Sweetheart

Sweetheart marks Kiersey Clemons as a star on the rise

JD Dillard's Sweetheart, currently streaming on Netflix, is a combination of Robinson Crusoe and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Dillard has decided not to foreground the film's themes, a wise move for a somewhat simpleminded genre flick. The currents of racism and class consciousness emerge only after the protagonist in peril has gained our rooting interest by battling a fearsome monster. Dillard and his compatriots have chosen an opposite tack to that of Robert Zemeckis in Castaway. In that film, Tom Hanks offered a running commentary to his only companion, a volleyball he dubbed Wilson. In Sweetheart, Kiersey Clemons utters nary a word for half the movie. Her skill as a performer and Dillard's unfussy professionalism make this as an engaging B horror outing.

I was reminded of what James Agee said, more or less, to Stanley Kubrick after viewing Fear and Desire, a first feature Kubrick later admitted was pretentious and inept. The film "had too many good things in it to be called arty" was Agee's reassurance to the young tyro. I feel the same way about Sweetheart. Hopefully, more will be seen from Ms, Clemons and Mr. Dillard.

Best of 1966

 

1. Au Hasard Balthazar                                                      Robert Bresson
2. 7 Women                                                                          John Ford
3. Persona                                                                            Ingmar Bergman 
4. The Battle of Algiers                                                       Gillo Pontecorvo 
5. Andrei Rublev                                                                 Andrei Tarkovsky
6. La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV                               Roberto Rossellini 
7. Torn Curtain                                                                    Alfred Hitchcock 
8. Blow-Up                                                                          Michelangelo Antonioni
9. Suzanne Simonin, la Religieuse                                   Jacques Rivette 
10. Daisies                                                                             Vera Chytilova

                    Honorable Mention

                    The Good, the Bad and the Ugly -- Leone, Lord Love a Duck -- Axelrod,

                    The Round-Up -- Jancsó, The Shooting -- Hellman,

                    Films I Enjoyed

                    What Did You Do in the War, Daddy,

                    Fahrenheit 451, The Chase, 

                    Masculin Feminin, Scorpio Rising

                    Flight of the Phoenix, The Professionals,

                    The Hawks and the Sparrows, Tokyo Drifter,

                    Samurai Wolf,

                    A Fine Madness, Inside Daisy Clover,

                    The Heroes of Telemark, Ride in the Whirlwind, 

                    The Fortune Cookie, The Big T.N.T. Show,

                    A Report on the Party and Guests, Noon Wine,

                    Kill, Baby...Kill!, The Diabolical Dr. Z,

                    The Naked Prey, The Group,

                    Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Arrivederci Baby!,

                    The Quiller Memorandum, 

                    The Trouble with Angels, Harper, 

                    Modesty Blaise, Violence at Noon

                    Below the Mendoza Line

                    Cul-de-sac, War and Peace, 

                    Georgy Girl, Cast a Giant Shadow,

                    Dead Heat on a Merry-go-Round,

                    How to Steal a Million, The Silencers, 

                    Night Games, Nevada Smith,

                    Arabesque, Alfie, This Property is Condemned,

                    A Man for All Seasons, Wake Up and Die, Seconds,

                    Hurry Sundown, A Big Hand for a Little Lady,

                    A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, 

                    King of Hearts, The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming,

                    The Wild Angels, The Bible, 

                    Madame X, Stagecoach, Grand Prix,

                    Is Paris Burning?, A Man and a Woman, Our Man Flint,

                    The Sand Pebbles, The Appaloosa, Fantastic Voyage,

                    The Blue Max, The Devil's Own, Born Free,

                    An American Dream, Walk Don't Run,

                    Batman, The Singing Nun

                                             

                    

                     

                   

The Sun

Issei Ogata as Emperor Hirohito in The Sun

Aleksandr Sokurov's The Sun is an idiosyncratic portrait of Japan's Emperor Hirohito towards the end of the Second World War. Sokurov and his scenarists play up the helplessness and quirkiness of Hirohito as he goes about his daily routine in an underground bunker while the empire falls around him. Issei Ogata, best known as the befuddled Dad in Yi Yi, portrays an emperor seemingly more suited to pursuing his interests in marine biology and poetry than in helming an empire.

The film culminates in Hirohito's decision to forsake his role as a national deity. General MacArthur is shown as willing to keep on as Emperor in the interests of continuity and national cohesion. The slow pace, desaturated colors and wry comic tone of the film may be too odd for some viewers, but Sokurov's dreamlike mise-en-scene held my attention.

Sokurov succeeds in showing the insularity of Hirohito's life. A surrealistic dream sequence shows that Hirohito was haunted by the cost of the conflict, but the film elides addressing Hirohito's culpability in Japanese war crimes. However, an offscreen tragedy, seemingly tossed as an aside at the film's conclusion, provides a final sting that casts all that has gone on before in a different light. 

