Human Highway

Neil Young and "Kaw-Liga" in Human Highway

Neil Young's Human Highway is an amusing curio that can't transcend its being an indulgent whim of a rock star. When both manager and wife of said rock star appear in the film, it is difficult to regard it as anything other than a vanity project. Still, Young displays more visual imagination here than in the excruciating Journey Through the Past and Russ Tamblyn (goofy), Dean Stockwell (satanic), and Dennis Hopper (bedraggled) are always fun to watch. It is a tribute to Young's sense of humor that his portrayal of Lionel, an idiotic auto mechanic, is the most self-parodying performance by a rock star ever. Young has a gift for kitchen sink surrealism and Human Highway's best moments smack of a more lysergic Frank Tashlin. The mise en scene blends the awkward fakeries of soundstage musicals and model railroad dioramas. (Young was, at one time, a part owner of Lionel Trains) Fans of Young will appreciate explorations of themes that recur throughout his music: native American spirituality, anti-nuke agitprop, gearhead car culture, and a hankering for waitresses. Rock and roll fans may find the film and its music enjoyable, others will be befuddled by its moronic humor and primitivist film style. 

The Blackcoat's Daughter

Osgood Perkins' The Blackcoat's Daughter is an occasionally creepy and interesting horror film that evaporates towards its conclusion. As in his later films, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House and Gretel & Hansel, Perkins is good at establishing spooky atmospherics, but weak at integrating milieu with plot. The plot concerns two students stranded at their all girl boarding school waiting for their parents to pick them up for break. One of the girls is possessed by a mysterious force and proceeds to wreak havoc. Perkins is able to fashion a foreboding presence out of anonymous institutions be they hospitals, motel rooms or schools. He gets a pair of striking performances from James Remar and Lucy Boynton and lifts the rest of a variously talented cast towards competency. Unfortunately, the plot is a sub Exorcist retread. The film ends with a whimper instead of a bang and all of the unsettling preliminaries are for naught. 

Best of 1941

1. How Green Was My Valley                                                        John Ford
2. Citizen Kane                                                                               Orson Welles
3. The Shanghai Gesture                                                              Josef von Sternberg
4. Swamp Water                                                                             Jean Renoir
5. The Lady Eve                                                                             Preston Sturges
6. Man Hunt                                                                                    Fritz Lang
7. Remorques                                                                                 Jean Gremillon
8. Ball of Fire                                                                                  Howard Hawks
9. The Maltese Falcon                                                                    John Huston
10. The 47 Ronin                                                                              Kenji Mizoguchi

         Films I Enjoyed

         A Woman's Face, Dumbo,

         Tobacco Road, Western Union,

         High Sierra, The Strawberry Blonde,

         Suspicion, 

         H.M. Pulham, Esq., The Little Foxes,

         All That Money Can Buy, The Flame of New Orleans,

         That Hamilton Woman, Major Barbara,

         49th Parallel, They Died With Their Boots On,

         Meet John Doe, Here Comes Mr. Jordan

         Below the Mendoza Line

         Sergeant York, Mr. and Mrs. Smith,

         The Devil and Miss Jones,

I don't usually comment on these lists, but, since I am swimming against the tide of film history, a few comments are in order. I feel that Welles is so intent on portraying the mature Kane as a hollow man that he drains most of the dramatic tension out of the last section of his film. Even the monstrous protagonists of The Magnificent Ambersons and Touch of Evil are viewed with more empathy than Kane and that is why I prefer those films to his allegedly unequalled masterpiece. How Green Was My Valley, like a number of films by Ford, has been criticized as being overly sentimental ("A monstrous slurry of tears and coaldust" wrote David Thompson). I think that Ford's sentimentality and humor, which often seem old-fashioned to modern viewers, counterbalance here what is one of the most bleak finales in all cinema. This pattern continues in most of the best of his later work: The Fugitive, Fort Apache, The Searchers, The Wings of Eagles, Two Rode Together, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, 7 Women. Is there a happy ending in any of these films? No way, Jose.

I'll cop to being a Ford partisan. I think he is by leaps and bounds the greatest American director. Heck, I even like Tobacco Road, which most view as an abomination. Still, I think there are more similarities than differences between Ford and Welles. Like Welles, Ford considered himself a man of the Left in 1941. It is only because of the persona of John Wayne, who Ford considered an intellectual lummox, that Ford is thought of today as some sort of right-winger. Ford acted as a mentor to Welles (see especially Tag Gallagher's John Ford: The Man and his Films, still the best book on Ford) and was his primary influence; as Welles, many times, graciously noted. The alleged technical innovations of Citizen Kane have been overstated. Welles claimed to have seen Stagecoach over forty times when he was preparing Kane, using it to study film technique. The expressionistic lighting, visible ceilings, depth of field, low-level camera and many other techniques evident in Stagecoach reappear in Kane in a more flamboyant manner. This is not a pejorative criticism, I enjoy Welles' flamboyance, but it is a distinction between directorial styles. 

