Deep End

John Moulder Brown and Jane Asher in Deep End

Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End, from 1971, is a neglected film that verges on greatness. Mike (John Moulder Brown) is a fifteen year old dropout working as a bath house attendant. There he becomes enamored with an older coworker (Jane Asher).  A teasing relationship between the two devolves into a power struggle rife with violence and humiliation. Mike discovers that Susan is stringing along a couple of men and tries to use that to his advantage. The narrative is less a series of dramatic incidents than a collection of clusterfucks culminating in absurdist tragedy. 

Skolimowski's players provide gamey vignettes of English lowlife, particularly a blowsy Diana Dors. John Moulder Brown is callow and thin, but so is his character. Jane Asher was a revelation to me in this role. I've enjoyed her in everything from The Masque of the Red Death to Death at a Funeral, but this is her best showcase. What could have been a forgettable portrayal of a feckless tart is instead a fully rounded portrait of a young woman dealing ambivalently with male predation. I wish Ms. Asher had more such opportunities like this because she was up to the challenge here. 

The production design and cinematography emphasize color to thrillingly expressionistic effect. David Lynch said it was the only film whose use of color he "freaked out over". Deep End's bleak scenario probably guaranteed its minimal commercial impact. Critics were generally laudatory, though some, like Roger Ebert and Gary Arnold, found the film to be too disjunctive. Arnold felt the film was a kluge: "half-Truffaut, half-Polanski." This is a misreading.

Elements of substance in Deep End: color and Jane Asher

By "half-Truffaut", I think Arnold was trying to lump the film in the European sentimental education tradition. Coming of age works like Flaubert's novel or Truffaut's Antoine Doinel films in which a raw youth gains wisdom through romantic experience. However, Deep End's Mike is not a sensitive sort, but a budding sociopath with not a trace of empathy. The clues are there from the film's first shot. 

Deep End, despite its tawdry English settings, is firmly within the camp of Polish black comic absurdism; like Polanski's less successful Cul-de-sac. In literature, this includes the work of émigré Jerzy Kosinski, Witold Gombrowicz, Marvela Gretkowska, Krzysztof Varga and Ignary Kapowicz. In film, this strain runs through the work of Wojciech Has, Polanski and Andrzej Zulawski, whose 2015 film of Gombrowicz's Cosmos is a successful version of a novel that one might think to be almost unadaptable. Certainly the perverse struggles between the sexes in Zulawski and Polanski's work is evident in Deep End. It is not a film in which to find comfort, but Deep End will reward the adventurous viewer.

Riders of Justice

Mads Mikkelsen is, as usual, fighting mad in Riders of Justice

One of the more pleasant surprises of 2021, Anders Thomas Jensen's Riders of Justice is a thriller with unexpected reservoirs of heart and humor. Mads Mikkelsen brings his stone faced talents to bear as a career soldier whose wife dies in a suspicious train wreck. A motley band of outsiders aid him in his mission of revenge and become a surrogate family to the wounded warrior. If anything, Riders of Justice functions as a critique of more simple minded revenge flicks. Riders of Justice contains rich characterizations and a tonal variety that recalls the best of Jonathan Demme and Aki Kaurismaki. A find!

Wonderstruck

Millicent Simmonds in Wonderstruck

Todd Haynes' Wonderstruck attempts to be an artful children's flick, much like Scorsese's Hugo which was also written by the talented Brian Selznick. Haynes arrays an impressive mélange of visual effects to tell the parallel quests of two deaf children, fifty years apart, who both travel to New York City on quasi pilgrimages. The 1927 part of the film is shot in black and white and the 1977 in color. Mark Friedberg's production design, Carter Burwell's score, Sandy Powell's costumes and Edward Lachman's photography all contribute to making Wonderstruck a sensual delight. The care and splendor of the production, which nicely evokes the New York of two eras, bolsters the film's theme of finding the phantasmagoric magic inherent in life and art.

Unfortunately, the film bogs down during its second half. Haynes and Selznick slight the story of the twenties child, charmingly played by Millicent Simmonds, and the70's juveniles' tale is not as compelling. Like the protagonists of From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the young lad of 1977 hides out with his chum in a museum. Haynes milks a modicum of wonder from this boys' fort set-up, but it soon bogs down into indifferent acting and artificially dramatic conflict.

