Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, 2009
Dir: David Yates
July 29, 2009

OK, who is this David Yates? This is way better than Order of the Phoenix (2007), also directed by Yates, which, honestly, can not hold up on its own. This interpretation of The Half-Blood Prince, while not perfect, shows a director trying to do something different with a huge cash cow like the Harry Potter series.

Harry needs to find out more about Voldemort, and most of the things he needs can be found at Hogwarts, including memories, some incomplete. YEAR 6, REPRESENT. Honestly, it's the best book (IMO), and Yates did a good job of getting most of the important things in there, and some of the added stuff actually worked well (Harry ogling a black waitress, tryin to "chat up birds" freal). The whole atmosphere of the movie is well done, and the toned down action let's some interesting things, like nonchalant magic (not done well since Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)), breathe.

So the acting. While the big three have gotten a lot better, they all have their wince moments. None suffers as badly as D. Radcliffe. Rupert Grint is probably the best actor of the three, while Emma Watson is somewhere in the middle. I was not impressed by Bonnie Wright as Ginny, in her new "flame" role. The one big surprise was Tom Felton as Draco, who honestly played the conflicted, frightened and desperate card to a tee. His weeping is way more convincing than Radcliffe's. The adults are all pretty much awesome, especially Rickman and Gambon, though Helena B.C. is a little too silly to be scary as femme-psycho Bellatrix LaStrange. Jim Broadbent as Horace Slughorn is equally good too, adding a bit more flair to the contrived character of the book.

This is up at the top with Azkaban as the the best HP films; all the others are at the bottom of the hill. I'm glad that Yates is coming back, especially with 2 movies to do his thing for one book. I'm actually kind of intersted now to see how he will turn that seriously flawed last novel into visual format.

Harakiri

Harakiri (Seppuku), 1962
Dir: Masaki Kobayashi
July 27, 2009

The first thing that you realize when watching Harakiri is that the cinematography is perfect; every scene is meticulously crafted and what Kobayashi shows you always seems right. The symmetry of traditional Japanese architecture plays a fair role in this, but you simply cannot ignore the genius of each camera angle and the choreography throughout. It is an impeccably beautiful film from an aesthetic standpoint. In this sense, Kobayashi seems like a much more native film-maker than Kurosawa, and from this, it certainly seems like he deserves the praise he gets as a Japanese "master."

Harakiri is a samurai film with a dark, dark heart. And not in the way Yojimbo (1961) is dark (humor), but as a scathing attack on the fuedal system that dominated Japan for so long, and also of the samurai code, or bushido, itself, which isn't just alluded to, but specifically called out as a "facade." This is shown most potently by the daiymo and the clan, which uses honor as a pretext to keep it's power. When a hard-on-his-luck ronin (with his beard, an almost unrecognizable, yet still awesome Tatsuya Nakadai) shows up at the house of a feudal lord and asks for the honor of committing harakiri (seppuku) in the clan's courtyard, the lord (Rentaro Mikuni) can't help but notice certain similarities to a ronin that asked for the same honor earlier in the year. When the similarites start to add up, you realize that the ronin isn't there just to kill himself.

Knowing exactly what harakiri ("cutting the belly") is, you understand why the second is there to decapitate the unfortunate samurai so quickly. Disembowelment is definitely in my top five ways of not to die. You also understand exactly what is happening when the young ronin who first came to the clan is forced to use his own "sword," and the time the second wastes to make sure the ronin does it right.

Like I said earlier, this underrated masterpiece is overshadowed by Kurosawa's equally astonishing works. It offers insight into the philosophical mind of the Japanese soul, whole heartedly and pure, and questions the role of honor through straightforward storytelling and brilliant direction. The story is akin to the works of Dostoevsky, exploring the darkest moments of humanity through suffering and redemption in a desperate search for meaning and justice. Intense and beautiful, Harakiri is a true work of art, no doubt about it.

Images, Memory and Experience

What's the boundary line between a film actually being good and only being good because it reminds you of some fond personal memory; some state of mind that makes you feel better, if only for a moment? Is there even a boundary? Does it all blur with that string of images anyway?

For me, what the spectator brings to it and makes of the connection is just as integral in making a film good or bad. I was having a conversation about Lost in Translation (2003), and I said that I liked it when I saw it in theaters, which was only once. The ending was great, and it struck a chord, even if I couldn't verbalize, or even really analyze why then. This person whom I was talking to thought that the film was just a celebration of incredibly shallow people. I thought that there was some merit to that statement in that the acting was not the reason why I liked he film. I could only sputter that I really enjoyed the photography and the whole premise of the film. I suppose the thought of traveling to a country far from my own, meeting a random face, spending time with that face, and then to leave without any expectation of meeting that face ever again has always felt like something that would excite me and make me feel sad all at once, which is what a great film can do too (me being terribly cinematic in my head again). But it got me thinking, "Was the film actually bad? Where does opinion start and end, or is that just another circle? Was the film itself shallow? What does that say about my gut-instinct/inclinations?"

I'm not sure that there are proper answers for any of those questions. What I might have said to that person is, "I think you have a valid point; the acting left a little to be wanting. You should trust your gut instinct on it. However, we are all exposed to a lot of disposable culture, and it's easy to write off things at face value, or shallowness. For me, I responded to the theme of being "lost in translation" in a culturally-bankrupt world, unable to communicate with kindred spirits. I have always had trouble with this; it might be my greatest flaw. I was 18, and the insecurities that I have were extremely exacerbated at that time in my life. Seeing something like that on screen left an impression on me because it had to; it's the way I am. I am not a fan of any of her other films, but I will stick by my statement that this is worth watching more than once, and worth taking five minutes to actually think about."

So in the end, is it all relative? Probably is about the best thing I can say.

Sanjuro

Sanjuro, 1962
Dir: Akira Kurosawa
July 16, 2009
Netflix Wakefield MA

My first impression of this sequel to Yojimbo (1961) is that it is a great, yet slightly inferior film to it's predecessor in that it simply reprises an awesome character, which of course is good enough for me. Sanjuro might actually have the better final showdown, which is off-the-charts intense, and then phenomenally quick and jaw-droppingly awesome.

