equally revolutionary, every bit as important, and, to be frank, considerably humbler about being such a breakthrough and also refreshingly devoid of Godard's hang-ups about women. I've loved the later Cassavetes films I've seen, but this one's the one that set his shit all in motion. I don't come to this to bury Godard, but I expect to be re-watching this one a lot more for some time.

Orphans of the Storm (dir. D.W. Griffith, 1921) -

Two sisters torn apart in Revolutionary France - makes for a great Griffith film that allows a large canvas for huge scenes (the Revolutionary aspects) and small, personalized touches (meaning the persons of the characters, not so much Griffith's own emotional investment). It's a compelling story, smartly rendered and beautifully shot. Plus, Lillian and Dorothy Gish are superb in the title roles - hard to say one is better than the other because they're both fantastic. It's loaded with beautiful moments too, the kinds of images that stick with you in a way only film can. Historical accuracy may go out the window in favor of the story he wanted to tell, but I for one am in favor of never letting the truth get in the way of a good story. Or a great one.

Slumdog Millionaire (dir. Danny Boyle, 2008) -

Let me keep this short, because I could easily go on about it. I've seen a lot of good and even great films about poor kids living in the streets. This would not rank in or probably even near my top ten of such films, despite reasonably good performances and cinematography. The primary reason it will not is because the story sinks into tediousness for about an hour in the middle - forgetting even about the "destiny" conceit that I knew immediately I was going to just have to swallow as soon as it surfaced. Did it earn the big ending that made the audience break out into applause? No, it absolutely did not earn it, betraying the audience by offering up some decent scenes early on and then winding through a whole lot of nothing until the big ending that apparently caused spontaneous applause amongst many audience members. I don't like reacting to or against hype, I like to just watch a film for its own merits. But the excess of hype around this on invites some reaction - about the film all I can say is "Blah."

The Innocents (dir. Jack Clayton, 1961) -

Now here's the ghost story I wanted both Phantom and Ghost Ship to be! It's good like a filmed ghost story should be, all Gothic design and creepy atmosphere and canted angles and two terrifically cast little kids who must have set the tone for all those dumb "creepy ghost kid voice" films that have come pouring out of Hollywood these days. And this one goes even a notch better than most ghost stories by making it ambiguous - if you can tell me with any certainty that there are ghosts in this film and that it's not all in Deborah Kerr's character's head, you win a special prize. I know that Turn of the Screw makes it clear, but I think the ambiguity here is a strength of the film that is perhaps lacking in the Gothic love story of the novel. It's not perfect, but it's exactly what I wanted.

Edvard Munch (dir. Peter Watkins, 1974) -

Better, I think than the angrily lefty Punishment Park in that it couches its politics - largely concerning women's equality - in a story ostensibly about something else entirely. I also love the structure - a 3+ hour biography about the Norwegian painter Munch intersperses real biographical information alongside speculative dramatic recreations of his life in a mixed up chronology that's shot in documentary style, as though these cameras were present at all the formative moments of his life. But again, I reiterate - while it tells you a lot about Munch, it also tells you as much about the women in his life, their lot in the world and how both the reactionary forces of conservative society and the surprisingly conservative art world Munch travelled in spoke out against strong and independent-minded women, a topic that Munch seems ever on the fence about. And though I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised to see something like this coming from Watkins, I guess I was - the life of Edvard Munch did not seem a likely vehicle for an examination of feminism. That'll teach me to try to pigeonhole Watkins as just one type of radical artist.

Ten recent reviews

I Vitelloni (dir. Federico Fellini, 1953)
A nostalgic look back at boyhood from Fellini? Impossible! OK, maybe not so impossible. In fact, a significant part of his catalog features his memories of provincial youth and this one is perhaps his finest early example of it, centered around a group of friends making that painful transition from their fly-by-night runaround ways into adulthood - most abruptly in the case of Fausto, who is made to marry a young woman he's gotten pregnant instead of following through on his plan of skipping out of town. While they're on honeymoon, the rest of his group scams, schemes, slacks, and dreams big without doing anything about changing their situation. But the specter of their forcibly adult-ed friend hangs over things and they start to worry about really facing up to life. That's basically the thrust of it, though of course in Fellini's hands, he really invests the people with a life that my description lacks. He understands the young, small town dreamers who would like to think they're one big break from turning their lives around and he's in sympathy with their plight, even if he's not uncritical. Before he started making his films into intricate puzzles and three-ring circuses, he made these types of character studies. This is one of the best - possibly the best - of his early works.