One of the best and most moving essays I've ever read is Farran Smith Nehme's short piece on How Green Was My Valley entitled "Father's Day with John Ford". It can be found at her wonderful website, Self-Styled Siren.

                                              

 

Ready Player One versus A Single Girl

Visual overkill: Ready Player One

Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One confirms his status as a first rate film craftsman and a second rate film artist. Ernest Cline's YA novel provides a sturdy enough game plan for the usual amblin theme park adventure and thrill rides. Spielberg gets to explore the latest faux gamer technology and indulge in nostalgia for the pop cultural artifacts of his own past. He fills the frame with enough Easter eggs to last till Doomsday. The pop references give the movie some fizz, especially the sequence in the Overlook Hotel. Mark Rylance, always an ace in the hole for Spielberg, has a nice turn as VR game savant whose invention propels the semblance of a plot.

Olivia Cooke is a rounded and entrancing performer as the female lead, but her counterpart, Tye Sheridan, seems a cut-rate Miles Teller. The baddies, Ben Mendelsohn, T.J. Miller and Hannah John-Kamen, have little to do but stare at screens and sneer. Spielberg wants to get a Hawksian camaraderie from the rainbow warriors that aid the hero, but they function largely as mechanical parts of the film's construction. The final battle seems a sop to Game of Thrones fans, the direction lacks even the (overly) reverential conviction of Peter Jackson in the Ring films. As a Spielbergian construction, Ready Player One ranks somewhere above Tintin and below Minority Report.

After the visual overkill of Ready Player One, the adult ambivalence and relative restraint of Benoit Jacquot's A Single Girl, from 1995, was particularly gratifying to this viewer. Despite its supposed status as a cinema verite offering, Jacquot uses his camera subjectively to heighten the hunted nature of his heroine. Virginie Ledoyen, the most significant ingenue of 90s French cinema, gives an astonishingly grounded performance as Valerie, a young woman who must tell her creepy boyfriend that she is pregnant on the day she begins working room service at a ritzy hotel. The drama is separated into discrete segments, acts one and three are set in a café where Valerie alternately spars with and seeks comfort from her homme. These bracket scenes of Valerie's misadventures at the hotel. A coda is set two years into the future and shows Valerie and son bonding with her mother, heretofore unseen. Valerie's strong, almost obsessive relationship with her has been illustrated in a series of one-sided phone calls Valerie makes from the hotel.

Virginie Ledoyen in A Single Girl

The film initially traps Valerie in a claustrophobically small café where she must deal with her sullenly shiftless boyfriend. She is temporarily freed as she dashes via tracking shot to her first day of work. The relief is temporary, as her workplace is a rat maze populated by the anxious and unhinged. Valerie's colleagues are ambivalent to her. The workplace banter is punctuated by Jacquot's quick, punchy pans, appropriate to a frenetic setting filled with both resentment and kindness. Valerie is also beset by a Me Too moment, but puts her coworker in his place with a quick, public slap. The trips to guests' rooms are all done in tracking shots to emphasize the repetitive unease of the experience. Valerie pops open the door with her key card and is confronted with a veritable Pandora's box of unsettling tableaux. The guests are inclined to overshare with their youthful interloper. She is unfazed by this journey through a late capitalist zoo where appetites are indulged, but individuals are unsettled and encaged. 

Deficiencies in the last third of A Single Girl leave it just short of being a masterpiece. A lifesaving embrace by the boyfriend seems like a Hollywood gimmick. Jacquot does undercut this by having his heroine give the elbow to the creep. The coda dawdles, but little Mateo Blanc is adorably himself and is proof enough that Valerie's declaration of independence is worth celebrating. (7/7/18)

Red Sparrow

Bad wigs and zipless torture porn: Red Sparrow

Francis Lawrence's Red Sparrow is a forgettable spy thriller that doesn't thrill. A star vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence, Red Sparrow tells the tale of a Russian ballerina who, after a career ending injury, is forced to enter a "Sparrow School" where she is trained in the arts of espionage and seduction. The plot is the usual eyewash of double crosses and lacy underthings. Lawrence helmed two of the Hunger Games with Ms. Lawrence and their rapport and the commercial success of those projects must be the reason for his hiring because he has yet to make an even halfway satisfying film. His botch of Water for Elephants was a particularly egregious missed opportunity. There are a host of talented actors in Red Sparrow, but, except for Mary Louise Parker's drunken satrap, no interesting characterizations emerge. Ms. Lawrence's warmth remains submerged because her character has to forge a steely persona for self preservation. What seems like a stretch for Ms. Lawrence, her performance is OK, is really miscasting. Since JLaw is sexually assaulted twice and brutalized every ten minutes or so, Red Sparrow functions as zipless torture porn with elegant production design.

