Craig J. Clark Watches a Lot of Movies
July 2008
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Is this known as obtaining objective eyewitness testimony? Because if it is, forget it.
While I'm home I decided to take advantage of Comcast On Demand, which currently features the widescreen version of Brian De Palma's 1981 conspiracy film Blow Out. It's doubly appropriate since the film is set in Philadelphia in the days leading up to the city's "Liberty Day" celebration -- and here we are just a few days before the Fourth of July. Along with the previous year's Dressed to Kill, this film represents the high water mark for De Palma as a writer/director and speaks most clearly to his obsessions with technology and voyeurism. (As much as I enjoy Body Double, I recognize how ludicrous it is. Blow Out, on the other hand, at least makes an attempt to present a realistic story and complex protagonists.)
The film opens with a hilariously awful slasher parody and then introduces John Travolta as the sound man charged with finding a new scream to replace the anemic one on the soundtrack. While out that night recording ambient sound effects, Travolta is the lone earwitness to a freak car accident and gets involved when he fishes a stunned Nancy Allen out of the river. The driver of the car, the governor and presumptive presidential candidate, isn't so lucky, though, and Travolta is pressured into lying about what happened by one of the governor's aides. When things start to add up, Travolta comes to believe that there was a conspiracy to remove the governor from the race, a belief born out by the activities of paid assassin John Lithgow, who is going about tying up any loose ends. De Palma regular Dennis Franz rounds out the cast as a sleazy photographer who had his own reasons for being present the night of the assassination (and who, in one scene, is seen watching De Palma's early film Murder a la Mod -- now there's an in-joke I'm sure few people ever picked up on before that came to DVD).
De Palma gets a lot of mileage out of his Philadelphia locations, including Reading Terminal Market, 30th Street Station and City Hall (which Travolta famously drives through on his way down Market during the Mummer-filled Liberty Day parade). There's a distinct red, white and blue motif running throughout the film, taking in the costumes, sets and props and especially the lights during the climactic firework display, which is where cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond really earned his keep. The film also features a lush score by composer Pino Donaggio, who was fast becoming the Bernard Herrmann to De Palma's Hitchcock. (Of course, the film this one most resembles is Antonioni's Blow-Up, but De Palma only uses it as a jumping-off point.) If there's any one area where Blow Out comes up short, it has to be the dialogue, which could have stood to be a little more polished, but I wouldn't want to give up any of the film's intensity in exchange. It's a flawed, yet dazzling, gem.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
You gotta watch him. He's tricky.
Leave it to Stuart Gordon to knock one out of the park. Here we are, five episodes into Fear Itself's run, and the show has finally produced a genuinely scary episode. Written by Richard Chizmar & Johnathon Schaech (who also wrote Peter Medak's Masters of Horror entry The Washingtonians), "Eater" opens with a mysterious prisoner being placed in a Chesterton, New York, holding cell for the night before being turned over to the feds the next day. The prisoner in question is a notorious serial killer (Stephen R. Hart), who not only kidnapped and killed 32 people, but also ate parts of their bodies. Pretty strong stuff, but it's nothing rookie cop Elisabeth Moss (an avid reader of Death Dance magazine) hasn't seen in countless horror movies. When she's left at the precinct to watch over the prisoner (along with fellow officers Stephen Lee and Pablo Schreiber), she finds herself drawn to his gruesome file and quickly grows to suspect that he may be more than the three of them can handle.
Stuart Gordon has never been one to hold back when depicting violent acts on screen (in fact, there are times when I really wish he had), but as this episode proves he's still able to build tension and evoke terror without having to depend on strong gore. (The makeup effects in this episode are mild compared to the sorts of things he's used to showing, but they're still plenty effective.) Something else that helps sell the horror is the extremely creepy music by Bobby Johnston, who has scored all of Gordon's features since 2003's King of the Ants. I don't know whether NBC plans on selling these episodes individually (like Masters of Horror) or as a complete set, but I would gladly pick this one up if I could get it by itself. Of course, there's a chance that future installments could be just as good -- or better -- than this one, but I doubt it.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Here at Clonus, nothing happens by accident.
As someone who's seen parts: the clonus horror in its MSTed form several times since it was first broadcast, it would be next to impossible for me to view the film objectively, but Plan 9 had the original theatrical version on its Employee Picks rack and I've been curious about it ever since it came to DVD a few years back (courtesy of Mondo Macabro), so I checked it out tonight. It's a strangely appropriate choice of viewing for the Fourth of July weekend, too, since it's about a secret compound where clones are bred and keep in good physical shape until such time as they "qualify" to "go to America" (i.e. they're killed so their organs can be harvested for use by their other "parts"). It's an uneasy amalgamation of 1984, THX-1138, Westworld and various conspiracy films of the '70s, which makes sense it was made at the end of that decade, in 1979. And if you ask director Robert S. Fiveson, it was remade in 2005 by Michael Bay as The Island (a film I've never seen because I don't watch Michael Bay movies) and the similarities were enough to convince Fiveson to bring a lawsuit against it (which, incidentally, was settled out of court).
As for the film itself, it's been hailed in some quarters as an underrated gem since its DVD release, but as far as I can tell there's a good reason it was considered good 'bot fodder: the thing is poorly-directed, with some of the most amateurish blocking this side of an Ed Wood movie, the acting is stilted and wooden (except for when the actors try to emote, in which case they're stilted and over-theatrical), and the premise is woefully underdeveloped. It doesn't help that the lead clone, played by Tim Donnelly, practically sleepwalks through the film, but that is at least partially due to the fact that the clones are bred to be docile, uncritical sheep who like to engage in slow-speed bike rides, homoerotic push-up competitions and wrestling matches. Donnelly is one of the few "control" clones of average intelligence, though, and he starts to think that something is amiss when he accidentally bumps into another "control" clone, played by Paulette Breen, with whom he has some stilted, wooden conversations before they have stilted, wooden intercourse (which was, of course, cut out of the MST3K version).