The samurai-with-no-name (Toshirō Mifune) is back, and again he's in a town where evil men are trying to oust the Chamberlain, who is a good man, from his position of power. He agrees to help nine young samurai, one of whom is the Chamberlain's nephew, deal with the growing corruption in their clan and rescue the Chamberlain and his family, who have been taken captive. He agrees to do this only because he believes they are "naive and stupid." So yeah, he is that awesome.

Mifune continues to dish out out his bizarre philosophy and then sometimes contradict it ("You made me kill those people!"), and the young samurai are sometimes confused by his actions and words, not believing that a proper samurai would behave in such a way. He also continues to use is wits to outsmart his opponents, eventually getting Hanbei (Tatsuya Nakadai, back for more baddie action), a samurai henchman, to believe he is on their side. The fact that Hanbei is made of fool of, something that he cannot live with, is the cause of the final showdown, which the wandering ronin had wanted to avoid. He then leaves, left to wander to good earth again, still the coolest man ever.

Yojimbo

Yojimbo, 1961
Dir: Akira Kurosawa
July 15, 2009
Netflix Wakefield MA

I think it is impossible to say what is the best "samurai" film ever (there are so many good ones), but Yojimbo (The Bodyguard) has to be up there. Kurosawa, with his great love for the American Western and the films of John Ford, created a darkly comic tale of a wandering ronin with no master or money who, after coming to a town where rival gangs are vying for control of the silk industry there and the profits from gambling, plays both sides and restores order to the town.

"Sanjuro"(Toshirō Mifune), which is the name the ronin gives, is a great usage of the "man-with- no-name" character, probably made most famous by Clint Eastwood in all the Westerns and Spaghetti Westerns that were just remakes of Kurosawa's best films. Despite that, Mifune's is way cooler than anything Eastwood ever conjured up. As soon as he "shows his worth" to one side, you know the movie is going to be awesome. His seeming ambivalence to the madness that surrounds him and his lack of fear make him far more menacing than the ugly thugs the gangs have hired, which is why most of them give him a wide berth whenever he ventures into the town. At the very beginning of the film, Kurosawa's camera sits behind Toshiro Mifune's man-with-no-name, inviting us to look up at the back of his head as he walks the earth, inviting us to be in awe of this man. And as he walks, super-cool walking-the-earth music plays. There is nothing left to think about with this man. He might be the coolest film character ever.

The lone wolf's only seeming threat in the film comes when Unosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai, who plays the main character in Sword of Doom (1966), and I knew he looked familiar but could not place it while watching), the youngest brother of one of the gang's boss, comes back, and in true Western style, is actually a "gunfighter" instead of a samurai. They play off each other nicely; Kurosawa actually told Mifune that he pictured the ronin as a wolf or dog and Nakadai that he pictured him as a snake. If you watch the film, you can see both characters actually displaying traits of these animals, particularly Mifune's famous shoulder twitch, as if he were trying to shake off some fleas. Unosuke, in the end, of course, is no match for the awesome of "Sanjuro."

Kurosawa actually uses a ton of Western techniques, like wide shots for showdowns right down to the town crier motif (like in High Noon (1952) ). The moral ambiguity of the ronin is actually far more in tune with the Spaghetti Westerns that this movie spawned, as opposed to the black and white (good vs. evil) value system of the traditional Western. Most of the comedy is universal, such as ugly dumb thugs who get played for suckers and skulking swordsman trying to intimidate each other but retreat in comic fear every time the other group make an aggressive move forward (this scene is done so well, you can't help but laugh). The music is incredible, and very few directors create atmosphere as well as Kurosawa. Yojimbo is cool any day of the fuckin' week, kiddies.

Cul-de-sac

Cul-de-sac, 1966
Dir: Roman Polanski
July 13, 2009
Hulu

So I've really wanted to see this for a long time, being a big Polanski fan, and there is no DVD release in the US, I'm pretty sure. Anyway, I'm cruising along Hulu, just browsing the movies they have (some really bad, others phenomenal) and there it is. I almost thought it might be a movie of the same name by a different director. But I am happy to say that is the real deal, so props to Hulu for uploading a decent version of it.

Cul-de-sac, for intents and purposes, is a psychological thriller, but I'm sure that Polanski thought that it was a black comedy. It's full of his school boy humor and his penchant for the sexually perverse. Two gangsters botch a job and have to hide out on a tidal island off Northumberland, England (think Scotland, or Tyneside), cut off by the rising tide. One (Jack McGowran, who is a dead ringer for The Professor from Tintin) has been shot in the belly, so the other gangster, Richard, or "Dickie" (Lionel Stander), who only got it in the arm, goes to the dark castle on the island hilltop to phone for help, and take hostage the couple living there (Donald Pleasence and Françoise Dorléac). The couple must then deal with Dickie's gruff manner and then uninvited guests until they hope a time that the gangsters will leave, rescued by their mysterious boss Katelbach.

Pleasence is particularly brilliant as the effeminate George, who is constantly berated and emasculated by his young wife, and also has no wish to stand up to Dickie or even protect his wife from him. His eventual collapse and downfall, as he screams "I'll break your legs!" over and over again as he smashes everything in sight, even when there is no point anymore and no one is there to see his manly outburst, and Teresa's leaving the castle with a "real" man signify a lot about things that Polanski is particularly interested in. Dorléac, as the beautiful young French wife Teresa, does a great turn as an ice queen (to George) and prissy bitch, just as her little sister Catherine Deneuve did in Polanski's Repulsion (1965) the year before. As you can tell, Polanski was movin' through them pretty fast. She is brazenly cheating on George with a young neighbor, and flirts constantly with a handsome man that comes unexpectedly (The summary that I read actually labeled her as a nymphomaniac). The two eventually come to a strange understanding with Dickie, who immediately lets George know who's in charge with his gravelly voice and aggressive demeanor, until the guests come and they all have play a part to get them to leave.

