Best of 1977

1. The Ascent                                                                               Larisa Shepitko
2. That Obscure Object of Desire                                               Luis Bunuel
3. Stroszek                                                                                    Werner Herzog
4. Three Women                                                                           Robert Altman
5. Annie Hall                                                                                 Woody Allen
6. Hausu                                                                                        Nobuhiko Obayashi
7. The American Friend                                                               Wim Wenders
8. The Duellists                                                                             Ridley Scott
9. Desperate Living                                                                      John Waters
10. Handle with Care                                                                      Jonathan Demme

         Honorable Mention

      

         Eraserhead -- Lynch,  Slap Shot -- George Roy Hill

         Films I Enjoyed  

         Semi-Tough, The Man Who Loved Women, Telefon,

         Eaten Alive, Suspiria, 

         Soldier of Orange, Sleeping Dogs,

         Exorcist 2: The Heretic, 

         Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Effi Briest,

         The Late Show, Rabid, 

         Sorcerer, New York, New York,
         Saturday Night Fever, High Anxiety, Cross of Iron,
         Peppermint Soda, Rolling Thunder, Star Wars,
         Fun with Dick and Jane, 

         The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover,

         The Hills Have Eyes, The Gauntlet,
         Demon Seed, Black Sunday,

          

         Below the Mendoza Line 

         Another Man, Another Chance, Julia, 

         The Spy Who Loved Me, Twilight's Last Gleaming,
         A Special Day, Close Encounters..., Smokey and the Bandit,
         Rollercoaster, A Bridge Too Far, 

         Orca, The Deep,
         The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Goodbye Girl,

         Welcome to LA, 

         MacArthur, Audrey Rose,
         Good Against Evil, Oh God!

Cluny Brown

Ernst Lubitsch's Cluny Brown, from 1946, is a fitting capstone to the career of one of cinema's greatest directors. The plot is utter tosh, merely an excuse for free spirits Charles Boyer and Jennifer Jones to shake the dust off English aristocrats. Boyer's performance was only bettered by his one in History is Made at Night. Here he is again the essence of continental charm and raffish romance. Jones shines in her only comic role outside of Beat the Devil. She portrays a ditzy plumber with aplomb. It is a pity her comic talent was sacrificed to David O. Selznick's ambition. A host of British character actors all contribute to the merriment with Richard Haydn a particular standout as a stuffy pharmacist.

Lubitsch's touch is so seamless as to be invisible to the casual viewer. A brief example will suffice here. Jones converses with Boyer before her date with the pharmacist. Lubitsch highlights her romantic excitement by using a tracking shot, a rarity for him, of Jones running to her tryst. Once inside the pharmacy, two graceful pans alert the viewer that Jones' romantic plans will eventually lead to a dead end. The economy and grace of Lubitsch's camera is classical cinema at its zenith.

Black Sea

Jude Law fondles his gold in Black Sea

Kevin Macdonald's Black Sea is a routine, yet fairly engrossing genre picture. Jude Law plays a submarine captain who leads a motley crew of British and Russian mercenaries trying to pilfer gold from a sunken Nazi U-boat. This is a predictable portrait of disparate men under stress, but the film boasts logical and economic construction and fine performances. The theme of class resentments seems tacked on, but the conflicts between the crew are solidly enacted by Law, Karl Davies, David Threlfall and the dependable Ben Mendelsohn. Overall, a somewhat anonymous, yet solid B picture with a surprising ending.

Best of 1978

1. Days of Heaven                                                                           Terrence Malick
2. The Marriage of Maria Braun                                                     RW Fassbinder
3. Pennies From Heaven                                                    Dennis Potter, Piers Haggard
4. The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith                                              Fred Schepisi
5. Martin                                                                                           George Romero
6. Straight Time                                                                               Ulu Grosbard
7. Girlfriends                                                                                    Claudia Weill
8. The Last Waltz                                                                             Martin Scorsese
9. Get Out Your Handkerchiefs                                                      Bertrand Blier
10. The Shout                                                                                    Jerzy Skolimowski

          Honorable Mention

          