However muddled the scenario, I found Haynes' sense of artistic quest to be more palpable here than in the highly praised Carol; which seemed. on second viewing, even more overly reverential and benumbed than when I first viewed it. The moments when Ms. Simmonds pours over lovingly rendered 20's film fan magazines or goes to a theater to see a mash-up of Sjostrom and Griffith silents show Haynes' love and care for his material. You get a sense of exhilaration that you find in the best parts of Haynes' canon: the opening of Velvet Goldmine or Cate Blanchett bringing it all back home as Dylan in I'm Not There. Wonderstruck may not have done much for Amazon's burgeoning coffers, but it shows Todd Haynes has not lost touch with his gifts. (3/1/18)
 

The Death of Louis XIV

Opulent decay in The Death of Louis XIV

Albert Serra's The Death of Louis XIV serves as a memento mori, not surprising given the director's last feature was 2013's Story of My Death. The voluptuous fruit and delectable meats that Louis feasts on at the beginning of the film point to the eventual decay and finitude of our existence as surely as they do in a 17th century still life. The magnificent furniture and art, even the luxuriant manes of his dogs point to Louis's transience and ultimate vanity. Once Louis goes the way of all flesh, his doctors busily examine his entrails for clues to the cause of his demise.

Serra keeps his camera within Versailles, usually keeping the camera low at the eye level of the gangrenous monarch. A few shots of the gorgeous grounds are partially obscured by bars and lattice, expanding the sense of claustrophobia. Jean-Pierre Leaud, once the rising sun of  La Nouvelle Vague, gives a heartfeltly doddering performance as the ruins of The Sun King to crown his iconic career. I did not find this film as emotionally or intellectually satisfying as two of its antecedents, Rossellini' The Rise of Louis XIV and Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, but it joins them in capturing the pace and texture of European court life. 

Book Review: The Films of Samuel Fuller by Lisa Dombrowski

Sam Fuller with ever present cigar

Lisa Dombrowski's The Films of Samuel Fuller: If You Die, I'll Kill You! left this Fuller fan deflated. Dombrowski is a Wesleyan University professor who wants to balance auteurist enthusiasm for the director and writer with recent academic scholarship on film production; most significantly David Bordwell, et al's The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960. This she does, so if you are looking for a book on the difference between Fuller's work for 20th Century Fox and his independent work or the average shot lengths of Fuller's films, then this is the book for you. Dombrowski's visual analyses of the films are an almost unreadable thicket of academic jargon that end up obscuring rather than revealing Fuller's pungent personality. I largely agree with Dombrowski's opinions, but felt so depleted by the end of this short book that I cannot recommend it. 

There are always the films themselves. The first fifteen I recommend wholeheartedly, but even Street of No Return has moments that could have come from no one but this very singular filmmaker.

1. Shock Corridor                                    1963
2. Pickup on South Street                       1953
3. The Naked Kiss                                   1964
4. Merrill's Marauders                             1962
5. Underworld USA                                  1961
6. Forty Guns                                           1957
7. Run of the Arrow                                 1957
8. The Crimson Kimono                          1959
9. The Big Red One                                  1980
10. The Steel Helmet                                  1951
11. White Dog                                             1982
12. House of Bamboo                                1955
13. China Gate                                            1957
14. Verboten!                                               1960
15. Park Row                                               1952
16. The Baron of Arizona                           1950
17. I Shot Jesse James                               1949
18. Street of No Return                               1989

          Haven't Seen: Fixed Bayonets (1951), Hell or High Water (1954), Shark! (1969)

                                 Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street (1972), Thieves After Dark (1984)

Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets

Vacuous eye candy in a 2.35:1 ratio frame

Luc Besson's Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets is utter tosh with cheesy costumes and ridiculous dialogue. This is not a bad thing necessarily, especially in the sci-fi genre, if delivered with verve and vitality. However, Valerian... is belabored and lifeless. The two leads, Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne, evince no chemistry and there scenes function as black holes sucking the fun out of the enterprise. Besson seems to want a Leia-Han bickering vibe between the two, but DeHaan seems more a character actor than a lead and Delevingne has little to do other than react to his alleged studliness.

Valerian... has a cobbled together feel and look: bits of Star Wars, The Road Warrior, Blade Runner, Avatar, Besson's own The Fifth Element, various Terry Gilliam films, all tossed together. Besson has some nice scenic moments, especially early on in the film, but the best bits are all silent. When the semblance of a plot emerges and dialogue ensues, all hope and engagement is lost. Various figures flash by cashing checks, but not making memories: Clive Owen, Ethan Hawke, Herbie Hancock(?), Benoit Jacquot! Only Rihanna provides moments of interest.

