A Better Tomorrow

Chow Yun Fat lets it burn in A Better Tomorrow

John Woo's A Better Tomorrow, from 1986, is an exemplary example of his craft. A Better Tomorrow suffers from clumsy exposition and Woo's sentimentality, but ranks with Face/Off as a career best. Woo's juvenile gun fixation and a hackneyed plot are present, but also sumptuous cinematography, incisive editing and genuine star power. The influence of De Palma is palpable, especially the club scenes from Scarface. Woo shares with De Palma a swoony romance with Thanatos, signaled here with melodies that range from classical to HK pop.

The plot is a retread of various Warners gangster films: two brother, one a gangster, one a cop. Woo is a fairly loose director of actors, he is more of a visual designer and choreographer. Thus, results are variable. As the gangster, Lung Ti is only adequate. The doomed and forever golden Leslie Cheung is an erratic actor at this point, but he has presence galore. Best of all is Chow Yun-Fat in the Dean Martin role. Before launching a fruitful partnership with Woo on this film, Mr. Yun-fat had toiled in obscurity for ten years before this became a worldwide hit. Woo is especially weak with women and narrative, a minor action director despite my youthful enthusiasm. However, A Better Tomorrow rewards viewing and reviewing.

Best of 1992

1. The Last of the Mohicans                                                            Michael Mann
2. The Oak                                                                                          Lucian Pintilie
3. Raise the Red Lantern                                                                  Zhang Yimou
4. Passion Fish                                                                                  John Sayles
5. Un Coeur en Hiver                                                                        Claude Sautet
6. Unforgiven                                                                                     Clint Eastwood
7. One False Move                                                                             Carl Franklin
8. The Hairdresser's Husband                                                         Patrice Leconte
9. Simple Men                                                                                    Hal Hartley
10. Army of Darkness                                                                         Sam Raimi

       Honorable Mention

       Porco Rosso -- Miyazaki, Zentropa -- von Trier, The Long Day Closes -- Davies,

       Proof -- Moorhouse, Brother's Keeper -- Berlinger, Sinofsky, The Player -- Altman,

       Light Sleeper -- Schrader, The Crying Game -- Jordan, Husbands and Wives -- Allen,

       Glengarry Glen Ross -- Foley, La Vie De Boheme -- Kaurismaki,

       Noises Off -- Bogdanovich, Housesitter -- Oz

       Movies I Enjoyed

       Bram Stoker's Dracula, Bad Lieutenant, 

       Careful, Howard's End, Reservoir Dogs,

       Under Siege, Raising Cain, 

       Hard Boiled, Memoirs of an Invisible Man,

       Damage, Betty, Aladdin, 

       The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, Honeymoon in Vegas,
       Malcolm X, Leap of Faith, 

       My Cousin Vinny, Hoffa, Orlando,
       Basic Instinct, Fortress, Alien3,

       A River Runs Through It,

       A League of Their Own, Dead Alive,
       Single White Female, Captain Ron, 

       Deep Cover, Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
       Singles, Wayne's World

       Below the Mendoza Line

       Thunderheart, Chaplin, 

       Lorenzo's Oil, Scent of a Woman,

       Death Becomes Her, Sneakers, 
       The Lover, A Few Good Man,  

       White Men Can't Jump, Batman Returns, 

       The Waterdance, Sister Act,
       Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, 

       Cool World, 1492: Conquest of Paradise,
       Encino Man, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot

White Line Fever

The real stars of White Line Fever

Jonathan Kaplan's White Line Fever, from 1975, is an above average B picture. Kaplan's liberal populism, best expressed in Heart Like a Wheel and The Accused, meshes well with this tale of independent truckers fighting the powers that be. Kaplan, rather than being hamstrung by the formulaic plot, uses the gnarled southwest settings to accurately portray blue collar struggles. The picture captures the area and the era well. Kay Lenz has little to do and Jan Michael Vincent is always a liability, but the supporting cast is strong: L.Q. Jones, R.G. Armstrong, Slim Pickens. Dick Miller plays a character named Corman and Joe Dante gets a shout-out. No claims of artistic significance can be staked to White Line Fever, but auteurist leaning aficionados will appreciate Kaplan's efforts to elevate this genre film. Too bad they couldn't afford the great Merle Haggard song.

Mabel's Busy Day, Gentlemen of Nerve, 3 Minutes with Mabel Normand

Top-notch Vaudevillian Shtick

A yearning for Mabel Normand shorts sent me to the You Tube during our mutual confinement. Knockabout comedy seemed an easy cure for the doldrums and it was; Mabel's Busy Day particularly. A 1914 short filmed by Mack Sennet, it features hot dog vendor Mabel being bedeviled by Charlie Chaplin, here monikered "Tipsy Nuisance".  The backdrop is an auto racing track, the Ascot Park Speedway in Los Angeles. Sennet uses the track and its crowd to frame Norman and Chaplin's vaudeville shtick. Charley Chase, Chester Conklin, Edgar Kennedy and Slim Summerville are on hand. It spawned a sequel, of sorts, also filmed in 1914 at the same location, Gentlemen of Nerve. Like most sequels, it fails to match the inspiration of the original. Mack Swain joins the action this time to get his prat (or posterior) abused. I also recommend 3 Minutes with Mabel Normand, a video montage made with love.