          Halloween -- Carpenter

          Films I Enjoyed

         An Unmarried Woman, Perceval le Gallois, 

         The Deer Hunter, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 

         Who'll Stop the Rain, Movie Movie,

         The Driver, Grease, 

         Pretty Baby, Every Which Way But Loose,

         Heaven Can Wait, Big Wednesday, 

         Piranha, Interiors,

         Animal House, The Eyes of Laura Mars, Magic

         Below the Mendoza Line

         Blue Collar, Summer of Fear, 

         La Cage Aux Folles, Fedora,

         The Cheap Detective, Goin' South,

         The Wild Geese, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Coma,

         California Suite, The Betsy, 

         The Fury, Revenge of the Pink Panther,

         The Buddy Holly Story, Force 10 from Navarone, Up in Smoke,

         Superman, Jaws 2, 

         Grey Lady Down, Midnight Express,

         Convoy, The Boys from Brazil, 

         The Swarm, The Brass Target,

         Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

RIP Linda Manz

         

Eighth Grade, The Skin of the Wolf

The awkwardness of Eighth Grade

Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade is a fine feature debut that captures the anxieties and awkwardness of adolescence. Burnham's background is in writing and comedy, so it is no surprise that these are the film's strengths. The film suffers from a lack of visual imagination and a certain narrowness, but Burnham achieves what he sets out to do. Part of the feeling of insularity of this project has to do with the social isolation of the film's protagonist, Kayla, memorably portrayed by Elsie Fisher. We see Kayla navigating the last week of middle school, dealing with her burgeoning sexuality, struggling with social functions and attempting to reach out with social media.

Much of the success of the film stems from Burnham's empathy for his characters. even Kayla's dorky single Dad is shown with more compassion than is usual in teen comedies. If Eighth Grade, at times, seems overly familiar, that is because we have all been in Kayla's shoes and, despite the presence of smart phones, the social dynamics of adolescence has not changed all that much. It seems like damning with faint praise to call this a nice little film, but the film's focus on Kayla keeps its scope small. However, it is precisely that tight focus that makes us care about Kayla's plight.

A completely different kettle of fish is Samu Fuentes' directorial debut, The Skin of the Wolf. The film tells the tale of a trapper who lives alone in the Pyrenees. He bargains for a wife and helpmate with a miller who gives the trapper one of his daughters to pay off a debt. When that woman dies, the miller is forced to hand over his other daughter. This daughter, Adela, cannot submit to living with the brutish trapper, Martinon, and concocts a scheme to release her from her travails.

The Skin of the Wolf moves at a very deliberate pace, mimicking the routines of the peasantry of Northern Spain. Though the film is set in the mid twentieth century, the way of life these characters lead is centuries old. The wordless first third of the film establishes Martinon's day to day struggles as he traps wolves to trade their pelts for cash, hunts deer for meat and tends his small garden. Nature is portrayed as both beautiful and deadly. Martinon is portrayed as not altogether different from the animals he stalks. The tactile quality of The Skin of the Wolf is brought out not only by its gorgeous cinematography, but also by its sound design: whether it be the rustling of storms or the sound of Martinon scraping the flesh off his wolf pelts.

Unlike Burnham's empathy, Fuentes regards nature and his characters with an imperious objectivity. A good example of this is the filming of the sex scenes. Martinon views women merely as means to a male heir. Fuentes films the brusque and animalistic copulation, which in the present day would be classified as rape, with a cold, impassive eye. Fuentes evidently feels he does not need to heighten the audience's outrage at this brutality, it speaks well enough for itself. There is a bit of the perversity of Bunuel in this. Fuentes is cocking his snook at Spain's patriarchal past in a way that does not coddle a bourgeois audience.

Some things here don't add up. Martinon seems to live in an abandoned monastery high in the mountains, but the effect is falsely fanciful and jars with the realistic tone of the film. The film's objectivity probably limits its audience, there is no romance or redemption as a sop. Thus, the film has had little commercial or critical impact. However, Fuentes' cold-eyed point of view is what made the film stand out for me. Fuentes draws no easy moral lesson from his story, but presents a dog eat dog world where man is little different from his feral, mammalian counterparts. Overall, an impressive and memorable debut. (2/22/19)

Richard Jewell

Jon Hamm exhibits institutional corruption in Richard Jewell

Clint Eastwood's Richard Jewell is middlebrow Oscar bait that floundered in the wake of a slut shaming controversy. Namely its slurring of reporter Kathy Scruggs, fiercely played by Olivia Wilde. Scruggs is shown trading her sexual favors for tips on the Jewell investigation from an FBI agent. That the FBI agent is played by Jon Hamm and not, say, John Goodman, makes the exchange more ambivalent. Regardless, this controversy is one of the few intriguing aspects of this film. 

