Saddened by his passing, I recently watched Bill Paxton's Frailty, a reasonably well constructed slice of horror that failed to resonate with me. Paxton the director lets Paxton the actor do a full-on Jack Torrance, even running around with a bloody axe. He does get a focused and spookily restrained performance by Matthew McConaughey; one of his best. The role of a suspicious cop fits Powers Boothe like an old show. Frailty doesn't add up to much, but there are loads worse 90 minute horror films. (4/5/17)
Frailty
Arrival
Adams does her best to convey credulity and torment, but Villeneuve has left her stranded in a hackneyed scenario that resorts to time travel to save the day. Talents like Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker are similarly adrift in this very sub-Spielberg sci-fi outing. I thought Villeneuve's Sicario was overrated, but it seems like Greed compared to this nothing muffin. (3/29/17)
Biff's Favorite Pop Albums of 2021
2) Billie Eilish Happier Than Ever
3) Spillage Village Spilligion
4) Mdou Moctar Afrique Victime
5) Dry Cleaning New Long Leg
6) illuminati hotties Let Me Do One More
7) Loretta Lynn Still Woman Enough
8) Olivia Rodrigo Sour
9) Toumani Diabate Korolen
10) Lucy Daucus Home Video
I also enjoyed releases by Low Cut Connie, Anansi Cisse, Liz Phair, Turnstile, Sons of Kemet, Girl in Red, Ashnikko, Modest Mouse, Young Thug, Courtney Barnett, Chuck Berry, Carly Pearce. Lindsey Buckingham, and Jason Isbell. Plus two releases each by perpetual overachievers Lana Del Rel and Neil Young with Crazy Horse.
Throw Down
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| Cherrie Ying, Louis Koo, and Aaron Kwok in Show Down |
A homage to Akira Kurosawa, the film is dedicated to the Japanese master, Throw Down echoes the themes of his first directorial effort, Sanshiro Sugata. Not only does Throw Down repeat the ethical issues faced in Sanshiro Sugata, it also uses musical motifs associated with that film. Throw Down is a thorough composed film in which the choreography and score are integrated as if in a musical. Leavened with humor, To nods to the gangster films of Scorsese (the nightclub is named the After Hours club) and, especially, Streets of Fire. The neon kissed noir look of Throw Down is extremely similar to Walter Hill's film, as is the mix of music and choreographed mayhem. Fans of Streets of Fire and Asian gangster films will find much to grok here.
Platform
Jia Zhangke's Platform, from 2001, is a period piece set in the 1980s that follows members of a theatrical troupe against the backdrop of communist China's first experiments with privatization. The dour nature of their northern Chinese hometown of Fenyang is stressed as the characters are often dwarfed by the stone walls of their burg. The director favors long shots establishing the characters in their milieu, but also as performers on the various stages and platforms of their lives.
The various musical and theatrical performances show the creeping Western influence in China during the 80s. The troupe start the decade performing Maoist theater, but by the end of the decade, as state support lessens and they must earn their living in the marketplace, they have evolved into a "rock and breakdance" band.
Zhangke's characters are constantly being bombarded by both visual and aural messages. The movies they watch and the pop songs they adore are counterpointed with state propaganda transmitted via street signs and loudspeakers. The arm of the state is omnipresent. The troupe is constantly being hassled by local authorities and the one child policy casts a pall over any romantic interchanges. Slow moving, at times, Platform is thoughtful and rewarding cinema.
Doomsday Book
The Korean horror anthology Doomsday Book, from 2012, merits a mention for its two out of three success rate. The dud episode is an inert Spielbergian tale of a robot monk obtaining nirvana. Techno baddies bedevil our hero, but who better than a robot to look into the void of existence and find solace. Director Jee-woon Kim has a pretty good track record, thus far, but this outing will be a footnote for him.
The two episodes from Pi-sung Yim show a bit more vim and verve. The first is a zombie Adam and Eve colorfully told. The final film tells of a girl who orders a billiard ball from a mysterious website and is horrified to find it is being sent to her from outer space as a giant 8 ball shaped meteor hurtling towards earth. Both of Yim's films employ a satiric look at Korean media and politics showing that it is not just the West that is in the thrall of tabloid culture.
Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse
Arnaud Desplechin's Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse has been unfortunately retitled My Golden Days for Anglo consumption. This gives a rosy impression that the film is another of what my wife calls the dreaded tender coming of age films. The French title nods to the film's structure and has a tartness missing in the Anglo title. Whatever the title, it is an impressive addition to Desplechin's splendid filmography.