Why build sets? Why pay extras? Sennet lets the performers loose and they perform.

Best of 1993

                                         

1. The Story of Qiu Ju                                                                    Zhang Yimou
2. Short Cuts                                                                                   Robert Altman
3. The Blue Kite                                                                              Tian Zhuangzhuang
4. The Piano                                                                                    Jane Campion  
5. Flesh and Bone                                                                           Steve Kloves
6. Groundhog Day                                                                          Harold Ramis
7. The Puppetmaster                                                                      Hou Hsiao-hsien
8. Bitter Moon                                                                                 Roman Polanski  
9. King of the Hill                                                                           Steven Soderbergh
10. Latcho Drom                                                                              Tony Gatlif

       Honorable Mention

       Red Rock West -- Dahl, Malice -- Becker,

       A Perfect World -- Eastwood, What's Eating Gilbert Grape -- Hallstrom,

       The Age of Innocence -- Scorsese, Barjo -- Boivin, 

       Six Degrees of Separation -- Schepisi, Dazed and Confused -- Linklater

      Movies I Enjoyed

      In The Name of the Father, Matinee,

      The Scent of Green Papaya, 

      In The Line of Fire, Tombstone, 

      3 Colors: Blue, Helas Pour Moi,

      Ma Saison Preferee,
      Kalifornia, The Last Days of Chez Nous, 

      True Romance, Carlito's Way,
      The Firm, Hot Shots! Part Deux,  

      The Fugitive, Cliffhanger, Naked,
      Schindler's List, The Remains of the Day, 

      La Ardilla Roja, Fearless,

      Needful Things, Naked in New York,

      Killing Zoe, Striking Distance, 

      Below the Mendoza Line

      The Wedding Banquet, Sleepless in Seattle,

      Blood In Blood Out, Philadelphia

      Much Ado About Nothing, Manhattan Murder Mystery, 

      Household Saints, M Butterfly, 

      Body Snatchers, Jurassic Park,
      Hard Target, A Bronx Tale,  

      The Last Action Hero, The Joy Luck Club, 
      Point of No Return, Indecent Proposal, 

      Benny and Joon, Another Stakeout,
      Wayne's World 2, Dave, Rudy,  

      Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, Sliver, 
      Grumpy Old Men, Demolition Man, 

      Falling Down, Mrs. Doubtfire
                                                                       

The Keep

The Keep

Michael Mann's The Keep, from 1983, is a ludicrous horror film. Mann's direction gives the film a cheesy intensity, but the material is so outlandish that Mann's sober tone doesn't gibe. The plot, such as it is, concerns a mysterious fortress in Romania that Nazi troops occupy in 1941. A mystical entity starts knocking off the soldiers until a professor played by Ian McKellen and a mysterious wanderer played by Scott Glenn join forces to combat the what-zit.

This has to be the worst acted of all Mann's films. McKellen, Gabriel Byrne and Robert Prosky all turn in competent performances, but the majority of the cast flails. Jurgen Prochnow is the worst offender, spitting his lines out with misplaced hysteria. Scott Glenn is his usual taciturn self, but his character is so ridiculous he cannot help but verge on self-parody. His wordless courting of leading lady Alberta Watson is risible, but so is Ms. Watson's big 80s hair. Her mop resembles a slightly used Brillo pad and it is no wonder she could not project a comprehensible character under its weight. Some of Mann's visuals are striking and the Tangerine Dream score is appropriately spooky, alas The Keep is a fiasco.

This Man Must Die

Hit and run or knocked over chess piece in This Man Must Die

Claude Chabrol's This Man Must Die, from 1969, is a top notch revenge melodrama. Michel Duchaussoy plays the father of a boy who dies in a hit and run accident. He vows revenge and the remainder of the film concerns his search for the perpetrator. The screenplay, taken from Nicholas Blake's novel, offers Chabrol a perfect template for an exploration of his usual themes of family dysfunction, manipulation and violence. Duchaussoy's character, Charles, finds out that film star Helene Larson, played by Caroline Cellier, was in the car at the time of the accident. He subtly romances her in order to find the culprit. He also ingratiates himself with her family until his suspicions align on her brother-in-law, a vulgar and thuggish garage magnate played with great gusto by Jean Yanne. Despite himself, Charles develops feelings of tenderness towards Helene and, especially, her abused nephew, Philippe. This leads towards an act of self-sacrifice unusual in the Chabrol canon which chiefly chronicles the dog eat dog nature of existence.

From the masterly cross-cutting between speeding car and victim that opens the film, This Man Must Die displays Chabrol at the top of his game. Sweeping pans show off the exteriors of Brittany as picturesque, yet harsh; a fitting battleground for a game of domination. When Charles and Helene make love and knock the pieces off an antique chessboard, it is as if that game of domination has been paused for a brief respite. Yet, in Chabrol's oeuvre romance is fleeting, as his characters, especially his male ones, always resort to exerting control over their dominion. Duchaussoy is a model of repressed fury. Cellier is merely adequate. One wishes Stephane Audran had been available. Chabrol's handling of action sequences looks clumsy compared to his main inspiration, Hitchcock, but This Man Must Die is comparable to the best work of that master.