Wilde's performance gives the flick a needed jolt of fizz. Leisurely paced, the film is a mildly involving police procedural. Kathy Bates was justly lauded for her performance as Jewell's mother, but most of the principles lack color amidst Eastwood's po-faced realism. Hamm gets to do his man without a soul schtick again and it is getting tiring. Paul Walter Hauser as Jewell and Sam Rockwell as his lawyer are adequate. The film comes off like a civics lesson and is, as that great existential philosopher Iggy Pop once put it, no fun. 

Perhaps Richard Jewell would have been more suited to the directorial talents of its screenwriter, Billy Ray. Ray's chief theme, at least since Shattered Glass, has been American institutional corruption. Eastwood's direction is unengaged and Richard Jewell functions as a placebo. 

Best of 1979

1. The Brood                                                                      David Cronenberg
2. Dawn of the Dead                                                          George Romero
3. Vengeance is Mine                                                         Shohei Imamura
4. Wise Blood                                                                     John Huston
5. Christ Stopped at Eboli                                                Francesco Rosi
6. Alien                                                                                Ridley Scott
7. My Brilliant Career                                                        Gillian Armstrong
8. Mad Max                                                                         George Miller
9. Saint Jack                                                                       Peter Bogdanovich
10. Stalker                                                                            Andrei Tarkovsky

         Honorable Mention

        The Silent Partner -- Daryl Duke, The Jerk -- Carl Reiner

        Escape from Alcatraz -- Siegel, 10 -- Edwards

        Films I Enjoyed

        The 3rd Generation, Manhattan, 

        The Warriors, The Jericho Mile, 

        Chilly Scenes of Winter, Town Bloody Hall,

        The In-Laws, The Life of Brian,

        All That Jazz, Winter Kills, Real Life,

        Yanks, Nosferatu, Apocalypse Now, 

        1941, Kramer vs Kramer, 

        Luna, Last Hurrah for Chivalry,

        Being There, North Dallas Forty, 

        The Onion Field, The Black Stallion,

        A Little Romance, Phantasm, Breaking Away, 

        Below the Mendoza Line

        The Great Santini, The Tin Drum, 

        Time After Time, Buffet Froid,

        Rock and Roll High School, Rust Never Sleeps, 

        Hardcore, Cuba, The Wanderers,
        Quadrophenia, The Amityville Horror, 

        The Frisco Kid, The Black Hole,
        Americathon, Bloodline, 

        Dracula, More American Graffiti,
        And Justice For All, The Visitor, 

        The Champ, Moonraker,
        Prophecy, 

        The Passage, Star Trek

      

Wisconsin Death Trip

Wisconsin Death Trip was originally a non-fiction book published in 1973 and written by Michael Lesy that was inspired by the late 19th century photography of Charles Van Schaick. Schaick's photography centers around the community of Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Van Schaick's photography emphasizes the severe hardships of life in the Midwest and features numerous portraits of the dead primped up for their funeral, including many infants. The text of the book consisted of news reports, mostly of crime and mayhem. Director James Marsh uses these news reports as a starting off point for his 1999 film. He has the late Ian Holm, using these press clippings, narrate the film whilst Marsh reenacts the various tragedies using mostly silent, black and white footage. This footage is interspersed with Van Schaick's photography and color footage of the community today. Marsh divides his film into four sections, allied with the seasons, that suggest the continuity of the societal ills presented.

Marsh's flippant tone drew the ire of critics at the time, but I found it appropriate. It reminded me of a favorite book of my youth, Otto Bettmann's The Good Old Days -- They Were Terrible! Drawing from his vast archive, Bettmann sought to debunk the mythos of the Gilded Age by showing that America was as beset by social and environmental problems as it is today. Marsh's intent is largely the same and I feel he succeeds. His visual style is unsentimental, but not overly grotesque. What to some displays a lack of empathy, to me is a clear eyed exploration of the outer boundaries of the documentary form.

Imitation of Life (1934)

John M. Stahl's Imitation of Life, from 1934, is a melodrama that still packs an emotional wallop. It is a good example of what Imogen Sara Smith calls Stahl's "juxtaposition of formal, elegant framing and explosive emotion."The film is inferior to Douglas Sirk's version and features a number of cringe worthy elements: Warren William, cheap backdrops and racial condescension. Nevertheless, Stahl provides many sublime moments. He gets one of the warmest and most three dimensional performances from Claudette Colbert whose scenes with Louise Beavers are the highlight of the movie. The shot of Beavers and Colbert using separate staircases after a tete a tete, Beavers going down to the basement and Colbert moving on up, is an apt encapsulation of the ongoing tragedy of American race relations. A fine, and for the time, brave film.