Take Me to Town

Douglas Sirk's Take Me to Town, from 1953, is a delight that will charm even those who have never heard of the great director. Ann Sheridan provides the oomph as a saloon singer on the run from the law. Three young boys who are searching for a wife for their widowed father offer her safe haven at their cabin and she discovers the joys of domesticity. The boy's father, played by the always welcome Sterling Hayden, is a preacher who leaves the boys alone at the cabin while he makes ends meet working as a logger. Hayden succumbs to the singer's charms and, despite opposition by the uptight parishioners, love wins the day.

Like most of Sirk's films for Universal in the 50s, the film functions as a celebration of American abundance and a critique of American intolerance. The townspeople are unable to view Southern's Vermillion O'Toole (!) with any sexual ambiguity: since she is not a virgin, she must be a whore. Their judgement is immature, much like the youngest boy, Bucket, who either likes things or hates them. The tolerance shown by Hayden's preacher serves as a beacon of mature acceptance.

Take Me to Town is a cheap B Western with musical numbers. It was targeted at family audiences, like most Westerns of the time, but has nice frissons of sexuality. Hayden's character is as much of a sexual object as Southern's. A shirtless Hayden sawing wood establishes him as an emblem of virility, anticipating Rock Hudson's arborist in All That Heaven Will Allow. He is the cynosure of female attention, much like Andrew Scott's "hot priest" in Fleabag. Sirk's elevation of the material is helped by the color cinematography of the great Russell Metty (Bringing Up Baby, Touch of Evil, Madigan). This marked the first time Sirk and Metty worked together, they would reunite for nine more films. It was also the first Sirk time toiled in a Ross Hunter production. The melodramas Sirk and Hunter collaborated on would be the most lasting and influential legacies of both. Sharp eyed viewers will notice uncredited appearances by Fess Parker, Guy Williams, and Anita Ekberg.

Best of 1967

1. Belle de Jour                                                                        Luis Bunuel 
2. Playtime                                                                               Jacques Tati
3. Point Blank                                                                          John Boorman
4. The Red and the White                                                       Miklós Jancsó
5. El Dorado                                                                             Howard Hawks
6. Marketa Lazarova                                                               Frantisek Vlacil
7. Weekend                                                                              Jean-Luc Godard
8. Gunn                                                                                    Blake Edwards
9. Mouchette                                                                            Robert Bresson
10. Bonnie and Clyde                                                               Arthur Penn

         Honorable Mention

         Don't Look Back -- Pennebaker, Wavelength -- Snow,

         Accident -- Losey, Samurai Wolf 2: Hell Cut -- Gosha

         Films I Enjoyed

        The Graduate, Don't Make Waves,

        The Dirty Dozen, Wait Until Dark, 

        The Fearless Vampire Killers, La Chinoise.

        The Young Girls of Rochefort, Hour of the Gun,

        Up the Down Staircase, 

        Cool Hand Luke, Le Samourai,

        Two for the Road, A Countess from Hong Kong,

        Japanese Summer: Double Suicide, Viy,

        This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse, The Flim Flam Man,

        Reflections in a Golden Eye, Who's That Knocking at My Door,

        To Sir, With Love, Elvira Madigan,

        In the Heat of the Night, The Jungle Book,

        Games, Tony Rome, 

        The Honey Pot, The Witches,

        Spider Baby, The Happening

        Below the Mendoza Line

        L'Etranger, Far from the Madding Crowd, 

        Sing a Song of Sex, Samurai Rebellion,

        The Producers, Two or Three Things I Know About Her, 

        Divorce American Style, Branded to Kill,

        The Trip, In Cold Blood, 

        Valley of the Dolls, The Whisperers, 

        Barefoot in the Park,

        Casino Royale, The Taming of the Shrew, 

        The War Wagon, Hombre,

        Billion Dollar Brain, 

        The Night of the Generals, How to Succeed in Business...,

        Clambake, The Way West, 

        The Born Losers, The Happiest Millionaire,

        Marat/Sade, Warning Shot,

        Guess Who's Coming to Dinner,

        Doctor Faustus

        Look What They've Done to My Song, Ma

        Camelot, Doctor Doolittle

                                                  

        

Little Women

Camaraderie in Little Women

Greta Gerwig's Little Women tries to update the old chestnut by rejiggering the narrative in postmodern fashion. This helps accentuate the feminism and class consciousness of the novel. It also serves to position the film as a meta commentary on Alcott and her fiction. However. Gerwig's choices somewhat dissipate the film's emotional impact.

