Best of 1937

1. History is Made at Night                                                  Frank Borzage
2. La Grande Illusion                                                            Jean Renoir
3. Snow White                                                                       David Hand, et al
4. Sabotage                                                                            Alfred Hitchcock
5. Wee Willie Winkie                                                             John Ford
6. Stage Door                                                                         Gregory La Cava
7. The Hurricane                                                                   John Ford
8. Captains Courageous                                                       Victor Fleming
9. Stella Dallas                                                                       King Vidor
10. Make Way for Tomorrow                                                  Leo McCarey

         Films I Enjoyed

         Lost Horizon, The Awful Truth,

         Pepe le Moko, Un Carnet de Bal,

         You Only Live Once, Camille,

         Nothing Sacred, Angel,

         A Star is Born, The Pearls of the Crown,

         Shall We Dance?, The Prisoner of Zenda,

         Easy Living, Fire Over England,

         The Life of Emile Zola,

         Topper, Dead End

         Below the Mendoza Line

          

          Stolen Holiday,

         A Day at the Races,

         In Old Chicago,

         The Good Earth

          

Jolt

If you are tired and indiscriminate: Kate Beckinsale pounds another victim in Jolt

Tanya Wexler's Jolt, currently streaming on Amazon Prime, is a super heroine actioner for the Adderall generation. A vehicle for the confoundingly lithe and youthful Kate Beckinsale. the story is at a comic book level with broad villainy and double crosses. Yet, despite the ludicrous material (which cribs from the Crank series), Wexler's breezy direction strikes the right tone and milks amusing banter from a too talented cast: Bobby Cannavale, Laverne Cox, Jai Courtney, Stanley Tucci, and Susan Sarandon. Not a good or memorable film, but appreciably better than such femme bot opuses as Atomic Blonde, Red Sparrow, Lucy, and the Resident Evil films.

I Know Where I'm Going!

Roger Livesey and Wendy Hiller in I Know Where I'm Going!

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's I Know Where I'm Going!, from 1945, is a charming romance shot amidst the shadows of World War 2. Wendy Hiller plays a headstrong young Londoner who is travelling to a remote Scottish island to marry a much older captain of industry. In an introductory scene at a swank London restaurant, she informs her befuddled father of the imminent nuptials. The milieu is sophisticated and the tone is tart. Our heroine is being set up by the Archers to be knocked down by love and country manners. She is stranded by a storm in a rustic seaside village where she attracts the attentions of a naval officer on leave. He takes her to a barn dance celebrating a long time union which contrasts nicely with the cosmopolitan opening. Sparks fly.

One of the few things I found unsatisfying about the film was the male lead, Roger Livesey. His performance is workmanlike and not without charm, but he is not a good match for the flint and fire of Hiller. Despite losing twenty pounds for the role, Livesey seems more avuncular than dashing. It is a pity that James Mason, then at his saturnine peak and the first choice for the role, did not play the part because of financial wrangling with the Archers. It must not have been too bitter because he did pair with Helen Mirren in Powell's 1969 film Age of Consent; a nice, but slight effort. In I Know Where I'm Going!, Hiller is incandescent, as is Pamela Brown. I'm more familiar with these ladies when they played Baronesses and High Priestesses in the 60s and 70s, so it is a treat to see them together in their prime. The glowing close-ups of Brown attest to the place she held in Powell's heart. 

The Archers always seem more at ease with fantasy than reality and this film is no exception. Hiller's dream sequences are marvelous, utilizing superimpositions and a surreal sense of sight and sound. On the debit side, the sequences of a boat and its crew in peril are clunky. My father first clued me into the Archers when reminiscing about his college days when he would look forward to each new Archers release. He delighted in their films and waxed enthusiastically about them. He sparked my interest in the cinema, opening a magical world that enthralls me to this day. He would champion films that stood a bit outside the mainstream: Ophuls' The Exile, Huston's Beat the Devil, and Mulligan's The Stalking Moon. His tastes were hardly avant-garde, but he taught me, mostly by example, to develop my own critical faculties and not kowtow to prevailing notions. In time, I was able to return the favor. I was chuffed after I sent him a VHS of History is Made at Night and he told me that he enjoyed it so much, he watched it twice in a row. Powell's work was no longer fashionable when my Dad first mentioned it me in the mid-70s, but critical winds have changed and he is now acknowledged as one of the premier English filmmakers. Dad, I promise I'll get to Oh...Rosalinda!! before I join you behind the veil. 

Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai

Christopher Kirkely's Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai (which roughly translates as "Rain the color of blue with a little red in it") is the first fictional feature to focus on Tuareg culture. The Tuareg are a Berber ethnic group. They are largely Muslim and semi-nomadic, inhabiting the Sahara. A cultural reawakening followed the Tuareg Rebellion that started in 1990. The rebellion sought to construct an autonomous Tuareg nation out of portions of Niger and Mali. This failed, but it raised awareness of Tuareg culture, particularly its musicians.

Tuareg refugees have gone back and forth between Libya, Algeria, Mali and Niger in the last thirty years because of conflict between Tuaregs and Islamic fundamentalists.  Congregating Tuaregs' wedding parties have throbbed to the sounds of takamba, both a musical form and a dance to them. Musicians use rock instruments, Akounak's star, Mdou Moctar, favors a Fender guitar, but with a rhythmic sense far different from that which emerged from the American South. This is chiefly due to the land locked nature of Tuareg culture. The coastal lands of West Africa, from which America's slaves were plucked, are more musically allied with Mississippi Delta Blues than they are to takamba which looks East. 

Regardless, the buzz surrounding Tuareg music culture led to bands being signed by Western labels, most notably Bombino and Tinariwen; the latter one of the most consistent and accomplished popular music groups of this century. Tinariwen dance like grooves have been likened to the Grateful Dead (as opposed to, say, Deep Purple, I suppose), but whatever pleasant buzz their music generate did not come from hallucinogens but from the heat struck trance of living a nomadic life in the desert. Mdou Moctar, the raison d'etre of this film, brings improvisatory skill and an added psychedelic edge to takamba.

The film's director was also the boss of Moctar's label, Sahel Sounds, at the time. Thus, the film is a promotional vehicle. Kirkely acknowledged lifting the semblance of a plot from Purple Rain and  Moctar enters the film astride a purple motorcycle. One can check off the shared plot points: lead and romantic interest taking a cycle ride, father issues, musical numbers, and a climactic battle of the bands. Of course, this would be true of almost any Rock movie since Presley hit; there are even disapproving elders in this one who are tapping their toes in delight at the conclusion. 💚

Kirkely directed, shot, and edited this film and had a hand in the script with Moctar. Thankfully this two man band kept this film to 75 minutes. The dramatic scenes are of meager interest, but the musical scenes rock. Moctar has an electric effect as a performer. Ethnographically, the film is a bright travelogue centered upon Agadez, a city in Niger with over 100,00 inhabitants. Kirkely touches upon the romance of a nomadic existence, but, on the whole, there is very little subtext to the film. Like Purple Rain, Akounak...is negligible as film art, but it succeeds as entertainment due to Mr. Moctar, his guitar, and his muse.

Moctar is on a bigger label now, Matador, but the quality of his music has not diminished. His new album, Afrique Victim, and 2019's final release for Sahel Sounds, Ilana, are heartily recommended. 

💚 See Greil Marcus, "Rock Movies" The Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll, 1976

                                                            and

            Marshall Crenshaw, Hollywood Rock, 1994

Violence at Noon

Kei Sato dispenses with another victim in Violence at Noon

Nagisa Oshima's Violence at Noon  is one of the more gonzo and nutzoid products of 60s cinema. It tells of a serial murderer who also commits necrophilia. Kei Sato admirably portrays both the charming façade and brutal core of the psychopath. Saeda Kawaguchi as the lusty Shino and Akiko Koyama (Mrs. Oshima) as the more demure Matsuko portray two women drawn together in their mutual love of the evil miscreant. Both actresses are effective. Only the last point of this film's misbegotten romantic quadrangle, Rokko Toura's cartoonish portrayal of the suicidal Genji, is subpar. 

