The Hateful Eight, Beasts of No Nation

The creative stasis of Quentin Tarantino is confirmed in the intermittently entertaining The Hateful Eight. My wife thinks he is lost without an Uma, a bitch goddess to build his film around. The Hateful Eight is Tarantino's third straight revenge film based on racial animus and its dramatic core is bloated and redundant. Reality and logic are out the window as Tarantino's racial obsessions are turned (Mad magazine style) into scenes he'd like to see. Fair enough, I think any filmmaker ought to work his or her obsessions out onto 70MM celluloid. But when Quentin's ultimate revenge fantasy is Samuel L. Jackson forcing a racist Southerner to orally satisfy him than I think Tarantino has taken the concept of Mailer's "White Negro" too much to heart.

There is no romantic element as in Django Unchained, just the hateful eights knocking each other off And Then There Were None style. The dialogue contains the usual extended riffs, maybe too extended, but Tarantino remains a gifted director of actors. He utilizes Michael Madsen better than anyone besides Ridley Scott in Thelma and Louise. The closeups of Madsen are the most loving in the film. Tim Roth handles his role with aplomb. Critical opinion on Jennifer Jason Leigh was divided as ever, but I feel her performance is the most memorable one in the film. Like her or not, she is a gutsy performer who seems gung ho to meet every disgusting challenge Tarantino throws her way. Nearly toothless, with blood and chunks of brain matter in her hair, Leigh is without vanity or inhibition. Tarantino does not succeed with all of his players. Walton Goggins is too cartoon like, Kurt Russell is too charming to be a badass, and Samuel L. Jackson's badass routine seems rote this time. Nevertheless, my concept of what constitutes badassdom could be called into question since I am a dadass. 

Ultimately, The Hateful Eight is a horror movie dressed in western garb. Tarantino telegraphs this by opening the film with a shot of a crucifix that seems to belong in Transylvania and not Colorado. The film belongs to that subgenre Joe Bob Briggs classified as "spam in a cabin". Briggs was reviewing The Evil Dead when he coined that phrase, but Tarantino lacks the visual brio Sam Raimi employs in such projects, needed to charge grand guignol flicks to life. Tarantino wants this film to be both a grindhouse entertainment and a racial parable. A whiny cracker and a black superstud are the only ones left standing at film's end: red and blue America remain after the carnage of America's history. A new hope for the future or locked in perpetual struggle? Tarantino does not enlighten us. Compare this to The Assassin, which confronts the moral dilemmas of a revenge narrative, and it looks like Tarantino is treading water here.

Idris Elba in Beasts of No Nation

Cary Joji Fukunaga's Beasts of No Nation is a prestige picture that earned my respect, if not my enthusiasm. A mélange of Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies, the film gives us a compelling portrait of good and evil in modern day Africa, but fails to bring its characters to life. Idris Elba is a good fit for the "Kurtz" role, but Fukunaga is unable to bring out his manic intensity as he did with Matthew McConaughey in True Detective. A few moments stand out, particularly a dolly through the trenches reminiscent of Paths of Glory that conveys the squalor of warfare. While the film is competently made and has a moral seriousness that The Hateful Eight lacks, it failed to move me. (3/15/16)

The Martian

                   
Ridley Scott's The Martian is an amiable mediocrity. Scott handles marooned astronaut Matt Damon's exploits on the red planet briskly and well, but crashes amidst NASA's bureaucratic infighting on terra firma. Damon is charming, but the script has him in contact with NASA far too early in the game. Hanks' hysteria is more affecting in Cast Away because he is more isolated.

