Kino Biff: October 2021

Best of 1930

Morocco Josef von Sternberg
The Blue Angel Josef von Sternberg
L'Age d'Or Luis Bunuel
Men Without Women John Ford
Abraham Lincoln D. W. Griffith
Murder Alfred Hitchcock
Monte Carlo Ernst Lubitsch
Up the River John Ford
Laughter Harry d'Arrast
The Dawn Patrol Howard Hawks

Films I Enjoyed

Earth, Westfront 1918,

Hell's Angels, City Girl,

The Devil to Pay, The Big Trail,

Menschen am Sonntag,

All Quiet on the Western Front,

Animal Crackers, Born Reckless

Kid Blue

Lee Purcell and Dennis Hopper in Kid Blue

James Frawley's Kid Blue is a counterculture Western of unexpected charm and originality. The screenplay was written by Bud Shrake who also penned oaters JW Coop and Tom Horn, but was primarily known as a sports writer. Dennis Hopper plays the Kid, an outlaw bent on taking up a new leaf. He settles in Dimebox, a plains town dominated by a giant ceramics factory which produces ashtrays and other tchotchkes. He is befriended by Reese Ford (Warren Oates), an employee at the factory and his wife, Molly (played by the finger bitingly beautiful Lee Purcell) who both make plain to the Kid that they wish to dally with him. Oates' character even extols the virtues of masculine love in ancient Greece to the baffled Kid, something I don't recall seeing in any Western; even Warhol's Lonesome Cowboys. The Kid tries to stay on the straight and narrow, but a series of humiliatingly menial and repetitive jobs grind him down. He is dogged every step of the way by a venal sheriff played by Ben Johnson, here more the degenerate of The Wild Bunch than the resolute hero he played for John Ford. Johnson's Sheriff obviously believes that the only good hippie is a dead hippie.

The tone of Kid Blue is mildly comic throughout. The Kid is introduced botching a train robbery and each job he attempts afterwards illuminates his ineptitude. Hopper was in his mid-thirties at the time of the shoot, but Frawley helps brings out his boyish vulnerability. The Kid is catnip to the ladies of the film and Oates' character, too. The Kid eventually seeks out the only folks lower than himself on Dimebox's totem pole, a trio of natives, to help him rob the factory. A mad preacher played by Peter Boyle provides the Kid a Deus ex Machina.

This is a resolutely nice and appealing film even when violence, rancid capitalism, racism, adultery and drug abuse poke into the narrative. The hero is not a masculine protector of the frontier, but an androgynous (blue) boy who seems too fragile for the world. While the film rejects traditional values found in Westerns, it is still in a dialogue with its cultural past. Hopper even assumes a traditional heroic pose for the final shot. The look of the film is not all that different from that of a Andrew V. McLaglen film. The walking and talking tracking shots of Hopper and Oates convey the loose limbed and affable nature of the film. It is a good not great movie, but the cast alone makes it an amiable hang: Janis Rule, M. Emmet Walsh, Ralph Waite, Clifton James, Mary Jackson. Oates and Boyle are at their most low-key and affable. This was the final film for Jose Torvay, best known in the US for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Bandido!, but a veteran of well over 100 films in Mexico. Kid Blue provides him a wonderful send-off with a memorable death scene.

The film was shot in 1971, but not released until 1973. It was not a wide release, but a burial. Andrew Sarris and Philip French had nice things to say about Kid Blue at the time, but it had fallen into oblivion and been hard to find until its 2015 DVD release. I would recommend it to fans of 70s Westerns. It would make a great double bill with such Hippie Westerns as Bad Company, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, Jeremiah Johnson and, especially, McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

The Damned (1963)

Oliver Reed commands the Teddy Boys in The Damned

With its intimations of punk rock and the surveillance state, Joseph Losey's The Damned rises above its genre limitations and Cold War topicality to stand as a classic B movie. Filmed in 1961, but, because of censorship difficulties, not opening in England until 1963, it has been released in many different versions under many different titles. The first US print released in 1965 lopped off fifteen minutes from the UK version. In any form, this is bracing filmmaking. Oliver Reed is the main attribute to a sub-par cast. Losey's ambivalent heart is with the brutish, proletariat teddy boys rather than the cultured, rationalist elites and that makes all the difference in this visually exciting sci/fi horror, pulp, pop masterpiece.

