Quinoa1984 Reviews

Go, Go Second Time Virgin (1969)

A nightmare of misery and pain and violence. Light viewing!

[8/10 · 22 April 2024]

Go, Go, Second Time Virgin is disturbing and affecting only if one takes it as a dream, or as it subsumed me in the uncomfortable and repetition of a nightmare. You don't follow this story in terms of realism, especially in terms of human behavior, and yet I don't look at these figures on the screen, Poppo (Kozakura) and Tsukio (Akiyama), like they're some unrecognizable beings or aliens from another planet. They're traumatized figures from multiple rapes (one of which the opening of the scene, letting the audience know precisely what this is) and, as we come to find out, a vengeance-soaked mild-mannered killer (ain't they the peachy keen folks), and their bond after Tsukio stands by and sees Poppo raped and doesn't do anything is to talk about how much they want to die.

So, maybe this is also the dream or nightmare of unending and the blackest kind of despair. But it is also shot in this sort of detached Godardian French New Wave approach where things are on such a surreal pace and tone that it feels like every rule is broken in filmmaking so that we can see what makes the traumatized and criminals of the world tick. When these two talk with one another it is all of a randomized piece, like all these violent and bloodied forms make sense even as nothing makes sense.

In a deeper sense, and I may just be spitballing here, the director is looking to portray how minds become wholly discombobulated after traumatic events (as perpetrated or perpetrator), how the only way to communicate and be connected is through a desire for an end to it all (and, eventually, there's unbridled joy in the mania of violence). This apparently ranked in the top 100 list of the New Republic's best Political films ever made some years back, and I can see why that would rank in there. In the sense that is is a harrowing, bitter document of politics, it js about how a destructive force like rapists and a vengeful killer can't and wont stop. And just because one takes it as a jazz-scored chiaroscuro nightmare doesn't make it feel less palpable.

Again, light stuff. I dont think this is something you would even come to unless you know what to expect, but what makes the film so surprising is that the director Wakamatsu, working in the form of Exploitation (and this was released as a "Pink" film or what was close to a Dirty Movie in Japan in those days) uses the wide-screen frame fully and boldly, and the fact that he shot this in four days and got all those shots in the rain is radical by itself. In other words, what at least partially redeems this as something other than just misery porn are things like the sudden song, and how he cast the film and directs Kozakura and especially Akiyama (who strikes me as one of the most chilling Killers in post modern cinema because of his mild demeanor).

Not something I can exactly see myself watching again in a while (one of those excellently made, artistically defiant works), but it is one I'm glad I took a chance on from the Japan section at Kim's.

The Tall T (1957)

What a picture

[10/10 · 9 April 2024]

It's not even the violence in The Tall T, but the threat of violence that strikes so hard and cutting into one's soul. That is one of those not too well kept secrets of the movies, or at least something that Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott know, which is that it isn't seeing violence that effects an audience but how characters wield it, and how those around it (who try to hold on to a moral tether) react and have to break out of the bone-curdling fear that the men with those guns like Richard Boone and Henry Silva carry like a shield. Oh, and how Boone laughs with an unabashed (yet very human) nastiness when Randolph Scott's Brennan bumps his head on that cave is the kind of moment the movies were made for, or rather how art could come out of Hollywood at the "B" level.

Maybe it sounds like film critics trying to redeem what has been so often looked down upon as simplistic popcorn entertainment, especially since this was not on the high plain even of like Ford's the Searchers just a year earlier (Boetticher had Technicolor but certainly not Vistavision) inasmuch as calling something like the Tall T as Existential or an even Poetic rendering of Bad Outlaws Taking a Good Tough Cowboy and a Woman Hostage. I know that there are times even I get into such Auteurist ideology without thinking about how many awesome craftspeople and even the producer of this film had as much to do with why a film is special outside of one director's supposed vision on a seemingly simple piece of entertainment.

But the fact is this had in 1957 as much to say about life and death in its own way as The Seventh Seal or Paths of Glory did (if in a slimmer volume of text), and at a time when perhaps the makers of the film thought audiences were ready for something a little nastier and tougher (within the confines of the "Code" but managing to smuggle in some moral complexity). This is a story where such things as who gets to stay alive and who gets killed and who goes to send word about money and who stays comes down to not simply economics but who places the coldest, most brutal value around it. And when Boone has his talk with Scott after laughing at him it's such a great moment because he sees himself in his own way as trying to make his way into having a decent life... just that, well, a body or two or four may pile up along the way.

Boetticher and the writers (one of them no less than Elmore Leonard) makes everyone complicated and morally Grey, including the wife played by Maureen O'Sullivan who didn't have the most gentle heated reasons for taking up with her small minded husband. And while one knows that Scott will do whatever it takes to win out in the end because he makes us believe he can outmaueveur and out-flank these dirty little tough-guys (one of whom, Silva, we get a little back-story in a couple of lines that, frankly, makes him far more understandable than any other movie would attempt to do), you can't be sure just how he will go about it.

There's taut suspense in so much of The Tall T, but like another Leonard-Western story from 57, 3:10 to Yuma, it's a tremendous and searing story more of how wielding violence can pay... until it doesn't, and our world of guns and attitudes and twisted morals makes that more possible than not, with Boone especially nearly stealing the production from Scott and O'Sullivan. I should not neglect to say that it looks glorious and there's a lovely score throughout.

Coup de Chance (2023)

Not always wise to make your own luck. Another Allen infidelity drama but great performances throughout

[8/10 · 6 April 2024]

Coup de Chance is sort of like Woody Allen's paraphrased retelling (and he's done what I call 'paraphrased' versions several times in his work) of Unfaithful, with less on screen carnage and erotic sex... which itself was a remake of The Unfaithful Wife, and which is to say this is very much a Woody Allen movie. That doesn't mean it's one of his all timers, but it's not in the lesser range either. It's a good, comfortable middle-tier piece of drama with sprinklings, like a dusting of parmesan cheese on pasta, of humor, and while it may seem on the surface like Allen repeating his absolutist stance on luck being paramount to one's existence, I don't find it quite as dark as Crimes or Match Point.

He manages to thread the needle in making a substantial infidelity drama with a couple of satisfying neo-noir overtones (and that I found knowingly ironic Herbie Hancock music like this smooth graceful jazz overlaying sex and lies and body parts being transported here and there) while having a good air of "we know how this goes, let's have some more fun as we go into the second half." I don't know if Fanny should have been a little more suspicious or war of what goes on with her husband Jean so she isn't to make the plot make sense, or... no I do, and it's not the actresses fault (de Laage is more than *fine) but is my one main criticism (and the pacing of the first half hour is a little slack).

What makes Coup de Chance memorable isn't necessarily the story anyway, and if it wasn't from Chabrol or Allen before this has been the outline of countless melodramas and thrillers, rather it's the strength of the performers to bring the verbose Allen text to life and (minority opinion I guess) Storaro as cinematographer does some of his best work in... well, ever, always with a seamless ability with movement and always bringing out the rich textures to every setting (or dark shadows when called for).

De Laage and Schneider have decent chemistry, but Lemercier and Poupaud are especially good actors for Allen for different reasons; Fanny's mother has to be more of the grounded (less of a Great Attractive looking Person like de Laage and Schneider are or are meant to be), and everything about how the mother quickly has her suspicions and goes into what it's all about is my favorite part of the film.

Poupaud meanwhile makes Jean a wonderfully irksome, rich-person creep, totally insecure yet with so much monetary power, and yet not someone we can't recognize as a human being with all his faults (as in he isn't just some rich clod, we get why he has to keep his toy trains running and going, an example of "making his own luck" as it were). In particular his reactions to the private investigator is everything we need to know about how he thinks and will act and those scenes where he has to hold back what we know he wants to say with Fanny in the several scenes after that is just perfect. It's also cool to see how he has grown as a performer from his earlier roles like Rohmer's Summer's Tale (you probably cant recognize him from that unless you looked him up).