I think Shawn Levy, the critic not the director of Free Guy, has Ridley Scott pegged about right as a present day Michael Curtiz: an excellent craftsman, but a second rate artist. I was watching Thelma and Louise  the other night and found it still moving, but for every first rate Ridley Scott movie there are more than an equal number of duds like Legend, GI Jane or Robin Hood. Due to its genial handling on the material, The Martian was a hit, but it is not one of Scott's better movies. (3/7/16)

Joy

Jennifer Lawrence in Joy

David O. Russell's Joy strikes me as one of the more underappreciated films of the past year. Not up to par with his best films (Flirting With Disaster, Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle), but, like I 💛Huckabees and Three Kings, it is a rewarding, if minor, work. Joy is a feminist fairy tale that alternately critiques and celebrates capitalism (like ...Huckabees) by portraying the life of the title character, the inventor of the Miracle Mop. Jennifer Lawrence is as likeable a presence as always, but doesn't convey enough New York attitude. Russell's hold on his supporting cast is similarly variable. Isabella Rossellini's performance has a more comic tone than that of her onscreen amour, Robert De Niro, for example.

The messy and ambivalent tone of Joy probably didn't help it with critics or audiences, but it is consistent with Russell's polyphonic intent. This is a story told with a variety of voices. Joy's Grandma (Diane Lane) narrates the opening of the film as a female empowerment fable. However, Russell stays with this device only fitfully when he wants to stress Joy's resourcefulness. Russell spends time illustrating the soap operas Joy's Mom (an unrecognizable and brave Virginia Madsen) is addicted to. I don't know if it was snobbery that elicited raspberries to this subplot, but I enjoyed watching Susan Lucci, Maurice Bernard, and other soap stars keep a straight face as they burlesque the already rococo conventions of the genre.

Russell wants to stress the illusory nature of television and how it affects consumers as they gaze upon capitalism's lustrous baubles in the comfort(?) of their own homes. This he magnifies in the QVC sequences which resemble a heightened dreamscape more akin to the mise en scene of a soap opera or music video than the homey realism of the scenes in De Niro's garage. Russell does this because he wants to hold up material wealth as a poisoned chalice. The struggle for wealth ultimately alienates Joy from family and friends. Bradley Cooper's QVC producer warns her that this will happen early on, but it is Joy's acknowledgement of this at the end that marks a mature acceptance of her fate. Her hair is up, teased and styled. She has donned the modern armor of the business suit. Previously, when Joy chopped off her hair, she was asserting her individuality while straining against gender (and genre) confines. She was becoming a business warrior. Eventually, she accommodates herself to the corporate business structure and wears its uniform. She acknowledges the producer's wisdom as a gesture of a onetime comrade, now adversary, who like her does battle in the maw of Darwinian capitalism. 

The ending of Joy is not a particularly happy one. On an economic scale, Joy is a success. She lives in a great mansion with family and hangers on, many of whom are trying to sponge off or swindle her. She has a few loyal friends, but there is no Lawrence/Cooper dance to the altar this time round. I think this film was made more to expand Russell's palette than to please a mass audience. It is an extension of the polyphony of American Hustle and its focus on illusion. People do not meet in Russell's films, they and their agendas collide. 

Russell is one of our best directors because of the quality of his writing, his utility with actors, and his handling of visual space. Adam McKay, in The Big Short, cannot visually express the threadbare nature of the hedge fund firms he wants to depict. Russell frames Joy, hoping to get her foot in the door of a media behemoth, at the very corner of a frame dominated by an ugly blue wall. She is dwarfed by corporate culture, but unbowed. Russell foregrounds too many themes early on and has too much variety of tone for coherence in Joy, but a pulse is discernable. (6/25/16)

The Big Short

Steve Carell in The Big Short

Adam McKay's The Big Short is a diverting, if somewhat shallow, look at some of the "winners" of the 2008 financial meltdown. McKay pictures the parallel stories of three investors who scored by betting the the US housing market would implode. McKay has been previously known as a director of comedies, chiefly Anchorman. He brings a bit of comic flair and razzmatazz to juice up what could have been a deadly earnest docu-drama in other hands.

McKay interjects such media luminaries as Anthony Bourdain and Selena Gomez into the mix to give us light-hearted lessons into the intricacies of  subprime mortgages and the like. This, and other techniques, help the film zip along its merry way, but McKay's loose control of his players and his pedestrian mise en scene ultimately detract from his attempt to make a black comic screed about the state of US banking.

