Bacurau

 

A collective response in Bacurau

After writing that The Hunt was the umpteenth remake of The Most Dangerous Game, I watched another thinly veiled rehash of the same material, Juliano Dornelles and Kieber Mendonca Filho's Bacurau. The hunters in this one are evil gringos preying upon the inhabitants of an isolated village in the hinterlands of northern Brazil. The writer/directors do a good job sketching the inhabitants of the village who collectively band together to defeat the wicked Anglos. As social parable, Bacurau is thin gruel, but the large cast performs well and the film is beautifully shot. Bacurau's coffin imagery is a distinctive and peculiarly Brazilian touch. The film is a magically realistic palimpsest with the skeletal remains of an old action plot still visible. 

The Trial of the Chicago 7

 

Just one example of the startling imagery of The Trial of the Chicago 7

Remarkably unengaging and badly directed, Aaron Sorkin's The Trial of the Chicago 7 is prime Oscar bait, but subprime cinema. Sorkin flattens all the participants into one dimensional caricatures. Mark Rylance and Frank Langella do solid work, but cannot overcome their miscasting as William Kunstler and Judge Hoffman. Eddie Redmayne and Sascha Baron Cohen huff and puff as, respectively, Tom Hayden and Abbie Hoffman, but cannot project a performance that transcends Sorkin's limited conception of these multi-sided men. Only John Carroll Lynch is able to make flesh and blood out of one of the seven as David Dellinger. Sorkin has made a name for himself as the Paddy Chayefsky of our era, but his direction would have seemed dull in the days of the The Philco Television Playhouse. A much better presentation of this travesty of justice is the bare bones BBC Production, The Chicago Conspiracy Trial. 

Best of 1958

1. Vertigo                                                                               Alfred Hitchcock
2. Touch of Evil                                                                     Orson Welles
3. A Time to Love and a Time to Die                                   Douglas Sirk
4. The Magician                                                                     Ingmar Bergman
5. The Tarnished Angels                                                       Douglas Sirk
6. The Hidden Fortress                                                         Akira Kurosawa
7. Bitter Victory                                                                     Nicholas Ray
8. Gideon of Scotland Yard                                                  John Ford
9. Bonjour Tristesse                                                              Otto Preminger
10. The Lineup                                                                         Don Siegel

         Honorable Mention

         The Ballad of Narayama -- Kinoshita, Du cote de la cote -- Varda,

         Rally Round the Flag, Boys! -- McCarey, The Music Room -- Satyajit Ray

         Films I Enjoyed

         Wind Across the Everglades, Party Girl,

         Cowboy, Man of the West,

         The Naked and the Dead, Gunman's Walk,

         Curse of the Demon, The Last Hurrah,

         Gigi, Thunder Road, 

         The Vikings, God's Little Acre,

         The Long, Hot Summer, Horror of Dracula,

         Invention for Destruction

         Below the Mendoza Line

         Terror in a Texas Town, The Gun Runners.

         The Left Handed Gun,

         Bell, Book and Candle, The Fly,

         Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Damn Yankees,

         South Pacific, The Quiet American,

         Auntie Mame, I Want to Live,

         A Night to Remember, 

         The Missouri Traveler, Houseboat,

         Run Silent, Run Deep. The Buccaneer,

         The Brothers Karamazov, The Young Lions,

         The Big Country, The Defiant Ones,

         The Old Man and the Sea

       

        

         

       

         
                                 

Intermission

Cillian Murphy and Kelly Macdonald in Intermission

John Crowley's Intermission, his first feature from 2003, examines the intersecting lives of a dozen or so characters in modern day Dublin. This kind of film requires a firm hand on the directorial tiller, more Robert Altman's Short Cuts than Paul Haggis' Crash. I feel Crowley bit off more than he could chew here. His choice of camera angles is, at times, bizarrely ineffective and the narrative has too much of a rough hewn, haphazard feel to it that dissipates the effect of the multi-story arc. Mark O'Rowe's screenplay is strong on characterization, but the plot feels jumbled and the tale's themes, especially jabs at American styles capitalism, are overstated.

Still, even at this early date, Crowley shows that he can elicit strong performances. Shirley Henderson, Cillian Murphy, Kelly Macdonald and Ger Ryan all do memorable work. Colin Ferrell is well cast as a psychopath and delivers a nervy, interestingly bifurcated performance. Intermission is a mixed bag, but a promising start to Crowley's career, the high point of which is, so far, Brooklyn.

