Many contemporary romantic comedies have no problem locating the desperation within their female protagonists, but few hint at the loneliness that drives it. Those who devoured episodes of My So-Called Life during its brief run in the 1990s shouldn’t be surprised that Claire Danes manages to pull off the latter with grace and aplomb. Surrounded by Steve Martin and Jason Schwartzman as her unlikely suitors, Danes portrays Mirabelle, a talented artist who bides her time in an underwhelming job while she quietly waits for something — or someone — to come along and change things.
by Beth Gilligan | Source: Touchstone Pictures 35mm print
31 Oct 2005 12:10 PM | Submit Comment
I’m a huge Audrey Hepburn fan, and although this is isn’t my favorite film of hers (that would be Roman Holiday), I would argue that it boasts her richest performance. Directed by Stanley Donen and co-starring Albert Finney, Two for the Road tracks the ups and downs of a ten-year marriage with the appropriate amounts of cynicism, warmth and humor. As Joanna Wallace, Hepburn channels her usual charm and radiance, but bitterness, restlessness, and dry humor also elbow their way in, resulting in a fully-rounded portrait of a woman struggling to keep her relationship with her husband afloat. Sadly, the movie marked the beginning of a nine-year absence from the screen for Hepburn, who would only return to complete three more feature films before her death in 1993.
by Beth Gilligan | Source: Fox Home Entertainment DVD
31 Oct 2005 11:41 AM | Submit Comment
A very uncharacteristic work, even for Hitchcock’s early career, following a country widower’s search for a new wife. The film is one of the very few examples of pastoralia in Hitchcock’s career.
I don’t have much to say about this one except that the new French DVD looks nice.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Studio Canal DVD (R2)
29 Oct 2005 9:53 AM | Submit Comment
An early collaboration between Shaw Bros. (Hong Kong) and Shin Films (South Korea), this film was shot in two versions simultaneously — once in Mandarin, once in Korean — with two different casts and two different directors.
The bizarre, pseudo-Buddhist martyr scene, in which the heroine tears her own eyes out, is a must-see.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Celestial Pictures / Shaw Bros. DVD
28 Oct 2005 6:18 PM | Submit Comment
Part-homage, part-remake, part-ventriloquist act, Jill Godmilow’s What Farocki Taught reconstructs Inextinguishable Fire, Harun Farocki’s 1969 film about Napalm and the “unwitting” participants in its creation.
Here’s a clip and a link to a website about Godmilow’s films.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Video Data Bank DVD
28 Oct 2005 6:11 PM | Submit Comment
Elisabeth Subrin’s speculative anti-biography of the photographer Francesca Woodman. A clip is available here.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Video Data Bank VHS
28 Oct 2005 6:04 PM | Submit Comment
Consider the immense chore you create for yourself when you title your film Arachnophobia. Think about it. When film motivates a phobia in the viewer, it’s because the viewer has little foresight in what the film contains, or of the film’s potential to inspire a viewer’s phobia. This example carries no weight now, but Psycho was carefully deployed to theaters, with little or no mentions of its notorious scene. (Jaws doesn’t support my argument, but I accredit its relentlessness in instigating the viewer’s fear.) Conceptually, you watch Arachnophobia and you inherit a fear of spiders, but this isn’t what happens because you’re expecting close-up shots of inordinately venomous spiders, and tracking shots of them creeping ever so slowly up someone’s pant leg. The film is an adequate slasher film: it is replete if not constructed entirely with scenes in which the Future Victim is completely oblivious to the slasher killer, and the slasher killer has no human identity, and is even iconic. But – better yet – Arachnophobia works as a critique of capitalist malaise.