Ryan Gosling and Christian Bale are more than fine, as usual, as two of the main leads. Given his previous films, it seems that McKay likes to give his players a lot of leeway and I think he gave Steve Carell a too much here. Carell is made for uptight roles, but resorts to bombast here playing an obnoxious hedge fund manager haunted by the suicide of his brother. Carell is the only main character given a spouse or friend to help flesh his character, in this case a wife played by the always welcome Marisa Tomei. Bale has an offscreen wife whose voice is heard once and Gosling is seemingly unencumbered. This would all be fine if McKay was able to get an emotional payoff from the time spent on Carell's background, but when the emotional floodgates are supposed to open, as Carell's character finally listens to his wife and opens up about his feelings (a cliché for male characters in recent movies), the effect is negligible. McKay has endeavored to suggest that this character, beneath his bluster and sociopathic tendencies, is deeply concerned with the economic havoc he has helped wrought, but the moment still falls flat. 

McKay's objective camera never taps into his characters' feelings. Brad Pitt's character is, we are told, so disgusted with the financial sector that he has rejected modern society and gone to live off the grid, but we never actually see this. No context is provided for either Pitt's or Carrell's performance. McKay, like a lot of directors, overuses close-ups and this reduces Pitt's efforts to uncharismatic insularity and Carell's to bluster and an array of tics. Similarly, the film's settings are undifferentiated. The lowly hedge fund offices don't seem ratty and tatty enough compared to the big boys. Such a lack of attention to detail doesn't mean much when framing lowbrow farces such as Anchorman and Step Brothers, but The Big Short deserved better. (7/8/16)
 

Days of the Bagnold Summer

Monica Dolan and Earl Cave in Days of the Bagnold Summer

I avoided Simon Bird's Days of the Bagnold Summer out of pig-headedness. I first heard of the film by listening to Belle and Sebastian's nice soundtrack, but thought it had something to do with Enid Bagnold, so I avoided it because I thought it was going to be too twee and British. It is certainly British and has the bed-sit suburban anomie of Glasgow's finest, but after stumbling over it on TUBI, I was charmed. Hardly a cinematic landmark, the flick is a well paced and sturdily constructed character study.

Lisa Owens' screenplay, adapted from the graphic novel by Joff Winterhart, is a marvel of economic expression. The film is, primarily, a two hander concerning a middle aged librarian and her fifteen year old son. The mom, Sue Bagnold, has raised her son on her own after the father has deserted them some seven years before. Sue is dowdy, stuck in a rut with little comfort and joy in her life. Monica Dolan. a mainstay of British television, portrays the bespectacled and stifled librarian cunningly. Dolan taps into her character's vulnerability and pain, but also conveys Sue's quiet indomitability. 

Daniel Bagnold is a different kettle of fish. A sullen metalhead caught in the awkward cusp of teenhood, Daniel is directionless, seemingly content to brood, sulk, and play video games all day. The absence of a father has clearly stunted his development. Earl Cave effortlessly embodies this rebel without a clue with a soupcon of father Nick's charisma. 

Predictably, Sue and Daniel butt heads through the course of the film and, just as predictably, find common ground before the conclusion. Director Bird, who started as a juvenile comic actor, frames his players expertly and excels at keeping sequences compact and tidy. Their are no extraneous or dead scenes in the film and no bad performances. Rob Brydon as a narcissistic suitor and Tasmin Greigas as a New Age type chum of Sue's are particularly memorable. Best of all is Elliott Speller-Gillott as Daniel's best bud, Ky, who gives his metalhead a touch of Restoration comedy foppishness which gives the picture some needed fizz. Days of the Bagnold Summer is nothing earth shaking, but it is pleasant and well made fare. 
 

Spencer

Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in Spencer

Pablo Larrain's Spencer pictures Princess Diana struggling with mental health issues as she attempts to get through the Christmas holidays with her in-laws at their Sandringham estate around 1993 or so. Sandringham, or rather the magnificent German castle that stands in for it, represents, in this film, the prison of the British monarchy that Diana yearns to break free of. Larrain and his screenwriter, the gifted Steven Knight, follow Diana through the labyrinthine corridors of the castle which assumes a sinister air, like the Overlook Hotel. Indeed, Spencer visually quotes the bathroom scene between Jack Torrance and Grady from The Shining in a scene in a walk-in cooler between Diana and a menacing manservant played by Timothy Spall.

