August 2008: 15 Mini Reviews

August 4, 2008

The last fifteen films I've seen.

Tokyo Chorus ('31): The earliest film from Yasujiro Ozu to be released on DVD to date, this comedy-drama from the director's late silent period is emblematic of his more famous films of the '40's and '50's, using a focused and immovable style to focus on family values and struggles within the middle class. Here we're presented with a young father of two who loses his job, and Christmas bonus, just after his son was promised a new bicycle, so to support his growing family, and satisfy his bratty son (brats of course are always prevalent in Ozu), the proud man takes a lowly job at a restaurant from an old teacher, who proves kinder in old age than he did as an authority figure. Blending familiar tropes of the Japanese cinema of the day – student comedy, white-collar working man comedy, family melodrama – Ozu creates an environment where pride can only stand up so much in the face of a petulant son or sick daughter, laying the groundwork for three decades of films to come where money issues would give way to modernity, but the family is always front and center.

The Grapes of Wrath ('40): Working with master cinematographer Gregg Toland for the first time, John Ford creates a documentary style urgency to John Steinbeck's blockbuster novel, softening the politics and emphasizing family struggle just enough to satisfy both a nervous Darryl Zanuck, weary of censors, if not early anti-Communist sentiments, and a public already weened on the devastating odyssey of Steinbeck's westward Oakies. As Tom Joad, the paroled prodigal son of the displaced Joads, Henry Fonda gives the performance Ford had been building him towards with “Young Mr. Lincoln” and “Drums Along the Mohawk” the previous year, a strong willed soul willing to sacrifice for the betterment of his increasingly desperate family, including taking it on the lam after killing a strike buster, while as the beloved Ma, the heart and soul of the clan, Oscar winner Jane Darwell matches Fonda's intensity with a sensitive motherliness that breaks at the thought of losing her family. Drawing on a documentary style of the '30's, especially in the early Hoover camp sequences, Ford and Toland create a unique vision unusual for such an expensive and eagerly anticipated studio effort (Ford won the second of his four Best Director Oscars for his efforts; Toland and the film lost to Hitchcock's “Rebecca”), giving Steinbeck's already popular and polarizing text the kind of faithful visual representation any author would be proud of. And how, it's often noted that both Ford and Steinbeck, titans similar in style and substance, considered the classic film to be personal favorites throughout their storied careers.

Crime Wave ('54): Terrific Los Angeles location photography by Bert Glennon highlights this economical B noir from Andre De Toth, about a parolee (Gene Nelson) roped into a bank robbery by two prison escapees (Ted de Corsia, Charles Bronson), while being hounded by dedicated and frustrated detective Sterling Hayden to turn the screws on his ex prison mates. Besides the location photography, which is one of the reasons the film has earned high status in the noir cannon, the primary reason this pulp yarn works so well is because of Sterling Hayden's rumpled detective Sims, a cynical door buster quick to ensnare weak sisters like Nelson into doing his bidding, with masterminds like de Corsia (the kinds of roles Hayden himself excelled at in “The Asphalt Jungle”, “The Killing”, etc) in his ultimate target. The DVD features a spirited duel commentary track from noir specialist Eddie Mueller, author of the inventive and priceless text “Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir”, and novelist James Ellroy, the master of modern L.A. crime fiction, noting the locations, from Chinatown to City Hall, like kids in a darkly lit candy store.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army ('08): Guillermo del Toro and his brilliant team of fantasy filmmakers continue in the glow of “Pan's Labyrinth” with this very entertaining sequel, fully expanding the depth and likability of the lead characters while providing new heroes, villains and amazingly detailed creatures that makes the exposition and religious themes of the original seem heavy handed by comparison. After preventing a Nazi resurrection, and netherworlds colliding, Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and his partners, fire-starter Liz (Selma Blair), and psychic fish-man Abe (Doug Jones, greatly improving over the disembodied voice of David Hyde Pierce in the original), have to prevent underworld outcast Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) from wakening the sinister, and indestructible Golden Army to avenge his people against humankind. The Prince has an identical twin sister (Anna Walton) who isn't so sympathetic to his cause; she brings the case to Hellboy and Abe, who falls in love with the pasty Princess, and their romance not only brings needed depth to Abe, who played second fiddle to Hellboy in the original, but brings the film, which is often overwhelmed by stunning CGI creatures and Hellboy's comedic quips, a humanist touch. Pulling all this together with remarkable fluidity, del Toro revels in creating one creature filled set piece after another for our heroes to conquest (an underworld gatekeeper resembles, with his flat face and eight eyes, the horrific Pale Man of 'Pan's'), while the addition of new hero Johann Krauss, a hilarious wind bag (literally, made of gas) voiced by Seth MacFarlane in a mock German accent who comes to odds with Hellboy, makes the character roster especially deep and humorous. There's a reason Peter Jackson has chosen del Toro to helm his ambitious two-part adaptation of “The Hobbit”; he's a visionary perfectionist with the keen ability to match action and CGI creature development with likable characters and knockout humor. Akin to “Spider-Man 2”, “X-Men 2”, and “The Dark Knight” as comic-book sequels that far surpass their originals, 'Hellboy II' may just be the best of the bunch.