This wouldn't be worth the ink if Besson hadn't once displayed some talent, but everything he has done since The Fifth Element has seemed listless and second hand. Tant pis! (3/4/18)

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri

The backlash against Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri crested on Oscar night as Guillermo del Toro's winning, but slight The Shape of Water took home the Best Picture trophy. In praising Three Billboards..., I don't mean to diss del Toro. He is a gifted filmmaker and The Shape of Water has many enchanting moments. There are certainly many Best Picture winners that are far worse. I never get in a high dudgeon anymore about the Oscars. It is an industry award and there are too many inside Hollywood shenanigans to expect my favorites to be awarded. There were quite a few films this year, as always, that I found to be superior to the winner that did not get nominated: Columbus, A Quiet Passion, Good Time, etc. I can't get too worked up about this silly spectacle anymore. I remember being flummoxed when Dances With Wolves beat out Goodfellas, but, secure in my dotage and comfortable with my own pantheon, I am more equivocal about the passing fancies of the academy. I even think they got it right in 1941: How Green Was My Valley is a better film than Citizen Kane, but I don't expect the world to cotton to my particular view.

Three Billboards... is a masterpiece and, after two previous very good features, vaults McDonagh to the first rank of filmmakers. Years from now, viewers will be able to feast on the ample bounty of supple supporting performances in the film: Abbie Cornish, Lucas Hedges, Zeljiko Ivanek, Peter Dinklage, Clarke Peters, Caleb Landry Jones and John Hawkes. Each benefits from the rich script and restrained direction by McDonagh. As does the justly praised lead trio of Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell.

Where Three Billboards... falls short, according to the naysayers, is in its inaccurate portrait of present day America. I won't touch this argument because I don't think this was McDonagh's intent. Even a cursory glance at his oeuvre reveals that he is too in love with black humor and blarney to be regarded as a realist. His theatrical tropes here, such as the titular billboards, serve to capture the tenor of our rancorously divided times, not the reality. When Lars von Trier, in Dogville, paints a grim allegorical portrait of our nation I can accuse him of the same artistic overkill that undermines Sartre's The Respectful Prostitute, but I cannot accuse him of being untrue to his artistic impulses.

Like Dogville, Three Billboards takes its blueprint from Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge plays such as The Spanish Tragedy and The White Devil. The vengeance that Frances McDormand's Mildred seeks is too outsized to be sated, so it spills over into her community in an endless cycle of reprisals. McDonagh tips his hand in the songs picked for the film: "Last Rose of Summer". "Walk Away Renee", "Buckskin Stallion Blues", "Streets of Laredo", "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", each a lament for a loss that cannot be regained. Some see the ending of Three Billboards... as hopeful, two lost souls burying the hatchet to join a noble quest. I do not. I see two damaged individuals joined in a folie a deux pursuing one of the oldest and least merciful of human impulses; an eye for an eye. Whether I share this bleak view is moot, Three Billboards...is a supremely effective and affecting film. (3/6/18)

The Devil Rides Out 1968

Charles Gray goes to work in The Devil Rides Out

Terence Fisher's The Devil Rides Out manages to make Satanism dull. The literary reputations of Richard Matheson and Dennis Wheatley have helped this late Hammer production achieve cult status, but I am baffled as to why. Fisher's direction is square and stolid, as it is in all the other Hammer films he did. That is part of the problem. This movie filmed during the Summer of Love looks and feels like could have been made ten years earlier. 

Christopher Lee and Charles Gray both manage to convey learned virtue and urbane villainy, respectively, but anyone who is not a horror aficionado should skip this one. 

The prominent use of Gray's baby blue eyes led me to ask, Is Charles Grey the British John Vernon? Pretty much. Vernon's villainy is the creepy corporate kind while Grey is more of a decadent Marquis. 

Piercingly villainous baby blues: Charles Gray

and John Vernon

                               

The Architecture of Doom

Peter Cohen's The Architecture of Doom, from 1991, is a fascinating and well constructed documentary focusing on the aesthetics of the Nazi regime. Cohen posits that Hitler's failure as an artist led to his attempt to revive what he saw as the classical artistic values of Greece and Rome in opposition to modern art which he thought was degenerate.

The effort to strip culture of its impurities led to a purge of the body politic itself, the Holocaust. Cohen mostly eschews talking heads as he lets Nazi propaganda footage show how Hitler tried to usher in a new era for German art, architecture and popular culture. The result, a combination of kitsch and utter horror, makes for riveting viewing. My wife noted how Hitler's paintings and aesthetics lacked any sense of ambivalence: a terrifying preview of a dichotomous political philosophy where you either stood with the party or were eliminated.

I recall seeing, in 1976, an exhibit of Hitler's paintings and Churchill's even feebler efforts at the Imperial War Museum. My father remarked that it was a good thing that the Second World War was not decided on artistic merit. 