Oshima, much like Shohei Imamura circa Vengeance is Mine, was returning to features after a bit of an exile spent making documentaries. He brings renewed energy to this literary adaptation, perhaps too much energy. This film contains over 2000 edits, further fracturing an already fragmented narrative largely told in flashback. Oshima busies himself utilizing the jazzy effects popular with directors who were trying to be modern, or at least mod, in 1966: jump cuts, frantic zooms, and enormous close-ups. This makes this dizzying slice of pulp more hysterical than it needs to be. Even Sam Fuller at his most outré (Shock Corridor, The Naked Kiss) is restrained compared to this in his handling of exploitive material.

Oshima is so intent on castigating the misogyny and stultifying classism of Japanese society that his portrayal of his supporting players descends into grotesqueries. What hold the film together is Akira Takada's high contrast black and white cinematography. Violence at Noon looks stunning even when it verges on the ludicrous. 

Best of 1938

1. Holiday                                                          George Cukor
2. Bringing Up Baby                                        Howard Hawks
3. Young and Innocent                                     Alfred Hitchcock
4. Alexander Nevsky                                        Sergei Eisenstein
5. Three Comrades                                           Frank Borzage
6. La Bête Humaine                                          Jean Renoir
7. The Lady Vanishes                                       Alfred Hitchcock
8. You and Me                                                   Fritz Lang
9. Bluebeard's Eighth Wife                              Ernst Lubitsch
10. Le roman de Werther                                   Max Ophuls

          Films I Enjoyed

          Pygmalion, Le Quai des Brumes,

          Four Men and a Prayer,

          You Can't Take It With You,

          The Adventures of Robin Hood, Algiers

          La Marseillaise, Hotel Du Nord,

          Olympia,

          Jezebel,

          Angels with Dirty Faces

          Below the Mendoza Line

          J'accuse!, Boys Town

Sightseers

Alice Lowe and Steve Oram in Sightseers

Ben Wheatley's Sightseers, from 2012, tells of a murder spree perpetrated by a couple on a caravan holiday in rural England. Chris (Steve Oram) is the initial instigator of the violence, but is soon outstripped in cruelty and mendacity by his girlfriend, Tina (Alice Lowe). Oram and Lowe's script strikes a black comic tone. The film is funny in a peculiar way rather than a laugh out loud way, as Chris and Tina's itinerary includes quirky attractions like the National Pencil Museum. The editing is provocative and tight, giving shape to a film that often threatens to meander. I was never fully intrigued with the proceedings, but I was never bored. Recurrently, Wheatley seems intent on exploring the sociopathy lurking beneath the civilized veneer of English society. 
 

Happy Death Day, Faces Places, Kedi

Jessica Rothe and friend in Happy Death Day

Christopher Landon's Happy Death Day is a mashup of Groundhog Day and Scream that is convivial horror fodder. Landon moves things merrily along and coaxes an assured performance from lead Jessica Rothe. There is not much to ponder over, but the young cast is appealing and the tone is spritely instead of lugubrious. Better than I expected. 

Agnes Varda and JR in Faces Places

Agnes Varda and JR's Faces Places is a documentary chronicling the New Wave legend and muralist as they tour the back roads of France with a portable phone booth. The duo print large mural prints of the people they meet along the way and affix them to buildings. A pleasant film, Faces Places has been described as "radical" by the New York Times, a judgement that would have been dubious even if the film had been made in the 1950s.

Criticizing any Varda project at this stage seems churlish. It is no sense expecting a Vagabond from her at this point in time. The amiable late life documentaries she has crafted are a testament to her joie de vivre and bonhomie. Only the episode involving Jean-Luc Godard, another senior crafting fine films in his dotage, seems ill-judged.

Kedi

My favorite of this threesome is Ceyda Torun's Kedi, a profile of the feral cats of Istanbul and the people who love and care for them. Torun starts with a cat's eyes view of her locale, but expands beyond the day to day struggles of her feline cast to offer a compelling portrait of Istanbul and its inhabitants. A treat.

