November 2010: 15 Mini Reviews
November 1, 2010
The last fifteen films I've seen.
Asphalt ('29): Betty Amann is beguiling as a Louise
Brooks-esque thief who casts her spell on a young policeman in this
Ufa classic, one of the last of the studio's mega-productions of the
silent era.
Walking home from a shift, policeman Gustav
Froehlich ("Metropolis") notices a ruckus at a jewelry
store; inside Amann has just been busted for lifting a diamond, and
faithful to his job, despite being off duty, he takes her in. But the
taxi ride to the station is just enough time for the girl to weave
her seductive magic on the young man, and soon enough they are back
at her swank apartment, clutched in a melodramatic clinch. Naturally,
this leads to bad consequences, and lives are ruined on seemingly
minor lies and actions.
Director Joe May, a longtime veteran
hardly mentioned in history books today, grasps onto the dying
aesthetic of Expressionism, and the opening shots of Berlin, a
bustling city of pavement, cars, and humanity, could be straight out
of "The Man with the Movie Camera", but this is more of a
romantic melodrama in which the participants get jerked around for
letting their emotions dictate their actions, and in it's lush
production, could stand along Sternberg, Stroheim, and Murnau for
visual pop.
The Town ('10): Ben Affleck puts together an excellent cast
for his second directorial effort, a Boston tale about love,
friendship, hometown pride, and hometown hubris amongst bank robbers
and the Feds on their track.
After serving behind the scene
on "Gone Baby Gone", Affleck gives himself the choice lead
role here, the head of a four-man heist team, facing middle age and
either death or jail if he doesn't get out; when he starts to date a
hostage from a heist (Rebecca Hall), he sees a way out, but neither
his mob boss, or his hot-wire best friend (Jeremy Renner) will let
him.
In between the Affleck/Hall romance, all of the Townie
drama, and all of the Fed scenes (led by TV heroes Jon Hamm and Titus
Welliver), there are at least three exciting action sequences,
including a tight chase scene, and a shootout outside of Fenway Park.
To say Affleck reveres Boston is an understatement, but if he feels
comfortable behind the camera (with brilliant cinematographer Robert
Elswit guiding the images) in his hometown, so be it, for he's
getting better every time around, and this one's solid.
L'enfance nue ('67): Extremely unconventional sociology
study from first time feature director Maurice Pialat, who, with the
help of producer Francois Truffaut, lays bare the workings of the
foster care system.
Pialat observes the transition of a ten
year old boy (Michel Tarrazon, heartbreakingly realistic) from one
foster family to another, his troublesome antics seemingly clashing
with the kind, but frustrated parents who attend to him. The boy is a
classic study in psychological regression; at times he's actively
disobedient, and with friends he commits petty crimes with ease, but
other times he's a genuine child, attentive to his foster parents and
their stories, respectful of elders and cousins during a wedding
reception. Unlike in "The 400 Blows", where Antoine's
troubles seem to stem from lack of attention, our hero here is
generally cared for, which makes his problems and behavior all the
more confusing and frustrating.
Pialat directs with a cinema
verite attention to the scene, cutting from place to place with
ellipses that never connects time in an easy manner, suggesting the
disorienting nature in which foster children live as "temporary"
sons and daughters. It's a difficult experience, and rarely
rewarding, even to a patient audience, but for niche buffs interested
in the immediate post New Wave crop of French directors, this is an
important film.
The Docks of New York ('28): George Bancroft gives a tough,
bullish, and sweet performance as a steam ship worker who saves the
life of a suicidal flapper (Betty Compson), uses her, and comes to
love her, all in one gloriously foggy and brilliantly lit night, in
this, the last of the great Josef von Sternberg Paramount films of
the silent era.
Bancroft and Compson, using gestures and eyes
to portray their growing love, cynical and guarded at first, tender
as the night turns to day, make believers of even the most jaded
anti-romantics, and on these studio-built docks, those are plenty and
many, while Sternberg and lighting master Harold Rosson create a fog
shrouded atmosphere that, entirely studio bound, perfectly matches
the gritty, gorgeous, balletic movement of the characters and the
camera.
Some will suggest that the final five years of the
silent era is undeniably the greatest era of visual cinema of all
time, and these Sternberg films of the time certainly lend credence
to that belief.
The Social Network ('10): No wonder Mark Zuckerberg wasn't
happy with this project, he, or really anyone else involved, don't
exactly come out looking like anything but pretentious, obsessive,
elitist jerks (including Harvard and it's long history of
pretentious, elitist snobbery), but what matters is that David
Fincher, ever the master of making brilliant character studies out of
the most uncharismatic of subjects, whips this thing into a prime
entertainment, and a cautionary tale of mixing business with
friendship.
