2004-06-28 - 18:23:00
Current music: The Books - "Tokyo"
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A friend of mine watched 'Thief' after reading my write-up and felt utterly let down by it. This provides me with the perfect opportunity to point out that I have horrible taste in films. Just look at the movies I've watched since I started keeping this journal. With that said, I don't think my write-up on 'Thief' was misleading. If you've seen 'Heat' (which I don't really like), you'll know that Mann hates going from A to B in the shortest number of steps. But I should've mentioned that just because it's called 'Thief' doesn't mean it's really a heist film. Said friend is totally right to dislike the movie and feel betrayed. I will always let you down.
I love Mike Judge. Here's this week's Onion A/V Club interview with him - I Like Mike
FAHRENHEIT 9-11 (2004) - d. Michael Moore
I don't really like writing about movies that every single person and their mom are talking about. It was good, it got me riled, I liked it, it wasn't nearly as shrill as I was expecting. There's a small part of me which still wishes it was a socialist recruitment video, but that wouldn't have been the right approach, and Moore, for once, understands that now is the time to play the relatively straight man. All in all, a very cogent argument, and a film that I think is going to sway more people than pundits want to believe. It could stand to lose ten to fifteen minutes from the end, though.
I know they only had a couple of weeks from the time they purchased it to the this past week's release, but Lion's Gate dropped the ball bigtime. Sure, it's the #1 movie in America, broke all kinds of records for a documentary, blah blah blah blah, but they didn't have nearly enough prints out to theaters. Seeing how every local screening was sold-out in the Triangle area (keep in mind that this is the South), you have to think they could've easily broken the $30 million mark.
LOST IN LA MANCHA (2002) - d. Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe
I forgot that I'd watched this about three weeks ago. I'd heard that it was a pretty sloppy effort, and it was, but it's better than what I'd prepared myself for. The big surprise was that Terry Gilliam didn't come off like an idiot who lost control of his production. The biggest mistake he seemed made was to surround himself with producers sans clue as to what it would take to get that big a movie done. It's a pretty clear-eyed look at how films go south. I want to see Gilliam get the movie made; it looks like there were some great ideas on hand.
TRICKS OF THE TRADE: MAKING 'MATCHSTICK MEN' (2004) - d. Charles de Lauzirika
It was probably some rag like Entertainment Weekly or Premier where I read that the documentary in the 'Matchstick Men' DVD package was a must-see, and now I know better. The film, at 70 min., is actually a pretty decent overview of the filmmaking process, prep-to-post, but it's no major revelation. I'll give it credit for not being 100% rah-rah, but the warts-and-all approach smacks of a calculation, and there's gotta be much juicier stuff which didn't make the final cut. 'Hearts of Darkness' and the 'making of' which accompanies 'Three Kings' are much better bets.
VISITOR Q (2001) - d. Takashi Miike
Confession time. I got sent a fucked up copy of the disc, so I only got to watch the first hour of the film (the runtime is 85 min) and things got mangled just as it was getting to the I-can-take-no-more-point.
Oh, Miike, you so crazy. Anyhow, this is like all of his favorite themes, and the film includes paying your daughter for sex, a kid beating the living shit out of his heroin addict mother, rectal exams with microphones, and excessive lactation. Shot on video, and no worse for it, of his films that I've seen, it's the one which most explicitly examines the seamy side of mainstream Japanese culture. Icky as hell, and sometimes too offensive for words, but mostly oh so fun. And, yeah, sure, the second Netflix gets a new copy (good luck), I'll re-watch it and come to a different conclusion.
Here's a couple of Miike interviews - ranked in order of personal preference - to tide you over:
Miike in The Guardian
Miike in Film Threat
Miike in Midnight Eye
THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977) - d. Wes Craven
If I was a true horror fan/sadist, I'd like Wes Craven's earlier movies a lot better than I do. While 'Last House on the Left' is effective in its brutality, it's also completely WRONG, and I fucking hate it. 'Deadly Blessing' and 'Stranger in our House' are also suck. Actually, they're both so bad, I'm sorry I even need to mention them.
I've stayed away from 'Hills Have Eyes' because I was expecting more of the same.
It is more of the same.
Talk about movies with a lame setup. I'm not really sure why this is a cult-classic and one of the more important horror films of the 70s. I mean, it's better than the rest of his early stuff, but it's mostly just dumb and crappy. A warmed-over 'Texas Chainsaw' with bad performances, good locations, silly silly costumes and Craven's trademark ultra-aggressive direction.
Monday, June 28, 2004
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Huracán Ramirez Was Here.
2004-06-24 - 20:13:00
Current music: Chris Knox - "Break"
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GEN-X COPS (1999) - d. Benny Chan
When I wrote about 'The Vampire Effect' a couple of months ago, I talked about how the big thing in HK right now is to make movies with name brand pop stars. I caught a show on AMC a couple of weeks ago which confirmed that, and also explained that producers no longer care if someone can kung fu, because they can teach the kung fu, but they can't teach Teen Beat looks.
'Gen-X Cops' would be a standard bearer for the converted pop-star genre, then. At least three of the leads in this film, Nicholas Tse, Stephen Fung, and Grace Yip, started in music, and their acting proves that out. The only real upside of the pop-star films is that the budgets are pretty big, and the endless string of car chases and explosions in 'Gen-X' is an effective counterweight to a lot of silliness. It's not a great movie, it's not necessarily a good movie, but it's a fun movie, and the energy is high, even when some sequences are too confused for words. It's a good thing that Benny Chan was behind the camera, and that Eric Tsang shows up in a thankless role. Kudos for the dumbest death by parachute scene you'll ever see. Reservations aside, I will be checking out 'Gen-Y Cops,' if only because I'm lately enjoying Asian popcorn crap a lot more than American popcorn crap.
DREAMSCAPE (1984) - d. Joseph Ruben
I loved this movie when I was a kid. It doesn't hold up perfectly, but it's not a total disaster, either. The movie stars Dennis Quaid, Max von Sydow, and Kate Capshaw's hair. They're all doing research on entering people's dreams through a combo of high-tech science and guys with ESP (like DQ's character). It's silly as hell and only deepens the mystery of Hollywood's obsession with the saxophone in the 1980s (Clarence Clemmons?), but it's good nostalgia, and the snake man is still scarier than shit.
THE LADYKILLERS (1955) - d. Alexander Mackendrick
I was expecting better. It's good, but without Alec Guinness - who made a number of Ealing comedies - it would be a nothing. Same plot as the Coen Brothers remake, except it's in England. Maybe I'm being too critical, but I went in expecting a classic, and I'm not convinced that I got it.
Since I'm too bored to explain what an Ealing comedy is - Screenonline Ealing
And here's a general overview of Ealing Studios - BBC Article
SHREK 2 (2004) - d. Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, Conrad Vernon
I thought the original was okay, relatively funny, but wildly over-hyped. The sequel made me desperately miss 'Shrek 1' and was lazy, stupid, dull, lazy, and poorly animated. It was also lazy. Antonio Banderas' Puss In Boots is the only redemption for an otherwise shit movie.
People are sheep. Especially Petey, who should definitely know better.
PETE'S DRAGON (1977) - d. Don Chaffey
If anyone was reading this, they might wonder why I've seen a bunch of kids' movies this week. I just spent the weekend with my little brothers and sisters, and we caught up on some viewing. 'Pete's Dragon' was a huge let-down. I'll still watch it with my kids, but my seven year-old brother was too old for it, and it looks ancient for a film made in 1977 (a great year). I take back everything I said about it being better than 'Jack the Giant Killer.' The dragon still looks cool.
PETER PAN (2003) - d. P.J. Hogan
Congratulations, P.J. Hogan, you've managed to make the most sexed-up 'Peter Pan' never to appear on Cinemax (and there's still time for that). The movie itself is pretty good, but that leotard has NAMBLA written all over it, and I seriously wouldn't have been surprised if Peter and Wendy hadn't whipped out the Kiwi-Strawberry massage oil on the El Train (to the 'Risky Business' soundtrack, of course). The kids liked it.
DARK STAR (1974) - d. John Carpenter
If you're going to watch a movie that's a spoof of '2001: A Space Odyssey,' you should probably have seen '2001: A Space Odyssey.' With that said, this is Carpenter's first feature, started while he was still at USC. It's amateurish and inconsistent, but features great special-effects by Dan O'Bannon (of 'Return of the Living Dead'/I'm-still-getting-paid-for-'Alien' fame), good sense of humor, etc. It was a bit of a reach for a first-time director to try to make a film about being bored while you're out in space, though. How could it not end up boring? And I watched the new, shorter version.
Current music: Chris Knox - "Break"
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GEN-X COPS (1999) - d. Benny Chan
When I wrote about 'The Vampire Effect' a couple of months ago, I talked about how the big thing in HK right now is to make movies with name brand pop stars. I caught a show on AMC a couple of weeks ago which confirmed that, and also explained that producers no longer care if someone can kung fu, because they can teach the kung fu, but they can't teach Teen Beat looks.
'Gen-X Cops' would be a standard bearer for the converted pop-star genre, then. At least three of the leads in this film, Nicholas Tse, Stephen Fung, and Grace Yip, started in music, and their acting proves that out. The only real upside of the pop-star films is that the budgets are pretty big, and the endless string of car chases and explosions in 'Gen-X' is an effective counterweight to a lot of silliness. It's not a great movie, it's not necessarily a good movie, but it's a fun movie, and the energy is high, even when some sequences are too confused for words. It's a good thing that Benny Chan was behind the camera, and that Eric Tsang shows up in a thankless role. Kudos for the dumbest death by parachute scene you'll ever see. Reservations aside, I will be checking out 'Gen-Y Cops,' if only because I'm lately enjoying Asian popcorn crap a lot more than American popcorn crap.
DREAMSCAPE (1984) - d. Joseph Ruben
I loved this movie when I was a kid. It doesn't hold up perfectly, but it's not a total disaster, either. The movie stars Dennis Quaid, Max von Sydow, and Kate Capshaw's hair. They're all doing research on entering people's dreams through a combo of high-tech science and guys with ESP (like DQ's character). It's silly as hell and only deepens the mystery of Hollywood's obsession with the saxophone in the 1980s (Clarence Clemmons?), but it's good nostalgia, and the snake man is still scarier than shit.
THE LADYKILLERS (1955) - d. Alexander Mackendrick
I was expecting better. It's good, but without Alec Guinness - who made a number of Ealing comedies - it would be a nothing. Same plot as the Coen Brothers remake, except it's in England. Maybe I'm being too critical, but I went in expecting a classic, and I'm not convinced that I got it.
Since I'm too bored to explain what an Ealing comedy is - Screenonline Ealing
And here's a general overview of Ealing Studios - BBC Article
SHREK 2 (2004) - d. Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, Conrad Vernon
I thought the original was okay, relatively funny, but wildly over-hyped. The sequel made me desperately miss 'Shrek 1' and was lazy, stupid, dull, lazy, and poorly animated. It was also lazy. Antonio Banderas' Puss In Boots is the only redemption for an otherwise shit movie.
People are sheep. Especially Petey, who should definitely know better.
PETE'S DRAGON (1977) - d. Don Chaffey
If anyone was reading this, they might wonder why I've seen a bunch of kids' movies this week. I just spent the weekend with my little brothers and sisters, and we caught up on some viewing. 'Pete's Dragon' was a huge let-down. I'll still watch it with my kids, but my seven year-old brother was too old for it, and it looks ancient for a film made in 1977 (a great year). I take back everything I said about it being better than 'Jack the Giant Killer.' The dragon still looks cool.
PETER PAN (2003) - d. P.J. Hogan
Congratulations, P.J. Hogan, you've managed to make the most sexed-up 'Peter Pan' never to appear on Cinemax (and there's still time for that). The movie itself is pretty good, but that leotard has NAMBLA written all over it, and I seriously wouldn't have been surprised if Peter and Wendy hadn't whipped out the Kiwi-Strawberry massage oil on the El Train (to the 'Risky Business' soundtrack, of course). The kids liked it.
DARK STAR (1974) - d. John Carpenter
If you're going to watch a movie that's a spoof of '2001: A Space Odyssey,' you should probably have seen '2001: A Space Odyssey.' With that said, this is Carpenter's first feature, started while he was still at USC. It's amateurish and inconsistent, but features great special-effects by Dan O'Bannon (of 'Return of the Living Dead'/I'm-still-getting-paid-for-'Alien' fame), good sense of humor, etc. It was a bit of a reach for a first-time director to try to make a film about being bored while you're out in space, though. How could it not end up boring? And I watched the new, shorter version.
Thursday, June 17, 2004
This Must Be the Museum of Mental Illness
2004-06-17 - 19:27:00
Current music: Abaetê - "Canto Sul"
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The Madstone Theater in Cary, NC closed last week. I was getting pretty used to the trek to Cary, and that movie house did a lot to ease the transition from life in the big city to life in the not-so-big city. Now it's going to be a much bigger scramble to see specialty films. It was also the one place around here where I didn't feel genuinely weird going to see something on my own.
I should also mention that all of the below reviews are boring. After the last post, I just didn’t have it in me to inject any energy. Turn back now.
I've made some bad decisions in my life, but last Wednesday was up there, as I watched the classic and 2003-remake versions of 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' back-to-back. The roller-coaster paranoia of the first really didn't set me up for the sanitized crapness of the second and, by the time I was done, I was feeling rancid.
Chainsaws through history.
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) - d. Tobe Hooper
This movie is so supremely, nightmarishly visceral, it would take an act of god to run out of new ways to describe it. But I'm lazy, and if I get started, we'll be here all week, so I will be taking a flyer. First films often define careers, especially in the case of independent-minded upstart-types, but not many filmmakers have been hamstrung by a successful debut quite as thoroughly as Hooper. It doesn't help that he's a well-known maniac, or that he blew all financial credibility with 'Lifeforce' (I've never seen), but if you only had one shot at greatness, it would be hard to top 'Chainsaw.' What a sick fuck.
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2003) - d. Marcus Nispel
An excuse for the Abercrombie crowd to stare at Jessica Biel's rack for an hour and a half.
I don't mind that they jettisoned almost everything from the original - a strategy which basically worked in 'Dawn of the Dead' - but they've dramatically increased the scope of the story, when relentless claustrophobia is what made Hooper's version so terrifying. There's also a by-the-numbers sterility to the whole affair, as if the depravity was test-marketed for maximum 'ick' and minimum psychosis. It's neither scary or shocking, and it's no better than the neutered terror of 'Jeepers Creepers,' another 'horror' film which failed to deliver in almost every department while still drawing plenty of sheep to the box-office.
I have plenty of other complaints, but I'll give up by whining about the production design/costumes/fact-that-they-set-it-in-the-70s. Why the hell didn't they move it to the present? Could've skipped the retarded bracketing device and no one would wonder why everyone's wearing acid-wash Britney jeans and goatees.
I can't say that I expected it to be this bad.
SILVER DREAM RACER (1980) - c. David Wickes
The bulk of this film - a story of a working class English mechanic who decides to enter the big race after inheriting a revolutionary prototype bike following his brother's death - brings to mind the Disney live-action era of the 60s and on. The vibe is a 'Herbie' for teens, with shades of 'Knight Rider' and 'Streethawk'. The PG rating immediately comes into question as it struggles to mix in some very adult ideas, foul language, and a shower scene, but the film's essence is the awkward, hard-to-believe kitsch that marked all pre-Eisner, post-Walt, House of the Mouse features.
After 1:45 of moldy preening, to say that the film's final minutes register as a blind-side doesn't even begin. Hard to remember the last time I was in this much shock after finishing a movie, but I'm thrilled that something this wholeheartedly terrifying actually exists. Better yet that it was peddled to children.
On IMDb, the main user comment starts with 'I've been scarred for life.' Ditto. I'm totally buying this fucking thing - much more sadistic than anything Tobe Hooper's ever come up with.
Oh, you may be wondering why I watched it? Because.
THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985) - d. Dan O'Bannon
As stupid horror-comedies go, this is a highlight. Stay far away if you don't like the genre, but 'Return' is one of the few successful movies to come out of the mid-80s horror swarm, and despite its inanity, it's wicked massive fun. O'Bannon wrote 'Dark Star' with John Carpenter and co-created and wrote 'Alien,' so his pedigree is pretty sterling. The plot is gleefully convoluted; what you need to know is that a boo boo occurs which releases a toxic gas that brings the dead back to life. Horror like this operates on the understanding that it doesn't matter what the rationale is as long as you get to the dying quick, and this is the one spot where 'Return' slips up. There's great stuff in the build-up, but there are so many divergent strands at the start that we spend an hour moving from story to story before zombie armageddon finally happens.