A number of American reviewers have described this film as nostalgic because of the period detail and 80s tunes. If anything, it is the opposite. The film functions as an auto-critique: Desplechin's alter ego, Paul Dedalus (the protagonist of Desplechin's 1996 film My Sex Life...), is the subjective voice of the film, but Desplechin shows that his protagonist's memories are one-sided and self-serving.
Desplechin uses irises throughout the film to stress the film's subjective approach. Dedalus is picking and choosing from his remembrances, but the film's narrative is entrapped by his point of view. Do we ever really get to know Paul's old beloved, Esther. More to the point and pity, did Paul?
Paul's teenage saga is told in three parts, two far from France. In the first, Paul is in Russia on a school trip. He and a classmate are, unbeknownst to their teachers, smuggling money and documents to refusenik Jews in the then Soviet Union. Paul even gives away his passport to a young man he resembles.
The second part commences in France where he returns in self-perceived triumph. The past for Paul is out of sight and out of mind. He embarks on his sentimental education by wooing Esther. Their bliss is short-lived as Paul is soon preoccupied by his studies. A one night stand with the married woman who is boarding him illustrates Paul self-absorption. His memory pictures the woman stripping off her skirt as if in an old stag film, not just once, but twice. The effect is patently ridiculous indicating that Desplechin does not want us to believe Paul is a reliable narrator.
Paul is next abroad in Tajikistan, continuing his studies as an anthropologist. Naturally, his relationship to Esther has fallen apart and she has taken up with a mutual acquaintance. This gentleman reappears in a coda, decades later, where Paul unloads years of resentment in an ugly, yet bracing, scene.
Desplechin has hinted in the prologue that Paul is damaged goods. We see his torment as he protects his siblings from their mentally ill mother. However, it is only in the epilogue that we see how closed off Paul is to other people. Mathieu Amalric rises to the challenge here, presenting Paul's monstrous side in an unflinching, taut manner. Quentin Dolmaire, as the young Paul, is no match for Amalric (who is), but, in his film debut, is an effective tabula rasa for Desplechin. Lou Roy-Lecollinet has little to do except smolder and pout, but she does give the film a little oomph. Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse is a knotty film that does not try to be ingratiating, but will reward repeat viewing. (3/28/17)
Quick Takes: February 2022
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| The Color of Paradise |
Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch is his most striking and accomplished film in some time. The cast and production design are outstanding. The film is the most intricately and interestingly structured of the past year. Twee should be his middle name, but Anderson's filmography is his best defense.
James Wan's Malignant is so-so horror. Wan utilizes space well, but the cast is average, and the story cretinous.
David Gordon Green's Halloween Kills is lackluster and unmemorable. The film suffers from being overly reverent towards the franchise. Green tries to inject a note of Trump era hysteria into the proceedings, but the results are pitiful.
Julia Ducournau's Titane is a disappointment after her highly promising debut, Raw. The protagonist has sex with an automobile and gets pregnant, then things get weird. Another example of Cronenbergian body horror, unfortunately the results have the impact of M. Butterfly instead of The Fly. Vincent Lindon, as a deluded fireman, gives an interesting performance, but this is a misfire.
Michael Showalter's The Eyes of Tammy Faye provides Jessica Chastain with an Oscar bait part and she delivers with a rousing and full bodied performance. Unfortunately, the film never finds a consistent tone. At times, it flirts with being a satire, but it also seems to want to present Tammy Faye Bakker as a feminist heroine. The end result is an unsatisfactory kluge. Andrew Garfield and Vincent D'Onofrio do fine work, but are miscast as, respectively, Jim Bakker and Jerry Falwell.
Eytan Rockaway's Lansky is a barely adequate gangster film subspecies. Due to the cut rate nature of the production, the décor and supporting performances trumpet anonymity. Only AnnaSophia Robb's turn as Meyer Lansky's first wife stands out. Rockaway's script has some interesting ideas, but seems unable to confront Lansky's perfidy. The film is the biggest whitewash since Al Davis vs. The NFL. Harvey Keitel's performance as Lansky is the most compelling reason to see the flick. It is a sly, ethnically distinct piece of work that far outclasses Lansky itself.
Heart of a Dog
Happily, it is a fervent love that occupies the heart of this movie, made to commemorate Anderson's pooch, Lolabelle. The warmth of this film is what carries it over. Anderson employs a layered look for the film utilizing videos, stills, tons of drawings by the beloved canine, and various visual bric a brac. Anderson references everyone from Goya to Wittgenstein, but does not come off as a smarty pants this time because all 75 jam-packed minutes of this film are devoted to picturing a once living soul with warmth and humor. (3/27/17)
The Dry
Robert Connolly's The Dry is a good slow burn mystery that doesn't reinvent the cinematic wheel, but has solid craftmanship and excellent performances. Aaron Falk (Eric Bana) returns to his drought stricken hometown in the Outback to attend the memorial service of a friend who, allegedly, murdered his wife and child before committing suicide. The visit triggers memories for Falk (and flashbacks for the audience) of a lost love who died under mysterious circumstances. Bana underplays nicely in a film that values characterization over mayhem.