The Disaster Artist

James and Dave Franco in The Disaster Artist

James Franco's The Disaster Artist is a fitting and pleasant vehicle for his talents. The story of maudit auteur Tommy Wiseau and the making of his cult film, The Room, The Disaster Artist is a low-key satire that is gentle and affectionate. Franco gets to engage in a full on spoof of the tortured artist while subtly celebrating Wiseau's aspirations. Franco's performance art tendencies get to be indulged here in his over the top portrayal of Wiseau, but his directorial ambitions are more of a modest nature; a pleasant shift after Franco's tortured adaptations of Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy. Franco seems to be more of an actor's director than inspired auteur and when he has talents like his brother Dave, sister in law Alison Brie and Seth Rogan on hand, the end result is a pleasing and slight diversion. (7/11/18)

Assassins and the documentary form

Fleeing the scene of the crime: Assassins

A standout documentary, Ryan White's Assassins chronicles the assassination of Kim-Jong Nam, step-brother of North Korean dictator Kim-Jong Un, at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in 2017 and the subsequent trial of some of the perpetrators. The style of the doc is the usual Making a Murderer type mix of talking heads, CCTV clips, and graphs. What is distinctive about Assassins is the utterly bizarre nature of the crime, so I will divulge no more. I am fascinated by North Korea and its regime and have been entertained by recent documentaries on this country by Werner Herzog and Michael Palin. Even though I followed this case in real time, I was gobsmacked by some of the footage here. Of recent documentaries, only Jared Hess' Murder Among the Mormons comes close in seeming implausibility.

White is able to evoke his Asian locales in just a few succinct shots. Whether it be Pyongyang, Hanoi, Macao or the rice paddies of Indonesia, we get a real sense of place in the film. White is particularly strong in contrasting the baroque capitalist excess of Malaysia with its squalor. Sometimes he tries too hard, a segment in a Kuala Lumpur sweat shop is followed by a shot of a caged bird, but I prefer a director who shows his hand in the documentary form and I will attempt to explain why.

I think that the notion of objectivity in documentary filmmaking is a crock. No matter the intention or biases of a filmmaker, simply putting a camera in the presence of subjects changes their behavior. Two recent documentaries illustrate my point: Frederick Wiseman's City Hall and the PBS show, Philly D.A.. So unblinking in their alleged objectivity are these two films that they end up being campaign films for their protagonists: respectively former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh (now U.S. Secretary of Labor) and Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. Frankly, I'd rather see Nanook play act his life or Michael Moore confront some rascals,  than politicians signal their virtue.

A favorite documentary of my youth was D.A. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back. A look at Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of the United Kingdom, the film is chock full of great performances. Bob and Joan Baez's onstage performances are, of course, wonderful, but they are equally compelling backstage, in their hotel suites, and on the road. Memorable performances are also turned in by Bob Neuwirth, Alan Price, and a number of clueless journalists. The best and most memorable performance is by Albert Grossman as a conniving manager.

Bob Dylan and Donovan Leitch in Don't Look Back

Throughout the film, we hear about the rise of Donovan, the new folk-rock hero. Now I like Donovan's music, at least his Sixties output, well enough, but, in retrospect, he was just one in the line of "New Dylans" that the media trumpeted during that era. This continued through the Seventies with Bruce Springsteen, Elliott Murphy and, finally I think, Steve Forbert. Donovan eventually appears and offers a tune for the edification of Bob and company, the slight and somewhat charming "To Sing for You". Donovan requests Bob sing "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and Dylan responds by singing it, one of his many masterpieces, and showing up the young pretender with a sly and knowingly malevolent performance that was beyond Donavan's ken at the time. (though "Season of the Witch" and "Hurdy Gurdy Man" came close, later on) For what its worth, Richard Thompson believes that "... Baby Blue" was inspired by the grisly execution of the blue stocking wearing Mary Queen of Scotts. I don't think this stunning performance would have occurred in quite this way if Pennebaker's camera was not in the room. Regardless of this blither, Assassins is a must see. 