With that said, this is good zombie armageddon. I'm not a gore guy. I like it fine in the hands of someone like Peter Jackson or Sam Raimi, where it's actually stylish, funny, and serves the plot. Normally, I get the feeling that the filmmakers are preening for 'Fangoria.' That isn't the case with 'Return,' which has tons of icky stuff, but never lingers just to keep you grossed out. The film shows exactly why there's still a place for ooze and limbs and all the sticky stuff.
The effects work is great, but the two real hallmarks of 'Return' are its terrific dialogue ('I like death with sex. How 'bout you Casey, do you like sex with death?' 'Yeah, so fuck off and die.') and the heavy punk rock influence which was already dated by the time the film came out. The latter sounds like a criticism, but it isn't. Over half the cast is 'punk,' and their sheer stupidity makes the film. Without the punk flavor, I don't think 'Return' is nearly as good a time. Oh, right, 'Return' also features just about the best (and most self-aware) cop-out ending around.
MY TERRORIST (2003) - d. Yulie Cohen Gerstel
This is a confusing little film. Yulie Gerstel was a stewardess on an El Al flight taken hostage in London by pro-PLO terrorists in August of 1978. Gerstel was wounded, co-workers were killed, all the bad shit that you expect to happen when a story starts with 'not to long ago, in Israel..'
Gerstel, years later, recovered and now a peace activist, is still deeply effected by the incident. She wants her daughters to grow up in a world different than the one her parents gave to her. Her solution is to seek out one of the terrorists from the London hijacking, Fahad Mihyi, who is still in a prison in England. She wants to meet him, find out who he is, what he's about, 'heal the wound,' etc. Upon meeting him, becomes convinced that she must help to get him paroled.
'My Terrorist' is only 60 or so minutes long, but it's a gut punch even at that length. Gerstel's crisis of conscience is so extreme that watching her healing process is almost too much. I'm not convinced it's actually that 'good' a film, for any number of reasons, but it's an important document, and it takes the concept of diary film in a new direction.
THE LADY EVE (1941) - d. Preston Sturges
I've seen three other Preston Sturges features - 'The Great McGinty,' 'Sullivan's Travels,' and 'The Palm Beach Story' - but none of them really prepared me for 'The Lady Eve.' Everyone and their mother seems to have seen 'Sullivan's,' and a lot of people have seen 'Eve,' but the rest of Sturges' work and career remains a mystery to most. Sturges started his career as successful playwright, and like so many of his era, the next logical step was a move from New York to California. His earliest work for the studios came as a script-doctor, and his impeccable ear for dialogue quickly set him apart. He rose to the top of the screenwriting game, churning out classics like 'The Good Fairy' and 'Remember the Night,' and then became the first writer from the post-silent period to successfully crossover from the writer's desk to the director's chair. His success made it okay to be a writer/director again.
'The Great McGinty' was Sturges' directing job, and once he got rolling, he made some of the best American comedies to come out of the 1940s. Unfortunately, the quality of his work fell off dramatically after 1944 - 'Unfaithfully Yours' (1948) was his last quality feature - and he died of a heart attack while he was prepping a play on Broadway in 1959. The good news is, he was prolific from 1940 - 44, so there's between seven or eight really good Sturges films, depending on whose opinion you seek. The hallmarks of a Sturges picture are his unbelievable comic timing, razor-sharp dialogue, and an edgier, more adult tone than you'll find with most of his contemporaries. He didn't come up during the silent era, so his camera work isn't very stylish, but it's effective. If 'Sullivan's Travels' is the only Sturges film you've seen, you might think I should be using adjectives like 'hokey' instead of 'edgy.' But then, you haven't seen 'The Lady Eve'... or 'Palm Beach Story'... or 'McGinty.'
Just a great, great movie. Everything in it is absolutely perfect, especially Barabara Stanwyck.
TIERRA (1996) - d. Julio Medem
This is another Julio Medem film. This one is about a guy named Angel who's just left a mental hospital and is now helping his uncle spray a Spanish wine region to get rid of woodlice. It chronicles the relationships he develops with a revolving cast of characters who live in the countryside. This includes a farmer, Patricio, his wife, Angela, her wine-growing father, a wild-child temptress, a family of Roma, and, maybe most importantly, Angel's guardian angel, who only he can see.
Woodlice are crustaceans. This one's in amber.
So yeah, that should give everyone a sense of just where Medem is willing to go. Heavy is the coincidence and metafísica aquí.
The strength of the film is that it doesn't go for the jugular. Where Almodóvar, particularly in his early years, lay the kitsch on thick, Medem's strangeness is far more composed and serene. By this point in his career, Medem was already an experienced storyteller, and the web he weaves here is much more confident and convincing than in his earliest work. I think one of the director's great skills is his ability to turn out a satisfying finale, and while some of his more recent films may be greater works, 'Tierra' still has my favorite ending. The fact that it stars both Emma Suárez and Silke, two of the prettiest Spanish actresses of the 90s, ices it for me. Casting hot actresses who can actually act is a hallmark of all Medem movies. Also, Karra Elejalde of 'Accíon Mutante' fame plays Patricio; someone should've brought him to Hollywood.
The DVD that's available in the states features a sub-par transfer, but you can still tell that the original print was beautiful, like a life cast in amber. But again, shit transfer, I'd watched this on a PAL VHS tape before, and it probably looked better.
More on woodlice.
TIMELINE (2003) - d. Richard Donner.
As bad as it looks, it's worse.
HERO (2002) - d. Zhang Yimou
I bought 'Hero' off of Ebay courtesy of some dude in Hong Kong for $14 with shipping. Seemed like a vaguely stupid idea at the time, but I'd heard about a couple of people getting their hands on Asian versions and decided I didn't want to wait any longer.
My friend Kujo had seen this film a while back, through methods as nefarious as you would expect from one so sleazy. What he told me, first and foremost was that there's no point in comparing 'Hero' with 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' since they're just totally different movies. I agree. The simple division is that 'Hero' is an art film while 'Tiger' is a high-quality entertainment (which isn't to say that 'Hero' isn't entertaining'). 'Tiger' is much more rooted in traditional Asian storytelling and is one long reference to the work of King Hu.
'Hero' is something quite different, and while there's all kinds of touchstones in the film - including Hu again - any discussion of this film should start begin its photography. Zhang started his career as a cinematographer, and his brilliant eye has been a big factor in his success. Even his slighter films, like 'Shanghai Triad,' are so great to look at that it almost doesn't matter if the stories get a little thin. Here, the director really takes things to a whole new level; we may never see fight sequences this utterly ravishing again. It's going to blow your mind.
Anyways, the other thing I wanted to say was just that 'Hero' seems to draw as much from a Japanese tradition as it does a Chinese one. The narrative is split into a 'Rashomon' quilt of three variations on the same story, and seems to owe another debt to Mizoguchi, especially, for some reason, the huge studio-shot expanses of movies like 'Sansho the Bailiff.' Other influences are probably a whole lot more apparent to people who actually know a thing or two about Asian cinema.
I hope this thing isn't cut to hell when American audiences get to see it; the film as it stands is insanely great.
UN AIR DE FAMILLE (1996) - d. Cédric Klapisch
This film deserves a better, and more involved write-up than I've got in me - I'm still hungover from last week's mega-opus.
Ok, so, Cédric Klapisch. 'L'Auberge Espagnole' and 'When the Cat's Away' are the two films he's known for in the States, and while both made minor waves, a lot of my movie-geek friends have bad things to say. This has a lot to do with the fact that 'Cat' rode in on a wave of hype that it could never live up to. It's a slight romantic comedy, without enough romantic emphasis, but it has a gentle, quirky tone that I liked, and the vacation sequence is pure cinema genius. 'L'Auberge' is also slight, but it's a much more effective film, and I have friends who didn't like 'Cat' but enjoyed it. I thought it was great.
I'd been meaning to watch some other Klapisch films, mostly on the basis of loving 'L'Auberge,' but also because he's looked at as a pretty major director in his home country, which generally means I've got movies to see. There isn't much on DVD, so I went with 'Un Air De Famille,' which is the only other film of his that's easy to track down. It confirms Klapisch as a serious talent, and is the best of his films that I've seen.
The movie's based on a play - the title translates into 'Family Resemblances' - written by two of the film's leads, Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri, and it's about a family get-together at the café run by Henri, who has inherited it from his deceased father. There two other full-grown siblings, Betty and Philippe, a barkeep named Denis, Philippe's wife, and the children's domineering mother. Almost the whole of the film takes place in real time in the café, but you never feel like you're watching a play on film. Instead, the single location enforces the frustration and claustrophobia which comes from being in a tight-knit family.
The movie's really funny, really human, and really impressive. I wish I knew more French, there's a ton of dialogue and the subtitles fly by.
SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER... AND SPRING (2003) - d. Ki-duk Kim
There's nothing better than going into a movie theater with low expectations. If the show sucks, you're vindicated, and if it's great, you walk away feeling like you've won the perfecta. Two people told me this movie was good, and I went because I trust the opinions of both. But still, I'd seen the trailer, and I was sure that it would be a heartwarming highbrow cheese-fest in the mode of Zhang Yimou's 'Not One Less' (ugh) or Kaige Chen's 'Together' - elegant Asian films tailor-made for Miramax releases, Best Foreign Film nominations, and the rapturous embrace of Volvo owners who rent at the library. There's a great flood of these ugly beasts invading our shores, and I was steeled for the worst.
Excellent surprise then, when 'Spring, Summer, etc.' turns out to be a terse, beautiful meditation on life, Buddhism, and the Korean hinterland. There's not really much point in explaining the story - wise master and naive student, episodic structure, characters age dramatically over the course of the narrative, etc. - but the film's power is undeniable. It's koanish, even, obvious and mysterious, and, as advertised, wonderful to look at. Neat to note that the director, Ki-duk Kim, was raised Catholic. The end to the theatrical run is nigh, so you'll have to wait for it on video. It will be worth it; the film warrants repeated viewings.
ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS (1939) - d. Howard Hawks
I don't know a ton about Howard Hawks. I haven't watched a lot of his movies and I don't know much about his life. One thing I do know is that he was an air force pilot for a while, had an obsession with planes, and often got hung up on the macho. This film, then, about running a small air courier service in the Peruvian Andes, was clearly pretty close to his heart. It's pretty good, but, to be honest, the first hour is much better than the second.
Cary Grant is the bad-boy pilot who heads the operation and runs over every woman he meets, and Jean Arthur would be his more than capable foil, except Hawks keeps her off screen for too long periods. After the first twenty minutes, I was thinking 'Man, they just wrote such better parts for women back in the golden days'; the second hour completely ruined that argument. Rita Hayworth is also on hand, in one of her earlier roles, and the one which apparently convinced Columbia that she had what it took to be a showcase star. I know her name well, but I'm not sure I've ever seen her in anything else. She's smoking hot here, though.
I know, I know, I shouldn't be calling an actress smoking hot one second and then bitch about the film being sexist and too-macho the next, but Randy Savage could watch this movie and question its value system.
THE HIT (1984) - d. Stephen Frears
I didn't even know this movie existed. This was the film Frears made right before he directed 'My Beautiful Launderette' and one of his very first features (like almost every other Brit of his generation, Frears got his start in TV). It's non-essential, but it wasn't wasted time. Terrence Stamp is a criminal who rats on his boss, moves to Spain and goes underground. Ten years later, said boss is out of jail, and sends two hitmen, played by John Hurt and Tim Roth (in his first feature), to drag Stamp's ass from Andalucia to Paris, where he's due to be killed. So, road-movie, then, set against the beautifully observed Spanish countryside. The acting is top-class, Frears is on his game, but the script fizzles at the end. Not terribly, but the final 15 minutes do little justice to what's come before.
THE HUNTER (1980) - d. Buzz Kulik
I go in for the whole Steve McQueen thing. He's one of the few unassailably cool movie stars, and he was the first 'old school' actor I copped on to. 'The Hunter' was the last film he made before he died. It is also a steaming pile of shit.
I hate to see him go out like this, but he'd clearly packed it in before the cameras rolled. Had McQueen's cancer not overtaken him, had his career gone on, we might've looked back on 'The Hunter' in the same way that we look back on 'Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot' as the sign that Stallone's career was done. Uncle Steve plays a bounty hunter, and he goes around doing stuff and getting into crazy shit. He's graying at the edges, a little slower (and sicker) than he used to be, a 'reluctant' skip-tracer. He's prone to giving jobs to bail jumpers (LaVar Burton) and his woman, Kathryn Harrold, is a decidedly modern woman - hippyish, even.
There's absolutely no reason to watch this movie outside of a few good action sequences, and even then, they redeem nothing. A cornfield chase ends with one of the best car explosions I've ever seen, but I'd rather wrap my face in plastic than watch this again.
Current music: Abaetê - "Canto Sul"
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The Madstone Theater in Cary, NC closed last week. I was getting pretty used to the trek to Cary, and that movie house did a lot to ease the transition from life in the big city to life in the not-so-big city. Now it's going to be a much bigger scramble to see specialty films. It was also the one place around here where I didn't feel genuinely weird going to see something on my own.
I should also mention that all of the below reviews are boring. After the last post, I just didn’t have it in me to inject any energy. Turn back now.
I've made some bad decisions in my life, but last Wednesday was up there, as I watched the classic and 2003-remake versions of 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' back-to-back. The roller-coaster paranoia of the first really didn't set me up for the sanitized crapness of the second and, by the time I was done, I was feeling rancid.
Chainsaws through history.
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) - d. Tobe Hooper
This movie is so supremely, nightmarishly visceral, it would take an act of god to run out of new ways to describe it. But I'm lazy, and if I get started, we'll be here all week, so I will be taking a flyer. First films often define careers, especially in the case of independent-minded upstart-types, but not many filmmakers have been hamstrung by a successful debut quite as thoroughly as Hooper. It doesn't help that he's a well-known maniac, or that he blew all financial credibility with 'Lifeforce' (I've never seen), but if you only had one shot at greatness, it would be hard to top 'Chainsaw.' What a sick fuck.
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2003) - d. Marcus Nispel
An excuse for the Abercrombie crowd to stare at Jessica Biel's rack for an hour and a half.
I don't mind that they jettisoned almost everything from the original - a strategy which basically worked in 'Dawn of the Dead' - but they've dramatically increased the scope of the story, when relentless claustrophobia is what made Hooper's version so terrifying. There's also a by-the-numbers sterility to the whole affair, as if the depravity was test-marketed for maximum 'ick' and minimum psychosis. It's neither scary or shocking, and it's no better than the neutered terror of 'Jeepers Creepers,' another 'horror' film which failed to deliver in almost every department while still drawing plenty of sheep to the box-office.
I have plenty of other complaints, but I'll give up by whining about the production design/costumes/fact-that-they-set-it-in-the-70s. Why the hell didn't they move it to the present? Could've skipped the retarded bracketing device and no one would wonder why everyone's wearing acid-wash Britney jeans and goatees.
I can't say that I expected it to be this bad.
SILVER DREAM RACER (1980) - c. David Wickes
The bulk of this film - a story of a working class English mechanic who decides to enter the big race after inheriting a revolutionary prototype bike following his brother's death - brings to mind the Disney live-action era of the 60s and on. The vibe is a 'Herbie' for teens, with shades of 'Knight Rider' and 'Streethawk'. The PG rating immediately comes into question as it struggles to mix in some very adult ideas, foul language, and a shower scene, but the film's essence is the awkward, hard-to-believe kitsch that marked all pre-Eisner, post-Walt, House of the Mouse features.
After 1:45 of moldy preening, to say that the film's final minutes register as a blind-side doesn't even begin. Hard to remember the last time I was in this much shock after finishing a movie, but I'm thrilled that something this wholeheartedly terrifying actually exists. Better yet that it was peddled to children.
On IMDb, the main user comment starts with 'I've been scarred for life.' Ditto. I'm totally buying this fucking thing - much more sadistic than anything Tobe Hooper's ever come up with.
Oh, you may be wondering why I watched it? Because.
THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985) - d. Dan O'Bannon
As stupid horror-comedies go, this is a highlight. Stay far away if you don't like the genre, but 'Return' is one of the few successful movies to come out of the mid-80s horror swarm, and despite its inanity, it's wicked massive fun. O'Bannon wrote 'Dark Star' with John Carpenter and co-created and wrote 'Alien,' so his pedigree is pretty sterling. The plot is gleefully convoluted; what you need to know is that a boo boo occurs which releases a toxic gas that brings the dead back to life. Horror like this operates on the understanding that it doesn't matter what the rationale is as long as you get to the dying quick, and this is the one spot where 'Return' slips up. There's great stuff in the build-up, but there are so many divergent strands at the start that we spend an hour moving from story to story before zombie armageddon finally happens.
With that said, this is good zombie armageddon. I'm not a gore guy. I like it fine in the hands of someone like Peter Jackson or Sam Raimi, where it's actually stylish, funny, and serves the plot. Normally, I get the feeling that the filmmakers are preening for 'Fangoria.' That isn't the case with 'Return,' which has tons of icky stuff, but never lingers just to keep you grossed out. The film shows exactly why there's still a place for ooze and limbs and all the sticky stuff.
The effects work is great, but the two real hallmarks of 'Return' are its terrific dialogue ('I like death with sex. How 'bout you Casey, do you like sex with death?' 'Yeah, so fuck off and die.') and the heavy punk rock influence which was already dated by the time the film came out. The latter sounds like a criticism, but it isn't. Over half the cast is 'punk,' and their sheer stupidity makes the film. Without the punk flavor, I don't think 'Return' is nearly as good a time. Oh, right, 'Return' also features just about the best (and most self-aware) cop-out ending around.
MY TERRORIST (2003) - d. Yulie Cohen Gerstel
This is a confusing little film. Yulie Gerstel was a stewardess on an El Al flight taken hostage in London by pro-PLO terrorists in August of 1978. Gerstel was wounded, co-workers were killed, all the bad shit that you expect to happen when a story starts with 'not to long ago, in Israel..'
Gerstel, years later, recovered and now a peace activist, is still deeply effected by the incident. She wants her daughters to grow up in a world different than the one her parents gave to her. Her solution is to seek out one of the terrorists from the London hijacking, Fahad Mihyi, who is still in a prison in England. She wants to meet him, find out who he is, what he's about, 'heal the wound,' etc. Upon meeting him, becomes convinced that she must help to get him paroled.
'My Terrorist' is only 60 or so minutes long, but it's a gut punch even at that length. Gerstel's crisis of conscience is so extreme that watching her healing process is almost too much. I'm not convinced it's actually that 'good' a film, for any number of reasons, but it's an important document, and it takes the concept of diary film in a new direction.
THE LADY EVE (1941) - d. Preston Sturges
I've seen three other Preston Sturges features - 'The Great McGinty,' 'Sullivan's Travels,' and 'The Palm Beach Story' - but none of them really prepared me for 'The Lady Eve.' Everyone and their mother seems to have seen 'Sullivan's,' and a lot of people have seen 'Eve,' but the rest of Sturges' work and career remains a mystery to most. Sturges started his career as successful playwright, and like so many of his era, the next logical step was a move from New York to California. His earliest work for the studios came as a script-doctor, and his impeccable ear for dialogue quickly set him apart. He rose to the top of the screenwriting game, churning out classics like 'The Good Fairy' and 'Remember the Night,' and then became the first writer from the post-silent period to successfully crossover from the writer's desk to the director's chair. His success made it okay to be a writer/director again.
'The Great McGinty' was Sturges' directing job, and once he got rolling, he made some of the best American comedies to come out of the 1940s. Unfortunately, the quality of his work fell off dramatically after 1944 - 'Unfaithfully Yours' (1948) was his last quality feature - and he died of a heart attack while he was prepping a play on Broadway in 1959. The good news is, he was prolific from 1940 - 44, so there's between seven or eight really good Sturges films, depending on whose opinion you seek. The hallmarks of a Sturges picture are his unbelievable comic timing, razor-sharp dialogue, and an edgier, more adult tone than you'll find with most of his contemporaries. He didn't come up during the silent era, so his camera work isn't very stylish, but it's effective. If 'Sullivan's Travels' is the only Sturges film you've seen, you might think I should be using adjectives like 'hokey' instead of 'edgy.' But then, you haven't seen 'The Lady Eve'... or 'Palm Beach Story'... or 'McGinty.'
Just a great, great movie. Everything in it is absolutely perfect, especially Barabara Stanwyck.
TIERRA (1996) - d. Julio Medem
This is another Julio Medem film. This one is about a guy named Angel who's just left a mental hospital and is now helping his uncle spray a Spanish wine region to get rid of woodlice. It chronicles the relationships he develops with a revolving cast of characters who live in the countryside. This includes a farmer, Patricio, his wife, Angela, her wine-growing father, a wild-child temptress, a family of Roma, and, maybe most importantly, Angel's guardian angel, who only he can see.
Woodlice are crustaceans. This one's in amber.
So yeah, that should give everyone a sense of just where Medem is willing to go. Heavy is the coincidence and metafísica aquí.
The strength of the film is that it doesn't go for the jugular. Where Almodóvar, particularly in his early years, lay the kitsch on thick, Medem's strangeness is far more composed and serene. By this point in his career, Medem was already an experienced storyteller, and the web he weaves here is much more confident and convincing than in his earliest work. I think one of the director's great skills is his ability to turn out a satisfying finale, and while some of his more recent films may be greater works, 'Tierra' still has my favorite ending. The fact that it stars both Emma Suárez and Silke, two of the prettiest Spanish actresses of the 90s, ices it for me. Casting hot actresses who can actually act is a hallmark of all Medem movies. Also, Karra Elejalde of 'Accíon Mutante' fame plays Patricio; someone should've brought him to Hollywood.
The DVD that's available in the states features a sub-par transfer, but you can still tell that the original print was beautiful, like a life cast in amber. But again, shit transfer, I'd watched this on a PAL VHS tape before, and it probably looked better.
More on woodlice.
TIMELINE (2003) - d. Richard Donner.
As bad as it looks, it's worse.
HERO (2002) - d. Zhang Yimou
I bought 'Hero' off of Ebay courtesy of some dude in Hong Kong for $14 with shipping. Seemed like a vaguely stupid idea at the time, but I'd heard about a couple of people getting their hands on Asian versions and decided I didn't want to wait any longer.
My friend Kujo had seen this film a while back, through methods as nefarious as you would expect from one so sleazy. What he told me, first and foremost was that there's no point in comparing 'Hero' with 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' since they're just totally different movies. I agree. The simple division is that 'Hero' is an art film while 'Tiger' is a high-quality entertainment (which isn't to say that 'Hero' isn't entertaining'). 'Tiger' is much more rooted in traditional Asian storytelling and is one long reference to the work of King Hu.
'Hero' is something quite different, and while there's all kinds of touchstones in the film - including Hu again - any discussion of this film should start begin its photography. Zhang started his career as a cinematographer, and his brilliant eye has been a big factor in his success. Even his slighter films, like 'Shanghai Triad,' are so great to look at that it almost doesn't matter if the stories get a little thin. Here, the director really takes things to a whole new level; we may never see fight sequences this utterly ravishing again. It's going to blow your mind.
Anyways, the other thing I wanted to say was just that 'Hero' seems to draw as much from a Japanese tradition as it does a Chinese one. The narrative is split into a 'Rashomon' quilt of three variations on the same story, and seems to owe another debt to Mizoguchi, especially, for some reason, the huge studio-shot expanses of movies like 'Sansho the Bailiff.' Other influences are probably a whole lot more apparent to people who actually know a thing or two about Asian cinema.
I hope this thing isn't cut to hell when American audiences get to see it; the film as it stands is insanely great.
UN AIR DE FAMILLE (1996) - d. Cédric Klapisch
This film deserves a better, and more involved write-up than I've got in me - I'm still hungover from last week's mega-opus.
Ok, so, Cédric Klapisch. 'L'Auberge Espagnole' and 'When the Cat's Away' are the two films he's known for in the States, and while both made minor waves, a lot of my movie-geek friends have bad things to say. This has a lot to do with the fact that 'Cat' rode in on a wave of hype that it could never live up to. It's a slight romantic comedy, without enough romantic emphasis, but it has a gentle, quirky tone that I liked, and the vacation sequence is pure cinema genius. 'L'Auberge' is also slight, but it's a much more effective film, and I have friends who didn't like 'Cat' but enjoyed it. I thought it was great.
I'd been meaning to watch some other Klapisch films, mostly on the basis of loving 'L'Auberge,' but also because he's looked at as a pretty major director in his home country, which generally means I've got movies to see. There isn't much on DVD, so I went with 'Un Air De Famille,' which is the only other film of his that's easy to track down. It confirms Klapisch as a serious talent, and is the best of his films that I've seen.
The movie's based on a play - the title translates into 'Family Resemblances' - written by two of the film's leads, Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri, and it's about a family get-together at the café run by Henri, who has inherited it from his deceased father. There two other full-grown siblings, Betty and Philippe, a barkeep named Denis, Philippe's wife, and the children's domineering mother. Almost the whole of the film takes place in real time in the café, but you never feel like you're watching a play on film. Instead, the single location enforces the frustration and claustrophobia which comes from being in a tight-knit family.
The movie's really funny, really human, and really impressive. I wish I knew more French, there's a ton of dialogue and the subtitles fly by.
SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER... AND SPRING (2003) - d. Ki-duk Kim
There's nothing better than going into a movie theater with low expectations. If the show sucks, you're vindicated, and if it's great, you walk away feeling like you've won the perfecta. Two people told me this movie was good, and I went because I trust the opinions of both. But still, I'd seen the trailer, and I was sure that it would be a heartwarming highbrow cheese-fest in the mode of Zhang Yimou's 'Not One Less' (ugh) or Kaige Chen's 'Together' - elegant Asian films tailor-made for Miramax releases, Best Foreign Film nominations, and the rapturous embrace of Volvo owners who rent at the library. There's a great flood of these ugly beasts invading our shores, and I was steeled for the worst.
Excellent surprise then, when 'Spring, Summer, etc.' turns out to be a terse, beautiful meditation on life, Buddhism, and the Korean hinterland. There's not really much point in explaining the story - wise master and naive student, episodic structure, characters age dramatically over the course of the narrative, etc. - but the film's power is undeniable. It's koanish, even, obvious and mysterious, and, as advertised, wonderful to look at. Neat to note that the director, Ki-duk Kim, was raised Catholic. The end to the theatrical run is nigh, so you'll have to wait for it on video. It will be worth it; the film warrants repeated viewings.
ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS (1939) - d. Howard Hawks
I don't know a ton about Howard Hawks. I haven't watched a lot of his movies and I don't know much about his life. One thing I do know is that he was an air force pilot for a while, had an obsession with planes, and often got hung up on the macho. This film, then, about running a small air courier service in the Peruvian Andes, was clearly pretty close to his heart. It's pretty good, but, to be honest, the first hour is much better than the second.
Cary Grant is the bad-boy pilot who heads the operation and runs over every woman he meets, and Jean Arthur would be his more than capable foil, except Hawks keeps her off screen for too long periods. After the first twenty minutes, I was thinking 'Man, they just wrote such better parts for women back in the golden days'; the second hour completely ruined that argument. Rita Hayworth is also on hand, in one of her earlier roles, and the one which apparently convinced Columbia that she had what it took to be a showcase star. I know her name well, but I'm not sure I've ever seen her in anything else. She's smoking hot here, though.
I know, I know, I shouldn't be calling an actress smoking hot one second and then bitch about the film being sexist and too-macho the next, but Randy Savage could watch this movie and question its value system.
THE HIT (1984) - d. Stephen Frears
I didn't even know this movie existed. This was the film Frears made right before he directed 'My Beautiful Launderette' and one of his very first features (like almost every other Brit of his generation, Frears got his start in TV). It's non-essential, but it wasn't wasted time. Terrence Stamp is a criminal who rats on his boss, moves to Spain and goes underground. Ten years later, said boss is out of jail, and sends two hitmen, played by John Hurt and Tim Roth (in his first feature), to drag Stamp's ass from Andalucia to Paris, where he's due to be killed. So, road-movie, then, set against the beautifully observed Spanish countryside. The acting is top-class, Frears is on his game, but the script fizzles at the end. Not terribly, but the final 15 minutes do little justice to what's come before.
THE HUNTER (1980) - d. Buzz Kulik
I go in for the whole Steve McQueen thing. He's one of the few unassailably cool movie stars, and he was the first 'old school' actor I copped on to. 'The Hunter' was the last film he made before he died. It is also a steaming pile of shit.
I hate to see him go out like this, but he'd clearly packed it in before the cameras rolled. Had McQueen's cancer not overtaken him, had his career gone on, we might've looked back on 'The Hunter' in the same way that we look back on 'Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot' as the sign that Stallone's career was done. Uncle Steve plays a bounty hunter, and he goes around doing stuff and getting into crazy shit. He's graying at the edges, a little slower (and sicker) than he used to be, a 'reluctant' skip-tracer. He's prone to giving jobs to bail jumpers (LaVar Burton) and his woman, Kathryn Harrold, is a decidedly modern woman - hippyish, even.
There's absolutely no reason to watch this movie outside of a few good action sequences, and even then, they redeem nothing. A cornfield chase ends with one of the best car explosions I've ever seen, but I'd rather wrap my face in plastic than watch this again.
Sunday, June 6, 2004
Sputnik Oy
2004-06-06 - 17:11:00
Current music - The Immortals - "Can't Keep A Good Man Down"
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The following is a lesson in why I should post with regularity. 26 films. That's way too many to write or read about in one sitting. There's a lesson here that I'm sure I won't learn.
I posted my write-up for 'Land and Freedom' separately. It's really long, and this way it's easier for Stef to avoid.
THE PARALLAX VIEW (1974) - d. Alan J. Pakula
I'm amazed this movie isn't more of a household name. Sure, in the 70s, good political thrillers were as common as stupid-head evangelical Christians are today, and this isn't the most user-friendly entry in the genre, but still. I don't know, maybe I live in a cave and everyone I know really has seen it, but I doubt it.
Anyways, here's the deal: Warren Beatty is a whacked-out reporter for a junky newspaper somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. At the start of the movie, he witnesses the assassination of a senator-cum-presidential candidate atop the Space Needle. A couple of years down the road, a bunch of the other witnesses to said event are D-E-D. So, good old Warren, who's now off the bottle, but still pretty much a grizzly pseudo-hippy, goes on a mission to investigate. That's about all I should tell you, other than be sure you pay attention, because the movie has a level of respect for the viewer's intelligence, which would probably be deemed unpatriotic by the current administration. This isn't one of those shell games where the audience waltzes through with all the cards while our hero is trying to figure out how many nines have already been dealt. No, in this one, I actually felt like Pakula was baiting me, trying to drive me crazy by withholding, withholding, withholding...
The bulk of the film was shot on location throughout the PNW, and this is probably going to be the first and last time I throw props to a location manager for the job they've done finding the most angular, modern buildings to use in a film. Gordon Willis is behind the camera, and watching the movie, it's clearly one of his best efforts, creating images as modern as anything to come out of the early 70s. Most of the time the widescreen format is just an excuse to make things look prettier, but these guys are constantly giving the frame a workout, and there's all kinds of lessons in film technique available in this movie. Except for the dam sequence and the car chase that follows. Those are both kinda crappy. Good transfer on the DVD, zero extras.
THIEF (1981) - d. Michael Mann
No film on this list is screaming for a revival quite as loudly as 'Thief.' It's not the best movie ever made, but it's still something very special, and it's the first film written and directed by a guy who a lot of people think is an important filmmaker. I'm not a fan of 'Ali' (except for Emmanuel Lubezki's photography), and I think that 'Heat' is over-hyped, slow, and just a little bit too sucky at the center. I also couldn't hate 'The Last of the Mohicans' more. But still, this is the man who gave us Crockett and Tubbs, 'Manhunter,' and 'The Insider,' so it's hard not to call him important.
As far as 'Thief' is concerned, Mann pretty much pulls the 'emerging fully-formed from the head of Zeus' routine. All of his familiar motifs are on hand - big guns, big cars, shiny surfaces, neon, gritty realism - and they're wrapped in a beautiful little modern noir which features what has to be James Caan's best performance as a diamond-thief extraordinaire who's working for the normal life which he's never been allowed. The key to the film is that it's suffused with a crusty blue-collar grit, a harshness that not only ads to the narrative, but also suggests that Mann could've turned out to be the last of the great 70s filmmakers. If only he didn't arrive at the party a little late and los studios didn't decide to churn out only crap in the post-'Jaws' era. Instead, he turned back to TV, and his success there is well chronicled. It's a shame, though, that there aren't more Michael Mann movies out there, because even if he hits and misses, the hits are something special.
