Ten recent reviews

Chichi Ariki (dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 1942)

A father and son (mother deceased from before the movie starts) move around over a period of 20 years, with father trying to make a good life for his son but limiting their personal relationship in the process by making choices that keep them apart and unable to form familial bonds. It's really that simple, but as always with Ozu the beauty is in the details - the stunning framing and cinematography choices, the superb acting (Chishu Ryu especially, but also Shûji Sano as the older son), the dialogue that cuts right through the melodrama that drenches 98% of films and gets to the heart of human interaction. Really a beautiful thing by someone I'm starting to think may end up as my all-time favorite director. Well, top 3 anyway.

Hulk (dir. Ang Lee, 2003)

Another Ang Lee exploration of a love that's not just unrequited, but can never happen. He's all about tragic romance like that. But also like most Lee films, there's a conflict between parents and children - a disconnect really, that keeps them apart, ultimately resulting in conflicts when they're forced by circumstance to confront each other. Do I like it as much as Crouching Tiger? As much as The Ice Storm? Brokeback Mountain? No, not quite, but it's right in there with his basic thematic material and a solidly made film to boot (especially love those very comic-y transitions between scenes contained in comic book frames, better even than Lucas's use of classic adventure serial wipes in Star Wars). Those going in because their favorite catchphrase from their comic book days was "Hulk Smash!" are sure to be disappointed. Those looking for a way for an artist like Ang Lee to insert his ideas into the Marvel Universe will find a lot worth seeing.

The Dark Knight (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2008)

And speaking of adult adaptations of comic book material... Like Hulk this one also takes comic book situations that can be read as absurd or totally unreal and then invests the intelligence in saying "OK, but what if this really happened to you?" and showing the results on screen. What would a flashy comic villain like the Joker be like in the real world? What happens when people get menaced by costumed villains? - they die. They get shot, blown up, etc. And Nolan, like a lot of people making comic movies these days, wants to know how that would impact on real people in the real world. This may be the best comic book movie yet in terms of placing things in a real-world situation, even while retaining a comic-booky feel - how, for example, could The Joker possibly have planted all the bombs in the hospital? But those questions don't come into play when you're watching because it's not the point of the film - once that does happen, what are the choices people will be forced to make as a consequence? And ultimately that's what the film is about from beginning to end. In the first scene there are fake Batmen all around, trying to thwart a drug deal. It's the first step in suggesting that until average citizens feel empowered to take on crime on their own, there will be a need for vigilante justice like The Batman represents. That's the central thrust of the film and Bruce Wayne's dilemma throughout - can the person whose genesis as Batman in Batman Begins find it in himself to give it up? The movie doesn't really make him answer it - it lets him off the hook, I think - but it's the point of the final scenes that could've been edited out for brevity's sake, but would have disrupted the logic of the central idea running through the film. I think it's the right length myself, and right on the money. For what it's worth, I think the political allegory people are drawing from the film right now doesn't hold a lot of water, except that like any film it reflects its time and thus the idea of terrorist action and public response to it are in the air.

Powaqqatsi (dir. Godfrey Reggio, 1988)

A little more pointed than its predecessor and much more focused on people rather than spaces, buildings, and whatnot - though not so much that it actually endorses a strict point of view or course of action, mind you. But it's probably the equal of the first film overall. And musically Philip Glass steps it up a notch, warming up a little from the austerity of Koyaanisqatsi. Altogether it's a worthy sequel, if that's even the right word, taking the ideas of the first film and running with them, showing a real warmth and feel for the people it's portraying on screen, never losing touch with the beauty of either the filmmaking or the subjects in front of the camera. A great one.

Time of the Wolf (dir. Michael Haneke, 2003)

Haneke is quickly moving up the ranks of contemporary filmmakers whose work I love. This one's probably his least harsh film that I've seen, despite some very brutal moments (like the startling first scene of the film), mainly because the severity is undercut by the humanism on display here. In a post-apocalyptic world, what kind of society would emerge? In this particular unspecified post-apocalpyse, we first find something almost exactly like our current world - the people with the weapons and the supplies control the fate of everyone around them, until a different group of people with different ideas of how to do things move in. It's pretty basic as a film idea, but pretty powerful in how it plays out. Onward to Code: Unknown.

