The Ladykillers (2004)

The Ladykillers, 2004
Dir: Joel (and Ethan) Coen
August 28, 2009

I can say now that I have seen every feature that the Coens have made. It's been a pretty good ride; it's too bad that it ran out of gas with The Ladykillers. I think it's second nature to be wary of remakes, and this film really doesn't do anything to improve my feelings. I have never seen the original (1955), but anything with both Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers must be incredible. This remake isn't awful, it just really isn't a Coen Brothers film. They wrote the script, but were not supposed to direct. When Barry Sonnenfeld dropped out, they were offered the directing reins as well. I'm not really sure if they had some studio people watching their every move, but they tried to be subtle with their own personal touches and most of them just fall flat.

A merry band of criminals posing as musicians led by an eccentric southern dandy professor (Tom Hanks) hatch a plan to use the basement of an old lady (Irma P. Hall) to dig a tunnel straight to the store room of a steamboat casino and steal the loot. What follows is a comedy-of-errors, "ignorance is bliss" romp that is steeped in great atmosphere and mood but lacking in substance. The Deep South setting is used very well with both the main character's dialogues and some great gospel tunes which help to cover up some of the films many failings. The religious undertones and Christian metaphors (basement/evil, gargoyles and the trash island in the middle of the harbor/sea [heaven or hell?]) are a bit heavy handed, as are the E.A. Poe references, but you get the point. Changing Charon's ferry to a trash barge (because that's what the criminals basically are, duh) was actually the one clever thing that I really liked in the film.

The odd thing is that the most obviously glaring sore spot of the film is the writing. It's as if it was written by someone trying to ape the Coens' schtick but got really lazy. Maybe they were rushed, I don't know. But for guys who usually give lots of love to the support, they left them gimmicky. Sure they have weird things about them as usual, but that's about it. Marlon Wayans cat callin' big booty bitches and sayin' things like "damn skippy!" seems a bit hollow. And J.K Simmons's Garth Pancake has irritable bowel syndrome. Really? Fart jokes? The General (Tzi Ma) is alright, but Lump (Ryan Hurst) is just plain annoying. The professor, for his part, is laughably befuddling ("Madam, you are addressing a man who is quiet, yet not quiet, if I may offer a riddle?") and his sniveling laugh is just strange coming out of Hanks, so a decent job I think. Hall is good too, for her part, but a bit too demonstrative for her role, which should have her being way more daft. With writing, most of the time I would give the Coens the benefit of the doubt, but here you really can't. They know, and have proved, that they can do much better.

Inglourious Basterds

Inglorious Basterds, 2009
Dir: Quentin Tarantino
August 26, 2009

I must say that, while the proud tradition of really annoying Tarantino films flows strongly, Inglourious Basterds might be the most subdued and mature film he has made. You would not think that on the title of the film, or the trailer, but it is. A quick reflection after watching this will also probably remind you that, more than anything, Tarantino wants to be a writer, and that directing his own scripts is just something that he has to do. The lengthy dialogues, most of them in either German or French (it's basically a foreign language film) work nicely with the sporadic Tarantinoesque moments. Most people looking for a Pulp Fiction (1994) or a Kill Bill ('03 or '04) will probably be disappointed, because frankly, this has the feeling of a very European film.

It's funny that my last film was a Godard, because this film, despite the others having much in debt to French New Wave as well, is probably the biggest homage to him in the Tarantino canon. Even as the credits role, "A Band Apart," Tarantino's production company, proudly displays his affection for Godard. It also has a pays is debts to Spaghetti-Westerns and 70s B-movies, as all his films do, but you can't get away from the New Wave spirit that drives most of the film, which centers around the dialogue. A lieutenant in the US army, Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), puts together a group of Jewish-American soldiers, in addition to some European Nazi haters, to go behind enemy lines and kill as many Nazis as possible. A parallel story line of revenge runs along this, of a young Jewish French girl (Mélanie Laurent) who, after escaping a "Jew Hunter" Nazi (Christoph Waltz) earlier in the film, finds the opportunity for her vengeance arrive when the Nazi high command decides to hold the exclusive premiere of a German propaganda film at her Paris cinema. And vengeance is had because all the big wigs show up.