Hacksaw Ridge
In Hacksaw Ridge, Mel Gibson wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Gibson's directorial work has shown a fixation with violence. In this film, he portrays the travails of a conscientious objector trying to serve in the army as a medic during World War 2. Thus, Gibson can wallow in the, admittedly, well choreographed carnage of the Battle of Okinawa while championing a man of peace. This is not all that different from the scenarios of his previous films, especially the one about the Christian Prince of Peace. However, while Gibson's films since Braveheart have become more deeply felt, his themes and characters still tend to bog down in cliché,
This did not sink his previous film, Apocalypto, which had a brisk narrative momentum with its cross-cutting from the beleaguered protagonist to his equally put upon spouse. However, Hacksaw Ridge takes awhile to find its footing. Its first act dawdles on the back story of its protagonist, one Desmond Doss from rural Virginia. Doss' Dad, a World War 1 vet with PTSD, drinks heavily and is abusive to his wife and kids. Hugo Weaving does his best with the role, but Gibson picturing him spilling bourbon on his dead comrade's graves is indicative of his lack of subtlety. The protagonist has a eureka moment wrestling a gun away from his father, but his sudden transformation feels contrived. Similarly, Doss' wooing of a local nurse seems rote. Andrew Garfield and Teresa Palmer are fine as the lovers, but romantic passion seems out of Gibson's ken.
Things perk up during the basic training sequences where Vince Vaughn sinks his teeth into the role of a drill sergeant and Gibson does a good job delineating Doss' comrades. Nevertheless, the script cribs too much from Full Metal Jacket and Doss' court martial is risible. It is only in the third act that Hacksaw Ridge comes alive. A sequence of a battalion returning from battle with thousand yard stares amidst corpses stacked high in trucks is the best in the movie. Gibson's direction of action sequences has become more fluid than it was in Braveheart and his portrayal of his protagonist's anguished heroics is less masochistic than in The Passion of the Christ.
All in all, Gibson seems to be a moderately talented lunkhead, best suited to direct action films. The best moments in Hacksaw Ridge deals with the sufferings of men at war. When Gibson addresses faith, romance or notions of justice, his limitations are readily apparent. Hacksaw Ridge is a well crafted film that feels a bit hollow. (3/27/17)
Mr. Lucky
H.C. Potter's Mr. Lucky, from 1943, is a likeable and lightweight wartime feature starring Cary Grant and Laraine Day. The story is piffle, a gambler falls in love with his mark: reminiscent of Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve and anticipating Guys and Dolls. Laraine Day has always struck me as a mallomar presence and her performance here, as a prig who learns to let down her defenses and love (well, who could resist Cary), struck me as typically unmemorable. Of course, Grant tends to be the cynosure of any movie he is in. His stiffness during the early 1930s is long gone. The physical grace retained from his early days as an acrobat is evident whether he is smoking a cigarette or struggling with knitting needles. The deftness and beauty of Grant is the film's main draw and Potter does well to play up the female attention lavished upon his star.
Potter, if he remembered at all, is best known for directing Hellzapoppin', The Farmer's Daughter, and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. The latter I've found to be an absurdly overrated one note comedy, but, overall, his work has a breezy charm which is in evidence here. Potter had the reputation, like Tony Richardson, of being a better theatrical than film director. His work has little visual elan, but his touch with actors brings benefits here. Familiar supporting players provide playful riffs on their usual typecasting: Gladys Cooper displays aristocratic charm, Paul Stewart oozes shiftiness, and Charles Bickford emanates avuncular crustiness.
Every time the script sags, however, Potter is unable to transcend his material. When Grant and Day trade coded slang, the effect is nauseatingly cute. Compare Grant's staccato ripostes to Roz Russell in His Gal Friday. Also, a long scene with Grant and a priest seems shoehorned in to provide wartime propaganda and a motivation for our titular heel to repent. RKO seems to have cut a few corners for this production. A few backdrops are clumsily integrated within shots. RKO soundstages stand in for wharf warehouses with nary a box of fish to imply verisimilitude. These stand out because the esteemed William Cameron Menzies did the production design and there are a few bravura moments that display his touch.