She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (dir. John Ford, 1949)

My least favorite of the cavalry trilogy. I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with Mr. John Wayne that the film should've ended before its final coda, with him checking his watch and saying he'd been a civilian for two minutes. Much more ambiguous about his future, much more intriguing if you ask me. But it is Hollywood, and wrapping things in bows is the specialty of the studio system, and Ford knew how to navigate the studios to get what he wanted. So the ending could've been less mushy, but overall the film provides a really great look at a man about to retire and what to do with his life after giving up what he's invested decades doing. I don't find the story as compelling as Fort Apache or the interpersonal relations as interesting as Rio Grande, but it's still a fine film in the Ford catalog, well worth seeing.

Now, Voyager (dir. Irving Rapper, 1942)

Bette Davis turns in a great performance, yes, but my main memory of the film is how absolutely horrid Gladys Cooper is as her mother (I mean, she's great, not horrid, but the character is horrid). I love the basic trajectory of the Davis character, though the transformation from ugly duckling into Cinderella is awfully quick and complete. But still you're rooting for her, want her to not fall back into old patterns, to fall under her mother's thumb once again. The pivotal scene where she finally stands up to mom is pretty much the best thing here, certainly more affecting for me than the perfunctory romances - one of which is (amusingly) severed with a "thank you" and a handshake, the other more profound but doomed from the start. Anyway, a fine model of a strong woman's drama from the classic Hollywood period.


Once (dir. John Carney, 2006)

I'll say this - it's charming. It's hard not to like these two musicians and hard also not to see that the music they end up making together is so much the focus of this story that hardly anything else matters. Romantic angle is underplayed and good - it's not what makes the film go, though chemistry between the two is necessary to make things work. I'm glad that when they went for the montage of things coming together in the studio I didn't feel like fast-forwarding. A movie about making music that's worth seeing, unlike... well, most of them. Is it great? No, but again, it's charming.

WR: Mysteries of the Organism (dir. Dusan Makavejev, 1971)

Wacko stuff, drawing explicit lines between Freud's sexuality studies and Marx's political studies via Wilhelm Reich, about whom I know nothing aside from the perfunctory "documentary" this film offers in its first portion. But overall, the film seems to be saying (over and over) that the sexual revolution equals a political revolution, which apparently upset Reich's admirers enough to have them denounce the film. Still - interesting viewing if not exactly the revolutionary critique I had hoped, with the recurring thread of the revolutionary rhetoric interspersed with real and simulated sex, Stalin, the pseudo-documentary and other stuff to make sure it's not too linear, too programmatic. The overall effect is exhilarating, but still I found myself looking for a little more cohesion.

Rio Grande (dir. John Ford, 1950)

Ford's final Calvary trilogy film might actually run the deepest, even if I prefer Fort Apache. I love the sharply drawn family relationships here and action is kept pretty minimal in favor of the personal stuff - which I'm also usually in favor of. Ensemble is great yet again, and if more time is spent on manly camaraderie than on heavy plotting, I'm down with it - the film gives a great sense of what it at least could have been like in the situation given. Only a conflict between the son and the father who hadn't seen him in 15 years feels like it's missing from the film to me.

Ten recent reviews

Lilith -
Robert Rossen really had a way in his later films with portraying people with mental and emotional problems. Between this and The Hustler, there's a real interest in and affinity for women in serious distress, and he's got a stark visual aspect that corresponds to it. I don't know what the mental health care system was like at the time, but early on in the film it feels just out of wack that Beatty's character could just walk into the job like he does when it's clear that despite being a nice guy, he doesn't have the skills to really do the job. That's probably the chief failing of the film, but in telling his story it's a disbelief I just suspend to see how the story plays out, which is of course tragically and emotionally right on the money, if not 100% accurate in adhering to how things might work in reality (then again, maybe it was a case like his that brought about background checks). Anyway, a really interesting portrayal of people with deep-rooted problems and worth seeing again. Also makes me interested in checking out Rossen's ouevre as it develops from All the President's Men to this, despite the bad reviews abounding on IMDB.

