May 2008: 15 Mini Reviews
May 5, 2008
The last fifteen films I’ve seen.
This Is England (’07): Directed by Shane Meadows from auto-biographical memories of his childhood, this bleakly realistic portrait of a young boy taken in by the skinhead subculture of the early Thatcher era, is a difficult and politically charged examination of England at a time when young men and women had little to idolize except punk rock and anarchy. First timer Thomas Turgoose plays Shaun, a lonely adolescent boy whose father has recently died in the Falkland’s, so desperate for an emotional contact, he takes up with the ska-influenced older skinheads of his town, only to become disillusioned when the non-racist group splits towards the neo-nazi’s with the release of a former member from prison. Meadows uses poor, rural sections of Nottingham for a gritty, realistic background, and the naturalistic performances of the relatively unknown cast, especially Turgoose and Stephen Graham as the nazi influenced new leader of the group, make this unsettling depiction of a specific subculture in a troubled time an especially hard hitting social critique.
Scenes from a Marriage (’73): Marriage and human interaction have always been a key theme in the films of Ingmar Bergman, but nowhere in his canon is it so scrutinized, so emotionally dissected, than it is here in this landmark series, made for Swedish television in 1973, where it galvanized and hypnotized a national audience for five consecutive weeks. Bergman regulars Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson give the performances of their careers as a husband and wife who appear happy during the film’s initial interview phase, but as the scenes progress, as Josephson reveals an affair, and years of frustration and unhappiness, the façade crumbles, leaving two people that, although highly compatible, and still in love, find it next to impossible to carry on a binding relationship without physical and emotional attacks. Criterion’s brilliant box set features both the original five part television series (my preferred viewing), and Bergman’s painstakingly edited American theatrical release, which is just as good, but cuts crucial scenes that further illuminates the revelatory work of Josephson and the amazing Liv Ullmann, whose face is our gateway into the joy and incredible pain of a strenuous emotional partnership.
High Tension (’05): I have nothing particular against slasher flicks, and this highly bloody mess from France has some good production values, as well as a buff lead actress in Cecile de France, but when mindless entertainment starts pulling rugs out from under your feet, like we get here when our feared straight-razor killer is suddenly revealed to be our hunted heroine, than whatever credit good camerawork and a hot actress gets you is kaput. That said, if you don’t care for implausibility in your slasher flicks, by all means watch this, it does have a few decapitations that may suit a gruesome appetite.
There Will Be Blood (’07): Paul Thomas Anderson’s psychological oil and religion drama has become an instant classic, but the two-disc DVD release is hardly worthy of such a monumental achievement, despite a choice short film and three deleted scenes. Of note on the features disc is a silent film made by the government in 1927 showing the production of oil, including some funny animated sequences where the camera can’t go, scored by Jonny Greenwood using highlights of his moody and impressionistic score. Despite that refreshing bit of info propaganda from the late ‘20’s, the set is ultimately a disappointment for what is missing, a commentary track from either Anderson or Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Elswit, or the kind of lengthy behind-the-scenes documentary that made the “Magnolia” DVD so fascinating. One could argue that the film alone is enough, and it is, the few bonus features just add to the enjoyment of the work, but when you’ve looked at a dense film like this numerous times, you begin to crave stories about its conception and execution, and for the time being, us diehard fans will have to continue to crave.
3 Bad Men (’26): John Ford’s precision framing and George Schneiderman’s beautiful cinematography are just two highlights of this sweet and rousing silent western, the director’s last true horse opera until “Stagecoach” 13 years later. Three gruff but kindly horse thieves take in a young woman after her father is murdered, intent on finding her a suitable husband during a land race in the burgeoning gold encrusted Dakotas, all the while fending off a corrupt sheriff responsible for the murder. The relationship between the horse thieves and the girl, and her potential suitor, played by Ford hero George O’Brien, is handled with typical Fordian sweetness, while the great land race features some of the director’s very best action photography, including the remarkable and famous shot of a stampede descending on an abandoned baby.