Best of 1933

1. Libelei                                                                                             Max Ophuls
2. A Man's Castle                                                                               Frank Borzage
3. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse                                                       Fritz Lang
4. Hallelujah, I'm a Bum!                                                                  Lewis Milestone
5. Duck Soup                                                                                      Leo McCarey
6. The Bowery                                                                                    Raoul Walsh
7. Dragnet Girl                                                                                   Yasujiro Ozu
8. The Invisible Man                                                                          James Whale
9. Little Women                                                                                  George Cukor
10. Pilgrimage                                                                                      John Ford

          Films I Enjoyed

     

          Dinner at Eight, Lady for a Day,

          Design for Living, Bed of Roses,

          Dr. Bull, The Bitter Tea of General Yen,

          The Private Life of HenryVIII, Flying Down to Rio,

          Baby Face, Gold Diggers of 1933,

          I Cover the Waterfront, King Kong, 

          Zoo in Budapest, Queen Christina

          Zero for Conduct, Ecstasy

          Below the Mendoza Line

          Mystery of the Wax Museum,

          Female.

          The Story of Temple Drake

Death in the Garden

George Marchal, Simone Signoret and Michel Piccoli in Death in the Garden

Luis Bunuel's Death in the Garden, from 1956, is a melodramatic adventure film that shows Bunuel could be a competent commercial director when he chose (or needed) to be. Based on Jose-Andre Lacour's novel, the film is set in an unnamed South American country where the authorities have nationalized the country's mines. The miners, mostly French expatriates, revolt against this perceived injustice and, when the rebellion is crushed, a disparate band of survivors try to escape through the jungles to the safe haven of Brazil. 

The film was a French Mexican co-production, shot in Mexico with a Mexican crew and a French speaking cast. The male lead is Georges Marchal, a notable French leading man of the 50s, who, at the time, was primarily appearing in swashbucklers or sword and sandal epics. He physically resembles Sterling Hayden, though he lacks Hayden's manly burr. His character, Chark, is a rogue and a bounder who is introduced giving the middle finger to the Federales. His character is akin to many rebellious and cynical French protagonists of the era (the sons of Bogart and James M. Cain), a no-nonsense adventurer looking out for number one; much like Yves Montand's "Mario" in 1953's The Wages of Fear. a film whose success spurred on the making of the similar Death in the Garden.

Marchal is suitably insolent and jousts well with the female lead, Simone Signoret. At the height of her fame and beauty, Signoret is well cast as a hooker with a heart of lead. Reportedly pining for husband Montand, Signoret was not thrilled with the location shooting. Bunuel lets her have a few glam moments, but seems eager to cake Signoret with mud, blood, ooze and mire as she treks through the jungle. Civilization is a materialist fantasy in Death in the Garden, as in all of Bunuel's work.

Michel Piccoli, who like Marchal would appear in future Bunuel features, is cast as a missionary. Predictably, for a Bunuel film, the cleric is a craven hypocrite who has even less of a moral compass than Chark. Piccoli, expert at portraying dispassionate and hollow men, is a constant source of jaundiced amusement. 

The setting and color photography draws comparison to Bunuel's earlier Robinson Crusoe, somewhat to Death in the Garden's detriment. The source material is not as strong as Defoe's classic. Still, even though it is minor Bunuel, Death in the Garden is worth a gander for both Bunuel buffs and the casual viewer. As a chunk of entertainment, Death in the Garden delivers. The film's surrealistic asides, particularly a large snake carcass being devoured by ants, show that Bunuel was doing more than passing time and making a buck.  

Death Race 2050, Lady Bird

G. J. Echternkamp's Death Race 2050 is a direct to video sequel to Paul Bartel's Death Race 2000 from 1975, both are iterations of Roger Corman's production principles. Echternkamp and his cohorts have wisely given the film a full comic book treatment. The visual feels is part video game, part The Perils of Penelope Pitstop. The film addresses our dystopian zeitgeist: Malcolm McDowell badly lampoons our President, the masses are lulled by video immersion and one female character quotes Pascal to another at the aptly named Bechdel Bar. The first third is a hoot, but like most Corman productions, Death Race 2050 runs out of steam and invention.

In contrast, Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig's first directorial feature, grows with assurance and multi-dimensionality as it progresses. Lady Bird is a memoir of Gerwig's senior year that pictures her yearning to leave provincial Sacramento for a more cosmopolitan collegiate sojourn. The performances are finely etched and Gerwig winningly portrays the bucolic lull of her hometown. Graceful tracking shots of faux Colonial homes and local haunts paint a picture that is both affectionate and gently satiric.

