I pugni in tasca

I pugni in tasca (Fists in the Pocket), 1965
Dir: Marco Bellocchio
September 8, 2009

"Fists in the Pocket"; the term in itself, to me anyway, brings up teenage angst and uneasiness that is, I think anyway, what this film is trying to portray. It's attack on European bourgeois culture sometimes hits the nail on the head, but I can't help but feel that this film is, for lack of a better word, retarded, but this might be exactly what Bellocchio wants. This probably has something to do with some of the characters in this film. The end is pretty much a parody/send-up of the ending of Antonioni's L'avventura (1963), which, unlike I pugni in tasca, is a masterpiece and an important milestone of European and Italian cinema. If you ever feel the need to see this, I might recommend watching L'avventura first. It might help clarify some things.

The film's setup is that four adult children live with their blind mother in the suburbs, and that this is basically the perfect fermentation for the bourgeois culture run amok. Augusto (Marino Masé), the oldest, is the breadwinner and basic caretaker for the rest, but seems annoyed that he can't be in city hitting on chicks and going to parties. Giulia (Paola Pitagora, who looks like a young Barbara Streisand, is HAWT. I have never been attracted to Barbara, but I think I might be now. Is that weird?) is the only girl, and seems like she has some mental instability. Leone (Pier Luigi Troglio) is mentally retarded and suffers from epilepsy. The film is, however, about Alessandro (played with reckless abandon by Swedish actor Lou Castel), who, as well as suffering from epilepsy, might possibly be insane (either that or mildly retarded). Ale (as he is sometimes called, or Sandro) makes up his mind that getting rid of his blind mother and retarded brother will ease the burdens on his dysfunctional family, especially those of Augusto, who he sort looks up to but also hates a lot. By the end, you have no sympathy for any of the characters, except maybe Leone, who is basically treated with disdain by his siblings, is sad when his mom dies, and just wants to hang out with his brothers and his sister most of the time. Giulia and Augusto both know that Ale might do these heinous acts, and yet they do nothing, and Giulia freaks out when she realizes that Ale has drowned Leone, as if she didn't know that he was a killer already.

There is a completely bizarre almost incestuous relationship between Ale and Giulia, and it's context in the film can only be described in retrospect to the bizarre things that all of the characters do. At a certain point they are looking at the pictures and paintings on their mother's wall, and all of their old relatives look like Hapsburg cross-eyed mogoloids. It is never really specifically implied if continuous inbreeding has anything to do with their conditions, but the relationship that Ale and Gulia have and everyone's mental and health problems made me immediately think about it.

(It also made me think of one of my favorite modern European monarchs, Robert I, Duke of Parma, a fellow Italian. After marrying a fellow Bourbon princess (of a different cadet branch), he went on to father 12 children with her, of which only 2 were not mentally retarded, died in infancy or were stillborn. Now, if you have more than one retarded child, wouldn't you stop for two seconds and think, "Gee, another retarded one? There must be something wrong with us." But nope, got his wife to pop out 12, where she died in child birth, which was a stillborn. What a fucking asshole. He got married again later and had 10 more kids! Some dukes, man. Yet I digress way too much.) Portraying these types of relationships in the context of European society on screen, along with the whole blase attitude about life where you can do what you want and get away with it, has, for Bellocchio, it's roots in directors like Antonioni and Buñuel. The entire point of this film is to stick a knife in the eye of the old European order which was still clinging to power, which as many critics point out, was being threatened with the student riots of the 1960s.

All of the acting seems well done, the atmospheric black and white cinematography seems like it was developed from some dingy retarded nightmare and Ennio Morricone's haunting score works well when Ale finally gets to take out what he thinks are his burdensome relatives. But throughout the entire thing, I kept thinking in the back of my mind, "This is fucking retarded." It might all be some Brechtian put-off, and the joke's on me, but epilepsy as a metaphor for teen angst? Seriously? All of the frenzied retardation is kind of analogous to the stream-of-conscious jumble which William Faulkner used at the beginning of The Sound and the Fury, and is used to the same effect here i.e., to chart a family's disintegration as a mirror to the decaying grandeur of a dying society. But, if that's the case, I feel like I've seen that before in Antonioni's work, and I am much more partial to that I guess. As a opposed to blabbing and flapping, Antonioni uses austere silecnce and longing looks to communicate the inability to communicate. So, in the end, maybe I am supposed to think that this is retarded, and the director actually did a fine job. But I can't really shake all of the negative feelings that are connected to that. I guess I can see why people think this is great, but I'm going with my gut on this one. Over-rated.