Jamaica Inn -
Hitchcock not exactly in top form though I wouldn't place the blame on him for the film not quite working. In fact, I wouldn't even say the film doesn't work, just that it's not great and that it's not a typical Hitch film. Problems begin and end with the script, I think. We're not given a heroine (or hero) that we can really latch on to - you only like her because she stays strong in the face of some very effective and strongly played villains, from the brutish uncle Joss to the sinister gang leader Thomas to (especially) the utterly repuslive Sir Humphrey Pengallan (played with slavering relish by Charles Laughton). In this, it's not unlike a ton of films where our lead is stiff and wooden and the villains have all the color and remain the center of interest in the films. But it does tend to undercut the plight of our central characters - and thus our interest as viewers - when we don't care as much what happens to them as we care what dastardly things our villains might be up to. Enjoyable in spite of its flaws, I'm glad I wasn't scared off by the bad rep the film has because of it being sandwiched between two far more brilliant works.

Electra Glide in Blue -
A really captivating vision of the fallout of the 1960's and the conflict between the underground youth movement and the establishment, here represented by a few motorcycle cops and detectives caught up investigating the murder of a loner. Robert Blake plays the ambitious cop who comes across the body and wants to use it to springboard his career into homicide but he's checked at every side by his naivety, by an establishment that's far more rigid than he imagined, and by an underground that doesn't want him, no matter how sympathetic he may be to their ideals. It's like the film takes "the Man" and draws him from the point of view of the underground, while not really taking either side. Only Blake is a truly sympathetic character - his associates range from arrogant to mean-spirited to engaging in real abuses of power while the hippies and other normal folks he comes into contact with lie, steal, and murder or are simply crazy. Filmmaking is really stylistically dynamic, with one of the greatest closing sequences I've ever seen - major props to cinematographer Conrad Hall for his work here. It's a shame that James William Guercio never made another film - this is a remarkably strong and assured directorial debut, but I guess that managing the group Chicago just as they were taking off commercially (singer Peter Cetera is great here in a small role as a drug-dealing hippie) had to swallow up a lot of time and probably didn't allow for the rigors of filmmaking. Anyway, really interesting, especially in its immediately post-Woodstock (and more importantly, post-Altamont) look at the counter culture. Helps give a possible (and plausible) explanation to Peter Fonda's enigmatic "We blew it" from Easy Rider.

Memories of Murder -
What I enjoyed most about The Host is that it took a genre pic and took off from it in its own unique way, and this earlier (and better) film from director Joon-ho Bong does the same, upending conventions of the serial killer/police procedural film until it becomes something entirely different. As I've heard Zodiac does and as Spike Lee's Summer of Sam tangentially does, this concentrates not on suspenseful rendering of fact-based, scary murders but rather on how those murders affect those involved in the killings and a recreation of the atmosphere in which those killings happened. As that it's a masterpiece, showing us two provincial cops and their boss stymied by a puzzling rape/murder. They're later joined by a big city investigator in from Seoul who's more used to this type of crime but proves equally unable to solve the increasing number of murders. Things begin to unravel for the investigators as their efforts and those by the government (at the time a military dictatorship) fail to produce proof of an individual responsible for the crimes or to stop more from occurring. Really good stuff all around with tension, humor and drama taking about an equal amount of time in the spotlight.