I get if this has the "well, nothing new, move on" thing with this filmmaker, but if this happened to be the last thing the 88 year old Allen put his name on, it not only wouldn't be an embarrassment but he could think to himself "yeah, that last one had most of what I want the world to know about my mindset... oh wait, I'd be dead so who cares." In other words, in that closing narration from Alain's novel regarding how luck and life go together, the part about (and here I am paraphrasing) how to be alive is having won the lottery means a lot to hear and in the context of the film and his career of (to me healthy) skepticism.

The Heiress (1949)

A great picture about (as Scorsese once described) "emotional brutality"

[10/10 · 3 April 2024]

This is the essence of anti-romance - the ideal story of how someone can have their hopes and dreams raised to immeasurable heights, and then the disappointment and disillusionment is like getting hit by a train... and the worst part is life keeps having to go on. Scorsese recently described the picture as having an "emotional brutality" and that is totally accurate.

The Heiress means to punch a hole through your soul because, almost despite how we might at first look at Catherine like she is naive, there is not naivite but vulnerability. And it call comes down to money, doesn't it? When Catherine asks, with a newfound incredulity in the latter part of the story: "I love him - does that humiliate you?" We can feel the absence of everything that she had earlier, which was if not love than some kind of, dare on say, hope for something else outside of this existence.

But life isn't a Disney fairy tale and especially life in the upper crust of New York City in the latter 19th century could be as if not crueler than life in more "working class" straits. I totally get how this later influenced Age of Innocence (and to an extent Killers of the Flower Moon, especially the sickened realization in the latter part of the story), but The Heiress cuts somehow even deeper because of how Catherine's affection is sincere for so long - or, again, the hope for that life where a man can whisk her away to a grander place. She has everything materially someone could ask for, but material things can't replace what really matters - and of course Catherine's father knows this very well; cynically so.

Olivia De Havilland's performance is remarkable when taken in sum; at first, she seems so wide eyed to things she could come close to becoming an Anime caricature version of herself (cue up the stars and other effects around her head when Morris shows up, Montgomery Clift in one of his essentially beguiling and wretched roles), and I did wonder why she was so acclaimed. Not to say she isn't good in these early scenes, she absolutely is, but she is playing it so sincerely that you can't help but understand where her father and other characters come from in wondering how Catherine goes so all in on Morris... but it's important to note that hopeful doesn't mean stupid.

Catherine is an iintelligent and thoughtful person, though perhaps sheltered is a better way to put it and that sheltering and distance between what she wants and what other wants for her is blurred. But once that shock of abandonment comes, she sharpens up and the demeanor of De Havilland changes - and not simply there, when she finally confronts her father, but again after he passes away, and if she hasn't grown up then she's woken to what this life is around her. It's a transformative performance - via a character with one kg the great arcs of the 1940s Hollywood cinema - and an example of someone who conveys so much complexity - and notice how Catherine looks when she hears Morris's voice and then responds "Come in, Morris." Damn. What an actress.

In other words, The Heiress is about how a person, a woman in particular, has to understand their place in that "emotional brutal" world where status is everything and what is in the heart comes second and probably not at all. And the larger societal problems converge with the familial and personal and it creates a tremendous historical (and for 1949 or any year deeply Feminist) drama.

Closely Watched Trains (1966)

Will that train ever come on time?

[9/10 · 2 April 2024]

On a more substantial note, this seems to me a much more important and impressive film if one takes it at least a third if not a half the way as more symbolic than wholly realistic. It's not to say that Menzel isn't staging this in a place that is grounded in reality. On the contrary, everything seems to be filmed in places that look far from artificial, and if they were created for the film then the train station and the locations for the homes and rooms are designed to look like they've been there forever.

But what I mean is the satire has such a footing in its place and time, down to the often intentionally intrusive sound design, to the point where it barely looks like satire at all - this despite the fact that once poor young Milos suffers from his... condition, he can't seem to stop telling people about it (as meekly as possible). I'm sure critics and historians more astute or knowledgeable about the history of the period than me have connected this scenario and what happens with Milos and those around him at this station to how Czech society and communist disconnection at the time is there on the screen, or disillusionment to how rules and what Those in Charge Say is never really followed (even as destruction and violence appears imminent).

However, I took what we are seeing to be somewhat more universal in the sense that most young persons, or anyone who can fitfully remember when they were young, can know what it means to be surrounded in a job by people who have very serious tasks to do and all that pales in comparison to the bewilderment that comes with the... opposite sex, frankly (or it could be the same sex, but thats another matter). What happens when one is so ignorant of what to do when in bed with someone else for maybe the first time that everything goes awry? This film takes such a darkly comedic approach to this (CW suicide attempt) that I wonder if Hal Ashby saw this when preparing for Harold and Maude; Neckar as Milos strikes me as Bud Cort as Harold, only if he were even meeker and more introverted.

But it's not simply Neckar's equally deadpan and extremely sincere performance that makes this so endearing as a film but those around him and how they react to him (or equally dont), and how he does have someone who is attracted to him (and he her) and it's also portrayed with a playful silliness that makes such a rich contrast to the harsh black and white shacks and rust and iron of the railroad tracks around them. I especially liked Scoffin as Masa and Zelenohorska as Zdenka, ladies in his life who are making him uh so excited, the latter as this presence throughout the film that is not part of any satirical or commentary message, rather she exists to be... as real as she is, a beautiful young woman who represents a kind of freedom that no one in the story can get at even if they knew what to do with it.

Maybe that is a larger point going on here is this idea of freedom, the sexual kind but in a larger sense of what there is to do as Men; no one here can be all that free due to the wartime duties, but sexual contact and the malaise with young attraction seems to be something that breaks up that routine. Even when Milos late in the film gets taken away by what appear to be some nasty looking SS men on a train when one of them notices Milos's wrist scars he realizes to the effect of (without a word) "eh, he can go."

It's a curious moment, but what I took that to be was a variation on what we have seen elsewhere in the story; it's not necessary Milos himself that makes Closely Watched Trains a unique and engaging experience but how everyone reacts to him (which seems to be at worst incredulity and mostly chuckling embarrassment). He keeps on very plainly and in that same soft monotone declaring that he is a Man, as if this is the only way he can be considered that. Since he isn't really interested in war, maybe he has a point. Or, Menzel is saying, taking yourself too seriously as a "Man" in any context (or if I can try to find a larger sociological comment here goes) is a farce unto itself.

But hey, just try to think of soccer when *that* happens, you know?

Seizure (1974)

Creations coming to life - good premise, wretched execution

[3/10 · 31 March 2024]

It is not too complicated to look at what Oliver Stone was trying to do with his first feature film, Seizure, in that it is about the anxieties inherent in creating art. If you make a drawing or make a piece of writing or conjure up something out of nowhere, it is going to take on its own special properties and (to not sound too hyperbolic but it's sometimes very true) take on a life of its own.

Stone and his co writer decided to make this much more explicit in the story of an illustrator of Gothic things who somehow manages to bring to life some disturbing beings into existence. How they come into being is... I dunno, did you see the South Park Underpants Gnomes? (stage 1 collect underpants, stage 2..... stage 3 is profit, sort of like that)

While that intention of artistic creations that should be on a page only coming to life and wreaking havoc on a bunch of bourgeois house guests - including that ass Charles Hughes, played in one of the few memorable turns here by Joseph Sirola (you'll remember his name because he says it incredulously to a gas station attendant like 50 times in the early part of the movie) - sounds rather keen and interesting on paper, the execution of that is haphazard, obtuse and dreadfully plodding and full of dialog that you need the best actors in the world to make sound okay, and this has... the guy who played Barnabas Collins on Dark Shadows (who is trying!) and Mr De Plane de Plane Herve Villachaize.

Maybe Stone took this experience as a good sign for himself: you can only go up from here. Frankly I'm not sure he ever made something as messy and stinky dramaturgically as this (and boy did he try once or twice!) This whole film feels like someone really trying to impress with something in the idea stage that has far more depth that can be faced dramatically, but that might not be a problem if Stone understood the basic power more of having a demented good time with his premise. There's a moment when "the Spider" (Villachaize), after a couple of "gotcha" moments gazing like a creep through the window, crashes into this increasingly freaked out house party and caused some minor havoc, slashing up these snooty guests and not getting his.

