The King of Staten Island

In the land of the blind...

I've never been particularly taken with the films of Judd Apatow, at least the ones he has directed. His talents seem better suited to the roles of writer and producer. Indeed, projects he has produced but not directed such as Superbad and Pineapple Express seem superior to me than ones he has directed such as Trainwreck, This is 40 and Knocked Up. Thus, it surprised me how much I enjoyed The King of Staten Island. 

The theme is a familiar one in the Apatow oeuvre (and recent American Cinema): a young male protagonist mired in arrested development begins making tentative attempts to grow up. Pete Davidson is the young layabout whose dream is to become a tattoo artist. As the film commences, Davidson's character's behavior verges on sociopathy. He spends his time smoking weed and watching SpongeBob while hanging with his crew of young miscreants. His Mom, played by the ever splendid Marisa Tomei, finally has had enough and kicks him out of the house, forcing him to grow up a little and confront the legacy of the father he barely knew, a firefighter who died in the line of duty.

This is indeed the background of Davidson himself, who was among the cowriters of the film along with Apatow. Both these native New Yorkers give the film a believable sense of place. Whatever Apatow's limitations as a visual stylist, his style is your typical bright Hollywood realism, he has displayed a solid feel for the give and take of heterosexual relationships. The interactions of Davidson and his lady love, expertly played by Bel Powley, and that of his mother and her fireman suitor (Bill Barr) are memorably etched and convey a reasonably realistic sense of interpersonal dynamics. The King of Staten Island shows an arc of personal growth for its characters that I find heartening.

The film is overlong, 140 minutes when it should have been 100 minutes at most. This belies the desire of the filmmakers to transcend the limitations of your typical relationship comedy, but film is too choppy and overloaded as a result. The issue of mental health is briefly mooted and then forgotten. A botched pharmacy robbery, in which the protagonist escapes consequences all too easily, should have been excised. Still, Messers Apatow and Davidson have largely succeeded in what they sought to do. Apatow shows once again that he is particularly adept at casting his players. Rapper Action Bronson is an especial treat as a loquacious stabbing victim. 

  

The Wild Goose Lake

Gwei Lun-Mei and Ge Hu share a spark in The Wild Goose Lake

Certainly the most accomplished and interesting new feature I've seen in 2020, The Wild Goose Lake  fulfills the promise director Yi'nan Diao showed in his earlier features.  Set mostly at night amongst the lakeside demimonde of Wuhan and told largely in flashback, the film has been described as a Hitchcockian noir, but I found it more akin to the man on the run films of Carol Reed, particularly Odd Man Out and The Third Man. Like those films, The Wild Goose Lake features a doomed protagonist, played with Steve McQueen like dexterity and taciturnity by Ge Hu, who is sought by both the authorities and the mob. He wants to turn himself in and give the reward money to his somewhat less than faithful wife, but danger lurks for him around every corner. The mood of the film is fatalistic and paranoid. All of the main characters are being stalked or surveilled. A prostitute tries to help Ge Hu's character, but his fate is sealed and he knows it. The principles are all outstanding, but the pool halls, flesh pits and noodle shops of Wuhan come equally alive in this memorable and moody thriller. 

Best of 1964

1. Gertrud                                                         Carl Theodor Dreyer
2. A Hard Day's Night                                      Richard Lester
3. Woman in the Dunes                                   Hiroshi Teshigahara
4. The Red Desert                                            Michelangelo Antonioni
5. The Killers                                                    Don Siegel
6. Bande a part                                                 Jean-Luc Godard
7. King and Country                                        Joseph Losey
8. Dr. Strangelove                                            Stanley Kubrick
9. Diamonds of the Night                                Jan Nemec
10. The Naked Kiss                                            Sam Fuller                                         

          

          Honorable Mention

          Zulu -- Endfield, Onibaba -- Shindo,

          A Shot in the Dark -- Edwards, Lilith -- Rossen,

          I Am Cuba -- Kalatozov, Three Outlaw Samurai -- Gosha,

          Kwaidan --Kobayashi, Masque of the Red Death-- Corman

         Films I Enjoyed

         The Pink Panther, The Battle of Culloden, 

         The T.A.M.I. Show, The Best Man,

         Man's Favorite Sport, Cheyenne Autumn,

         The Fall of the Roman Empire, Loving Couples,

         Enchanted Desna, Joy House,

         Kiss Me Stupid,

         The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Marnie,

         Viva Las Vegas, Diary of a Chambermaid,

         A Fistful of Dollars, The World of Henry Orient, 

         The Moon Spinners, 

         A Distant Trumpet, The Train, 

         Emil and the Detectives, Black Sabbath,

         The Americanization of Emily, Goldfinger

         Below the Mendoza Line

         The Night of the Iguana, Becket,

         Goodbye Charlie, Paris When It Sizzles,

         The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Pumpkin Eater, 

         The Tomb of Ligeia, Mary Poppins,

         My Fair Lady, Father Goose,

         Send Me No Flowers, Seven Days in May, 

         Fail Safe, The Pawnbroker, 

         What a Way to Go!, Good Neighbor Sam,

         The Incredible Mr. Limpet, Behold a Pale Horse,

         The Carpetbaggers, The Unsinkable Molly Brown,

         Zorba the Greek, Dear Heart, Circus World,

         Santa Claus Conquers the Martians,

         

