July 2010: Fifteen Mini Reviews
July 10, 2010
The last fifteen films I've seen.
Pale Rider ('85): Serious but cornball Eastwood western with the actor riding into a mining town and kicking the snot out of a monopoly in the name of the band of panhandlers in the mountains. And for some unexplained reason he's a preacher. There's an earnestness here that makes the brutal gun violence at the end seem all the more appalling, and the fact that most of the film hinges on the creepy relationship between Eastwood and a young girl (Sydney Penny, soap opera bound) is squirm inducing. Thankfully, seven years later when he'd all but remake the plot as "Unforgiven", trading in miners for prostitutes, the preacher's collar for a whiskey bottle, and Michael Moriarty for Morgan Freeman, he'd work out all the kinks.
She's Gotta Have It ('86): A true independent film, shot for whatever money young Spike Lee could accumulate from friends, family, and art grants, and he makes the most of it with the held of chief DP Ernest Dickerson, whose black and white images of New York, or mostly, Brooklyn, rival Gordon Willis' "Manhattan" and James Wong Howe's "The Sweet Smell of Success" in presenting the city in a gritty, loving beauty. Lee plays one of three lovers of title character Nola Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns), who is at the mercy of a pseudo-documentary format that interviews her suitors post-relationship, doubling back in flash back to see how it played out, examining, among other things, the psychology of sexual relationships, monogamy, the female sex drive, and the macho ego, though frankly, the girl isn't as terrific as the men would make her out to be, which in itself is one of the lessons the film has about obsession and perception. Of the players, Lee makes out the best as the hilarious Mars, a frantic street clown that Lee would parlay into a pop culture icon (especially opposite Michael Jordan in Nike commercials) in the wake of the film's surprise success, but critically, Johns isn't up to the task of such an important female lead, and we wonder why these guys don't ditch her sooner. This may be slight next to the more polished films Lee would make in the following years, but everyone has to start somewhere, and this is a funny and inventive debut.
Mystery Train ('89): On a lonely Memphis night three stories begin to intertwine around a flophouse, an Elvis tune, and a sense of desperate fascination towards an America that would let one of it's richest musical cities run down to the ground. Independent auteur Jim Jarmusch films the three segments, each one about a different foreigner experiencing the brutally depressed Memphis their own way, with a dark color tone and almost hallucinogenic subdued lighting scheme (of Robby Mueller, who shot "Paris, Texas" in a similar manner) that makes the shock of periodic brights (red lipstick, red blazer, neon store lights) pop out all the more for their misplacement within the starkness of the setting. This is perhaps more visually arresting than Jarmusch's previous films about outsiders and hipsters on the fringes of a metropolitan society, but the storytelling doesn't suffer to directorial pretensions, instead, the sly way the three stories connect, without ever actually connecting, is part of the film's charms, and one of the reasons it stands out as arguably the best film of Jarmusch's career.
Toy Story 3 ('10): Fifteen years after the landmark "Toy Story", Pixar brings back their lovable, adventurous gang of toys for a third time, and like the previous two, it's pretty much perfection. This time around the movie world has aged with the real world and little Andy of the first two films is 18 and moving to college, but what of his beloved toys, who have been crammed in a chest for the past few years? Thinking they are destined for the trash bin, most of the jaded friends wind up at a daycare center, where a sinister bear runs the place like Strother Martin in "Cool Hand Luke", but idealistic Woody (Tom Hanks, affable as ever) keeps the faith and knows they're destined for a better place, physically, and emotionally, in Andy's memories. The second half of the film is almost entirely comprised of the Great Escape from the daycare center, and it's filled with plenty of prison film illusions (also, Maggie's escape from daycare in a classic 'Simpsons' episode), but Pixar doesn't need to rely on homage (though a carefully placed Totoro is a fun Easter egg nod to Miyazaki) to get through 100 minutes, and there is plenty here that is new (all of the daycare inhabitants, including Michael Keaton giving a hilarious performance as a Ken doll), exciting, and ultimately, impossibly touching. The theme of these "Toy Story" movies has always been the struggle to stay together as time takes its natural course on aging and growing up, and no more so than here as the toys feel they've been abandoned by the only owner they've ever known and loved; it gives the film a hint of sadness, along with a shock of fright in the darkest minutes of the daycare escape, and it hits you in the gut. This is a beautiful, funny, and moving work.