It's the high point of the movie because Stone isn't afraid to get silly with it, or rather to let his actors to over the top. Again, someone like Sirola knows how to Amp things up to 11 (to the extent maybe Stone had a flashback or two to this when directing Pesci in JFK), but he is the exception. Other times, the pomposity of some of the cult-ritual staging strikes me as one step away from Manos: the Hands of Fate (but without the memorable costumes or horrific dubbing). But most damaging to the film is that Stone and the co writer don't bother to give much context to these evil creations, except for us to see brief flashes of the illustrations. Why do these matter so much to Edmond? Why are they haunting his nightmares? Shrug. Phase 2.

When it does mean to get horrific and violent it's also strangely, unsatisfyingly restrained (maybe Stone, unintentionally or who knows, didn't want to go too deep on creating violent imagery following his recent stint in Vietnam - staging horrific violence would come later), and yet it also falters just in making one feel suspense. When a character gets strangled there are multiple shots zooming in quickly and cutting quickly because hey ain't that s*** sick, bro? And meanwhile, there's only the same pained expression on Frid's face, punctuated occasionally by underlie outdoor scenes and creakily melodramatic music.

I'm glad Stone made Seizure ultimately; he learned from his mistakes pretty quickly, and even upon returning to horror several years later with The Hand he had improved despite that not being great shakes, either.

Fanny and Alexander (1983)

Bergman packs almost *everything* into one epic, personal, haunting and sometimes comical experience

[10/10 · 18 March 2024]

Suffice to say Fanny and Alexander, the last film that Bergman *intended* to direct for theaters (he had two others that were released on TV that also made it to US theaters, besides the point), is the stuff that most artists, writers and filmmakers wish they can accomplish in one fell swoop. Here is a work that encapsulates the obsessions, desires, fears, passions, anger, anguish, hatred, warmth, cold, humor, and probing questions in Bergman's life work- some 50 movies including scripts made by other directors- while also working as very possibly his best film, his richest, the one that says everything there needs to be said about being a kid, having a warm family, and being (rightfully) on your guard about men of the cloth.

It's also, as I sort of realized watching a wonderful new (digital?) print of the UNCUT 5 hour version at the IFC center, something that might have some comparisons with Pan's Labyrinth: this is a story of a child who has an imagination all his own, but also the story of what happens to him and his sister after the death of their father.

After losing the strongest father-figure force that she knew, Emilie Ekdahl remaries to a figure who seems to have an equally strong presence, Bishop Vergerus, who subsequently imposes that she and the children take no posessions and live with him and his family in a cold, medieval home out of the 15th century. Like Captain Vidal, Bishop Vergerus believes in freedom, and subsequently free will, but also believes in swift punishment, "strong, harsh love" for his wife and new step-kids, and the only retaliation Alexander has are his 'fantasies', which are all his own but with their own force to them.

Least that's the comparison I can make now, late at night and with so many thoughts and feelings about seeing the film once again. But it's got more than just the story of a boy's world of ghosts (not least of which, in a given Hamlet reference, his late father) and magic via Jewish rabbi Isak, but it's also the perfect telling of two kinds of family life.

The first part of the picture, up until the section with the father's death, is full of lush, vibrant colors, brought out by Nykvist's cinematography, and the vibe is brought out in the Ekdahl family, which is full of warmth and love, lusts, some quarrelling, some emoting from the matriarch Ekdahl. Then when things turn to the Vergerus clan, it's all stark and gray and without any texture, with bars on the windows of the room where the children sleep (which also holds a dark secret). In Vergerus, I might add, the actor Jan Malmsjo creates one of the most terrifying of all cinema characters, the kind of evil that ranks up there with Nurse Ratched, where it's all in the face of 'it's for the good of *you*'.

So, there's religion, there's spirituality, there's the supernatural, there's family, there's amazing, mind-blowing monologues, it's... a sumptuous film to take on a deserted island. It's the only one that goes past five hours I would think could work over and over and over again and still have bits and pieces to stimulate the mind, consciousness. And it's a fine piece of filmmaking to boot, on all fronts.

The Heroic Trio (1993)

Raising Arizona and Shoot em Up but even crazier - Raimi-esque Kong Kong Gonzo action with a wonderful Michelle Yeoh

[8/10 · 17 March 2024]

You know as soon as you get that moment, in the first fifteen minutes, where the one lady badass uses the thingamajig that severs one of the thug's fingers from his hand - with no positive or negative reaction, just "oh, there goes my finger" face - and then after she leave he picks it up and, after seeing Good that unfortunately it won't go back on he puts it in his mouth and eat it, this is going to be a very... special movie experience (and I don't mean that, at least entirely, in any ironic sense).

The Heroic Trip has both a relatively straightforward set up in that it's about 18 babies who have been baby-napped by a mysterious villain who is looking to have them for... world domination, perhaps (or just because this evil Master wants these babies because they have something he wants of them once they grow up) and yet how this plot unfolds doesn't always follow such a straight line. In fact, everyone's favorite bad-ass beautiful contemporary star Michelle Yeoh is initially on the villain's side, Ching aka the Invisible Woman, who has a cloak that makes her able to go in and cause chaos and steal the babies because, hey, who's gonna see her, and Anita Mui (aka Wonder Woman) is out to stop her, and doing a better job than the bumbling cops (what other kind would there be though?)

But the plot isn't the point here, and I don't think Johnnie To would want to kid us with all of that. All you need to know is that the Trio of the title does eventually form because (this shouldn't come as a surprise) they all have a past with this dastardly Imperial fantastical villain, and eventually you know Michelle Yeoh will turn to the side that is fighting to get back the babies. The appeal of the Heroic Trio is that To means to use his camera and editing equipment with the same insane ferocity that Sam Raimi had going on at the time with his Evil Dead movies (Dead by Dawn and Army of Darkness for sure), and like Raimi his delirious camera choices are matched by the special vfx department which has great goofy get ups of bad guys to fight, limbs and parts ready for the dismantling, and smoke machines all going at all times (yes, even when it's indoors).

It's a camp extravaganza of violence, and the focus isn't there for the entire run time, rather the movie works best in fits and starts. It's a terrific Set Piece movie more than a coherent story, but that is far from a complaint when To and his leading ladies (I also should mention Maggie Cheung, who is in a much different gear than one would see her a year later with Wong Kar Wai in Chungking Exp), and those set pieces are bursting with energy and fresh Gonzo ideas, largely involving how someone is falling needs to be caught before going to the ground (sometimes it works and, in one tragic cue-the-melancholic-pop-song post-dead-baby, it doesnt).

And while part of the climax is more repeating things visually we saw earlier- ie the bullet as it flies and then gets returned to the characters- the latter part of the climax is the best part of the movie, with I assume some influence from the end of The Terminator but much crazier and invigorating. It's the kind of magnificent showmanship and insanity that makes me almost bump up the rating a little higher, but for now it's fine where it is. It's hard to see someone not having a good time with The Heroic Trio as long as you click with it in the first several minutes. To and company aren't trying to "get" you with anything here: this is just straight out manic comic book filmmaking, but from a time when that meant something extra than it does today.

Ministry of Fear (1944)

Fritz Lang's "Is It Cake?"

[7/10 · 13 March 2024]

Ministry of Fear is a perfectly agreeable and mostly engaging and fun War-time Film-Noir about a recently released asylum patient (Ray Milland, no fake bats to react to this time, though, that would come a year later), who gets embroiled in a very strange group who perform a séance - this, of course, comes after he has already had a prized cake (meaning he won it in a prize at a fair - a fortune teller told him the weight to say to win it, despite all the suspicious eyes over it) and a person is shot in the midst of a struggle in a dark room. He's convinced there's a Nazi spy ring, but how can he prove it? Will someone find that missing and/or explosive cake? What a tasty MacGuffin we got here!