Ashes of Time Redux (dir. Wong Kar-Wei, 2008)

Kar-Wei Wong's romantic tangle unwound a bit to be easier to follow and I'm not sure it improves things at all. I found the original version a little tough, but somehow this more circularly organized take on things seems to lose a little of the mystery, even if it's been constructed of the same materials that made up the other version. I liked it the way it was, I guess, even if it meant that I had to come back a few times to really get to the heart of the film. Given Kar-Wei's strengths in constructing multiple layers and multiple timelines in his best works, I'm wondering just why this one ended up being re-worked. It's still a good film and it was a treat to see it again, but I prefer it the way it was.

Ghost Ship (dir. Mark Robson, 1946)

Another solid Val Lewton cheapie that fulfills its ambitions to being a good film, this time without as many of the supernatural/thriller elements that are present in most of his other films of the period. As always, there are 'A' performances from 'B' actors, a script that's way stronger than the unpromising and misleading title would have you believe, and an atmosphere of creepiness even as it works toward a more conventional drama. A seaman takes to a new ship helmed by a notoriously hard captain only to find that he's beyond "hard," he's nuts. But at sea, with the cap'n in charge, what can you do about it? That's the dilemma facing our hero here, and it's done nicely in the film. It's more about how this kind of life can suck out a person's soul, not about said souls returning from the beyond. Maybe less exciting than some of Lewton's other great films of the period, but it's certainly worth seeing.

Ichi the Killer (dir. Takashi Miike, 2001)

I can't figure Miike out. Certainly he's got a flair for the outrageous, and this is by far the most outrageous of his four films that I've seen, but I don't know if he's got anything up his sleeve beyond shock value. I mean, here's a film about a timid and lethal assassin (Ichi), motivated and manipulated by a man tangentially involved in the Yakuza. The second man's motives are dirty, Ichi doesn't exactly draw our sympathy, and the ample time spent with the masochistic Yakuza boss doesn't really draw us into his psyche at all. I guess that's kind of the deal with Miike's films that I've seen - he's got a set of ideas that get no more complex than your average comic book; a character has his simple motivation and that's enough to power the film for him. There's no pathos, nothing believable to grab on to, just a flashy show of violence, blood and guts that's maybe entertaining but hardly something that can make me think much about the characters involved, much less anything beyond the confines of the film.

Tokyo Twilight (dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 1957)
This is as overtly (melo)dramatic as any Ozu I've ever seen. That's not to say that it's not good, just that there are dramatic outbursts onscreen that are uncharacteristic of his work and come off as pretty startling and unexpected. Two sisters - one troubled and pregnant, the other separated from her husband - live with their father while they attempt to sort out their lives and deal with the knowledge that the mother they have long believed is dead may well be alive. I've read complaints about the plot, about the drama, but it doesn't really bother me, the film is still shot beautifully and anything with both Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara in it is gonna be worth my time, if perhaps not yours. It's not great, for sure, but it's certainly worth a look, and for those who find his films a little dry, it may even be a good way in to understanding his world better.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (dir. Nicholas Stoller, 2008)

Shall we just accept that I'm probably going to enjoy everything coming out of Judd Apatow's stable of Freaks & Geeks alumni and move on from there? Let me try for a second to explain why though - the thing that Apatow has fostered in his young group of writers that makes his films exceptional (within the confines of comedies centered around insecure young men) is that he encourages them to make character rather than plot the central focus of the films. And so here we have Jason Segel's variation on his F&G character - a slightly weird and obsessive wounded romantic who wants to get into a good relationship but has some trouble figuring out exactly how to make any headway with the opposite sex or any understanding of how odd he really is. So if the film shows women finding him somehow irresistible when his charms actually seem quite resistible, he's still got charms, like most of the leads in the Apatow films. It was funny for sure (especially Russell Brand's egocentric rock star), I bought the drama with a minimal suspension of disbelief, and I think that there's a good solid grounding in writing character here that makes the film far better than it could've been. Maybe it coulda been cut down a bit, maybe it coulda been sharpened, but I always prefer character-driven films to plot-driven ones, so I might have liked it considerably less if so.