The casting of Spall, who can exude malevolence simply by showing up in a frame (he was a superb rat in Harry Potter), is an example of the manifold flaws of Spencer. Not that  he delivers a poor performance, quite the contrary, but he is introduced as a forbidding spy and enforcer for the Crown and that is what he remains throughout. The royals themselves are also presented one dimensionally, almost as if they were waxworks. This would not be bad in itself if Larrain's direction gave some additional slant to the proceedings, not necessarily the icy black comedy of a Kubrick, but something. Larrain's direction is so muted as to be indiscernible. His handsome, yet feathery style marks him as the Bryan Forbes of our century. 

Kristen Stewart labors heroically in the title role. she inhabits the Princess convincingly, both vocally and physically. However, Larrain's mise en scene detracts from her efforts. The script bravely addresses Diana's bulimia, but the results are some of the most elegant vomiting sequences in cinema and that is not meant as a compliment. A director who cannot accomplish a believable puke scene cannot be expected to pull off the more hallucinatory moments in Spencer. I was especially nonplussed by the cautionary apparitions of  Anne Boleyn. Except for some warm notes by Sally Hawkins as Diana's dresser, I was bored by most of the film.

The Assassin

                     

Hou Hsiao-Hsien's The Assassin garnered kudos from the usual suspects primarily due to its visual splendor. It is a gorgeous film, further cementing his reputation as one of the world's preeminent directors. What struck me most was how well the film's visual style mirrored the arc of the titular character's development. 

When we first see the assassin, she speedily dispatches one of her father's slayers and seems hellbent on exacting her revenge upon her clan's foes. However, she recoils from killing one of her targets because he is playing with his child. Hou's camera eyes the noble families much like the assassin: stalking from a distance, the target partially obscured by blinds, silk fabric, flowers, candles, and the like. There is one astonishing moment when the assassin appears as if by magic behind rows of screens and curtains; a phantom materializing.

After casing her intended victims, the assassin comes to believe that more harm than good will come from dispatching them. She confronts her Mom, the film's Lady Macbeth, and renounces violence. Truth is found by her hiding in the darkness as she spies on her targets and is brought to light on the heights with her mother as the fog rolls in. The best film I've seen since Maps to the Stars. (3/4/16)

The Prowler, Sicario

Evelyn Keyes and Van Heflin in The Prowler

Joseph Losey's The Prowler is a very good B with the director's characteristic anxiety and hysteria. Throughout his career, Losey, when directing romantic scenes emphasizes the power struggles between the two lovers/combatants. Evelyn Keyes is evenly matched with Van Heflin, so much so you think she will turn out to be a femme fatale. Not for the last time, Losey subverts expectations by revealing Van Heflin's LA cop to be a psychotic villain. An especially dark vision in 1951.

On seeing the film a second time, I was struck by its resemblance to Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly: human scorpions facing off in the alternately swank and seedy settings of L.A.. Indeed, Aldrich was the second unit director on The Prowler.

Emily Blunt in Sicario

Denis Villeneuve's Sicario is a well made disappointment. Even with such fine thesps as Blunt, Brolin, and Del Toro, Villeneuve can't flesh out the plight of his female protagonist. The action and suspense is well handled, heightened by a throbbing techno score. Roger Deakins' photography is superb, but the plot goes nowhere. Blunt's FBI agent is unbelievably naïve when questioning the motives of CIA man Brolin and the even more shadowy Del Toro. Kathryn Bigelow handled bureaucratic rivalries better in Zero Dark Thirty and Ridley Scott got more of a charge out of the macabre surrealism of the Drug War in The Counselor. Sicario is a facsimile of better movies. (2/29/16)

Hanna, Cinderella, Blue Ruin

Saoirse Ronan as Hanna

Joe Wright's Hanna is a thoughtful action flick that takes a fairy tale premise, a foundling raised in the forest by a father figure goes in search of her real parents, to a very modern and satisfying conclusion. Wright has a good eye for tableaux and stages his action scenes effectively. The scenario ties in the Brothers Grimm aspects to the carnage in an interesting fashion. Bana, Blanchett, and Ronan are all effective in a lean, crisply paced entertainment.