Extract

Extract, 2009

Dir: Mike Judge

September 7, 2009

Judge's funny workplace winning streak continues, but I guess it should go without saying that this isn't exactly a "good film" in terms of what a film is, or should be. Like Idiocracy (2006) (which wasn't horrible, or good though, but got trashed by every critic and no one saw it), this is one of the most technically mundane and boring experiences one could have watching a movie, but it still manages to be kind of subversive, weird, and extremely likable in its own super-conventional way. Actually, Judge is basically making movies the exact same way "indie" directors in the 90s did. It certainly has the same sort of conventional minimalism. It definitely works in its favor, though, as it makes the tone all the more unassuming. I should probably mention that the trailer for this is completely misleading. It basically takes away all of the complexity and condenses it into some cutesy love story thing. It is anything but. Jason Bateman is playing the same character as he did in Arrested Development as Joel, a man of power whose hours and hours of laborious devotion seems to go unrecognized by all around him. Things get worse when a freak accident occurs in the workplace, which leads to a lawsuit, an untimely one since his company is working on striking up a deal with General Mills. Comic hi-jinx ensues, right? Oh, uhm no, I guess not.

Don't get me wrong, this movie is hilarious but it is so in a way far different from what one would expect from that trailer. This is Mike Judge after all. The humor is not only in Jason Bateman whining about not having sex with his wife, but also in how he responds to this. Like Michael Bluth, Joel worries and complains to a point that risks losing all sympathy with the audience. Unsurprisingly, many of the characters here never become more than one-dimensional cartoons, all characterized by one defining quirk. This usually is a no-no, and a pathway to a terrible movie, but I think that, within these rather flat characters, Judge has instilled as much life and energy into them as possible. Something probably should be said that, even though these characters aren't exactly going to knock the socks of you, they aren't exactly cut from the Hollywood mold. Mila Kunis' character is a terrible, terrible person and yet the trailer makes her out to be a cute and extremely likable earthy girl along the lines of Natalie Portman in shitty Garden State (2004). Again, she is anything but this. In all honesty, Kunis' character is hardly in the movie at all. She is, like pretty much every narrative device here, on the peripheral. Joel's arch comes along her character, but there is no sentimental "relationship building" or emotional bonding. They have sex one time, and it plays out as nothing more than a one-night stand.

Ben Affleck's character operates on a similar point. He plays a major part in pushing the story forward, but his character never seems to be a "part" of the movie by himself, instead he is seen as someone Joel just talks to. Affleck in himself makes me laugh, because he's a shitty actor who thinks he is great. I think he should, like Edward Burns, move into directing, where at least he can do something interesting, instead of flapping about the screen (did you see him in State of Play (2009)? Yeesh.). In the process of this film, however, he introduces Joel (and the audience) to not only marijuana, but xanax, riddlin, and maybe horse tranquilizer. From this, he introduces friend/gigolo/extremely stupid person Brad (Dustin Milligan) to Joel. On drugs, Joel agrees to a terrible plan of getting his wife (Kristen Wiig)(who is actually much more likable and real than the trailer indicates) to have an affair with the aforementioned Brad. The next day Joel tries to call the whole scheme off, but it's too late and now Brad has fallen for his wife, even though she realizes the limits of the younger man's intellect. As her final decision regarding Brad isn't one of melodramatic betrayal, she continues to come off as the only person (along with Joel) whose sanity we can trust.

Perhaps ironically, a major plot point comes from the fact that Joel begins to believe that he is losing his sanity. He's definitely on a downward spiral and countless situations he gets himself into unravel with the brutality and power of a film noir. This element is disguised very well, but noticeable if you are well versed in cinema. The adventure (if one wants to call it that) here is much less obvious in its trappings. It was only afterward that I realized how the movie sort of is a crime-drama, but in its own special little way. It's quite hard to explain, but it makes total sense. While Judge is obviously no great humanist, or even a legitimate artist, he has (once again) made a seemingly conventional movie without letting the mainstream aesthetic influence his unorthodox storytelling qualities. This actually serves as a great counter-weight to Office Space (1999), where there it was about the groundlings wallowing in the system, this is about the guy on top who gets in a mess. Also, did I mention the movie is really funny? Because that helps a lot.