The film also features Dick Sargent as the patronizing scientist in charge of Clonus, Keenan Wynn as an irascible retired newspaper reporter who is rather nonplussed when Donnelly shows up on his doorstep after having escaped from the compound, David Hooks as the long-winded (and easily-swayed) philosophy professor he was cloned from, and Peter Graves as Hooks's brother, a presidential candidate who's in on the Clonus conspiracy. In addition to the sex scene, there were a number of other parts that were cut out of the MST3K version, including some blood and gore, and one unexpectedly chilling scene where Donnelly stumbles upon the facility where the frozen clones are stored. If Fiveson had included more scenes like that -- and had a protagonist who was less apt to throw hissy fits when confronted by them -- he might have had something. As it is, MST3K is still the best way to experience the clonus horror.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
This ain't no lace pants business.
Jules Dassin's final Hollywood film before fleeing to the (relatively) safer political climes of Europe was 1949's Thieves' Highway, a hard-nosed film noir about the occupational hazards of the wholesale produce business. Richard Conte stars as a returning World War II vet who doesn't like it when he finds out his father has been rooked -- and crippled for life -- by crooked San Francisco wholesaler Lee J. Cobb. Looking to get even, he partners up with grizzled trucker Millard Mitchell, who knows about an early crop of golden delicious apples, and embarks on a treacherous 36-hour drive from Fresco to Frisco. When Conte arrives dead-tired he looks like easy pickings to Cobb, who pays Italian émigré Valentina Cortese (making her American film debut) to get him out of the way while Cobb sells his produce out from under him, but Conte turns the tables, extracting the full price for his load. Of course, Cobb knows more than one way to rob a man blind.
And so does A.I. Bezzerides, who wrote both the novel and screenplay for Thieves' Highway and would go on to adapt Mickey Spillane's Kiss Me Deadly for the screen in 1955 (and write 112 episodes of The Big Valley the following decade). As for Dassin, after one further excursion into film noir for Twentieth Century-Fox -- 1950's London-based Night and the City -- he would never again work for an American studio. And after a somewhat rocky start on the continent, he eventually found his feet and made his reputation with films like Rififi, Never on Sunday (for which his future wife, Melina Mercouri, was nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars) and Topkapi (which netted Peter Ustinov the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor). I've never seen the latter two, but I have designs on catching up with them.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Don't let me down. You're an Englishman, aren't you?
Director Carol Reed's third and final collaboration with novelist Graham Greene, after a gap of a decade, was 1959's Our Man in Havana, which was shot right after the Cuban Revolution, but set before. Greene also wrote the screenplay for the film, which stars Alec Guinness as a vacuum cleaner salesman who's tapped by the British Secret Service (in the guise of Noel Coward) to be part of their Caribbean network. Guinness has a comfortable enough life, but he's in need of money to provide for his daughter (Jo Morrow), who is blossoming into young adulthood before his eyes -- and attracting the unwanted attentions of a ruthless Cuban police captain (Ernie Kovacs).
Taking the advice of his doctor friend Burl Ives (playing, of all things, a German), Guinness sets about fabricating a spy network and inventing secrets that impress Coward's boss (Ralph Richardson) enough for him to send Guinness a professionally trained field agent (Maureen O'Hara) to help expand the operation. Of course, as London begins to show an interest in Guinness's flights of fancy, the threats to his life and the lives of those around him become all too real. As the story progresses Reed and Graham have to tread carefully, heightening the suspense without losing sight of the comedy, which crops up at unexpected moments -- and from unexpected sources. And when the game becomes a matter of life and death, Guinness rises to it admirably. How very British of him.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Welcome to Panama -- a Casablanca without heroes.
As I was watching Our Man in Havana last night, the film I kept thinking of was John Boorman's The Tailor of Panama, which was based on the novel by John le Carré. Released in 2001, just two years after the U.S. relinquished control of the Canal, the film stars Pierce Brosnan (gleefully sending up his Bond image) as a disgraced MI-6 agent exiled to Panama after one indiscretion too many. Given one last chance to redeem himself in the agency's eyes, he cultivates the friendship of tailor Geoffrey Rush, who services many high-ranking government officials (including the president) and who, like Guinness in Havana, is in a bit of a spot money-wise. He's also married to Jamie Lee Curtis (what has she been up to lately?), who works for the Panama Canal Authority and has no idea about his criminal past, which Brosnan is able to dig up fairly readily.
In order to keep Brosnan interested and the money flowing, Rush starts telling him stories about a "Silent Opposition" led by his friend, former political prisoner (and current drunk) Brendan Gleeson, and his disfigured assistant, Leonor Varela. MI-6 eats it up and things quickly spiral out of control as Rush spins ever more elaborate lies -- over the protests of his dead Uncle Benny (Harold Pinter), who tries to act as his conscience, but is unable to stop him once he starts fabricating an entire underground resistance movement. (Rush doesn't embroider the truth so much as he invents it whole-cloth, much like his suits.) The film also features Jon Polito as the bank official putting the squeeze on Rush, Dylan Baker as the last American commander in Panama who's itching for a chance to take it back, and -- as Rush and Curtis's children -- Lola Boorman (continuing the director's tradition of putting his own children in his films) and a young unknown named Daniel Radcliffe (in the one feature he made before embarking on a career of being Harry Potter).
Boorman wound up softening the ending from the one he originally had, but the changes aren't too detrimental to the story. What some may perceive as a loss of nerve, others will see as a cynical depiction of how things turn out when ordinary people get caught up in things they don't -- and can't -- understand. And the closing scene echoes the one at the end of David Cronenberg's A History of Violence, which is also about a man whose past comes back to haunt him after he's established himself and started a family far from home. Well, now I know what I'm watching tomorrow...
Thursday, July 10, 2008
You always were a problem for me, Joey.
If there is another major motion picture that deals with the consequences of violence as well as David Cronenberg's A History of Violence, I would really like to see it. Following 1999's eXistenZ (which couldn't help but be overshadowed by The Matrix) and 2002's insular Spider, it reminded audiences that Cronenberg could be both a critically and commercially successful filmmaker. And it paved the way for last year's Eastern Promises (which also starred Viggo Mortensen) and whatever else Cronenberg has in the pipelines.