Cate Blanchett plays the wicked stepmother role in Hanna and pops up again in the same role in Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella. Disney has spared no expense, the production design by Dante Ferretti and costumes by Sandy Powell are eye popping. The cast contain the usual British thesps, who Branagh keeps in check. There is little of the camp artifice that marred his Shakespearean comedies. Excepting some unfunny mugging by the evil sisters, Branagh plays the story straight and gives it the thematic import absent in most versions. Lily James is fine and the prince is somewhat wooden, as princes usually are. I saw this after reading John Waters' rave, thinking it would be good family fare and was not let down. Nothing earth shaking, but Branagh's best film since Henry V. 

Lily James as Cinderella

Jeremy Saulnier's Blue Ruin is the kind of small budgeted indie film that is oft overlooked. The direction is assured, the acting solid, and if the revenge based plot seems a bit worn, that just reinforces the tropes that this Southern Noir delivers to the viewer. (2/22/16)

Quick Takes, June 2022

Orson Welles dazzles in Black Magic

Gregory Ratoff's Black Magic, from 1949, is a junky lark, a Classic Illustrated comic version of  Dumas pere's work. The film is based on two of the eight or so novels he wrote centering around the figure of Marie Antoinette. Charles Bennett, a longtime Hitchcock collaborator, wrote the adapted screenplay. The central figure in the film is loosely based on Count Cagliostro, the pseudonym of the age's greatest magician and charlatan. Thomas Carlyle called him the "Quack of Quacks". In Dumas and the film, Cagliostro unlocks the secrets of hypnosis and mind control after an encounter with Franz Mesmer. Cagliostro uses his newfound powers to reach messianic levels of wealth and power, but succumbs to hubris. All in all, a role totally suited to Orson Welles, the wunderkind from Kenosha.

The film foregrounds Welles' eyes a ridiculous amount of the time. But if one can tolerate Orson's baby browns and slice or two of his Gypsy prosciutto, one will be treated to a more free-spirited portrait of a megalomaniac than Doctor Strange 2. Welles is particularly adroit in the magic sequences, some of which would fit right into F is for Fake. The eye-popping Italian costumes and sets make up for the occasionally awkward supporting cast and direction. Nancy Guild is adequate in a double role. Akim Tamiroff and Valentina Cortese are, as always, superb. Some may want to dig for traces of Welles' direction, but Black Magic is fun, as it is. 

Bo Burnham's Inside was a slight disappointment to me. A response to COVID, the film consists of Burnham singing little ditties inside his abode. The songs are hit and miss, but the main problem with the film is that it is not visually inventive or exciting. Burnham is one of the most talented comics of his generation, but it is hard to make a one character film about anxiety, anomie, and depression without succumbing to solipsism. 

Alex Cox's Straight to Hell is a stoopid Leone parody with traces of Peckinpah and Charles Portis. A must see only for Cox completists and midnight movie addicts. I must say the "Director's Cut" is a much better and more coherent film than the one I saw in 1987. For one thing, there are more musical numbers. The cast includes Joe Strummer, Elvis Costello, The Pogues, Grace Jones, Dennis Hopper, Courtney Love, Jim Jarmusch, and Edward Tudor-Pole. Zander Schloss, former bassist for the Circle Jerks, steals what movie there is as a decrepit hot dog vendor. The liquor bill on this shoot must have been enormous. Quentin Tarantino seems to have inspired by the performance of Sy Richardson as "Norwood" in this film to invent the persona of "Jules" for Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction.

I've touched on the Maryland Censor Board and Mary Avara before. However, I was ignorant of Joe Tropea's Sickies Making Films, a loving and wry history of local censors that focuses on the Free State's board. Recommended to native Marylanders and film buffs. 