Saoirse Ronan is Lady Bird

Lady Bird also functions as a self-critique as the older Gerwig is not afraid to mock the self-absorption of her younger self. The clergy of Lady Bird's Catholic school are portrayed warmly even when the heroine disrupts an anti-abortion presentation. For Gerwig, the wisdom gained from experience tempers her presentation of her rebellious youth. She acknowledges mistreating her best female friend, a warm Beanie Feldstein, and regards her suitors with the retrospective knowledge that love is blind. More importantly, she has structured her film so that the emotional climax is given to her mother's character. Laurie Metcalf expertly embodies the mother in a warts and all fashion, so when she breaks down at her daughter's departure, the emotional release feels earned.

The self-critique continues in the coda where Lady Bird is shown repeating previous mistakes. Gerwig's experience has taught her that a change in scenery does not change character. She vividly recalls her youthful slips in a remembrance that is sweet in its affection for her hometown and former schoolmates, but rueful about experience. Saoirse Ronan is nonpareil, helping to make Lady Bird a superb debut from Ms. Gerwig. (3/10/18)

It, The Florida Project

Come back Shakes the Clown, all is forgiven

Andy Muschitelli's It is an utterly dull horror movie. Derived from a lesser Stephen King novel, there are snatches of better King novels (and movies) scattered throughout: teenage humiliation and body shaming (Carrie), teenage camaraderie (Stand by Me), shut-ins going bonkers (Misery, The Shining), horrific crimes from the past being reenacted in the present (Salem's Lot, The Shining) and the like. Bill Skarsgard (above) and Sophia Lillis have nice moments, but most of the male juveniles are anonymous. The film is overlong by at least forty five minutes because the exposition is so belabored. The cinematography by Chung-hoon Chung has an appropriately cruddy palette, but Muschietti's camera setups are rarely provocative or interesting.

Sean Baker's The Florida Project boasts a totally different palette (soft pinks, purples and teals) appropriate for its Orlando settings and is well edited, paced and shot. His cast is even younger than the one in It, but give far more coherent and spontaneous performances. They enact the plot of The Florida Project amidst the welfare motels, tacky tourist shops and waffle huts that line the periphery of Disney's magic Kingdom. The kids engage in mischief in these slightly surreal surroundings which Baker shows dwarfing them; befitting members of an underclass that Baker portrays as trapped by economic and social circumstances.

Willem Dafoe abides in The Florida Project

Putting up with their shenanigans is Willem Dafoe who portrays the manager of the motel that houses the main child character, Moonee. Moonee's mom is portrayed as a young, tattooed floozy who is engaged in an array of nefarious activities. Dafoe's character is housemother and saint, especially when angrily escorting a potential child molester from the premises. Dafoe is snug in his role, but Bria Vinaite, as the mom, throws the movie off with a braying performance. The close up of Vinaite's howling mouth after she has been arrested and Moonee has escaped custody is a payoff shot that fails to payoff.

Baker's camera then follows Moonee and a cohort as they run pell-mell into Disney World for a sequence that does provide an emotional and visual catharsis. Baker gets a lot of mileage in the film out of lyrical shots of children running through kudzu and tarmac. After twenty years of incredibly varied work, he has risen to the ranks of promising newcomers. (3/11/18)

 

Battle of the Sexes

Emma Stone and Steve Carrell in Battle of the Sexes

Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton's Battle of the Sexes is a relative disappointment given the possibilities inherent in dramatizing the clash between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. Indeed, the carnivalesque nature of their tennis duel would seem to be right in the wheelhouse of the directors of Little Miss Sunshine. Emma Stone, Steve Carrell, Andrea Riseborough, Alan Cumming, Elizabeth Shue and Sarah Silverman are all well cast and give good performances. yet, the total effect is negligible. The script and direction effectively show the isolation of those engaged in individual sports, but the narrative is streamlined, mainly to promote Ms. King's status as a champion of feminism and LBGTQ rights, in such a fashion that robs it of any ambiguity or tension.