All of this sounds quite promising, especially as Milland can and does play a convincing Man In Over His Head type, and Lang and his cinematographer give spaces moods of portent and mystery, both in how sometimes characters are facing one another in the same shot (notice who has power and who doesn't), and what we can or can't see in the dark. And I love the set piece with the cake being stolen as the two men stagger over what looks to be a battlefield right off to the side of the train (then again it is war-time Britain, after all). If the movie is just "good" and not great, that may be in part from expectations - maybe unfair, maybe not - with other Fritz Lang Noir thrillers, and he made some of the best of them (maybe with the unofficial first one in "M" 1931).

Why it's simply "good" in the canon is down to the storytelling not giving a lot for Lang to work with, and he complained about that; the writer was also the producer on the film, Miller, and he reportedly hamstrung Lang in re-writing the script. So if it may not have the power and punch of the previous year's Hangmen Also Die (written by "Bert" Brecht), that could be why. Basically, the details of the story are laid out more simply than one might want, and while there's terrific atmosphere and a couple of good conniving performances for the Nazi characters (of course Dan Duryea, but also Marjorie Reynolds), there aren't a lot of other memorable side characters, save maybe the seemingly mild-mannered man on the train who sets the plot in second gear.

Ministry of Fear has some decent twists, a committed Milland performance (if not quite at Dial M for Murder or The Big Clock level of memorable), and a final line that should set all the old ladies watching this in a chuckle to leave the theater. It's nice Escapist entertainment that, unlike the best of Lang, won't stay with you for too long after it ends.

I'm Hip (2023)

Sweet little satirical jabs with energy via director Musker (Aladdin)

[7/10 · 9 March 2024]

"I'm Hip" strikes me as a little odd that it even got into contention for an Academy Award as a short film - I mean, technically it is, but it's also chiefly a music video, and for a song I'm not sure I'd hear outside of ambient background noise in that one guy's bookstore that only gets frequented when the guy's professor friend makes his class go inside - but this isn't to say it is bad exactly. It leaves a bunch of impressions regarding self-important Hipsterdom, and it touches on the now somewhat dated aspects (ie Hipsters frequenting French Art House cinema) and even those that have become hackneyed if not out of date (Macrobiotic diets, and here I am clutching my pearls, another reference).

Why I can't be that mad at something like this is because I just like John Musker's animation approach - yes, if it rings a bell the co director of Aladdin and Little Mermaid and Moana among many other Disney staples - that jumps and hops and pivots from one reference to the next, so the speed keeps it so you can't ponder how one joke may not be as gravy as another. Musker and his team also like quick throwaway gags and manage to pack in jokes in spaces that I would need another watch or two to get. So while this is anemic in story, it is bursting with jokes and a winking sense that anyone who takes themselves so seriously (and Middle Class life who needs that speed, Jack), and that's enough for four minutes.

So, for sheer entertainment and kinetic energy, this is probably (no definitely) better than at least one if not two or even three of the shorts that got nominated at the 96th Oscars. Am I that upset that it wasn't included though? I need to talk with my Java Cappuccino friend on the two hour line for the Movha Scones and $30 Flatbread before I get back to you on that.

Jim Gaffigan: Cinco (2017 TV Special)

"You walk and think "I'm Brad Pitt" then by a mirror "I'm... John Goodman?"

[7/10 · 3 March 2024]

Maybe some of this is not all of the freshest material, and you (or who am I fooling, me) will smile or have a chortle than a full laugh. But if you come to this after watching several Gaffigan specials then there's a comfort level to bits about the seasons or going to an "old fashioned" steakhouse or the idiocy of hiking ("there isn't even a vending machine at the end of it, you just have to... walk back the way you came?")

He's the kind of comedian that gets five solid minutes out of fish on Fridays (more about the general WTF ery involving the idea of prioritizing fish than anything religious) and how that leads to *Fish?!" in general and how disgusting that can be, and you know I don't always need Carlin or Pryor, sometimes... A pale Midwest bag of fluff in a shirt and pants (and a belt which yeah he has material about skinny vs fat people wearing belts too) is just what the doctor ordered on a lazy Sunday morning.

Actually, a second belt line and I felt all too seen about his line (saying how women are much better than men looking out for how they look) how men will wear the same pair of pants because the belt's in there.

The Most Beautiful (1944)

Kurosawganda!

[6/10 · 17 February 2024]

Seriously, The Most Beautiful is not in the mode of a particularly strident or aggressively anti-American or West saga, and I'm not even sure if America or the "Enemy" in sort of quotes are even mentioned once. In fact, the strength of the film is on Kurosawa's interest in the drama that would be found in the daily interactions of a factory like the one we see in this film, as the women are expected to reach a "Quota" in this emergency time of action. This expectation leads to what is actually more natural in such an environment: anxiety, stress, and, in what one could say is the most propagandistic aspect of the production, that work has to continue until morale improves! But hey, as Top Gun showed us, perhaps a team-spirited volleyball game is in order.

I think Kurosawa, whatever he had to do to appeal to the Studio/Governmental Powers That Be of the period, took the opportunity here to create a story that was not negatively drawn, as in we aren't seeing something that is meant to make people rush out and grab their guns or point fingers, rather it's about a collective (dare I say) positively drawn portrait of women who Can Do This (no don't insert that image of the woman with her bicep here).

It is simplistic when it comes down to it, and I would never claim this is a film that should be seen by non Kurosawa completionists (full disclosure, I came to this having only one or two of his works left to see), but I was pleasantly surprised that it is mildly engaging for the attention to performances and a kind of melancholy that the characters are fighting against. And yes, a lot of this comes down to "No, no, don't send me home because of X reason, I can keep working," and that drum is beat a number of times. And if you are wondering, there are at least half a dozen scenes of women breaking down in tears over what they may have done to (emotionally) slight a fellow co worker, and that is looked at in the film's pov as something that is like the gravest problem.

But I liked that Kurosawa depicts the issues for the characters as more interpersonal - or, I should really say in a larger sense, he let's these women like Noriko and Watanabe *be* human beings with some dimension despite the ultimate goal of this being to boost morale for the women watching at home. I could picture this as being without any personality and simply about beating the drum of "Do The Work For Your Country" and it isn't that. When a character gets sick, for example, this is looked at by the director as worthy of a sensitively drawn storyline, and it defines many of the people around this character as she struggles to try to get better - and then later when another character is sick more often than not and how this information becomes a focal point for another character.

This is all to say while Kurosawa can't help but get into repetition in the depiction of certain scenes - a group scene of laughing turning into a dramatic moment because a couple of girls are not laughing along happens at least three or four times here - he takes the scenes seriously as a dramatist, treats the emotional lives with sincerity (giving the actresses something to play, especially when one is shown as dead tired working on a project), and even crafts with his collaborators some kinetic camera movements and editing. It's a minor work that is marred by its sociological context, but an interesting one all the same.

Texasville (1990)

"Don't tell Jacy how I turned out, it'll just depress her" - black and white director's cut is a minor melancholic-comic gem

[9/10 · 13 February 2024]

Texasville is the sort of picture I'm glad I waited to see until I was sort of older as a person (do I say I am middle aged, oh hell I have more gray hairs, of what is left, to show for it, but I digress kind of); for the time when the longer director's cut - in black and white - got finally released to video in full restoration, which thankfully has happened from Criterion, but also because this is a film that speaks to the disillusionment that years of life, of relationships, responsibilities to others, that comes with middle age. It's a very funny picture in a lot of ways - there's even a semi-climactic egg fight at that much ballyhooed Centennial celebration - yet the melancholy of McMurty's writing and from the prior film is still there and not exactly subtle to find.