Anon

Amanda Seyfried in Anon

Andrew Niccol's Anon is a Netflix Sci-Fi film that, like most Netflix features, is disappearing without a trace, but I found it to be slightly better than ordinary fare. Set in the near future, Anon stars Clive Owen as a police detective whose job is made easy because the authorities have access to peoples' memories through the new and improved world wide web known as the "ether". Owen can access perpetrators' and victims' memories through his own retina. This allows Niccol to pile on the subjective images from his characters' mind's eye, similar to what Kathryn Bigelow did in Strange Days. The fly in Owen's Ointment is Amanda Seyfried, who portrays a hacker who is able to erase herself from peoples' memories. She is an analog monkey wrench in a digital future. Not surprisingly, in the course of his investigation of her, Owen falls for Seyfried and, by movie's end, has been won over to her defense of individual privacy.

Hardly a great film, Anon suffers from a sense of Deja vu. The plotting is predictable. The police procedural scenes are rote and the display of female flesh hackneyed and, at times, exploitive. However, I found the relationship between the two leads to be haunting and memorable. As in Gattaca and In Time, Niccol emphasizes the shared humanity that persists in an increasingly impersonal future. Owen and Seyfried are up to the challenge that Niccol provides, but it is a pity that the rest of the film is not as resonant and fleshed out. (5/23/18)
 

Latcho Drom

Tony Gatlif's Latcho Drom (Safe Journey), from 1993, is a vivid and entertaining Romani musical. Indeed, I would cite it as my favorite musical of the 20th century. Gatlif fills his wide screen with color, dance, song, and closeups of jaw dropping musical technique. The film is a symbolic journey from East to West that mirrors the Romani peoples wanderings from India to Spain. The march through time is reflected in the change in conveyance from donkeys to auto caravans. There is little dialogue and no plot. Scenes of nomadic travel are punctuated by musical numbers when the Romani gather and celebrate. 

The film is a series of music videos featuring noted musicians. It is not an ethnographic portrait of the Romani. Instead, Gatlif, who has devoted his life to cinematically exploring the culture of his fellow Romani, celebrates and romanticizes his players whether they be youngsters just learning to sing or grizzled hammered dulcimer virtuosos. I am a big fan of Romani music so the film was catnip for me, but may not be to others. Still, I would urge even those not familiar with what was once called, pejoratively perhaps, Gypsy music to let Latcho Drom cast its spell. The only absence for me was the lack of Romani brass bands, like the wonderful Fanfare Ciocarlia.

The Oregonian today carried the story that the Entomological Society of America is no longer using the term "gypsy moth" because Gypsy is pejorative term. Perhaps. I know that to gyp someone was to cheat them, but don't think the term is used by today's youth. Certainly, Gypsies were regarded as, at best, charming brigands in days of yore. A good example is the ancient folk ballad "Gypsy Davey" (or Black Jack Davy) where a rich young wife forsakes her husband, baby, and feather bed to sleep on the cold, cold ground with the titular stud. Everyone from Woody Guthrie to Jack White has covered the tune, but my favorite is Cliff Carlisle's sly version from 1939. It was an oldie even then. In his majestic and acidic book Country, Nick Tosches traces the ballad back to the myth of Orpheus. Regardless, I don't really look forward to the logical end reached in erasing such a slur. Should Cole Porter's "The Gypsy in Me", Stevie Nicks' "Gypsy", and Cher's "Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves (#1 in 1971) be banished into the mists of time along with the hundreds of recorded versions of "Gypsy David". I hope not.

I had a recent experience where someone I met used the term pejoratively. I was reuniting with college chums in Seattle and stayed at the slightly seedy Marco Polo Motel. When I was checking in, one of the management team decried the Gypsies he had had to put up with for the last three days. He told me that they had pointedly ignored the dictate against cooking in the rooms, but he didn't complain about the music. I saw no sign of them except for some rotten onions and grapes in a dresser drawer. 

Whatever moniker one wants to use, Latcho Drom is a splendid film that will delight the eye and ear.