Blast of Silence (’61): Allen Baron’s minor ‘60’s classic gets a well deserved rediscovery courtesy of The Criterion Collection, who present the existential noir with a documentary on the making of the independent film, as well as then-and-now photographs of the film’s famous New York street locations. Beside writing and directing, Baron stars as hitman-for-hire Frank Bono, a cold and calculating businessman whose latest job, to take out a mid-level mob man, goes ethically awry when an innocent gun dealer (scene stealer Larry Tucker) winds up dead. With a unique narration track by Lionel Stander, commenting to Bono as a voice of God conscious, and wonderful Christmastime New York photography, Baron’s steely vision is almost Wellesian in it’s morally corrupt atmosphere and freeform nature, and like Welles, Baron toiled for years on the fringes, never quite equaling the power of his first picture.
Hangman’s House (’28): Echoing later Irish themed films like “The Informer” and “The Quiet Man”, John Ford’s moody silent stars Victor McLaghlen as a wanted Irish soldier who comes home nonetheless to kill the scoundrel who wronged his sister, currently residing in the haunted house of the lynch happy town judge. Bits of whimsy, like a steeple chase sequence predating the epic ‘Quiet Man’ race, easily give way to revenge in the name of family and national pride, all photographed with enough fog and light to make F.W. Murnau (Ford’s obvious inspiration at the time, utilizing themes and sets from “Sunrise”) envious.
The Idiot (’51): Just before “Rashomon” made him an international star, Akira Kurosawa had already completed a four and a half hour adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot” for Shochiku, but following a disastrous audience preview, the company drastically cut the film to 160 minutes, knowing not of the star its director was about to become. The missing footage has never been rediscovered, and what a travesty it remains, because even in a trumped up cut, Kurosawa’s work is a stunningly photographed character study of love, betrayal, paranoia, and self hatred, pooled together with first rate performances by Masayuki Mori, Toshiro Mifune, Yoshiko Kuga, and a decidedly dark Setsuko Hara. Mori is the simpleton of the title, a war-scarred vet who somehow catches the devoted eye of Hara and Kuga, while reclusive millionaire Mifune pines for Hara in a love-hate relationship, playing out a love quadrangle that, given the irony of Dostoyevsky, renders the three sane participants crazier than The Idiot. Today this is considered minor, simply because of its history as a compromised work, but I still feel it represents Kurosawa’s visionary abilities of the early ‘50’s, when it can be argued he was the world’s greatest director.
A Woman is a Woman (’61): Perhaps drunk on the trip of an instant success (“Breathless”), or disillusioned by the shelving of a personal political bombshell (“Le Petit Soldat”), Jean-Luc Godard’s third film is shockingly self indulgent, and though it remains a lynchpin in the progression of the New Wave (with cinematography by Raoul Coutard, and stunning jump cuts), seen today it’s almost unbearable. The beautiful Anna Karin stars as a sprightly striptease dancer whose fiancé (Jean-Claude Brialy) doesn’t share her want for a child, so to spite him, she seeks the companionship of his best friend, played by “Breathless” star Jean-Paul Belmondo. The story isn’t the problem, it’s Godard’s execution; modeling the film as a “musical comedy”, he peppers the soundtrack with fits and bursts of annoying musical interludes that do little to complement the performances or the story. Of course you can argue that that is Godard’s point, as it would be later in his career, that to make pure cinema is to utilize genre elements in your own unpredictable and symbolic fashion, but to use them in such a way that you’re more contemptuous than honorable, is to suggest an ego beyond its own limitations.
All the Boys are Called Patrick (’57): Presented as a bonus feature on Criterion’s edition of “A Woman is a Woman”, this short represents Godard’s first produced film, written in collaboration with fellow Cahiers critic Eric Rohmer. Lightweight but fresh and funny, about a womanizing student (Jean-Claude Brialy) who picks up two separate woman on one gorgeous Parisian afternoon, not knowing the two are best friends and roommates. Of note, a man reading a newspaper in the background of one scene with a headline denouncing France’s traditional cinema of quality, the kind of groundbreaking criticism that Godard was spearheading in the late ‘50’s that directly led to the New Wave.