Marketa Lazarova

 

Frantisek Vlacil's Marketa Lazarova, from 1967, is an epic Czechoslovakian film set in the 13th century. As warring clans face off in an increasingly appalling conflict, Vlacil's camera focuses of the flora and fauna of the Bohemian countryside in winter. There is an almost pantheistic embrace of the natural world in the film, a not particularly faithful version of Vladislov Vancura's 1931 novel. The conflict between Paganism and Christianity is at the heart of both works. The fecundity of Paganism and the charity of  Christianity are both given their due. The scions of the dueling factions are portrayed as stern patriarchs whose values are self serving and evil. The ultimate struggle in Marketa Lazarova is not between the two isms, but between Man's better or more bestial nature.

The film juggles a myriad of themes with a plethora of effects: pans, tracking shots, flashbacks, quick cuts, closeups of an impressive number of beasts, even human ones. The narrative seems jumbled, but the film races along with a hurtling momentum in which each character is enmeshed in a snare of their own natural design. Characters often hide from their nemeses in brambles or underbrush. The hero is ultimately trapped in the stone crevices of a crumbling castle. There is little solace except by meditating on loss and mortality.

Marketa Lazarova is not really an actor's movie because of its emphasis on nature. The acting is haphazard with the heroine a tabula rasa and the villainy sometimes overdrawn. Still, there are moments of greatness: tracking shots of wolves, a tableau of deer, an amputation. The greatness is not an Apollonian one, but a living, breathing Dionysian one. The film was selected by Czech and Slovak writers in 1998 as the greatest Czech film and I haven't seen a better one. 

Best of 1959

1. North by Northwest                                                              Alfred Hitchcock
2. Imitation of Life                                                                    Douglas Sirk
3. Rio Bravo                                                                               Howard Hawks 
4. Anatomy of a Murder                                                           Otto Preminger
5. The Horse Soldiers                                                               John Ford
6. Some Came Running                                                            Vincente Minelli 
7. Ride Lonesome                                                                      Budd Boetticher
8. The 400 Blows                                                                       Francois Truffaut
9. Floating Weeds                                                                      Yasujiro Ozu  
10. The World of Apu                                                                  Satyajit Ray     

          Honorable Mention

          Pickpocket -- Bresson, Hiroshima, Mon Amour -- Resnais,

          The Crimson Kimono -- Fuller, The Tiger of Eschapur/The Indian Tomb -- Lang,

          A Double Tour -- Chabrol, Les cousins -- Chabrol

          Films I Enjoyed

          Day of the Outlaw, The Wonderful Country,

          Operation Petticoat, Some Like It Hot,

          Westbound, Darby O'Gill and the Little People, 

          Pillow Talk

          Below the Mendoza Line

          Compulsion, Sleeping Beauty,

          The Mouse That Roared, Solomon and Sheba,

          House on Haunted Hill, A Summer Place,

          The Diary of Anne Frank, The Young Philadelphians,

          Suddenly, Last Summer, 

          The Nun's Story, The FBI Story,

          The Shaggy Dog, On the Beach,

          Lil' Abner, Ben-Hur, 

          Plan 9 From Outer Space,

          The Sound and the Fury
                                               

The Hunt

Betty Gilpin is the prey in The Hunt

Craig Zobel's The Hunt is yet another version of The Most Dangerous Game, this time with liberal elites hunting down intolerant deplorables. The film is well paced, the humor scattershot. Zobel maintains a consistent tone of comic grotesque horror. Betty Gilpin is a solid lead, her presence here made me mourn the untimely demise of GLOW even more. Amy Madigan and Hilary Swank chew the scenery effectively. The Hunt is not a film for everyone, it left some critics in an apoplectic state, but I appreciated its B movie craftmanship and relative nihilism.   

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

George C. Wolfe's film of August Wilson's play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is a modest success. Wolfe has mode forays into television and film work before, but is chiefly known as one of the American theater's most distinguished directors. Unfortunately, this does not mean that he is naturally gifted in a largely visual medium. In the film, whenever action is occurring, particularly the violence and sex, Wolfe interjects some quick cutting and frenzied movements. The intended effect is to evoke the passions of the characters, but the results are a jumble.

Happily, Wolfe is on firmer ground when directing his players as opposed to filling the screen. The ensemble performances of Ma's band are superb and moving. Wilson is most gifted at delving into the concurrent camaraderie and rivalry of Afro-American males through their banter. This the film nails and since these interactions are the meat of the work, the end result is more than passable as entertainment. The music is sterling and since music is central to Wilson's thematic concerns, it greatly contributes to the success of the project.

In Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, August Wilson portrays the decline of country blues or, as it is slightingly referred to within the play, jug band blues. Ma represents this dying genre while the character of Levee represents the burgeoning urban genres of up tempo blues and syncopated jazz. In a prologue added to the film, screenwriter Ruben Santiago-Hudson shows Ma performing at a tent show in the south. Then, a PBS style montage chronicles the migration of Afro Americans from the South to the urban centers of the Midwest and Northeast. At the end of which we see Ma's band arrive for their fateful session in Chicago.

Ma and Levee spar over which version of the title tune they will record. Ma upholds her tradition even if it means she will fade into obscurity. Wilson romanticizes Ma a bit, but as a devotee of her music and that of her compatriots, I sympathize. I would urge any fans of 20th century American music to listen to the works of Ma, Bessie Smith, the Memphis Jug Band or the Mississippi Sheiks. The result will be both rewarding and fun. I first got into jug band blues through Laurie Bird's shrill, but endearing version of "Stealin, Stealin" in Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop which I saw in the late 70s. My lid really flipped when I heard the genuine article. Viola Davis is much too handsome to play Ma, but has enough sweat sprayed on her, kohl smeared round her eyes and actorly skill to play the raunchy and dissipated diva. She is a ferocious delight whether sucking on a Coke bottle or haranguing her manager. 

Chadwick Boseman is Levee and his presence throws the film out of whack for both good and ill. There is an air of valedictory poignancy about his performance that tilts the film towards his character's favor. Wilson's Levee is a not uncritical take on the aggressive Afro-American male of the Twentieth century in opposition to his supposedly more servile Southern forebears. Levee also represents the gangster strain in Afro-American music which stretches from Stagger Lee to Suge Knight and beyond. Boseman ably channels his character's damaged psyche (he is literally scarred across the chest) and youthful vitality. However, I think his dynamic performance makes Ma's character a supporting player in her own movie. A similar thing occurred when Marlon Brando's performance of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire eclipsed that of Jessica Tandy's Blanche. Tennessee Williams' intentions were altered, but not, as even he admitted, necessarily negatively. 

Mr. Santiago-Houston adds an effective coda to the play wherein a white, Paul Whitman type orchestra blandly plays the doomed Levee's composition, "Jelly Roll" (and I hope you know what this is a euphemism for). Another lineage is invoked, this time ironically, which has bequeathed such embarrassments as Pat Boone and Vanilla Ice. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is not an unqualified success, but it conveys enough of the power of Wilson's ideas and vision to make it compelling viewing.   

 

Best of 1960

1. Psycho                                                                           Alfred Hitchcock
2. Breathless                                                                     Jean-Luc Godard
3. Shoot the Piano Player                                                Francois Truffaut
4. The Virgin Spring                                                         Ingmar Bergman
5. Les Bonnes Femmes                                                    Claude Chabrol
6. Les Yeux Sans Visage                                                  George Franju
7. Comanche Station                                                        Budd Boetticher
8. L'Avventura                                                                 Michelangelo Antonioni
9. Peeping Tom                                                                 Michael Powell
10. Sergeant Rutledge                                                       John Ford

          Honorable Mention

           Macario -- Gavaldon

           Heller in Pink Tights -- Cukor, The Apartment -- Wilder

          Films I Enjoyed

          The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs,

          Esther and the King, Exodus,

          Flaming Star, Spartacus, 

          Wild River, La Dolce Vita,

          The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse,

          Purple Noon, Elmer Gantry,

          Verboten!, The Magnificent Seven,

          The Housemaid,

          Rocco and His Brothers, The Night Fighters,

          Black Sunday, North to Alaska,

          Devi, House of Usher, 

          Jigoku, Swiss Family Robinson

          Below the Mendoza Line

          Cimarron, The Time Machine,

          The Cloud-Capped Star, The Little Shop of Horrors,

          Where the Boys Are, Murder Inc.,

          Private Property,

          Cinderfella, Butterfield 8, 

          Pollyanna, The Trials of Oscar Wilde,

          Please Don't East the Daisies, The Unforgiven,

          Inherit the Wind, Ocean's 11,

          The Entertainer, The Alamo,

          Sink the Bismarck!, G.I. Blues,

          The Sundowners, Tall Story

Les Perles de la Couronne

Sacha Guitry's Les Perles de la Couronne, from 1937, is a cinematic sorbet, sweet, light and not altogether filling. A film bouffe, it spans four hundred years as it tells the tale of seven precious pearls; four of which end up in the English royal crown. This provides Guitry a chance to stage a historical burlesque. Kings, thieves and courtesans parade by exchanging the pearls, often for sexual favors as they are passed to younger lovers by older ones who have lost their other charms. The tone is sly and sardonic, but the cinematic technique is often perfunctory. Guitry shoots a few scenes as tableau vivant, but most resemble vaudeville skits. 