Based on the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke (which the film deviates from wildly), it tells the story of Tom Stall (Mortensen), a small-town diner owner who becomes a local hero when he kills two men who come in one night to rob the place and -- if their previous stop is any indication -- kill everybody present. The news outlets jump all over the story, much to the consternation of his lawyer wife (Maria Bello), who is also dismayed that Tom has caught the attention of vindictive Philly mobster Ed Harris, who believes that the man of the hour is actually Joey Cusack. He denies it, of course, but it's heartbreaking for her when she learns that the man she married and bore two children for has a secret past -- and that he may have passed his propensity for violence onto their teenage son (Ashton Holmes).
Once he's come clean and admitted that he really is Joey, Mortensen has no other choice but to return to Philly to confront his brother Richie (William Hurt, in an astonishing one-scene performance that earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination). This plays out very differently in the graphic novel, where the climax of the story takes place in New York and Richie is in no condition to welcome Joey home. Of course, there are some things in the novel that I think even Cronenberg would have balked at putting on screen.
It would be a lot easier to think of this objectively if it wasn't so damned stupid.
Fear Itself is taking the week off, so I have filled the gap with John Landis's first Masters of Horror episode, Deer Woman, which he wrote with his son Max -- and with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Brian Benben stars as a haunted police detective known as the "weird calls guy" -- which usually translates to animal attacks -- who teams up with rookie officer Anthony Griffith to investigate a series of bizarre slayings involving men being trampled to death by a creature with deer hooves. The problem is none of the attacks have taken place in the woods (although Landis makes us think the first one is going to be when he shows a drunk pool player going outside to take a leak).
It seems all of the victims have been seen in the company of a beautiful Native American (Cinthia Moura), who turns out to be a Deer Woman -- half-deer, half-woman, all pissed off at men. Landis keeps things from getting too serious, which was a wise move on his part, but he still manages at least one good scare early on. (At least I jumped.) And he even works in a direct reference to the climax of An American Werewolf in London, which is remembered as another case of an animal attacking people in an urban setting, seemingly with no reason. Of course, as one character says about this case, "It's a woman with deer legs. Motive really isn't an issue here."
Friday, July 11, 2008
It's fair to say I'm stepping out on a limb, but I am on the edge and that's where it happens.
Ten years ago this week, Darren Aronofsky's Pi was released in theaters and I immediately knew that I had another director to watch. (I thought it was ten years today, but apparently I got the dates mixed up because it was actually released on July 10, 1998. Oops.) In many ways it's like a dry run for his next film, 2000's Requiem for a Dream, because there are some things -- like the repetitious pill-popping and door-unlocking montages -- that he would carry forward into it. And there are certain themes -- like the scientist who obsessively searches for answers to the exclusion of everything else in his life -- that would find flower in his belated follow-up, 2006's The Fountain.
Pi stars Sean Gullette as brilliant mathematician Maximillian Cohen, who is searching for patterns in the number pi and the stock market and accidentally stumbles onto a mysterious 216-digit number that could be the key to his life's work. His problem is he's prone to crippling headaches, bloody noses and vivid hallucinations -- and he's beset on all sides by people who are looking to get the magic number out of him. The real star of the film, though, is Aronofsky's bravura directing, aiding in no small part by the striking cinematography of Matthew Libatique and Clint Mansell's pulsing electronic score. With their help, Aronofsky puts us right inside Max's head, which is a frankly terrifying place to be when he's having one of his attacks. There are those who were quick to dismiss Aronofsky as a director who's all style and no substance, but I think he's one of the few true visionaries working today and I'm proud that I can look back and say that I was in his corner right from the start.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
You can't be a Wanderer for graduation. I'm thinking about the future.
Philip Kaufman's career must have been on overdrive in the late '70s because just one year after his remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers he directed 1979's The Wanderers, based on the Richard Price novel about youth gangs in the Bronx in the early '60s. (Over the course of his career, he's been more inclined to go 4-5 years between projects.) Set in 1963, the film follows the titular gang as they get in and out of scrapes on the streets, in school and even on the football field. At first their worst run-ins are with the Baldies, but they also have problems with the black Del-Bombers and the Ducky Boys (whose scenes are shot like something out of a horror film). The film is very cartoonish at times, which makes it hard to get too caught up in any of the characters' lives, but Kaufman and his wife Rose (who co-wrote the screenplay with him) paint a few of them quite vividly.
The leader of the gang is Richie (Ken Wahl), who is seen deflowering his longtime girlfriend Despie (Toni Kalem) as the film opens. Another key character is wiry bigmouth Joey (John Friedrich), who befriends his new neighbor Perry (Tony Ganios) and recruits him for the gang. One day while they're out "elbow-titting" beautiful women on the street they bump into proto-folkie Karen Allen, who agrees to go to a party with Joey but ends up making out with Richie, which leads to some bad blood that gets cleared up in time for the big football game against the Del-Bombers (which their elders have decided would be a better way to resolve their differences than the rumble they initially planned on). Along the way Kaufman manages to shoehorn in the JFK assassination (which devastates everybody watching it on TV on the street corner) and Bob Dylan singing "The Times They Are A-Changin'." Whether the Wanderers liked it or not, the times certainly were.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Typically when I see films in the Ryder Film Series, the venue that I go to is sparsely populated by people eager to catch up on a film that bypassed Bloomington during its initial release. Occasionally they'll do something different, though, as they did with tonight's screening of the 1911 Italian silent feature Dante's L'Inferno. The film has recently been restored and released on DVD with a new score by Tangerine Dream, but the Ryder engaged pianist Haken Toker to provide improvised accompaniment to the film. This bumped up the ticket price from the usual $4 to $7, but it was definitely worth it as Toker's contribution definitely helped to make the screening an event -- and a well-attended one, too.
Directed by Giuseppe de Liguoro, the film is very loosely based on the first part of Dante's The Divine Comedy, with much of its imagery coming straight out of the work of Gustave Doré. The film follows Dante (Salvatore Papa) as he's given a tour of the nine circles of Hell by the poet Virgil (Arturo Pirovano). The damned that they encounter are -- to a man (and woman) -- almost completely naked and frequently aloof, although there are a few that converse with Dante and, as they tell their tales of woe, the filmmakers show the events that led to the death and damnation.