And sure, McMurty and Bogdanovich and company touched on in Last Picture Show this idea of not knowing where life is going and that rut becoming intractable, via the supporting characters (Leachman, who returns and is wiser if not still sympathetic to Timony Bottoms' Sonny, and Eileen Brennan who has a lesser role but still is striking). Maybe Bogdanovich had to grow a little more as well with life and experience to come to this point, but at the same time it doesn't mean Texasville has to be solely dependent on the previous film to work. On the contrary, like the Two Jakes released the same year (to a lesser extent that one uh Mob movie too, I forget the name), this works as its own story and the filmmakers create a dynamic that fits the particular world and changing of the times.

Another key difference is that Bridges' Duane is the lead here, not an ensemble despite the many cast in town (it is easy too, perhaps somewhat by design, to lose track of how many kids Duane even has, or who has grand kids on the way, or who Duane's kids are sleeping with and knocking up related to friends or his, but yeah, again this is partly a comedy), so it is about what he's going through most of all. At the same time, and for all the formidable strengths in Bridges skills as a performer that he brings to an older, sort of sadder, not much wiser Duane in this film, it's the women who make up the heart and guts and unconventional soul of the production. For as long as the director's cut is, you want to see what Jacy is going to say next to Duane because, little by little in degrees, her attitude towards Duane thaws and this love between them (one can call it that) is there... and then there's Karla, who nearly steals the film away from the both of them!

I can't stress enough how brilliant Potts is in Texasville, and mostly because of how, with some exceptions when the scene has to call for it like the kids acting up and getting into fights, her Karla is... cool, and collected, and this all may be a cover for her own deep seated pain and resentment at Duane. There is one scene in particular where she is just lying back on the bed or a couch or what have you in their bedroom as Duane is exasperated about a number of things and popping off, and she has the same level tone with him and is just perfect (it doesnt hurt that Bogdanovich and von Sternberg's camera adores her and she looks really beautiful here).

Indeed, the main pleasure and complexity of the film, which takes the kind of unwieldy sexuality of the first movie into another dimension, is how Jacy becomes closer to Karla upon her return to this town than she does even to Duane - and as one suggests to Duane, Jacy and Karla may be together on a more intimate level. Will Jacy take Duane's family, Karla included, off to Europe? Can you blame them if they did? Is it a love triangle? Hey, maybe they should all get some breakfast and everything will be fine.

This film as it is in its full cut glory may be too long, but at the same time the length is part of why it also works because Bogdanovich knows as well as anyone that you need time to let these relationships breathe, and for the many mistakes and follies and fights (the one between Duane and his son the most memorable, mostly for how it ends and both father and son are immediately sorry), and there's this gradual but very real sense that some of these people, chiefly Duane and Sonny but also Randy Quaid's Lester (so pathetic you can't remember him as the plucky youth from LPS), know that whether they've made their problems or life has to them, they don't know what to do about it next. And considering this is a world where the progtagonist is 12 million in debt over oil with a house and pool and maid, and to have sympathy for him, that takes something special to pull off on the director's part.

Texasville is a worthy and involving and entertaining sequel, and if not as groundbreaking as its predecessor it makes for an entertaining, humorous but melancholic (maybe on occasion wistful) drama with great dialog for these performers - and, it should go without saying, one shouldn't watch the theatrical cut again simply because it's in Color and it's mindboggling to think a studio would allow it to be done that way (then again I'm naive in my own older years). Indeed, considering the absence of Polly Platt (the production designer/at the time wife of Bogdanovich on LPS and supposedly a big influence on the script level) and Ellen Burstyn, this turned out to be a major success.

The Stranger (1991)

Who are you, who are we, what is life in society? Fascinating examination of existence and identity

[9/10 · 10 February 2024]

Perhaps, Ray might argue (or through Utpal Dutt's Uncle Mitra would say, a great performance by the way), you have a danger sometimes to be a "Kupamanduka" or "a Frog in the Well" meaning you reguse to leave home, and all that entails (stuck in one's ways, injurious about the outside world) - but if you are a "Chhot" (someone on the run all the time), suspicions may be raised as to what you're all on about. In brief, Satyajit Ray in the Stranger, to the last of his time on earth making films and this one about a potentially mysterious uncle returning to his niece and her family after decades away, was concerned with and had a great skill and ability to depict human beings caught up in societal traps, which includes traditions, history, and one's place in the world. If that all sounds deep, well, Ray was a deep thinker.

In this case, The Stranger is on one level about suspicion, which the niece's husband has (is this "Uncle" only here for the inheritance or something else, *What's his deal* in short), but is on another about what values and morals people carry with them - the Uncle especially talks about what he sees as the joys and ills of the world (the latter as religion and drugs, the former about family) or things he is indifferent about (sports/football, which seems unconscionable to one Bengali gentleman talking to him in one of the meaty dialog scenes).

One could call it a, forgive if this sounds pretentious but it is, an existential mystery: it's less about the suspense of whether this man's ulterior motives will bring for the family than what responsibility the family (or the Uncle) has in this situation. What is one's identity? Is it solely defined by how much one makes in work/money, or about experience and knowledge or wisdom? And it's not a film that ventures much outside the home of this family- part of this may have been practical as Ray was sick at the time, directing much of the film on an oxygen tank- but this also means Ray has his characters talk and talk and it is all so fascinating and engrossing talk. And where will the talk lead - to some epiphany? Or just... he is who he says he is?

It is all in the context of... who *is* this man? Well, who is anyone?

Heaven Can Wait (1943)

Trying to get lots of Beetles; wonderful Lubitsch existential comedy

[8/10 · 3 February 2024]

I think that scene between Ameche and Tierney in the bookstore is a superbly light and yet totally serioud encapsulation of the level of high wit and threading-the-needle tone that Lubitsch had with actors, especially in a romantic misunderstanding kind of context - or, in this case, there isn't too much to not understand as Martha sees that this man Henry has a thing for her and tries to tell her no, but oh, he has poetry in him. But look how connected by a live wire Ameche and Tierney are to each other, and how the color of the scene, that vibrant purple that lines her hat, adds to the warmth and sensuality, which maybe is in place of what you could get away with then.

So, show just this scene to someone and you can sat "this is *the* Lubitsch scene, this is what he was concerned with, how people are attracted and yet one tries to fight that attraction and we are so entertained by that conflict, and he is just so great at and confident in directing as an artist). That said, if that were today, no way he wouldn't get into some trouble for hitting on her so hard like that, regardless he didnt work there. Hell (pun intended) that was already pushing up against the line of acceptable behavior in that time and place. Oh, and this is the woman his cousin is going to marry, so they call each other Cousin Henry and Cousin Martha (from Kansas, you won't mistake it as Tierny brilliantly sobs about it).

The first half of Heaven Can Wait is far more witty and light and leaning into things like double takes for Pallette, and it feels so enjoyable scene to scene. At first, I had the quibble (hard to call much in this a complaint) that Lubitsch and Raphaelson sprint through the marriage so we dont get to see much of Henry and Martha until there are the conflicts, like from ten years and then to another ten and... that is the point, aint it? In the third part of the film, as Henry grays and gets older and has his indiscretion - and witnesses as his son Jack gets into his own with a theater gal (his reaction when he tells old rounder Henry is a highlight) - the film surprisingly deepens with its theme of "Ive done this with my life and that, and... I'm a louse, aren't I?"

Maybe another actor could have taken this into an all-timer level pantheon, but no matter: Ameche's performance got better for me the longer the film went and the older and less confident about himself Henry gets (as Sarris says on the Criterion Dvd, he courted women but didnt follow through as much), and when he and Martha have their last scenes ("It's just a dizzy spell" was the equivalent of a small cough in those days for a character like her to soon have mysterious/deathly illness), and I liked the fact that the filmmakers make this a little more serious as the characters get older, though not so serious that we lose the "Lubtisch touch" of a lightness that is totally natural, punctuating a rather dramatic moment with a damn good line.

Heaven Can Wait is a wonderful, existential comedy that makes a sly commentary on upper class gentlemen without denying any humanity, or power to women.