Best of 1939

1. The Rules of the Game                                                       Jean Renoir
2. Stagecoach                                                                          John Ford
3. The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums                           Kenji Mizoguchi
4. Young Mr. Lincoln                                                               John Ford
5. Only Angels Have Wings                                                    Howard Hawks
6. The Women                                                                          George Cukor
7. Love Affair                                                                           Leo McCarey
8. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington                                          Frank Capra
9. Drums Along the Mohawk                                                  John Ford
10. The Wizard of Oz                                                                 Victor Fleming

          Honorable Mention

          Northwest Passage -- Vidor, Sergeant Madden -- Sternberg

          Films I Enjoyed

          Destry Rides Again, The Roaring Twenties,

          Sans Lendemain, Union Pacific,

          Gone with the Wind, Made for Each Other,

          Wuthering Heights, Jamaica Inn,

          Ninotchka, Gunga Din,

          Dark Victory, Frontier Marshal, 

          Midnight, The Mikado,

          The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 

          Jesse James, Beau Geste,

          Four Feathers

          Below the Mendoza Line

          The Hound of the Baskervilles, Slightly Honorable, 

          The Night Riders, Of Mice and Men,

          Alleghany Uprising

          

          

Twin Peaks 2017

Naomi Watts and Kyle McLaughlin in Twin Peaks

David Lynch's Twin Peaks, an 18 hour reboot of the cult series, represents the director at his most disciplined and unbridled. Because he has countless hours to expand the series he and Mark Frost devised in 1990, Lynch can indulge his quirks and fantasies and indeed, he does. Everything irritating about the original series is here in spades, not least of which is an expanded role for Lynch's character, a hearing impaired FBI man. The hearing aid humor is still tiresome, but Lynch's FBI "Director" allows him to comment drolly on the casting couch when his character orders a comely agent to exit a room so he can watch her sashay away like a model. Similarly, the presence of zombified pink clad showgirls attending to the needs of two cartoon thugs is a cheap effect that culminates in a conga line, but it also functions as a comment on the commodified roles known as jobs available to women in our rapaciously capitalist culture.

Lynch continues to utilize his favorite axiom of the cinema, Kyle McLaughlin, as Agent Dale Cooper. McLaughlin does double duty as both Cooper and his evil doppelgänger for reasons too wearying to explain. The evil Cooper exists in a noir world of violence and revenge, the Coop is a tabula rasa much like Chauncey Gardner in Being There. Lynch amusingly plays off the stolid Cooper against the twitchy energy of his screen wife, Naomi Watts. Watts is able to present a master class in screen acting here, much as she did in Mulholland Drive (a film with numerous doppelgängers), where she played off similarly impassive players like Chad Everett and Laura Harring.

Miguel Ferrer and David Lynch

Lynch's storytelling is relaxed and indulgent. This sometimes results in twee mugging, particularly by the denizens of the Twin Peaks Sheriff's station, but, more often than not, results in heartfelt performances of grace and empathy. The number of name actors willing to work in bit roles in this series attests to the respect Lynch's oddly principled career has engendered. Lynch obtains heartfelt performances from Lynchian vets like Harry Dean Stanton, Miguel Ferrer and Laura Dern, but also exciting contributions from such Lynchian newbies as Amanda Seyfried, Caleb Landry Jones, and Eamon Farren. Added poignancy is gained from knowing that this is the last we will see of not only Messrs. Stanton and Ferrer, but others who have passed on such as Don Murray, Henry Silva and the log lady herself, Catherine E. Coulson.

What is most impressive about this series is how much Lynch has poured himself into this epic project. Themes and motifs from his oeuvre recur throughout the series to galvanizing effect: the industrial grunge of Eraserhead, the dark side of the American Dream in Blue Velvet, the search for identity in Mulholland Drive; all are present and amplified here. It is gratifying to see the visual and sonic energy on display here by Lynch who directed all eighteen hours. He will always be a surrealist, a bit outside the mainstream yet unconsciously reflecting upon it. The new Twin Peaks touches deftly upon both gun violence and the rise of Trump without Lynch breaking stride. It confirms his status as the most avant-garde of the major American commercial directors. (5/31/18)

Tiptoes

Kate Beckinsale and Gary Oldman in Tiptoes

Matthew Bright's Tiptoes, from 2003, is a third rate oddity that pretty much finished off Bright's career in Hollywood, but I found it to be not completely meritless due to its cast. Kate Beckinsale and Matthew McConaughey play expectant parents who face an unusual problem. McConaughey comes from a family of dwarves, a fact he has never shared with Beckinsale, and fears his offspring will be dwarves. McConaughey turns out to have a dwarf twin, who is played by Gary Oldman in a deft and sensitive performance. Oldman and Beckinsale's characters bond and when McConaughey's character has difficulty adjusting to his role as a parent of a child with special needs, Oldman steps in as the father figure. Peter Dinklage tries to add merriment as a French biker who pals with Oldman, but comedy is not Bright's forte.