The audience watched the film in rapt attention, although there were a few moments that elicited laughter, like the appearance of Cerberus (which was very obviously a large puppet) and, later on, the transformation of the grifters in the eighth circle into reptiles. The thing that most amused me, though, is that Dante is presented as the prototypical tourist: he goes all the way to Hell and all he wants to do is talk to other Florentines. And the thing that most bothered me was I kept waiting for somebody to invent the close-up. With all of the fantastic imagery on display and the committed actors and detailed costuming (particularly on the demons), you'd think the filmmakers would have thought, "Hey, why don't we move the camera closer to the action once or twice?" Alas, they did not -- that is, until Lucifer himself showed up at the very end. Now there was a demon who was ready for his close-up.
Monday, July 14, 2008
A challenge must be answered.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army had a triumphant opening weekend, so I decided it would be a hellishly good follow-up to Dante's L'Inferno. It's more exciting and fleeter of foot than its 2004 predecessor, which was also written and directed by self-avowed fanboy Guillermo del Toro (who collaborated with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola on the story this time out). The core cast from the first film returns, with Ron Perlman proving once again that he was born to play Hellboy -- whose love of TV, candy, kittens and cigars is unparalleled -- but he most aches to find his place in the outside world. Beholden to the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense -- as are his pyrokinetic girlfriend Liz (Selma Blair) and amphibious partner Abe Sapien (Doug Jones, del Toro's bodysuit specialist who also plays two other characters) -- Hellboy finds a way during one investigation to make a grand entrance onto the public stage, much to the chagrin of harried bureau chief Jeffrey Tambor.
As a result of the PR snafu, the BPRD assigns a new team leader in the form of ectoplasmic scientist Johann Krauss (voiced by Seth MacFarlane with a German accent, who replaced genuine German Thomas Kretschmann), who goes around in a containment suit and generally gets Hellboy's dander up. They have little time for bickering, though, because the exiled prince of the Sons of the Earth threatens to break the truce that gave humanity dominion over the surface world long, long ago (as related in a story told by Hellboy's adoptive father [John Hurt, who died in the first film] when he was but a wee imp). Or, rather, there is time for bickering, but it has to be between battles with the albino prince (Luke Goss) and his assorted minions. And Abe even gets to develop a love interest in form of Goss's twin sister, the princess (Anna Walton), which adds an extra dimension to the fight scenes because any injury inflicted on the prince is also felt by the princess.
Backing up del Toro on the technical side of things is his longtime cinematographer Guillermo Navarro (who won the Academy Award for his work on Pan's Labyrinth) and first-time composer Danny Elfman (who hasn't scored a comic book movie since 2004's Spider-Man 2). The best musical moment in the film, though, comes when Abe and Hellboy sit down at the end of a hard day and croon along with Barry Manilow's "Can't Smile Without You." It's a funny scene and more tender than you would probably expect. (Who knew the big red guy had a soft spot for Manilow?)
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
A man fighting for survival in a jungle is in no position to maintain prisoners of war.
After their first successful collaboration, 1967's Point Blank, director John Boorman and star Lee Marvin re-teamed the following year to make Hell in the Pacific, with Marvin as an American soldier marooned on an uncharted South Pacific island with Japanese naval officer Toshiro Mifune. At the start of the film, Mifune is fairly well-established on the island: he's organized, well-equipped (he's even fashioned himself a crude katana) and highly disciplined. Marvin, on the other hand, is a recent arrival and he's more disheveled and beaten down -- and dehydrated. Once Mifune has been alerted to his presence they play a game of cat-and-mouse, with Mifune trying to flush Marvin out of the jungle and Marvin trying to get at Mifune's fresh water supply. Eventually Marvin is captured, but he's able to turn the tables on Mifune and gets some revenge for the way he's been treated. Before long, though, Marvin sets Mifune free (because he's tired of doing all the cooking, he says) and they form an uneasy alliance so that they can get off the island, which both recognize is a death trap. ("If we stay here, both of us will be dead for sure," Mifune says.)
Marvin and Mifune never do learn each other's languages (nor do they make an attempt to), but, as the subtitles on the DVD bear out, by the end of the film they are carrying on conversations as if they actually understood each other. That's something that would have been lost on 1968 audiences (unless, of course, they were bilingual), but four decades on anyone watching in the comfort of their own home can be assured of not missing a word. (Not that there's much dialogue to begin with. Boorman and his writers pretty much keep it to a minimum.) Another feature that DVD viewers can avail themselves of is the alternate extended ending, which is much more satisfying than the abrupt conclusion that was imposed on Boorman by the studio. Sure, it's ambiguous, but I'll take Boorman's ambiguity over the outright nihilism of the studio version.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
We'll clean up the mess while you're away.
Caught a late showing of WALL•E, the latest animated wonder from Pixar. (My goal in doing so was to cut down on the kid factor, but there was still one parent/guardian who felt that a 9:00 screening was appropriate for their tyke.) A stunning achievement, it has more heart than one would expect from a film about a waste disposal robot on a future Earth that has become a fog-enshrouded wasteland, but that's Pixar for you. Of course, it helps that WALL•E not only takes its job seriously (and goes about it in a creative fashion), but also finds time to collect the ephemera of a culture that has long since departed -- and it has an abiding love for the movie musical Hello, Dolly! and its pet cockroach.
For a good portion of its running time WALL•E is virtually dialogue-free, telling its story mainly through visuals (which are up to the studio's usual standard) and sound (which is the domain of sound effects wizard Ben Burtt, who also voices the title character), and allowing it to evolve organically. And the same goes for WALL•E's tentative relationship with Eve, a scanning robot voiced by Elissa Knight. When the film gets around to introducing some human characters they're voiced by the likes of Jeff Garlin, John Ratzenberger (of course) and Kathy Najimy, with a real-life Fred Willard (a first for Pixar) as the Global CEO of Buy N Large, the corporation that sold humanity on abandoning the planet in a luxurious spaceship (not too hard a sell since it wasn't exactly in the best of shape). After 700 years, though, life has found a way to flourish once again on Earth, to which the population could return if only the ship's computer (voiced by Sigourney Weaver) would let them.