American Animals

 

Bart Layton's American Animals is one of the more unjustly overlooked features of the past few years. The film examines the misbegotten attempts by four students to steal rare books from the collection of Transylvania University. The film interweaves the narrative with interviews of the actual participants. Layton views his hapless subjects with a fully rounded humanity that prevents the film from succumbing to moralizing.

He is greatly helped by his two leads, Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan, who do a fine job fleshing out this folie a deux. Keoghan seems to have a lock on playing creeps and Peters brings the barely contained hysteria he has ably displayed on American Horror Story.

I was familiar with the story going in, but Layton's skill at ratcheting up the suspense had me palpitating. A find. 

 

El Bruto

Katy Jurado has Pedro Armendariz typed as El Bruto

The melodrama of 1953's El Bruto is much more logically plot bound than is to be expected from a Luis Bunuel film. However, Mr Bunuel, as was his want, didn't just settle for a paycheck and uses this lurid feature to arrestingly explore strands of Marxism, Surrealism and Absurdist humor.

Class struggle is one of the central conflicts of the film. A rich landlord, Andres, wants to evict some poor tenants from his slum so he can make a financial killing redeveloping the land. When a collectivist response threatens his plans, he enlists an employee, the titular brute, to muscle the tenants into submission. After the "success" of Los Olivados, Bunuel was working his way up the food chain of the burgeoning Mexican film industry. He ended up doing everything from distinguished literary adaptations to the charming Mexican Bus Ride in a period every bit as interesting as his later European one. What strikes me was how deft he is here with the early crowd scenes. He contrasts the lone wolf oligarch and his thugs with the unwashed masses gracefully, utilizing multiple speaking parts, but able to invigorate and speed the dramatic action so the baldly Marxist outlook never seems pedantic. 

Armendariz is one of the most important actors of postwar cinema and is somewhat neglected; at least in the USA. He had dipped his toe into Hollywood cinema (The Fugitive, Fort Apache, We Were Strangers), but worked largely in Mexico, where he was a major star. The role of a simple minded fascist thug is not really a test of his ability, but he makes a convincing thug. Katy Jurado is best known for her role as the masochistic Helen in High Noon, but she had roles more worthy of her talent in One Eyed Jacks and Pat Garrett and Bill the Kid. As a raging virago, she has a field day here. When the brute dumps her for a mousy good girl, she exacts a furious revenge.

Bunuel leavens the gloom with humor, particularly in the character of Andres' father, a demented codger. The patriarch is now a drooling child, stealing and hoarding candy. The sardonic streak in Bunuel also emerges as he has the brute declare what a beautiful country Mexico is to his lady love while standing in a pile of rubble. This helps dissipate the nightmarish nature of the world of El Bruto, which is replete with degradation, poverty and charnel houses.

The surrealistic asides of the film usually involve animals or their corpses. Bunuel is stressing that we are material creatures to whom life is but a brief dream. Jurado's character is a destructive force of nature. Bunuel presents her first savagely gorging on grapes as she admires herself in a mirror. Later, she rips the heads off flowers to visually reinforce fatal advice. She ends the film triumphing over her male lover/combatant and sealing his fate. Bunuel has her hiss at a cock as she exits. 

Maybe not a major Bunuel film, but an accomplished and enjoyable one. For anyone interested in the great Spaniard, his memoir, My Last Sigh, even in its expurgated English version, is a droll pleasure.