Fort Apache -
One of the best of the Ford westerns I've seen and possibly the clearest view in his films of the tension stemming from the conflict between the "civilizing" frontiermen and the "savage" natives; or if you prefer, between the call of order and the call of chaos. Those who think that westerns are intrinsically racist would do well to start seeing the error of their ways here - at no point does the film (as opposed to certain characters within it) see Cochise as anything less than a leader worthy of great respect and at no point does it offer a full endorsement of Fonda's tactics - he's mainly portrayed as an arrogant and rigid interloper from the East who has no understanding of the subtleties of cultural interaction necessary for survival on the frontier. I've always liked the way that some directors of the classic Hollywood period use mainstream films to portray and undercut these sorts of social and cultural conflicts, and Ford (along with Hitchcock and Sirk) is one of the best at offering up a situation not to celebrate it, but to analyze and sometimes critique it. Lastly, the entire ensemble is brilliant, with Fonda's rigidly militaristic Lt. Thursday and John Wayne's Capt. York taking the top honors as complex people, but even the small side players giving their all and providing the realistic and illuminating details that make the characters feel real and giving you reason to sympathize with every one (even Fonda). A masterful work.

Encounters at the End of the World -
A friend I saw this with had complaints that this went for poetic moods rather than scientific analysis, but I have to wonder what he was expecting. After all, it is a film by Werner Herzog, very possibly the most quixotic romantic in film history. And here rather than seeking out scientific data about Antarctica he's looking for the "encounters" of the title, finding the kindred spirits who choose to live or work there and talk to them about what drew them there, what makes them tick. If there's a problem with the film for me, it's that he doesn't give them the space to let us meet them fully - cutting off one interview with a rudely abrupt "Her story goes on forever," for example. But it still paints a portrait of the type of person who - like Herzog himself - is drawn to Antarctica not to see cuddly penguins, but to find a way out of the perceived constraints of "normal" society. He also shows enough of Antarctica itself to give the viewer an understanding of why some of them choose to come to "the end of the world." Like most Herzog documentaries it's gorgeously made, it's impressionistic rather than building a strict argument, and I enjoyed it immensely.

Broken Blossoms -
Having only seen Griffith's massive spectacles, this came as something of a surprise with its intimate tenderness and sensitivity. Lillian Gish is fantastic, as is Richard Barthelmess. Story is a fine little tragic love story, and seeing this on the heels of The Bitter Tea of General Yen offers a nice comparison for an Asian/Caucasian love story and the slightly differing attitudes that 13 years makes in the way it can be portrayed (more openly in the latter, though no less tragically). More than anything this shows me the diversity that Griffith can bring to the table and brings his talent alive more than the historical lens I've always watched his other stuff through. Now it's time for me to start exploring his catalog more fully.

Sons of the Desert -
Something light and silly to take my mind off a shitty day at work. Laurel & Hardy are in good form here, with their slapstick working better for me than Laurel's perpetual misunderstanding of words but the situational comedy working perhaps best of all. As soon as the conventioneer they've grown chummy with gets on the phone I knew there was gonna be trouble and I love the way it played out. For that matter, as soon as they started planning out their trip to the convention I knew trouble would ensue and it came through about as humorously as I would hope. Good stuff.

Series 7 -
I wanted so much more from this than the promising idea ended up actually giving me that I was pretty disappointed. But when I take a step back I realize that it did offer up its premise and follow through with it, just that instead of watching some meta-narrative about a reality TV show as expected, I was watching a reality TV show. And I like Survivor a lot better. If this is a comment on anything in particular I must have missed it, but I think that it's more likely writer/director Daniel Minahan missed the part about putting it in the film, allowing the audience to simply extrapolate their own feelings about reality TV onto the film. Disappointing for a film that uses such a potentially rich premise.

La Notte -
Much ado about nothing, like most Antonioni I've seen. Two people who've been married for years find that they don't love each other anymore and Antonioni uses some expert camerawork, a great cast, and 122 minutes to express that (supposedly) shattering revelation. There is a way to express ennui and boredom in a film without making your audience bored and restless themselves. Maybe that's why the camerawork and cinematography are so good, because he knows that at the core, his film isn't saying very much? Lovely to look at, less so to listen to, and probably a tedious bore to discuss later.