While not his best film, it is very Polanski, and if you dig that, you will dig this. The themes of masculinity and femininity play a huge part of the film, as is being trapped in an enclosed place (a typical Polanski usage), making the setting of the "dark island castle on a tidal island" pretty friggin' awesome. It's also a great way to see the superbabe Dorléac in action, who was sadly killed in a car crash in 1967 at 25. One of the best things about the film is that the usual ending, in which George would finally find his courage and become a "man" by killing Dickie, is completely subverted by Polanski, as George's neurosis and shock cause him to lose all. Hilaroius, Roman.

Public Enemies

Public Enemies, 2009

Dir: Michael Mann

July 8, 2009

AMC Theaters Danvers MA

The updated gangster flick can, as previously exampled, reinvigorate or simply replicate. I am not really sure what Public Enemies does. It doesn't have a whole lot of fresh life about it and it doesn't have a lot of interesting things to say. That's not to say the film was not entertaining; at points, I suppose it was. But how many times do you have to see a bank robbery? In the end, what John Dillinger's life was all about never really got across to me, though Johnny Depp thought he was a pretty cool cat.

John Dillinger robbed banks, and wouldn't take the money of the people there who were patrons. Just the banks' money. Dillinger certainly could be charming, and the aura that surrounded him during the Depression certainly helped him achieve a favorable public opinion despite being Public Enemy #1. After doing some reading, 'cause frankly the guy is interesting, it turns out that John Dillinger was a psycho killer when he had to be. Depp's performance is adequate, but leaves something to be wanting. A few bursts of anger, but nothing torrential. The Dillinger in Public Enemies is all easy smiles and clever zingers, accompanied with a "live for today" attitude that most impulsive criminals must live with.

Christian Bale again acts stoically as if his life depended on it, and the seeds of doubt that must have come across Melvin Purvis's mind about the brutal methods being employed by the Bureau of Investigation get lost in Bale's Bressonain visage. Dillinger's girlfriend is meant to be an outsider because of her Native American ancestry, but Marion Cotillard just can't keep the accent she wants down, and spews forth this bizarre midwest/french weirdness that just distracts from anything that she might have been able to do. One of the better, though small, performances in the film is that of Billy Crudup as master of G-men and creepshows, J. Edgar Hoover. His wacky relentlessness to get the FBI off the ground is evident, as is his relationship with all things masculine. At this point, Hoover isn't the cross-dressing psycho that he would morph into, but slight hints are dropped at his alleged homosexuality ("Tell him he can call me...'J.' ")

The rest of the public enemies (note the plural) are barely in it. Pretty Boy Floyd dies right away, Stephen Graham's Baby Face Nelson is goofy when it should be fucking insane, and the rest of the Dillinger gang never really get to assert themselves. Alvin Karpis (Giovanni Ribisi) also is pretty much a cameo, and Ribisi doesn't really create a character, especially not the creepy menace that Karpis was.

I shouldn't really compare this to Band of Outsiders though, so I won't. The film is basically a docudrama with some bank robberies and a shootout. There is nothing about the restlessness of poor young men taking action to affect their lot in life, and the tension building up to the inevitable death Dillinger must have known was coming is not presented as well as it could have been. You want to watch an American classic about gangsters whose romance and crime come together perfectly?: Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Public Enemies doesn't even come close.

Bande à part

Bande à part, 1964
Dir: Jean-Luc Godard
July 3, 2009
Netflix Wakefield MA

Godard goes back to where he started; back to restless young men who have watched too many American gangster movies and find out that life, in it's own cruel way, can be terribly cinematic. Bande a Part (Band of Outsiders) plays on American movies, French language, and the pining after young women in the sweet, melancholy tone of Godard's best films. You know, just by how the characters act, that things will never happen the way they plan.

The two young men (Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur) both find themselves yearning for the attention a very pretty but naive girl (Anna Karina, in probably her best performance yet). When they find out that a lot of money is being stored in the house where she lives, the score is on. They enlist her help through some cajoling, and until the right time comes, they just have to waste it; time, that is.

From trying to break the record for fastest time to see all of the Louvre (held by an American, of course) to the extended dance scene in the cafe, the film is filled with the restless tension and cavalier attitudes of men who are only thinking about the now, and the heartbreakingly gullible girl who gets caught up in their act. A post-modern classic, and Godard's best since Breathless (If anyone has a fantastic opinion of Contempt, fine. I thought it was very good; that's it).


This is a good reference to my next review, also a gangster flick. Coming Soon.

The Man Who Wasn't There

The Man Who Wasn't There, 2001
Dir: Joel Coen (and Ethan Coen)
June 30, 2009
Netflix Wakefield MA

Another neo-noir from the Coens? You bet, and again their visual style and lyrical flair help transcend this film from just a tribute to the great Noir films of the 40s and 50s to a great period piece in it's own right.

The film, shot in color but transfered to black and white, looks fantastic, and has a tremendous cinematic appeal, the way only a black and white film can really make you feel that your watching a movie. Off the bat, the inner-monologue narration and low-key, high contrast lighting pays a lot of debt to those movies of the 40s and 50s, such as Double Indemnity (1944) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). I'm going to say that I love the lighting and I hate the narration. I understand that it's a huge part of the genre, but I hate voice-over narration in general, as the images and dialogue should tell you all you need to know, or what the director wants you to know (watch Chinatown (1974) ). The film's content and weird mannerisms, however, owe a higher debt to some later films in the genre, the works of true masters: Orson Welles's The Lady From Shanghai (1948) and Touch of Evil (1958), and Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950).

Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton) is a barber, and by his own admission, he doesn't talk much. He knows that his wife (Frances McDormand) is having an affair with her boss, "Big" Dave (James Gandolfini), and really doesn't care about it. But a man, Tolliver (Jon Polito), comes into the shop one day and talks to Ed about opening a dry cleaning business but needing and investment to open it, and Ed, as we know through his monotone, dry inner-monologues, is in need of some change, and knows what he can do. So he blackmails Big Dave for $10,000 to provide capital for the "pansy's" (the man makes a pass at Ed during their first meeting in the hotel, and Big Dave, who was the original target the man thought he could get the money from, must have known something about this too because that is his term for him) business venture. The Pansy disappears though, leaving Ed to think that he has been suckered. Big Dave calls him late one night, and already having listened to his vague confessions earlier, reluctantly agrees to head over to his store. Big Dave hunted down The Pansy, thinking he was blackmailing him, but getting a confession that it was indeed Ed. Enraged at this so-called betrayal ("What kind of a man are you?"), Big Dave begins to strangle Ed, who only saves himself by stabbing Big Dave in the neck with knife used as a cigar cutter. No one sees Ed leave, but soon enough the body is found, and Ed's wife has become the prime suspect.

Ed Crane is the sort of man that has let everything slide in his life; his apathy is a defense mechanism. In one scene, trying to convince the teenage daughter of a friend (Scarlett Johansson) that her piano playing is her ticket to a better life, and maybe even his, he tells her, "I haven't always been dealt the best cards in life. I don't know, maybe I have, and I just didn't know how o play 'em." The comedy of errors that plays out over the film just ends up as a sad reminder of how life picks and chooses sometimes, even when we work really hard to better our own situations. Ed's sadnesses tend to come out in ruminations, like his philosophical wax on hair after he kills Big Dave: "This hair...you ever wonder about it?...I don't know. How it keeps on coming. It just keeps growing. No, I mean it's growing, it's part of us. And we cut it off. And we throw it away."


But really, you know what to expect, if you've ever seen a noir before: greed, dark secrets, and murder, in a world of fedoras, cigarette smoke, snapping lighters, and deep moral turpitude. A world where nothing or no one is what they seem, and the only sure thing is that, in the end, some sap is gonna get it. The sad thing is that Ed's best efforts seems to be in vain, even he can't withstand the tide of the genre: "I don't know where I'm being taken. I don't know what I'll find, beyond the earth and sky. But I'm not afraid to go. Maybe the things I don't understand will be clearer there, like when a fog blows away. Maybe Doris will be there. And maybe there I can tell her all those things they don't have words for here. "

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, 2009
Dir: Michael Bay
June 27, 2009
Showcase Cinema Revere MA

Oh Michael Bay. How I hate your douchey guts. I read recently somewhere where he said he took it personally that his movies got shat on so much. In so many words he said that it was really hard to make a really "good" action movie, and that he could make an "arty" film, no sweat. I have no doubts that shooting an action film, like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, is hard work, but there are some other important things that go into it...ah.... like good writing and acting. What the fuck. How does this mongo work in Hollywood? Oh yeah, I just answered my own question.

You really have to know what your going in for, and I was. But considering all that, a man craves substance, not just empty explosions and terrible make-outs. Lame comedy (tons of dick/balls jokes: is there something you're not telling us, MB?) couldn't even save this disaster from an atrociously retarded plot which I'm not going to bother summarizing. Shia LaBeouf sucks man, and Megan Fox, the token eyecandy (very fine thought it may be), even insisted that you don't flex your acting chops in a movie like this. Oh shit, Michael Bay. Did you hear that? A glorified model just dumpstered your flick. John Turturro does his schtick well, I have to admit, but not even the Transformers, some of which were beyond anonymous, hammed it up well, except for the Twins, but their act got tired quickly.

The one interesting thing that you could say about the Transformers (the cartoon and here) is Optimus Prime. His whole Warrior-Philosopher persona is genuinely conceived, and his penchant for the poignant anecdote ("Fate rarely calls us at a time of our own choosing...") has it's own uplifting rewards. His being not in a lot of the movie (something happens, guess) kind mucks that up though.

So, I'd have to say that while the summer blockbuster spirit can be felt, the movie still blows ass. I'd write more about that, but I'm kinda depressed that I actually went to see it. Here's just a picture of Megan Fox, which I prefer:

Moon

Moon, 2009
Dir: Duncan Jones
June 24, 2009
AMC Lowes Cambridge MA

David Bowie's son made a film? Yup, Duncan "Zowie Bowie" Jones did and it's a cerebral sci-fi that starts promisingly and then sort of let's itself off the hook. There is plenty to think about by the end, about being alone and loneliness, and madness for that matter, but the ending left me a bit underwhelmed.

Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is an astronaut who works for a company called Lunar Industires that mines helium3 from the surface of the moon for clean energy used on earth. He has a three year contract that is two weeks away from being complete, and is looking forward to being reunited with his wife (Dominique McElligott). Strange things start to happen, or maybe to him, and on a routine round to the harvesters, he has an accident. He wakes up back at the SELENE base, weak and clumsy but seeming unhurt. Sam's only companion, a robot named Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey) tries to avoid questions, but eventually, he realizes that something isn't right. He is finally able to get back to the harvester where the accident happened, and in the rover he finds...himself.

Moon is a dying breed of film for sure, a "hard" sci-fi, one that requires some brain cells to watch, and which makes most of the film worth watching. Has Sam's isolation finally gotten to him? He is lonely, and despite the company of Gerty, often talks to himself and spends endless hours working on a model of his hometown, some of which he doesn't remember making. Three years, his wife says in a recorded video message, is "too long." Sam's confusion about "the other guy" in the base soon turns to dialogue between the two; some funny, some tense. But soon a realization comes about between them. Sam is not crazy, and the other guy in the base is not some hallucination brought about by extreme isolation. They are both clones, and neither of them is going to go home, at least not in any sense that they thought.

The look of the film works well with the tone; all of the white in the frame makes if hard to tell where rooms begin and end, and it cramps Sam a lot of time, giving it an appropriate claustrophobic feel. What I thought had been in exercise in loneliness and the dangers of extended space isolation (a-la Solaris) turned into Big Brother-ish paranoia about the greed of the corporate conglomerate. Maybe I was a bit underwhelmed because I thought the whole clone thing was a cop out to the mental aspects of the film that were being looked at in the beginning of the film. But what would we do if we are faced with our doppelgänger? When we are alone, who else is there left to face but ourselves?