There is some great acting, especially Waltz, who steals every scene he is in and is one cool customer. His opportunistic waffen-SS officer is always looking for something and sniffing it out, whether it's Jews hiding under the floor boards or a way to better his predicament. There are a lot of silly parts in the film, most of them pertaining to real people, like Hitler and Goebbels, but also a shadowy, curmudgeonly Churchill in one scene, as well as a wonky Mike Myers playing a British general as if he were a subdued Austin Powers. It kinda works. Eli Roth is way over the top as the Boston-born "Bear Jew," who wields a baseball bat to club Nazi skulls. His intensity in the final part of the film, however, is pretty impressive for a guy that is most definitely not an actor.

What Tarantino does well is create tension through dialogue, and this is best exemplified in the bar scene which last for about fifteen minutes, most of which is a heated exchange, full of subtle looks and empty space which only help enhance the conversations taking place. Of course, after an intense standoff where people point guns at each others nuts, the scene explodes. Where Tarantino has problems stem from the same problem that I have with Godard. Get the text off the screen. It is not cool. His use of flashbacks is random and uneven, and some of the Basterds get lost by the wayside. There was nothing particularly striking about the photography; slo-mo works sometimes (it's not 300 at least), a few nice wide shots, but that's not Tarantino's forte, so it's really pointless to talk about.

It's kind of incredible that Tarantino has basically reworked his "revenge saga" a bunch of different times. Is he still that interested in it? I guess so. Maybe it just allows him to make a film that another plot device wouldn't. His femme fatale stories (Jackie Brown (1997) and Kill Bill) tie in nicely to make my point (for the Laurent character anyway). The funniest part of the whole thing was definitely leaving the theater and hearing dumb asses say, "Didn't Hitler die in the bunker? That was stupid." But isn't Hitler getting pumped full of lead by a extremely hateful Jew more satisfying? The revenge fantasy was fun. Good, not great. Better than Death Proof (2007), at least (probably Kill Bill too).

Une femme mariée

Une femme mariée: Suite de fragments d'un film tourné en 1964 (A Married Woman), 1964
Dir: Jean-Luc Godard
August 20, 2009

Godard has turned the tables in this film, one of the least seen of his earlyish output, where before he had restless men skulking about Paris, here he has a wandering married woman moving between her pilot husband and her actor lover, making promises and professing love to both but unable to choose until she is forced to.

Godard gives us little vignettes (these "fragments of a film") of Charlotte (Macha Méril) lounging about with her two lovers (Bernard Noël and Philippe Leroy), some 30 seconds long, some ten minutes, all of them fading to black and then fading back in. Lots of close-ups; many of them of Charlotte's legs and torso, with hands all over her. Some of these hands have a ring on them, some of them do not. Godard himself narrates at points, in his fashion, and of course there are many references to the cinematic and literary figures who have influenced his work. These little pieces really have no narrative flow, but they work in their own way, but later on Godard moves on to a series of documentary (or cinéma vérité, I guess) style interviews with the husband, his young son, and film-maker Roger Leenhardt, which are broken up by Godard's typically infuriating title cards, and the whole series just bust up any type of flow the film might have had. I'm sure this is exactly what Godard wanted though. In another scene at a pool, Charlotte overhears two girls talking (about girl things, ya' know), where Godard again busts out his voice-over and the text on film, which is just not my jambox. He also uses some negatives here too. I can't really say for sure if these things truly show my dislike for most of post-modern cinema, but all I know is that it seems slightly forced. I know it works for others, clearly, but there is just something about it that niggles me. Sometimes I want to use the word pompous, but I hate using that word when applied to film. Why would anyone want to make a film that no one wants to see, or is going to be immediately miffed by? Godard is not pompous, in my opinion, just...flamboyant sometimes, I guess. There is one shot however, where Charlotte is driving in a convertible with the actor, where she is sitting really low in her seat trying to not be seen (hiding from who though?). The camera is right behind the car as they drive along the Seine, with the Eiffel Tower filling up half the frame and gradually getting bigger as they skid along. It's pretty awesome.