For what it's worth, the DVD is crap. The film is an amazing technical accomplishment, but the transfer is awful. At least the sound is good, and Tangerine Dream's excellent score comes through loud and clear. No extras, and that sucks, because supposedly Mann and Caan did a commentary track for a laser-disc edition. Also, I'd be stupid not to point out that Tuesday Weld and Robert Prosky are excellent as wife and nasty crime boss, respectively. I don't think Criterion is going to shell out the cash it would take to get the rights off of MGM, but someone has to do a better job releasing this thing.
TROUBLE IN PARADISE (1932) - d. Ernst Lubitsch
Wow. Wow. Wow.
The only Lubitsch movie I'd ever seen was 'Ninotchka,' which I loved. This is better. Ernst Lubitsch is God. Herbert Marshall is fantastic. Kay Francis is a babe. Extravagant, smart, and naughty as hell, it was Lubitsch's first perfect talkie, and - while it isn't screwball - it's the foundation on which screwball was built (screwball comedies came a little later in the decade). There isn't a better example of pre-Hayes Office filmmaking.
Excellent commentary track on the Criterion DVD by Lubitsch historian Scott Eyman; he's pretty much reading from a script, but whatever, you learn a lot about everything that makes Lubitsch Lubitsch. Can someone please help me figure out how I can get my hands on a copy of 'To Be or Not To Be'? Are there still any websites, which do the Netflix thing, except with videotapes? Please advise.
DAS FIDELE GEFAGNIS (THE MERRY JAIL) (1917) - d. Ernst Lubitsch
A German silent film from Lubitsch's pre-Hollywood years. Criterion packaged it on the 'Trouble' DVD. For a silent drawing-room comedy, the laughs are still pretty fresh. I haven't seen a lot of comedies from the pre-sound days - nothing that isn't Keaton or Chapman, at least - but this, though lighter than air, would rate against any competition.
ARIEL (1988) - d. Aki Kaurismäki
Fucking hell. Aki Kaurismäki should be a legend by now. He is in other countries, but nobody seems to want to see his movies here. Fuck that. Finland deserves better from you, America.
I don't really know how exactly to pin down what he does, what his 'thing' is. Logical reference points include Godard, Bresson, Jarmusch (definitely Jarmusch, who I think was throwing props to his buddy AK with the Helsinki sequence in 'Night on Earth'), Wong Kar-Wai, Hal Ashby, and Bergman, but none of those names really get at the heart of the beast. 'Ariel' is a beautiful movie - though not beautiful in the way its name suggests - and it was his first film which found a broad international audience.
FYI, it's actually in color.
The film is beautiful because of the lazy chaos it breeds, its totally immersive subversion. 'Ariel' is a crime film in all the wrong ways, all Scandy despair, blue-collar deadpan and old-fashioned awesomeness. It's what might happen if you took Seijun Suzuki into a corner, beat him senseless and then made sure the only reading materials he had access to while convalescing were 'Cracked' magazine, 'The Communist Manifesto,' and the collected works of Kingsley Amis. See it. See it now. See it often. See it on VHS, cause it hasn’t gone digital yet. Ask to borrow my copy.
Oh, yeah, the visuals are also amazing. A to the K is terrific at telling stories, and telling jokes, with his camera; he never needs dialogue to get the point across. Of the films I've watched since I started keeping this online journal/temple to my ego, 'Trouble in Paradise' is the only one which gives 'Ariel' a serious run for its money. And, yes, Stef, that includes our beloved 'Together.'
If I could read Finnish, this site would be even cooler. A map and tour of the locations in Helsinki which were used in the film:
Ariel Tour
EAT THIS NEW YORK (2004) - d. Kate Novack & Andrew Rossi
This doc came on the other night and I left it on, initially as background noise. It turned into a pretty good waste of time, a doc about restaurant culture in NYC. I ended up staying up past my bedtime to finish it. The film follows two dudes from Minneapolis with almost zero restaurant experience trying to open a place called Moto in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, it's a good watch if you're at least vaguely interested in the subject. The clincher is all the 'celebrity' interviews they get from chefs and luminaries of the New York restaurant world. They pull this off pretty impressively: I'd say about 80% of the big names in the restaurant game show up on camera at some point. If you don't want to hear Daniel Boulud or Keith McNally riffing on their background and/or watch near-crisis level events unfold because certain individuals who have decided to open a restaurant weren't really aware of what exactly they were getting into, this isn't the movie for you. If you do, there's a nice, efficient energy to the filmmaking - especially the editing - which carries things through the weaker patches.
VACAS (1991) - d. Julio Medem
Outside the big big names of European filmmaking are a whole stack of talented directors who don't get nearly the credit they're due, especially on our shores. Kaurismäki is clearly one of them, but another filmmaker who belongs high atop that list is the Spaniard Julio Medem, who's better known for two more recent efforts, 'Lovers of the Arctic Circle' and 'Sex and Lucia,' than this film, which was his first. His movies aren't for everyone as his particular taste for the cósmico doesn't necessarily translate to a broad audience, but I'm a big fan.
While 'Vacas' is very clearly a first feature, it's also a great example of a unique voice hitting the ground running. The story is set in the Basque countryside (Medem and Alex de la Iglesia are the two most prominent filmmakers who hail from the Basque region), during the early half of the 20th century. The plot isn't the reason to watch the film, but it revolves around two families living the agrarian life, their petty squabbles, generational politics, and romantic entanglements. If you're familiar with Medem, you know that there's always a thick vein of magical realism - á la García Márquez, Borges, Allende, etc. - running through his work. That funky hocus-pocus stuff is a big part of 'Vacas,' except here - and I haven't seen this in his other films - Medem mixes in the makings of a thriller, introducing slasher-film tropes along the way. The ideas he steals from the horror genre are mostly confined to the camera and movement, but there are enough running-in-the-woods shots that I started wondering if I wasn't watching 'Last House on the Left.' Really, though, 'Vacas' is to horror films what eating guacamole Doritos is to eating chips and guacamole, there's a hint of a scare around the next corner, but he's not interested in providing the real thing. This is going to seem like a reach, but I also kept flashing back to 'Bad Taste' - I think it was the impact of watching a major young talent using the kitchen sink approach to figure out what does and doesn't work for them. 'Vacas' ain't perfect, and Medem's storytelling has improved dramatically in the last 13 or so years, but there should be more than enough ideas here to keep you entertained throughout the 96 minutes of runtime.
THE KEEP (1983) - d. Michael Mann
Early-Michael Mann, set during the height of the Second World War. The Nazis, occupying a small but strategically essential town in Romania, turn an ancient and imposing fortress into their base of operations. Things go haywire (the fortress is evil!), Krauts start dying, and a Jewish family (gasp!) comes along to try and fix the mess, courtesy of some Kaballa-esque wisdom from Ian McKellen in the days before Kaballa-esque wisdom opened its Los Angeles flagship store. It soon turns out that McKellan's Cuza hasn't been reading the manual on how to be a good occupiee.
'The Keep' is based on an F. Paul Wilson novel, and the idea, and Mann's desire to adopt it, are inspired. The movie is stylish - complete with music by Tangerine Dream - and certainly aims for the pedigreed, big-idea horror of 70s films like 'Alien' and 'The Exorcist.' But it falls far short. At 96 minutes, the film's plot caves in badly; suggestions have been made that the studio had a hand in gutting the film, opting for brevity at the expense of coherent narrative, but I'm only half-convinced. Mann's only feature to this point was 'Thief,' and he had a ways to go before his black Amex/the-studio-leaves-me-alone days. Scott Glenn, Jürgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne and Ian McKellen are all in play, making you wonder just how a movie with a cast this strong can turn so hackneyed. On evidence of what's made it to the screen, I don't think anyone should be holding out for a director's cut. Even if you're a Michael Mann completist, you're not going to betray any geek ideals by skipping out on this one. Go watch some Crockett and Tubbs - or 'Thief' - instead.
JACKASS: THE MOVIE (2002) - d. Jeff Tremaine
So long as it turns out that my seed still works when some poor suckerette decides to take pity on me and breed, and so long as my children aren't too deformed and/or demented by my parenting to have children of their own, I intend to one day watch 'Jackass' - both the movie and the series - with my grandchildren. I'm sure that much edgier shit will be available by then, but I can't imagine that this is going to age poorly. You and I both know that the golf cart crash alone is worth the price of admission.
TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE
I hadn't seen this since I was a little kid. Turns out that it's only partially the movie I remember.
I ain't done seen a lot of John Huston, but I've seen enough to have a pretty decent idea of what to expect from him. Beautiful photography, complicated characters which defy archetypes, etc.. More of the same here. Huston started out as a screenwriter, and his first run-out as a director came in 1941 with 'The Maltese Falcon.' 'Treasure' was only Huston's second feature behind the camera, and it's amazing how accomplished a storyteller he already is. The film is beautifully composed in black and white - as in 'Trouble in Paradise,' the frame is pre-widescreen - and everything from sound to editing is absolutely top-notch. If you aren't familiar with the story, it involves two American itinerants who've dried up in Tampico, Mexico. Crashing at the Mexican version of the Y, they meet an older guy who tells a lovely tale about the thrill of the hunting gold, spinning a yarn that's just plain impossible for our two 'heroes' to refuse. With a bit of good fortune, they find themselves with enough money to get started on the hunt, and soon enough, they're in the mountains, discovering a tasty claim and striking it rich. Things devolve from there, as greed inevitably corrupts, and the film opens out into a story about the evil that men do.
One thing you have to respect about Humphrey Bogart is that he's willing to play the bad guy. He may be in love with himself, but he's not so in love with himself that you won't see him play an absolute asshole if the story calls for it. He's an absolute asshole here.
My feelings about the movie are mixed. It's very, very good. It's exceptionally good. But I'm going to nitpick because I can. One of Huston's other classics is the 1951 adaptation of C.S. Forester's 'The African Queen.' 'The African Queen' is a movie I fucking hate. I know it's a 'good' movie, but I had three different English teachers who made me read the book and sit through the film in class, and each time brought me closer to the edge. Huston, as good as he is, isn't the most economic of storytellers, especially not in his earlier and later years. In 'The African Queen,' the pace is often glacial and the chemistry between Bogart and Hepburn isn't quite as special as everyone else seems to think it is. In 'Treasure,' I felt like both the first forty and the final twenty minutes could easily have been tighter. Especially the beginning of the movie, where I actually found myself waiting for the next cut, even within dialogue scenes. I'm not sure whether or not we're looking at a three-act structure, but the middle section of this film, atypically, is the strongest. Not a major complaint, and I wish this movie was a little fresher in my head so I could make a stronger case than I have, but whatever. It's just my opinion.
SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT (1986) - d. Spike Lee
A lot of people think that Spike Lee gets too much credit. A lot of people think, deep down, that Spike Lee gets all the credit he does because he's black and a great self-promoter. A lot of people think Larry Bird gets all the credit he does because he's white. A lot of people say and think stupid shit about Larry Bird because they didn't watch him play or only saw him play once he was old and his spine was pretty much fused. A lot of people say and think stupid shit about Spike Lee because they haven't seen 'She's Gotta Have It,' Lee's first and best film.
If you haven't watched this movie, it's amazing - one of the best films of the 80s - and Lee throws down the gauntlet like Daryl Dawkins shattering glass. It's both comedy and commentary, owing a huge debt to both Woody Allen and the French New Wave, and it features a great jazz score by Spike's pops, Bill Lee. How in hell the AFI left it off it's '100 Years... 100 Laughs' list is beyond me. Spike's ethnicity and big mouth may play a part in his celebrity, but if you've seen this, you can't hate the game.
IRON MONKEY (1993) - Woo-ping Yeun
After the 'Honey' debacle, I swore to myself that I'd try to watch a better mix of movies, and while I've definitely been eating a lot more brain food lately, it's still nice to throw in for churros and a 40oz. of Country Club every once in a while. Actually, I'm not sure I could survive without them. This and the next film in the post, 'Full Moon High,' definitely destroyed a few brain cells.
To be fair, 'Iron Monkey' is an awesome fucking movie, even if it is empty-headed. Anyone who hasn't seen it is missing out, big-time. It's tons of fun, and it's directed by Woo-ping Yeun, who is one of the best fight choreographers on earth. It also benefits hugely from casting Donnie Yen as a lead. Yen isn't the best-looking dude in the world, but he sure can kung fu. It's actually ridiculous how good he can kung fu.
You'll rarely see this in Hong Kong cinema, but the budget is large, and the money shows up on screen. The photography is great, the sets are class, and the costume design is especially nice (I'm thinking of Jean Wang's pants and Yen's trés cool gear). Woo-ping's trademark wirework is in full bloom here, and he's at it again with the wide-angle lenses on medium-to-close-up shots. I'm not sure that the near-fisheye technique is unique to him, but he uses it all the time, and you basically know to expect it when you're watching his films. What happens is that the image distorts cartoonishly when the camera is too close to its subject so that, when feet or fists fly at the camera, they get huge while the rest of the body stays 'normal.' It's similar in style to what Jack Kirby does with foreshortening and adds distinctly comic book flair. A neat effect. So are 'Flying Sleeves.' The whole thing ends with one of the most stylish action sequences in the history of Hong Kong cinema, a battle to the death on top of flaming wooden poles. Ginchy.
I'm not one to talk up Quentin Tarantino, cinema historian, but his interview on the DVD is actually required viewing if you've watched the film as it explains some interesting nuances of kung fu cinema.
FULL MOON HIGH (1981) - d. Larry Cohen
Mild surprise. Larry Cohen is the guy who made the 'It's Alive!' movies (which I've never seen), directed 'Black Caesar' and 'Hell Up in Harlem,' and wrote 'Phonebooth.' He's kind of a legend in B-movie circles, but even in the minor leagues, he's something of a second-tier talent. The one thing Cohen really knows how to do is write, and this movie, about a teen who gets bitten by a werewolf while on a 'mission' to Romania with his father, has some clever and campy moments. It stars Adam Arkin, Ed McMahon (giving an awful performance in a distracting role), Maggie from 'Switchblade Sisters,' and Adam's daddy Alan (as the mother of all shrinks). The two Arkins consistently outshine the material. Cohen is willfully silly/campy - even self-reflexive - throughout, and lines like 'Come back here, you premature ejaculator!' fly fast and hard.
He may be a decent writer, but the man has no idea what to do with the camera; this is especially clear when they pay homage to the shower scene in 'Psycho' in the most ham-fisted manner possible. The movie's real claim to fame, though, is that it was the basis for 'Teen Wolf' a couple years later. Swap football for basketball and Romania for genetics, and the two films are so alike that I'm amazed Cohen doesn't have a story credit on the latter. The biggest difference between the two is that 'Teen Wolf' doesn't have Bob Saget wearing a gray wig and pretending to be a sportscaster.
A PLACE CALLED CHIAPAS (1998) - d. Nettie Wild
This is a damned good documentary which has an interesting approach to its subject. I'm eternally fascinated by Third World political struggles and, while there's plenty of debate as to whether or not Mexico is a Third World nation (I grudgingly vote 'No'), there's no debating that Chiapas, a state in southeastern Mexico, home to the only direct descendants of the Maya, and source of mucho conflict in recent years, rates as a Third World region.
'A Place Called Chiapas' is the result of nine months of immersion in the world of the Chiapan struggle and the mysterious Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), and for director Nettie Wild and her crew, it was clearly time well spent. It's kind of a sexy story (Oliver Stone's been threatening to do something with it for ages now) and I'd love to fill up space with a lengthy dissertation on the ins and outs of the conflict, EZLN's savvy use of media, and their enigmatic figurehead Subcomandante Marcos, but I'm mostly here to write about movies, and other people have done a much better job of explaining Chiapas than I ever will. Also, I want to convince people to see this movie, rather than dilute its effectiveness, so we'll try to leave something to the imagination.