Jack Kramer and Riggs' coterie of tennis buddies are lumped together as straw men of the male chauvinist variety. This is fine as far as it goes, the film needs some king of porcine villainy, but it is indicative of the broad strokes the film uses. More damaging is the rose colored glasses approach to King's two loves: Larry King and Marilyn Barnett. Both had a hustler aspect to them that the film ignores. Instead, the film treats them with kid gloves, as if the filmmakers were loathe to offend Ms. King. This lack of nerve carries over to the portrait of Mr. Riggs who was, if anything, far more unsavory than the film portrays. Because its hagiography resembles that of Hollywood's golden age, Battle of the Sexes stands as a muffed opportunity. (3/20/18)

The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Thor: Ragnarok

Barry Keoghan and Colin Farrell in The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Yorgos Lanthimos's The Killing of a Sacred Deer continues in the vein of his earlier films: faulty personal dynamics are explored, body dysmorphia is investigated and an air of disquietude pervades. Lanthimos is too austere and off-putting a film artist to be everyone's cup of tea, but his body of work is singular and thought provoking. This film has provoked an outpouring of wrath by critics and viewers. Tom Shone, a fine critic, has criticized the film as utterly failing as a date movie, but that depends who your date is. I will admit that the film is humorless and distended. It is not as successful as his previous one, The Lobster. Its intimations of Greek tragedy fall flat and its performances are not in the least ingratiating. 

However, Lanthimos' vision, an unsparing one, is well articulated and his grasp of cinematic technique exemplary. Lanthimos' protagonist, once again played by Colin Farrell with his charisma under protective custody, is trapped and lifeless at home. The interloper who pronounces a curse upon Farrell's family is not a realistic portrait of a revenge seeker, but an emanation of the guilt and dread Farrell's character feels and projects upon his family. Barry Keoghan's performance as the interloper has been criticized as being overly repellent, but that misses the point. His character is not meant to be a three dimensional creature, but a phantom or bogeyman, an uncanny personification of unconscious fears and desires. Keoghan's performance is creepy beyond belief and that is the point.

Nicole Kidman, Bill Camp and Farrell also give brave and unvarnished performances. Kidman these days seems to relish playing unsympathetic characters in dark movies. Her care with the stillness of her body in her unsettling sex scenes with Farrell is startlingly effective. Lanthimos subtly manipulates the camera in such domestic scenes, but also does not hesitate to reach for bravura effects. The overhead shot of a child collapsing at the bottom of an escalator, reminiscent of Hitchcock in Topaz, creates just the right tone of helplessness within a deterministic cosmos. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is not without its faults, but, on the whole, represents another richly cinematic offering from Mr. Lanthimos.

A deterministic cosmos in The Killing of a Sacred Deer

I don't seek out comic book movies, but found Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnorak to be an unexpectedly pleasant surprise. The humor displayed by Mr. Waititi in What We Do in the Shadows is fully evident here, as is a light directorial touch and spritely pacing. As Thor, Chris Hemsworth is a chunk of marble, but talented thesps such as Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Anthony Hopkins, Mark Ruffalo and Benedict Cumberbatch are on hand to enliven the proceedings. A star making turn by Tessa Thomson makes me hope she will soon have her own vehicles. A frothy and fun flick. (3/23/18)

Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar

Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo are Star and Barb!

Since the premier of Saturday Night Live in 1975, the influence of sketch comedy on American feature films has been a mixed bag, at best. Though some SNL grads have had successful film careers, Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy especially, most attempts to convey the punchy hilarity of sketch comedians in feature films have been poor or disastrous. Indeed, some of the worst movies of the last fifty years have been attempts to build a feature film around SNL skits: A Night at the Roxbury, Stuart Saves His Family, The Coneheads, It's Pat. What crud! The main reason is fairly obvious, it is hard to sustain for 87 minutes what is hilarious for five or ten. 

That's why I was pleasantly surprised at the modest hilarity provided by Barb and Starr Go to Vista Del Mar. Written by its two co-stars, Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, it tells the tale of two middle-aged single females from Soft Rock, Nebraska cutting loose on a vacation in Florida. I guffawed and tittered more than laughed out loud, but Barb and Star won me over with its goofiness and good nature. Wiig and Mumolo have created a nice portrait of two female friends who finish each others' sentences and have a shared passion for culottes and hot dog soup. The interchanges between the two, reminiscent of the duo's sketch comedy roots, are the best thing in the film. 

Some of the elements of Barb and Star..., particularly the cartoon villainy, seems like padding. However, director Josh Greenbaum handles the musical numbers with aplomb and paces individual sequences well. There is also a nice color contrast between the avocado, beige and brown of Nebraska and the vivid teals, aquamarines, banana yellows and pinks of Florida. Vanessa Bayer, Richard Cheese, Andy Garcia and Fortune Feimster all chip in merrily. Jamie Dornan exorcises the ghost of Christian Gray in a charming performance as Barb and Star's object of desire, but rest assured interested ladies and gents, he does rip his shirt off. Only the talents of Damon Wayans Jr. are ill-used.

Certainly not a cinematic milestone, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is pleasant piffle. Fans of Romy and Michele's High School Reunion should check it out. 