Trying to dig out what Godard is saying about love, or anything for that matter, can sometimes be a chore, and here it is no different. Love is just a charade; a word we use to justify our relationships? Or maybe she really does love both of them. Charlotte certainly throws "love" around a lot, but it's what the men she's with want to hear. It's her way of keeping them happy as she tries to figure herself out. Her roaming nature seems quite well expressed by her travel in Paris, where she changes taxis frequently, as if trying to hide her actions from suspicious eyes. As the film moves along, she indulges in some verbose soliloquies about herself and her feelings ("I have no will power.") Love, while seeming like a big part of the film at first, by the end seems just a pretext.

I think the more interesting thing about the film is that instead of a straightforward story about adultery, which this can seem like, it puts a microscope on the consumer culture of the 60s. Like the way Godard is interested in the way that cinema shapes our lives, here he puts forward the way in which the media and popular culture influence Charlotte and her actions. It seems strange at first viewing, when you see all of the advertisements, magazines, record sleeves and films stream through, as if randomly, but it's all very deliberate, as is the way she reacts to them, like her tedious talks and thoughts about boobs and bras ("perfect bust"). All of this takes us back to the earlier vignettes, where fetishistic images of her body remind us of the advertisements that are constantly being bombarded at Charlotte.

It's difficult to say if all of those things truly inform all of Charlotte's actions, but they certainly tell us a lot about what it is like to live in this modern age. While I clearly have problems with Godard's...presentation in some of his films, it is impossible to watch one of his films and not know that he is buzzing with ideas, like a fragmented narrative to coincide with a fragmented life. His study of modern life, the restless struggle we all face, is felt in a melancholy undertone that is in a lot of his films, and I think is the greatest thing he ever achieved. Une femme mariée clearly sets out to do what it wants to, which is show us what it must have been like for a young French woman to be alive in the summer of 1964.

The Hidden Fortress

Kakushi toride no san akunin (The Hidden Fortress), 1958
Dir: Akira Kurosawa
August 18, 2009

From all of the the Kurosawa that I've seen, this is as probably the closest to pure comedy he gets. That's not to say that this is bad, or that it's strictly a comedy, but that's the type of Samurai epic that you are getting with The Hidden Fortress. A general (Toshirō Mifune) and a princess (Misa Uehara) must dodge enemy clans while smuggling the royal treasure out of hostile territory with two bumbling, conniving peasants (Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara) at their sides.

This blockbuster samurai adventure is made all the more memorable for those buffoonish peasant sidekicks, who not only steal the film from Mifune and his swagger, but nearly upstage their visionary director and his studied use of wide-screen photography for the first time. Of course that's impossible; utilizing the studio's newfangled “Toho-scope”, Kurosawa was able to fill his stretched frame with planes of action and nature's natural clutter, reserving close-ups, apart from his usual picky telephoto decisions, for the more dramatic moments between Mifune, the princess, and rival general/friend Susumu Fujita. Scenes of the fire festival are especially great, as is the the the scene where Mifune rides down two soldiers, and then proceeds to the always mandatory samurai duel, this time with spears.

But for all the brilliant film making theatrics, the conventional plot wouldn't be as entertaining without our entry into the action, through Chiaki and Fujiwara's bickering peasants, who are separated by a slave trade just long enough to learn of a stash of gold pieces hidden throughout the land in tree branches, a wonderfully hilarious device to represent the film's themes of nobility and heroism over self and greed. With this Kurosawa bridged the gap between sweeping action symbolism (Seven Samurai (1954)), heady literary action (Throne of Blood (1957)) and westernized ironic action (Yojimbo (1961)), proving yet again to be one of the most malleable cinematic craftsmen in the world.