Labor Day Review + Badlands

So the summer has been pretty good with this. I'm glad that I've kept up at it. I'm going to be taking some writing classes this fall which will hopefully jump-start my Grad School applications, but who knows. I might not blab about films as often, but I hope to.

I changed the name of the blog because, despite it's relative lack of importance, I kind of want this to be more serious than what it started as. That doesn't mean I will only review art-films or classics, but it may limit what I choose to put in here. In the end, writing about these films is something that brings me great joy, and I hope I can keep refining my tastes.

I have nothing else to watch today, so I'm going to write about a film that I re-watched this morning. I'd say this blog is usually about first impressions, but I might make posts like this or film in general from time to time.

Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973) [REWATCH]

Still the most easy-going of all of Malick's films, but probably the least emotionally rewarding. Calling it simply escapist entertainment is a bit too harsh, but I can say that it felt that way by the end, though I love the final shot moving through the clouds. Malick has always had an approach to characters that isn’t necessarily complex, but instead, something more fleeting and poetic. In this case, this flashier fleshing out of characters is not fully developed. At times, the film crosses the line to a plot-driven sensibility if only for the overwhelmingly simple set-up. This is all meant in relation to the man’s other films which are more abstract, more profound, and more ambitious. Don’t get me wrong, I love Badlands, always have and always will, and it's simplicity is what makes it's message profound in the end. Odd to think that Malick is seen as a humor-less pretentious maniac nowadays. I found myself laughing more often than I did on the previous viewing.



^ Watch for the reappearance of the catfish screen-left of Sheen during the shot of him lying in bed with black feathers fanned out behind him starting @ 3:45. This shot alone cements Badlands as one of the greatest American films of all time.

If I had to make a film right now, I would steal everything from Malick and be happy about it. Sometimes I can't believe he's only made 4 films.

Dead Man

Dead Man, 1995
Dir: Jim Jarmusch

Is the the post-modern Western a great idea? Who knows. Described as an "Acid Western" by one critic, Dead Man is a pretty good reference to point to if you want to describe post-modern American film. It's too bad that whole movement has spawned the popular indie "mumble" movies of this decade, but I digress. This is not John Ford, that's for sure.

When an accountant William Blake (Johnny Depp) arrives at a "end of the line" town Machine (get it?) for a job, he finds out that it has already been taken. After getting himself into a pickle in town where two people get murdered, he finds himself on a "trip" with a chubby, poetic Indian called Nobody (Gary Farmer) where they roam around the forests and deserts of the American West. Nobody, who had spent time in England as a "captured heathen," mistakes this Blake for the English poet and painter of fame, and proceeds to call him a "dead man" and even spouts Blake's poetry at him from time to time. I'm not quite sure if the main allegory of the film was based around Blake's poetry or some greater theme (possibly the destruction of Native American land and the "myth" of America, manifest destiny and whatnot), but I am not familiar enough with Blake's art or prose to be really certain. Depp's character finds himself out in the desert, coming to grips with "idea" of the West. At some point, he accepts his namesake in his mind after becoming a fugitive: "Yes, I'm William Blake. Have you read my poetry?" This might have something to do with the vision quest that Nobody goes on after eating payote, or may it have had something to do with the men that he kills while learning to "write with blood" with his gun. There's a lot open to interpretation, which is good.

Shot in high contrast black and white, the look of the film does a good job of equating the contemplative themes that it is trying to put across. Something that is lost in much of contemporary cinema is the power of human faces. This film photographs the faces of the actors in a way such that their distinct features remain in our mind long after the movie. Close-Ups can be particularly powerful in their own way. Jarmusch is known for his minimalist style and lack of any plot driven narrative, and it is not really any different here. While Western genre iconography (violence and language) actually drives the film forward, it's this structure and pacing that let's the film come close to being anywhere close to a success. By the deliberate use of fade out to black (as opposed to his usually annoying jump cuts) as a form of visual punctuation, a device introduced early in the film and used consistently throughout, the narration is broken up into what is essentially film segments related by slow, hypnotic rhythm. Neil Young's score works well with this; the haunting repetition of solo-guitar accentuates the structure that Jarmusch chose, though it can sometimes be jarring and intrusive. This rhythm makes a viewing of the film akin to something of a spiritual meditation, which might be the best way to think of the film in general.