The Teachers' Lounge (2023)

Intense, timely, great lead performance

[8/10 · 31 January 2024]

The Teachers' Lounge may not tell us anything we don't already know (or assume to) about the perils and very real dangers of accusations or, moreover, what "Cancelling" looks like when people are more likely than not to believe someone who has been accused before the accuser - especially with circumstances that seem, well, fishy. Nor will we necessarily leave having some grander idea about how painful and bad it is to be accusatory for subjects when their ethnicity or race (ie Ali early in the film) or nationality (even Ms Nowak being Polish and her having to put on the German voice, until she's found out to be Polish by the newspaper, ever hear this Polish joke, etc).

But I was most taken with this as much as if not moreso the personal aspect or simple/not so simple humanity of the situation, or the lack of it/the damnation of it all, when trying to still be a teacher who Can Reach These Kids(TM)(!) It's not a cynical film even as it deals and reckons with a cynical society, and since we are in this teachers pov we want to be on her side (to a fault, perhaps). The script could have pitfalls, for too grandiose an actor, but Leonie Benesch gives an outstanding performance as someone who, arguably (or just), is too good a person for this particular job.

Or, if you take another point of view, who doesn't see the problem with being so trusting, or butting into things not her own business, that people will do the right thing. It's tricky to play composure-under-immesurable-stress without going too far into melodrama, but she finds the tone that is just right for every scene, especially with Stettesch as Oskar, the kid who believes her thieving mother (OR DID SHE?!! Nah she probably did).

And throughout, the depictions of students and other faculty seem if not accurate (my time in Academia is college not grade school so different frame of reference and all) then appropriate and striking, especially how the kids in class are a good mix of trying to understand and then totally breaking down and going into rebellion and disorder. And how exactly the teacher tries to reckon with this (and stop doing that silly Green Acres-sounding clap riff, going from conductor to nuisance) is also intense. If anything, the movie could be longer and would benefit from a little more space for the filmmakers to wrestle with some of the themes that are compacted into the stress of the scenario. In other words, maybe an extra scene or two with the kid and his mom?

After all, would you believe a dumb teacher over your own *mother*? Boy's best friend, etc. At any rate, put this on a double feature with Kor-eda's Monster also from this year and you will probably, if you have kids, will really have to look extra hard at how your school works.

Spend It All (1972)

Cajun poetic bliss

[10/10 · 31 January 2024]

This really runs the gamut of the human experience. I was soothed watching this, absorbed, intrigued, compelled, amused, entertained, at one key point disgusted and horrified - the guy pulling his own teeth out specifically and spitting out blood like old timers spit out tobacco, Jesus Mary and Joseph - but I don't blame you if you see this and are mortified when they casually slaughter the pig while singing the equivalent of Cajun showtunes - and it is all of a piece together.

Spend it all runs only 43 minutes, and one wishes it could run longer, but maybe it is just the length it needs to he for Les Blank to get a melange of points across while never making points, if that makes sense. What I mean by that is he shows us, with this organic, unvarnished and thoughtfully soulful style (as in how the music compliments all the animals and varieties of humans with them, whether they're alive or not), and this equally wholesome and down to earth/working class community, and it's not entirely a community that is together as they used to be, despite the scenes of lovely get-togethers and musical playing and, of course, the cooking (I'm watching this late at night but it makes me want to scarf down a plate of BBQ pork, oy vey).

For all the splendor of the natural world, and how much these people are connected to the world of their Cajun roots, we hear some poignant voice-over telling us how modern money and commerce has replace how people used to immediately come to help build up this or that (like if something fell down or other), like the fracturing of the community. Blank doesn't spell it out and he doesn't have to, that this is a world that could change even further in another ten years, even five years, as more commerce and more industry and the mediums of television and ither technology comes in. But it hasn't fully, at least not yet, and maybe the accordion is enough to make things a little more varied past solely the fiddle and violins.

I don't know and frankly don't care to know what this could be like if it has a stronger narrative spine or if it followed one or two characters more completely (Im not sure I even learned one of these guys names). And... that's okay sometimes! I think with a film like Spend it All, the magical quality is that it's that documentary that works more like a sweeping melody or piece of music that carries you along from one moment to the next, and Blank and Skip Gersons' work camera and sound work gets you into every piece of food, every catch of the day of the shrimp and crawfish, like you're in the pot of critters and world weary and work-gnarled faces.

It's not that this style wouldn't work for another kind of subject, rather I don't think most filmmakers would wrap their mind around approaching the subject like Blank did, to flow from one image or subject to the next (here's child jockeys one moment, and that's a superb little interview by the way, then crab fisherman and Bean cookers the next) and combine it with that sweetly generous sounding music like this.

Maybe this is to say, and I haven't checked out his interview about it on the Criterion Channel yet, but I get why Werner Herzog in particular loved this so much; the depiction of the world is pure, and the senses to show it leans into the poetic over hard facts or an adherence to narrative. In its unassuming and low key way, this is one of the great docs of the 70s.

The Ascent (1977)

The Men and the Damnation

[10/10 · 26 January 2024]

Devastating. Larissa Shepitko's final film (that she died gives me a sadness all by itself) is about how war, in its systematic barbarism, reveals men to be at their lowest... and, at times, if it happens, their bravest. And there's not a whole heck of a lot that can be done when in the face of unadulterated and immovable evil like with Nazis in the coldest depths of hell. And there's not much that compares sure the hell of being sentenced to death while cheery German music plays. The Ascent is bleak and awfully grim, but if it's punctuated by anything it's the pocket of humanity that comes from the Sotnikov character and his sacrifices... or what he tries to do in the name of a conscience.

And while I know Come and See is held up, perhaps rightfully so, as the grimest story of war being hell upon the citizens of Earth in the middle 20th century, The Ascent carries even more tragic power for me (maybe a little greater, if not with the same punch of those set pieces) because one gets interested in the first half with these two Russian soldiers, how they stumble through the winter wilderness and then wind up at the farm that will lead to their doom. And it's about how humans beings in desperate times will find their moral compass challenged and will meet it or fail it.

Boris Plotnikov as Sotnikov - who has that kind of intense fire in his eyes as a performer that is Method level in feeling like he took everything in him to do this - especially in that look that he gives to the boy from across the way in the last part of the film in that climactic beat - in many shots and moments strikes me as a Russian Richard Widmark.... if Widmark had turned in a Jesus-level performance. But equally impactful is the "Judas" of the film, the doomed turn from Gostyuhkhin as the soldier who sells his soul. Those final minutes of him in that camp tear you up inside, in some part because, perhaps, that could just as easily be you or me.

What a couple set of characters, what unrelenting direction, and what a perfect example of equally loose and controlled black and white cinematography by Lebeshev, staggering hand-held compositions and longer, inexorably drawn slow zoom ins and imprisoning close ups, for the clarity of vision given to such a harrowing and tragic, hopeless and cold story (I wonder if Kaminski and Spielberg watched this before Schindler's List).

Occupied City (2023)

If you give your time to this, this is one of the most engrossing and challening/rewarding documentaries of this century

[10/10 · 22 January 2024]

There's been talk in some (but not all) cinephile circles over the past few years (or maybe it has been longer) about how we have so many/too many "Long" films that get released to theaters (and let's table how many make the argument while binging 12 hours of a show in a day). In full disclosure, there have been at least a few in recent memory that have made me wonder "When will this end already" so I can sympathize the need for a break or two.

But I also subscribe to the notion put forward by, say, Peter Jackson (who has a mixed to positive record on this himself) that a film should be, to paraphrase it a bit, as long as it needs to be. In other words, is the filmmaker and storytellers using that time that they are asking the audience to take with them, once we go into the past 2 1/2 hour range for example, to make that commitment, with care and patience, or is it cinema as masturbation? For me, the context of the subject matter, and the context of the environment one is in, can make a difference (so like Killers of the Flower Moon, 206 minutes, film of the year... Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes at 156, not so much).