What makes 'Chiapas' so successful is the depth of Wild's reportage and some effectively layered storytelling. The film is beautifully shot - ah, to be Canadian and have access to both CBC and BBC money - on what I'm guessing was Super-16mm, and the exceptional visuals draw you into the frame in a way most docs just plain can't. The cinematographer, Kirk Tougas, has a great, slightly unconventional eye - the director is also credited on the photography end, so kudos all around - and you rarely feel like you're just watching another Frontline doc. Wild was unwilling to play fly-on-the-wall, and she's consistently rewarded for her efforts, developing a strong dialogue with the local villagers, the EZLN and the various groups of refugees she encounters. Her CBC credentials and outsider status also leave government officials to let their guard down and say things that, well, shouldn't ever be said. The crew is in so deep that there's a point in the film where a running camera is all that's preventing local refugees from a full-on assault by government 'peace-keepers' (the highly-illegal Peace and Justice Party). It's heady stuff, and the whole thing culminates in the ultimate coup in the crazy world that is Chiapas - an on-camera interview with Mr. Subcomandante Marcos himself.
Los chinos son muy cabrones.
This film is good (just short of great) stuff, both serious brain food and genuinely engaging. Unique to the storytelling is the fact that there's almost no introduction to the story. An editorial decision has been made to leave the bulk of Chiapas' dense history behind. Instead, you're thrown into the thick of things, and your experience is similar to that of the filmmakers. I doubt it works for everyone, but if nothing else, it keeps the film from growing stale, as you're still trying to put all the pieces together at the end.
Props to Zeitgeist Films for actually getting this film out to the American public. Not everyone would bother.
The following is a link to the Wikipedia's overview of Chiapas, there's links to info on the EZLN and Marcos from there. There's better stuff available online, but I'm nothing if not lazy. Right, Stef? - Chiapas
CHOROPAMPA: THE PRICE OF GOLD (2003) - d. Ernesto Cabellos & Stephanie Boyd
It was Latin-night on Sundance's 'DocDay,' so here we are with a tale of an evil mining company, an undereducated and impoverished Peruvian population, and a big, sloppy, horribly irresponsible mercury spill. Guess who likes this movie?
The truth is, 'Choropampa' isn't the stomach punch that 'Chiapas' was, mostly because it's a bit too beholden to the standard look and feel you expect from documentaries. Not every story tells itself, and while Cabellos and Boyd do an impressive job on a film full of powerful and painfully revealing moments, it never ratchets things up to the boiling point (it's all very cinema verité, so maybe that's the point). Still, a very good movie and a way too disheartening story about macro-scale corporate malfeasance and its impact on a human level. I don't think it's on DVD or VHS, so you'll have to look for it on the telly.
HOOSIERS (1986) - d. David Anspaugh
Well, it doesn't hold up completely, but it's still good. 'Hoosiers' is a big part of the reason I'm into basketball; I watched it constantly when I was a weejun, and I can still see why. As mid-80s heartland fluff goes, it don't get better. But, hey, there are issues, and it's my job to whine about them.
My biggest problem is that the story goes by too quickly, so that conflicts are introduced with no hope of satisfying resolutions, and the two major subplots (Gene Hackman and Barbara Hershey's romance and Dennis Hopper's battle with the bottle) are given a beginning and an end, but not enough middle. Nothing has much room to breath and, as much as Hackman and Hershey have good chemistry, their relationship still feels kinda false. That may be because there's no good reason for the cold-shoulder Coach gets at the start of the film; if nothing else, it's too much of a dead giveaway that they're gonna be playing some one-on-one by story's end. The movie works anyways because the story is universal, the look is right-on, and Norman Dale's pre-Big Game speech consists of the sentence 'I love you guys.'
The basketball isn't that interesting to look at, but it's better than the action in 'Blue Chips' (the gold-standard for making basketball look stupid in a movie) and the rest of the film has that awshucks rustic glow you instantly associate with corn country. Anyways, the thing that surprised me most, watching it for the first time in forever, is that the kids are such a small part of things. I don't know if I'd just revised events in my head because so many 'Hoosiers'-clones have put the kids front and center, or if it really even matters, but it was strange to discover that none of the ballers have more than six lines.
BORN TO WIN (1971) - d. Ivan Passer
George Segal plays a drug addict in the big city. Karen Black is the love interest. I'd wanted to see it for a long time because I have a thing for addict movies, and 'Born' was rumored to be above average. Also, the director, Passer, was a member of the Czech New Wave - one of my most favoritist of the new waves - and this was supposed to be his artistic peak. I gave up on it after half an hour - partially because night was closing in on morning, partially because it wasn't an expectation-meeter. The only thing it really has to recommend it is Hector Elizondo's unreal fur coat and even less real limousine. Segal is up for it, but Black isn't enough of an actress to stay in the game, and the movie ends up feeling like a wannabe 'Midnight Cowboy' with a heroin twist. I still haven't seen 'The Panic in Needle Park' (because it's had a checkered past on video), but I feel pretty safe saying that it's better.
CONDO PAINTING (2000) - d. John McNaughton
I wanted to like this. It appeared out of the blue on one of the indie channels, and I got my hopes up. John McNaughton's had as many hits as misses, but he generally gives good misfire. I didn't know George Condo before watching this movie, and now that I've seen it, I'm not sure I needed to. Here's the gist: low-budget documentary about Condo, a painter I don't like, made by a director whose style doesn't translate well to documentary. Condo's art is similar in spirit to that of Kustom Kulture artists like Robert Williams (think the inside cover of 'Appetite for Destruction'), Frank Kozik, and Shag, and you can easily picture it in the pages of Juxtapoz. The fundamental difference is that Condo's something of an art-world darling, and his work hangs in galleries like Pace Wildenstein, while the Juxtapoz crowd shows at La Luz de Jesus. To be fair, Condo's a bit more concerned with being a 'real' artist, but still, a guy like Williams is a whole lot kookier and would probably have been a much more interesting subject. I really ain't interested in hearing Condo spiel about his juvenile worldview for 90-something minutes. The whole thing is kind of dowdy, and ultimately, not worth anyone's time unless they were already into Condo's stuff.
Here's a couple of Condo painting's so you know what you're dealing with:
FOLLOWING (1998) - d. Christopher Nolan
Been a while since I'd seen this, but I was in the mood for something short and smart and 'Following' is both those things.
I'm a whore for movies made with zero money, and Nolan's first feature is no exception. Supposedly, the whole thing cost about $7,000 (before blow-up), and he shot it on weekends over the course of a year. The story's structure is extremely fragmented, and he got around the difficulties of shooting a warped narrative by heavily rehearsing his cast in the build-up to the shoot.
I've never gone through the process of watching the 'front-to-back' version of 'Memento' available on the DVD, but I'm willing to guess that, no matter how entertaining the story may be, the film is much better for running in reverse. Cutting up the narrative isn't a super-common practice, but some really great directors have effectively played that card in order to buoy thinner stories (I'm especially thinking of 'The Limey,' which was shot as a beginning-middle-end movie, but wasn't working until they went all Resnais on it). Anyways, the reality of 'Following' is that the story isn't all that strong, but the shifting, sliding narrative fills things out nicely. It's not perfect, but it's a nice first attempt.
A lot of comparisons are made between this movie and Darren Aronofsky's 'Pi.' There's some logic to that, as both films are flawed but stylish black & white thrillers shot on a shoestring budget, but there are huge ideological differences between what Nolan tries to accomplish in 'Following' and the never-ending head games of 'Pi.' In both cases, almost nothing is clear until the final scenes, but Nolan's film owes its debt to the French New Wave (rather than ripping off Shinya Tsukamoto's 'Tetsuo: The Iron Man'*) and seems to have greater faith in the audience's ability to hang on through the hazy stuff. Really, if it reminds me of anything, it's 'Suture,' the 1993 debut of Scott McGehee and David Siegel, the pair who made 'The Deep End.' There's a morose edge that this film shares with 'Suture's' slow-burn weirdness, and both leave an acrid, if effective, aftertaste.
*And, no, you will never ever hear me talk about 'Pi' without a mention of 'Tetsuo.' I have no beef with 'Pi,' it's just, well... watch them both and tell me I'm crazy getting annoyed about all the 'Eraserhead' comparisons when 'Tetsuo's sitting out there. And, yes, 'Tetsuo' is hugely influenced by 'Eraserhead,' I'm not stupid, just stubborn.
SHORT FILMS BY ROMAN POLANSKI (1957-1962) - d. Roman Polanski
Murder/Morderstwo (1957), Teeth Smile/Usmiech zebiczny (1957), Break Up the Dance/Rozbijemy zabawe (1957), Two Men and a Wardrobe/Dwaj ludzie z szafa (1958), The Lamp/Lampa (1959), When Angels Fall/Gdy spadaja anioly (1959), The Fat and the Lean/Le Gros et le Maigre (1961), Mammals/Ssaki (1962)
Yay, Criterion. The second disc of the 'Knife in the Water' set is a collection of Polanski's student and post-student short films. What you discover is that Polanski, in his early stages, was a lot more concerned with developing his style than he was with his storytelling and the experience of watching these films is pretty damn well heartening. Actually, watching most 'great' filmmakers' student and/or short work is generally pretty heartening. The one short of his that most film students have seen is 'Two Men and a Wardrobe,' and the throwback slapstick style of 'Two Men' is so successful, that Polanski returns to the format of two good for-nothing fools forming a vaguely-abusive partnership again in both 'The Fat and the Lean' and 'Mammals.' Of the films, 'Fat and Lean' - which also played the festival circuit - is probably the most successful; it has the inventiveness of the more stylish shorts, but couches it in a coherent narrative. 'When Angels Fall' was the director's thesis film at the Lodz Film School, and while it's beautifully shot and has a lot of interesting ideas, it doesn't nearly cohere. In fact, I wonder if you threw it in with a bunch of other filmmaker's student work, whether it would clearly stand out from the pack. Probably, but maybe not.
TROY (2004) - d. Wolfgang Petersen
Ugh, insipid, boring. The worst thing about this movie is that it could've been perfectly good. The script isn't bad. But this is inexcusable, Wolfgang, and you're moving dangerously close to 'hack' status. Two times in a row, you've wasted excellent material in the service of making cheesy, cheesy scheiße. No, wait, I just checked your credits, and you've been stuck in neutral since 'In The Line of Fire.'
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACKKKKKK.
Here's the deal, it looks pretty, it sounds pretty, and the majority of the cast is excellent. Eric Bana makes nice on his promise and delivers a good, human performance, proving that the guy in 'Chopper' isn't necessarily lost forever. Orlando Bloom takes on his most thankless role since 'Black Hawk Down' and makes a hash of it - there were girls in the audience yelling 'kill him,' so that about sums that up. Brad Pitt, who may not be Marlon Brando, but isn't James Marsden, either, gives a crap performance as Achilles and is totally outclassed throughout. Peter O'Toole plays Priam, the king of Troy, and is apparently too old to be making movies anymore. It was tough not laughing every time he walked on-screen, and I nearly had a fit when Achilles and Priam were in the same room together (one of the better-written scenes in the film, but as far as unintentional comedy goes, all it needed was a James Brown cameo). Diane (Heid)Kruger does a good enough job as Helen; I gotta think they could've done a much worse job casting that role. If nothing else, she's pretty enough to play the part.
May I never see the whiny surfer who plays Achilles’ cousin in a movie ever again.
I know the 'Iliad' pretty well, not really well, but pretty well, and I was constantly amazed at how many things had been changed 'in the service of the story' without actually serving the story. I'd pile on the examples, but we could be here all day. The three things that should definitely have happened, though, are as follows: We needed more of Helen and Paris while they were still in Greece; the story kicks in and all you're thinking is 'Man, these kids sure made a rash decision.' Their 'love' needed more development to make the whole thing actually convincing. My mom picked up on this, which makes me wonder why no one who made the movie did. The second thing is the much-hyped fight between Hector and Achilles. The fight is put together pretty perfectly, it's probably the highlight of the film. With that said, there's no excuse for the fact that it doesn't last ten times longer. In Homer's version, it lasts an entire day and ends with Achilles dragging Hector around the city of Troy a whole bunch of times. The first 100 minutes of the movie are essentially build-up to that one scene and, as good as it is, it's hard not to feel like you've been sold short. So, that scene should've been longer, but the rest of the movie should've been much shorter, unless there was more fighting. As it stands, 'Troy' is episodic and more sleep inducing than Tylenol PM (ask Chuck, who fell asleep in the theater). There are just way too many scenes with people talking talking talking, going on forever. In that sense, it's a lot like my movie posts.
Once we got past Hector v. Achilles, I spent most of the rest of the film singing the theme song to 'The Neverending Story.'
TRUCK TURNER (1974) - d. Jonathan Kaplan
Not a lost gem from the Blaxploitation era, mostly because it's kinda of boring. Marvin Gaye's incredible soundtrack is the best thing to come out of it. It's hard to root against anything starring Isaac Hayes, though, and 'TT' fits into a subset of the genre which was a little nastier and angrier than the standard routine. 'Superfly' was the height of this ideal, and the extra venom on hand here makes the bounty hunter thing extra-fun. Also, Lt. Uhura goes crrrrazy in it (keep your pal in your pants, G--g).
THE SHIPPING NEWS (2001) - d. Lasse Hallström
One of those deflating experiences which makes you wonder why anyone would want to keep on with this whole living thing. Kevin Spacey in frumpy mode, Kate Blanchett in oddly psychotic (though extremely hot Cleopatra-eye) mode, Julianne Moore sleepwalking, Judy Dench gone to waste, blah blah blah blah blah. Sometimes the movie is really beautiful to look at and sometimes you think you're looking at a Hallmark Hall of Famer. Lasse Hallström isn't much of a director, but this is inexcusable. Even worse was getting the feeling that they'd ruined a good piece of fiction in the process. There's probably a very good film in this story, but Miramax shouldn't have paid for it, Hallström shouldn't have directed, and it definitely shouldn't have been test-screened to within an inch of its life.
Oh, wait. What life?
THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS (2003) - d. Andy & Larry Wachowski
Hey, I have an idea for the Wachowski brothers. Why don't you leave us alone? And, Larry, is getting a sex change really going to make you any less of a pussy? No? I didn't think so. 'Conan the King' better be fucking awesome, or I'm going to cut Andy's balls off, too.
I have seen Larry's future.
HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS (2003) - d. Donald Petrie
I have a lady friend who can listen to Black Flag one minute and turn around and convince me that watching this movie is a good idea the next. I don't get how women can sit through shit like this. Though I'll acknowledge that men watch stupid shit, too. Like sci-fi.
I will have my revenge.
YOU CAN'T HURRY LOVE (1988) - d. Richard Martini
Joe Isuzu vs. Hotlips. Worst movie I've seen in forever and I only sat through it because I am a hopeless insomniac. Does include the cherry line 'I want you to beef her' and a soundtrack of relatively big-name songs by guys like Robert Palmer and Van Morrison. There's also a grody Sally Kellerman song at the end that reminded me of being touched by the cootie-girl in 3rd grade.
Try never seeing it.
Current music - The Immortals - "Can't Keep A Good Man Down"
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The following is a lesson in why I should post with regularity. 26 films. That's way too many to write or read about in one sitting. There's a lesson here that I'm sure I won't learn.
I posted my write-up for 'Land and Freedom' separately. It's really long, and this way it's easier for Stef to avoid.
THE PARALLAX VIEW (1974) - d. Alan J. Pakula
I'm amazed this movie isn't more of a household name. Sure, in the 70s, good political thrillers were as common as stupid-head evangelical Christians are today, and this isn't the most user-friendly entry in the genre, but still. I don't know, maybe I live in a cave and everyone I know really has seen it, but I doubt it.
Anyways, here's the deal: Warren Beatty is a whacked-out reporter for a junky newspaper somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. At the start of the movie, he witnesses the assassination of a senator-cum-presidential candidate atop the Space Needle. A couple of years down the road, a bunch of the other witnesses to said event are D-E-D. So, good old Warren, who's now off the bottle, but still pretty much a grizzly pseudo-hippy, goes on a mission to investigate. That's about all I should tell you, other than be sure you pay attention, because the movie has a level of respect for the viewer's intelligence, which would probably be deemed unpatriotic by the current administration. This isn't one of those shell games where the audience waltzes through with all the cards while our hero is trying to figure out how many nines have already been dealt. No, in this one, I actually felt like Pakula was baiting me, trying to drive me crazy by withholding, withholding, withholding...
The bulk of the film was shot on location throughout the PNW, and this is probably going to be the first and last time I throw props to a location manager for the job they've done finding the most angular, modern buildings to use in a film. Gordon Willis is behind the camera, and watching the movie, it's clearly one of his best efforts, creating images as modern as anything to come out of the early 70s. Most of the time the widescreen format is just an excuse to make things look prettier, but these guys are constantly giving the frame a workout, and there's all kinds of lessons in film technique available in this movie. Except for the dam sequence and the car chase that follows. Those are both kinda crappy. Good transfer on the DVD, zero extras.