In his usual word-a-second dialogue style,
screenwriter Aaron Sorkin spins the wordy tale of the genesis of
Facebook (and subsequent legal battle over rights and it's tremendous
wealth) in a fascinating montage of deposition statements, computer
geek tech speak, and college dorm chatter, mixing in the defining
technological moments of the past decade as a way to meet, and
discuss, the sex lives of fellow students.
That it snowballs
into a billion dollar monster, tearing apart friendships, spawning
greed and opportunity for almost everyone involved (including
Zuckerberg, who is quite modest about his mega wealth) is the nasty
offshoot, but what success story doesn't have backstabbing ,
megalomania, and untoward ambition? This is riveting stuff, with an
excellent young cast ably handling Sorkin's rapid fire dialogue and
Fincher's black sense of humor.
From Here to Eternity ('53): A multitude of Oscars,
including Best Picture, went to this adaptation of the famous James
Jones novel, set in the waning days of pre-strike Hawaii, 1941, where
the loves, lives, and tribulations of a handful of Army men and their
women run up to turmoil as the clock towards war inevitably ticks.
Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Clift headline the high powered
cast, which also includes Oscar winners Frank Sinatra and Donna Reed,
and Deborah Kerr memorable as an officer's wife carrying on an affair
with Lancaster.
The melodrama is ripe with sexual tension,
and the "treatment" Clift suffers at the hands of a
sadistic officer who needs him for the core boxing team, is pure
psycho-macho torture, but for all the heated confrontations (and
famous love-making beach scenes), when the Pearl Harbor attack
finally commences, the mixture of stock footage and recreation
ratchets up the suspense that much more.
Take Aim at the Police Van ('60): While transporting a van-full of prisoners, prison guard Michitaro Mizushima's van is attacked by assassins, two prisoners are killed, and he's suspended six months for negligence. But who were these assassins, did they kill the right prisoners, and who was that girl by the side of the road just before the shooting opened up? All of these questions lead to bigger questions in director Seijun Suzuki's typically confusing black and white action yarn, in which Mizushima, on his six month "vacation", takes it upon himself to answer the riddles, stumbling upon a competitive prostitution ring and many shady characters in trench coats and sporting hand canons. Mizushima, aging into a suave but grizzled Bogart-esque tough guy, helps the audience through the holes with various montage recaps and his own puzzling out of the confusion, but it doesn't help much; by the end when the Big Bad is finally revealed, we hardly care, but Suzuki keeps it light and exciting, and his wide-screen photography is captivating.
Rescue Dawn ('06): Werner Herzog puts his actors through the ringer in this jungle set adaptation of his 1997 doc "Little Dieter Needs to Fly", about German-born American pilot Dieter Dengler, who gets shot down over Laos and held in a prison by torturous guards at the onset of the Vietnam War. Christian Bale plays Dengler, an enthusiastic pilot who never loses hope during his dire situation, with Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies equally as grungy and skinny as fellow hostages. Herzog is known for his extreme shooting environments, and this one is a doozy, but aside from the authentic photography and the fearless commitment of the actors (especially Bale, who eats bugs and snakes and is kicked, dragged, and soaked throughout), this is nothing more than a nominal P.O.W. escape and survival yarn, and a curio companion to the better earlier documentary.
The True Story of Jesse James ('57): Nicholas Ray's take on
Jesse James isn't really different than any other previous take, in
fact it's a slight remake of a 1939 Henry King production, but using
Cinemascope and his own idiosyncratic brand of angst and melodrama,
Ray's Jesse is a 50's anti-hero, and it's no secret that James Dean
would have starred if alive.
Instead we get handsome,
unconvincing Robert Wagner as Jesse, with Jeffrey Hunter (equally too
good looking) as second banana brother Frank, spinning the tale of
the James brothers from their involvement as guerrilla fighters in
the Civil War (which, after the war, makes them targets of North
sympathizing neighbors and bankers; a possible motive for their
robbery spree),to their disastrous attempt on a Minnesota bank, the
beginning of the end.
The use of flashback, and the Minnesota
bookends, is interesting, building a "who is Jesse James"
character study out of familiar tropes and knowledge of previous
films, splashing in some romance (with buxom, stiff Hope Lange), and
action (including a well staged train robbery). Passable, but not
entirely essential Ray.
