20 Mini Reviews: March 2007
March 29, 2007
The last 20 films I’ve watched in the past month or so.
Borderline (’30): Disjointed British silent film with Paul Robeson and a gaggle of dour boardinghouse residents caught up in interracial love affairs. Strange soviet style montage only enhances the weirdness of this late silent period film released by Criterion in their Robeson box set.
Body and Soul (’25): Oscar Micheaux’s famous silent starring Paul Robeson as a con pretending to be a priest, or so we assume until the tacked on ending which tells us it was all a dream. Micheaux is an important name in film history, but largely unheralded; thank Criterion for collecting this intense piece for their Robeson tribute.
In a Lonely Place (’50): One of Humphrey Bogart’s finest performances in a Hollywood drama from the talented Nicholas Ray, directing his estranged wife Gloria Grahame and Bogie with heated passion and disillusionment. Of the three backstage masterworks of 1950 (“Sunset Boulevard” and “All About Eve” the other two), this is the only one to focus less on the creation of entertainment than on the crippling personal effects of Hollywood cynicism and pressure.
The Kids Are Alright (’79): Cool footage of The Who in concert spliced with various television interviews from their Mod years on through “Quadrophenia”. Did anybody ever smash a guitar quite like Pete Townshend, or rock the drums quite like Keith Moon?
Dawn of the Dead (’04): Moderately entertaining modern zombie remake from “300” geek director Zack Snyder.
Shoot the Piano Player (’60): Truffaut’s second feature as a director, more experimental than “The 400 Blows”, not as signature to the New Wave as “Jules and Jim”, but arguably the best of the three.
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (’60): More cheers to the Criterion Collection for their continued support of classic Japanese cinema, this time releasing for the first time one of the many socially stinging dramas from the great Mikio Naruse. The cast includes the luminous Hideko Takamine and the future samurai god Tatsuya Nakadai.
Casino Royale (’06): Great actions scenes and a buff Daniel Craig make this the best Bond film in years, but how improbable is the final hand of the poker tournament Bond wins over his enemy, where he eliminates three opponents (two with full houses, one with a flush) with nothing but an unbeatable straight flush? Frankly, the odds of winning the lottery are better than seeing those four hands on any given shuffle, but it makes for good drama anyway.
Fires on the Plain (’59): Kon Ichikawa’s 1959 masterpiece about the endless wandering of sick soldiers near the end of the war, sprinkled with dark humor and a sharp damnation of war itself. Quite possibly the fiercest anti-war film ever made, and a good companion piece with Eastwood’s “Letters from Iwo Jima”.
The Burmese Harp (’56): A pacifist anti-war film from Ichikawa about a soldier who goes AWOL after capture, becoming a monk with a vow to bury his comrades scattered throughout the fields of Burma. Not as shocking as the later “Fires on a Plain”, but quietly beautiful with a resonating message of peace, religion, and nationalism.
Heading South (’05): Overheated but somewhat satisfying drama from the promising French director Laurent Cantet, about middle aged white women vacationing in the Caribbean to sleep with studly black residents, who cater to their every bourgeois repression. Not Cantet’s best effort, but the scenery is pretty, and the actresses (including Charlotte Rampling) are reasonably believable.
Bicycle Thieves (’48): Not enough can be said about Vittorio DeSica and Cesare Zavattini’s enormously important Neo-Realist masterpiece, which finds a worker desperately searching the streets of Rome for the stolen bicycle he needs to survive, while his little son tags along to witness his father’s slow decline. The plot may be about a stolen bike, but the film is about the growth of a father and son, the economic struggles of post war Italy, the proletariat cause, and the definition of a natural film style. One of the five greatest Italian films of all time, and along with “The Children are Watching Us”, “Shoeshine”, “Miracle in Milan” and “Umberto D.” represents a stunning collaboration by two creative geniuses.
Rebel Without a Cause (’55): Nicholas Ray’s famous teenage angst picture, featuring a knife fight, a dangerous chicken run, a post childhood Natalie Wood, a devastating climax, and the most iconic of James Dean’s famed three film performances.
300 (’07): Decapitations and CGI blood abound in Zack Snyder’s faithful adaptation of Frank Miller’s gory graphic novel; what will end up being one of the biggest moneymakers of the year. As a fan of the novel I can recommend this bloody, ultra macho war film, but as a serious film critic, I can’t place too much importance on it’s dialogue, dreadful backgrounds, and ultimate single-minded message of war and honor. Snyder has a good eye for detail, so lets hope his in-the-works adaptation of Alan Moore’s “Watchmen”, a virtually unfilmable narrative, is a bit more emotionally resonant than “300”.
The Ladykillers (’55): Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers are but two of the heist men trying to con sweet old Katie Johnson into doing their bidding in this dark comedy from Ealing Studios and master director Alexander Mackendrick. Guinness is funnier in “Kind Hearts and Coronets”, but he had eight roles in that film, here he has just one, as the bumbling mastermind outwitted by an 80 year old widow, and it’s a legendary performance.
The 400 Blows (’59): Jean Pierre Leud as his most notable creation, Antoine Doinel, a Truffaut surrogate in the director’s famed, important Parisian debut. Truffaut’s handling of childhood throughout his films was always delicate and realistic, none more so than here when Doinel and a friend skip school and bounce around Paris, from the amusement park to the cinema (naturally), one cold autumn afternoon.
Borat (’06): The funniest film of 2006 isn’t as good on DVD, simply because laughing at it by yourself can’t match the full power of a sold out audience laughing at Sacha Baron Cohen’s every racist, ignorant, sexist remark, but it’s still a wickedly smart satire, and one of the few mock documentaries to truly utilize the guerrilla tactics of documentary filmmaking.
Green for Danger (’46): Post war melodrama from Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat concerning murder and sex at a countryside medical barracks, with a crisp new transfer from Criterion.
The Emperor Jones (’33): Paul Robeson gives his signature performance in this stilted, slightly racist dramatic adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s powerful stage play. Most of the film is wince inducing, but the final 20 minute jungle scene, with Robeson giving one of the finest monologues in the history of film (and theater) as his enemies beat an unending war drum spelling his doom, is simply stunning to watch.
Quadrophenia (’79): Frank adaptation of The Who’s rambling rock opera, with the songs merely guiding the action from the soundtrack, unlike the earlier “Tommy” where they completely tell the story. General consensus is that this is the best of the Who films, and I agree, but on CD, I’d take “Tommy” and it’s beautifully harmonized vocals of loneliness and conformity over “Quadrophenia” and it’s rough, socialist Mods vs. Rockers realism.
by Adam Suraf