Treacherous footing and intimations of domination in  This
Man Must Die

Best of 1994

1. Ashes of Times Redux                                                          Wong Kar-wai
2. An Unforgettable Summer                                                    Lucian Pintilie
3. Chunking Express                                                                 Wong Kar-wai
4. Pulp Fiction                                                                            Quentin Tarantino
5. To Live                                                                                    Zhang Yimou
6. Barcelona                                                                               Whit Stillman
7. Casa De Lava                                                                         Pedro Costa
8. Exotica                                                                                    Atom Egoyan
9. Heavenly Creatures                                                               Peter Jackson
10. Ed Wood                                                                                 Tim Burton

        Honorable Mention

        Cold Water -- Assayas, Leon: The Professional -- Besson, Faust -- Svankmajer,

        Muriel's Wedding -- Hogan, Little Women -- Armstrong, Crooklyn -- Lee,

        Wes Craven's New Nightmare -- Craven, Death and the Maiden -- Polanski

       Films I Enjoyed

       L'Enfer, The Boys of St. Vincent, 

       The Ref, The Last Seduction, Speed, 
       Three Colors: White, The Hudsucker Proxy, 

       True Lies, Shallow Grave, 
       Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Lion King, 

       Quiz Show, Eat Drink Man Woman,  
       Three Colors: Red, The Adventures of Priscilla, 

       It Could Happen to You, Dark Angel: The Ascent, 
       Clerks, Nobody's Fool, 

       Legends of the Fall, Serial Mom, 
       Dumb and Dumber, The River Wild,

       Stargate,

       Below the Mendoza Line

       Interview with the Vampire, Cobb, 

       Reality Bites, Wolf, Guarding Tess, 
       Bullets Over Broadway, Color of Night, 

       Wyatt Earp, Natural Born Killers, 
       Queen Margot, The Shawshank Redemption, 

       The Mask, Ace Ventura, The Secret of Roan Inish,
       Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, 

       The Client, Beverly Hills Cop 3, 
       Star Trek: Generations, The Crow, 

       Forrest Gump, Disclosure, Maverick,
       The Santa Clause

      

Carrington

Jonathan Pryce as Lytton Strachey, Emma Thompson as Carrington

Christopher Hampton's Carrington, from 1995, chronicles the relationship between painter Dora Carrington and literary butterfly Lytton Strachey. The two shared a lifelong love, a mostly platonic one due to Strachey's homosexuality.  The film fails as a portrait of the two, but is entertaining enough as a soap opera featuring the muffled passions of the Bloomsbury set.

Hampton provides little family or social background to his main characters. Mentions are dropped of  Strachey's pacifism and Carrington's Bolshevism, but only a vague sense of political ideation is given. Similarly, the lead duo's aesthetic leanings and motivations are not plumbed. We see Strachey writing and hear about the success of  Eminent Victorians, but his literary stance is not illuminated. We see Carrington at her easel, but are given no clue as to her taste, influences or inspiration. A line about art being her therapy is dropped, but never mentioned again.

Both lead performances are capable. However, despite the title, the film is weighted towards Strachey. Whether ogling a hack driver or mincing across a dance floor, Jonathan Pryce gives the film enough juice to keep the viewer interested. Later typecast as a villain or colorless functionary, Pryce gives the only full blooded impersonation in the film. There is a zest to his performance that provides a needed spark to a largely placid and picturesque period picture. I feel Emma Thompson was somewhat miscast as Carrington. Wearing a frugly pageboy, Thompson gamely tries to temper her grace and sex appeal in order to inhabit the gawky Dora. She never seems truly awkward, which is probably more Hampton's fault than hers. The notion of Carrington's frigidity is broached, shots of lovers pumping away on top of her as she registers discomfiture, but Hampton never explores her psychology. A similar thread of self-abasement is never pulled.

Hampton displays some visual talent here and there: some nice pastoral tracking shots and an interesting two shot of Strachey and Carrington lying on a roof. However, a number of moments come undone. An outdoor dance party is a choreographic fiasco: socialites alternately shimmy, frug and do the Charleston while "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" is played on a harmonium. The scene is edited chaotically as if someone wanted to hide its failure. Similarly, a brief fight scene, badly lit and blocked, is equally unconvincing. A scene meant to show Gerald Brenan's passion for Dora is so badly directed that it seems Brenan is suffering from indigestion and not thwarted desire.

Besides Caroline Amies stellar production design and Pryce's performance, the saving grace of the film is that Hampton is willing to poke fun at the Bloomsbury crowd's self-absorption. Otherwise, this portrait of the set's romantic misalliances would be under powering in its dispassionate ambivalence. For a juicy sidebar on this topic, I heartily recommend "I Married My Father's Lover -- Angelica Garnett" by Noreen Taylor which ran in The Times in June of 2001.

Trouble Every Day, The Platform

Zombie fu interior design in Trouble Every Day

Leslie Fiedler, in his introduction to Jonathan Cott's wonderful collection of Victorian fairy tales, Beyond the Looking Glass, posits two possible conclusions to all such fables. One, the happy one, is living en famille ever after. Unhappy endings usually involve the protagonists being eaten. The good conclusion intimates immortality through offspring. The bad is bestial in its consumption of the young. America's insatiable desire for zombie carnage dates back to the trauma of the 60s. George Romero kickstarted things with Night of the Living Dead, but such pointed works as Funkadelic's America Eats its Young also tumbled out of that tumultuous era. Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day is a Euro variant from 2001 that takes this idea literally: cannibalistic mutants feast on the bodies of their victims in a postmodern critique of consumerism. The body is Denis' canvas here, as in Beau Travail. The eros of the flesh soon leads to Thanatos as sex here leads to blood feasts.