 

National Gallery, Tabloid, The Incredibles 2

One great scene does not make a great movie: Jack-Jack versus Racoon in The Incredibles 2

I recently watched two documentaries by two of our most feted documentarians: Frederick Wiseman's National Gallery and Errol Morris' Tabloid. Both films have their moments, but I cotton to Morris' relative subjectivity compared to Wiseman's unrelenting objectivity. Since first seeing Wiseman's High School on public television sometime in the mid-seventies, I have found most of his films to be arid explorations of institutions and National Gallery is no exception. Wiseman seeks to portray how people function within institutional settings, but his camera drains the settings of any frisson or emotional undercurrents. Since this film captures some of the most glorious paintings in the history of Western art, along with fascinating scenes of art restoration, it has many marvelous moments, but Wiseman includes too many meetings with functionaries spouting bureaucratic jargon. This may be true to Wiseman's intent, but it causes the three hour National Gallery to be a bit of a slog. 

Morris' Tabloid, on the other hand, zips merrily along. The tale of a former beauty queen who was accused of kidnapping and raping a Mormon missionary in England in 1977, the film depicts the Fleet street frenzy that resulted. More akin to Fast, Cheap & Out of Control than to The Thin Blue Line, Tabloid is Morris at his most relaxed and droll. Unlike the impassive Wiseman, Morris cannot help but inject himself into the film as he interrupts and questions the whoppers that emit from the mouth of Joyce McKinney, his somewhat demented subject. What Tabloid lacks in objectivity, it makes up for in entertainment value.

In a different vein, Brad Bird's The Incredibles 2 is a pleasant and well made, if somewhat predictable sequel. Production design trumps the first one, but the story is rote. The climax at sea reminded me of the similarly nautical variation of Speed 2, a change of venue that reflects only the writer's desire for a spin on the original. Dash has little to do and the villain is not compelling. Edna Mode and Jack-Jack still rule, but The Incredibles 2 is a somewhat superfluous second helping. (6/29/18)

Best of 1942

                

1. The Magnificent Ambersons                                                Orson Welles
2. The Battle of Midway                                                            John Ford
3. Gentleman Jim                                                                       Raoul Walsh
4. Sullivan's Travels                                                                   Preston Sturges
5. Son of Fury                                                                             John Cromwell
6. The Palm Beach Story                                                           Preston Sturges
7. Saboteur                                                                                  Alfred Hitchcock
8. Casablanca                                                                             Michael Curtiz    
9. Cat People                                                                              Jacques Tourneur
10. The Major and the Minor                                                       Billy Wilder

          Films I Enjoyed

          Talk of the Town, To Be or Not to Be,

          Les Visiteurs du Soir, Across the Pacific,

          Journey Into Fear, Bambi,

          I Married a Witch,

          Now Voyager, The Spoilers,

          Woman of the Year, In Which We Serve

          Below the Mendoza Line

           Yankee Doodle Dandy, All Through the Night,

           Pittsburgh, Kings Row,

           The Black Swan, Tennessee Johnson, 

           Mrs. Miniver, Flying Tigers, 

           The Pride of the Yankees, 

                                                             

                                                           

Jeanne

Jean-Francois Causeret and Lise Leplat Prudhomme in Jeanne

American critics outside of New York City were tepid towards Bruno Dumont's Jeanne, a sequel to his Jeanette. I thought Jeanette was a bold success and like Jeanne even more. Both films are rock operas with songs by the late French musician, Christophe, and they both tell the saga of Joan of Arc. The American title of Jeanne is Joan of Arc because Americans like things spelled out for them while the French know the story of Joan all too well. 

Oodles of films have been made about Joan and Dumont chose the youngest actress to play the role thus far. The casting of Lise Leplat Prudhomme, ten years old at the time of the first film, pays dividends because Dumont contrasts the youthful vigor of Joan's spirituality with the craven venality of her elderly male accusers. The clergy are portrayed as more concerned with climbing the ladder of success than saving souls. The film has memorable turns by Jean-Francois Causeret and Daniel Dienne (both making their film debut) as men of the cloth brought near apoplexy by the strength of the girl they brand a heretic. Fabrice Luchini, nearing a hundred credits in his storied film career, flexes his pearly whites in a cunning turn as the feckless Charles VII. 

Dumont has always drawn strong performances from both seasoned actors and amateurs, even in dire failures such as Slack Bay. Here, backdrops ranging from sand dunes to ruined forts serve like a bare stage to heighten our appreciation of the costumed cast. Like the unadorned backdrops Alain Cavalier used for his film about a saint, 1986's Therese, this choice heightens the presence of the actors so we are more attuned to the nuances of their performances and the sensual impact they make as creatures in their finery. Notice how the rich robes of the clergy and the wolf stole worn by Causeret leap off the screen at the viewer. 