In the end though, the film seems to try to be about the clones, and their grasp about who they really are and what they are going to do now that they know the truth about their situation. How real are they? How real is what they do? Someday they will die, and what would that mean? (The "older" Sam seems to be deteriorating as the film progress, maybe having something to do with the 3 year time limit of the contract, which might be the clone's life span. Video evidence that he finds seems to suggest this too.) Their memories seem to be uploaded from the original Sam, and are not what they seem. Who was this Sam, and what happened to his wife? Did it have something to do with giving his DNA for cloning?

By the end, the Sam that has been awake for three years realizes that he doesn't want to go back to earth if he has the chance, and let's the new Sam go in the plan that they come up with. So, my own expectations of the film were not met (clones was just not in my head going into it, and it was just thrown in so nonchalantly), but maybe just because I thought it would be a different type of film. Most sci-fi fans should approve, and it ask questions most films would rather not put in.

Blood Simple

Blood Simple, 1984
Dir: Joel Coen (and Ethan Coen)
June 20, 2009
Netflix Wakefield MA

The Coen's first feature film is a perfect example how to do more with less, and how to jump out of the blocks in your film career with a blue ribbon, which the Coen's did of course. The neo-noir crime caper is certainly not the most heady film, but in the great tradition of independent cinema, it it shot great, the super-16mm film is used to great effect, and the acting is fantastic.

The Texas setting is a huge part of the film, and the restlessness of the Old West propels the characters to make decisions that spirals into chaos. Ray (John Getz) is a bar manager who has an affair with his boss' wife (Frances McDormand) and starts woefully misinterpreting his increasingly complex circumstances. The boss, America's hairiest man ever: Dan Hedaya, gets a private investigator (M. Emmet Walsh) to do a little extra dirty work. Unbeknownst to everyone, the PI has a plan of his own. Walsh pretty much steals the show in every scene he is in, and is pretty much the only one who knows the score the entire movie. By the end of the film, everyone is confused and completely wrong about what has happened, and Ray's decision to "cover" for his lover completely backfires.

You can tell that the budget on the film is small, and that it was definitely shot in the 80s, but it still sets up the Coen style and the great camera work that is synonymous with all their films. The last shot, of the underside of a sink, with all the complex piping running down from a simple drain, exemplifies this very well.

So it's a good film, noir-ish in it's way, that twists and turns and begins the Coens' lyrical flair that really hits its stride at Miller's Crossing. Big thumbs up for THE FOUR TOPS in the soundtrack for sure.

Les Carabiniers

Les Carabiniers, 1963
Dir: Jean-Luc Godard
June 18, 2009
Netflix Wakefield MA

Looking at some newer reviews of Les Carabiniers (The Rifleman), it seems to have been given a more positive take with the time that has passed than it first did when it was released. While I did not hate the film, I'm pretty sure I know why people did not like it then, and it's message, while certainly worthwhile, seemed a bit...I don't know, obvious.

Godard's bleak and amateurish take on war, with a few silent film techniques, is intentional, and apparently had to be vehemently defended by Godard when the film was ripped apart by critics. War is alienating, he said, and that's what he wanted the audience to experience. I agree with this, and I like the fact that he overexposed all the film stocks to give it that grainy, almost ugly look that he felt was appropriate for the subject matter. Despite complaints from many critics, I did not find there to be any real technical errors, and it was shot with Godard's typical cinematic creativity.

The film follows two moronic brothers, ironically named Ulysses and Michaelangelo, as they go off to war for a fictitious king. They are lured to go in return for glorious loot and treasure, and have wonky adventures as torturers and mercenaries in the countryside.



They have a certain moronic charm about them, in that comedy of errors kind of way. And for unprofessional actors they do a decent job. In one scene where Michaelangelo goes to the cinema for the first time, a beautiful women undresses to take a bath and he does not understand that it's not real. He runs the length of the aisle over people trying to grab a peak of her as she leaves the screen and eventually knocks the screen down trying to get to her. The comedy is of course supposed to make you realize the outrageousness of the whole situation.

The one thing that really bugged me the most about the film was the use of text in intertitles throughout. Godard is known to use text in his films, and I'm not really a fan. Here he uses letters home from the two brothers to their girlfriends. Most of the things are just banal observations of living and soldiering through a war, and some things that might have been interesting to shoot I think, in that observational European fashion. The fact that there weren't any action scenes didn't bother me; you don't need that to show the atrocity of war. Godard's take is actually interesting, in it's way (of goofish peasants under false impressions carrying out the orders of an evil dictator), but those intertitles were just long winded and made me want to fast forward. I don't know. Maybe it was the language difference.

The film certainly works as a manifesto against war and genocide. The claims of being the "greatest anti-war film" ever made in these second takes kind of perked my eyebrows up though. The greatest anti-war film I have ever seem is Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, and the two movies are on opposites of the cinematic spectrum. Maybe I will like the film better on my second take, but it just didn't do that much for me. It's style just did not resonate.

Susuz Yaz

Susuz Yaz, 1964
Dir: Metin Erksan
June 17, 2009
The Auteurs

So I found The Auteurs just cruisin' around the web, and it's a pretty awesome site. It seems to be up with the help of Martin Scorcese, and it's just seems like a cool place to go to talk about and watch films. Most of the films that they have uploaded you have to pay to watch (like $5), but there are some free ones too, like Susuz Yaz (Dry Summer), the film of the month (June).

Woah. I only watched this because I had nothing else to watch last night, and this film just blew my gaskets. It is a tightly directed, tightly acted and supremely disturbing Turkish tale of water; the way that people interact because of it and what it will drive some people to do. Two brothers, Osman and Hasan, own the land where a water source starts and it run down to let the rest of the village irragate from. Osman, the older bother, is miserly, and during a dry summer, decides to dam the water to keep it for themselves. Hasan has doubts about this, but defers to his older brother. This of course causes huge uproar in the village, and after multiple rulings, "justice" sides with Osman. One night, two villagers come and blow up the dam. Osman and Hasan chase them away, but Osman decides shooting at them it a good idea, and kills one of the men. At their trial, Osman gets Hasan to take the blame, telling him that he will be able to take care of their lands better because he is older and wiser. So Hasan goes to jail and Osman heads back to their land.