THIEF (1981) - d. Michael Mann
No film on this list is screaming for a revival quite as loudly as 'Thief.' It's not the best movie ever made, but it's still something very special, and it's the first film written and directed by a guy who a lot of people think is an important filmmaker. I'm not a fan of 'Ali' (except for Emmanuel Lubezki's photography), and I think that 'Heat' is over-hyped, slow, and just a little bit too sucky at the center. I also couldn't hate 'The Last of the Mohicans' more. But still, this is the man who gave us Crockett and Tubbs, 'Manhunter,' and 'The Insider,' so it's hard not to call him important.
As far as 'Thief' is concerned, Mann pretty much pulls the 'emerging fully-formed from the head of Zeus' routine. All of his familiar motifs are on hand - big guns, big cars, shiny surfaces, neon, gritty realism - and they're wrapped in a beautiful little modern noir which features what has to be James Caan's best performance as a diamond-thief extraordinaire who's working for the normal life which he's never been allowed. The key to the film is that it's suffused with a crusty blue-collar grit, a harshness that not only ads to the narrative, but also suggests that Mann could've turned out to be the last of the great 70s filmmakers. If only he didn't arrive at the party a little late and los studios didn't decide to churn out only crap in the post-'Jaws' era. Instead, he turned back to TV, and his success there is well chronicled. It's a shame, though, that there aren't more Michael Mann movies out there, because even if he hits and misses, the hits are something special.
For what it's worth, the DVD is crap. The film is an amazing technical accomplishment, but the transfer is awful. At least the sound is good, and Tangerine Dream's excellent score comes through loud and clear. No extras, and that sucks, because supposedly Mann and Caan did a commentary track for a laser-disc edition. Also, I'd be stupid not to point out that Tuesday Weld and Robert Prosky are excellent as wife and nasty crime boss, respectively. I don't think Criterion is going to shell out the cash it would take to get the rights off of MGM, but someone has to do a better job releasing this thing.
TROUBLE IN PARADISE (1932) - d. Ernst Lubitsch
Wow. Wow. Wow.
The only Lubitsch movie I'd ever seen was 'Ninotchka,' which I loved. This is better. Ernst Lubitsch is God. Herbert Marshall is fantastic. Kay Francis is a babe. Extravagant, smart, and naughty as hell, it was Lubitsch's first perfect talkie, and - while it isn't screwball - it's the foundation on which screwball was built (screwball comedies came a little later in the decade). There isn't a better example of pre-Hayes Office filmmaking.
Excellent commentary track on the Criterion DVD by Lubitsch historian Scott Eyman; he's pretty much reading from a script, but whatever, you learn a lot about everything that makes Lubitsch Lubitsch. Can someone please help me figure out how I can get my hands on a copy of 'To Be or Not To Be'? Are there still any websites, which do the Netflix thing, except with videotapes? Please advise.
DAS FIDELE GEFAGNIS (THE MERRY JAIL) (1917) - d. Ernst Lubitsch
A German silent film from Lubitsch's pre-Hollywood years. Criterion packaged it on the 'Trouble' DVD. For a silent drawing-room comedy, the laughs are still pretty fresh. I haven't seen a lot of comedies from the pre-sound days - nothing that isn't Keaton or Chapman, at least - but this, though lighter than air, would rate against any competition.
ARIEL (1988) - d. Aki Kaurismäki
Fucking hell. Aki Kaurismäki should be a legend by now. He is in other countries, but nobody seems to want to see his movies here. Fuck that. Finland deserves better from you, America.
I don't really know how exactly to pin down what he does, what his 'thing' is. Logical reference points include Godard, Bresson, Jarmusch (definitely Jarmusch, who I think was throwing props to his buddy AK with the Helsinki sequence in 'Night on Earth'), Wong Kar-Wai, Hal Ashby, and Bergman, but none of those names really get at the heart of the beast. 'Ariel' is a beautiful movie - though not beautiful in the way its name suggests - and it was his first film which found a broad international audience.
FYI, it's actually in color.
The film is beautiful because of the lazy chaos it breeds, its totally immersive subversion. 'Ariel' is a crime film in all the wrong ways, all Scandy despair, blue-collar deadpan and old-fashioned awesomeness. It's what might happen if you took Seijun Suzuki into a corner, beat him senseless and then made sure the only reading materials he had access to while convalescing were 'Cracked' magazine, 'The Communist Manifesto,' and the collected works of Kingsley Amis. See it. See it now. See it often. See it on VHS, cause it hasn’t gone digital yet. Ask to borrow my copy.
Oh, yeah, the visuals are also amazing. A to the K is terrific at telling stories, and telling jokes, with his camera; he never needs dialogue to get the point across. Of the films I've watched since I started keeping this online journal/temple to my ego, 'Trouble in Paradise' is the only one which gives 'Ariel' a serious run for its money. And, yes, Stef, that includes our beloved 'Together.'
If I could read Finnish, this site would be even cooler. A map and tour of the locations in Helsinki which were used in the film:
Ariel Tour
EAT THIS NEW YORK (2004) - d. Kate Novack & Andrew Rossi
This doc came on the other night and I left it on, initially as background noise. It turned into a pretty good waste of time, a doc about restaurant culture in NYC. I ended up staying up past my bedtime to finish it. The film follows two dudes from Minneapolis with almost zero restaurant experience trying to open a place called Moto in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, it's a good watch if you're at least vaguely interested in the subject. The clincher is all the 'celebrity' interviews they get from chefs and luminaries of the New York restaurant world. They pull this off pretty impressively: I'd say about 80% of the big names in the restaurant game show up on camera at some point. If you don't want to hear Daniel Boulud or Keith McNally riffing on their background and/or watch near-crisis level events unfold because certain individuals who have decided to open a restaurant weren't really aware of what exactly they were getting into, this isn't the movie for you. If you do, there's a nice, efficient energy to the filmmaking - especially the editing - which carries things through the weaker patches.
VACAS (1991) - d. Julio Medem
Outside the big big names of European filmmaking are a whole stack of talented directors who don't get nearly the credit they're due, especially on our shores. Kaurismäki is clearly one of them, but another filmmaker who belongs high atop that list is the Spaniard Julio Medem, who's better known for two more recent efforts, 'Lovers of the Arctic Circle' and 'Sex and Lucia,' than this film, which was his first. His movies aren't for everyone as his particular taste for the cósmico doesn't necessarily translate to a broad audience, but I'm a big fan.
While 'Vacas' is very clearly a first feature, it's also a great example of a unique voice hitting the ground running. The story is set in the Basque countryside (Medem and Alex de la Iglesia are the two most prominent filmmakers who hail from the Basque region), during the early half of the 20th century. The plot isn't the reason to watch the film, but it revolves around two families living the agrarian life, their petty squabbles, generational politics, and romantic entanglements. If you're familiar with Medem, you know that there's always a thick vein of magical realism - á la García Márquez, Borges, Allende, etc. - running through his work. That funky hocus-pocus stuff is a big part of 'Vacas,' except here - and I haven't seen this in his other films - Medem mixes in the makings of a thriller, introducing slasher-film tropes along the way. The ideas he steals from the horror genre are mostly confined to the camera and movement, but there are enough running-in-the-woods shots that I started wondering if I wasn't watching 'Last House on the Left.' Really, though, 'Vacas' is to horror films what eating guacamole Doritos is to eating chips and guacamole, there's a hint of a scare around the next corner, but he's not interested in providing the real thing. This is going to seem like a reach, but I also kept flashing back to 'Bad Taste' - I think it was the impact of watching a major young talent using the kitchen sink approach to figure out what does and doesn't work for them. 'Vacas' ain't perfect, and Medem's storytelling has improved dramatically in the last 13 or so years, but there should be more than enough ideas here to keep you entertained throughout the 96 minutes of runtime.
THE KEEP (1983) - d. Michael Mann
Early-Michael Mann, set during the height of the Second World War. The Nazis, occupying a small but strategically essential town in Romania, turn an ancient and imposing fortress into their base of operations. Things go haywire (the fortress is evil!), Krauts start dying, and a Jewish family (gasp!) comes along to try and fix the mess, courtesy of some Kaballa-esque wisdom from Ian McKellen in the days before Kaballa-esque wisdom opened its Los Angeles flagship store. It soon turns out that McKellan's Cuza hasn't been reading the manual on how to be a good occupiee.
'The Keep' is based on an F. Paul Wilson novel, and the idea, and Mann's desire to adopt it, are inspired. The movie is stylish - complete with music by Tangerine Dream - and certainly aims for the pedigreed, big-idea horror of 70s films like 'Alien' and 'The Exorcist.' But it falls far short. At 96 minutes, the film's plot caves in badly; suggestions have been made that the studio had a hand in gutting the film, opting for brevity at the expense of coherent narrative, but I'm only half-convinced. Mann's only feature to this point was 'Thief,' and he had a ways to go before his black Amex/the-studio-leaves-me-alone days. Scott Glenn, Jürgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne and Ian McKellen are all in play, making you wonder just how a movie with a cast this strong can turn so hackneyed. On evidence of what's made it to the screen, I don't think anyone should be holding out for a director's cut. Even if you're a Michael Mann completist, you're not going to betray any geek ideals by skipping out on this one. Go watch some Crockett and Tubbs - or 'Thief' - instead.
JACKASS: THE MOVIE (2002) - d. Jeff Tremaine
So long as it turns out that my seed still works when some poor suckerette decides to take pity on me and breed, and so long as my children aren't too deformed and/or demented by my parenting to have children of their own, I intend to one day watch 'Jackass' - both the movie and the series - with my grandchildren. I'm sure that much edgier shit will be available by then, but I can't imagine that this is going to age poorly. You and I both know that the golf cart crash alone is worth the price of admission.
TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE
I hadn't seen this since I was a little kid. Turns out that it's only partially the movie I remember.
I ain't done seen a lot of John Huston, but I've seen enough to have a pretty decent idea of what to expect from him. Beautiful photography, complicated characters which defy archetypes, etc.. More of the same here. Huston started out as a screenwriter, and his first run-out as a director came in 1941 with 'The Maltese Falcon.' 'Treasure' was only Huston's second feature behind the camera, and it's amazing how accomplished a storyteller he already is. The film is beautifully composed in black and white - as in 'Trouble in Paradise,' the frame is pre-widescreen - and everything from sound to editing is absolutely top-notch. If you aren't familiar with the story, it involves two American itinerants who've dried up in Tampico, Mexico. Crashing at the Mexican version of the Y, they meet an older guy who tells a lovely tale about the thrill of the hunting gold, spinning a yarn that's just plain impossible for our two 'heroes' to refuse. With a bit of good fortune, they find themselves with enough money to get started on the hunt, and soon enough, they're in the mountains, discovering a tasty claim and striking it rich. Things devolve from there, as greed inevitably corrupts, and the film opens out into a story about the evil that men do.
One thing you have to respect about Humphrey Bogart is that he's willing to play the bad guy. He may be in love with himself, but he's not so in love with himself that you won't see him play an absolute asshole if the story calls for it. He's an absolute asshole here.
My feelings about the movie are mixed. It's very, very good. It's exceptionally good. But I'm going to nitpick because I can. One of Huston's other classics is the 1951 adaptation of C.S. Forester's 'The African Queen.' 'The African Queen' is a movie I fucking hate. I know it's a 'good' movie, but I had three different English teachers who made me read the book and sit through the film in class, and each time brought me closer to the edge. Huston, as good as he is, isn't the most economic of storytellers, especially not in his earlier and later years. In 'The African Queen,' the pace is often glacial and the chemistry between Bogart and Hepburn isn't quite as special as everyone else seems to think it is. In 'Treasure,' I felt like both the first forty and the final twenty minutes could easily have been tighter. Especially the beginning of the movie, where I actually found myself waiting for the next cut, even within dialogue scenes. I'm not sure whether or not we're looking at a three-act structure, but the middle section of this film, atypically, is the strongest. Not a major complaint, and I wish this movie was a little fresher in my head so I could make a stronger case than I have, but whatever. It's just my opinion.
SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT (1986) - d. Spike Lee
A lot of people think that Spike Lee gets too much credit. A lot of people think, deep down, that Spike Lee gets all the credit he does because he's black and a great self-promoter. A lot of people think Larry Bird gets all the credit he does because he's white. A lot of people say and think stupid shit about Larry Bird because they didn't watch him play or only saw him play once he was old and his spine was pretty much fused. A lot of people say and think stupid shit about Spike Lee because they haven't seen 'She's Gotta Have It,' Lee's first and best film.
If you haven't watched this movie, it's amazing - one of the best films of the 80s - and Lee throws down the gauntlet like Daryl Dawkins shattering glass. It's both comedy and commentary, owing a huge debt to both Woody Allen and the French New Wave, and it features a great jazz score by Spike's pops, Bill Lee. How in hell the AFI left it off it's '100 Years... 100 Laughs' list is beyond me. Spike's ethnicity and big mouth may play a part in his celebrity, but if you've seen this, you can't hate the game.
IRON MONKEY (1993) - Woo-ping Yeun
After the 'Honey' debacle, I swore to myself that I'd try to watch a better mix of movies, and while I've definitely been eating a lot more brain food lately, it's still nice to throw in for churros and a 40oz. of Country Club every once in a while. Actually, I'm not sure I could survive without them. This and the next film in the post, 'Full Moon High,' definitely destroyed a few brain cells.
To be fair, 'Iron Monkey' is an awesome fucking movie, even if it is empty-headed. Anyone who hasn't seen it is missing out, big-time. It's tons of fun, and it's directed by Woo-ping Yeun, who is one of the best fight choreographers on earth. It also benefits hugely from casting Donnie Yen as a lead. Yen isn't the best-looking dude in the world, but he sure can kung fu. It's actually ridiculous how good he can kung fu.
You'll rarely see this in Hong Kong cinema, but the budget is large, and the money shows up on screen. The photography is great, the sets are class, and the costume design is especially nice (I'm thinking of Jean Wang's pants and Yen's trés cool gear). Woo-ping's trademark wirework is in full bloom here, and he's at it again with the wide-angle lenses on medium-to-close-up shots. I'm not sure that the near-fisheye technique is unique to him, but he uses it all the time, and you basically know to expect it when you're watching his films. What happens is that the image distorts cartoonishly when the camera is too close to its subject so that, when feet or fists fly at the camera, they get huge while the rest of the body stays 'normal.' It's similar in style to what Jack Kirby does with foreshortening and adds distinctly comic book flair. A neat effect. So are 'Flying Sleeves.' The whole thing ends with one of the most stylish action sequences in the history of Hong Kong cinema, a battle to the death on top of flaming wooden poles. Ginchy.
I'm not one to talk up Quentin Tarantino, cinema historian, but his interview on the DVD is actually required viewing if you've watched the film as it explains some interesting nuances of kung fu cinema.
FULL MOON HIGH (1981) - d. Larry Cohen
Mild surprise. Larry Cohen is the guy who made the 'It's Alive!' movies (which I've never seen), directed 'Black Caesar' and 'Hell Up in Harlem,' and wrote 'Phonebooth.' He's kind of a legend in B-movie circles, but even in the minor leagues, he's something of a second-tier talent. The one thing Cohen really knows how to do is write, and this movie, about a teen who gets bitten by a werewolf while on a 'mission' to Romania with his father, has some clever and campy moments. It stars Adam Arkin, Ed McMahon (giving an awful performance in a distracting role), Maggie from 'Switchblade Sisters,' and Adam's daddy Alan (as the mother of all shrinks). The two Arkins consistently outshine the material. Cohen is willfully silly/campy - even self-reflexive - throughout, and lines like 'Come back here, you premature ejaculator!' fly fast and hard.
He may be a decent writer, but the man has no idea what to do with the camera; this is especially clear when they pay homage to the shower scene in 'Psycho' in the most ham-fisted manner possible. The movie's real claim to fame, though, is that it was the basis for 'Teen Wolf' a couple years later. Swap football for basketball and Romania for genetics, and the two films are so alike that I'm amazed Cohen doesn't have a story credit on the latter. The biggest difference between the two is that 'Teen Wolf' doesn't have Bob Saget wearing a gray wig and pretending to be a sportscaster.