As is standard operating procedure for Pixar, the film is preceded by a hilarious short entitled Presto, which is about the lengths to which a hungry magician's rabbit will go to get a carrot. The studio's best curtain-raiser is probably still Lifted, but this one is right up there with it. Writer/director Doug Sweetland has been an animator with Pixar since the first Toy Story, so hopefully this means he'll get a shot at his own feature someday.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
It's not about breaking people. It's about finding out the truth.
When John Boorman's In My Country breezed through theaters in 2005 I gave it a miss because my enjoyment of his work is generally inversely proportional to how much he wears his liberalism on his sleeve. In dramatizing South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was instituted by Nelson Mandela's government to heal the wounds left by decades of apartheid, Boorman does himself no favors by telling the story largely through the eyes of Afrikaans poet and radio commentator Juliette Binoche, but she's balanced by the presence of cynical Washington Post correspondent Samuel L. Jackson, who's incensed by the idea of the perpetrators getting amnesty for their actions if they can prove that they were following orders. Even so, with the help of Binoche's sound engineer (the ever-cheerful Menzi Ngubane), he manages to get a one-on-one interview with one of the government's more brutal torturers, a colonel played by Brendan Gleeson who's being "thrown to the wolves" by his superiors.
Clearly Boorman entered into the project with the best of intentions and should be commended for tackling such a difficult subject, but I'm not about to hop in a time machine and upbraid my 31-year-old self for choosing to skip the civics lesson. For one thing, the reviews were middling at best and it would have taken a lot to overcome them. For another, the affair between Jackson and Binoche, which the reviews hinted at, comes off as incredibly arbitrary and faintly ludicrous. I'm not sure whether it was present in Antjie Krog's book Country of My Skull (the film's original title) or if it was introduced by Ann Peacock's screenplay, but it's little more than a distraction when the focus of the story should be on the people telling of their suffering, not the ones listening on the sidelines.
Friday, July 18, 2008
You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
I know there are some who were not completely sold on Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan's 2005 reboot of the Batman series. I can't say I blame them; personal taste is personal taste. However, I believe that The Dark Knight is unequivocally the best comic book movie that has ever been made and I doubt anyone would be able to convince me otherwise. I won't go into too much detail about the plot because, frankly, if you threw a stone in cyberspace you could hit a hundred people writing about this film on their blogs right this very second. I will say, however, that Nolan and his brother Jonathan (who collaborated with him on the screenplay) have given us the most psychologically complex Batman yet, helped in no small part by Christian Bale's performance. Of course, it helps that he has a worthy adversary in Heath Ledger's Joker. I'm sorry we won't get to see him reprise the role, but this one film is more than enough for Ledger to leave an indelible mark of the character. Consider the Joker retired. Dealt out of the deck.
As for the rest of the cast, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman and Cillian Murphy all return from the last film, Aaron Eckhart makes a big impression as grandstanding district attorney Harvey Dent (Gotham City's White Knight to Bale's Dark), and Maggie Gyllenhaal takes over the role of love interest Rachel Dawes, effortlessly making one forget that Katie Holmes ever played the part. And in smaller roles I spotted William Fichtner as the bank manager in the opening sequence, Eric Roberts as a mob boss Dent puts on trial, and Anthony Michael Hall as an opportunistic talk show host. In all honesty, though, there was not a single performance that seemed off to me in any way, even down to the one-scene parts and glorified extras. Everyone has their part to play and no moment is wasted. It's not often that one can say that about a two and a half hour film.
P.S. - Saw the trailer for Watchmen in front of the film. I've had my doubts in the past, but it looks like it could actually be... worthy. I guess we'll see in 231 days.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Life is nothing but show business in 1994.
I've seen some terrible, terrible movies in my day -- oftentimes on purpose -- but none of them have ever come close to the sheer awfulness and ineptitude of 1980's The Apple, a film that has been trumpeted by the Onion A.V. Club for its overwhelming campiness and the fact that it "is so relentlessly trippy that it makes recreational drug use redundant" -- and one that was recently aired on TCM Underground. It's like somebody decided to remake Phantom of the Paradise with Flash Gordon's production design and The Return of Captain Invincible-quality musical numbers. Now, I have a certain amount of affection for all three of those films, but when you combine their elements into one the result is far from pretty. In fact, most of the time it's jaw-droppingly garish -- all glittery surfaces, wretched excess and painfully one-dimensional characters.
Written and directed by Menahem Golan -- who with his producing partner Yoram Globus is more commonly associated with testosterone-fueled movies like The Delta Force, Over the Top and various Death Wish sequels -- The Apple is set in a world held under the sway of BIM, a totalitarian musical entertainment conglomerate run by the transparently satanic Mr. Boogalow (Vladek Sheybal), who fixes things so lovey-dovey Canadian duo Catherine Mary Stewart (who would go on to star in cult favorite Night of the Comet and numerous other films and TV shows) and George Gilmour (who went on to do absolutely nothing) lose the 1994 Worldvision Song Contest (did I forget to mention that this takes place in the future?), but he still wants to sign them to his agency and, in essence, buy their immortal souls. Stewart is all too eager to sell out, but Gilmour puts up a fight, continuing to write his earnest love songs when there are no takers and refusing to wear the compulsory Mark of BIM. (I'll bet he also boycotts the daily one-hour fitness regimen, the slacker.) Eventually Gilmour falls in with hippie leader Joss Ackland (who's been in many good films, including some directed by Richard Lester), but not before he tries to save Stewart from a life of debauchery and laughably over-the-top production numbers.
In the end, Gilmour and Stewart are reunited and live peacefully among the hippies until Mr. Boogalow brings the hammer down, threatening to throw the lot of them in jail unless Stewart can cough up $10 million dollars. When all seems lost, Gilmour professes his belief in Mr. Topps (Ackland again), a God-like character who has never been mentioned once before this moment and who immediately appears and shepherds them to safety, far away from Mr. Boogalow's diabolical influence. It's the kind of ending that I would say needs to be seen to be disbelieved, but you'd probably do just as well not to. Surely you have much better things to do with the 90 minutes you would otherwise spend watching The Apple.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Do not interfere with the Spiders' business.