Not only is Osman niggardly, he is also one of the all time cinematic creepshows I have ever seen. Hasan gets married at the beginning of the film to the beautiful Bahar, and Osman frequently watches them make out/movie hump through a crack in the wall. He also stares at her constantly, even when Hasan is around, and is overtly sexual toward her all the time. After the jailing, things obviously get worse. If you thought the staring was bad, how about sucking on the utter of a cow while rubbing it's flank, all while staring at a horrified Bahar. What the fuuuuuuuuck! So this was supposed to turn her on, I guess? Osman is deviant central, that's for sure.

Osman hears in town one day that a Hasan has died in jail, and he decides to take that as his brother, not really caring if it is or not. He tells Bahar this, and she obviously takes it badly. Osman decides to make his move, but he still has doubts about his ability to win her. He practices his betrothal by putting a head scarf on a scarecrow, and wooing it. God damn. This guy is just the worst. He then goes on to forcibly make out with her. From there on she becomes much more vocal in her contempt of him, and even hides and throws fruit at him.



The Turkish government is however in a forgiving mood and decides to pardon some prisoners, Hasan being one of them. Word reaches him of what Osman has done and he makes his way back home. Osman prepares for the coming showdown by having target practice on the scarecrow. Osman, obviously gets his just desserts, and Hasan and Behar take over the land.

While the story of family betrayal and spousal lust drives the story forward, the backbone of the film is water and violence. And seriously, like Chinatown, I don't think you can make a film about water without it being weird as hell. The villagers are obviously pissed off about Osman's hoarding and the decision to let him keep the dam up. In retribution for this, one of the villagers kills his dog. You actually see this on film, and it fucked me up. They killed a fucking dog! It whimpers and shakes on the ground, and there is very little chance that it was not real. Jeebus Christ, I'm still thinking about it. The violence against Osman escalates to the point where a number of villagers come after him in his fields and beat him with sticks, a scene reminiscent of Chinatown when Jack Nicholson's character gets his ass kicked in the orchard by those redneck farmers. Water is a necessity of life, called "the earth's blood" in the film, and when there is very little of it around, people change. They will betray their neighbors for it. They will kill for it. Men become other things. Or is that simply the nature of man? All you know is that people need water.

The water tale mirrors the fractured family well, with an opportunistic and conniving Osman thinking to take for himself (a widower) what is his brother's. In the end, we only see the best in people (Hasan) after we see the very worst of everyone. After being killed, Osman's body floats down through the opened dam, finally flowing down with "his" water in death after he couldn't bring himself to do it (for free anyways) in life.

Miller's Crossing

Miller's Crossing, 1990
Dir: Joel Coen (and Ethan Coen)
June 14, 2009
Netflix Wakefield MA

Miller's Crossing is a really good film. The Coen's take on the 30's Gangster film is filled with a lot more pithy dialogue, along with their signature black humor, than most of these flicks (uhh, I'm looking at you Road to Perdition. The Untouchables?? Are you serious? We'll see how Public Enemies is later this summer) and is also, from what I've seen, just a better made film. The noir aspects aren't as heavy as they are in Barton Fink, but there are still enough to keep you thinking while also enjoying the zingers and the shoot-em-ups.

Tom (Gabriel Byrne) is an adviser for Leo (Albert Finney), a strong-armed Crime Boss who runs the city. Leo is clearly muscle who has bludgeoned his was to the top, and doesn't often see, as Tom puts it, "all the angles." Trouble starts when Italian rival Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito), a seriously conflicted gangster who has trouble wrestling with the ethics of the business ("You double-cross once - where's it all end? An interesting ethical question."), needs to bump Bernie (John Turturro), a bookie who's been giving out too much information on fixed fights. Leo's main squeeze, or gun moll, is Verna (Marcia Gay Harden), Bernie's sister, so Leo isn't going to let it go down. Tom thinks it's the wrong move, but Leo won't budge, and the power struggle ensues. Tom has to do a lot of juggling from then on to set things "right."

The strangest part of the film has to be the sexual undercurrent running between three men: Bernie, Mink (Steve Buscemi) another bookie, and The Dane (J.E. Freeman), Caspar's ferocious right hand man whose hatred of women is clear in the scene where he goes to confront Verna: "I'll kill all you whores!" While it's never explicitly said that these relationships are happening, it's pretty obvious what's going down. A nervous Mink talks to Tom at the beginning about the trouble brewing, and Tom quips that Mink has too many "amigos." Bernie, on the other hand, states that one can never have too many friends, and his relationship with Mink seems to be more about getting an "in" than anything else, which it turns out is the type of person Bernie is, or as Tom puts it, "a grifter." Verna merely says that he is "different," but that clearly translates as homosexual in the subtext. The Dane, who is clearly the "whacko-homo" in the triangle, defends Mink even when he can't be found for questioning, and seems to generally care for him. Johnny says that he knows that they are "boys," whatever that means. Johnny's insistence to kill Bernie might stem from a persistent Dane, who sniffs that something is up between Mink and Bernie. Overall it was a subtle and clever thing to throw into a gangster film which usually eschews that sort of thing.