The film was taken out of Bright's hands and pared down to become a ninety minute feature. It is that rare film that could have used more length, mainly to flesh out characters' motivations. While not a masterpiece about the marginalized like Tod Browning's Freaks, Tiptoes displays enough compassion for its characters to provide moments of interest. Beckinsale and Oldman have pleasant chemistry, but McConaughey seems at sea because he can't utilize his trademark charm and cockiness. Music and costumes are atrocious. Bright seems ill at ease with intimate scenes, a meaningless tracking shot spoils a bedroom scene between Beckinsale and McConaughey. Bright's feature debut, Freeway, displayed a glimmer of inspiration, but that was apparently that. 

Hereditary

Gabriel Byrne and a full throttle Toni Colette in Hereditary

Ari Aster's Hereditary is a good first feature, but not a great one. Aster's tale of a family coming apart due to an ancient curse resonates as a creepy exercise, but falls short of being transcendent horror. Visually, the film is competent and well thought out, but not deeply felt. Aster nicely uses pans and quick dolly shots to heighten the feeling of a family trapped by its past, but when the occult climax is reached the effect is muffled because the direction, measured and assured, lacks the crazed brio of a Polanski, Dante, Raimi or De Palma.

The cast all give well guided performances. Toni Collette gives the film hysterical intensity it needs. Ann Dowd, so magnificent in The Leftovers, is money in the bank in the Ruth Gordon role. Gabriel Byrne, often adrift if miscast, is effective. When Colette's wife asks him to be open to the idea of a séance, I had to chuckle, because there is no actor more closed than Mr. Byrne. The juveniles are all effective leading me to believe Mr. Aster had a firm hand on the tiller and I look forward to his next effort. (6/10/17)

The Naked and the Dead

Aldo Ray

Raoul Walsh's The Naked and the Dead is a heavily compromised version of Norman Mailer's novel that, nonetheless, is effective entertainment. The clash of Walsh's adventurism with Mailer's anti-authoritarianism makes this a fugless kluge that is neither fish nor fowl. However, Walsh's pictorial gifts fill the widescreen with colorful and abstract energy. He never winks at the audience by treating the action campily and the film's flashback sequences are as stylistically audacious as Tashlin and Ray's work from that same period. Aldo Ray, Cliff Robertson, and Raymond Massey are a solid march up the chain of command. It is also fun to see Richard Jaeckel and L. Q. Jones in their youth. 

Best of 1940

1. His Girl Friday                                                                  Howard Hawks
2. The Long Voyage Home                                                  John Ford
3. Pinocchio                                                                          Ben Sharpsteen, et al.
4. Seven Sinners                                                                   Tay Garnett
5. The Shop Around the Corner                                          Ernst Lubitsch
6. The Philadelphia Story                                                    George Cukor
7. The Great Dictator                                                           Charlie Chaplin
8. The Mortal Storm                                                             Frank Borzage
9. Rebecca                                                                            Alfred Hitchcock
10. Foreign Correspondent                                                   Alfred Hitchcock

          Honorable Mention

          They Drive by Night -- Walsh,

          Gaslight -- Dickinson

          Films I Enjoyed

          The Grapes of Wrath, The Return of Frank James,

          The Thief of Baghdad, The Great McGinty,

          The Letter, Fantasia,

          Dance, Girl, Dance, Dark Command,

          Santa Fe Trail, The Primrose Path,

          Waterloo Bridge, 

          The Sea Hawk, Night Train to Munich,

          Below the Mendoza Line

           

          Strange Cargo,

          The Westerner,

          The Blue Bird,

          Abe Lincoln in Illinois

Men Go to Battle

Zachary Treitz's Men Go to Battle has been dismissed as Civil War mumblecore, but I found it to be an auspicious debut. The film was made for peanuts and has the expected defects: murky cinematography, dance troupes and reenactors ambling through to save the producers a buck, sub-monophonic sound, but Treitz makes even the defects signify. Sound and vision are appropriately reflective of a world where the protagonist brothers are adrift and in peril. Some critics seemed to expect the characters to have dialogues like the New England Brahmins of  A Quiet Passion or their learned Southern counterparts in The Beguiled, but these are illiterate Kentuckians who can barely stammer pleasantries about the weather.