For all the obtuse content that the filmmaking contains, Jarmusch's reputation as a filmmaker preceded him in louring many stars into this film, including Johnny Depp. Depp was fine, for what it's worth, but nothing special. Gary Farmer's Nobody is a pretty good mixture of comedy and philosophy while creating a genuine Native American character, something most Westerns lack. Many minor characters are only there for one scene (film segment), and the names are pretty staggering (Gabriel Byrne, Robert Mitchum!!, Iggy Pop, Billy Bob Thornton, Alfred Molina, John Hurt, Crispin Glover). Many of them die by Blake's gun. Byrne's scene in the hotel with Depp and the ex-prostitute is particularly good, as is Molina's as the corrupt missionary at a trading post who tries to get Nobody to buy "blankets." Lance Henriksen, of Aliens (1986) fame, is memorable as a cannibalistic bounty hunter, who with two others, is on the trail of the main duo.

The ending clearly has some connotations to the self-destuctive forces that have always been prevalent in American society, despite it's need to push ever onwards. Some people are just going to be left by the way-side. The overall experience of the film seems to be that of using William Blake's poetry to galvanize a lament for the American West, or possibly America's ascent (or decent?) in general. Dead Man is not so much about the events in the movie but about the characters involved and the way in which the old West drives them to violence. It's pretty clear that, for me at least, it warrants another viewing at some point, though I'm not sure if I ever will. That's basically how I feel about it.

Alphaville

Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution, 1965
Dir: Jean-Luc Godard
September 3, 2009

This altogether bizarre proto sci-fi is notable only, to me anyway, for the way in which Godard and cinematographer Raoul Coutard manipulate light and photography to turn nighttime Paris into a futuristic netherworld of impersonal glass structures, monotonous computers, and robotic humans devoid of form, function, or personality. Some of them are seductresses (of different classes, of course), some engineers and scientists, while others refuse to be "normal" and are eliminated (in a super strange "ceremony" in a pool) by the system, the computer-voiced power that sounds like a chain-smoking Frenchman without a larynx.

The film is about detective Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) who infiltrates the totalitarian Alphaville, run by an omnipresent computer called Alpha 60, as newspaper man Ivan Johnson to extricate a professor (Howard Vernon). The beginning has some strange bits where Ivan just blasts his way with a gun while in a hotel while the emotionless Alphavillians around him hardly bat an eye, and for a second I thought this might be fun. It was slightly campy, in that way in which Godard pays homage to American action flicks of the 30s (like the scene where Constantine is thrown from back and forth of the frame of a fixed camera, like he is being punched on both sides, is actually pretty funny). The music had Noir elements and bravado, which also had me kinda pumped, but in the end, I really could not take anything positive from the narrative elements of this film.

The biggest problem with this film is that Godard is telling you exactly what you should feel about what he is showing you, instead of letting you interpret the images. It is a fatal flaw, and what you get is preachy and, dare I even say it, pretty inherent. People must know that being human is to feel and love; does it really have to be told in this fashion? Maybe with WWII being only 20 years removed, it resonated with the crowd, but now it seems redundant. In the end, it is a baffling, and often impossible mixture of Godard's politics (I'm really dreading getting past his New Wave films and moving into his political, socialist era) and his radical examination of human interaction in spite of war and technology (the final shot of Anna Karina, in close up, saying “I You Love”, is about as self-reflexive and pretentious as Godard gets, and you know I have already defended him on this), and even though the concept is intriguing, and Coutard's photography is like nothing that came before it, the film ultimately doesn't add up to anything close to comprehension. With Le Petit soldat (1960), probably the worst Godard that I've seen.

Ponyo

Ponyo, 2009
Dir: Hayao Miyazaki
September 1, 2009

I think that I might have had a different overall experience of watching this film if I had waited to view a subtitled version rather than a dubbed one. The voices were almost too much. I think I might wait for a more in depth reaction until then, but I'll throw a few nuggets out there:

Gorgeous, like all his films. You can't help but smile during the animation magic of some of his scenes. Ponyo starts fine (a great opening and credits), and then turns bat-shit insane; the second half is nonsensical. A ticking clock, potions, and a tests of love are introduced late in the film in order to drum up a modicum of tension. The best parts of the film are typical Miyazaki moments (what the critics love to rave about as his "quiet moments", but in the end it's just very Japanese), when kids are allowed to be kids, play with toys, eat ham, ect. The whole film should have just been a string of those. There are plenty of laughs intentional and otherwise. Not really close to his two best films, which are Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Porco Rosso (1992).