Best of 1980

1. Berlin Alexanderplatz                                                                        RW Fassbinder
2. The Shining                                                                                         Stanley Kubrick
3. The Elephant Man                                                                              David Lynch
4. Raging Bull                                                                                         Martin Scorsese
5. Melvin and Howard                                                                            Jonathon Demme
6. The Big Red One                                                                                Sam Fuller    
7. Out of the Blue                                                                                   Dennis Hopper
8. The Long Good Friday                                                                      John Mackenzie
9. The Stunt Man                                                                                    Richard Rush
10. Bronco Billy                                                                                        Clint Eastwood

         Films I Enjoyed       

        Stardust Memories, The Long Riders, 

        Dressed to Kill, Heaven's Gate,

        Atlantic City, American Gigolo, 

        Kagemusha, Just Tell Me What You Want,  
        Altered States, Airplane, 

        Used Cars, Gloria, 

        Bad Timing, Carny, 
        Coal Miner's Daughter, Private Benjamin, 

        Popeye, Resurrection,
        The Empire Strikes Back, Breaker Morant 

        Below the Mendoza Line

        Every Man for Himself, Any Which Way You Can, 

        Caddyshack, Ordinary People,
        Flash Gordon, 9 to 5, 

        Cruising, The Great Rock n Roll Swindle, 

        Superman 2, Fame, 

        Christmas Evil, 

        Death Watch, Brubaker,
        The Fog, Can't Stop the Music, 

        The Changeling, The Blue Lagoon,
        Prom Night, Taxi zum Klo, 

        Somewhere in Time, Stir Crazy, 

        Urban Cowboy, Cannibal Apocalypse,
        The Blues Brothers, Xanadu, 

        Little Darlings, Those Lips, Those Eyes,
        The Gods Must Be Crazy, Motel Hell

        Cave Videntium

        Foolin' Around

                                                                                                                                                   

Blood Feast, Outlaw King, A Simple Favor

Kendrick and Lively face off in A Simple Favor

Short takes in ascending order...Owen Egerton's Blood Feast has a good premise: fans attend a horror festival which ends badly for most of the participants. The meta message is interesting, but the delivery inept. Egerton fails to foreground most of his action diminishing the visual impact of the carnage and killing any emotional response in the viewer.

Carnage is also in the offing in David Mackenzie's Outlaw King, an improved variation of Braveheart. Chris Pine dons the mantle of hero as Robert Bruce with Florence Pugh as his queen. They are both well cast and deliver performances that temper restraint with fire. Mackenzie handles the pair's courtship adroitly, highlighting how unions were used to cement alliances that often proved temporary. Pugh's Elizabeth is imprisoned and tortured when her husband rebels against Edward the First of England. The anguish of Elizabeth's plight is illustrated well by Mackenzie when her parents beseech her to knuckle under to Edward's demands. In the heroic tradition, she chooses to share her husband's suffering. Part of the realism of the film is the lack of agency of the female characters compared to, say, the unbelievable antics of Sophie Marceau in Braveheart.

The film's relative historical accuracy is also evident in its scenes of combat. The Battle of Loudoun Hill sequence, which climaxes Outlaw King, displays well not only the tactics of the battle, but also its chaos. Stephen Dillane is sharp as Edward the First, Aaron Taylor-Johnson is suitably deranged as Douglas and the other players are uniformly stalwart. On the negative side, the narrative meanders and the cinematography is unnecessarily murky at times. Outlaw King is too old-fashioned in its narrative style and heroic ethos to impress present day critics, but, as Brahms said, there is still great music to be made in B sharp.

Paul Feig's A Simple Favor is his most accomplished film to date and his most enjoyable since Bridesmaids. The film has Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively playing mouse and cat in a suspense narrative with darkly comic undertones. The ending is overly convoluted, but the ride is bitchy fun.
Statuesque blonde Lively is well matched with the doll-like dark-haired Kendrick. Lively's character appears to have the upper hand for most of the film as she lords over the diminutive Kendrick. Lively's character dons masculine garb fitting for her omnivorous, shape-shifting sociopath.