The Little Hours, The Battle of Chosin, War Machine, Trainspotting 2

Johnny Lee Miller and Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting 2

A few notes on recent views, in ascending order...

Jeff Baena's The Little Hours is a comic misfire. A talented cast labors mightily, but this attempt to make a bawdy comedy is stillborn. Baena shoots the material as if he were remaking Under the Tuscan Sun which doesn't help, but Boccaccio has vexed even greater talents.

Randall MacLowry's The Battle of Chosin is a strong documentary on the US military's most ignominious Korean War defeat. MacLowry is weak on the political background that led to the Korean conflict and cursory on military strategy, but the reminiscences by American veterans are heartfelt.

David Michod's War Machine is an arch satire of Stanley McChrystal's tenure as leader of the Coalition forces in Afghanistan. Tone is all in an endeavor like this and Michod succeeds in skewering both the military brass and political elite without heedless caricature. Brad Pitt bends his form like a pretzel and then straightens it out into ramrod military posture. He carries this film like an Atlas, albeit with much assistance from a sterling cast. The Nick Cave and Warren Ellis score is strikingly effective. A bit underrated I say, as is...

Danny Boyle's Trainspotting 2 which surprised me with its winning commitment to character and visual invention. Boyle, at his best, finds fecund territory in the ambivalence of human relationships. When Ewan McGregor's Renton returns in T2 to reconnoiter with the three companions who he ripped off years earlier, Boyle frames these encounters as dark dances underlined with cocksmanship, dependence and co-dependence. There is love apparent, both Agape and Eros, but also resentment, betrayal and anger. Newcomer Anjela Nedyalkova more than holds her own with the male leads as both lover and betrayer. Though next time Danny, enough with the lads, more Kelly Macdonald and Shirley Henderson, please. (11/30/17)

A footnote...

At this date in time, the biggest box office draw in movie theaters worldwide for 2021 is the Chinese feature, The Battle at Lake Changjin. It is already the third highest grossing non English language film of all time. Almost three hours long, the film cost over $200 million and employed 70,000 members of the People's Liberation Army. Six directors are credited, including such notables as Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine, The Emperor of the Assassin) and Tsui Hark (Peking Opera Blues, Once Upon A Time in China). The battle portrayed is the one Americans call the Battle of Chosin Reservoir.

The film has already raised hackles, mainly in the South Korean press. It will be interesting to see if it makes its way to the USA, since we are the prime villains in the picture. It surely is indicative of the currently tense relations between China and the US. Hopefully, it will not be, unlike Alexander Nevsky, a preview of coming attractions. It is a further indication of the hardline recently taken by the Xi regime which includes a reaction against capitalistic excesses in China, more religious crackdowns, attempts to shift blame regarding the pandemic, xenophobia, a greater emphasis on Party ideology, sabre rattling over Taiwan, etc. We will all be watching. (10/25/21)

Quick Takes (October 2021)

Mario Bava's Kill, Baby...Kill!

Kill, Baby...Kill! Top-flight Bava and the best use of punctuation in 1966 besides

"Paint It, Black".

La Piscine (1969) Louche.

Shipmates Forever (1935) Middling Borzage. Entertaining if one can tolerate Dick Powell's

warbling.

Perdita Durango (1997) Superior pulp with Rosie Perez, Javier Bardem, Screamin' Jay

Hawkins, James Gandolfini and Don Stroud. Uh-oh, it looks

like I'm going down the Alex de la Iglesia rabbit hole.

Squid Game > Midnight Mass (Netflix)

Zorns Lemma (1970) A structuralist masterpiece from Hollis Frampton who was trying to develop film into "a machine counter to the machine of

language." Bold use of color and one of the best evocations

of the New York City of that era. Viewers who need a

narrative should avoid this.

What If (2013) Bland.

Gunpowder Milkshake (2021) Blech!

Al Davis vs the NFL (ESPN) I've enjoyed most of ESPN's "30 for 30" documentary series, but this is cretinous gunk.

If I'm bald and my hair is getting long in the back: Do I have a skullet?

Ghost in the Shell

Rupert Sanders' Ghost in the Shell surprised me by having more depth than most of its femme bot competition. Accused of racism because of its casting of Scarlett Johansson in the lead and an under performer at the till, the film is a lost critical cause that has eye popping visuals and character development. Producer Avi Arad's commitment to the project has paid off with a futuristic Tokyo that sparkles with color and detail. Mr. Sanders gets finely etched turns from Pilou Asbaek, Michael Pitt, Chin Han and Takeshi Kitano who, blessedly, speaks mostly Japanese. Johansson nicely underplays the lead who (mostly) spurns carnage to find her true identity. A difficult task in a society that is able to brand one's identity through media. Sanders is able to inject some Cronenbergian notes on the interface between devices and human forms.