Mongol ('08): Russian director Sergei Bodrov directs this sweeping film, both bloody and beautiful, about the early life of future war king Genghis Khan, when our hero was a lowly slave named Temudgin, destined to avenge the murder of his father and rightfully claim the clan's throne that was stolen from him. Stolen heritage and lost love fuel Temudgin (his beloved wife is taken by a rival when he's sold into slavery), who has to battle his blood brother for ruling supremacy, giving the story a biblical overtone that perfectly matches the epic battle scenes and scope of the cinematography. Characterizations suffer to melodrama and the bloody clashes, but Temudgin's fight is appropriately moving, and this being the first of a proposed trilogy, we can't wait to see what happens next, without looking too much up on Wikipedia.

The Dark Knight ('08): It's only slightly morbid to suggest that the overwhelming success of this blockbuster, Christopher Nolan's vastly improved saga of Bruce Wayne and his struggle as Gotham's conflicted vigilante Batman, is due to the curiosity of Heath Ledger's final performance as the terrorist Joker, a performance so disturbing, we've heard, that the talented actor was put on heavy medication that ultimately killed him. It's probably true, given the difference between the opening weekends of “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight”, but only a cynic would hold such a thing over the quality of a film, and given that Nolan's dark vision, pitting Batman (Christian Bale) against the maniacal Joker, with white knight D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and police chief Gordon (Gary Oldman) caught in the middle, delves into themes of hero worship, expectations, terrorism, hedonism, and the obvious, what it means to be good or evil, we've got the very basics for comic-book psych 101. Nolan deserved much of the credit, it can't be easy continually reinventing a franchise that dates nearly 70 years, but there's no mistaking that without the Ledger performance, both frighteningly funny and disturbingly demented, anchoring a film that so studiously suggests the thin line between pure good and evil, the film might just be another well constructed comic-book yarn. With the performance, the feather in the cap of a too short career, it's something special altogether, and one of the best movies of the year.

Decoy ('46): One of the few films to come out of Poverty Row (Monogram Studios) that actually looks as good as a major studio B picture; a bizarre film noir starring little known British actress Jean Gillie as the ultimate femme fatale, a woman who brings her husband back from the dead (!) to find the secret to his buried treasure. Along the way she cons a sap doctor and a sap mobster to help with the plan, but tough detective Sheldon Leonard is on her heals, always a step behind, in the classic noir plot device. Producer/Director Jack Bernhard brought wife Gillie to the states to make her a star, this was the result; a curio that holds up on camp value alone. It remains the best known film of both Bernhard and Gillie's largely unheralded and short careers, noted often in noir texts, not as highly as “Detour”, but noted just the same, and remains a surprisingly enticing production, despite Monogram's monetary constraints.