The cast is variable, but never jarringly bad. Timothy Morton as the beset upon Henry Mellon carries the movie with downtrodden aplomb. Treitz often tracks ahead of him, emphasizing Morton's dour face as he marches ever forward into one calamity after another. Men Go to Battle is not revelatory cinema, but it is honest and decent within its limits.

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion

Gian Maria Volonte

Elio Petri's Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, from 1970, is a Kafkaesque tale of a police official who murders his mistress and is then tasked with finding the murderer. The protagonist is a psychopath who ambivalently generates clues for his minions. His relationships are sado-masochistic with the official reveling in his dominance and power. Petri wants Gian Maria Volonte's power monger to represent the institutional corruption of Italy under the Christian Democrats, but overplays his hand. 

The film stays afloat because of vivid cinematography, incisive editing, and a bravura performance by Volonte. Volonte, best known as a hapless villain in Sergio Leone's Dollar films, gives a fleshy, vivid spin to his portrayal of a man who seems affable on the surface, but is a monster underneath. Petri seems to enjoy letting his thesps take their rips, to varying effect. Florinda Bolkan, as the victim, flails about without establishing a character as she and Volonte's character engage in S&M role playing in flashback.

What prevents this chestnut from reaching classic status is not Petri's theme, Lord knows the perfidy of Italy's powers that be was and is irrefutable (check out Peter Robb's Midnight in Sicily), but Petri is unable to express this visually. He is able to express his disgust at the candy colored decadence of late 60s Italy, but bogs down his narrative with close-ups of his cast mugging in an attempt at a black comic effect. The final half hour is especially belabored as the denouement is telegraphed by Petri's Marxist sympathies. Volonte memorably embodies the titular character, but Petri undermines his film's impact with blasé camera set-ups and thematic overkill.

Colossal

Jason Sudeikis and Anne Hathaway in Colossal

Nacho Vigalondo's Colossal  was a box office bomb that deserved better. Anne Hathaway plays Gloria who must return to her hometown after her boyfriend (the omnipresent and talented Dan Stevens) kicks her out of his New York apartment. Gloria is an out of work alcoholic who does little but party away to the wee hours. Oscar, a bar owner in her hometown with whom Gloria shares a past, hires her as a waitress. This is a mixed blessing for Gloria as she stays up till dawn after work drinking with Oscar's cronies.

The film lurches into Sci-Fi territory when a Godzilla like monster starts rampaging through Seoul and Gloria comes to realize that she shares a psychic connection with the creature. In many ways, this is the weakest aspect of the film. Vigalondo lacks the feel for spectacle of a del Toro and the carnage is typical Godzilla fu. However, Vigalondo's script is good at etching the arrested development and relationship struggles of thirty somethings. The characters are quirky without being twee, all ambivalent mixes of good and bad.

Vigalondo coaxes good performances out of his cast. Hathaway is too damned healthy looking to play a party girl, but her character's smart mouth is a good match for her verbal dexterity. The role is a stretch after a career playing awkward princesses and put upon waifs and Hathaway is up to the challenge. Similarly, Jason Sudeikis has heretofore mostly played nice guys in comedies, but is able to conjure darker hues as Oscar. Tim Blake Nelson and Austin Stowell are both effective as Oscar's drinking buddies, though I wonder if Stowell can do more than be stupid and beautiful. Vigalondo has an impressive number of credits as a writer, actor and director, mostly in Spain, and I hopes he gets to helm another Hollywood effort. 

Annihilation

Facing "the Glimmer" : Annihilation

Alex Garland's Annihilation is a more than decent Sci-Fi film that suffers from a clunky first act. Happily, the film improves as it goes along and offers a smidgen of character development and a chunk of visual splendor. Natalie Portman stars as a veteran whose husband's Special Forces unit has disappeared into a mysterious alien orb, named the Glimmer,  that is expanding on the Southeast Atlantic coast. Portman is implausibly roped into a suicide mission with an all female crew to investigate the glimmer. The crew is picked off, And Then There Were None style, but not before each actress relates the trauma that propelled her into the mission. Since the crew has thesps like Tessa Thompson and Jennifer Jason Leigh, this unfolds well, though Gina Rodriguez botches her big moment.