Multiple Maniacs
The cinema of John Waters always fills me with nostalgia for my upbringing in Baltimore. Seeing the cobblestone streets of my childhood in his 1970 film Multiple Maniacs brings me a pang of tristesse that I can't expect non-natives to feel. I was first exposed to Waters as a teen, in the 1970s, when his films played the midnight movie circuit. I remember the first one I saw was Pink Flamingos at Johns Hopkins. I was nonplussed, but should maybe stomach it again. Female Trouble remains my favorite. Every one of his features prior to Polyester is a window to Baltimore in the 70s. His verisimilitude is better than Barry Levinson's because of his one step ahead of the law, cinema verite style. The distinctive Bawlmer accent is heard best in his oeuvre. Seven or eight of the cast have dead on accents; especially Cookie Mueller. In all five seasons of The Wire, an excellent show, there were only three actors who nailed the accent.
Multiple Maniacs is an impressive first sound feature, despite its shaky tripod and overuse of zoom. Waters wears his influences like a tattoo: exploitation films, William Castle, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Kenneth Anger, Tod Browning, Bergman, CB DeMille, Bunuel, and Pasolini (see above) and, especially, Warhol. Warhol's silkscreen of Liz Taylor graces Divine's pad as do an interesting array of movie posters with a certain bent from the late 60s: Boom (Liz again), Vixen, Teorema, etc. Despite spastic zooms, a recurrent vice of the late 60s, Waters is fairly chaste with his camera. His setups are as elemental and direct as Feuillade or Sam Fuller. He shares with those cinematic titans an innate sense of camera placement. Take the low angle shot of the shocked bourgeois patrons of "The Cavalcade of Perversion". Waters frames his tableau of bad wigs and "shocked" expressions against the white scrim of the carnival tent. Waters makes it plain who the true grotesqueries are in his cracked scenario.
"The Cavalcade of Perversion" is a mask for criminal activity, one of Waters' most heartfelt obsessions. Indeed, the process of making Multiple Maniacs mirrored the theme: the non-union production had to be shot one step ahead of the cops and Waters had to dicker with the Maryland Censor Board. His sympathy is for those outside societal norms: be they hippies, queers, freaks, drug users (huffing paper bags here) thieves, and, most cast out of all, unattractive women. Waters, like Tod Browning, Fassbinder, and Warhol, identifies with the freaks and not the bourgeoisie.
Waters shares with Warhol a feeling for art as a celebration of the everyday. They are both ambivalent about this and that is why a camp sensibility is employed by both. The two also share an ambivalence to Catholicism. They both love the pageantry of the Church, but find its teachings, texts, and rituals ridiculous. Waters slapdash style in Multiple Maniacs is a mock epic one. The "Jesus" passages in the film are shot like most silent Biblical epics (particularly the original King of Kings), but the actors are egged on to over emote and push the scenes into absurdity. Similarly, Divine's (hmm, that name) entrance is a mock epic one. Lying on a cot in a carnival tent, Divine is naked and viewed from the rear, gazing at her own reflection in the mirror. The shot seems to be a burlesque of Velazquez's Venus at Her Mirror; a neat trick.
To me, the best scene in Multiple Maniacs and one of the best in Waters' canon is Mink Stole's seduction of Divine. A sequence which climaxes with Ms. Stole sodomizing Divine with a rosary in a church pew. This mock epic scene culminates in mock ecstasy, a telling Waters moment which highlights his eye rolling view of romance and religion. Waters had more to offer, but Multiple Maniacs shows he was already a fully formed auteur.
"Being Catholic always makes you more theatrical."
John Waters, Shock Value, 1981
WR: Mysteries of the Organism
The American sequences start out like a sober documentary, interviewing relatives, colleagues, and acquaintances of Wilhelm Reich, the iconoclastic and crazed doctor who spent his last decade or so in Maine. However, Makavejev's film is too much of a shaggy dog to stay the course. In some ways, Makavejev is a pioneer of the mockumentary. His footage in the US veers wildly from an editor of Screw magazine getting his member plaster casted to shots of Tuli Kupferberg stalking the streets of Manhattan as a "Communist soldier".
The second half of the film archly portrays the impact of the sexual revolution in Communist Yugoslavia. Makavejev juxtaposes two liberated Yugoslav femmes spreading the gospel of sexual liberation from their Pop art adorned pad with visions of Soviet kitsch: a socialist figure skating show and numerous Stalin era Russian propaganda films. The film seems more like a period piece than a provocation now, but it was enough to land Makavejev in exile.