Stage Struck

Gloria Swanson in glorious red and green

Allan Dwan's Stage Struck is a successful star vehicle for Gloria Swanson from 1925. The film opens in splendorous two strip Technicolor with a dream sequence lampooning the more glamorous cinematic vehicles of Ms. Swanson. As we leave the sequence for black and white 'reality', we learn she is portraying a humble hash house waitress day dreaming of stardom. 

The film has a relaxed charm and benefits from its New Martinsville, West Virginia location shooting. This marked the sixth and final collaboration between Dwan and Swanson. Their rapport is evident as Dwan builds the film around Swanson's skills as a physical comic; evident as late as her Chaplin riff in Sunset Boulevard. Stage Struck's male lead, the forgotten Lawrence Gray, is more than adequate. The show boat Captain is played by Ford Sterling, another graduate, along with former bathing beauty Swanson, of the Mack Sennett school of cinema.

The print of this silent is as sparkling as any I've seen. Kudos to the George Eastman House for the restoration and to Farran Smith Nehme for her fun and informative essay on this Kino disc. Not a profound statement on humanity, Stage Struck is exquisite light entertainment and a good slice of American regionalism. Where else can you find a character named Orme?

We'll make an exception for you, Gloria!

The Lure

Agnieszka Smoczyska's The Lure is a promising first feature that bites off more that it can chew. Part of the problem is that Smoczynska is juggling with genres. Robert Bolesto's screenplay concerns two carnivorous mermaids working as performers in a Polish cabaret in the 1980s. The film is a horror movie, a musical comedy, and a period piece. The musical numbers in the nightclub work best, providing some fizz to the muddled brew. 

Other parts fall flat. The acting is all over the well designed sets. Smoczynska fails to find the proper tone for the schizoid script. Love scenes have tenderness and tension: one cannot know when the mermaid's carnivorous appetites won't overtake her amorous ones during a tryst. Sometimes the director goes for cheap yuks, as when a Sapphic admirer lovingly licks a mermaid's scales. The result is very uneven and it fails to jell, but it is not boring.

Aloha

Stone, Cooper, and McAdams in Aloha

Cameron Crowe's Aloha deserves most of the brickbats thrown its way, but I enjoyed tiny bits of it. The film had been beleaguered with rumors of a troubled shoot and disastrous test screenings. The critical and box office response was dreadful and has sunk Crowe's reputation into the mire. Also damaging was the charge of cultural appropriation, which has some merit. I certainly chuckled in derision when lily white Emma Stone intoned in the film that she is a quarter Hawaiian and whatever native mystical threads introduced disappear by the time Aloha limps to its conclusion. However, cultural appropriation has become a catch all pejorative phrase and not all artistic borrowings are theft. Some are tributes and homages. Elvis Presley might not mean shit to Chuck D, but I think the world would have been poorer had the King not loved Gospel and R&B. 

Crowe has no feel for the military culture here ( as opposed to sports or rock and roll) and despite stalwarts like Danny McBride and Alec Baldwin on hand as officers, this flaw delivers the film into the realm of ludicrous nonsense; as does the miscasting of Bill Murray as a tech tycoon. The film's MacGuffin is that Murray's character needs the military's help in sending a rocket into space. Murray can certainly play a dramatic character, but is at sea here amidst the film's ever shifting tone. A dance with Ms. Stone at a military ball would seem to provide Murray a chance to shine, but the sequence has little impact because Crowe has no gift for visualizing spectacle. A good point of reference for comparison would be the twist scene in Pulp Fiction. 

Where Crowe's talent lies is in his articulation of relationships, particularly those of the young and not so innocent seeking mentors and romantic ideals. The romantic triangle of Stone, Bradley Cooper and Rachel McAdams, all charming, is a good example of this. For this alone, I hope Aloha will one day be reappraised, like Elaine May's Ishtar and Michael Lehmann's Hudson Hawk, not as profound or even good art, but as underrated professional filmmaking. (4/23/18)

 

Siberia

Abel Ferrara's Siberia casts Willem Dafoe in the tundra of the titular region adrift in a sea of memories. Script and editing make clear that the action is occurring in the mind's eye of Clint, Dafoe's character. Self-indulgent and slightly batty, Siberia is well-paced, beautiful and incomprehensible. The glimpses we see of Clint's life are compelling, yet ephemeral because of their subjectivity. Ferrara and Dafoe's skills make the film visceral viewing, but the film's evocation of one man's unconscious will leave some feeling unmoored. Recommended to fans of Messrs. Dafoe and Ferrara. Others should be wary. 

 

The Best of Belmondo

                                                                 Jean-Paul Belmondo

                                                                       1933 - 2021

                       "Hell, everyone knows than an ugly guy with a good line gets the chicks."