However, the film is largely mindless piffle. Juliette Binoche is wasted giving Ms. Johansson physical rehabilitation and bad advice. The villain, a suitably clenched Peter Ferdinando, is reduced to moving a giant spider on a virtual reality chess board. Sanders handles the character interactions better than the violence. Ghost in the Shell succeeds more as a mournful character study than an action flick. (1/22/18)

A Quiet Place Part 2

Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt in A Quiet Place Part 2

A Quiet Place Part 2 is a workmanlike sequel. Writer/Director John Krasinski has a bigger budget and a larger canvas to work with, but the qualities that made the original a nice surprise are largely absent.

A prologue shows the alien predators' arrival during a little league game. Tracking shots establish the all American small town vibe before the whatzits arrive to wreak carnage. The prologue exists to remind us of Krasinski's Dad, who was killed off at the end of the first film, Emily Blunt's Mom and the remainder of their clan, but also to introduce Cillian Murphy's "Emmett", the male lead of the sequel. Emmett is the fly in the ointment here. A straw man in a trucker (read MAGA) hat, Emmett exists to renounce selfish individualism and work for the common good. Murphy, a significant talent, struck me here as neither blue collar nor American.

The other major flaw of the film is that Mr. Krasinski has chosen to divide the family, whose dynamics underpinned the first film, into two separate plot lines. The second half of the film devolves into strained cross-cutting that dilutes, rather than doubles, the dramatic tension.

Anatahan, Lady Macbeth

Josef von Sternberg's Anatahan is one of the more peculiar movies I've seen. Working with a Japanese cast and crew, Sternberg had relative creative freedom to tell his tale of twelve men and one woman stranded on a remote South Pacific island for seven years. This 1953 film is akin to Bunuel's Robinson Crusoe and Ford's Republic pictures in that Sternberg had to roam far away from the major Hollywood studios in order to make the movie he envisioned. I found it to be a worthy final film, if not attaining the heights of his masterpieces.

Sternberg elicits fine performances from his players, particularly ensemble sequences like the one above. Akemi Negishi, though a fine actress, doesn't have the steely magnificence of a Dietrich; but who does. This lessens the power of the sexual intrigue that surrounds her. She is supposed to be a Queen Bee, regally indifferent to the fate of the drones who struggle to win her. Negishi has ample sex appeal, but projects little of the drive and mania that female protagonists such as Shanghai Lily, Catherine the Great and Madame Gin Sling do in the Sternberg canon.

Sternberg makes do here tracking his camera through a plastic jungle set that is as bizarre as any of its predecessors. His narration is another oddity. It hearkens back to the silent era, but also gives the film a post-modern, manipulated feel. It reminded me of Welles' Chimes at Midnight which I just watched again recently: both films please the eye, but the soundtracks seem off. Still, few directors have moments as sublime as the one at the end of Anatahan when Negishi imagines her dead lovers finally returning home. Kino's Blu-ray disc seems overexposed at times, but I am very thankful I finally got to see Anatahan.

It's a pity that Sternberg didn't get to work with Florence Pugh, who nails the steeliness and psychopathology of the titular character in William Oldroyd's assured first feature, Lady Macbeth. The film is a streamlined and Anglicized of Nikolai Leskov's novella, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. A young Victorian woman in an arranged marriage chafes under the confines of living in a remote country house with her brutal husband and even mote odious father in law. She ensnares a randy groom as her lover and soon enlists him in a murderous agenda. The strictures of gender and class that impinged her ironically help her escape from paying for her misdeeds.