Mon Oncle Antoine ('71): Director Claude Jutra examines life in a small Quebec town in this famed Canadian feature, about a 13-year-old boy whose sense of wonderment and security is shattered one Christmas when he comes to realizations about sex, death, community, and the ineffectiveness of his foster parents. Jutra, drawing heavily on the ethics of the French New Wave, especially “The 400 Blows”, presents this small mining town, post WWII but still two or three years before their own independence revolution, steeped in a ritualized malaise, where the duties of the local shop owner extend beyond mere convenience to town undertaker, and the death of a country boy from sudden sickness is no less shocking than the death of a miner from black lung. Criterion's DVD features two documentaries, one examining the film's reputation as “the greatest Canadian film of all time” (a possible exaggeration), and a feature length doc on director Jutra, whose promising career flamed out in spectacular fashion, ending in a long disappearance and eventual suicide, but whose name lives on primarily on the strength of this intimate and acute human drama.

The Hidden Fortress ('58): The closest Akira Kurosawa ever came to pure comedy, this blockbuster samurai adventure starring Toshiro Mifune escorting his clan's disguised princess through enemy lines, is made all the more memorable for its peasant sidekicks, played with greedy comedic gusto by Kurosawa stalwarts Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara, 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 (Misa Uehara), and rival general/friend Susumu Fujita. 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 wonderful 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”), heady literary action (“Throne of Blood”), and westernized ironic action (“Yojimbo”), proving yet again to be one of the most malleable cinematic craftsmen in the world.

The Bank Job ('08): Remarkably, this well crafted heist yarn from director Roger Donaldson, about a group of friends duped into a dangerous vault heist by MI-6 to recover some scandalous royal photos, who literally broadcast their conversations, mid-heist, over ham radio wires, is entirely true, held in a locked file for years to protect the anonymity of the individuals involved. Now open and subject to scrutiny, the lurid story, which delves into underground pornography rings, police corruption, and government cover-ups, plays up the likability of the robbers, led by action star Jason Statham, to perhaps cut the marked level of East End sleaze simmering beneath the surface. This doesn't quite hold up with classic heist films like “Rififi” and “Le Cercle Rouge”, films that also emphasize the band of brothers over the pinch itself, but as far as modern heist films are concerned, I'd certainly take this lot over George Clooney and his smug Vegas buddies.

Chop Shop ('08): Following the DeSica-esque “Man Push Cart”, director Ramin Bahrani once again utilizes a neo-realist style to focus on New York City's struggling poor, about an enterprising 12-year-old boy who lives hand to mouth working and hustling in a small auto detailing shop in the shadow of Queens' Shea Stadium. Bahrani's camera follows Ale (Alejandro Polanco) in the course of one hot summer trying to save for a used food wagon; hustling candy on the subway, selling bootleg DVD's, stealing hubcaps for his boss's illegal operations, and worrying all the while about his older sister (Isamar Gonzales), whose sexual coming of age is both troubling and devastating for the streetwise but naïve Ale. Where “Man Push Cart” dealt with one man's dependence on a vending wagon to eek out a meager existence, ala “Bicycle Thieves”, “Chop Shop” is more akin to “Shoeshine” in its study of children and the ways they get through difficult situations, where even in the face of poverty and corruption, there's hope and happiness somewhere out there, symbolized so eloquently by the cheering crowds and bright lights of Shea Stadium, which towers over Ale's world like some kind of wonderful blue UFO.