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| Tuli Kupferberg |
Love is Colder Than Death
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| Schygulla and Fassbinder |
Dietrich Lohmann's gorgeous high-contrast, black and white cinematography engages the viewer. Characters shot against white backgrounds highlight the postmodern debt Fassbinder owed to his artistic forbears and anticipated the work of Robert Longo; who eventually married Fassbinder collaborator, Barbara Sukowa. When Hanna Schygulla and Fassbinder ride off into the sunset at this film's end, one can't help feeling love and exhilaration for the duo. They stand at the outset of an extraordinary career together.
The Seventh Veil
The Seventh Veil is one of a number of films from that era that explored Freudian psychology, including Lady in the Dark, Whirlpool, and a host of film noirs. These films marked a sea change in the portrayal of psychiatrists who had been generally portrayed as heavily accented quacks. The most famous of these is Hitchcock's Spellbound, the second highest grossing film of 1945, in which Hitch portrayed shrinks as "dream detectives" working to uncover traumas that have led to neurotic behavior.
Compton Bennet lacks the insight, audacity, and visual flair of a Hitchcock, but this, his first feature, gained him entre into Hollywood and demonstrates his taste and craftmanship; talents he only displayed fitfully throughout his film career. Lom is particularly deft and ingratiating as the psychiatrist. I was reminded of his wonderful performance as a therapist in Cronenberg's The Dead Zone where Lom similarly displays subtlety and sensitivity. It's a nice contrast to the monstrous villains I usually saw him play growing up or his role as Peter Sellers' straight man in the Pink Panther films. Ann Todd is one of my least favorite leading femmes of the 40s, however, her inert and zombified presence suits her damaged character here and she is not bad as a juvenile. I adore James Mason, especially his purring voice. His role fits him like a glove and Bennet gives him a few bravura moments, especially a nice low angle shot of his eyes flashing with pain and hate as Todd tells him of her desire to marry a suitor.
The sado-masochistic nature of Mason and Todd's relationship should make this film seem ludicrous in these supposedly emancipated times. Mason's patriarchal cruelty makes Todd's choice of him as her eventual partner seems like an affront to the goodwill of the 21st Century viewer. However, none of Todd's suitors has the sexual magnetism of Mason. They all seem to be Ralph Bellamy to his Cary Grant. The Seventh Veil is by no means a great film, but, thanks chiefly to Mason's clenched performance, it does exert an odd, darest I say, unconscious pull.
The Magnificent Seven versus Free Fire
Two recent action flicks barely made an impression on me. I doubt I'll remember either of them in five years or so. Antoine Fuqua's remake of The Magnificent Seven is lackluster. I'm not that big a fan of John Sturges' 1960 film, especially compared to The Seven Samurai. The choreographed mayhem is by the numbers and the cartoon villainy of Peter Sarsgaard and his minions is unintentionally risible. The only one of the "7" to stand out is Ethan Hawke doing a PTSD update of Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday. Fuqua has done two good films with Denzel Washington (Training Day and The Equalizer), but the rest is dross.
Ben Wheatley's Free Fire came and went in theaters in a blink. Neither critics or audiences were enthused. Still, I found it to be a marginally better action flick than The Magnificent Seven. Critics have a point about the one dimensional nature of this shoot-'em-up in which the cast spend most of the film blowing each other away in an abandoned factory. The archetypal nature of this film allows Wheatley to riff on the genre as if he were a jazz musician messing around with a chord progression. Indeed, the score by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury seem to play with this notion. Wheatley's style is equally self knowing and dynamic. The thematic underpinning of the film, however, is a muffin made of nothing.
I must admit I got a frisson of pleasure from watching talented thesps like Brie Larson and Cillian Murphy crawling through the ooze and dusty detritus of this ninety minute acting exercise. Armie Hammer wins the acting honors and erases the aftertaste of The Lone Ranger by embodying the drollest of the film's villains. At its best, Free Fire reminds me of middling Walter Hill films like Trespass, The Driver, and Extreme Prejudice, but only at its best. At its worst, the film feels like a Reservoir Dogs knock off. (7/31/17)
Dunkirk
Nolan's script is an interesting one. He weaves three stories of land, sea, and air, whilst shifting the time frame for each tale. He does a better job of delineating the time ruptures than in his somewhat incoherent Inception. Overall, this is his best film since the similarly time warped Memento. However, as a director, he muffs key sequences that detract from the film's power. A confrontation between Mr. Murphy and Mark Rylance, which results in the senseless death of a youth, is poorly blocked out and seems jumbled instead of meaningfully ambivalent.