Florence Pugh is Lady Macbeth

Screenwriter Alice Birch pares down the original story nicely, leaving Oldroyd to flesh out the bones of an economical and astringent film. Oldroyd's style is unhurried and that slow burn works in the film's favor as the melodramatic plot unfolds. He borrows as much from painting (particularly Courbet and Whistler) and literature (most especially Hardy) as he does from film; though a lengthy shot with the back of Ms. Pugh's head in the center of the frame calls to mind Godard's Vivre Sa Vie. Costumes and décor are first rate and the cast, largely unknown to me, is superb. Sometimes things are laid on a bit thick, as when Ms. Pugh's character is repeatedly warned not to go outside, but Lady Macbeth is mostly first rate cinema and I hope we see more from Ms. Pugh, Ms. Birch and Mr. Oldroyd. (1/24/18)

The Shape of Water

Beauty and the Beast redux

Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water is a nice film, but nice is a limiting adjective within the horror genre. As with almost all of del Toro's previous films, the art direction, cinematography and costumes are superb, but this time, del Toro and his fellow scenarist, Vanessa Taylor, have fashioned a stronger story than in such del Toro fizzles as Blade 2 and Crimson Peak. The script is another variation on Beauty and the Beast with beauty a put upon mute cleaning woman who toils at a sinister aquatic research center where her beast is an imprisoned object of research. The tone is light, more Tim Burton than David Cronenberg, and the flick gets nice chuckles from hard boiled eggs, dismembered digits and underwater bestiality. Paul D. Austerberry's production design captures the style of 1962 while having a nice lived-in look to it. The Baltimore of the era is not captured, but this is not fatal to what is essentially a fable.

However, there is an aura of predictability about the proceedings. As soon as you meet the all too perfectly cast Michael Shannon, you know he is the film's Gaston and that he will meet a bad end. Olivia Spencer and Richard Jenkins are always nice to see, but simply flesh out stock figures here. Michael Stuhlbarg is, as usual, effective in his role as a Russian Spy, but his character's subplot is underwritten and overlong. Del Toro's best films, The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth, have a little more darkness and teeth to them. Watching The Shape of Water, the viewer fully expects the heroine to wind up with her love under the sea, like Ariel, and this is exactly what happens.

What prevents the complete Disneyfication of the film is the performance of Sally Hawkins. Her Elisa is at once a winsome waif from the silent era and a modern erotic presence. The film introduces her character going through her daily routine, including her ablutions, to establish Elisa as a flesh and blood creature starved for romance. Hawkins makes Elisa enough of a seemingly real character that her plight is never mawkish. True horror, like in The Fly, would confront physical issues that The Shape of Water would rather skirt. It cops out by making its beast a healing, Jesus-like figure. We are left with a slice of cinema fantastique that is sweet, but slight. (2/5/18)

Best of 1931

M Fritz Lang
La Chienne Jean Renoir
City Lights Charlie Chaplin
Tabu F. W. Murnau
Dishonored Josef von Sternberg
Street Scene King Vidor
The Smiling Lieutenant Ernst Lubitsch
Kameradschaft G.W. Pabst
A Nous la Liberte Rene Clair
An American Tragedy Josef von Sternberg

Films I Enjoyed

Bad Girl, Marius,

The Champ,

Frankenstein, Arrowsmith,

Slightly Dishonorable, East of Shanghai,

The Front Page, The Bat Whispers,

The Public Enemy,

Waterloo Bridge, Jim. The Man with the Scar,

The Seas Beneath, Dracula,

The Criminal Code, Monkey Business,

Night Nurse, Blonde Crazy,

Below the Mendoza Line

Little Caesar, Other Men's Women

A Free Soul, Svengali

Hangmen Also Die!

Brian Donlevy makes sure Hangmen Also Die!

Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die! is a pretty good World War 2 thriller that is right in Lang's wheelhouse. Lang ably conjures the oppression and paranoia of Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia. The film concerns the assassination of SS thug Reinhard Heydrich, but, even with script help by one 'Bert Brecht', the film bears little relation to the actual event. Heydrich was not killed by members of the local Czech resistance, as in the film, but by two Czech soldiers who had been parachuted in from England. I think the reason for this tweak was that Hollywood was expected to highlight the efforts of the resistance; as in This Land is Mine, Casablanca, To Have and Have Not, Edge of Darkness, The North Star and many others. These films were meant to convey that our boys were not dying in some vain effort, but were supporting people who yearned to be free and were willing to go underground and fight to achieve this.

Hangmen Also Die! suffers from some peculiar casting. Brian Donlevy has never been one of my favorites, but seems particularly ill at ease here. Similarly, Anna Lee and Walter Brennan, yeoman performers, are both miscast. I must admit I am a little bit more critical of this movie than I would normally be because I just read Laurent Binet's novel about the assassination, HHhH, and was totally enthralled by the book. Hangmen Also Die! is a very good film, but does not reach the heights of Lang's other wartime thrillers, Man Hunt and Ministry of Fear.