The altar in Amiens Cathedral

Dumont's choice of Amiens Cathedral as the backdrop of Joan's trial is a likewise bold move that seems at first glance, given the baroque nature of the Church's interior, illogical. Joan is tried before a high baroque altar constructed three centuries after her death. Yet, the excessive finery of the cathedral's interior stresses the Church's accommodation with wealth and power, a stark juxtaposition with the peasant girl trying to obey God and rid her homeland of invaders. Dumont is attempting to shake up a story that is overly familiar to the French through its multiple iterations. The American equivalent would be the multiple films that feature Lincoln though Peter Parker is closing fast.

Jeanne often courts absurdity, especially its Busby Berkeley horse ballet that represents the Battle of Montepilloy. I'm not sure I'd ever want to hear the film's songs on their own. Jeanette's songs were bombastic rock while the ones in Jeanne are more contemplative. Christophe himself sings the final number as a monk foretelling the eternal damnation awaiting Joan. He sings it as an elegy in a high, keening voice that I won't soon forget. Christophe passed away from COVID in April of 2020. 

I also won't soon forget Joan's final vision in this film. Praying to God one last time before she faces the stake, she spies a robin's nest. Hungry chicks open their mouths as their mother arrives to feed them. Death always awaits both saint and sinner, but life goes on and hope springs eternal. This is the message of religion behind the veil of suffering that is life. Buddhism teaches us explicitly that life is suffering. Christianity teaches us this implicitly by having us meditate every Sunday on the image of a Messiah and common criminal nailed to a cross. Once we accept this suffering and the horror of our own mortality, then we can accept hope through eternal life. This is the message of Dumont's Jeanne and its very young saint. 

My present home town's statue of Joan of Arc. Erected in Portland in 1925, it is dedicated to those Americans who died serving in France during the First World War.

The Other Side of Hope

Aki Kaurismäki's The Other Side of Hope is a middling effort from this genuine auteur of not quite the first rank. I've seen half of his twenty or so features and only Ariel sticks in my mind as a masterpiece. The Other Side of Hope shares a similar port setting and immigration theme with Kaurismaki's 2011 effort Le Havre, but is not as memorable a film. Sherwan Haji's Khaled is a refugee from the civil war in Syria who disembarks from a pile of coal and then tangles with Finnish bureaucracy until he encounters Waldemar, a new restaurant owner escaping from a lifeless marriage and a job as a shirt salesman. deadpan humor and bad sushi ensue,

Kaurismäki's framing and use of color are always pleasant to watch. Markku Patila's art direction is vivid and longtime collaborator cinematographer Timo Salminen's lensing is crisp and striking. Members of Kaurismäki's stock company reappear, such as Tuomari Nurmio, Kati Outinen and Sakari Kuosmanen as Waldemar; all to heartfelt effect. Unfortunately, brutal scenes involving nativist thugs are clumsily handled and cartoonish. Kaurismäki's slow crawl absurdism cannot account for spasms of violence. Pratfalls are more his style. Khaled is not a Chaplinesque immigrant anarchist, but a Poitier like symbol of racial dignity straight out of Lilies of the Field. Thankfully, the musical interludes in The Other Side of Hope are tuneful, spry, and ingratiating. 

Diamonds of the Night

A stunning first feature from 1964, Jan Nemec's Diamonds of the Night offers an impressionistic evocation of two Czech youths on the run from the Nazis during the Second World War. The two minute tracking shot that opens the film shows the two protagonists escaping from captivity and scrambling up a hill to reach a dense forest as unseen guards attempt to shoot them. The film contains relentless reiterations of the trauma of being hunted interspersed with flashbacks and reveries going on inside the heads of the two youths. The editing links the pair's memories with their current plight through the use of counterpoint (shots of the two struggling up a rocky hill is contrasted with a memory of sledders going down a snowy hill) or echo (the rhythm of their escaping feet is rhymed with their two pairs of boots tramping on cobblestones in happier times). 

What particularly impressed me was how well Nemec integrated his influences his into his own vision. There are traces of Resnais in the editing techniques, of Bresson in the use of non-professional actors and the closeups of their hands and of Bunuel's surrealism, all apparent without drawing attention to themselves as homages; though the reference to the ants in Un Chien Andalou is a little too obvious. Cinematographically impressive, the only technical flaw I could detect is the mediocre Foley work, but the power of the film undercuts such pettifoggery. Largely silent and only 67 minutes long, Diamonds of the Night is potent and provocative viewing for its entire running length.