The Glimmer is a zone of strange genetic splicings and mutations. Sometimes the CGI resembles a bad progressive rock album cover, but Garland and crew largely capture a vision of an alien nature that is both wondrous and terrifying. A novelist, Garland has displayed both here and in Ex Machina that he has a firm grasp of the themes underlying fantasy and horror. He has not displayed that he is a natural filmmaker, but Annihilation continues to display his promise, if not his skill at execution. (6/24/18)

Best of 2020

1. Vitalina Varela                                                                                 Pedro Costa
2. The Wild Goose Lake                                                                      Diao Yi'nan
3. Tomasso                                                                                           Abel Ferrara
4. Jeanne                                                                                              Bruno Dumont
5. Beanpole                                                                                          Kantemir Balagov
6. Dick Johnson is Dead                                                                     Kirsten Johnson
7. Emma                                                                                               Autumn de Wilde
8. The Platform                                                                       Galder Gaztelu-Urruitia
9. Preparations to Be Together For An Unknown Period of Time  Lili Horvat
10. Uppercase Print                                                                               Radu Jude

          Honorable Mention

          Assassins - White, Lovers Rock - McQueen

          The Assistant -- Kitty Green, I'm Thinking of Ending Things -- Kaufman

          Films I Enjoyed

          Rose Plays Julie, The Bra,

          The Devil All the Time, First Cow,

          Come to Daddy,

          Nomadland, Martin Eden,

          Bacurau, Cut Throat City,

          Shirley, Babyteeth,

          Borat 2, Pieces of a Woman,

          Promising Young Woman, The Outpost,

          Collective, Blow the Man Down,

          Deerskin, The King of Staten Island,

          Teenage Bounty Hunter, The Vast of Night,

          Mucho Mucho Amor, The Hunt,

          Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Another Round,

          Let Them All Talk, Tenet,

          Gretel & Hansel, I'm Your Woman,

          Alone, Lucky Grandma,

          Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics,

          Uncle Peckerhead, Buffaloed,

          Scare Package, Minari,

          The Invisible Man, A Call to Spy,

          Little Fish,

          Original Gangster, Black Bear,

          All My Friends Are Dead, Underwater

          Below the Mendoza Line

          Swallow, Possessor,

          Freaky, The Sound of Metal,

          The Dark Divide,

          The Quarry, Her Socialist Smile,

          Mank, City Hall,

          Amulet, Sh*thead, 

          The Gentlemen, Relic,

          She Dies Tomorrow, Psycho Goreman,

          Call of the Wild, Project Power,

          The History of the Kelly Gang, The Nest,

          1 Dead Dog, Come Play,

          The Father, Thorp,

          Wonder Woman 1984,

          The Other Lamb, The Trial of the Chicago 7,

          Sea Fever, Kajillionaire,

          The Rental, Unhinged,

          Capone,

          The Dark and the Wicked, Spontaneous,

          The Grudge, Wander Darkly,

          1 BR, Slaxx,

          The Vanished,

          Bad Boys for Life, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga,

          Becky, The Old Guard

A votive candle of a movie...

The Greatest Showman

Zac Efron and Hugh Jackman toast their great chemistry in The Greatest Showman

Michael Gracey's The Greatest Showman strikes me as the most effective Hollywood musical in some time. Compared to the overly somber tone and punchless affect of Rob Marshall and Bill Condon's efforts in this genre, Gracey's color and dynamism are a welcome respite. The story, of course, is pure Hollywood hooey (here Barnum leads a proto Rainbow coalition), but Gracey succeeds in making the musical numbers sparkle and sing. Hugh Jackman stars as Barnum and it is nice that he has, before his clock runs out, found a musical project suited to his talents. Michelle Williams sings and dances more than adequately as his missus. Rebecca Ferguson, as Jenny Lind, sucks the energy out of the film when she appears, but both Zac Efron and Zendaya are effective as the secondary lovers. I was pleasantly surprised. (7/3/18)