Trouble Every Day does have a semblance of a plot, but that is its weakest point. Newlyweds Vincent Gallo and Tricia Vessey travel to Paris for their honeymoon. Unfortunately, zombie flashbacks point towards PTSD for Mr. Gallo's character. We learn, again through flashbacks, that he is a research physician who was working on some kind of mysterioso project that obviously went awry. In Paris, he tries to look up a former colleague. The doctor, played by the dependable Alex Descas, has a wife, Beatrice Dalle in fine form, who also desires feeding on flesh. Her husband tries to keep her locked up in their house, but apparently they don't have Home Depot in France and he ends up burying her prey. In the film's most memorable scene, two young vagrants break into the house with predictably gory results.

Cinematography, editing and costumes are all first class, Ms. Denis coaxes uniformly fine performances. Even Mr. Gallo, at the height of his rock goddess boffing fame, shows restraint. Yet the picture does not amount to much and my mind was left hungry. Denis is a passionate director and lacks the mordant satiric touch of a Cronenberg needed for the attack on Big Pharma (or whatever was intended) in the lab sequences. Not coincidentally, Cronenberg's last project was a, bloodless I'm afraid, novel entitled Consumed and it is also a consumerist critique. Trouble Every Day lacks bite. Denis would go onto investigate similar corporeal themes more fruitfully in the recent High Life.

Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia's The Platform is a Spanish (and Basque) horror film with a bit more bite than Trouble Every Day. The Platform's premise is intriguing. Inmates are incarcerated in vertically stacked cells. There is an aligned hole in the cells into which a platform descends containing food for the day. Meal time is only a few minutes until the platform drops down into the next cell. What is a magnificent feast at the top of the prison turns into smashed crockery and maggots when it reaches the bottom. Survival only seems possible at the top of the food chain.

Gaztelu-Eguiler deftly brings out echoes of Beckett and Poe in the two handed first act. The protagonist is played competently, but dully by Ivan Massague. Zorion Eguileor gets to gnaw on a hambone as his cellmate and nemesis, Trimagasi. Trimagasi believes in the transactional bartering of information, so scenes between the two gradually assume the dynamics of torture. Once the torture becomes literal, all hell breaks loose. Levels are explored and the resultant cannibalism seems inevitable.

The third act is a letdown. Too many scenarists hope violence will provide the catharsis, but here it occasionally looks silly. The director does seize on the visual possibilities of the platform as a still life. The goodies are devoured quickly in a simulation of real time before our eyes. The transience of our life, desires and appetites lie before us and tell us all is vanity. Flames flicker and fade. The fruit and flesh rot, all will decay: the moral of the Vanitas and Horror genres.

Our current mass incarceration dilemma gives The Platform more resonance, but it is the social stratification of this film that aligns it with Parasite, Roma and many others of recent ilk. The parallels with Bong's Snowpiercer, which had stratification on a different plane (horizontal rather than vertical), has already been noted. The Platform ends with a communitarian ethos enforcing self sacrifice upon the prisoners in order that the next generation may prosper. Ever after trumps once again over the consumption of human flesh.

Vanitas in The Platform

Best of 1995

1. Dead Man                                                                                 Jim Jarmusch
2. Heat                                                                                          Michael Mann
3. Shanghai Triad                                                                        Zhang Yimou
4. Clueless                                                                                   Amy Heckerling
5. Nelly and Monsieur Armand                                                  Claude Sautet
6. Toy Story                                                                                  John Lassiter
7. Leaving Las Vegas                                                                  Mike Figgis
8. The Kingdom                                                                           Lars von Trier
9. L'America                                                                                 Gianni Amelio
10. Wild Bill                                                                                    Walter Hill

      Honorable Mention

      Before Sunrise -- Linklater, Safe -- Haynes, Underground -- Kusturica,

      Fallen Angels -- Wong Kar-Wai, The Addiction -- Ferrara, 12 Monkeys -- Gilliam

      Films I Enjoyed

      Nadja, The Bridges of Madison County, Crumb, 

      A Single Girl, Babe, 

      Devil in a Blue Dress, Seven, 

      Living in Oblivion, River of Grass,

      From the Journals of Jean Seberg, 

      Cold Comfort Farm, Sense and Sensibility, 

      The Quick and the Dead, Little Odessa,

      Strange Days, While You Were Sleeping, 

      Carrington, Mighty Aphrodite, Smoke, 
      Rob Roy, Apollo 13, 

      The Day of the Beast, Showgirls, 

      The Usual Suspects, Get Shorty, 

      Desperado, Kids

      Below the Mendoza Line

      To Die For, Mallrats, 

      Braveheart, Jumanji, Rough Magic,

      Il Postino, The City of Lost Children,
      French Twist, Crimson Tide, Tommy Boy, 

      The American President, Waterworld,
      Dead Man Walking, To Wong Foo..., 

      The Flower of My Secret, Pocahontas, 
      Outbreak, Jade, Casper, 

      Home for the Holidays, The Brothers McMullen, 
      Bad Boys, Congo, 

      The Brady Bunch Movie, Assassins, Hackers, 
      Die Hard with a Vengeance, Tank Girl, 