Pineapple Express ('08): Independent master David Gordon Green leaves behind his Terrance Malick poetics for a Judd Apatow weed comedy, starring co-writer Seth Rogan as a pothead on the run with his sweet natured dealer (James Franco) after witnessing a murder by drug lord Gary Cole. Rogan and Evan Goldberg's follow up to the successful “Superbad” has the same kind of humor and heart, especially in the budding friendship between Rogan's Dale and Franco's Saul, two lazy stoners whose only previous relationship to each other was through routine weekly drug deals, while Green uses the murder-and-chase plot to expertly satirize the genre with hilarious bursts of comedic violence. Danny McBride has a scene stealing supporting role as a fellow drug dealer who gets involved in the conspiracy, and there's funny work from Cole, Rosie Perez, Craig Robinson, Bill Hader, and Ed Begley Jr., but the key to the film's success is the partnership between Rogan and Franco, who eschew the obvious Cheech and Chong characterizations for a more realistic, slightly homo-erotic, and ironic take on male friendship. This is the funniest movie of the year so far, another knockout for Apatow and his growing stable of comedy stars, and a fine debut for Green outside of his comfortable independent arena.

The Band's Visit ('08): Memorable warmhearted drama from Israel, winner of the Israeli Academy Award for Best Film, about a sky-blue clad Egyptian police orchestra who spend a stranded night in a rundown town in Israel on their way to a ceremonial concert. There they build one-night friendships with the townspeople: a fighting husband and wife celebrating a birthday; a boy eagerly awaiting a pay phone call from his abroad girlfriend; a homely man clueless about how to get a women; and central to the story, a lonely divorcee (Ronit Elkabetz) who desperately tries to show the conflicted and stern conductor (Sasson Gabai) a good time. All of the small vignettes are filled with both humor and sadness, as the Arab visitors come to realize that their Jewish hosts have the same troubles and pains as themselves, lending the understated politics of the situation a humanist bent.

The Ballad of Narayama ('83): Shohei Imamura won the first of his two Palme D'or awards for this lyrical examination of sex, tradition, and death in a 19th century Japanese mountain village, where at 70, the elders of the village are taken to Mount Narayama to meet their God. Continuing a partnership that lasted five films, Imamura casts Ken Ogata as the eldest son of matriarch Sumiko Sakamoto, tasked to carry his mother on his back for the treacherous journey when she turns 70, something his abandoned father was never able to accomplish, shaming the family for years to come. Imamura balances the heavy specter of immediate death with comedic sexual episodes involving Ogata's discombobulated younger brother (Tonpei Hidari), though the equation between sex and death, so brutal and honest in “Vengeance is Mine”, doesn't quite mesh during the film's stark and symbolic 30-minute trek to Narayama. Though he made less than 25 features in a long career, Imamura is still considered one of the great Japanese auteurs of the 20th century; this is one of his most beautiful and studied films, it looks great on DVD, but a deluxe Criterion edition in the future would be a godsend.

Aladdin ('92): The third of Disney's four modern masterpieces that reinvented the animated format, this unbelievably entertaining Arabian Nights musical is bolstered by Robin Williams' frantic, hilarious mile-a-minute vocal performance as a freedom seeking blue genie, who references the likes of Groucho Marx, Rodney Dangerfield and Ed Sullivan in a classic stand-up delivery. Beautiful animation and a memorable villain (evil royal vizier Jafar and his wise-cracking Parrot Iago) make up for the slightly conventional central story, about street urchin Aladdin who rubs the magic lamp and wishes to be a prince so Princess Jasmine will fall in love with him, unleashing Williams and his genie to lift the film from special to all time classic. Alan Menken's Oscar and Grammy winning “A Whole New World” gives the film a nice romantic ballad, but show-stoppers “One Jump Ahead”, “A Friend Like Me”, and “Prince Ali” easily place “Aladdin” alongside “The Little Mermaid”, “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King” in the pantheon of great Broadway inspired Disney musicals. As is the case with most of Disney's classic animated films, the two-disc DVD, featuring two commentary tracks and a two-hour documentary, is a virtual textbook guide through the difficult multi year production of an animated feature.

asuraf@DunkirkMA.net