A PLACE CALLED CHIAPAS (1998) - d. Nettie Wild
This is a damned good documentary which has an interesting approach to its subject. I'm eternally fascinated by Third World political struggles and, while there's plenty of debate as to whether or not Mexico is a Third World nation (I grudgingly vote 'No'), there's no debating that Chiapas, a state in southeastern Mexico, home to the only direct descendants of the Maya, and source of mucho conflict in recent years, rates as a Third World region.
'A Place Called Chiapas' is the result of nine months of immersion in the world of the Chiapan struggle and the mysterious Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), and for director Nettie Wild and her crew, it was clearly time well spent. It's kind of a sexy story (Oliver Stone's been threatening to do something with it for ages now) and I'd love to fill up space with a lengthy dissertation on the ins and outs of the conflict, EZLN's savvy use of media, and their enigmatic figurehead Subcomandante Marcos, but I'm mostly here to write about movies, and other people have done a much better job of explaining Chiapas than I ever will. Also, I want to convince people to see this movie, rather than dilute its effectiveness, so we'll try to leave something to the imagination.
What makes 'Chiapas' so successful is the depth of Wild's reportage and some effectively layered storytelling. The film is beautifully shot - ah, to be Canadian and have access to both CBC and BBC money - on what I'm guessing was Super-16mm, and the exceptional visuals draw you into the frame in a way most docs just plain can't. The cinematographer, Kirk Tougas, has a great, slightly unconventional eye - the director is also credited on the photography end, so kudos all around - and you rarely feel like you're just watching another Frontline doc. Wild was unwilling to play fly-on-the-wall, and she's consistently rewarded for her efforts, developing a strong dialogue with the local villagers, the EZLN and the various groups of refugees she encounters. Her CBC credentials and outsider status also leave government officials to let their guard down and say things that, well, shouldn't ever be said. The crew is in so deep that there's a point in the film where a running camera is all that's preventing local refugees from a full-on assault by government 'peace-keepers' (the highly-illegal Peace and Justice Party). It's heady stuff, and the whole thing culminates in the ultimate coup in the crazy world that is Chiapas - an on-camera interview with Mr. Subcomandante Marcos himself.
Los chinos son muy cabrones.
This film is good (just short of great) stuff, both serious brain food and genuinely engaging. Unique to the storytelling is the fact that there's almost no introduction to the story. An editorial decision has been made to leave the bulk of Chiapas' dense history behind. Instead, you're thrown into the thick of things, and your experience is similar to that of the filmmakers. I doubt it works for everyone, but if nothing else, it keeps the film from growing stale, as you're still trying to put all the pieces together at the end.
Props to Zeitgeist Films for actually getting this film out to the American public. Not everyone would bother.
The following is a link to the Wikipedia's overview of Chiapas, there's links to info on the EZLN and Marcos from there. There's better stuff available online, but I'm nothing if not lazy. Right, Stef? - Chiapas
CHOROPAMPA: THE PRICE OF GOLD (2003) - d. Ernesto Cabellos & Stephanie Boyd
It was Latin-night on Sundance's 'DocDay,' so here we are with a tale of an evil mining company, an undereducated and impoverished Peruvian population, and a big, sloppy, horribly irresponsible mercury spill. Guess who likes this movie?
The truth is, 'Choropampa' isn't the stomach punch that 'Chiapas' was, mostly because it's a bit too beholden to the standard look and feel you expect from documentaries. Not every story tells itself, and while Cabellos and Boyd do an impressive job on a film full of powerful and painfully revealing moments, it never ratchets things up to the boiling point (it's all very cinema verité, so maybe that's the point). Still, a very good movie and a way too disheartening story about macro-scale corporate malfeasance and its impact on a human level. I don't think it's on DVD or VHS, so you'll have to look for it on the telly.
HOOSIERS (1986) - d. David Anspaugh
Well, it doesn't hold up completely, but it's still good. 'Hoosiers' is a big part of the reason I'm into basketball; I watched it constantly when I was a weejun, and I can still see why. As mid-80s heartland fluff goes, it don't get better. But, hey, there are issues, and it's my job to whine about them.
My biggest problem is that the story goes by too quickly, so that conflicts are introduced with no hope of satisfying resolutions, and the two major subplots (Gene Hackman and Barbara Hershey's romance and Dennis Hopper's battle with the bottle) are given a beginning and an end, but not enough middle. Nothing has much room to breath and, as much as Hackman and Hershey have good chemistry, their relationship still feels kinda false. That may be because there's no good reason for the cold-shoulder Coach gets at the start of the film; if nothing else, it's too much of a dead giveaway that they're gonna be playing some one-on-one by story's end. The movie works anyways because the story is universal, the look is right-on, and Norman Dale's pre-Big Game speech consists of the sentence 'I love you guys.'
The basketball isn't that interesting to look at, but it's better than the action in 'Blue Chips' (the gold-standard for making basketball look stupid in a movie) and the rest of the film has that awshucks rustic glow you instantly associate with corn country. Anyways, the thing that surprised me most, watching it for the first time in forever, is that the kids are such a small part of things. I don't know if I'd just revised events in my head because so many 'Hoosiers'-clones have put the kids front and center, or if it really even matters, but it was strange to discover that none of the ballers have more than six lines.
BORN TO WIN (1971) - d. Ivan Passer
George Segal plays a drug addict in the big city. Karen Black is the love interest. I'd wanted to see it for a long time because I have a thing for addict movies, and 'Born' was rumored to be above average. Also, the director, Passer, was a member of the Czech New Wave - one of my most favoritist of the new waves - and this was supposed to be his artistic peak. I gave up on it after half an hour - partially because night was closing in on morning, partially because it wasn't an expectation-meeter. The only thing it really has to recommend it is Hector Elizondo's unreal fur coat and even less real limousine. Segal is up for it, but Black isn't enough of an actress to stay in the game, and the movie ends up feeling like a wannabe 'Midnight Cowboy' with a heroin twist. I still haven't seen 'The Panic in Needle Park' (because it's had a checkered past on video), but I feel pretty safe saying that it's better.
CONDO PAINTING (2000) - d. John McNaughton
I wanted to like this. It appeared out of the blue on one of the indie channels, and I got my hopes up. John McNaughton's had as many hits as misses, but he generally gives good misfire. I didn't know George Condo before watching this movie, and now that I've seen it, I'm not sure I needed to. Here's the gist: low-budget documentary about Condo, a painter I don't like, made by a director whose style doesn't translate well to documentary. Condo's art is similar in spirit to that of Kustom Kulture artists like Robert Williams (think the inside cover of 'Appetite for Destruction'), Frank Kozik, and Shag, and you can easily picture it in the pages of Juxtapoz. The fundamental difference is that Condo's something of an art-world darling, and his work hangs in galleries like Pace Wildenstein, while the Juxtapoz crowd shows at La Luz de Jesus. To be fair, Condo's a bit more concerned with being a 'real' artist, but still, a guy like Williams is a whole lot kookier and would probably have been a much more interesting subject. I really ain't interested in hearing Condo spiel about his juvenile worldview for 90-something minutes. The whole thing is kind of dowdy, and ultimately, not worth anyone's time unless they were already into Condo's stuff.
Here's a couple of Condo painting's so you know what you're dealing with:
FOLLOWING (1998) - d. Christopher Nolan
Been a while since I'd seen this, but I was in the mood for something short and smart and 'Following' is both those things.
I'm a whore for movies made with zero money, and Nolan's first feature is no exception. Supposedly, the whole thing cost about $7,000 (before blow-up), and he shot it on weekends over the course of a year. The story's structure is extremely fragmented, and he got around the difficulties of shooting a warped narrative by heavily rehearsing his cast in the build-up to the shoot.
I've never gone through the process of watching the 'front-to-back' version of 'Memento' available on the DVD, but I'm willing to guess that, no matter how entertaining the story may be, the film is much better for running in reverse. Cutting up the narrative isn't a super-common practice, but some really great directors have effectively played that card in order to buoy thinner stories (I'm especially thinking of 'The Limey,' which was shot as a beginning-middle-end movie, but wasn't working until they went all Resnais on it). Anyways, the reality of 'Following' is that the story isn't all that strong, but the shifting, sliding narrative fills things out nicely. It's not perfect, but it's a nice first attempt.
A lot of comparisons are made between this movie and Darren Aronofsky's 'Pi.' There's some logic to that, as both films are flawed but stylish black & white thrillers shot on a shoestring budget, but there are huge ideological differences between what Nolan tries to accomplish in 'Following' and the never-ending head games of 'Pi.' In both cases, almost nothing is clear until the final scenes, but Nolan's film owes its debt to the French New Wave (rather than ripping off Shinya Tsukamoto's 'Tetsuo: The Iron Man'*) and seems to have greater faith in the audience's ability to hang on through the hazy stuff. Really, if it reminds me of anything, it's 'Suture,' the 1993 debut of Scott McGehee and David Siegel, the pair who made 'The Deep End.' There's a morose edge that this film shares with 'Suture's' slow-burn weirdness, and both leave an acrid, if effective, aftertaste.
*And, no, you will never ever hear me talk about 'Pi' without a mention of 'Tetsuo.' I have no beef with 'Pi,' it's just, well... watch them both and tell me I'm crazy getting annoyed about all the 'Eraserhead' comparisons when 'Tetsuo's sitting out there. And, yes, 'Tetsuo' is hugely influenced by 'Eraserhead,' I'm not stupid, just stubborn.
SHORT FILMS BY ROMAN POLANSKI (1957-1962) - d. Roman Polanski
Murder/Morderstwo (1957), Teeth Smile/Usmiech zebiczny (1957), Break Up the Dance/Rozbijemy zabawe (1957), Two Men and a Wardrobe/Dwaj ludzie z szafa (1958), The Lamp/Lampa (1959), When Angels Fall/Gdy spadaja anioly (1959), The Fat and the Lean/Le Gros et le Maigre (1961), Mammals/Ssaki (1962)
Yay, Criterion. The second disc of the 'Knife in the Water' set is a collection of Polanski's student and post-student short films. What you discover is that Polanski, in his early stages, was a lot more concerned with developing his style than he was with his storytelling and the experience of watching these films is pretty damn well heartening. Actually, watching most 'great' filmmakers' student and/or short work is generally pretty heartening. The one short of his that most film students have seen is 'Two Men and a Wardrobe,' and the throwback slapstick style of 'Two Men' is so successful, that Polanski returns to the format of two good for-nothing fools forming a vaguely-abusive partnership again in both 'The Fat and the Lean' and 'Mammals.' Of the films, 'Fat and Lean' - which also played the festival circuit - is probably the most successful; it has the inventiveness of the more stylish shorts, but couches it in a coherent narrative. 'When Angels Fall' was the director's thesis film at the Lodz Film School, and while it's beautifully shot and has a lot of interesting ideas, it doesn't nearly cohere. In fact, I wonder if you threw it in with a bunch of other filmmaker's student work, whether it would clearly stand out from the pack. Probably, but maybe not.
TROY (2004) - d. Wolfgang Petersen
Ugh, insipid, boring. The worst thing about this movie is that it could've been perfectly good. The script isn't bad. But this is inexcusable, Wolfgang, and you're moving dangerously close to 'hack' status. Two times in a row, you've wasted excellent material in the service of making cheesy, cheesy scheiße. No, wait, I just checked your credits, and you've been stuck in neutral since 'In The Line of Fire.'
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACKKKKKK.
Here's the deal, it looks pretty, it sounds pretty, and the majority of the cast is excellent. Eric Bana makes nice on his promise and delivers a good, human performance, proving that the guy in 'Chopper' isn't necessarily lost forever. Orlando Bloom takes on his most thankless role since 'Black Hawk Down' and makes a hash of it - there were girls in the audience yelling 'kill him,' so that about sums that up. Brad Pitt, who may not be Marlon Brando, but isn't James Marsden, either, gives a crap performance as Achilles and is totally outclassed throughout. Peter O'Toole plays Priam, the king of Troy, and is apparently too old to be making movies anymore. It was tough not laughing every time he walked on-screen, and I nearly had a fit when Achilles and Priam were in the same room together (one of the better-written scenes in the film, but as far as unintentional comedy goes, all it needed was a James Brown cameo). Diane (Heid)Kruger does a good enough job as Helen; I gotta think they could've done a much worse job casting that role. If nothing else, she's pretty enough to play the part.
May I never see the whiny surfer who plays Achilles’ cousin in a movie ever again.
I know the 'Iliad' pretty well, not really well, but pretty well, and I was constantly amazed at how many things had been changed 'in the service of the story' without actually serving the story. I'd pile on the examples, but we could be here all day. The three things that should definitely have happened, though, are as follows: We needed more of Helen and Paris while they were still in Greece; the story kicks in and all you're thinking is 'Man, these kids sure made a rash decision.' Their 'love' needed more development to make the whole thing actually convincing. My mom picked up on this, which makes me wonder why no one who made the movie did. The second thing is the much-hyped fight between Hector and Achilles. The fight is put together pretty perfectly, it's probably the highlight of the film. With that said, there's no excuse for the fact that it doesn't last ten times longer. In Homer's version, it lasts an entire day and ends with Achilles dragging Hector around the city of Troy a whole bunch of times. The first 100 minutes of the movie are essentially build-up to that one scene and, as good as it is, it's hard not to feel like you've been sold short. So, that scene should've been longer, but the rest of the movie should've been much shorter, unless there was more fighting. As it stands, 'Troy' is episodic and more sleep inducing than Tylenol PM (ask Chuck, who fell asleep in the theater). There are just way too many scenes with people talking talking talking, going on forever. In that sense, it's a lot like my movie posts.
Once we got past Hector v. Achilles, I spent most of the rest of the film singing the theme song to 'The Neverending Story.'
TRUCK TURNER (1974) - d. Jonathan Kaplan
Not a lost gem from the Blaxploitation era, mostly because it's kinda of boring. Marvin Gaye's incredible soundtrack is the best thing to come out of it. It's hard to root against anything starring Isaac Hayes, though, and 'TT' fits into a subset of the genre which was a little nastier and angrier than the standard routine. 'Superfly' was the height of this ideal, and the extra venom on hand here makes the bounty hunter thing extra-fun. Also, Lt. Uhura goes crrrrazy in it (keep your pal in your pants, G--g).
THE SHIPPING NEWS (2001) - d. Lasse Hallström
One of those deflating experiences which makes you wonder why anyone would want to keep on with this whole living thing. Kevin Spacey in frumpy mode, Kate Blanchett in oddly psychotic (though extremely hot Cleopatra-eye) mode, Julianne Moore sleepwalking, Judy Dench gone to waste, blah blah blah blah blah. Sometimes the movie is really beautiful to look at and sometimes you think you're looking at a Hallmark Hall of Famer. Lasse Hallström isn't much of a director, but this is inexcusable. Even worse was getting the feeling that they'd ruined a good piece of fiction in the process. There's probably a very good film in this story, but Miramax shouldn't have paid for it, Hallström shouldn't have directed, and it definitely shouldn't have been test-screened to within an inch of its life.
Oh, wait. What life?
THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS (2003) - d. Andy & Larry Wachowski
Hey, I have an idea for the Wachowski brothers. Why don't you leave us alone? And, Larry, is getting a sex change really going to make you any less of a pussy? No? I didn't think so. 'Conan the King' better be fucking awesome, or I'm going to cut Andy's balls off, too.
I have seen Larry's future.
HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS (2003) - d. Donald Petrie
I have a lady friend who can listen to Black Flag one minute and turn around and convince me that watching this movie is a good idea the next. I don't get how women can sit through shit like this. Though I'll acknowledge that men watch stupid shit, too. Like sci-fi.
I will have my revenge.
YOU CAN'T HURRY LOVE (1988) - d. Richard Martini
Joe Isuzu vs. Hotlips. Worst movie I've seen in forever and I only sat through it because I am a hopeless insomniac. Does include the cherry line 'I want you to beef her' and a soundtrack of relatively big-name songs by guys like Robert Palmer and Van Morrison. There's also a grody Sally Kellerman song at the end that reminded me of being touched by the cootie-girl in 3rd grade.
Try never seeing it.
Dude, You Gotta Come to My Party!