      Billy Madison, Goldeneye, 

      The Net, Lords of Illusion, 
      Batman Forever, Vampire in Brooklyn,  

      Cutthroat Island, Mortal Kombat,
      The Scarlet Letter,  Judge Dredd
      


     

      

Long Day's Journey Into Night, Cecil B Demented

The transience of passion in Long Day's Journey Into Night

Bi Gan's Long Day's Journey Into Night is a largely successful art film that has drawn more attention for its technique than its artistic merit. The first half of the film chronicles protagonist Luo Hongwu searching for a lost love: a gangster's moll, Wan Qiwen, who he romanced twenty years earlier. The scenes of him on Qiwen's trail are intercut with flashbacks of their affair. The chronology is scrambled and the director chooses poetic effects over narrative coherence. The local reviewer from the Portland Mercury threw up his hands at the film's plot, but the narrative strategy worked for me. The film is a mystery that will reward multiple viewings.

The film further obfuscates the plot by having his two main actresses assay different roles in the second half, a surrealist technique. Indeed, the second half of the film is a dive into the protagonist's unconscious. Seemingly near the end of his journey for his lost love, he kills time by entering a cinema and donning 3D glasses, a cue for the audience to do so also. The remaining half of the film is one long tracking shot following Luo Hongwu. He starts his dream-like journey deep in a mine shaft and then emerges to find himself in a labyrinth like ancient fortress which houses a pool hall and karaoke theater. Eternal recurrence and repetition compulsion are the order of the day, as our hero searches like Orpheus for his lost love.

Long Day's Journey Into Night suffers from an art film languor, somewhat akin to Last Year at Marienbad. Mr. Bi can surely be accused of artistic overreach in what is only his second feature. However, his attention to locale has already established him as an auteur to watch. His portrait of the Guizhou Province, in this film and his first feature, Kaili Blues, strikes a contrast with the glistening cityscapes of modern China. Instead of the wonders of urban China, we are shown the impoverished underbelly. Bi emphasizes the struggles of the urban poor surrounded by rust, decay, crumbling structures and mudslides.

Mr. Bi uses graceful pans to bridge time and space. It is his lyricism, his celebration of the flowering of love amidst the chaos and rubble, that won me over to this film. Bi juxtaposes transience and eternity within this perhaps overlong meditation on romantic love. Stopped clocks and watches are the stand-ins for eternity. That Mr. Bi has chosen to make his case for transient passion, the flickering flame of love, is encapsulated by the film's final frame.

John Waters' Cecil B. Demented, from 2000, is a different kind of art film, but Waters uses his ramshackle style to also celebrate passion. In this case, his enthusiasm for his favorite film artists and fading (or faded) movie palaces. The plot, as in every other Waters feature, is about borderline criminal misfits putting on a show. There is a thin line in Waters' work between criminal behavior and performance art. The setting is, as usual, Baltimore and this Charm City bred lad cannot hope to be objective about a film that utilizes familiar and beloved haunts of his youth. To sum up succinctly: better than Serial Mom, but not as funny as Pecker. In retrospect, it is especially fun to see young thesps such as Michael (Mike here) Shannon, Alicia Witt and Maggie Gyllenhaal give their all for the director's looney vision. As Waters himself has noted, he got to use actors who were either rising or falling in their careers. On the downslope, Melanie Griffith and Stephen Dorff give committed performances and perhaps they should have been. Mr. Waters' primitive technique inches forward here: he uses wipes and even a POV shot near the end. Still, it is his cramming in almost every seedy and decrepit movie theater in the Baltimore metro area that marks this as a labor of love.

                             

The Apex: The last adult theater in Baltimore. Now a grocery store.

Mama Mia! Here We Go Again

Ol Parker's Mama Mia! Here We Go Again is a dull retread of the first film. Parker's direction lacks the buoyancy and spritz that Phyllida Lloyd brought to the first film. The interiors again look like Pottery Barn advertisements and the vocalizations are again cheerily amateurish. Unfortunately, we are left with the dregs of the Abba songbook. Jessica Keenan Wynn as the young Christine Baranski and Josh Dylan as the young Stellan Skarsgard are the brightest of the newcomers.  The project seems like a cynical cash in on the success of the first film. Even Cher's cameo seems perfunctory. In short: stale processed cheese.

Best of 1996

1. Flirting With Disaster                                                                David O Russell
2. Fargo                                                                                           Joel & Ethan Cohen
3. Irma Vep                                                                                      Olivier Assayas
4. Ridicule                                                                                       Patrice Leconte 
5. Mother                                                                                         Albert Brooks
6. Breaking the Waves                                                                   Lars von Trier   
7. Trainspotting                                                                              Danny Boyle
8. The Whole Wide World                                                              Dan Ireland
9. Paradise Lost:...                                                       Joe Berlinger, Brian Sinofsky  
10. Hard 8                                                                                         Paul Thomas Anderson

      Honorable Mention 

      Drifting Clouds -- Kaurismaki, Angels and Insects -- Haas, Jude -- Winterbottom,

      Beautiful Girls -- Ted Demme, La Ceremonie -- Chabrol

      Films I Enjoyed

      Mars Attacks!, Michael Collins,

      Cable Guy, Jerry Maguire

      Bottle Rocket, Crash, Bound,

      Portrait of a Lady, The Long Kiss Goodnight, 

      From Dusk Till Dawn, Scream,

      The Rock, The Birdcage, Kingpin, 

      2 Days in the Valley, Swingers, Ransom,

      The People vs. Larry Flynt, The Craft, 

      Twister, Primal Fear, Romeo + Juliet,

      The English Patient, Everyone Says I Love You, 

      Broken Arrow, That Thing You Do!