What McQueen is saying I think with the length of Occupied City are two things: 1) it would be short changing the figures of history who died (and/or fought and died and/or saw justice... or not) during 1940 to 1945 when Nazi Germany occupied Amsterdam to make it like an hour and a half, and 2) if you take the accumulation of all these places and events, and how much time I will give you to think and feel about what you're seeing, you may have a different time than you're typical documentary. And, sure enough, this is not unlike the high-marker of all Holocaust documentaries, Shoah, in the sense of "this is now, this is here, this is where it happened, and there is a sense of memory... and perhaps that memory is fading fast."

At the same time it also isn't like Shoah (maybe no other film could get to that just because of the timing of it all), because this is a Narrated experience, from writing via McQueen's wife Bianca Stitger (also a tremendous documentarian, see Three Minutes a Lengthening, the opposite of this but no less a Put You Through the Ringer of the Medium of Cinema Itself experience), and we are getting history about these people and places that used to live here in Amsterdam.... and many of these who lived also died, many shipped off to concentration camps. And because the city, as we learn in the course of this film, was not bombed as heavily as other European cities, there are places that remain (somewhat) untouched.

One of the fascinating things about the documentary is because of how it's structured - I was informed after it ended that there were altogether 130 places described and shown (which makes this an average of two minutes per place, some get more than others and some less, of course) - we get so much history about such and such a place; where the Germans did this or that and killed these people and how for example the firing squad worked; how they had their rules and curfews (more on that in a second); and how Jewish family after family after individual was more often than not dehumanized at first by Nazism and it's monstrous system and then shipped off to the camps.

We also learn about so many of the places where Resistance fighters met and did their acts of resistance both overt and covert (many Jews hidden, some kept away and some betrayed and so on), and where works of art were made into contentious pieces of controversy (ie Rembrandt). But it's not like any one piece of history sticks out necessarily, and that's not only by design it is what makes this such an engrossing and upsetting and yet (in little ways) inspiring experience.

The visuals of everyday city life, sometimes with protesters (early on due to Covid, other times against fascism and then, near the end, a gigantic March against Climate Change, with some notable figures in the parade I dare not spoil here), sometimes with kids, sometimes with the elderly, sometimes with a random man in a park doing martial arts, and, other vital points, inside many of the places, and McQueen is letting us take in an experience of, well, occupation in modern day... or, during Lockdown, the lack of an occupation, with this 4:3 framed camera bringing us in like I'm not sure would have been the same in a wide-screen frame (oh and the drone shots at night, eat your heart out, Michael Bay, I digress). But all of these visuals with the narration does a number of captivating things because it's never one thing that McQueen is juxtaposing.

What I mean is that there is so much that he's showing us, and that we are listening to, and sometimes an image and the voice over will be ironic; other times, the moment is precisely reflecting what the narrator wants us to know about this particular place (ie the one Theater, which was closed for a long time and then controversially reopened and now had a long memorial inside with many many names of those Jews who died who were kept there/hidden and then sent away), and other times it's more about, in a curious way, that the people not only don't know what such and such a place was 75/80 years prior, it's maybe better *not* to know.

I don't mean to suggest ignorance is bliss, rather that McQueen may be suggesting with his approach and style that these people, especially the young, are here now and they have to make the present and the future what it is, and as long as they meet what the moment is there is a chance for humanity. Maybe. Or there's time to dance.

There's so much to Occupied City, I don't know if I scratched the surface in describing why this is such a special cinematic experience (and it was shot in 35mm and since it was given a Theatrical release, however limited, it's meant to be seen this way in theory). I also get if it may drag on for some or feel too "long." To me, the length is the point, and even when my mind started to drift a little or when, frankly, what McQueen shows us with his camera and the real life subjects is more absorbing than what we are listening to, that's.... good.

I hate using this term sometimes but it is a Meditation as much as a History of a period in many places that all make up one place, and meditating for this level of time is what we need in a world where everything is in bite sized chunks and information comes so quickly. It's one of those times subject, context, form, and history all converge.

A tremendous work of art and its hard not to tear up at the end when we see that Torah/Bar Mitvah ceremony.

Trances (1981)

Great vibes more than it is a great documentary

[7/10 · 16 January 2024]

Trances is a documentary/concert film hybrid that you either get on the vibe of or you don't so much. I did, and the concert footage is spectacular; Eastern music is so mesmerizing because of the repetition and the groove that these musicians get into in song after song can't help one but want to move around the room as it plays and goes around like a slinky animal going in beautiful circles.

There's a complexity in the simplicity of the musicianship if that makes sense, that it must take years of becoming a fully integrated unit and to be on the same wavelength as everyone else in the group in order to create harmony and a connection not just with themselves but the audience, so it doesn't matter so much that it's many of the same notes.... it has the same kind of momentum as certain kinds of punk rock in a way, or even like the Stooges or Velvet Underground with some of their deliberately long songs (Sister Ray, Funhouse).

It may be a little more scattershot as a documentary, mostly because the director is largely concentrated to just observe the musicians - to the point of conversations losing any focus - as they talk and sometimes argue and some political digressions in the middle (with a couple of key moments of history on the music that I wished were a little more jn depth or thorough for context, like imagine the Beatles talking about Little Richard and youd never heard his stuff before).

I felt a little too ignorant on the politics of the region except the Band sings about general oppression and it likely leans into some religious terrain, though I could be wrong. If I knew who the members were a little more I'd feel something, but that's not what the director is going for - he gets their natural thoughts and down to earth philosophy in spots and that's cool.

Trances is directed with a calm and confident eye, not a verite influence of like the Maysles or Pennebaker going in and that works for this tone where people sometimes drift into a moment like the one guy with the yellow head-scarf who comes in with his flute and he and one of the drummers gets into a groove right away ("Hamdouchi" I think it was called for the rhythm). My point in this review is to note that if you're a college student with friends in your dorm with a good bit of substances, this is perfect to accompany your trip.

The Hole (1960)

Film Noir at its most gripping, somewhere between Escape from Alcatraz and A Man Escaped is Becker

[10/10 · 15 January 2024]

Le Trou was and still is a riveting prison film because it manages to have its cake and eat it (and I'm sure someone slipped a sharp nail file in that cake, ho-ho), and by that I mean director Jacques Becker and his cast make a fully dramatic story out of material that isn't melodramatic or so heightened that you ever feel taken out of it into something even vaguely sentimental. I wonder if there are some who come to this who have seen a prison break-out movie or two and may expect, oh, Shawshank or Alcatraz and it's not that. At the same time, it's not quite the level of sparse and austere stripping away to the bare essentials as Bresson and A Man Escaped (and I have to think Becker must have seen that).

Le Trou is somewhere between those two extremes, so no there is no scene where an inmate plays an opera record and makes everyone entranced by an emotional connection. Matter of fact, due to how this French prison is presented, where prisoners are mostly kept within their cells - and four or five to a cell and that's it - we don't get much of a sense of what the other prisoners are like at all. That's part of what makes Le Trou so effective and unique is that there's the central unit of these guys, and how this young "decent' fellow Claude may be a wild card (Marc Michel, he was in Demy's Lola you mag recall). But this group does grow to trust him, and pretty soon they go into the execution of this plan... which has several hiccups along the way.

It does help that Becker mixes up some actors who were regulars in films and a couple who were not, specifically Jean Keraudy who was an actual prisoner and appeared as a version of himself here (others like Constantin would go on to further careers but this was also his first feature); I can't imagine what he could have said to direct him in this scenario except to just be as close to himself as possible. It helps that he doesn't necessarily have to deliver Tennessee Williams here, and as a listener he's always interested and it's all down to subtlety. And then as the screws may be tightening in the last ten minutes of this, how characters simply look at one another, how Becker holds on everything, that's all you need to make the drama work. Who needs hackneyed conflict when a man with some information, and how much he knows vs everyone else, that's conflict all its own.