1. Breathless                            Jean-Luc Godard                            1959
2. Pierrot le Fou                      Jean-Luc Godard                              1965
3. Stavisky                               Alain Resnais                                    1974
4. That Man From Rio           Philippe de Broca                               1964
5. Leon Morin, Priest             Jean-Pierre Melville                           1961
6. Mississippi Mermaid          Francois Truffaut                               1969
7. A Woman is a Woman        Jean-Luc Godard                              1961
8. A Double Tour                     Claude Chabrol                                1959
9. Le Doulos                             Jean-Pierre Melville                         1962
10. Two Women                         Vittorio De Sica                                1960   

The paucity of good roles after 1975 suggests that Belmondo, even more than Jean-Pierre Leaud, epitomizes the rise and fall of the French New Wave.      

Best of 1934

1. The Scarlet Empress                                                                  Josef von Sternberg
2. L'Atalante                                                                                    Jean Vigo
3. Twentieth Century                                                                      Howard Hawks
4. Judge Priest                                                                                John Ford
5. Little Man, What Now?                                                               Frank Borzage
6. The Man Who Knew Too Much                                                 Alfred Hitchcock
7. It Happened One Night                                                              Frank Capra
8. Les Miserables                                                                           Raymond Bernard
9. The Black Cat                                                                             Edgar G. Ulmer
10. The Merry Widow                                                                       Ernst Lubitsch

         Films I Enjoyed

         The Lost Patrol, 

         Treasure Island, Death Takes a Holiday,

         Cleopatra, Our Daily Bread,

         The Gay Divorcee, Imitation of Life,

         Que Viva Mexico, The Scarlet Pimpernel,

         Viva Villa, Broadway Bill,

         Sadie McKee, The Thin Man 

         Below the Mendoza Line

         Triumph of  the Will,

         Manhattan Melodrama,

         Babes in Toyland,

         Of Human Bondage,

         The Scarlet Letter

Nocturama

Lost at the mall: Nocturama

Bertrand Bonello's Nocturama is a first rate art film that dares to explore terrorism shorn of ideological baggage. Both John Waters and Positif have characterized the film as irresponsible, though only Positif used the term pejoratively. Bonello is exploring the unconscious roots of terrorism in a surrealist manner much like Bunuel in his later, French language films. 

The first half of the picture shows the terrorists coordinating their bombing mission. They are shown conveying through Paris as if they are rats in a Google grid whether they are on the boulevards or in the Metro. They exude a sense of purpose which Bonello sketches in with flashbacks that offer glimpses of how this band of outsiders came to be. 

This sense of purpose collapses in the second half of the film when, after successfully completing their mission and bringing Paris to a standstill, they hole up in a high toned shopping mall to wait till the coast is clear. Things do not goes as planned. The terrorists succumb to anomie and anxiety before they more ultimately succumb. This is thanks to the faceless police force who have been given carte blanche to eliminate these enemies of the state. Bonello offers us a despairing portrait of an official France growing more authoritative whilst its resistance grows more feckless and divided.

Bonello has one of the terrorists allude to Nixon's toppling of Allende, but this is a red herring. More pertinent is the conversation about civilization succumbing to its own decadent forces and the glittering mall that houses Nocturama's last hour represents our culture at its most bewitching and vulgarly materialistic. There is a lot to chew on in Nocturama and I have only just started to masticate it, but I think it is the most accomplished and complex French film I have seen since Leos Carax's Holy Motors; a film to which it bears a faint resemblance. (4/3/18)

Hollywoodland

                         

Allen Coulter's Hollywoodland, from 2006, aspires to be a modernist take on LA noir like Chinatown and L.A. Confidential, but ended up a failure with only muffled attempts at cinematic style. Coulter is a good TV director, but can't transcend a muddled script that attempts to put a Rashomon spin on the suicide of George Reeves. Ben Affleck is miscast as Reeves despite his Superman status. Reeves was a chunky, two bit supporting player and not the Adonis A star that is our Ben. Affleck underplays his charm for a nice deprecating effect, as in Chasing Amy. This spark of charisma is badly needed as Adrian Brody sucks up all the film's oxygen as a screenwriter/detective (!) obsessed with Reeves' demise. Brody is difficult to cast as the lead in any film and seems destined for sinister or wacky supporting roles. Diane Lane wins the acting laurels by portraying Reeves' older love with desperation and acerbic relish. Joe Santos is very good as a fixer, but Robin Tunney is miscast as a party girl; they should have gone with Fairuza Balk. Hollywoodland is a mess with glimpses of the better films that inspired it contained within. (4/9/18)