Taking Woodstock ('09): Ang Lee's continuing trip through American culture stops off in the late 60's in a rural country town in upstate New York, where enterprising but stuck-in-a-rut Demetri Martin somehow wrangles a big music festival to his humble town to help his parents' struggling motel business, and from there Woodstock happens. Good premise, but Lee doesn't have much of a handle on the counter-culture save for the usual cliches, the characters and their psychosis are muddled, and the modest budget doesn't do the crowd scenes any justice, making a concert that featured half a million people look like a composite of a few hundred grubby extras and some background CGI. An extended acid trip is pretty well done though, and Martin, a comedian making his feature acting debut, takes the straight lead role admirably next to all the freaks, hippies, and promoters. Watch again with Lee and lifetime collaborator James Schamus' commentary track for a better appreciation of their influences and film-making decisions.
Shadows in Paradise ('86): You don't go to the films of Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismaki for belly laughs and action comedy, but in his own deadpan, carefully framed critiques of romance on the outer fringes of society, he's one of the world's great comedic directors. In this somewhat famous film, the first of a proletariat trilogy, a lonely garbageman meets a cynical grocery store bag girl, and sparks fly, but in Kaurismaki sparks emanate not from sex, nudity, or innuendo, but from the healing of a bloody hand, the dark dinginess of a bingo parlor, and the plastic consumerist pastel of a men's outerwear department. Not much happens in the sparse 74 minutes, filled with a static but not boring mise-en-scene punctuated with dark light and American blues rock, but by the end you feel you understand these characters down to their very being, and understanding the human condition, for tragedy or romance, isn't exactly an easy thing to pull off.
The Milky Way ('69): I love Bunuel even when I can't profess to know what I'm loving, and this extremely amusing series of heretical vignettes, centered on two modern day pilgrims on their march from France to Spain who witness, or invariably are concurrent to, scripture's most pressing questions and baffling acts of atheism and Catholic anarchy, is one of the great films of his famed late French period. Thankfully, the Bunuel buffs at Criterion do know what the master was up to, and the DVD presents an hour's worth of extras and two illuminating essays.
Happy Together ('97): One of the great visual treats of the 90's, and one of the most excruciating break-up films of all time, Wong Kar Wai's third consecutive film to deal with the complexities of human communication and sexual frustration in a modern context is his most progressive film to date. And also, possibly, his most difficult, following two Hong Kong gay lovers who become stranded while on vacation in Argentina and, through an entire movie's worth of jump cuts and time ellipses, break up and reunite with the passion and hatred of a Liz Taylor/Richard Burton romance, bouncing between lyrically beautiful and hazy color and hypnotic, depressing black and white (from the gifted lens of master Christopher Doyle). Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung are brilliant as the forever incompatible lovers, though through all of the fights, the actors bring a sensibility to their performances that suggests a love that once flourished, but collapses in a land of improbable future, and impossible dreams.
As Tears Go By ('88): Wong Kar-Wai got his first shot at the director's chair with this stylish, cheesy Hong Kong mix between "Mean Streets" and the sympathetic gangster popularity of "A Better Tomorrow", and it bears some visual inventiveness that would mark his later works, but not much else. Andy Lau is a hotshot underworld figure whose best friend, Jacky Cheung, is a constant screw-up and the laughingstock of the gangster scene; when Jacky runs afoul of a fellow Big Brother, an interdepartmental struggle ensues. Also, beautiful Maggie Cheung is around to add romance for Lau as a distant visiting cousin. The melodrama is thick and the soundtrack is bubbling with gaudy synthesizers and over-the-top emotional cues, but even in a jumbled gangster film Wai has a knack for holding attention, and he gets most of it in the editing.