But it's all the attention to detail, the extremely and harsh physical process, of every bolt getting sawed down, all the floor that has to get hammered away, how two soldiers hide from two guards in a small space, that's the meat of the entertainment in Le Trou. And I dont think Becker forgets to make it an entertaining spectacle, even as he perhaps was influenced by Bresson from the attention paid to physicality and that purity of cinematic action and movement (I haven't watched interviews or read up on it so I can't guess how much or how little). We get to know about these guys, know what makes them tick, but the reality is if they don't get the fake bodies under those blankets moving just so as the guard passes by the door there's trouble, and Becker and the actors take enough time in the first half hour to get us invested.

Sharply filmed, tense, hard-bitten French Film Noir. Glad I finally got around to it and it didn't disappoint.

I Heard It Through the Grapevine (1982)

Now available again in a 4K restoration, Baldwin visits the South and it's as vital now as in 82

[9/10 · 14 January 2024]

Logically, I know this probably has a couple of minutes or interactions that make this drag even at its relatively brief length as a documentary. It doesn't matter really when the parts that make up the whole are so vital and disturbing and, when this was made in 1980, still a terribly live issue, and the filmmakers take a back seat to letting the subjects lead the material rather than crafting narration and typical talking-head interviews.

The Civil Rights movement? King's Dream? All of the (seeming, actual, somewhat) progress made? This documentary argues persuasively that it was largely surface level, with aspects of integration crippling parts of the South (ie the Blacks may go to the downtown White part of Atlanta, but would the Whites go to the Black owned parts of the city? Shrug, and there go those places). And as Baldwin goes from place to place in the South (and Newark, which my God you take for granted sometimes how desolated that place was left in the wake of 1967), he bears witness to people who were major figures in the movement, from the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth to the relative of Chaney the slain man in the killings in Mississippi in 1964.

And, despite and/or because it is 1980 watching in 2024, it doesn't feel like ancient history. This is still in the here and now, there's still jails being filled because of crime (and often disproportionally from minorities despite low crime rates), and unemployment and economic disenfranchisement never goes away, and as much as you may have criticisms of one leader (Carter) there's another just around the bend that spells much more dread than you can imagine (Reagan).

There's tremendous Archival footage mixed with Baldwin, as if in a sort of (forgive using this expression) Shoah/bearing witness sense, experiencing and observing the places where battles were waged and the 'Great Society'mafe things change while things stayed status quo in other respects. He also talks with his brother David and that helps to give the filmmakers a place to come back to throughout (as an even more personal place for discussion).

It is a bit rambling in structure as a documentary, but again it's hard to hold that against the bulk of what does work here, like there are some stretches, the whole Philadelphia, Mississippi section, the visit to Selma, that are exceptionally shot and edited and argued, like among the most engaging of any 1980s documentary. The message comes down to this: as a country, how many times will the opportunity to go down the proverbial right road lead to going down the wrong road?

Inspiration (1949)

Ingenious, one of the masterpiece stop motion shorts of its or any time.

[10/10 · 8 January 2024]

An artist sits and ponders what to do next, where he will get his next piece of creativity. As it turns out, as it typically does in the life of someone who needs to create, inspiration comes from one small thing - like a drop on a leaf - transforming (or perhaps more aptly transcending) into another form, lime little fish or sea creatures, and from there into another plane like figurines and a ballerina made of glass, and on and on.

What this makes you think and feel is that art needs to have an organic property in order to transform and change, and that organic quality, of objects being made of something that can then turn into something else, that is what is so completely and beautifully in control of an animator. It also needs to be said this all works so gorgeously because it is stop motion, and because Karel Zeman knows there's nothing he can't do, or to try, to make something like a small glass fish or a porcelain clown into a work of art. Everything we see had to be made, crafted, shaped, molded, and then utilized to bend and move for the camera frame by frame.

And there's always movement, momentum, and some kind of action that takes these figurines and shapes into the next place. This is all to say that Inspiration is a wonderful visualization of what it can be like for us creatives to work: one thing leads to another to another, and (to borrow David Lynch's phrase) you capture bunches of little fish to lead you to the "big" fish or idea. I don't know if this short has a "big fish" except that it's all little ideas, little pieces, that make up a whole glorious set (Zeman also features a flower or two, and what better metaphor than a flower that contains many facets to discover?)

American Fiction (2023)

A modern day The Producers (or Bamboozled, but sharper and more humane)

[8/10 · 8 January 2024]

Wright is very good, but look out for that Sterling K Brown, he's going places. The whole cast is wonderful; extra kudos to Uggams and Taylor, who have roles that could lean more into melodrama and then don't go too far into tipping the scales for the tone the filmmakers want to have as a more subtle/natural feeling film.

American Fiction is a fun, knowing and cutting satire of stereotypes and cultural identity (both of macro and micro), though if it seems like this is even more of a commentary on tropes that were more prevalent or pervasive in the 1990s, it's no accident as the book "Erasure" this is based off of was released in 01 - not that gangbanger or slave narratives ever went fully away, but the dynamics have shifted a *little* in the thirty years since Boyz n the Hood and so on. And there's never a comedic scene that doesn't hit somewhat - Adam Brody is a scene stealer as an example, and you can never go wrong with RBG art in the background to communicate all we need to know about a particular brand of white liberal - but it actually works better as a tale of familial dysfunction and grief and trauma.

My wife made a great point after we left that a point in the film's favor is that the way Monk is comes more from his parentage and upbringing than from his own defects (and the mother and brother and for the short time shes in the film the sister are all drawn with good dimensions and empathy dialog), even as he brings all of his problems on himself in his big goof of a move to make a point (which, naturally, is taken the wrong way by everyone... except Issa Rae, who calls out how phony and half hearted the book is), and his stubbornness to keep the lie going.

It's a very good film because it is about the thing you think it is going in - racial appropriation, how Whites see Black's vs how Blacks sees Blacks (and, though brief, how a woman is judged differently than a man) - but it's also about things that are more universal, like the harm in thinking you are superior to others because of X or Y or Z, or (on a more emotional/feelings level) not seeing when other people... like or even love you and not thinking you're worthy of that.

Two critiques: the ending having those multiple Wayne's World type "Let's do the mega happy/violent" ending has a decent punchline, but cutting to black and coming up on the film shoot is a little of a cheat. And on a lessor note, one thing I would've liked a little more of were seeing a couple other scenes from the book "Stag R. Leigh" writes (or an idea of what Monk's "Blue Label" books are like conversely), albeit that's mostly because it would mean more Keith David and you can never get enough of him.

Thunder Road (1958)

Stopping the clock and turning it back - classic B movie

[8/10 · 2 January 2024]

Robert Mitchum was cooler than cool. He didn't have to fake a thing, or seem to do much in the way of going into anything too emotional. That took work though, or at least to get to where not looking like you gave a damn was totally natural.

Look how he looks head on to those mobsters and the cops here - it's a classic example of going the distance by stripping down a performance to appearing to be just himself - but it helps his voice was about perfect for his physical appearance, and he modulates that while he keeps his face smooth so that one looks at his (fiercely intelligent) eyes. Sometimes, there's a man etc.

As for what it's about? "Small-time" criminal folks who are nothing but honorable men within what they do, as Luke is here and those who know what he's up to against Kogan, up against a Machine of money that is out to knock him out. I don't know it Mitchum, in his only writing credit of his great career, thought in the ways of seeing already in the mid 1950s that a total rebel Whiskey Runner/bootlegger trying against all odds to do his thing in an environment where an Organization is set to wipe him out with the cops licking their chops to get everyone for Capitalists to come in to make things "Legit," thought in terms of social commentary.

Maybe it wasn't conscious, but I suspect there must have been something of Someone Doing it His Way (and not being a total ass about it) that is there in a real Rock and Roll sense, hence why Presley wanted the Robin role and Springsteen later on of course. Like its central character, it's a film that flies, drives, in the face of authority. But if all you're looking for is thrills and tough personalities the filmmakers get it done.

Thunder Road isn't particularly deep, but it is propulsive, muscular, sharply directed, and it serves as a good bridge between classic Film Noir and the B movies of the 60s and 70s. I bet Corman wishes he had made it, or had the several extra thousands Mitchum got together from UA.