Ten Recent Reviews

Funny Games (2007) -
I hated the original. It worked on me the way I suspect that Haneke expected, but I didn't forgive him for putting me through the psychic violence of the film and then pulling out the rug from under me. Brecht would've been proud, but I was pissed off and wouldn't watch his films after that. That is, until a friend persuaded me to watch Cache with her. I thought it was brilliant but was afraid that going back through his catalog would provide another mess of horrors to infuriate me. Then he announced the U.S. version of Funny Games and I decided to go for it. This was much easier to take because I knew what was gonna happen and thus was not enraged by the narrative and instead found myself just focusing on the ideas of the film. Or should I say "idea"? Although I think it's a devious little film, I find that once you've taken the main thrust of it into consideration - real violence does not have the exhilarating feel of screen violence and rarely has its morally attached happy outcome - there's not much more that's there. Knowing this as a shot by shot remake, I knew what was going to happen even though I watched the original nearly a decade ago and so I found the characters impossible to connect with or get involved in their plight in the face of the ideas of the film staring me down ominously. That said, I agree with the main message of the film and think it's worth seeing, but probably not if you've seen the original. This one doesn't bring anything new to the table.

The Lost -
Right on the heels of Funny Games I saw this grim little horror show about a murderer in a rural town where there's apparantly nothing to do but fuck and get fucked up. Opens with Ray, our resident psychopath, murdering two female campers on a whim and getting away with it. The rest of the film is a slow burn toward its brutal climax. I guess this is how I like my horror films these days: nasty, extremely unsettling, and afterward you kind of wonder why you watched it and why it's made. My theory is that people who are drawn to this type of film work to find the furthest reaches of on-screen violence that they can tolerate and then work backward. The film falls squarely within the same kind of un-fun, grim, brutish, nasty sub-genre of horror film that includes Last House on the Left (my own personal watermark for upsetting onscreen violence) but also includes films like Salo and Man Bites Dog and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and probably Irreversible as well, though I haven't seen it. Everyone who is drawn to this type of film seems to find the one that finally hits their button and then they draw back. They've scratched the itch of what they can take in non-exciting, on-screen violence. I hit it back with Last House and found watching this a mostly unpleasant experience, brewing slowly (too slowly for my tastes) toward a fucked up ending that's broadcast from early on and you spend the rest of the film waiting for. It's well-made for what it is, it's an effective screed against this type of violence that in no way glorifies it or makes it exciting. But would I want to see it again? Probably not.

Chinatown -
Nearly perfect, even the tenth time around. A grim film of course, as with everything Polanski made after his wife was murdered (and many of the ones he made before that). But I love the way danger lurks everywhere. A setting seems empty and quiet - orange grove, waterway, nursing home, etc. - and suddenly menace enters the picture. Nicholson and Dunaway turn in classic noir-styled performances, and John Huston is as sleazy a villain as ever set foot on screen. Somehow I'm glad that Polanski won the fight with Robert Towne to have the ending as it stands now rather than the more "Hollywood" ending that Towne had initially written, even if Towne himself thinks it got fucked up in the process. The film is genius at just about every level, if you ask me.

Punishment Park -
Fucking intense, but along more predictable lines than comparable pieces of wildly leftist art like Godard's Weekend, or even Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool, which keeps throwing curveballs. I like its bluntness - I got nothing against sledgehammer subtlety when it feels right - but I kept hoping it would at some point go in a way less hectoring, less didactic. That said, if your sympathies are with the left you're gonna hear a lot in the film that appeals to you, as it did to me. So if it's preaching to the choir at least it's out there preaching, which is fine by me. As an agitprop film, this is a fine thing; as effective political art it's only illustrating an existing political divide, not offering any solutions. To do that it would have to work harder to understand its conservative participants, something it never tries to do. Very punk, that. And it's certainly intriguing enough to send me off to see more Watkins.

