February 2010: 15 Mini Reviews
February 20, 2010
The last fifteen films I've seen.
Paisan ('45): Rossellini's follow-up to "Rome Open City" is more ambitious and polished, thanks in part to the celebrity of the first film. Six 20 minute vignettes tell stories of the American liberation of Italy from coast to coast; redemptive, like a scene in a country-side monastery, romantically devastating, like an Italian girl who falls in love with a GI but loses track of him and turns to the streets, and brutally tragic, like the famous ending where Americans and partisans are cut down by stray Germans in a bog just weeks before the surrender. Rossellini hones the Neo-realist style here with tremendous long takes, outdoor filming in bombed out buildings, and an invisible montage, creating one of the most powerful of all war films, and arguably the best film of his distinguished career.
Gone with the Wind ('39): It was recently stated that though "Avatar" is going to become the highest total money earner of all time, it still remains that with inflation GWTW is an overwhelming number one in ticket sales. Hence, this thing is still timeless, and probably the only four-hour movie that I can watch straight through without moving an inch. And in HD it's more beautiful than ever.
Germany, Year Zero ('49): After focusing on the effects of the war on the Italian people in "Rome Open City" and "Paisan", Roberto Rossellini went to Berlin to tell the story of the enemy, and what he found was a great city in rubble, the lingering effect of the Nazis starving the people, and widespread poverty. Rossellini conveys this through the downward descent of 12-year-old Hitler Youth Edmund, who becomes susceptible to the destruction and schemes surrounding him, suggesting a shared hell that war, at home or abroad, is equally psychologically and socially devastating.
Do the Right Thing ('89): Spike Lee's entry for the Great American Movie is touched with the same kind of genius that informed "Killer of Sheep" and Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man"; 21 years later some of the fashions may date, but Lee's innovative style, complex portrait of racial tensions, and that overwhelmingly powerful climax, remain timeless.
Death in the Garden ('56): Slow but entertaining commercial effort from Luis Bunuel, newly restored with a fine color print on DVD with a commentary track and lengthy interviews. As far as color jungle adventure goes it's better than "Robinson Crusoe", but there are more important Bunuel Mexican films still unavailable that need the treatment this one got.
Ghostbusters ('84): This sci-fi comedy blockbuster, with state-of-the-art 1984 special effects, still holds up remarkably well, thanks mostly to a terrific cast - led by improv master Bill Murray - that gels tremendously around all of the ghosts and goo. Featuring one of the all time great movie theme songs, the hilarious Stay Puft Marshmallow Man finale, and a young, sexy Sigourney Weaver in her Ripley days, "Ghostbusters" remains great fun.
Full Metal Jacket ('87): Stanley Kubrick's penultimate film is his unique take on the standard War Is Hell Vietnam film, split down the middle to focus on Marine training and battle. Vincent D'Onofrio and R. Lee Ermey so dominate the training sequences of the first hour that the more standard, hallucinatory war second half suffers for their departure, but Kubrick is nothing if not obsessed with the devolution of basic human nature, and Vietnam is a natural setting for his textbook tracking shots and ethics.
The Last Metro ('80): Francois Truffaut's theater companion to "Day for Night", mixed together as a tragi-comedy set during the Nazi occupation, with big stars (Deneuve, Depardieu) and a careful lighting gloss from master lensman Nestor Almendros, has a certain respect for putting on a good show, and heightened with life-and-death game stakes, and just a slight inkling of political suggestion, Truffaut is genuinely sincere (though being the least ironic of the New Wavers, that was never a problem). This isn't one of his great films, but as always, Criterion does a terrific job presenting it, with an excellent high-def transfer, nearly 70 minutes of interviews, and two commentary tracks.
Eyes Wide Shut ('99): Never shy about making his audience feel uncomfortable, Stanley Kubrick's final film is a real squirm inducing puzzler, loaded with nudity and sex, but one of the most unerotic films ever made. The England-bound New York sets are only semi-convincing, but they lend to Kubrick's claustrophobic, creepy feel, as does Tom Cruise slowly losing it over one bizarre night, but at nearly 160 minutes, and a crucially weak performance from Nicole Kidman, this controversial, wildly divisive film remains lower tier Kubrick.
Splendor in the Grass ('61): Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty make one good looking pair of sexually repressed teenagers in this William Inge/Elia Kazan film that seems to presage the sexual revolution by about a year. Top performances, always a Kazan specialty, highlight the tale of two high school seniors confused about what they want, and what society (and their old fashioned parents) deems they should do, in terms of their raging hormones, in a late 20's Middle America drunk on breaking prohibition but hypocritical about youngsters and their Jazz Age freedoms. Barbara Loden and Pat Hingle steal the show as Beatty's slutty flapper sister and their stern oil-man father.
(500) Days of Summer ('09): Sweet, funny, heartbreaking, and inventive film is adorable on every level, especially Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel as a couple who see differently about the prospects of love and fate. Nice soundtrack too.
Buchanan Rides Alone ('58): A crooked politician, an even crookeder sheriff, their dim brother, a sack full of 50,000 dollars, a town thirsty for a lynching, and twist upon twist meet Randolph Scott when he rides into the town of Agry with a smile on his face in this quintessential Scott/Boetticher b-western. Scott always gets out of his scrapes, but his hero this time needs a bit of help wherever he can get it, including a sympathetic townie from West Texas, and a Mexican gunsel who just killed the judge's no-good first born, the catalyst that spurs the complicated plot.
Kagemusha ('80): With the financial help of rich American fans Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, Akira Kurosawa was able to realize this painstakingly detailed, and beautifully story-boarded, epic about power, trust, illusion, and war in 16th century Japan. The big names may have secured the money, but this is pure Kurosawa, especially emblematic of his final decade and a half of work, with painterly canvases, static long takes, less of an emphasis on tele-photo lenses (though in the battle sequences, as he pioneered in "Seven Samurai", they are ever present), and a humanist, melodramatic touch that at this point wasn't as suffocating as it would be in the final films ("Madadayo"). Criterion's Blu-ray transfer is stunning, fully realizing Kurosawa's rich color textures.
Shutter Island ('10): Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio play the crazy game again as they did in "The Aviator", but this time Leo goes off the deep end not so much due to megalomania but due to the influence of one creepy island on a stormy stretch of days investigating a disappearance at a loony bin. Nice production design and Scorsese's obsessive use of saturating back-lighting highlight a film that could have used a tighter edit (of about 20 minutes), and for every baffling twist - faithful to the Dennis Lehane novel - the cast pulls it off in a seemingly convincing mystery play about repression, obsession, deep trauma, and reverse psychology.
Hunger ('09): Brutally artistic, violent, savage, poetic, and unforgettable prison film from British visual artist Steve McQueen, detailing a political hunger strike in an Irish prison in 1981 that killed 10 I.R.A. members before it was called off. As leader Bobby Sands, focus of the second and third acts (act one details a "no wash" strike), actor Michael Fassbender presents a strong unified front as he literally wastes away to nothing. Both uneasy to watch and amazingly visual, this artistic triumph is decidedly not for junkies of prison movies (there are no well planned escapes here), but for fans of directors like Ken Loach, Terrence Malick, and Abbas Kiarostami, this is a gem.