2004-06-06 - 17:10:00
Current music: Queen - "Brighton Rock"
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LAND AND FREEDOM (1995) - d. Ken Loach
This was the film that really put Ken Loach - the English filmmaker who made his initial mark in the 1960s - back on the map. During the early 1990s, Loach was on a creative roll, turning out 'Riff-Raff,' 'Raining Stones,' and 'Ladybird, Ladybird,' in short succession. By mid-decade, perhaps on the strength of 'Ladybird' (a truly great movie), people were starting to pay attention to Loach again, and when 'Land and Freedom' arrived, it managed to find a substantial audience. Substantial, at least, by the standards of English-language Spanish Civil War epics beholden to ideas, idealism, and how political differences can quickly obscure a goal as vital as freedom. If there's one thing 'Land and Freedom' isn't, it isn't 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.'
Even where he finds critical success, Loach's films can be a difficult sell. The director's fiercely leftist agenda would be challenge enough, but Loach is to medicinal (if high-quality) filmmaking what Michael Moore is to self-love. While Moore is, often rightly, pilloried for putting himself front and center, Loach is the guy who makes boring movies that only a Marxist could love. Whether it's impossible accents ('My Name is Joe,' 'Sweet Sixteen'), browbeating leftist-speak ('Bread and Roses,' 'The Navigators') or the occasional 'huh?' ('Fatherland,' 'Black Jack'), the films of Ken Loach never run out of ways to confound a viewer. Try making it through the first 30 minutes of 'Bread and Roses' and tell me different.
And yet, this guy's been regularly churning out movies since the early 60s, and the financial well still draws water. Kind of makes you think he's doing something right.
Loachy-poo.
Fierce political commentary always has a place in British society, and the British film industry bears no exception. Loach, through equal parts craft and longevity, has become a poster-boy for political thinking writ in celluloid. He's certainly the dominant English purveyor of his era. For all of the agendaneering - and we're talking about the maker of a documentary called 'A Contemporary Case for Common Ownership' - the director, more often than not, makes things work. He's been behind the camera long enough that he knows just how much politicking viewers can stand and most of the time manages keep himself from reaching that breaking point. He has an exceptional talent for scripts and casting; his performers, both professional and amateur, find ways to make even thankless roles appealing (see Robert Carlyle's performances in 'Carla's Song' and 'Riff-Raff'). He has a terrific, if understated, sense of humor - 'Raining Stones' is a heartbreaker, but also a good example of the director's ability to find humor in the bleakest places. Most important of all, Ken Loach has a big, sloppily-bleeding heart.
He's kept something of a harem of writers over the years - often turning to like-minded playwrights and novelists to adapt their own work - but many of his best films have come from the pens of Paul Laverty and Jim Allen. Allen wrote ‘Land and Freedom’, and though 'Hidden Agenda' (another Allen script) was the Jury Prize winner at Cannes in 1990, this is a far more accomplished work. I imagine it must be tiring writing for Loach - as opposed to say, Hitchcock or Wilder - what with all the monologues and anti-establishment harangues you're expected to squeeze in. But most of the time, Allen gets it right. As an example, there's a particularly long scene in the middle of the film where the locals go on and on about collectivism and land rights. It should be as much fun as a moonshine enema, but the enthusiasm of the performers and the quality of the words turn the scene into a highlight.
'Land and Freedom' is set during the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that lasted between 1936 and 1939. Said war broke out because the Popular Front, a loose collective of about 400,000 left-wing organizations, won general elections and the right to govern in '36, leading the conservatives to decide that a military coup was in order. Franco's name is the one that people outside of Spain generally recognize, but Emilio Mola and José Sanjurjo were also big players on the Nationalist (conservative) side. To be entirely fair, a good number of Spaniards backed the coup at the time (these, I imagine, are the people whose descendants now sit in the Ultras sections of soccer stadiums and like to get in knife fights with one another after games). So yeah, violent coup, the Nationalists take Madrid - as well as every other major city - and the Popular Front was left in the countryside wondering just what the hell to do, especially since the Nationalists controlled the bulk of the Spanish army.
(Real) Marching in Madrid.
Elsewhere in Gotham:
On the heels of the Communist Revolution in Russia and the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy, intellectuals throughout Europe - both Communist and Social Democrats - were chomping at the bit for a place in the west to serve as a Marxist proving ground. Spain, the first country in Western Europe (ok, fine, the Iberian Peninsula) to democratically elect a neo-Socialist government, suddenly became the belle of the Marxist ball. But it wasn't just money that poured into Spain to support the Loyalist/Republican (read: leftist) cause; many of the same intellectuals who were starting trade unions and papers, promoting the idea of a Marxist utopia throughout their own countries, saw a war which was potentially winnable, and decided to ship out to Spain and fight for their beliefs. It sounds like an incredibly unselfish act, and it was, comparable to the way Americans enlisted in Europe before the United States officially entered the Second World War. The most stunning thing about the influx of foreigners - from literally all of Europe (throw in some Canadians and Americans, as well) - was just how many people came to Spain and put their lives on the line to fight the fascists. A long-term benefit of the war was that a large number of those foreigners, once peace was made in Spain, were far better prepared to fight in World War II. The resistance movement in France, for example, was primarily led by French Communists who originally fought in Spain.
This is where 'Land and Freedom' actually kicks in. Ian Hart, one of my favorite actors, plays a young, idealistic Scouser (aka Liverpudlian) Commie named Dave Carr, who ships out from England full of dreams and prole ambition, and is quickly plunged into a war which is nothing like he'd expected. I don't know that I want to talk too much about the plot other than to explain that the Loyalists' cause lost the war as much because of deep ideological rifts among its own ranks as anything Franco and his gang managed to do. Exploring the chaos of the Republican/Loyalist cause is the primary motivation of Loach and Allen, and with good reason, as it makes for good drama. The Loyalists were terribly undersupplied and their presence wasn't greeted with warmth in every town they traveled through, but the Nationalists were similarly undermanned, under-financed, and under-appreciated by their fellow countrymen (when is civil war ever popular?). Carr ends up with an organization called P.O.U.M. (something along the lines of People's Militia), fighting in an English-speaking regiment. As the war wears on, the Stalinist/Communist wing of the anti-Franco resistance starts to push its agenda and organization to the fore, and Carr - a devoted Communist - finds himself being pulled at all corners, by his allegiance to his fellow P.O.U.M. fighters, his allegiance to his political beliefs, and his allegiance to the idea of simply doing right. To their credit, the Communists have the nicer uniforms.
Anyhow, I really like this film. A lot. And, in truth, in spite of the constant parading of facts and politics, it's extremely watchable, and probably wouldn't ruffle too many feathers if, say, you were to watch it with your parents. For what it's worth, a lot of British Communists didn't like the film, feeling that it focused on the 'wrong' details of the war and failed to do the cause appropriate justice, which I think is a good thing. Loach and Allen never lose sight of the fact that the story they're telling is the story of a working-class English guy named Dave Carr, and Hart is so right-on, so pitch-perfect and utterly believable, that he more than holds the center. The Spanish actress Rosana Pastor also gives a great performance as Carr's love interest, sister-in-arms, and conscience.
I'm totally in agreement with a majority of critics who found the story's modern-era bracketing device unnecessary. I hate bracketing devices in general, and I'm not a fan of using one here. I think that the 'letters home' which served as narration should've stayed as is, and they'd have done well to skip the whole granddaughter/funeral/learning-to-love-the-party-by-reading-Pappy's-letters-home routine. With that minor alteration, the film would've been just that crucial bit shorter, and maybe just a shade more exotic.
I'm going to finish up now. I'm not in the practice of trying to write lengthy and coherent 'proper' reviews, and I've clearly done an awful job of it here, so it's time to pack it in. I'll finish with the following: This isn't a movie for everyone. The greatest risk you'll run is that of death by boredom, but that may say as much about you as it does the movie. If you're looking to dig in deep on the Spanish Civil War, I can't recommend anything out of Spain - either films or books - as Franco lived and ruled into the mid-70s and had a thing for controlling the media, but 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' is an obvious resource, and George Orwell's 'Homage to Catalonia' is my favorite of his writings - it's also a lot more romantic and a lot less boring than title suggests (also, it served as a clear reference point for Loach and Allen). Realistically, though, you can get most of what you need in 'Land and Freedom,' and there aren't too many movies which do this good a job of mixing politics with a story that's entertaining and actually worth following ('Z,' 'The Battle of Algiers'). If you have the chance, please give it a shot.
Current music: Queen - "Brighton Rock"
------------------------------------------------------------
LAND AND FREEDOM (1995) - d. Ken Loach
This was the film that really put Ken Loach - the English filmmaker who made his initial mark in the 1960s - back on the map. During the early 1990s, Loach was on a creative roll, turning out 'Riff-Raff,' 'Raining Stones,' and 'Ladybird, Ladybird,' in short succession. By mid-decade, perhaps on the strength of 'Ladybird' (a truly great movie), people were starting to pay attention to Loach again, and when 'Land and Freedom' arrived, it managed to find a substantial audience. Substantial, at least, by the standards of English-language Spanish Civil War epics beholden to ideas, idealism, and how political differences can quickly obscure a goal as vital as freedom. If there's one thing 'Land and Freedom' isn't, it isn't 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.'
Even where he finds critical success, Loach's films can be a difficult sell. The director's fiercely leftist agenda would be challenge enough, but Loach is to medicinal (if high-quality) filmmaking what Michael Moore is to self-love. While Moore is, often rightly, pilloried for putting himself front and center, Loach is the guy who makes boring movies that only a Marxist could love. Whether it's impossible accents ('My Name is Joe,' 'Sweet Sixteen'), browbeating leftist-speak ('Bread and Roses,' 'The Navigators') or the occasional 'huh?' ('Fatherland,' 'Black Jack'), the films of Ken Loach never run out of ways to confound a viewer. Try making it through the first 30 minutes of 'Bread and Roses' and tell me different.
And yet, this guy's been regularly churning out movies since the early 60s, and the financial well still draws water. Kind of makes you think he's doing something right.
Loachy-poo.
Fierce political commentary always has a place in British society, and the British film industry bears no exception. Loach, through equal parts craft and longevity, has become a poster-boy for political thinking writ in celluloid. He's certainly the dominant English purveyor of his era. For all of the agendaneering - and we're talking about the maker of a documentary called 'A Contemporary Case for Common Ownership' - the director, more often than not, makes things work. He's been behind the camera long enough that he knows just how much politicking viewers can stand and most of the time manages keep himself from reaching that breaking point. He has an exceptional talent for scripts and casting; his performers, both professional and amateur, find ways to make even thankless roles appealing (see Robert Carlyle's performances in 'Carla's Song' and 'Riff-Raff'). He has a terrific, if understated, sense of humor - 'Raining Stones' is a heartbreaker, but also a good example of the director's ability to find humor in the bleakest places. Most important of all, Ken Loach has a big, sloppily-bleeding heart.
He's kept something of a harem of writers over the years - often turning to like-minded playwrights and novelists to adapt their own work - but many of his best films have come from the pens of Paul Laverty and Jim Allen. Allen wrote ‘Land and Freedom’, and though 'Hidden Agenda' (another Allen script) was the Jury Prize winner at Cannes in 1990, this is a far more accomplished work. I imagine it must be tiring writing for Loach - as opposed to say, Hitchcock or Wilder - what with all the monologues and anti-establishment harangues you're expected to squeeze in. But most of the time, Allen gets it right. As an example, there's a particularly long scene in the middle of the film where the locals go on and on about collectivism and land rights. It should be as much fun as a moonshine enema, but the enthusiasm of the performers and the quality of the words turn the scene into a highlight.
'Land and Freedom' is set during the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that lasted between 1936 and 1939. Said war broke out because the Popular Front, a loose collective of about 400,000 left-wing organizations, won general elections and the right to govern in '36, leading the conservatives to decide that a military coup was in order. Franco's name is the one that people outside of Spain generally recognize, but Emilio Mola and José Sanjurjo were also big players on the Nationalist (conservative) side. To be entirely fair, a good number of Spaniards backed the coup at the time (these, I imagine, are the people whose descendants now sit in the Ultras sections of soccer stadiums and like to get in knife fights with one another after games). So yeah, violent coup, the Nationalists take Madrid - as well as every other major city - and the Popular Front was left in the countryside wondering just what the hell to do, especially since the Nationalists controlled the bulk of the Spanish army.
(Real) Marching in Madrid.
Elsewhere in Gotham:
On the heels of the Communist Revolution in Russia and the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy, intellectuals throughout Europe - both Communist and Social Democrats - were chomping at the bit for a place in the west to serve as a Marxist proving ground. Spain, the first country in Western Europe (ok, fine, the Iberian Peninsula) to democratically elect a neo-Socialist government, suddenly became the belle of the Marxist ball. But it wasn't just money that poured into Spain to support the Loyalist/Republican (read: leftist) cause; many of the same intellectuals who were starting trade unions and papers, promoting the idea of a Marxist utopia throughout their own countries, saw a war which was potentially winnable, and decided to ship out to Spain and fight for their beliefs. It sounds like an incredibly unselfish act, and it was, comparable to the way Americans enlisted in Europe before the United States officially entered the Second World War. The most stunning thing about the influx of foreigners - from literally all of Europe (throw in some Canadians and Americans, as well) - was just how many people came to Spain and put their lives on the line to fight the fascists. A long-term benefit of the war was that a large number of those foreigners, once peace was made in Spain, were far better prepared to fight in World War II. The resistance movement in France, for example, was primarily led by French Communists who originally fought in Spain.
This is where 'Land and Freedom' actually kicks in. Ian Hart, one of my favorite actors, plays a young, idealistic Scouser (aka Liverpudlian) Commie named Dave Carr, who ships out from England full of dreams and prole ambition, and is quickly plunged into a war which is nothing like he'd expected. I don't know that I want to talk too much about the plot other than to explain that the Loyalists' cause lost the war as much because of deep ideological rifts among its own ranks as anything Franco and his gang managed to do. Exploring the chaos of the Republican/Loyalist cause is the primary motivation of Loach and Allen, and with good reason, as it makes for good drama. The Loyalists were terribly undersupplied and their presence wasn't greeted with warmth in every town they traveled through, but the Nationalists were similarly undermanned, under-financed, and under-appreciated by their fellow countrymen (when is civil war ever popular?). Carr ends up with an organization called P.O.U.M. (something along the lines of People's Militia), fighting in an English-speaking regiment. As the war wears on, the Stalinist/Communist wing of the anti-Franco resistance starts to push its agenda and organization to the fore, and Carr - a devoted Communist - finds himself being pulled at all corners, by his allegiance to his fellow P.O.U.M. fighters, his allegiance to his political beliefs, and his allegiance to the idea of simply doing right. To their credit, the Communists have the nicer uniforms.
Anyhow, I really like this film. A lot. And, in truth, in spite of the constant parading of facts and politics, it's extremely watchable, and probably wouldn't ruffle too many feathers if, say, you were to watch it with your parents. For what it's worth, a lot of British Communists didn't like the film, feeling that it focused on the 'wrong' details of the war and failed to do the cause appropriate justice, which I think is a good thing. Loach and Allen never lose sight of the fact that the story they're telling is the story of a working-class English guy named Dave Carr, and Hart is so right-on, so pitch-perfect and utterly believable, that he more than holds the center. The Spanish actress Rosana Pastor also gives a great performance as Carr's love interest, sister-in-arms, and conscience.
I'm totally in agreement with a majority of critics who found the story's modern-era bracketing device unnecessary. I hate bracketing devices in general, and I'm not a fan of using one here. I think that the 'letters home' which served as narration should've stayed as is, and they'd have done well to skip the whole granddaughter/funeral/learning-to-love-the-party-by-reading-Pappy's-letters-home routine. With that minor alteration, the film would've been just that crucial bit shorter, and maybe just a shade more exotic.
I'm going to finish up now. I'm not in the practice of trying to write lengthy and coherent 'proper' reviews, and I've clearly done an awful job of it here, so it's time to pack it in. I'll finish with the following: This isn't a movie for everyone. The greatest risk you'll run is that of death by boredom, but that may say as much about you as it does the movie. If you're looking to dig in deep on the Spanish Civil War, I can't recommend anything out of Spain - either films or books - as Franco lived and ruled into the mid-70s and had a thing for controlling the media, but 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' is an obvious resource, and George Orwell's 'Homage to Catalonia' is my favorite of his writings - it's also a lot more romantic and a lot less boring than title suggests (also, it served as a clear reference point for Loach and Allen). Realistically, though, you can get most of what you need in 'Land and Freedom,' and there aren't too many movies which do this good a job of mixing politics with a story that's entertaining and actually worth following ('Z,' 'The Battle of Algiers'). If you have the chance, please give it a shot.
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