The death of a low-level muscle man, who Leo sent to watch Verna, sets some things in motion that Tom really didn't want to happen. Who killed him? No one's quite sure, but fingers are pointed at Johnny in Leo's camp. Tom knows better, because Verna has been sleeping with him, so he thinks that Verna must have done it to keep the relationship a secret. Johnny's joints are raided. Johnny then calls for a hit on Leo in his Crime-Boss mansion, but it fails, and a quick-thinking Leo proves that he has more power with a tommy-gun in his hands than he is sitting behind a desk making decisions. It's one of the most awesome scenes in the movie. Then a whole gang-war erupts that sees power shift from Leo to Johnny, and forces Tom to pick a new team after he tells Leo about Verna, thinking that the jig must be up. The death of Rug, the tailer, was actually at the hands of Mink however, who thought that The Dane had "spies" tailing him. Bernie says later that Mink was terrified that The Dane would find out that they were "jungled up together." So the whole war pretty much stems from a minor character (Mink), who gets caught between two lovers, one who is using him and another who actually cares for him.

With great acting and directing, there's not a whole lot to find wrong about the film, though the 30's jargon and accents made me wish I had turned on the subtitles a few times. They way that Tom plays both sides off each other is pretty brilliant, and at the end, we find out that what Tom says a few times in the film rings true: "You never really know someone."

Drag Me to Hell

Drag Me to Hell, 2009
Dir: Sam Raimi
June 13, 2009
Showcase Cinema Revere MA

The whole horror genre is pretty easy to vault considering the manure that people have been putting into theaters recently, and Drag Me to Hell easily jumped them. Whether you're jumping or screaming or laughing, you're bound to have a good time. All of the bad reviews I've read are are the doucheiest drivel (Uh CG sucked...PLOT, where is it?!!...acting, are you serious?). I guess they have some points, but I'm sure they don't want to be told that they missed the point.

OK. Justin Long sucks. I agree. He didn't impress me in Dodgeball, Live Free or Die Hard, or this. Alison Lohman can also forget the Oscars, except for the raddest line in the whole movie: "Oh I'll give it to her! Bitch is gonna git some." Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhh. Wrong envelope though, OOOPS! Where was Bruce though? I was a bit disappointed that he at least didn't have a minor role. Too busy with Burn Notice I guess.

The gypsy lady was awesome. The Indian guy was retardedly awesome. The directing and sound design ruled. The ending: classic. Justin Long's tears: GAY. I actually jumped a few times even though I knew what was coming (kinda), and that tells me that the director is doing a good job. Sure you can laugh at the acting and CGI at points, but in what Sam Raimi movie can't you? The movie is just one unabashed funfest. Stop being tools and try to enjoy something.

The Hangover

The Hangover, 2009
Dir: Todd Phillips
June 11, 2009
Showcase Cinema Woburn MA

Ah, Lowbrow. I've missed you so. And you know it's a lowbrow film when in the end credits it literally looks like someone is getting there dick sucked (like for real real). I thought that it was pretty funny, but I generally like these comedies where very little brainpower is involved to watch it, which I'm sure is why America loves them so much as well.

There really isn't much to talk about. Three buddies, plus the brother of the bride-to-be (Zach Galifinakis, a not so biting but still weird-funny that he usually is), go to Vegas for a Bachelor Party. They have a toast before the night begins, and then it cuts to the next morning where no one can remember anything, and the groom-to-be is missing. Crazy hijinks ensue to find out where he is, involving Mike Tyson and babies in sunglasses.

So yeah, it's funny. That's all the analysis it really needs.

Le Petit Soldat

Le Petit Soldat, 1960
Dir: Jean-Luc Godard
June 10, 2009
Netflix Wakefield MA

Godard's second feature is about an a disenchanted hitman, Bruno (Michel Subor), living in Geneva to avoid enlistment in the Algerian War. Working for French intelligence, he is ordered to kill a pro-Algerian to prove he is not a double agent. Meanwhile, he meets and falls in love with Veronica Dreyer (Anna Karina), who has been helping the Algerians. Bruno plans to leave with her for Brazil, but before he can he is is captured and tortured by Algerian revolutionaries. He escapes, and agrees to kill the man he was supposed to in the first place in exchange for passage to Brazil for him and Veronica. However, the French discover Veronica's ties to the Algerians, and torture her to death. Before he realizes she is dead, Bruno kills the man.

Le Petit Soldat (The Little Soldier) caused a sensation when it was released for its realistic portrayal of torture. It was even banned in France until the war was over, which was three years later in 1963. In itself, it is pretty effective in the movie, though it isn't that gratuitous overall (only in comparison to what you can see today).

The film has the typical Godard style, which is nice for the most part, despite a few sloppy parts that were really jarring. The one thing about the film that I didn't like was the whole inner monologue thing that Bruno had going on. He'd say something like "I don't know why she turned away.", and then Veronica would turn away. I can see it for myself dingle. There's also the whole "I'm a hitman, but I'd rather think about art and classical music" stigma that must be really hard for Bruno to handle. It can be a bit overbearing at times, but that's just Godard speaking through the character obviously. What the style does establish is the something that Godard uses throughout his career, which Bruno verbalizes when he says: "Photography is truth, and cinema is truth 24 times per second." This is just another statement about the ruminations that Godard has about the nature of cinema.

The film overall is pretty interesting, though clearly not Godard's best. The Algerian War itself is something that I know little about, and it was nice to learn some stuff about it. About the DVD, there were a few parts, especially when Bruno isn't thinking or talking and just observing some people, where the subtitles fall off, so there were a few parts where I was guessing what was going on.

I think my overall feelings for Godard are starting to change to just that he has his place in the French New Wave revolution that changed cinema, but he really isn't one of my favorites. I'll just have to see how that progresses.

Barton Fink

Barton Fink, 1991
Dir: Joel Coen (and Ethan Coen)
June 7, 2009
Netflix Wakefield MA

Writing, in itself, is never an easy thing, especially when you write for someone else. While this is not what Barton Fink is totally about, it is the main dilemma that the title character faces in the film. Barton's (John Turturro) "problem" with writing spirals until it's hard to tell if what is happening is real or not. The Coen Bros. tale of Hollywood script writing finds a man trying to make a difference with his writing, and coming to grips with the choices that people must make while working there and how it affects them.