One further aspect of this film I want to touch on is the presence of Communists and future blacklist victims in the film: Brecht, John Wexley. Hanns Eisler and Lionel Stander, who is quite good in a brief role and once whistled "The Internationale" in the 1938 film No Time to Marry. Tagged as a Red film, Hangman Also Die! was withdrawn from circulation in the mid-50s and not seen again until the mid-70s.

The Beguiled

Wan in white

Sofia Coppola's The Beguiled is a lifeless remake of the 1971 Don Siegel feature. Coppola is trying to update the story and make it fit in today's woke political climate. So, out goes the female nudity, sapphism, incest, politics and most damagingly, a compelling Afro-American character. Unfortunately, the erotic charge of the original is also missing. We are left with a Southern Gothic tale shorn of Eros and Thanatos, which defeats the point.

Coppola's film is handsome, with fine production design and costumes. Close-ups and quick editing are eschewed as Coppola works well at capturing the slower pace of life in 1864. The film is largely shot with available lighting and it does give a feel for life before electricity. This overall effect, however, drain the film of vitality which Siegel's film, despite its vulgar lapses, has in spades.

Part of the problem with Coppola's film is that it soft pedals the mendacity of Colin Ferrell's wounded soldier. Siegel underlines the Big Bad Wolf nature of Eastwood's soldier by presenting flashbacks of him killing and pillaging; actions that belie his smooth. pacific tone when talking to the ladies. Farrell's soldier lacks the menace of Eastwood's. Thus, when he acts up and is smote down by the seminary ladies, the result seems more incongruous than just. A true conflict between the sexes has not been established. Farrell is well-cast and delivers the film's best performance, but his character is neutered by Coppola even before the seminary ladies get their licks in.

Comparing the actresses in both versions further tips the scales in the Siegel film's favor. Kidman is far too aerobicized and botoxed to be believable as a 19th Century headmistress. Geraldine Page, even though she was younger than Kidman in 1971, is far more believable as a love starved spinster. Not all of this is Kidman's fault. She is only given the faintest of back stories to work with, while Page's character's incestuous relationship with her brother even though it smacks of lunacy at times does provide a background for her character's barely restrained hysteria.

Jo Ann Harris tempts Clint Eastwood in Don Siegel's 1971 version of The Beguiled

Kirsten Dunst, a good luck talisman for Coppola, is miscast as an innocent school teacher pining for romance. She gives it a good go, but does not project the tremulous Victorian chastity that Elizabeth Hartman did. Ms. Hartman excoriation of Eastwood after his infidelity is a scalding moment Coppola's film never matches. Similarly, Elle Fanning is not able to project the sensuality that Jo Ann Harris did in the original, though this is more due to Coppola's muted sensibility than Ms. Fanning's efforts. Coppola is fine with indoor prayers, salon music and lessons, but sequences out of doors, like a shot of the ladies hoeing the garden, are fumbled badly.

Coppola's direction is overly restrained, perhaps in counterpoint to Siegel's often bonkers mise en scene. Siegel's over the top direction drew critical brickbats when the film was released. Champions of the director like Andrew Sarris and Robin Wood found the film to be a disappointment. Wood compared the film to Ford's The Fugitive as an example of an auteur's pet project exposing the limitations of a director more suited to working within the confines of a genre film. Certainly Siegel is guilty of lapses in taste in The Beguiled: the shot from Eastwood's POV of Harris' derriere being a prime example.

Siegel's film sometimes smacks more of the late 1960s than the Civil War era. Harris' character seems to have drifted away from a Russ Meyer shoot and Mae Mercer's interesting turn channels Angela Davis more than an antebellum slave. But this is why Siegel's film seems more modern and rewarding than Coppola's. It has an edge to it that Coppola dulls. I admit to being prejudiced after having seen Siegel's film five or so times over the years. I think it is one of his best, along with Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Line-Up, The Killers and Charley Varrick. Moments of crazed intensity, like Page's dream sequence (absent in the Coppola film) may have seemed overheated to the critical academy of the time, but to me today they seem like audacious attempts by Siegel to extend his artistic range. I think The Beguiled is a better attempt to portray the feverish delirium of unconscious sexuality than, say, Cries and Whispers. I'll certainly watch it again before I give another chance to Coppola's benumbed remake.