      Below the Mendoza Line

      Sling Blade, Tin Cup, 

      The First Wives Club, Stealing Beauty,

      Kansas City, The Stendahl Syndrome, 

      Evita, Happy Gilmore, The Frighteners,

      The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mulholland Falls,

      The Ghost and The Darkness, Matilda, 

      Sleepers, The Island of Dr. Moreau, 

      Independence Day, Striptease,

      Black Sheep, A Time to Kill, Star Trek: First Contact, 

      Mission Impossible, The Nutty Professor, 

      Dragonheart, 101 Dalmatians, Bio-Dome, 
      Bulletproof, Eraser, Space Jam, 

      Jack, Barb Wire

   

      

                       

Happy Death Day 2U

Jessica Rothe is menaced yet again in Happy Death Day 2U

Christopher Landon's Happy Death Day 2U is a better than average sequel to a better than average teen slasher flick. The Groundhog Day premise of the first film is expanded utilizing the campus science nerds and the theory of relativity. Invention never flags even if the action is, by definition, formulaic. Even while working with cheesy scenarios, Landon's direction displays, once again, a winning sweetness. Jessica Rothe, a little long in the tooth to be playing a college student, delivers a disciplined performance that holds together the wispy plot threads and propels the action forward. Landon's films tend to be better constructed and paced than most bigger-budgeted Hollywood fare.

A Cold Wind in August

Lola Albright

Alexander Singer's A Cold Wind in August, from 1961, is an impactful B picture that illustrates a May to September romance. Shooting on location in New York, Singer uses the story of mismatched lovers to picture the cultural dislocation of urban America in the early 60s. The premise borders on that of a pornographic short. During a heat wave, teenaged Vito, whose father is the building's super, goes to the apartment of Iris, an upscale stripper and prostitute. Spark fly and after a couple of Bloody Marys, so does Vito's virginity. Soon he is skipping stick ball with his pals to tryst with Iris. Eventually, he learns The Truth and thus the lesson endeth.

The film verges on exploitation, but Singer's skill with his cast lifts the picture above the routine. There are no jarringly bad performances. Scott Marlowe is fine as Vito. He is ten years too old for the role, but captures the youthful awkwardness of his character. However, Lola Albright, as Iris, is the cynosure of the film. Iris is punished by society, but Singer films her with empathy. It is easy enough to evoke this as Iris bumps and grinds in front of elderly, slobbering yahoos, but Singer also views her transgressive desire for Vito with sympathy. After all, are women not equally attracted to the young and beautiful. As a bald, elderly, slobbering Wahoo, I think the answer is obvious. Singer views Iris as a woman and not a cautionary figure.

Herschel Bernardi gives an understated and effective performance as Iris' sugar daddy. Joe De Santis also gives a deft performance as Vito's father. He avoids any marinara slathering and hits notes of rueful wisdom. Singer's talent seems to have been submerged in television, but a scanning of his impressive credits indicates he kept his hand in the game.

Best of 1997

1. L.A. Confidential                                                                   Curtis Hanson
2. Gattaca                                                                                   Andrew Niccol
3. Jackie Brown                                                                         Quentin Tarantino
4. My Best Friend's Wedding                                                   P. J. Hogan 
5. Henry Fool                                                                             Hal Hartley
6. The Wings of a Dove                                                             Iain Softley     
7. Taste of Cherry                                                                     Abbas Kiarostami  
8. Chasing Amy                                                                         Kevin Smith 
9. The Sweet Hereafter                                                             Atom Egoyan    
10. The Eel                                                                                   Shohei Imamura

       Honorable Mention

       Boogie Nights -- PT Anderson, Washington Square -- Agnieszka Holland, 

       Titanic  -- Cameron, The Swindle -- Chabrol

       Films I Enjoyed

       Winter Sleepers, Live Flesh, 

       The Fifth Element, Open Your Eyes,

       Year of the Horse, The Apostle,

       Perdita Durango, Mr. Jealousy,

       Starship Troopers, Con Air,
       Face/Off, Amistad, 

       Happy Together, The Spanish Prisoner,

       Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, Hercules,
       The Devil's Advocate, The Day Trippers, 

       As Good As It Gets, Grosse Point Blank,
       Air Force One, Breakdown,

       The Game, The Rainmaker,
       Alien Resurrection, Donnie Brasco, 

       Kundun,

       Lost Highway, Funny Games,

       Scream 2, Wag the Dog,
       Good Will Hunting, Cop Land, 

       Cure, Mimic, 

       Orgazmo

       Below the Mendoza Line

      Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, Two Girls and a Guy,
      George of the Jungle, Liar, Liar,

      In & Out, The Full Monty,

      Lolita,  

      The Jackal, Contact,
      Men in Black, An American Werewolf in Paris, 

      Austin Powers, Seven Years in Tibet,
      The Ice Storm, Kiss the Girls, 

      GI Jane, Two Orphan Vampires,

      Anaconda, Tomorrow Never Dies,
      Conspiracy Theory, Dante's Peak, The Saint, 
      
      So Bad It's Almost Good

      Batman and Robin

                                      

Ruben Brandt, Collector

Art is all consuming in Ruben Brandt, Collector

A jaunt through the Western Art canon, Ruben Brandt, Collector is spirited adult animation. The Slovenian feature from Milorad Krstic finds the title character haunted by figures from great paintings as he dreams. The film takes on a surreal edge immediately as Velasquez's "Infanta" eviscerates Brandt's forearm with her incisors. Paintings are integrated into the action and form the film's background. The effects and affects verge on overload, but Krstic keeps the momentum chugging along. He wisely shifts the film's palette with each succeeding segment, varying from somber realism to Fauvism.