The camaraderie, and feuding, between the sisters is lovingly established in Alcott's novel and serves to cement the reader's affection towards her characters. Gerwig shows these moments as flashbacks in a narrative where the sisters are already separated: Jo in New York, Amy in Europe with Laurie and Aunt March, Meg settled into domesticity with her husband and Beth, as always, back at home at death's door. The warm glow of the March's hearth dims when viewed in retrospect.

Gerwig's choices do yield some fruit. The death of Beth is contrasted with an earlier recovery and that helps to magnify the loss. However, the impact of Amy's fall into the frozen pond is negated because we already know she survives and will skedaddle off to Europe. For those not familiar with the original text, the only clue to the time frame of an individual scene is the length of Saoirse Ronan's hair. 

As usual, I carp too much. This Little Women is enjoyable, if not as impressive a film as Lady Bird. Gerwig does show she can work on a bigger scale. The film has many lovely moments. A sojourn at the seashore has the lighting and ambience of a Winslow Homer. The cast is uniformly fine. Even Timothee Chalamet, a callow and limited performer, is a snug fit as the shallow Laurie. The performances of Florence Pugh as Amy and Meryl Streep as Aunt March are the best done for these roles, thus far. The character of Jo has an overweening single-mindedness that borders on arrogance: a role tailor made for Katherine Hepburn. Ms. Ronan is a little too charming and likable for the role, but is not the disaster June Allyson was. I prefer the George Cukor and Gillian Armstrong versions of Little Women, but this will do fine until the next one comes along.

L'Inhumaine

One of the sumptuous sets of  L'Inhumaine

Marcel L'Herbier's L'Inhumaine, from 1924, is a diverting mishmash: half romantic melodrama, half screwball science fiction. The film breathes art with a capital A. L'Herbier was a decadent aesthete who took up filmmaking amidst the bacchanal of Paris in the Jazz Age. L'Inhumaine boasts Art Deco sets by Leger, Autant-Lara and Alberto Calvalcanti. Which is a good thing because the direction is alternately inert and frantic. The fast editing is suited to the frenzy of the sci-fi bits, but the salon melodrama, despite surreal asides, is unredeemable due to the deficiencies of the film's two leads. 

L'Herbier was inspired by the melodramas of De Mille, but, instead of the deft Gloria Swanson, opera star Georgette Leblanc is the female lead. She must have had something going for her besides her pipes, not only was she the longtime lover of Maurice Maeterlinck, but she also helped finance L'Inhumaine. Unfortunately, her performance here is little more than a series of diva poses. Male lead Jaque Catelain is even worse. An unrelentingly wooden presence, Catelain served as a muse for L'Herbier, but his acting ability resembles that of Carole Dempster rather than Lillian Gish. Silent film fans will enjoy this eye-popping folly, however the casual viewer may want to think twice before watching a spectacle that is dotty fun, but emotionally uninvolving.

Best of 1968

1. Rosemary's Baby                                                                          Roman Polanski
2. Madigan                                                                                         Don Siegel
3. Petulia                                                                                            Richard Lester
4. 2001                                                                                                Stanley Kubrick
5. The Party                                                                                       Blake Edwards
6. Night of the Living Dead                                                              George Romero
7. Coogan's Bluff                                                                               Don Siegel
8. Chronicle of Anna Magdalene Bach                     Daniele Huillet, Jean Marie Straub
9. Mandabi                                                                                         Ousmane Sembene
10. Pretty Poison                                                                                  Noel Black

          

          Films I Enjoyed

          The Bride Wore Black,

          Planet of the Apes, Shame

          Targets, Monterey Pop,

          The Immortal Story, Skidoo, Teorema,  

          The Thomas Crown Affair, Capricious Summer,

          Where Eagles Dare, Dark of the Sun,

          Kuroneko,  A Lion in Winter,

          Le Grand Silence, Romeo and Juliet, The Boston Strangler,

          If..., Barbarella

         Below the Mendoza Line

         Hour of the Wolf, Death By Hanging, 

         The Girls, The Charge of the Light Brigade,

         Finian's Rainbow, The Scalphunters,

         Bullitt, Je T'Aime, Je T'Aime,

         Witchfinder General, Bandolero!, 

         Anzio, Secret Ceremony,

         Isadora, 

         The Devil Rides Out, Funny Girl, 

         The Swimmer, Spirits of the Dead,

         Blackbeard's Ghost, The Girl on a Motorcycle

         The Love Bug, Wild in the Streets,

         The Odd Couple, 

         5 Card Stud, Candy,

         Hellfighters, Oliver!,  

         The Living Skeleton,

         The Green Berets, Inspector Clouseau,

         Ice Station Zebra, A Place for Lovers,

         Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

         Cave Videntium

         Suicide Commandos

My apologies to Aldo Ray fans, but the special effects in Suicide Commandos include
someone dropping lighter fluid and matches on toy planes.