Dunkirk has a number of fine moments. The shot of a drowning man's hands clutching for a hold or a blind man readings the face of a returning soldier with his fingers are images I will remember. However, Nolan's inability to flesh out his characters leave this well short of such World War 2 masterpieces as The Air Force, They Were Expendable, Army of Shadows, The Ascent, and The Thin Red Line. (8/16/17)
Four Sons
When confronting Four Sons, released in 1928, one is tempted to exclaim as Orson Welles, one of Ford's more fervent admirers, once did regarding Ford's occasional mawkishness, "Mother Machree!" Four Sons epitomizes sentimental Victorian mother love as three of the four sons (spoiler alert) expire while serving Germany during the Great War. Four Sons is part of a cycle of films (and literature like All Quiet on the Western Front and Le feu) that began with Gance's J'accuse, peaked with Vidor's The Big Parade, and ended with Renoir's The Grand Illusion; a film that Ford pondered remaking. What these films all shared was a revulsion towards the horror of World War 1 and a leftist humanism that stressed commonality amongst people in lieu of nationalist fervor.
The son of Irish immigrants, Ford, because of his association with John Wayne, is largely perceived as a reactionary nationalist. Nothing could be further from the truth, Ford identified as a leftist before World War 2 and even his more nostalgic work afterwards are, as Tag Gallagher has noted, "scathing denunciations" of American racism, classism, and imperialism. Four Sons' opening sequences paint pre-war Bavaria in sweet tones because Ford wanted this period to be viewed as an idyll before the devastation of war. The boisterous nostalgia of these sequences is a counterweight to the sense of loss and waste that dominates the second half of the picture.
Four Sons is not top rank Ford, but it is a very effective picture. A monocled Prussian officer who functions as the villain seems extraneous, a cliché of the times. The acting is generally above average and Ford regular Jack Pennick is a welcome sight. Ford was very much under the sway of German expressionism, particularly Murnau, and was still evolving his own style. A good comparison would be his stronger 1931 effort, Pilgrimage, a film with similar themes. Ford only really started to flower with his trio of Will Rogers pictures. Perhaps the best recommendation I can give is to say that Four Sons made my wife cry and she is a tough minded viewer.
Remorques
Jean Gremillon's Remorques, from 1941, is a nice yarn about a tugboat captain getting ensnared in a love triangle. Gremillon has the good fortune to have Jean Gabin, the epitome of mid-century Gallic masculinity, and the very sexy Michele Morgan as his adulterous lovers. They glow like embers. Madeleine Renaud is not exactly chopped liver, but has to make do with the thankless role of Gabin's long-suffering wife. She is on the verge of dying from an undisclosed malady, so Gabin must forsake his new beloved to come back to his wife's deathbed. After which, in a superbly wrought ending, he returns to his true mistress: the sea.
Remorques has some minor flaws, particularly the miniatures used for the nautical sequences. I am reminded of Andrew Sarris' criticism of William Wellman for using fake looking backdrops in The Ox-Bow Incident. Sarris did not mind fakery per se, just when it occurred in a film that aspired to be realistic. In Remorques, the miniatures don't really jibe with the other nautical shots. Gremillon utilizes a tilting camera and set for verisimilitude, but that effort is undermined by repeated shots roiled in a tank. Preminger's In Harm's Way has a similar problem with fake little boats, but, in both cases, the negative effect on the film is negligible.
Gremillon is coming back into fashion after his reputation fell due to the French auteurist reaction against the tradition of quality represented by Carne, Clair, Delannoy, and the like. I can't say I found Remorques to be up to the level of Renoir or Vigo, but it has whet my appetite for more Gremillon. The opening wedding sequence alone makes Remorques a worthy viewing experience.
This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse
I saw this film as part of the Tigard Joy Cinema's Weird Wednesday series. I've seen ten or so of the features in this series and this film is superior to nearly all of their bargain basement fare. Marins obviously loves what he is doing and that affection shines through the hackneyed script and middling mise en scene. Marins' work breaks no new cinematic ground, but he does have a vision that he seeks to convey, however cockeyed. He grasps that as we age our focus shifts from sex to death and that in his chosen genre the decay of the flesh is a key and fitting theme. (8/3/17)
The Card Counter
Paul Schrader's The Card Counter concerns a troubled gambler (Oscar Issac), named (over) significantly William Tell, who yearns to find redemption. As a young man, Tell, then named (over) significantly William Tillich, was among the torture crew at Abu Ghraib and ended up in the brig at Leavenworth because of his misdeeds. A young man (Tye Sheridan), whose father served with Tell and ended up committing suicide over his guilt, tries to enlist him in a revenge plot to punish a former torture master who escaped punishment. Tell wants to save the young man before it is too late. He accepts an offer from a fixer (Tiffany Haddish) who bankrolls gamblers with the help of an unseen investor. Together they support Tell as he enters poker tournaments in East coast casinos, ostensibly acquiring a nest egg for the young man.