It’s the story of Dr. Ross Jennings. He’s arachnophobic, but that’s not important. In an early scene he and his family are moving in to their new country home. One of the moving trucks is filled with antique wines, which he organizes obsessively in his basement. What’s clever is that for Jennings overcoming his phobia is equivalent to renouncing his materialist vice. (In the aformentioned early scene, he quantifies the value of one of his more priceless bottles: “At that price, who can afford to drink it?”) The film’s epilogue has he and his family moving to San Francisco, harmed but alive, with no room for a wine cellar.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: AMC
24 Oct 2005 11:27 AM | Submit Comment
There are many highlights in this film, and also many moments that hault the momentum completely, and we can blame these flaws on the Coen brothers. Namely, Tim Blake Nelson (a jailer) and Pete Stormare (an optometrist) are supporting characters, and each inhabits scenes that misdirect the velocity of an otherwise ingenious whodunit. You recall Nelson’s drawl from O Brother Where Art Thou?, or Stormare’s Zwedish accent, which charactizes him as an outsider in both Fargo and The Big Lebowski. Spielberg has typecast both here, and their performances are noticeably derivative of their former work, and furthermore, their familiar idiosyncrasy is of little utility here. This is footage that should have been tactfully truncated and exhibited in the supplements of the DVD. Of course, restraint does not characterize any of Spielberg’s recent films, and if he can be described as an auteur of excess, then Minority Report is rooted in his canon firmly.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: DVD Screener
24 Oct 2005 11:02 AM | Submit Comment
The second of three “Rat” films, directed by Alfred Hitchcock’s great mentor, Graham Cutts. It is a strange film that moves from a beautifully realized belle époque Paris (with some very nice location shooting and elaborate sets) to the more expressionistic setting of the Montmartre underworld, represented by a dive called the White Coffin. As in the other films, The Rat is played by Ivor Novello as a characteristically wounded, passive, pretty hero. Oddly, the film charts more a downfall than a triumph, but this neatly exploits Novello’s persona as martyr.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: 35mm Print c/o Pordenone Silent Film Festival
23 Oct 2005 12:15 PM | Submit Comment
This movie has a number of memorable scenes, but it can’t quite hold itself together as a feature film. Nolan gets points for ambition, though I don’t like how earnestly he approaches the material. Granted, Burton is a tough act to follow, because he got it so right the first time out: the storytelling in Batman and Batman Returns may have been thin, but Burton understood that at heart, his main character was as absurd as the villains he fights, and so the right way to a handle the material was to go equal parts sincere/ridiculous.
Having nowhere to go but down, Schumacher abandoned all seriousness and erred on the side of foolishness. Nolan, in the thankless position of having to revive the franchise, had no choice but to go over the top serious.
The friend I was watching this movie with made an interesting observation: Batman is at heart a Conservative tale. Wayne Enterprises is the generous and inclusive moral center of the story, donating money to worthy charities and bettering Gotham for all. And so it’s not corporations that are evil in this tale, but genocidal ninjas and mob bosses. Which left my friend wondering, why has a company as philanthropic as Wayne Enterprises spent so much money secretly developing military weaponary? Batman Begins: a retelling of The Wizard of Oz, with Lockheed Martin finally getting its heart.
by Jason Woloski | Source: Warner DVD
21 Oct 2005 1:35 AM | Comments (2)
Happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy!
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: IFC
19 Oct 2005 11:01 PM | Comments (1)
No, the other Ring. A brilliantly realized boxing film, exploiting nearly every geometrical configuration of rings and circles that one can imagine — with squares (frames) and (love) triangles thrown in for good measure. After all, Hitchcock designed titles before he directed anything, and here his sense of visual design charges every frame. Interestingly, this is also the only film that identifies Hitchcock as the sole screenwriter.
By the way, the restored print on this DVD is extraordinary.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: BFI DVD
19 Oct 2005 6:20 PM | Submit Comment
I always meant to rent this movie as a kid, but for some reason I never did. Today, it plays like a sincere version of a Beastie Boys music video. The effects are cheapo, the sets are entirely white and red, and the characters are ridiculous (especially the cowboy based equally on Colonel Tom Parker and Boss Hogg), but it might still bring your inner-eleven year old out to play. It certainly did mine.
by Jason Woloski | Source: MGM DVD
19 Oct 2005 4:51 PM | Comments (3)
Stylistic correlations between this film and Jules et Jim are pronounced, but I find this to be the more tragic – or, at least, the more felt – menage a trois. Whereas Truffaut’s film observes its characters with distance (and some amount of derision), mamá is more sympathetic, even when its characters are as stagnant and desperate. At the very least, watch it for the end credits, which contain the most unexpectedly beautiful track off of Frank Zappa’s seminal album.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: IFC
19 Oct 2005 9:52 AM | Submit Comment
Duvall and Ferrell’s lack of onscreen chemistry is the only fun thing to watch here, growing in awkwardness as Ferrell becomes more nonsensical from set piece to set piece. Also, I don’t understand how coffee could be given such high priority as a subplot without any sort of product placement to go along with it.
by Jason Woloski | Source: Universal VHS
17 Oct 2005 11:57 AM | Submit Comment
Walter Hill’s 1979 film is something that could never be made today—not for its consequence-less violence, but its failure to sufficiently estimate the hostility of its depicted demographic; it’s escapism that’s a tad too dumb. This is not a correct approach to the film, because it works very well as a dumb fantasy, even if I kept thinking Escape From New York would be the better dystopia to devote my two hours to.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Spike TV
17 Oct 2005 10:38 AM | Submit Comment
From the Department of Lazy Film Criticism: “In the early stages of his directing career, Alfred Hitchcock made a number of hackneyed studio films which barely resemble the works he would go on to direct. The society drama Easy Virtue is one of the nine silent movies Hitchcock directed.” What Brian Whitener of the All Movie Guide is presumably saying here is that Hitchcock’s 1927 film is one of these “hackneyed studio films” that naturally have little to do with his non-hackneyed studio films.