Phantom Thread

Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread is a chilly, hermetically sealed gothic romance. Anderson's oeuvre, an impressive one, has two kinds of film. His shaggier, looser, warmer, more Altmanesque films celebrate alternative surrogate families amidst a corrupt culture: Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Inherent Vice. His colder more obsessive and Kubrickian films usually follow an egoist at war with the world: There Will Be Blood, The Master and, now, Phantom Thread. By providing an evenly matched battle of the sexes, Anderson not only gives us a compelling film, but also one that exhibits artistic growth.

Part of that growth, as Molly Haskell has noted, is that Anderson has finally created a fully rounded female character to tussle with his male monster; named (ahem) Woodcock. Vicky Krieps' Alma goes toe to toe with Daniel Day Lewis' big bad fashion designer and makes him bend to her will. It is to Anderson's credit that Krieps is able to share the screen with one of the great actors of our day and more than hold her own. Lesley Manville is wonderful as the designer's sister, Cyril. A number of reviewers have written that she is playing the 'Mrs. Danvers' role, but I believe this is a misreading of the film. Mrs. Danvers is not sympathetic to the new Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca because she is devoted to the first Mrs. de Winter with an all-consuming passion. Cyril is initially portrayed as doing her brother's bidding, even going so far as to inform one of his girlfriends when she has been dumped. Alma's willingness to stand up for herself and defy Woodcock's domestic tyranny earns her Cyril's admiration and affection. Cyril comes to respect Alma because Alma is willing to combat Woodcock's controlling tendencies, something Cyril is too codependent to do.

The film is marvelously produced and has some of the most effective sound mixing in recent memory. Chairs scraping the floor and knives chopping mushrooms and spreading butter are the hue and cry of this domestic conflict and are indelibly rendered. About the only drawback to Phantom Thread's claustrophobic chamber play is that it lacks the big picture, color and polyphony that are among Anderson's greatest gifts. His restraint, no plague of frogs or milkshakes here, is wholly suited to this project and is also indicative of his growth. (2/13/18)

Censor

Prano Bailey-Bond's Censor, her debut feature, is compelling psychological horror film. Enid (Niamh Algar) works as a censor for the British government during the "video nasties" era of the early 80s. A movie she watches uncannily parallels the disappearance of her sister long ago and unsettles the repressed Enid. Enid tries to seek out the auteur of the film, a schlockmeister named Frederick North, in the hope that he will be able to offer clues about her sister's whereabouts. However, the process leaves Enid unhinged and, by film's end, her life has morphed into a video nasty.

Ms. Bailey-Bond love of film, even its most disreputable examples, suffuses Censor. The director plays with film stock, film grains and aspect ratios, displaying a connoisseur's knowledge and a playful wit. The first half of the film uses desaturated color to emphasize Enid's repression (she always has her top button buttoned and her hair in a bun) and the stifling nature of working in a bureaucratic environment. There is a lot of taupe and grey greens. As Enid loses her hold on reality, lurid reds, pinks and blues appear to signal her derangement (as above).

A good point of comparison is another recent film from the UK about a young woman's descent into madness, Saint Maud. While Censor shows more of a sense of visual imagination, Saint Maud offers better characterization and a firmer narrative construction. The attempts in Censor to offer a broader social context often seem facile. Mrs. Thatcher is equated to repression which is equated to some sort of bad mojo. There may be some sort of poetic or actual truth in this, but it is merely wispy background noise in the film. Has there ever been a UK film that has viewed Mrs. Thatcher positively or even ambivalently? I have not seen one.

All in all, though, Censor is an extremely promising first feature. The production is handsomely appointed without being ostentatious. A peeve of mine is period pictures where all the furniture and technological gadgets are au courant and sparkling. The offices in Censor are filled with dowdy hangovers from the 60s and 70s and are all the better for it. Ms. Bailey-Bond handles her cast with aplomb. I particularly enjoyed Michael Smiley's relish in playing a sleazy producer. Recommended to all who don't mind a decapitation or two in their film fare.

The Water Man

The lair of The Water Man

David Oyelowo's The Water Man is well crafted hokum, appropriate family fare for fans of Holes, Puck Everlasting, Mud and Beasts of the Southern Wild. The all American monikered Gunner Boone (Lonnie Chavis) is the new kid in town in rural Oregon. His mother (Rosario Dawson) is afflicted with leukemia and Dad (David Oyelowo), a retired Naval officer, is having anger issues which often end up being directed at his eleven year old son. A homeless victim of abuse, Jo (Amiah Miller), enlists Gunner to help find the legendary "Water Man" who Gunner hopes will help cure his Mom.