Best of 1965

1. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors                                 Sergei Parajanov 
2. The Saragossa Manuscript                                           Wojciech Has 
3. Bunny Lake is Missing                                                  Otto Preminger
4. Fists in the Pocket                                                          Marco Bellocchio 
5. Man is Not a Bird                                                            Dusan  Makavejev
6. Chimes at Midnight                                                        Orson Welles
7. Alphaville                                                                        Jean-Luc Godard
8. Simon of the Desert                                                        Luis Bunuel
9. Pierrot le Fou                                                                  Jean-Luc Godard
10. For a Few Dollars More                                                 Sergio Leone

                   Honorable Mention

                   What's New Pussycat? -- Donner, The Collector -- Wyler, 

                   Films I Enjoyed 

  

                   The War Lord, In Harm's Way, 

                   A High Wind in Jamaica, The Moment of Truth,

                   Repulsion, A Boy Ten Feet Tall, 

                   Young Cassidy, Major Dundee,

                   Pleasures of the Flesh, 

                   Cat Ballou, Hush...Hush..Sweet Charlotte, 

                   Help!, Darling,

                   Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!, The Great Race, 

                   Viva Maria!, Red Line 7000, 

                   Mickey One, The Cincinnati Kid,

                   The Sons of Katie Elder, That Darn Cat

                   Below the Mendoza Line

                   The Cavern, Le Bonheur,

                   The 10th Victim, The Knack...and How to Get It

                   Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines,

                   Lord Jim, Juliet of the Spirits, 

                   The Hill, Von Ryan's Express,

                   Thunderball, Planet of the Vampires, 

                   A Thousand Clowns, The Agony and the Ecstasy,

                   How to Murder Your Wife, The Loved One, 

                   The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Pawnbroker,

                   The Sandpiper, Harlow, 

                   Battle of the Bulge, Doctor Zhivago, 

                   The Sound of Music, The Bedford Incident, 

                   Beach Blanket Bingo, A Patch of Blue

                   John Goldfarb, Please Come Home, Ship of Fools,

                   The Greatest Story Ever Told

                   Cave Videntium

                   The Hallelujah Trail

The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb

 

Debra Paget skirts the censors in The Indian Tomb

Fritz Lang's The Tiger of Eschnapur and its sequel The Indian Tomb, both from 1959, have been released on discs (by Film Movement) that do justice to these visually stimulating works. The color photography by Richard Angst has an astonishing visual intensity as it illumes the splendid sets and striking costumes. The extras are worthy, but some viewers may be perplexed as to why one of the cinema's great masters should be working on such hoary epics of Orientalist kitsch. 

Lang is best known for such expressionistically modernist masterpieces as Metropolis and M, but he did dabble in exotica. Such early films as Destiny and Harakiri reflect this aspect of his oeuvre and even in Hollywood potboilers such as The Blue Gardenia there is more that a whiff of Orientalism. Furthermore, Lang's silent films contain elements of (or indeed are) pulp serials: The Spiders, Spies and even the Dr. Mabuse films. Whatever the genre, the main theme remains the same: protagonists, usually lovers, battling an oppressive environment and a seemingly predetermined fate. Despite the rubber snakes, indifferently handled action sequences, dubbed actors, rhinestones and overly bright blood, Lang conjures a felt epic true to his thematic interests. 

A good comparison is another bloated epic from 1959, also with lepers and stilted acting, the Oscar winning Ben Hur. William Wyler's film is a slog, enlivened only by the second unit work in the chariot race. I certainly could not sit through the whole thing again, but Lang's epics repay multiple viewings. Lang's pageantry has a more evocative touch to it than Wyler's and he is able to use the epic genre to amplify his themes in a grandiose fashion. 

The main set of the film, the palace of the Maharajah of Eschnapur, is the kind of eye candy we expect of films of this sort. Yet, the palace is soon revealed as a combination prison, interment camp and extermination center. Lang's slow pans literally show us where the bodies are buried. The titular tiger is  a deadly threat, but not as deadly or treacherous as man. In this world, the embrace of lovers is always fleeting and imperiled. 

The two films contain elements of classical opposition. Incidents in the first film are repeated or echoed in the second for thematic contrast and karmic retribution. A victim of a whipping in the first film turns the tables in the second. A fertility dance becomes a dance of death when repeated. The Maharajah cannot part with worldly pleasure and power after consulting a yogi in the first film. When they meet again in the second film, it is with a spirit of renunciation and self sacrifice. This strand of self sacrifice pops up repeatedly amidst the doom of Lang's films; most notably in Destiny, Man Hunt and Moonfleet.

Paranoia and themes of surveillance also recur in Lang's work, most prominently in the films about the omnipotent criminal mastermind Dr. Mabuse. In the Indian Tomb, one character states this theme baldly when noting a giant ceiling fan seems to be watching them. However, it is the deities of India that are shown to be all seeing. When the dictates of Kali and Shiva are transgressed, the consequences are dire. Despite their glittering surfaces, these two films are very much of a piece of the deterministic nightmare cinema of Fritz Lang. Certainly the products of a conscious artist, these films seem to emerge from the unconscious. They lack the exciting dynamics of early Lang, but evince a serene contemplation of mortality and its meaning.