Even the most cursory glance at Easy Virtue would demonstrate that this is not the case. To be sure, the film is no masterpiece, but it is far more interesting (and is far more Hitchcockian) than most of its assessors usually admit.
As a silent adaptation of a Noël Coward play, it is certainly a strange film, but Hitchcock’s work in adapting the play to the screen is fascinating and remains largely overlooked. The film’s first half is a masterful piece of visual narration, jumping forward and backward in time and between points of view in a manner that is still thrilling. And if the latter part of the film is less visually interesting, it still merits attention for its representation of the architecture of the family. Hitchcock changes the character of Larita from Coward’s defiant flapper into a prototype of Psycho’s Marion Crane, The Birds’ Melanie Daniels and the second Mrs. de Winter: a young woman whose threatening sexual presence is quashed by a dominant mother-figure.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: 16mm archival print
16 Oct 2005 8:04 PM | Submit Comment
Like Stray Bullet, The Coachman was made in the early 1960s, during a brief moment of relaxed censorship that would end with the 1961 military coup. The film is a rather winning melodrama, charting the rocky course of a hapless widower and his family as they variously seek love, employment, and social mobility in a straitened Seoul. Overall, the film artfully and endearingly combines comedy and tragedy, so its ending, while contrived, is thoroughly satisfying.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Bitwin DVD
16 Oct 2005 7:41 PM | Submit Comment
While most chick flicks follow a hapless heroine on her quest for love, this one digs deeper, leaving men on the sidelines and instead exploring the bond shared by two very different sisters. I’m not familiar with the book it was based on, but the characters in the film (superbly played by Toni Collette and Cameron Diaz) are much more richly drawn than your average chick lit heroines. Definitely one of the most rewarding girly films I’ve seen in a while, and yes, I called my sister as soon as I got out of the theater.
by Beth Gilligan | Source: 20th Century Fox 35mm print
14 Oct 2005 2:23 PM | Submit Comment
A parable on the unfavorable effects alcohol has on entrepreneurial, survivalist aliens (among many, many other things), The Man Who Fell to Earth isn’t as concretely approachable or lauded as Nic Roeg’s other films from the ’70s (two of which I consider to be among the decade’s best). It is, well, absolutely, cohesively weird. In its duration, I laughed many times, was frightened some (Bowie’s revelation recalls Don’t Look Now’s similarly jarring climax), and was confused most of the time. It is dense, and the narrative is relentlessly progressive; it’s the sort of film that is designed for introspection, provided the viewer can recoup his senses for a second viewing. In my case, I intend to give it another try after I read Walter Tevis’ source novel, packaged neatly with the recent Criterion DVD.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: The Criterion Collection DVD
12 Oct 2005 4:45 PM | Submit Comment
Akerman combines long sequence shots of New York City streets and subways with a voiceover reading of her mother’s letters. These letters (which Akerman reads herself in a soft monotone) relate the banal goings-on back in Belgium and berate her “darling little girl” for not writing more often. However, this voiceover is often drowned out by the roar of traffic or subway cars, suggesting that the everyday of the filmmaker’s new home supersedes that of her homeland.
Having just called Floating Clouds boring, it might sound surprising to say that I find Akerman’s films fascinating. But of course, they are “boring” in ways that are incomparable. Boredom in Akerman’s work affords the viewer a space of contemplation, even rest. Contemplating the details of the enframed image and anticipating the rhythm of the editing become new kinds of cinematic pleasures. Akerman’s work is filmmaking at its most essential.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: 16mm print
11 Oct 2005 2:40 PM | Comments (4)
While admitting that this is my first Naruse film and that this print came with questionable subtitles, I must confess that I found this film utterly boring.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: VHS transfer from 16mm print
11 Oct 2005 2:13 PM | Submit Comment
Showgirls is handing a child a crayon and instructing him to reproduce a classic painting. The result of Paul Verhoeven’s emulation is a supreme deviance from what is marketable or profitable—two margins Showgirls is insufficently designed to occupy. A quantifiably terrible film, and also an accidental masterpiece that transcends the careers of all involved.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: MGM DVD
11 Oct 2005 10:22 AM | Submit Comment
Completely lurid and wholly sympathetic, this film is epitomized by what is among the most beautifully orchestrated death scenes in film.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: IFC
11 Oct 2005 10:08 AM | Submit Comment
Of the extant films of Hitchcock, this is almost certainly his least seen and appreciated. Based on a play co-written by its star, Ivor Novello, the film charts the descent of a rich boy from public school privilege to abject poverty (and drug addiction, in the subtext). Accordingly, Hitchcock exploits every opportunity to visually express this descent, with Novello going both literally and metaphorically downhill in elevators, stairs, and so on. This particular conceit becomes quite obvious by the end of the film, but there are numerous other ingenious devices, and the film is in any case an adequate example of the director’s taste for purely visual narration.