The screenplay offers a clunky exposition. Dad embitters Gunner by spilling ink on his graphic novel while brandishing that totem of toxic masculinity, a football. Ruining someone's artwork or journal to motivate a dramatic reaction was a cliché by the time of Little Women or Peck's Bad Boy. Traces of topicality are sprinkled for cultural relevance: those darn graphic novels, blue haired pixies, BIPOC, wild fires and jokes about veganism. Despite this and many rehashes of old tropes, the film is redeemed by a solid cast and engaging visuals. The two leads have a nice rapport and Ms. Miller is a find. Alfred Molina, Maria Bello and Jessica Oyelowo are more than adequate in support.

The movie takes flight whenever we are in the Oregon outdoors with the runaway juveniles. Mr. Oyelowo cannot transcend the screenplay in domestic interiors, but is able to imbue the already beautiful Oregon woodlands with splendor and a touch of magic. The vivid and glowing colors captured by Matthew J. Lloyd's cinematography are more memorable than the hackneyed plot. Set design and decoration are top notch. The animation, which is used to give us the back story of the title character, is merely OK.

The film is overly indebted to Spielberg, there is even an E.T. lunchbox on display at one point. The gooey spiritual slush of the Amblin' maestro lurks here, as does E.T.'s successful regurgitation into Stranger Things. Still, Emma Needell's script is self aware. Jo, revealed at the end to be a huckster, is introduced preaching to her erstwhile followers in a graffiti filled abandoned warehouse that functions as a neo-church. The film's ending's acknowledges that what we must love is finite not infinite. Myths and legends come from not above, below or beyond, but from our daily struggles and strife. A message I am happy to swallow along with a bit of sugared goo.

Brawl in Cell Block 99

S. Craig Zahler's Brawl in Cell Block 99 is overly morbid, like his debut Bone Tomahawk, but has enough interesting moments to make it a diverting B picture. It has enough material for ninety minutes, but, unfortunately, has been inflated to over two hours. Zahler dawdles over his introductory sequences which present Vince Vaughn as a troubled and violent misfit who resorts to working as a drug courier to build a better life for himself and his wife. Vaughn's twang signals that this is a hillbilly elegy for the Trumpian blue collar underbelly left for dead by economic circumstance and awash in meth and opiates, much like Jean-Francois Richet's Blood Father.

Vaughn proves to be an effectively steely center for the film. He gives an unflappable performance of stoic machismo that recalls Clint Eastwood. Jennifer Carpenter as his femme doesn't register as much, probably because she is tied to a chair for much of the movie and it is that kind of movie. However, Zahler invests more effort in characterizations than most B directors and he provides Willie C. Carpenter, Mustafa Shakir and Udo Kier a chance to give dimensionality to what would be stock characters in a more routine flick.

Zahler's plotting and conception of the American penal system are ludicrous. By the time Don Johnson (channeling Burl Ives in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) arrives on screen as the warden of a torture chamber disguised as a maximum security prison, most viewers will be unable to suspend their disbelief. Benji Bakshi's overexposed photography does not help much, but Zahler's commitment to his crazed material won me over. Juxtaposing Vaughn lit by a hellish orange glow in prison with his wife safe in the verdant paradise of suburbia showed me that Zahler is willing to use exploitive material for a grander design. Brawl in Cell Block 99, like Bone Tomahawk, shows that Zahler is a better than average genre filmmaker, but it remains to be seen if he can transcend his tawdry material. (2/22/18)

68 Kill

Trent Haaga's 68 Kill is a run of the mill exploitation picture which has an interesting twist to its premise, but falters in its execution. Haaga is an alumnus of Troma Productions and seems eager to wallow in the gore, splatter, female nudity and bent humor that distinguishes its product. 68 Kill is a trailer park noir that puts its protagonist, Chip, through its bloody paces as he is tormented by one femme fatale after another. He is emasculated by his tormentors to such an extent that he ends up dressed in a pink bath towel and flowered red flip flops.

Haaga's screenplay has enough zingers to keep one amused, but he is not particularly gifted at framing the carnage. The most memorable shot is a subjective one of Chip urinating blood; the rest is dross. Haaga's numerous acting credits belie his strength and he coaxes enthusiastic performances from his experienced cast. Most memorable is Sheila Vand playing goth as she did in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. 68 Kill is engaging enough splatter fu, but is not particularly memorable.