Fritz Lang directed two features before he made 1919's The Spiders (which was released in two parts, three months apart), but they have both been lost, so this truncated serial (Lang originally planned to make two more installments, but never got around to them) stands as his earliest surviving work. Written and directed by Lang -- and heavily influenced by Louis Feuillade's 1915 serial Les Vampires -- The Spiders follows San Francisco-based sportsman/adventurer Kay Hoog (Carl de Vogt) as he foils the nefarious schemes of the titular crime syndicate. You know they're organized because they go around in masks and/or hoods when committing crimes and they always leave a petrified tarantula as their calling card. The story is full of trap doors, secret passages and trips to exotic locations, as well as plenty of reckless gun play and frequent displays of cultural insensitivity.
In the first part, "The Golden Lake," our hero tries to reach an Incan treasure before the Spiders, led by the devious Lio Sha (Ressel Orla) and her right-hand man Dr. Telphas (Georg John), plunder it. There he winds up rescuing Naela, the priestess of the Sun (Lil Dagover, who starred in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari the following year), from a giant boa constrictor, but he can't help being a male chauvinist when she returns the favor by leading him to the treasure. (In two consecutive shots he take a torch from her, which is a brilliant strategy. Yes, Kay, take the torch away from the person who knows where you're going.) In the second part, he seeks to prevent them from finding the Buddha-head diamond, which is the missing component of "The Diamond Ship." It's an adventure that takes him from a subterranean city underneath San Francisco's Chinatown all the way to London and then to the Falkland Islands, where hidden pirate booty awaits. And it proves that even the good guy is not above dressing up in black from head to foot while sneaking around. It's possible that future installments would have further blurred the lines between good and evil, but unfortunately we'll never know.
Monday, July 21, 2008
You have to know a man like a brother to kill him.
One of the last of the old-school noirs -- and virtually forgotten until Criterion brought it out earlier this year -- is 1961's Blast of Silence. Written and directed by Allen Baron (with an assist by Waldo Salt on the narration), the film stars Baron as a hired killer from Cleveland who comes to Manhattan during the Christmas holidays to do a job, with Lionel Stander's hard-boiled narration accompanying him each step of the way. Baron is a loner, having grown up an orphan, and he shuns human contact except when it's absolutely necessary, although he does start to have second thoughts about his occupation after he meets the winsome Lorrie (Molly McCarthy), the sister of one of his old friends from the orphanage. He loathes the kinds of people he has to deal with, especially his morbidly obese gun connection Big Ralph (Larry Tucker, who played essentially the same role in Advise & Consent the following year), who tries to shake him down once he finds out who Baron's target is. He's a professional, though, and when the time comes he knows how to do the job and do it clean.
In contrast to his character, Baron the actor is somewhat stiff and amateurish, as are many of the other performers. (Tucker doesn't have that problem, but then again he playing a rather outlandish character.) It's clear that he was also a novice behind the camera, but this doesn't prevent him from painting a bleak portrait of New York during the holidays. During one memorable sequence he kills time by walking past all the stores with their Christmas displays. Another takes place during what appears to be an actual blizzard. Baron didn't have the budget to create weather like that, so he either waited for a storm or he was out on location when one blew in and he decided to incorporate it into the shoot. It's the perfect metaphor for a lone man being blown about by larger forces than himself. Curious how he missed those danger signs.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
I know how much this money means to you. But a human life means more.
I first saw Akira Kurosawa's gripping 1963 crime drama High and Low half a decade ago during a Kurosawa/Mifune film festival at a local repertory house in the dead of winter. Some weekends I didn't make it out because of bad weather, but I made a point of seeing this one because it was the second to last film they made together. (It also helped that it was being screened the same day as 1948's Drunken Angel, which was their first.) I was greatly impressed by it at the time, but held off on getting the Criterion DVD because it was expensive and it didn't have any extras. Now Criterion has re-released it with a brand-new transfer, a commentary track and a whole disc full of supplements -- all at the same price I would have paid for a single disc five years ago. Just as I'm glad I didn't get Seven Samurai until that got a beefed-up edition, I'm glad I waited on High and Low. It may not be as well-known as Kurosawa's samurai epics, but I think it's pretty phenomenal and would urge anybody with even a passing interest in Japanese cinema to check it out.
Toshiro Mifune stars as a wealthy but conscientious shoe company executive who's put up his house and property as collateral to raise the money to gain a controlling interest in the company. As he's planning this power play, however, he gets a phone call saying his son has been kidnapped and the ransom is an astronomical 30 million yen. If he pays it he'll be ruined, but when it turns out the kidnapper abducted his chauffeur's son by mistake Mifune is beside himself when the kidnapper demands the full ransom anyway. Working with the police, spearheaded by chief detective Tatsuya Nakadai, Mifune strings the kidnapper along, but the money drop is arranged in such a way that the police are unable to intercept it. That's the point when Mifune fades into the background and the police swing into action, methodically sifting through the scant clues they have in the hope of recovering the ransom before Mifune's creditors come calling.
For this film, Kurosawa adapted a detective novel by Ed McBain, which isn't as much of a stretch as it seems since he'd already turned Macbeth into Throne of Blood and changed the setting of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot to rural Japan. It helps that he has a top-notch cast on board, including Takashi Shimura as Nakadai's superior and Ozu regular Nobuo Nakamura as one of the shoe company executives looking to oust Mifune. The whole first hour of the film rests squarely on Mifune's shoulders, though, since he's the one who ultimately has the decide whether to do the right thing -- that is, if caving in to the kidnapper's demands even is the right thing. When we finally get to meet him, it's clear that he has more on his mind than simple extortion. A desperate criminal with an agenda is a dangerous combination.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Will Koko becomes the first white American Protestant gorilla?
A few weeks back, the Adult Swim show The Venture Bros. made a passing reference to Koko the gorilla, which put me in mind to watch Barbet Schroeder's 1978 documentary Koko: A Talking Gorilla, which Criterion released a couple years back. It's a fascinating look at Koko, a female gorilla who was born at the San Francisco Zoo and who has been taught from the age of one to use and understand American Sign Language. Koko was six at the time of filming and at that time her teacher, Stanford University doctoral student Penny Patterson, claimed Koko knew more than 300 signs. Schroeder's camera observes them as they interact and communicate, leading both the narrator and some of the interview subjects to raise the question of how "human" Koko is because of this. It's certainly one that hasn't been put to bed in the 30 years since this thought-provoking film was first shown.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Creating a beautiful work of art and becoming beautiful oneself are identical.