Detective Story ('51): It must be tough translating a wordy stage play into a competent movie that gets the words and emotions right without feeling stagy and stiff, and this William Wyler production of the famous 1949 Sidney Kingsley play does it admirably. Kirk Douglas does his self-loathing best as a detective who lets his inner frustration and fury build to a bursting point while investigating an abortionist (controversial stuff for 1949/51), a case that hits home when he learns his wife (Oscar nominee Eleanor Parker) has a history with the crooked doctor. Fringe stories include a pair of career cat burglars who are persuaded to dime on each other, a first-time shop-lifter (Lee Grant, also Oscar nominated) who witnesses all the action from the galley, and the fate of a young veteran who stole some money from his boss to fund a futile relationship. All of the stories mesh into a coherent, well photographed blend of melodrama and harsh life lessons, providing a template for future police TV shows that would revolve around a booking desk, and serving as a fine showcase for the rising star of Kirk Douglas.
Days of Being Wild ('91): If "As Tears Go By" was Wong Kar-Wai's way into film-making via studio imposed populist melodrama, than "Days of Being Wild" was his inner auteurist shaking off the guilt. Filled with soon-to-be-textbook Wai moodiness - all exotic camerawork, indecipherable character motivations, and rumba on the soundtrack - Wai's handful of good looking, lonely characters in 60's Hong Kong placate their sexual desires and selfishness with one baffling, aching, monumental life decision after another, switching partners, jobs, and countries in an endless search for a happiness that remains utterly elusive. A fine companion piece, as the director often notes in interviews, with the later "In the Mood for Love" and, to a lesser extent, "2046".
Red Desert ('64): Antonioni's first color film, and the last of his famed Monica Vitti '60's cycle, this stark, beautifully composed rumination on isolation, loneliness, alienation, madness, science, technology, morality, and the psychological and physical effects of industrial environmental and noise pollution, serves as the director's bridge between the stark modernism of "L'avventura" and the hip post-modernism of "Blow Up" and "The Passenger". Vitti, stunning as always in dusty brown hair and designer clothes, plays the wife of a rich shipping magnate, whose environment consists of gigantic factories billowing with steam, mist, and yellow sludge; she's isolated beneath all of this massive pollution with barely anything to hold on to, and a recent accident has her already struggling mind swarmed with paranoia and fright. She is a bundle of neurosis, a mix between Toshiro Mifune in "I Life in Fear" and Julianne Moore in "Safe", and Antonioni uses color (going as far as to paint apples and grass ash gray for the effect) as well as landscape to suggest this woman's loss of her self; it's all very disturbing, but also extremely beautiful, a dichotomy that the director celebrates unabashedly.
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage ('69): Dario Argento would never stray too far from this crackling debut, complete with gloved knife wielding maniac, goofy humor, Hitchcockian cutting and suspense, Ennio Morricone music, sexy women, a so-so mystery, and an even more so-so resolution. It's a mixed bag, but Argento's mise-en-scene comes almost fully formed, thanks to years on the fringes of his producer father's business, and as a film critic.
Strike ('24): Sergei Eisenstein didn't invent the art of the edit, but he did everything within his bag of tricks to revolutionize the practice, which he called the Montage of Attractions, and this classic, his first feature film, contains one mesmerizing edit after another. If that sacrifices story and characterization, which indeed it does, to support the metaphorical and symbolic act of linking images for dramatic effect, than so be it, Eisenstein is so deft at moving large crowds (and this film, about a striking factory and the massacre of the proletariat that follows, has very large crowds), rapidly editing violence to fit his politics (especially in an infamous scene with a slaughtered bull), that the faceless villains and heroic plebeians are background dressing for the theory. Note to somebody, maybe Criterion, or Masters of Cinema, or Kino, that this greatest of silent films is badly in need of a restoration and HD transfer.
The Red and the White ('67): A 1967 Hungarian/Russian co-production about the Russian Civil War of 1919. Hungarian director Miklos Jancso dramatizes the Hungarian civilian volunteers who join the defending Red Bolshevik against the Czarist Cossacks, but favors neither side, as the lines between who has the upper hand are constantly blurred, so much so that by the end, in a famous image of a Hungarian soldier holding a blade against his cheek, we don't know if it's a gesture of victory or defiance. The non-narrative structure and lack of defining characters can be disorienting, but Jancso's long takes and flowing camerawork is masterful, as is his positioning of large groups of soldiers within the widescreen frame, and it's one of the best looking anti-war films ever made.