I found The Card Counter to be slightly better than Schrader's last exploration of modern trauma, First Reformed, but it still suffers from the same dour Calvinism and portentousness. Schrader is investigating the themes he always does. Tell is yet another of Schrader's angry men of God. He keeps a journal recounting his struggles, like Travis Bickle and Arthur Bremer. Tell attempts to find transcendence in a world rife with corruption and sin, like the protagonists in Light Sleeper and First Reformed. He approaches transcendence through the touch of humanity in an ending that all too closely resembles that of American Gigolo.
The Card Counter does have elements in its favor. Issac and Haddish are both superb and have an effective rapport. Schrader has written a well-structured and symmetrical screenplay. He has grown as a visual director and handles well sequences that range from a heavenly first date to the hell found in a torture chamber. However, Sheridan's character is a cipher and his performance is so anonymous it is almost fatal to the film. The film's music is dreadful, both portentous and pretentious. The poker sequences are superfluous. Schrader is so intent on expressing his anger at the pain and trauma caused by the US war on terror that the film loses plausibility and any sense of equilibrium. No one will be able to miss the message of The Card Counter, but its monotony of tone makes it a chore to sit through.
Don't Look Up
Part of the problem is miscasting. Jennifer Lawrence is playing a grad student in astronomy who leans goth and ends up with a skater boi (Timothee Chalamet) . The role is so insipid and underwritten, I'm not sure anyone could play it; maybe Mia Goth, Zooey Deutsch, or Saoirse Ronan. Ms. Lawrence is still too much the apple cheeked Abercrombie & Fitch model to convince as a punkish, geek genius who discovers a killer comet, even with a hair tint and a few nose rings. Leonardo DiCaprio plays her professor, a naïve nebbish and fellow science nerd. Leo has too much charisma to bother trying to tamp it down. He is most at home when he can swagger: as Howard Hughes, Gatsby, or Wolfie. Come to think of it, if Jonah Hill and Leo had exchanged roles in Don't Look Up, the results might have been more interesting. DiCaprio and Hill generate more laughs in one scene in The Wolf of Wall Street than in the entirety of this film.
Another problem is the film feels dated. Streep impersonates Sarah Palin and Cate Blanchett, Megyn Kelly. Don't Look Up is a Trump era satire about climate change denial, but, hopefully, we are out of the Trump Era. McKay pads the film with shots of nature and people of all nations, as befitting the global resonance attempted by the film. McKay once showed he could generate a pleasant comic camaraderie (Anchorman), but, despite an attempt to evoke family, this is not achieved in Don't Look Up. A look at the initial Oval Office scene in the film gives a clue as to why. Frantic editing can't generate amusement or even any sense of cohesion amongst actors performing on the same sound stage.
The CGI space bits add more padding. McKay even tries to invoke satiric cinematic classics, but all we get are feeble echoes of Dr. Strangelove and Network. I did enjoy the performances of Melanie Lynskey, Mr. Chalamet, and, especially, Mark Rylance. Nevertheless, considering the talent involved, Don't Look Up is thin gruel.
In Time
Andrew Niccol's In Time, from 2011, posits a world where everyone stays 25, but time has become currency. This not only produces a dystopian future where the elites can live for a century and the rabble struggle to eke out an existence, but also to the usual Hollywood hallucination in which Olivia Wilde can portray Justin Timberlake's mother. The film's critique of capitalism is pointed and timely, but In Time's impact is blunted by Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried's lack of chemistry.
Seyfried and Timberlake are both adequate, but fail to ignite a spark in their romantic scenes. This lessens the impact of the conclusion of the film when they have morphed into Bonnie and Clyde types who rob the time banks of the rich. Timberlake is too graceful and effete to portray a tough guy from the wrong side of the tracks. He only comes to life when he dons a suit and dances with the fetching Seyfried. Seyfried is too warm to play the brittle rich girl. The baddies fare better with Cillian Murphy as a cop tasked with giving the backstory and Alex Pettyfer oozing charisma as a gangster. Vincent Kartheiser, forever typecast as a creep thanks to his role in Mad Men, fits the bill as one of the capitalist swine variety.
Like Niccol's Gattaca, the film excels at an architectural vision of a dystopia, but, unlike that film, fails to capture many memorable moments of human interaction. Even if one doesn't dwell on the many lunacies of In Time's script, there are no moments as memorable as Ernest Borgnine toadying up to his masters in Gattaca. It remains to be seen if Niccol is more than a one trick pony.