The Goods: Live Hard. Sell Hard.

The Goods: Live Hard. Sell Hard., 2009

Dir: Neal Brennan

August 15, 2009

It's hard to think about a 90 minute movie being to long, but this is a prime example of that. When campy and over-the-top, there were some really funny bits. Lots of really unfunny shit though (like the boy band tripe) too. Movies like this don't need to make that much sense (low-brow), and things like "sentiment" and "resolution" just muddle everything up. I want to see something retardedly funny, not some mushy romantic bullshit.

Don Ready (Jeremy Piven) is the "Goods." A "gun for hire" car salesman called in for dealerships having trouble selling. There's some other stuff your supposed to care about, but you won't. The first part of Will Farrell's cameo is nevertheless very funny, because it comes out of nowhere. The second part, later in the film, was not funny at all because it was tied into Ready's "conflict." Yeah, I know how movies are supposed to play out. But I can't help but wonder if the normal structure a film is supposed to be ruins the laughs and flow of a movie like this. Maybe when they had to get a little serious, the writers just got shoddy.

Anyway, as a comedy that falls in the "Will Farrell" category (as opposed to a Judd Apatow comedy, the only two kinds that seem to be green-lit these days), this sucks.

The General

The General, 1926
Dir: Buster Keaton
August 12, 2009

I really wanted to know what the big deal was about this film, having seen a lot of silent comedies but never getting around to this one for some reason. So after watching it, all I can say, is that it is definitely worth the fuss. Rejected by the Confederate army as unfit and taken for a coward by his beloved Annabelle Lee (Marian Mack), young Johnnie Gray (Keaton) sets out to single-handedly win the war with the help of his cherished locomotive. What follows is, without exaggeration, probably the most cleverly choreographed comedy ever recorded on celluloid. Johnnie wages war against hijackers, an errant cannon, and the unpredictable hand of fate while roaring along the iron rails.

One of the most amazing things in the film occurs when Buster sits on one of the side rods of the train, which connect the drivers of the locomotive (thanks wikipedia!). The train starts gently and gradually picks up speed as it enters a shed. The visual effect of the forlorn Buster as the motion of the side rod moves him gently up and down is very poignant, and also one of the greatest things I have ever seen captured on film. My jaw rarely drops when I watch a film, but this was just crazy. Had they done anything wrong, he probably would have died. Another amazing thing he shot was the bridge collapse near the end, with an actual locomotive moving across it. Apparently he did not tell the actor playing a Union general that this was going to happen, and the look of terror and shock on his face is truly genuine. That's fucking genius.

The plot is a little standard, but it can be overlooked for the great score and hilarious physical comedy, and seriously, it is visually stunning at some points. Keaton seems to me the superb craftsman of silent comedy. Chaplin may have been the more nakedly emotional genius, but Keaton was more interested in the medium of film itself, as you can tell by the way this film is shot, which is way more interesting than anything Chaplin ever did. Insisting on accuracy in every detail, Keaton created a remarkably authentic historical epic, replete with hundreds of costumed extras and full-scale sets. I just read that he studied all of those famous Matthew Brady Civil War photographs before he shot this and his visual aesthetic was based on that. You can really tell that too, because no one else shot war scenes at this point like Keaton.

Pushing the limits of his body and the limits of stunts of the time, Keaton creates a sublimely funny and at times frankly astounding tour-de-force of physical comedy and slapstick sequences. Everything that is done in the film is done on the day, without the help of elaborate camera tricks, and the sheer audacity of Keaton's drive to find the funniest set piece is breathtaking to behold. Possibly the classic silent comedy.