                                                     

Queen of the Desert

A tedious Romance with magnificent backdrops: Kidman and Franco in Queen of the Desert

Werner Herzog's Queen of the Desert is a dull travelogue that does little to enlighten viewers about its subject, English writer, archaeologist and Arabophile, Gertrude Bell. Herzog's documentaries, such as Into the Darkness, The Dark Glow of the Mountains and, especially, Lessons in Darkness, have shown that he is gifted at revealing the beauty, majesty and terror of Earth's topography. Queen of the Desert has many gorgeous glimpses of the natural and manmade wonders of Morocco, but utterly fails in its depiction of its characters.

Nicole Kidman is fine as Bell, but fine is a limiting adjective. Herzog, who is credited with the screenplay, is negligent in showing Bell's motivations. Herzog ticks off the ills of the era, racism, misogyny and colonialism, but is unable to provide much depth to the Turkish, Druze and Bedouin characters Bell encounters. Thus, Bell's affection for these people never seems felt.

The picture never recovers from a botched portrayal of Bell's romance with Henry Cadogan, a Foreign Office attache based in Tehran. Jude Law was initially cast in the role, but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. In his stead, we have the badly miscast James Franco. The lack of chemistry and believability in the Kidman and Franco union destroys the momentum of the first third of the picture. Bell's life was crazier and more complex than can be shown in a feature length film. Perhaps the material is more suited for an extended series. By shoehorning the vast expanse of Bell's experiences into a film, Herzog loses that divine spark of madness that animates such films as Aguirre, The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser, Heart of Glass and, even, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. 

Herzog's pictorial gifts and a good cast make Queen of the Desert somewhat watchable. Mark Lewis Jones, Damian Lewis and Robert Pattinson all have memorable turns. However, Queen of the Desert is so colorless and empty that it stands as a lost opportunity. I was interested in how Herzog would handle Bell's witnessing of the Armenian genocide, but, before this event, Kidman rides into the desert one more time and the film ends abruptly. I was relieved.

Winter Flies

A toy gun, thankfully, in Winter Flies

Olmo Omerzu's Winter Flies is a slight Czech road film of some charm and intelligence. Two pubescent males steal an Audi and proceed to tour the hinterland. Their journey is told in flashback after the inevitable intervention of the authorities. Omerzu displays a keen visual sense and moral acumen. The film never lapses into sentimentality or social pathology, though it contains strains of both. Omerzu's restraint, taste and talent mark him as a director to watch.

Best of 1969

1. Ma nuit chez Maud                                                                       Eric Rohmer
2. The Color of Pomegranates                                                        Sergei Parajanov
3. Army of Shadows                                                                        Jean Pierre Melville
4. Once Upon a Time in the West                                                   Sergio Leone
5. The Joke                                                                                       Jaromil Jireš
6. Un Femme Douce                                                                         Robert Bresson
7. The Wild Bunch                                                                            Sam Peckinpah
8. The Milky Way                                                                              Luis Bunuel
9. Topaz                                                                                             Alfred Hitchcock
10. Goyokin                                                                                        Hideo Gosha                                                               

          Honorable Mention    

          The Stalking Moon -- Mulligan

          Burn! -- Pontecorvo, Cremator -- Herz, 

          This Man Must Die - Chabrol

          Play Dirty -- De Toth, Kes --Loach,

          A Time for Dying -- Boetticher

         Films I Enjoyed

         Easy Rider, Love is Colder Than Death,

         Winter Wind, The Rite,  

         Age of Consent, Women in Love,

         Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, True Grit, 

         Midnight Cowboy, Medium Cool,

         The Rain People, Porcile

         Eggshells, They Shoot Horses Don't They, 

         Z, La Piscine,

         Support Your Local Sheriff, Mississippi Mermaid,

         The Reivers, Tell Them Willie Boy is Here

         Below the Mendoza Line

         The Confrontation,

         The Passion of Anna, Ådalen 31,

         Anne of a Thousand Days, Goodbye Mr. Chips, 

         The Arrangement, Model Shop,

         Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, A Walk with Love and Death,

         On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Hamlet, Cactus Flower,

         The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Fellini Satyricon, 

          Putney Swope, Don't Drink the Water, 

         The Bed Sitting Room, Gaily, Gaily, The Only Game in Town,

         The Damned, The Assassination Bureau, 

         The Undefeated, Young Billy Young,

         More, John and Mary, Staircase, 

         Oh! What a Lovely War, Hello Dolly,

         Goodbye Columbus, Battle of Britain, 

         Marooned, Sweet Charity,

         The Good Guys and the Bad Guys, 

         The Magic Christian, If It's Tuesday..., 

         MacKenna's Gold, Paint Your Wagon,

         Number One, The Chairman