The Searchers -
This was paired with Taxi Driver in a local film series to illustrate similarities and differences and I have to say that while I'm growing more distant from finding that Scorsese's film has a lot to say to me, I'm getting more and more interested in Ford's with every viewing. Beautifully done, beautifully written, with a protagonist as out there as Travis Bickle, though toned down for the times (or rather, Taxi Driver was toned up for the times). Obsessive quests to save a young girl from a perceived taintedness by an unstable vet from the losing side of a war - that's the central idea of both films, though obviously played out in very different ways. Except that Ford's film is better.

Superbad -
I love Judd Apatow, even if Dex is sick of hearing "From the guys who brought you The 40-Year Old Virgin" in every ad. But this one - crass and sweet and humorous as it is - didn't make me laugh as much as 40-Year Old Virgin or Knocked Up, even if I did like it and enjoy it overall. More importantly, it didn't make me cry or even feel like there was a need to. Apatow's best stuff always treads that fine line of comedy and drama that makes his films (and TV, of course) really felt as though they're real lives lived and that's what makes them so funny. The cops here are caricatures and the fact that so much time is spent with them is a shame because the central friendship between Evan and Seth that's about to be separated could really have been a strong dramatic idea. Instead it's downplayed in favor of the lovable loser story that I've seen a million times before. It's still funny, it's well written and acted, but it's lacking a little something that really would've kicked it up a notch for me. Maybe Rogan's next script will iron out these minor problems.

Fool For Love -
Altman's style actually suits both the material and the theatricality of said material well. It's a very character-driven piece and his camera just keeps moving around the motel's lot or a room, zooming in to look closer at things and then zooming back out to show a bigger picture. I just wish I got more of a charge out of the material itself, because while Altman's really hit or miss for me, I'm usually pretty keen on Shepard. And while it's a little annoying watching the give and take between Basinger and Shepard for the bulk of the film, once it's put into context by the ending, it makes a lot of sense. And again, Altman's inquisitive camera (and microphones) (and of course the excellent cast) really help get you involved in these characters that might otherwise have been just a buncha nobodies. Good for Altman, not bad for Shepard. Overall, a pretty good thing, even if not terrific.

Taxi Driver -
What is there to say? It's pointless to write about this film at this date. I've seen it a billion times and you probably have too. Over time, this has faded a bit for me as I said above. I don't think it has much to say to the world, just a portrait of a fucked-up guy that you can take or leave. And it's interesting how Schrader's obsessions and Scorsese's dovetail in parts and seem to pull the movie in different directions in other parts. I dunno, it's iconic, it's classic, Michael Chapman's cinematography is brilliant, DeNiro really gets inside Bickle and illuminates him, but I just don't get the charge out of it that I used to. I'm sure I'll watch it again in my life, but there are many other films I'd rather see now.

Underworld U.S.A. -
Gritty Sam Fuller film in which a young punk sees his father beaten to death by some gangsters and dedicates the rest of his life to getting even with them. And as he worms his way into their organization, you just have to wonder what will happen once he's finished his revenge - a point the film thankfully addresses. In fact, it's the central idea of the film. Great stuff, on par with Naked Kiss and better than Shock Corridor for my money. I hope a DVD release is in the works.

Pulse -
Not as bad as I expected, given the one-star rating from the TV guide and the 4.3 rating it's currently enjoying on IMDB. Not great by any stretch but it's an interesting concept and Wes Craven and Jim Wright do a fine job adapting the film to the American teen crowd it obviously aims for. Sure, there are the flickering ghost images that have become cliche by now; sure there are plot holes; sure the cinetography and editing aren't quite up to what I'd like to see in my ghost stories - too much of that quick-cut "creepy" imagery that doesn't scare anybody over the age of 13 (shouldn't, anyway) - but it lays on the atmosphere quick and heavy and never relents, even if it also never quite picks up the pace. I enjoyed it - probably because my expectations were nil. But I've seen much dumber scare flicks.