Best of 1943

1. Day of Wrath                                                                       Carl Theodor Dryer
2. Meshes in the Afternoon                                                    Maya Deren
3. Shadow of a Doubt                                                             Alfred Hitchcock
4. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp                               Michael Powell
5. Hangmen Also Die!                                                             Fritz Lang
6. I Walked with a Zombie                                                      Jacques Tourneur
7. Cabin in the Sky                                                                  Vincent Minnelli
8. The Air Force                                                                       Howard Hawks
9. Stage Door Canteen                                                            Frank Borzage
10. Sahara                                                                                   Zoltan Korda

          Film I Enjoyed

          Heaven Can Wait, Mr. Lucky

          The More The Merrier, Port of Flowers,

          Immortal Sergeant, The Seventh Victim,

          This Land is Mine,

          

          Below the Mendoza Line

 

           Lady of Burlesque, The Ox-Bow Incident,

           Le Corbeau, Hitler's Children

                                                                

Hercules in the Haunted World

Riotous color in Hercules in the Haunted World

Mario Bava's Hercules in the Haunted World is not a film I would recommend to the casual video streamer. For aficionados of  Italian horror, I do not consider myself one, the film is a must see. The flick is a mashup: half sword and sandal, half supernatural horror. The peplum scenes are a trudge especially due to Reg Park's performance as Hercules. It led me to look back much more fondly on Kevin Sorbo, if not Steve Reeves. Sam Raimi's Hercules and Xena owe much to the mixture of cod mythology and campy horror on display here. Ted Raimi's Joxer in the Xena series is much like this film's comic foil, Franco Giacobini's Telemachus. Giacobini appeared in eight films in 1961 alone, most notably Luciano Salce's The Fascist. 

Hercules in the Haunted World is a snore any time Park starts tossing around paper-mache boulders, but when Christopher Lee appears playing a Hammer vampire things pick up. The occult elements allow Bava to play with riotous color for Pop Art effects that rival Lichtenstein and Warhol's then current offerings. The décor and lighting of this film far outstrip its dialogue and acting, though Lee, per usual, does his level best. For what its worth, the best Hercules movie I've ever seen, Hercules in the Haunted World would make a suitably cheesy treat for the inclined and reclined late night viewer.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's Frank Lloyd Wright, from 1988, is a solid and enlightening documentary. The first half suffers from vagueness in depicting Wright's developing architectural style. What trends Wright was reacting against and his debt to early mentor Louis Sullivan are not adequately explained. The film does a better job with Wright's response to the international style of Le Corbusier and Gropius that emerged after the First World War. Any study of Wright the man must grapple with his personal shortcomings and the doc's first half probably skimmed over the philosophical underpinnings of Wright's work because it had to detail the carnage of his private life. Brendan Gill and Philip Johnson, among others, offer wry assessments of his egotism and glowing testaments to his genius. One of the major treats of this film is watching the camera prowl around Wright's buildings, letting us revel in the play of light and color they offer. Edward Herrmann's crisp narration is a delight, with none of the patrician hauteur he used in portraying FDR or Richard Gilmore. He is missed.

A Quiet Place

John Krasinski's A Quiet Place mostly deserves its critical and box office success. Carnivorous arachnoid creatures have descended upon Earth and decimated the human population. The creatures are blind, but hunt their prey with their sensitive hearing. Krasinski and his real life missus, the talented Emily Blunt, play man and wife and they and their brood represent the dwindling hope of humanity. Isolated on a farm, they exemplify American ingenuity in thwarting the alien threat. Their talents are put to use minimizing noise by spreading sand on footpaths, soundproofing rooms and crafting soft Monopoly figures. When tragedy strikes, the family must overcome feelings of guilt and hopelessness. It is this portrait of a family under stress that rings true and raises this film above most run of the mill, CGI dependent, Sci-Fi horror.

Krasinski's workmanlike direction won't send me back to his earlier features, but A Quiet Place's least interesting aspect are its mechanistic thrills and chills. One scene of suspense is as old as A Corner in Wheat. These scenes are laid out rotely as in so many films after Alien where a hideous alien menaces a dwindling crew. Rather, it is Krasinski's focusing on the bric a brac of his protagonists' lives that brings the family and the threat to them to life. There is an element of survivalist chic to the film's shots of canned fruits and vegetables, bountiful paleo meals, and reconstituted gadgets. It is these gadgets that are the family's ultimate means of survival. Krasinski grounds his family's resilience in their work habits and attention to detail. When a newborn arrives, the family is prepared for the noisy newcomer and all the havoc his presence creates.