Veronica Mars
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| Kristen Bell as Veronica Mars |
I remember how in the 1960s various successful TV series spun off into movies that offered minimal viewing rewards: McHale's Navy, Batman: The Movie, Munster, Go Home!; all truly feeble films. There are only a handful of films spun off from television shows that stand alone as worthy films: Don Siegel's The Lineup, Blake Edwards' Gunn, and Joss Whedon's Serenity are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head. Like the Sex and the City films and Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, Veronica Mars seems to exist as more of a chance for fans to enjoy beloved characters again rather than to reinterpret them cinematically.
I do want to go on record as being very much a Veronica Mars fan, Indeed, I would rate the series higher than such touted ones as The Sopranos and Mad Men. Despite its high school detective premise, Veronica Mars offers a more incisive and less cartoonish point of view than either of those series. It was ahead of its time in addressing issues that have not evaporated: racial strife, economic equality, police corruption, misogyny, to name just a few.
Part of the reason I have striven to restrict my writing to film is that if I attempted to address television shows I would feel obligated to write lengthy treatises on shows I've enjoyed such as Mr. Robot and Legion, but I don't have the time or the bandwidth. Similarly, there is enough to chew on concerning Veronica Mars to inspire innumerable doctoral theses from now till doomsday.
One spring I will pull is the show's take on Hollywood. The setting of the show is the fictional town of Neptune, supposedly a northern suburb of San Diego. There, the elite high schoolers are referred to as 09ers, a riff, I suppose, on Beverly Hills 90210. The premier bad boy of the elite set, Logan Echolls, is the son of a major movie star, Arron Echolls. He is played by Harry Hamlin and Aaron Echolls wife is played by Hamlin's wife, the bizarre visual effect known as Lisa Rinna.
This provides ample opportunity to lampoon Hollywood materialism and narcissism and the show delivers. Hamlin and his wife portray exaggerated facsimiles of themselves. Hamlin even watches his younger self perform in Clash of the Titans at one point. Since Hamlin and Rinna are themselves rather overblown and monstrous Hollywood creatures, their presence amounts to a self-parody and auto-critique. I would call their performances tongue in cheek, if either were skillful enough thespians to project that they were in on the joke. (Actually, Hamlin is always reliable, if a little wooden. Rinna is dire) Nevertheless, Thomas is concocting these broad characterizations in a rather fanciful series and the effect works dramatically. The cartoonish stereotypes of Italian gangsters in The Sopranos detract from what is ostensibly a work of realism.
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| Jason Dohring as Logan Echolls |
Veronica Mars, the series, is rewarding viewing that has many layers of signifiers and themes to explore. Besides its updating of noir (much like Rian Johnson's Brick), its portrayal of tabloid culture and a host of other hot button topics previously mentioned, it unspools a plethora of cultural references in a self-knowing, post-modern style. Not to the level of Gilmore Girls, but it is hip enough to tip its cap to the feminist heroines of Stars Hollow. Veronica Mars, the movie, is not the best entry into this saga, but it is a nice capstone to a worthy series. (8/22/17)
The Naked Dawn
Edgar G. Ulmer's The Naked Dawn is a pretty good B picture from 1955. Ulmer establishes his love triangle well and provides enough Mexican exotica to show off the Technicolor without edging into ridiculousness. While it is easy to oversell a film like this to the casual viewer, an aficionado can only marvel at what Ulmer could accomplish on a ten day shooting schedule.
The Naked Dawn's premise is fairly simple: an outlaw on the lam happens upon a simple farmer and his wife and soon ensnares them in his misdeeds. The wife, forced into an arranged marriage, is, before you can even say Black Jack Davy, quite eager to ride off with the outlaw. Arthur Kennedy seems an odd choice to play a Mexican outlaw, but, even with a dyed beard and hair, he is effective. Perhaps feeling liberated after playing second bananas and constipated villains, he gives a performance of great charm and gusto without a hint of the Frito Bandito. I've always felt that Kennedy was an underrated performer and can only marvel at his steady contributions to such fine films as The Lusty Men, The Man from Laramie, Rancho Notorious, Bend of the River, Cheyenne Autumn, etc.
Betta St. John, who I vaguely remember from the turgid The Robe, is pretty good as the wife. Eugene Iglesias less so as the farmer. Ulmer uses a wonderful tracking shot in the first walk and talk between Kennedy and St. John and photographs her bare arms and shoulders to scintillating effect during their last tryst. A dance sequence in a cantina with the enticing Charlita perks up the film's midsection. No masterpiece, The Naked Dawn is a solid film from a director who achieved cult acclaim while working at the bottom of Hollywood's food chain. It would make a good double bill with Bunuel's Robinson Crusoe, another technicolor B shot in Mexico during the 1950s that was also scripted by a blacklisted writer.
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