At the moment, everything that I know about Yukio Mishima I learned from Paul Scharder's 1985 film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, which I watched for the first time this afternoon. It's not every day that I buy $40 Criterion DVDs sight unseen (even when I find them on sale for $30), but I knew that this film was special. A bold, visually stunning, intellectually rigorous work of cinematic art, it goes above and beyond the standard biopic, telling the story of Mishima's extraordinary life and work -- and his self-inflicted death by seppuku at the age of 45. Schrader accomplishes this by incorporating stylized adaptations of three of Mishima's stories and -- in collaboration with his brother, screenwriter Leonard Schrader, and Leonard's Japanese wife Chieko -- interweaving them with flashbacks to key moments from his life (all of which are in black and white) and scenes from the day of his death (which are in color). This seems like a lot to keep straight, but Schrader manages to pull it off, rewarding the attentive viewer with a unique film experience.
Mishima is played as an adult by Ken Ogata, who also narrates the film with Mishima's own words. (There's also an English-language narration by Roy Scheider, which I'm planning on checking out the next time I watch this.) As for the stories, "Temple of the Golden Pavilion" features Yasosuke Bando as a stuttering acolyte who finds himself overwhelmed by the beauty of the titular building, "Kyoko's House" features Kenji Sawada as a poet turned body builder who enters into a sadomasochistic relationship with a loan shark to cancel his mother's debt, and "Runaway Horses" features Toshiyuki Nagashima as an idealistic kendo student who plans a symbolic strike against the capitalist forces he believes has corrupted the country. All of these themes find reflections in Mishima's own life (he was a stutterer as a child, he worked out in order to build up his body after being deemed unfit for military service during World War II, and he formed a private army, the Shield Society, which reflected the forgotten values and codes of the samurai), allowing Schrader to create a whole that is more than just the sum of its parts.
Schrader's other main collaborators are composer Philip Glass (whose score is probably one of his best), cinematographer John Bailey (whose compositions are literally breathtaking), editor Michael Chandler (who helps him keep all the balls in the air without dropping any), and set and costume designer Eiko Ishioka (whose work is never less than a delight to behold). And, of course, there would be no film at all if it weren't for executive producers Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, who had previously teamed up to make Kurosawa's comeback film, 1980's Kagemusha, possible. At the time they were riding high on the successes of Apocalypse Now and Star Wars, respectively, so it was good of them to support the work of other artists.
I simply have a facility with a certain kind of minutia. I always have.
You don't have to be a classical music fan to appreciate Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, but it certainly doesn't hurt. Made in 1993, just over a decade after Gould's untimely death at the age of 50, the film was directed by Canadian filmmaker Francois Girard (who wrote the screenplay in collaboration with Don McKellar) and starred Colm Feore as the Talented Mr. Gould. The short films (and there are 32 of them as long as you count the closing credits as one) run the gamut from straightforward biography to stylized formal experiments, with talking heads sprinkled throughout to give as many perspectives on the man as possible. Some are extremely brief ("45 Seconds and a Chair" is literally 45 seconds of Feore sitting in a chair), while others are given more time to develop (like "Hamburg," where he detains a hotel maid long enough to play her one of his brand new recordings). Taken individually they could come off as enigmatic, superficial or just plain perplexing. Taken together they paint a portrait of the artist as a complex, multi-faceted individual. And every time I watch it I find myself wondering why I don't own more Glenn Gould records. I should look into that.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
I don't want anybody playing Edith Beale. I don't want anybody playing me.
In 2006, three decades after the release of Grey Gardens, Albert Maysles revisited the extensive outtakes from the original shoot with his late brother David, and with editor Ian Markiewicz fashioned a new film, The Beales of Grey Gardens, which Criterion released in tandem with the earlier film. The elder Edith Beale is still present, but Little Edie dominates to such a degree that she essentially takes over the film. Compared to the first film there's a lot more singing and dancing, and Little Edie does quite a bit of flirting with David (and to a lesser extent Albert). There's also a fair bit about horoscopes and palmistry (the latter courtesy of a neighbor whose art gets shown off as well), and cats and raccoons. There's even an action scene of sorts when a fire is discovered in the corner of a room in the house and David has to put down his microphone to help put it out. The biggest departure from the first film, though, comes when the Maysles follow Little Edie on excursions away from Grey Gardens, first to church and then to the beach. No matter how much she talks about getting away, though, she always comes back.
I've done the vilest things... foulest things. But I've done them superbly.
The unconventional biopics roll on with Philip Kaufman's 1990 film Henry & June, the film for which the NC-17 rating was created. Apart from its sexual frankness, its unconventionality stems from the fact that Kaufman and his wife Rose, who co-wrote the screenplay with him, used Anaïs Nin's own diaries to tell the story of her complicated relationship with Henry and June Miller in Paris in the early '30s. Fred Ward and Uma Thurman star as the combative Millers, but the film really belongs to Nin, the dutiful diarist delicately played by Maria de Medeiros (who would go on to play Bruce Willis's French girlfriend in Pulp Fiction). The cast also includes Richard E. Grant as Nin's straight-laced husband Hugo, who is more than a bit of a square (he even calls her "pussywillow"), Kevin Spacey as a frustrated writer who puts Henry up and is ever alert for signs that his work has been plagiarized, and Juan Luis Buñuel (son of the director) as a publisher interested in Henry's Tropic of Cancer despite its objectionable content.
Henry & June was ideal subject matter for Kaufman, whose previous film had been The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which also dealt with a thorny love triangle. Of course, the one in this film threatens to become a thorny love quadrangle when Nin returns to her husband and, having been sexually liberated, she pushes for a thorny love pentangle when she takes up with her cousin. With all those thorns, someone's bound to get hurt -- several someones, in fact. As for the film's fate at the box office, it may have been hurt by the rating, which limited where it could be shown and how it could be advertised. Even so, Philippe Rousselot's cinematography managed to get nominated for an Oscar, which shows that somebody was paying attention. Rousselot was in good company (Vittorio Storaro was nominated by Dick Tracy and Gordon Willis for The Godfather: Part III), but lost to Dances with Wolves. He shouldn't feel bad, though. Lots of people did that year.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
"Never" does not exist for the human mind... only "Not yet."