What brings the film home in its brisk running time are the top notch performances. Of the children, the standout is Millicent Simmonds as a deaf teen whose disability proves a boon. Blunt who has proven she can pump a shotgun or fill a petticoat with equal aplomb, provides solid value here as a loving and badass mom. Krasinski, a dadass adept at light comedy, gives a nice study in underplaying stoic heroism. It is damning with faint praise, but A Quiet Place is the finest American movie release of 2018 thus far. (7/15/18)

Charade

Stanley Donen's Charade is pleasantly entertaining black comic suspense film from 1963 that does not trouble to reach for greatness or sublimity. The script seems tailor made for Cary Grant making fun of his age and chin dimple. The script recycles plot contrivances from Grant's films with Hitchcock: the possibility that Grant is a cold blooded killer (Suspicion) or careerist heel (Notorious), a rooftop tussle (To Catch a Thief) and the peril and romantic banter of North by Northwest. However, the opening sequence alone establishes that Donen was not half the technician the Master of Suspense was. A clumsy pan across the French countryside precedes a jumbled depiction of a man being thrown from a train. Almost any Hitchcock action sequence is more dynamic, better constructed, and more memorable. It is certainly not the fault of cinematographer Charles Lang whose work here shows the finesse and feel for color he also displayed in One Eyed Jacks, The Stalking Moon, and Blue Hawaii.

Donen's direction work best in passages with theatrical conceits, perhaps due to his background in musicals. A nightclub scene displays the same winning flippancy towards European sophistication that Blake Edwards displayed in the contemporary Pink Panther films. A puppet show packs a visual punch and an actual theater is well utilized as the setting for the climax. Audrey Hepburn looks great in Givenchy and though no match for Grant's talents provides a good visual foil for him. The supporting cast is strong (George Kennedy, Walter Matthau, James Coburn) and Henry Mancini concocted an archetypal early 60s score. 

Best of 1944

1. To Have and Have Not                                                                 Howard Hawks
2. Ivan the Terrible                                                                           Sergei Eisenstein
3. Laura                                                                                             Otto Preminger
4. The Miracle of Morgan's Creek                                                   Preston Sturges
5. Meet Me in St. Louis                                                                     Vincent Minelli
6. Gaslight                                                                                         George Cukor
7. Hail the Conquering Hero                                                            Preston Surges
8. Phantom Lady                                                                               Robert Siodmak
9. Lifeboat                                                                                         Alfred Hitchcock 
10. National Velvet                                                                             Clarence Brown

          Films I Enjoyed

          Double Indemnity, Le ciel est a vous,

          Henry V, The Curse of the Cat People,

          Summer Storm,

          Going My Way, Bluebeard,

          Home in Indiana, At Land,

          The Keys of the Kingdom, Arsenic and Old Lace,

          The Lodger, The Song of Bernadette

          Below the Mendoza Line

          Passage to Marseilles, The Canterville Ghost, 

          None But the Lonely Heart, Belle of the Yukon,

          Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,

          Wilson, The Fighting Seabees,

          Dragon Seed,

          The Purple Heart

                                               

La desenchantee

Judith Godreche in La Desenchantee

Benoit Jacquot's La desenchantee, from 1990, is an intermittently successful portrait of a teenage Parisian making a difficult transition from childhood to womanhood. Beth is finishing school while caring for her younger brother and invalid mother. The family is living a hand to mouth existence dependent on the largesse of an older doctor, unsubtly called "Sugardad", who has designs on Beth. Beth has a more age appropriate boyfriend, but he shows himself to be an insensitive creep who flippantly suggests she take on an older, uglier lover to prove their own love is real. This throws Beth for a loop and she considers hooking up with a callow nerd and a thoughtful, but tormented older man. 

Jacquot conveys the confusion of youth where identities are tried on like hats to find the proper fit. Lead Judith Godreche is not as strong as Virginie Ledoyen in Jacquot's later A Single Girl, but her blankness fits her character's confusion. Some of the characters, like Beth's Mom, do not rise above cliché, but Ivan Desny provides effective notes of ambivalence as the sinister Sugardad. Jacquot, as in A Single Girl, conveys the menacingly lupine nature of his males. He also winningly portrays his heroine's cultural strivings, such as her interest in Rimbaud and Egyptian sculpture, as brief moments of transcendence in a dog eat dog culture. La Desenchantee is fitful and occasionally overbearing, but it succeeds in evoking its heroine's plight. 

Don't Breathe

Stephen Lang in Don't Breathe

Fede Alvarez's Don't Breathe strikes me as the most interestingly directed of the recent batch of good horror films. The plot is simple: a trio of thieves try to rob a blind man in his decrepit Detroit mansion, but he turns the tables on them. A lean, largely silent 88 minutes, the film greatly benefits from a titanic performance by Stephen Lang as the intended victim who has a few surprises for the perps and the audience. Unfortunately, Alvarez fails to elicit satisfactory performances from the male members of his larcenous trio. Jane Levy, a holdover from Alvarez's remake of Evil Dead, is good as the token femme.