Sayonara Jupiter (’84): Earth’s outer space colonies need a new sun to survive, so a controversial government mission plan on solarizing Jupiter and its wondrous gases to do the job, just one of the many outlandish concepts in this highly campy Japanese curio from the ‘80’s. I don’t know what’s more bizarre, the thought of making an entire planet nuclear, or that the chief antagonists of the film, a Jupiter based cult against the transformation, worship a dolphin as their god, but in a film this perplexing (and perplexingly bad), anything goes.
The Savages (’07): Tamara Jenkins mines the pain and struggle of dementia and elder care for both humor and heartache in one of the best films of ’07, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney as grown siblings putting their estranged father (Philip Bosco) away in a health care facility to die. The siblings are both floundering intellectuals with nagging memories of a neglectful childhood, so when time comes to do their duty for an elderly father they’ve hardly known for two decades, the emotions, from anger and frustration, to sympathy and guilt, run wild. Beautifully shot in New York, Arizona, and the cold winter of Buffalo, a perfect setting for the dark comedy inside the nursing home, Jenkins’ first film in nearly nine years is a perfectly realized story of aging and forgiveness in the face of death, masterfully acted by the gifted Hoffman and Linney.
Iron Man (’08): A sterling cast and gobs of seamless special effects highlight this instant blockbuster, a long gestating live action adaptation of Stan Lee’s classic superhero comic, that officially serves as the kickoff what we can only hope is a better summer movie season than last year. Robert Downey Jr. plays Tony Stark, a genius weapons manufacturer who, on demonstration in Afghanistan, is kidnapped by insurgents and tasked to build a super missile, but instead builds a prototype body suit that will become the Iron Man. Directed with glee by actor/director Jon Favreau, by far the best film of his short directing career, as something of a mix between James Bond and Robocop, the film picks up a remarkable pace once Downey begins to perfect his masterful body suit, using it to fight the bad guys (including former mentor Jeff Bridges, sporting a chrome dome and full beard) who have used his weapons for terrorism, rather than their intended purpose. Though the climax is an underachiever, both in effect and plausibility, the charm of Downey, especially opposite the adorable Gwyneth Paltrow as his devoted assistant, the sleek design of the Iron Man suit, and highly impressive special-effects, from suit work by Stan Winston and computer work by Industrial Light & Magic, makes this easily the best superhero film since “Spider-Man 2”.
Variety Lights (’50): A young Federico Fellini gets a helping hand from veteran Alberto Lattuada as co-director on the future master’s first film, a nominal neo-realist comedy/drama about a poor traveling variety troupe that gets a bolt of energy, and audience, when beautiful and enterprising Carla Del Poggio joins the ensemble. Some future Fellini staples are present here – the emphasis on unique, grotesque, and downtrodden faces, the sideshow atmosphere, the use of wife Giulietta Masina as the film’s heart and pathos – but Lattuada’s presence is indelible, especially in the Rome sequences where our hero, a broad comic named Checco, travels the streets picking up bohemian performers for his new act. For such an important film in the development of a renowned filmmaker, Criterion’s no-extras DVD is surprisingly weak, though like with the re-release of “Amarcord”, we can only hope a 2-disk special edition will eventually be in the works.
Spirited Away (’02): There’s nothing quite like the wonders of a film by Hayao Miyazaki, Japan’s greatest living animation director, and this beautiful work of magic from 2002, an award winner all over the world, including the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, is in my opinion one of the ten best animated films of all time. Miyazaki’s standard emphasis on childhood and fantasy has never been better realized than with “Spirited Away”, a story about a sullen 10-year-old girl who, to save her parents from a curse, takes a job in a traditional Japanese bathhouse for wandering spirits, where the friendships she makes, and troubles she endures, sets her on a path for adolescence a year or two away. Miyazaki’s imaginative character designs, from the frogs, ghosts, and spirits of the bathhouse, to Haku, our heroine’s guardian dragon, are all the more impressive considering the traditional hand drawn approach he still utilizes at Studio Ghibili, a throwback to Walt Disney who doesn’t need CGI to create masterworks of artistic and storytelling perfection.
by Adam Suraf