The film's plot concerns Brandt's attempt to steal and collect the masterpieces that haunt him in order to purge his trauma. An "art therapist", Brandt inhabits a world where characters faces appear to be drawn by Ernst, Dubuffet, Grosz or Modigliani. The narrative is absurd, but the visual invention never flags. Despite one too many chase scenes, Ruben Brandt, Collector ranks with the best animation of the last decade.

Black Coal, Thin Ice

Grids and neon fill the frame in Black Coal, Thin Ice

Diao Yinan's Black Coal, Thin Ice is a masterful mystery that doesn't kowtow to audience expectations for a tidy narrative. Mr. Diao purposefully obfuscates the story to heighten his poetic reveries of lust and control. The cinematographer Dong Jingsong, a frequent Diao collaborator who also shot Long Day's Journey Into Night, alternates between illustrating the industrial grid of downtown Xi'an and projecting a dream like atmosphere lit by gauzy neon. This works to somewhat mask the seamy nature of the plot, a noir in the tradition of James M. Cain. Fan Liao plays a police detective, Zili, in the Northern Chinese province of Shaanxi. The opening sequence, which has little to do with the plot and where he beats a woman who has dumped him, establishes him as a brute. An investigation into a mysterious killing in which body parts have ended up in coal bins miles apart ends badly with suspects and cops killed and Zili suspended from the force because of his PTSD.

Five years later, Zili begins to suspect the coal bin killer is still on the loose and starts shadowing the widow of an alleged victim. Further spoilers will be avoided because the impact of the film depends on the viewer perceiving things to be as much of a tangled web as the protagonist does. Lu-Mei Kwei gives a great, moody performance as the "widow" who Zili becomes smitten with. She is portrayed as a pawn passed between louts. The neon and constant snow provide a patina of romance to Xi'an, but the reality is tragic and coarse. The police are brutal forces of repression, none more so than Zili who rapes his lady love in a Ferris wheel.

Black Coal, Thin Ice is a bracing combination of beauty and Kino Fist. Production design, costumes and, particularly, sound design are all first rate. The film lingers in the nether regions of the mind. The images accumulate as if in a dream or, more aptly, a nightmare. The film sparkles and flickers such that the Chinese title might have been more apropos: Daylight Fireworks.

Best of 1998

1. A Simple Plan                                                                           Sam Raimi
2. Out of Sight                                                                               Steven Soderbergh
3. Croupier                                                                                    Mike Hodges
4. Rushmore                                                                                  Wes Anderson
5. The Thin Red Line                                                                    Terence Malick
6. Flowers of Shanghai                                                                 Hou Hsiao-Hsien
7. Living Out Loud                                                                        Richard LaGravenese
8. Fallen Angels                                                                             Wong Kar-Wai
9. New Rose Hotel                                                                         Abel Ferrara
10. Wild Things                                                                               John McNaughton

       Honorable Mention

       The School of Flesh -- Jacquot,

       There's Something About Mary -- Farrelly Brothers, Pi -- Aronofsky,

       The Big Lebowski -- Cohen Brothers, The Celebration -- Vinterberg, 

       High Art -- Cholodenko, Besieged -- Bertolucci,
       Affliction -- Schrader, Babe: Pig in the City -- Miller

        Movies I Enjoyed

       Love and Death on Long Island, Ringu, 

       The Opposite of Sex, Ronin, 

       The Hole, Rounders,

       Small Soldiers, After Life,

       Central Station, The Mask of Zorro, 

       Bulworth, The Newton Boys,

       Clockwatchers, Sicilia!,

       Twilight,

       The Parent Trap, Celebrity, 

       Shakespeare in Love, Enemy of the State, 

       American History X, The Truman Show, 

       Saving Private Ryan, Gods and Monsters,

       Pleasantville, After Life, 

       He Got Game, Bride of Chucky

       Under the Mendoza Line

       Secret Defense,

       The General, Buffalo '66,  

       Elizabeth, Apt Pupil, 

       Primary Colors, The Rugrats Movie,

       Rush Hour, The Man in the Iron Mask, 

       Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,

       The Wedding Singer, A Bug's Life, 

       The Replacement Killers, Ever After, Dark City,   

       The Faculty, Meet Joe Black, Deep Impact, 

       Armageddon, The Prince of Egypt, 

       Practical Magic, The Waterboy, Antz, 

       BASEketball, Lethal Weapon 4

       Cave Videntium

        

        Patch Adams

  

The Drowning Pool

Stuart Rosenberg's The Drowning Pool, from 1975, is a soggy detective thriller that benefits from a stellar supporting cast. Paul Newman plays private eye Lew Harper, reprising the role from the eponymous 1966 film. This film transposes the Southern California setting of Ross McDonald's novel to Louisiana for no obvious reason or benefit. The plot is a rehash of The Big Sleep with Joanne Woodward and Melanie Griffith in the Lauren Bacall and Martha Vickers' roles, respectively. Colonel Sternwood is replaced by a matriarch, well played by Coral Browne, and the greenhouse is replaced by an aviary. The film is nicely shot by Gordon Willis, but Rosenberg's direction is plodding and flavorless. A good example is the opening sequence, in which Newman disconnects the seat belt alarm on his car. The scene is laborious, merely existing to underline Harper's rebellious bona fides.