Alvarez arranges his shots to emphasize squares and rectangles. The aerial vistas that open the film emphasize the grid like nature of Detroit's neighborhoods. We first view the blind man's house within the rectangular confines of an alleyway. When the trio is locked in the house by the blind man, they try to escape via doors, grates, air vents and other four sided portals. They have no exit and are caught like rats in a maze.

The audience sympathy for the trio is increased when it is revealed that the blind man is a Nietzschean psycho. Thus, the culturally diverse trio become the communitarian bulwark against the out of control individualism of the white American male. A blow against the patriarchy is needed, especially when the blind man tries to impregnate the trussed heroine with a baster. All of this might seem silly were it not for Lang's howling at the moon performance. Whether he is immobile, vulnerable, confused or manic with vein trembling fury, Lang is a physical marvel here. After forty or so years in the business and over a hundred credits, he deserves to cash in with Don't Breathe 2. (7/22/18)

Raw Deal, Safety Not Guaranteed, Evil Dead (2013)

Shadows and fog: Raw Deal

Anthony Mann's Raw Deal, from 1948, is among the lesser of the film noirs he made in the late 40s, but is still potent and memorable. Dennis O'Keefe, who starred in Mann's breakthrough T-Men the year before, is a convict whose moll, played by the always wonderful Claire Trevor, helps him escape from prison. Mann superbly utilizes Trevor's tremulous masochism. The prison break has been masterminded by O'Keefe's criminal partner, a monstrous Raymond Burr, who actually hopes it will seal his doom. Instead, O'Keefe kidnaps his female parole officer, a bland as always Marsha Hunt, who is part hostage and part romantic rival to Trevor. Double crosses abound and dollops of extra creepiness are supplied by John Ireland and Whit Bissell.

Despite clunky dialogue and B leads, Raw Deal stands out because of the photography of John Alton who also collaborated with Mann on T-Men, The Black Book, Border Incident and Devil's Doorway. Alton has justly been celebrated as a master of shadows and this is evident in the night sequences with their evocative use of fog and neon. Note, too, the power of the sun kissed shots lensed here, particularly one of Hunt and Trevor's silhouettes crossing with a Malibu beach in the background. The collaboration between Mann and Alton produces a myriad of memorable moments: a tussle in a taxidermy shop, numerous car chases and stationary closeups of the two female leads in veiled hats which emphasize the unity of two opposed poles of femininity, both united in their love for the wrong man. 

Both O'Keefe and Hunt are serviceable in their roles. My dream casting would have been Mitchum and Teresa Wright, but Raw Deal is still powerful. I'll not soon forget the dream like beauty of the opening with Trevor's voiceover backed by spasms of theremin as she strides into San Quentin to spring her man. Mann's world is one of treachery and cruelty. Burr, shot as a hulking, yet weak menace in low angle closeups, provides a sickening note of lurid villainy by hurling a flaming dish of cherries jubilee at a mistress. A forceful and compelling picture that speaks wholly of its maker, the still underrated Anthony Mann.

Forceful direction is exactly what is lacking in the otherwise pleasant Safety Not Guaranteed, a film by Colin Trevorrow from 2012 and starring indie icons Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass. I do think Ms. Plaza is the bees knees, upgrading the Eve Arden supporting wisecracker role to lead for this post post-feminist era. Mr. Duplass, the most versatile leading man to emerge in the 21st century American cinema, ably plays a daft scientist who lives on the Washington coast and is constructing a time machine. Plaza is one of a trio of journalists who try to track down Duplass after he places a classified ad to recruit time travelers. Plaza, like Jean Arthur softening towards Cooper or Stewart, falls for the befuddled lug and is soon joining him in a folie a deux, training for trips to the past. Duplass and Plaza have a pleasant vibe between them and Trevorrow milks it for all its worth in numerous two shots.

Biff adores Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass, Safety Not Guaranteed not so much

The supporting characters are not as memorable. This is a film with problems of structure and tone. A voice over narration is used early on to establish Plaza's status as a misfit, but is soon discarded. There are a few satirical shots of the seedy seaside town where most of the action occurs, but this, too, drops by the wayside. The script seems to call for a tone of magical realism, but Trevorrow offers only plodding realism. This has its own rewards, as Trevorrow went on to helm Jurassic World and the upcoming Jurassic World: Dominion.

Fede Alvarez's Evil Dead, from 2013, is a rote reboot of the Sam Raimi classic. What's missing entirely is the mischievous glee Raimi brought to the carnage. Addiction is brought in as a subtext, but this an extremely hollow and disenchanted film.