Barton is a hot young playwright in New York when the film begins, getting lauded by the critics ans his fans alike for his portrayal of the "common man." One of his close associates convinces him to take a contract job at a film studio, despite his obvious doubts and his desire to write something better. His time in LA is lonely and isolated, as he tries to write a "B" movie wrestling flick that the studio wants but is suffering from a case of writer's block. From there, Barton's hold on reality seems to slip as things, literally, fall apart around him.

The hotel where Barton stays is the main focus of his isolation. He stays in a crappy hotel that has clearly seen better days, and never sees any of the other tenants, save one. Charlie Meadows (John Goodman) lives next to Barton and occasionally comes over after their first meeting where Charlie demands to know if it was Barton that had called to complain that he had been making too much noise (Charlie had been crying). Their conversations run from Charlie's work as an insurance salesman to the details on how to wrestle. The whole relationship is really buddy-buddy, but also displays Barton's main problem. While he is intent on creating this "new" theater for the "common man" about real people, he refuses to listen to Charlie, who is the definition of a common man, "who has stories to tell, believe you me." Barton's thoughts on "the life of the mind," that which he believes he lives and separates him from people like Charlie, comes back to haunt him as Charlie's character reveals itself to be not quite what Barton had assumed.

In seeking out help to write the film, Barton bumps into one of his literary heroes, W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney) and picks his brain for advice. The man turns out to be a drunk and completely spiteful of the whole Hollywood scene (allusions to William Faulkner), who may not have written all of his work anyways. He has a beautiful secretary, who is also his lover, who has ghost written many of Mayhew's script's while he has been too drunk to write. In a nervous moment, Barton calls this secretary to help him because his is coming up to a deadline. She comes over, and after confessing that he is having serious problem coming up a script, she tells him she will help him "relax." They have sex. When Barton wakes up, however, she is dead; butchered in his bed. Charlie helps him get rid of the body, but he soon has to leave for work, and cops (who are pretty hilarious) start sniffing around. Much to Barton's surprise, they are looking for Charlie, who is actually the serial killer "Madman Mundt" who decapitates his victims and keeps the heads. Before he left, Charlie had left a head sized package with Barton, and when they first said the things about decapitation, I was like, "Oh Shiyyyyyyyyyyyyt!" But it wasn't the half of it.

Barton's new experiences force out of him a script that he thinks is his best work yet. After coming back from a night of dancing, the cops are at his place, but Charlie comes back and the entire hotel erupts in flames. Running down the hallway blasting the cops with a shotgun, Charlie screams "LOOK UPON ME! I'LL SHOW YOU THE LIFE OF THE MIND!" With the fire raging all around and John Goodman barreling down the hallway, it is one of the most mesmerizing scenes I've ever watched. Soon after Barton and Charlie chat, and Charlie finally gets across that the pain and yearning felt by Barton, that which he tries to get across in his writing, is also felt by the common man, especially himself. The incendiary hotel is Charlie erupting, his pain and anger raging forth, and a fiery representation that his life may be in fact more complex and emotional that Barton's. His killings, even the one that he forced upon Barton (Audrey, the secretary), he explains are in fact a release: "Most guys I just feel sorry for. Yeah. It tears me up inside, to think about what they're going through. How trapped they are. I understand it. I feel for 'em. So I try to help them out." Maybe with this new understanding of the empathy needed to relate to the common man, Barton can create the thing he so desires.

But of course his script is dismissed by Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner), the movie studio head who's been singing Barton's praises the whole time, as a "fruity film about suffering." Lipnick is a composite of all the old Hollywood heads of ol', the blustering philistines who demand great art but know nothing about it and peddle formulaic entertainment for economic gain, and is the main representation of Barton's struggle of writing good material versus compromising for "the pictures."

I think I'll finish (though there is still plenty to talk about) with the picture in Barton's room and the final scene. Wandering onto the beach after being rebuffed by Lipnick, a beautiful girl comes out on the beach and sits down if front of him. The last shot mimics the picture where a girl sits on a beach looking out at the ocean. I've thought a lot about this, trying to put any kind of meaning behind it, and it seems to suggest the relationship between art and reality; what is in our heads and what we really see, and how art can mimic reality. This in turn puts doubts on what really happened in the film. Did it happen at all? Was this just a story made up in Barton's head that allowed him to mature as a writer? An extremely complex internal epiphany? In one scene where Barton is having trouble writing, he opens the Bible in his desk directly to Daniel, the passage where he is trying to interpret King Nebuchadnezzar's dreams. This seems to allude to some sort of unreal element about what is going on, and it only increases as the film builds to it's climax. The shots of slowly going down hallways and of going into things, as if you are going into someone's mind, might suggest this, and the entire nature of the hotel almost feels not real, so there is definitely a chance that the hotel induced some sort of frayed reality. The enigmatic last lines of the film also suggest something of this nature: Barton tells the girl that she is beautiful, and then asks, "Are you in pictures?" She blushed and replies, "Don't be silly." It is impossible to be certain because the film is purposefully enigmatic in this way, but they certainly want you to ponder certain things. All I know is that there are a lot of things to think about after watching this film, and it is probably the best Coen Bros. film I've seen.

The X-Files: Fight the Future

The X-Files: Fight the Future, 1998
Dir: Rob Bowman
June 1, 2009
Netflix Wakefield MA

In my fervent attempt to fill in all the gaps of The X-Files (which is a great TV show), I have decided to watch the entire series from the beginning. I am now in between seasons 5 and 6, which is where this movie takes place in the chronology. I don't think that I will write a long review, but just say that if you like the X-Files, you are bound to like this. It's surely better than the mediocre "monster of the week" movie that recently came out.

The reason why the film works is because it sticks with the main aliens mythology, and Mulder is back to being a believer instead of a whiny sulk, like he was for most of season 5. Also, Scully is back to being a hot cynic instead of some bible beating faithfart. Granted, it is kind of a glorified television episode, and the camera moves to make it seem more like a film were a little ridiculous (sweet crane shot bros), but it has all the government conspiracy/paranoia/suspense to at least keep you interested. Fake Ebert gives this a fat thumbs up (which counts for, like, one and a half).