Ponyo isn't great, but I'm sure in the future it will be worth staring at from time to time, much like a large aquarium full of colorful fish.

The Stranger

The Stranger, 1946
Dir: Orson Welles
August 31, 2009

It's easy to understand why this was the only commercially successful film Orson Welles ever made, and yet, his cinematic genius is still able to show through even though it was probably just a "director-for-hire" project, which is why Welles eventually disowned it as an artistic piece. After the jumble and studio mess that is The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), a noticeably restrained Welles created a clever cat-and-mouse game film that delivers some great acting and Welles' trademark cinematic touches, but still plays by all the rules. After being out out films for four years, it's pretty obvious that he wanted to get back in the game, even if this was probably not a film he would have directed for his own benefit.

Noir, as Welles will again show in Touch of Evil (1958) (which is a better film), is the perfect place for Welles to slip into "mainstream" skin. Using a relevant subject (and not befuddling, slightly aloof ones like his previous two features) where the Nazi war criminal Konrad Meinike (Konstantin Shayne) is released in hopes that he will lead war commission investigator Wilson (Edward G. Robinson) to much bigger Nazi fish Franz Kindler (aka Charles Rankin) (Orson Welles) hiding out in small-town America, Welles was able to work under budget and deliver on time, despite the fact that the most interesting part of the film was cut by 30 minutes against his wishes. This sequence, where Meinike is released from prison, features the use of German Expressionistic lighting, in particular, the use of silhouettes, which is key in creating the right mood immediately. I really liked this scene because the visual representation of a sleazy Argentina really catches the eye while only handing you bits of information. After Meinike and Wilson arrive in America, Welles uses a swooping high-angle establishing shot to give a God's-eye-view of the town, which he uses often, while others scenes, like where Meinike gets the upper hand on Wilson in a school gymnasium, show us that the king of low-angle shots still has his touch. Welles' love of long-takes is also evident in The Stranger during a four minute scene between Meinike and Kindler in the woods. This leads into one of the best sequences of the film, in which Kindler frantically covers up a dead body in the woods, while several of his students are participating in a paper-chase (gayest thing ever) nearby. The use of dramatic music and Welles' panicked, paranoid facial expressions create palpable tension in this scene as the teacher is almost caught by his pupils.

Welles is not only able to wring tension out of action sequences but also through dialogue-driven scenes as well. At one point during the film, Wilson and Kindler meet face to face over a family dinner. Kindler delivers a chilling monologue that starts off cordially and then, as he lets the facade slip ever so slightly, he expounds on Germany and the Nazi philosophy. He claims that the Germans are not waiting for another Messiah a la Jesus but rather another Hitler. It is a powerful speech delivered with zeal by Welles (who is definitely best as a villain) that anticipates his famous monologue in The Third Man (1949) (while not a Welles directed film, is still pretty good). The looks that Welles and Robinson exchange during this scene make it clear that the two men have no illusions about who they really are, but proper dinner decorum keeps them in check during the meal. It is what is not being said that is just as telling as what is being said. Very Welles.

Story-wise, The Stranger lacks originality. It is essentially a reworking of Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943), with Uncle Charlie being substituted by Franz Kindler. Both films are set in postcard perfect small town America, feature the villain launching into a psychotic monologue while sitting at a family dinner table, and climax with a dramatic scene atop a bell tower. The scene is still awesome in that cinematic way, where Welles gets skewered, but is a pretty big rip-off. Edward G. Robinson's Wilson is a terriblly stereotypical Noir character which is held up by a giant of the genre. No other characters, even the devoted wife (Loretta Young), are really worth mentioning.

The Stranger performed quite well at the box-office, earning an Academy Award nomination for, ironically, Best Original Screenplay. More importantly though, it proved to Hollywood that Welles was a bankable director, and paved the way for his next film, the incredibly awesome The Lady from Shanghai (1948). It might be said that this is the best thing about The Stranger, but it still has it's merits. This is Welles on a studio leash, which he had to deal with all the time when working in America. Partial genius, however, is better than no genius at all.

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.