Don Verdean

Jemaine Clement and Sam Rockwell as Don Verdean

Jared Hess' Don Verdean is a nice little satire that was met with supreme public indifference and critical ridicule. Yet, I found it was better constructed and more amusing than most American comedies. I cannot claim any great talent in Hess, but he has a consistent viewpoint and a gentle vision of our day and age that is reflected in his characters' spiritual quests. Don Verdean's title character is a huckster, a self-described archaeologist who peddles bogus Christian relics. By movie's end he has been incarcerated for his cons, but is spurred onto spiritual regeneration by guiding a fellow inmate, the son of a beloved.

Richard Brody, in an interesting review of this much maligned flick, casts the film as a bitter rejection of the "commercialization and instrumentalization of Christian faith." Yet, Hess is more Irvin S. Cobb than Sinclair Lewis. I think it is nice that Brody is taking Hess seriously as an artist, but I think he is taking him way too seriously. Hess pokes fun at the various evangelicals in the film, but there is also affection for them; which reminds me of John Waters. Like Waters, Hess uses B movie conventions and techniques not for bravura effect or august statements, but to tip off his audience that they are watching a show, a diversion put on by players. Like Waters, Hess gives his actors ample room to play.

Don Verdean provides some of our better comic actors a chance to chew on some bizarre and pungent dialogue. It heartened me to hear Sam Rockwell call out "sally forth" as if he were a Mountie in a 30s musical. With the success of Three Billboards..., he is now getting his just accolades. Jemaine Clement has the audacity of Peter Sellers. His run of the last few years, particularly in What We Do in the Shadows and Legion, stamps him as one of the most versatile comic talents of our time. Amy Ryan, Leslie Bibb and Danny McBride all have nice bits in a movie that has a sweet ensemble feel to it.

Brody ends his appraisal of Don Verdean by comparing the film to Kierkegaard and Bresson. This will draw snickers and I am ambivalent about such comparisons. Don Verdean is small scale satire and does not need to be laden down with cultural baggage. However, there is a Christian Existentialist whose life and work also dovetails with the film. This author went to prison before finding redemption and producing his greatest work. Dostoyevsky's work contains a dark humor that often escapes 21st century readers. Hess' morality play does not have the scale or depth of tortured Fyodor, but, piling that cultural baggage on, he could be our Gogol. (2/11/18)

Gentlemen Broncos

Jemaine Clement in Gentlemen Broncos

Jared Hess' Gentlemen Broncos is a slight comedy that continues to display Hess' fascination with eccentrics from America's heartland. Set amidst the world of pulp science fiction fandom, Hess fills the screen with quirky cultural bric a brac and lovable oddballs. Jemaine Clement, Sam Rockwell and Michael Angarano are all good, Jennifer Coolidge less so. For some, the site of stuffed stags spewing Pepto Bismol colored liquid will be enough to dismiss this picture as mindless buffoonery. I would describe it as mindful buffoonery. Hess' gift for dialogue, his affection for his characters and the care he takes with their milieu raises this film above most American comedies.

Best of 1932

Trouble in Paradise Ernst Lubitsch
Vampyr Carl Theodor Dreyer
Scarface Howard Hawks
Boudu Saved From Drowning Jean Renoir
I Was Born, But Yasujiro Ozu
A Farewell to Arms Frank Borzage
Shanghai Express Josef von Sternberg
Freaks Tod Browning
One Way Passage Tay Garnett
Grand Hotel Edmund Goulding

Honorable Mention

The Old Dark House -- Whale, Bird of Paradise -- Vidor,

What Price Hollywood? -- Cukor

Films I Enjoyed

The Sign of the Cross, Blonde Venus,

A Bill of Divorcement, Queen Kelly,

Fanny,

American Madness, One Hour With You,

Love Me Tonight, Kuhle Wampe,

The Mask of Fu Manchu, The Blood of the Poet,

Broken Lullaby, Wooden Crosses,

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Red Dust,

Horse Feathers, The Mummy,

Tiger Shark, Jewel Robbery,

Red Headed Woman, Poil De Carotte

Below the Mendoza Line

They Call It Sin,

Three on a Match, Lawyer Man,

The Most Dangerous Game, Man Wanted,

Vanity Fair,

Merrily We Go to Hell,

Kongo,

White Zombie