Judgment at Nuremberg (dir. Stanley Kramer, 1961)
An exceptional pair of performances anchor this film to prevent it from becoming too preachy - Burt Lancaster and the great Spencer Tracy both set about giving some of the best work of their careers as (respectively) one of the Nazi judges on trial and the American judge brought in to act as part of the tribunal trying them. (Please note that this is not a slap at the rest of the supporting cast, nearly all of whom do superb work here, just that these two roles call for more from the actors, both of whom rise to the occasion.) Where it could easily have wandered into a mere recreation of Nazi horrors and condemnation of them, it's aiming higher, more broadly about the act of making sure that we do not let these things go once they're supposedly over and done with, ready to be buried. Nearly everyone in the film encourages Tracy's character to let bygones be bygones, drop things and acquit the judges but he persists, he wants to understand especially how a judge like Lancaster's moralist - and by extension anybody - could slide to condemning people to concentration camps from which they'd never emerge. The viewer gets to understand it too, understand that each compromise, each lie told to the self to accomodate things moves everyone closer to the atrocities that are only late in the film explicitly shown. I'm not fan of courtroom dramas, but this one really got me.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (dir. Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger, 1943)Another great one from my chronological examination of Powell and Pressburger. Though it is perhaps not quite as exciting as 49th Parallel - and that's fine - it's yet another nuanced character study, which is what makes their films so great, or at least so interesting to me. Maybe it's a little long at 2 1/2 hours, taking time getting to where it's going in fleshing out the people involved, but there's never a scene where it feels like I don't want to be spending time with Blimp, with any of Deborah Kerr's three characters, or with Anton Walbrook's Kretschmar-Schuldorff - they're all so brilliantly drawn and acted that I don't mind that extra time. Anyway, it's a wonderful character study, putting aside even the extraordinary circumstances of the filming. Not as dazzling as I had expected for a wartime epic, but perhaps all the more affecting for the smart portrayals that it puts across that can cut across time like this.

City Lights (dir. Charlie Chaplin, 1931)
I've always found Chaplin just a hair too sentimental for my tastes, even while being fully engaged by his works - love the gags a lot of the time, but am not always on the side of The Tramp, as I think I'm supposed to be. That doesn't apply here. I found this brilliant throughout, totally engrossed and drawn in to the story beginning to end. The boxing scene in particular is great - I'd seen it before out of context and loved it then - but really, the bittersweet romance, the ups and downs with his friend the drunken millionaire, the ambiguous ending, they all add up to the most consistently entertaining and emotionally engaging of his films that I've seen yet. Helps too that I saw it with the Colorado Symphony performing the score live along with the film. Somehow Gold Rush and Modern Times both seem to have eclipsed this in the Chaplin canon and I don't know why, I think it's the best of the three, and though I haven't seen his entire catalog of full lengths I can't imagine them getting better than this. But unlike the reactions I had to the other two films just mentioned this one has made me really want to make it a priority to see them.

Katyn (dir. Andrzej Wajda, 2007)

Bringing an event heretofore not very public, especially something on the scale of the massacre that forms the main event of this film, almost automatically lends itself to a powerful cinematic adaptation. But it is at times too automatic as filmmaking, letting the event and story itself carry the weight of the film. There's no doubt that this was an event that partially defined the Polish experience of WWII (you can get a hint of its significance just by a quick look at the numerous Polish reviews on IMDB) - an entire generation of Polish officers are rounded up via a secret pact between the Nazis and the Russian army, then executed and buried in mass graves in the Katyn forest, an event later blamed by each entity by the other - but I found that it failed to draw me in the way a film trading in such heavily emotional material should have, relying not on Wajda's skills, but expecting story alone to carry it. In this, it's like dozens of films before it - a well-made, strong but curiously uninvolving film about a weighty, meaningful subject that means a lot to everyone who made it. The seriousness that the film has put across confers a lot of gravity to audiences, but despite fine cinematography, good performances, and a crafty script that juggles several timelines, I find that I'd rather go to his war films of the 50's and read a book about this topic.