Similarly, there is very little suspense in the film. The villainy of certain principals is foreshadowed from the get go and makes the narrative utterly predictable. Murray Hamilton is badly cast as a vulgar oil tycoon and offers just one of the film's poor Southern accents. Andrew Robinson and Helena Kallianiotes, two icons of 70s cinema, have one terrific scene together, but then disappear. Rosenberg and Newman seem to want to use the film to attack corporate greed and perfidy in Nixonian America, but the tale is so slight as to render such themes moot.

The film was a product of Newman's First Artists Productions and has the pluses and minuses of a vanity production. Rosenberg had helmed Cool Hand Luke and was presumably brought in because he got along with the star. Anthony Franciosa is reunited with his cast mates from The Long, Hot Summer. As in that film, a Southern accent is beyond him, but he has a few fine moments of unbridled hysteria towards the end. Richard Jaeckel, so wonderful in Newman's Sometimes a Great Notion, is largely wasted as a thug. The Drowning Pool passes the time as a pleasant enough star vehicle, but is ultimately forgettable.

Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?

Travis Wilkerson's Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? is a first person documentary investigating the murder of an Afro-American man by Mr. Wilkerson's great-grandfather in Alabama in 1946. Wilkerson utilizes home movies, interviews with relatives and civil rights advocates, still photos and clips from the dreaded To Kill a Mockingbird to illustrate what he says is an experimental and fragmented film about racism. The soundtrack is similarly sliced and diced, so that Negro work songs, hip-hop and folk are used to bracing effect. Wilkerson foregrounds his postmodernism and white privilege. This allows him to explore his subject in a digressive fashion, flaunting avant-garde effects. I was most impressed with his daring when he layered a clip of Billie Holiday singing "Strange Fruit" (backwards!) over an image of trees swaying in the wind. A send of bold adventurousness not usually found in documentaries of the PBS ilk. The film is never boring.

However, it is somewhat dry and bloodless for a film about family. Wilkerson's method is that of a dialectician, hoping that an interesting juxtaposition of images and sound will achieve a synthesis. The results are neutered by his aestheticism. Everything is shot beautifully, even a dead deer being devoured by insects. Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? suffers from the finger pointing syndrome embodied in its use of Phil Ochs' "William Moore" at its climax. Ochs' song, just like Dylan's one about Hattie Carroll, serves as a worthy protest and remembrance, but is limited by its sense of moral superiority. Wilkerson is willing to implicate himself in his family's dark heritage, but cannot show more than simulacrum of evil and intolerance. He is able to manipulate outrage at horrific events, but not evoke the horror of the everyday. The world of Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?, worthy film that it is, is more parsed over than lived in.

Best of 1999

1. Beau Travail                                                                               Claire Denis
2. Topsy-Turvy                                                                               Mike Leigh
3. Holy Smoke                                                                                Jane Campion
4. Election                                                                                       Alexander Payne
5. Run Lola Run                                                                             Tom Tykwer
6. The Insider                                                                                 Michael Mann
7. Eyes Wide Shut                                                                          Stanley Kubrick
8. The Color of Paradise                                                               Majid Majidi
9. Being John Malkovich                                                               Spike Jonze
10. All About My Mother                                                                 Pedro Almodovar

      Honorable Mention

      Jesus' Son -- Maclean, The End of the Affair -- Jordan,

      Audition -- Miike, Titus -- Taymor, Mansfield Park -- Rozema,

      The Straight Story -- Lynch, The Limey -- Soderbergh, Magnolia -- PT Anderson, 

      The Sixth Sense -- Shyamalan, Fight Club -- Fincher, I Stand Alone -- Noe

      Films I Enjoyed

      Pola X,  Office Space, 

      existenz, Bowfinger,

      Three Kings, Any Given Sunday, 

      Wisconsin Death Trip, Bringing Out the Dead, 

      My Voyage to Italy, The Talented Mr. Ripley, 

      The Iron Giant, Toy Story 2, 

      Ratcatcher, Man on the Moon, 

      The Matrix, Galaxy Quest, 

      Go, American Beauty, Cruel Intentions, 

      The Mummy, Boys Don't Cry

      Under the Mendoza Line

      Sleepy Hollow, Liberty Heights,

      Stuart Little, The Thomas Crown Affair, 

      Tarzan, Girl, Interrupted, 

      Ride with the Devil, Mystery Men,

      Warm Blooded Killers,

      Arlington Road, Never Been Kissed, 

      The Green Mile, Austin Powers 2, 

      At First Sight, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Notting Hill,

      American Pie, The Blair Witch Project, 

      10 Things I Hate About You, Big Daddy

      Cave Videntium

      Wild Wild West