This is not necessarily a bad thing. When you have Arletty and Marcel Dalio, in blackface, spouting gibberish in the Abyssinian episode, the ensuing amusement renders moot any objections to the lack of cinematic style, taste, and racial propriety. This episode also contains a wily jab at Mussolini's recent invasion of Ethiopia. Like Chaplin, Guitry was a man of the stage, but he lacks Chaplin's gifts of cinematic framing and timing. Still, I do wonder if Chaplin's frolics with the globe in The Great Dictator were inspired by Guitry's hijinks with a rubber ball here. In multiple roles, Guitry and his then missus, Jacqueline Delubac, are so delightful that it seems to be churlish to be too critical of Les Perles de la Couronne. 

21

Kate Bosworth and Jim Sturgess in 21. Kevin Spacey lurks menacingly.

Robert Luketic's 21, from 2008, is a singularly unmemorable movie. The premise is interesting: an MIT professor becomes a gambling Svengali to his students and takes them to Vegas where they display their card counting prowess at the blackjack table. As in Wall Street, the film becomes a parable in which a greenhorn is seduced by the lure of lucre and abandons the traditional values instilled in him by his parents. However, Luketic doesn't have the cinematic chops of Oliver Stone and the results are forgettable. Even Kevin Spacey, one of the producers of the film, gives a dull performance. Laurence Fishburne has some interesting moments as a casino security enforcer, but his subplot feels truncated. When Kate Bosworth delivers the best performance in a film, you know you are in trouble. Jim Sturgess displays a lack of charisma as the lead. A snoozer.  

Best of 2019

       

1. Fleabag                                                                        Phoebe Waller-Bridge
2. The Irishman                                                               Martin Scorsese
3. Shadow                                                                        Zhang Yimou
4. Rolling Thunder Review...                                          Martin Scorsese
5. Toy Story 4                                                                  Josh Cooley
6. The Golden Glove                                                       Fatih Akin
7. Climax                                                                          Gaspar Noe
8. Transit                                                                          Christian Petzold
9. Dragged Across Concrete                                          S. Craig Zahler
10. Parasite                                                                        Bong Joon-ho

          Honorable Mention

          Long Day's Journey into Night -- Bi Gan,

          High Life -- Denis, One Child Nation -- Nanfu Wang & Lynn Zhang 

          Films I Enjoyed

          The Spy, First Love,

          Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, 

          Parfum, Atlantics,

          Ruben Brandt, Collector, Russian Doll,

          Dolemite is My Name, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,

          Marriage Story, Portrait of a Woman on Fire, 

          Uncut Gems, The Souvenir,

          Where'd You Go,  Bernadette, Under The Silver Lake,

          Honey Boy, The Peanut Butter Falcon,

          Bad Times at the El Royale, The Ruthless, 

          Never Look Away, Days of the Bagnold Summer,

          Ash is Purest White, A Hidden Life, 

          Arctic, Midsommar,  

          JoJo Rabbit, Little Women,

          6 Underground, Knives Out,

          She Wolf, Happy Death Day 2U, 

          Queen of Hearts, Mo, 

          The Lighthouse, The Laundromat, 

          The Whistlers, Charlie Says,

          Anna, Spider-Man: Far from Home,

          Sweetheart, Zombi Child,

          Pain and Glory, Always Be My Maybe,

          The Last Black Man in San Francisco, The Lodge                                                                                              

          Below the Mendoza Line

          Velvet Buzzsaw, Hustlers,

          An Elephant Stands Still, Frances Ferguson,

          The Professor and the Madman, Anthropocene,

          Lux AEterna, Valley of the Gods,

          Freaks, Judy and Punch,

          Lucky Day, Queen & Slim,

          1917, Ad Astra,

          The Dead Don't Die, Ford v Ferrari,

          Blood Quantum, Ready or Not, 

          The Avengers: Endgame, Us, 

          Strange But True, Joker, 

          The Beach Bum, The Son,

          Serenity, Color Out of Space,

          Red Rage, It: Chapter 2

          John Wick 3, Rocketman,

          Curiosa, Funhouse, Eli,

          The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil, Pet Sematary, 

          Maleficent: Mistress of Evil,

          Downton Abbey, The Professor,

          Zombieland: Double Tap, The Furies,

          Castle in the Ground, A Score to Settle, 

          Child's Play, Triple Frontier

          Cave Videntium

          Polar