Funny People

Funny People, 2009
Dir: Judd Apatow
August 11, 2009

I'm glad that Judd Apatow made this movie. I'm glad he's working on a comedic American aesthetic that is based on morals yet still gets caught up in the vulgar culture that we all must deal with. I'm glad this film wasn't like 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) or Knocked Up (2007). However, the film was too long (and I rarely say that), and despite the mentoring relationship that George (Adam Sandler, who is really quite good) and Ira (Seth Rogen) forge by the end, I'm not really quite sure what the film was supposed to be about, and what I was supposed to take away from it.

If the the film was about how hard it is to make it as a comic without help and how much having a mentor really benefits you, then maybe Ira should've been the main character. As it is, with George being in the spotlight, the themes of redemption and second chances get lost in a ending which doesn't really correlate with all of the problems that George had. George has everything as a successful comedian/movie star, but when he finds out that he is terminally ill, he tries to turn his life around. He starts doing stand-up again, and at a L.A. comedy club he meets Ira, a struggling young comic looking for a break. George lets Ira write jokes for him and then lets him become his assistant, and their strange friendship starts to grow. Over time, George realizes that he is better, and a relationship that he rekindled with an ex-girlfriend (Leslie Mann) starts to progress despite her having a wonky Australian husband (Eric Bana, still mostly sucking).

There were so many superfluous things in this film that just didn't need to be in it. All of Ira's roommates, despite having some of the funniest moments in the film, could have been left out, along with Ira's love interest. The whole feel of the film dragging on too long is kind of like a bad stand-up routine that also doesn't know when to quit. Maybe that's what it's supposed to be like. Are comics' life supposed to be miserable, and that's how they get all their "hilarious" material? Life can give and take, is that what this is all about? Is this Apatow's stab at making a "film-makers" film? Maybe. All I know is that this is one train wreck of a movie that should probably be seen. What you make of it is debatable.

Intolerable Cruelty

Intolerable Cruelty, 2003
Dir: Joel Coen (and Ethan Coen)
August 10, 2009

It's pretty obvious that once you see the credits start to roll at the end of the movie, and you see a bunch of other dudes' names tacked on to the end of the screenwriting credits other than Joel and Ethan, you realize that the script might have been "doctored" up a bit to be more viewer-friendly. It's not a solid film by any means, but I'm pretty sure I don't hate it; in fact I found myself really enjoying a lot of it. A film bookended by Geoffrey Rush playing a bizarro pony-tailed Australian douche TV producer can't be all that bad.

So Hollywood wanted the Coens' to make a romantic comedy, a real doozy "battle-of-the-sexes" with stars that will fill the seats, or did the Coens convince them to let them make this? Whatever the circumstance, they can't really help themselves in turning it into a black comedy. The most prominent divorce lawyer in the country, Miles Massey (George Clooney), gets enamored with the scheming wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) of a wealthy real estate magnate (Edward Herrmann). When he helps the magnate keep all of his money in trial, leaving the wife with nothing, she plots revenge. Honestly, the first half of this movie has a breezy pace, is filled with enough clever dialogue and has enough weird "Coen" moments that I thought I was going to give this a positive review, but the time jump and the ending certainly make this film a mixed bag.

The Coens' leave their technical flair at home and seem to be more interested in the characters and dialogue, which has it's moments, to be sure. The acting is pretty stellar as well, and even CZJ is tolerable. Clooney's eccentric lawyer has strange enough lines and tendencies to appreciate, and mot of the supporting cast lends a pretty good helping hand, especially Billy Bob Thornton as a moronic oil baron. However, I'm still not quite sure why Cedric the Entertainer is in the film. The whole film trashes all over Los Angeles and the culture that thrives there, which the Coens' also did in Barton Fink (1991), but the "happily-ever-after" ending seems at odds with that and all the Coens' stand for, and the general thesis of the film is full of Hollywood bullshit. I dunno, the film is just too inconsistent, and not in a good way. A Coen Brothers film, no doubt, but a poor copy.

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.