However, Kendrick's character turns the tables as the film progresses, using Lively's manipulations as a tutelage in assertiveness. Her outfits change from childish naif to more mature and assured stylings. The film is largely Kendrick's to shoulder and she is up to the task. Part of the charm of the film is how the narrative unfolds the past lives of the two antagonists, so it would be churlish to reveal its surprises. Some are predictable, bur all are pleasing to the viewer no matter how unsavory. With characters on the verge of repeating self-defeating obsessive compulsive behavior, Feig seems to work best as a satirist on the edge of discomfort. Like Outlaw King, A Simple Favor is a successful present day take on classic film tropes. (3/6/2019)

Blow the Man Down

Two sisters dump the chum in Blow the Man Down

Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy's Blow the Man Down combines black humor, Americana and noir in a style reminiscent of Jonathan Demme and the Cohen brothers. However, this feature has a distinctive tone wholly its own. Coastal Maine is the backdrop for this murder mystery involving two sisters, played by Sophie Lowe and Morgan Saylor. The leads are serviceable, but the supporting cast is superb; particularly Margo Martindale, Will Brittain and Gayle Rankin. The narrative is a slight affair, but the filmmakers have expertly constructed it with nary a wasted shot. A mordant treat.

Best of 1981

1. Max Max 2                                                                                     George Miller
2. Eye of the Needle                                                                          Richard Marquand
3. Body Heat                                                                                      Lawrence Kasdan
4. Tess                                                                                                Roman Polanski
5. Cutter's Way                                                                                  Ivan Passer
6. Smash Palace                                                                                Roger Donaldson
7. Lilli Marleen                                                                                  RW Fassbinder
8. Montenegro                                                                                   Dusan Makavejev
9. SOB                                                                                                Blake Edwards
10. Scanners                                                                                        David Cronenberg

        Honorable Mention

        They All Laughed -- Bogdanovich, Thief -- Michael Mann,  Excalibur -- Boorman

        My Dinner with Andre -- Malle, Polyester -- Waters

        Films I Enjoyed

       The Howling, Beau Pere,

       Tre Fratelli,  Prince of the City,

       Rich and Famous, The Evil Dead,
       So Fine, Raiders of the Last Ark, Mephisto, 

       Reds, Modern Romance, Knightriders,  
       Escape From New York, Blow Out, 

       Pennies From Heaven, Southern Comfort,
       True Confessions, Eyewitness, Clash of the Titans, 

       Gallipoli, Mommie Dearest, 

       Dead and Buried, Ms. 45, 
       Quest for Fire, An American Werewolf in London, 

       The French Lieutenant's Woman

       Below the Mendoza Line

       Absence of Malice, Arthur, Diva, 

       Ragtime, Wolfen, 

       Quartet, Stripes,
       The Postman Always Rings Twice, 

       The Beyond, Taps, Endless Love, 
       History of the World, Part 1, Ladies and Gentlemen The Fabulous Stains, 

       The Bushido Blade, Hell Night, Christiane F,
       Deadly Blessing, Heavy Metal, 

       Dragonslayer, Rollover, 
       Nighthawks, Outland, 

       Don't Go in the Woods, Buddy, Buddy,

       Happy Birthday to Me, Chariots of Fire

       Cave Videntium

       On Golden Pond

Sleeping Dogs

No one will let Sam Neill lie in Sleeping Dogs

Roger Donaldson's Sleeping Dogs, his debut feature from 1977. focuses on one man's struggle for survival amidst a fascist takeover of New Zealand. Sam Neill stars as Smith, a man reeling from his
wife's infidelity, who attempts to withdraw from society on an isolated island. He is set up as a dupe by his neighbors who are in the resistance fighting the government. The politics seems stuck in the 1960s, the source novel was published in 1971, but Donaldson's handling of suspense and action sequences move things along. The acting is uneven, but it is always welcome to see Warren Oates; here, as a dog of war.

Davidson's most distinctive films are portraits of besieged masculinity: Smash Palace, The Bounty, No Way Out and The Bank Job. They portray men unable to cope with the structures and strictures of society who inevitably are drawn to a more natural or atavistic way of life. Even in Cocktail, an empty vessel, this is evident. The friendship and rivalry between Bryan Brown and Tom Cruise is not all that different than the one between Smith and his erstwhile best bud, Bull in Sleeping Dogs.

The romantic scenes flounder, particularly a bicycle built for two sequence with Smith and his wife that veers too close to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It is signifigant that the wife is in the driver's seat. Donaldson would go on to more interestingly explore post-feminist tensions in Smash Palace. Nevertheless, Sleeping Dogs is an extremely watchable debut.