The Magician ('58): Made during arguably the height of Ingmar Bergman's creative powers, with a cast consisting of his regular theater troupe, this darkly comic rumination on performance, the art of entertainment, and the dichotomy of illusion and reality (amongst other Bergman staples, e.g. Death and Torment), has always been a middle tier standard on the Bergman "best of" retrospective, but now with a shimmering, beautiful HD transfer courtesy of Criterion, the ever faithful Bergman experts, "The Magician" has found it's wide audience.
Deliverance ('72): And then there was that one time we went
rafting up in Appalachia...
John Boorman's 70's classic,
adapted from James Dickey's novel, still has the bite it had when it
first came out, thanks in no small part to the brilliant location
photography of Vilmos Zsigmond, which richly captures the beauty and
menace required of a film about Man vs. Nature.
Set in the
backwoods of the Appalachian mountains in Georgia, where blasting
companies are ready to flood hundreds of miles of land for
electricity and power purposes, four Atlanta businessmen set out on a
rafting trip of a lifetime, but what starts out as a bro-mantic
bonding trip, tuns into a nightmare when a couple of mountain men
disrupt the experience. The ensuing battle, kill-or-be-killed, tests
the moral and ethical fabric of the men, kicking in natural survival
instincts that one usually never has to summon in a normal lifetime.
Boorman's taut direction lends excitement to the already
tense situation, especially as the men float quietly down the river,
the rapids physically and symbolically around the bend, and the cast,
including Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds, are equally ready for
Dickey's devastating deconstruction of base human actions and
nature's intrinsic fury.
The Last of the Mohicans ('92): It's August 1757 and the British are trying to defend their colonies from the French; the French have allies in the Huron while the British have allies in the colonialists and the Iroquois, but poor governing practices and colonialist frustration are building and planting the seeds for future insurrection. Michael Mann's adaptation of Cooper's controversial American standard is heavy with politics, dividing up this crucial period in American history like a three or four way game of Chinese Checkers, with the Indians and their furs and trading posts as the catalyst to larger international game. The recreation is beautiful and authentic, especially the Huron sneak attack on the retreating British, and the lyrical, haunting Celtic finale, and Daniel Day-Lewis (always superb) and Madeleine Stowe find time for a melodramatic, sexy romance in between all of the heated debates and retreats.
Les Miserables ('34): Harry Baur makes a convincing Jean Valjean and Charles Vanel a sneaky Javert in this 5-hour epic adaptation of Hugo's well known lit classic, one of the last of the great French studio spectacles before an economic collapse cut production costs in half. Director Raymond Bernard, a master of wrangling large studio productions into seemingly intimate character studies, cuts his film into three parts, focusing on Valjean's immediate post-prison journey in act one, his salvation by rescuing Cosette in act two, and the student revolt during the Revolution in act three, bringing Hugo's appealing narrative of selflessness and spiritual reward to a resoundingly moving conclusion.
The Girl Who Played with Fire ('10): Noomi Rapace is a knockout in this second film adap of Steig Larsson's blockbuster Salander trilogy, this time finding our favorite post-punk hacker heroine wanted for a triple murder framed by her estranged gangster father. I can't imagine watching these films without having read the books, the plot is so dense it's sometimes hard just to get the names straight, and this one is much more faithful and packed than "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", but Rapace is so striking as Salander, be it in ninja black with red and white face paint, a boy's Yankees hoodie and cap, or stripped down in erotic sexual scenes (which this film only has one, but it's a winner) that the plot machinations just hum around her performance, and given that Salander is the standout character of the books, it's an apt, essential interpretation.
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence ('83): Directed with a distinct visual flair by Nagisa Oshima and composed of a multi-layered narrative between enemy leaders in a Japanese POW camp, this unconventional Japanese/English co-production stars international rockers David Bowie and Ryuichi Sakamoto as born leaders thrown together in a test of psychological willpower. With Tom Conti as an English officer and Takeshi Kitano as a Japanese officer who forge a kind of necessary bi-lingual partnership while Sakamoto and Bowie face off in their psycho-sexual mutual appreciation, the film delves into topics of honor, torture, war rules, memory, and the Japanese way of the Samurai, which the English fail to comprehend, and which becomes all too contradicted as the war in the Pacific escalates and the Imperial Army's atrocities become evident. Notable for Sakamoto's electronic soundtrack, Oshima's brilliant framing (numerous Hara-kiri sequences and torture sequences hark back to "Death by Hanging"), and the memorable triumvirate of Bowie, Conti, and Kitano.