What makes the film a little unpleasant is its misogyny. The film is basically an account of how money-grubbing vixens take advantage of young Roddy and ruin his chances of happiness in the pleasant security of a homosocial boarding school. To my mind, this is the only instance in Hitchcock where such an attitude is so plain and uncomplicated.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: VHS
10 Oct 2005 9:36 AM | Submit Comment
A rare Hammer misstep for this period. When making a mummy movie, it’s all about the shroud. Lee’s shroud is too tight and almost looks like a wet suit.
by Jason Woloski | Source: Warner DVD
08 Oct 2005 5:35 PM | Comments (1)
Jon Jost’s essay film is patently self-indulgent, but that’s really the point. In an obsessive, almost cartesian manner, the film attempts to interrogate every aspect of Jost’s local and global viewpoint, beginning with the particularity of the Montana cabin in which he has made a home for himself and then proceeding to the state of America at large, particularly its dealings in Southeast Asia. Jost shifts from intimate, sometimes amusingly confrontational interviews with his friends to a more conventional TV-documentary voiceover with stock footage of Vietnam, Kissinger, and Coca-Cola. What results is a fascinating account of the disjunctions between perception and reality, and between our individual perspectives and what we imagine to be the perspectives of others.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: 16mm print
04 Oct 2005 3:01 PM | Submit Comment
This is a film of great beauty and power, but I find (after seeing it again for the first time since its initial release) Atom Egoyan’s disjointed narrative to compete with the material. The same tactic is the paramount strength of the director’s seminal film, Exotica; here, it generates a suspense that is contrary to the film’s theme of unforeseeable tragedy.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Sundance Channel
03 Oct 2005 5:07 PM | Submit Comment
If The Simpsons is the old guard standard of animated television comedy, then Family Guy is its crasser, Maxim magazine-reading offspring. Family Guy treads where few shows dare, led fearlessly by its frat boy creator Seth MacFarlane, who shares not only a voice with his most famous creation, Peter Griffin, but a numb irreverence that at times proves nothing short of stunning. This direct-to-DVD movie piles laughs upon laughs, often in reference to obscure pop culture from the past quarter century, but it’s the structure of this film that may be most surprising in its audaciousness: what begins as a red carpet celebration smoothly transitions into a series of fake coming attractions, followed by a feature narrative involving an extended road trip and time travel, before concluding with a wrap party. Sprinkled throughout are commercials, public service announcements, and even an intermission. Granted, this isn’t Citizen Kane, but I’m impressed that the writers of the film actually made an effort, knowing full well that with the Family Guy marketing juggernaut currently running at full speed, they needed to do little more than paste four episodes together under the ruse of “all new material” to make this DVD sell like hot cakes. For my money, this movie’s worth the price of a rental for the Condoleezza Rice scene alone. The reference to Endo from the original Lethal Weapon was also a very nice, out of nowhere touch.
by Jason Woloski | Source: Fox DVD
03 Oct 2005 1:36 AM | Submit Comment
An excellent film, deserving to stand next to Spielberg’s Jaws as an example of how right Hollywood can be when cheerful entertainment and natural intelligence are mixed in exactly the right proportions. Josh Whedon’s command for screenwriting has made itself present in several previous feature films – Toy Story, the underrated Alien Resurrection as well as the underrated Titan A.E. – but I’m surprised by how effortlessly his television work, which I’m fairly unfamiliar with, translates mediums. With this film, Whedon has taken everything that once made the Star Wars series fun, and wishes it still could be but isn’t, and has made a film about a scoundrel captain more interesting and ambiguous than Han Solo ever was.
Rather than testing audience expectation with ideology lessons and “moments,” Whedon stitches emotion into the fabric of his storytelling as the narrative moves along (proof that the old adage, “show not tell,” should be remembered more often than it is). Whereas Lucas cgi-ed all ambiguity out of his already thinly realized Han Solo character in the Special Edition versions of Star Wars, Whedon has created a newer, better Han Solo character, packaged in a stronger story than Lucas has told in a very, very long time.
I should also mention that the acting in Serenity is truly an ensemble effort. Whedon has written parts for everyone. This isn’t a film in which one or two protagonists get to hijack audience interest while everyone else serve as window dressing for exposition. So much of what breathes emotional complexity into this film resides in the actors having been given actual parts, combined with those actors’ willingness to imaginatively realize their parts. Whedon may have had a singular vision in creating the Firefly world, but it’s the individual point-of-views allowed to roam in this world which makes it so interesting a place.
by Jason Woloski | Source: Universal 35mm Print
01 Oct 2005 6:06 PM | Submit Comment