Having scaled back his ambitions somewhat for Spies, in 1929 Fritz Lang pulled out all the stops for Woman in the Moon, his final silent film and one that is nearly three hours on the Kino DVD (although there is another restoration that runs 200 minutes). Working once again from a script by his wife, Thea von Harbou, Lang presided over a veritable Spies cast reunion, with Willy Fritsch as an obsessive/compulsive rocket scientist planning to take the first manned trip to the moon, Gerda Maurus as the woman he loves, an astronomer engaged to engineer (and Fritsch's best friend) Gustav von Wangenheim, Klaus Pohl as a discredited old professor who believes there's gold on the moon, and Fritz Rasp as shady individual who blackmails his way onto the trip so he can get at it. Rounding out the cast is Gustl Stark-Gstettenbaur as the boy who stows away on board and gets into all sorts of mischief, the scamp.
The presence of gold on the moon isn't quite so outlandish as it seems, especially since it's also believed that there is an atmosphere on the opposite side of the moon, which is capable of sustaining life. Also, I found it highly amusing that the lunar explorers climb up and down a rope ladder to get in and out of the hatch. What I was less amused by was the way the whole thing drags. With all the spy nonsense and interminable flashbacks in the beginning, the film is half over before the rocket even takes off. (At one point during the pre-launch sequence, Fritsch says, "Everyone to their stations, we launch in fifty minutes," which gives you some idea of the film's leaden pace.) By the time the party makes it to the moon, I was one with the engineer, who was all for turning right around and going home. Sure, the guy generally acted like an ass and was given to gesticulating wildly while making a point, but at least he had one.
Monday, July 28, 2008
One doesn't marry such a woman! It would be suicide!
The same year that Fritz Lang was putting a woman on the moon, fellow Austrian director G.W. Pabst was allowing one to let evil loose upon the Earth -- or at the very least, upon any man that she set her eyes on. 1929's Pandora's Box starred Louise Brooks as the scandalous Lulu, a woman who likes to be kept in the lap of luxury and, as the film opens, has a parade of men going in and out of her apartment to keep her there. One of them is prominent newspaper editor Fritz Kortner, who comes to tell her he has to stop seeing her now that he's engaged, but Brooks isn't kidding when she replies, "You'll have to kill me to get rid of me." She also sets her sights on his son, composer Franz Lederer, who puts her in his musical revue, and proceeds to play them against each other. Meanwhile, her "first patron," a down-at-heel Carl Goetz, tags along wherever she goes, unwilling to let her escape his orbit (or maybe it is he who is unable to escape hers).
Things come to a head the opening night of the show, when Brooks refuses to go on unless Kortner breaks off his engagement and agrees to marry her. This does not sit well with Lederer (or, to be frank, with Kortner's fiancée), but Kortner gives in to the emotional blackmail after being caught in a compromising position. The marriage goes about as well as could be expected, with the groom shot dead on their wedding night and the bride charged with his murder. With the help of their friend the countess (Alice Roberts), who is also besotted with Brooks, Lederer and Brooks flee to France (with Goetz in tow) and then to the foggy streets of London, where Lulu meets her end at the hands of Jack the Ripper. It's fitting that she would fall victim to someone as monstrous and destructive as she is.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
A drowning man will clutch at straws.
Nothing pleases the crowds quite like silent movies, especially ones from foreign countries, so I am continuing the trend with Yasujiro Ozu's 1931 film Tokyo Chorus. Recently released as part of Eclipse's Silent Ozu set, which is subtitled "Three Family Comedies," it follows salaryman Tokihiko Okada, who works at an insurance company and is expecting his annual bonus. On the day they're given out, though, he kicks up a fuss over an older employee's termination and gets fired himself. This doesn't sit well with his bratty son, who throws a tantrum when he doesn't get the bicycle he was promised, or his wife (Emiko Yagumo), who worries about money when their daughter gets sick and has to be hospitalized. Eventually he takes a temporary job handing out leaflets for his former teacher's restaurant until the teacher (Tatsuo Saito) can help him find a better one. Saito remembers when he was an undisciplined student (as we see in the comic opening), but relishes the chance to help an old pupil out -- especially if some business gets drummed up in the process. It's Ozu at his most lighthearted, even if there is an undertow of melancholy present.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Mackie, what price did you pay?
With Pandora's Box still fresh in my mind, I decided to check out G.W. Pabst's 1931 film version of Brecht & Weill's The Threepenny Opera and I have to admit I came away from it somewhat underwhelmed. Maybe it's because this is my first exposure to the play, maybe it's because it's an extremely early sound picture and thus more than a little ungainly, maybe it's because it's choppily edited (but that may not be the fault of the original filmmakers) -- whatever the reason, it didn't grab me. Or maybe it's because the whole time I was thinking of Fritz Lang's M, which was made the same year and is an exciting and dynamic story set in the criminal underworld, while I find The Threepenny Opera to be sluggishly paced in comparison. Of course, M was a completely original film, whereas The Threepenny Opera had a legendary theatrical pedigree to live up to.
At any rate, the film stars Rudolf Forster as Mackie Messer, a London crime boss known as "Mack the Knife," with Carola Neher as Polly, his latest romantic conquest. He's an intimidating figure who bullies his underlings mercilessly, but that's nothing compared to the way he treats his old friend Reinhold Schünzel, who has risen in the ranks to be chief of police, which means he spends most of his time and energy covering up for his friend. Schünzel's also worried about the queen's coronation, which makes him vulnerable to Fritz Rasp's "Beggar King," who disapproves of his daughter Polly's marriage to Mackie and wants him executed. I've read that the story played out differently on the stage than it does in the film, which may explain why the resolution seems somewhat forced, but Pabst must have known going in that he wasn't going to satisfy everybody with his adaptation -- especially the notoriously hard-to-please Brecht.
Back to June 2008 -- Onward to August 2008
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