Jon S. Baird's Filth, from 2013, is an intermittingly successful adaptation of the Irvine Welsh's novel. Baird and the talented cast capture Welsh's scabrous tone, but the protagonist's descent into madness is rendered feebly. Still. the cast is a stellar one: James McAvoy, Jim Broadbent, Imogen Poots, Jamie Bell, Kate Dickey, and Shirley Henderson. 

Clive Donner's She Fell Among Thieves, from 1978, is TV mystery movie that is more than adequate light entertainment. Tom Sharpe, who freely adapted the script from Dornford Yates' novel, displays the wit that marked him as the best English comic novelist since Evelyn Waugh. Eileen Atkins steals the show as villainess "Vanity Fair". The costumes and décor are a feast for the eyes. The fine cast includes Malcolm McDowell, Michael Jayston, and Karen Dotrice.

Some Call It Loving

The somnolent Tisa Farrow and Zalman King in Some Call It Loving

James B. Harris' Some Call It Loving, from 1973, is a curious mish-mash of art and exploitation tropes. The results are stillborn, but betray a personal vision lacking in Harris' directorial debut, the routine Cold War thriller The Bedford Incident. The lead performances by Zalman King and Tisa Farrow are extremely wooden, but fit within the somnambulant nature of this post-feminist retelling of Sleeping Beauty. Richard Pryor offers a jagged portrayal of a junked out jazz fan who, seemingly, is saxophonist King's only friend. Cinematographer Mario Tosi does outstanding work here. He also does fine work in Hearts of the West, Carrie, and The Stunt Man, but then suddenly disappeared from the film world.

I was moved to view the film after reading Jonathan Rosenbaum's review. I can't say I found this as intriguing as he did, but chalked it up as an interesting failure. That is pretty much my verdict on Harris, whose subsequent potboilers (Fast-Walking, Cop, and Boiling Point) I have seen. Overall, his films have interesting moments, but none are fully satisfying entities. 
 

The Tall T

Randolph Scott in The Tall T

Budd Boetticher's The Tall T, from 1957, is the solid, if unspectacular second feature of the Ranown cycle of B Westerns he made with Randolph Scott. Burt Kennedy adapted his script from an Elmore Leonard short story. The film contrasts the implacable integrity of Scott's character with the pungent villainy of Richard Boone and Henry Silva. All three principals are in superb form. Unfortunately, Scott's romantic scenes with Maureen O'Sullivan sink like an anchor. Enough abuse has been heaped upon Ms. O'Sullivan's talent and character by a former co-star (in his brilliant memoir Me Cheeta: My Life in Hollywood) that any further attempt by me to denigrate her would be piling on. Despite this caveat, The Tall T will satisfy Western fans. 

Mississippi Grind, Slow West

Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn in Mississippi Grind

By chance, we've been having a Ben Mendelsohn film festival. Mississippi Grind provides a chance for him and Ryan Reynolds to show off their acting chops as gamblers looking for a big score on a road trip to New Orleans. Reynolds shows some of the magnetism that producers have seen in him. The supporting cast is fine and the music (mostly classic blues) and Southern locales provide winning notes of local color. However, the script and direction, by the team behind Half Nelson, are somewhat rote. I was reminded of California Split, but the tenor of this film seems wan compared to Altman's work. 

Somewhat better was John Maclean's Slow West, where Mendelsohn is underused as the main villain. A naïve young Scotsman is searching for his lady love in the American West. Unbeknownst to him, she has a bounty on her head. Michael Fassbender is a gunslinger willing to help the lad, but does he want to find the girl to cash in on the bounty? Fassbender plays the role well, but may be too cerebral an actor to exude the authority needed to play action leads. 

Slow West, unlike Mississippi Grind, has some genuine surprises and boosts good period detail. The tone is discursive with the narrative meandering in much the way the protagonist does. There are touches I've never encountered in a Western: a German aboriginal scholar provides one striking vignette as does a trio of Africans singing in French. Not a great film, a killing in Scotland is mishandled, but a quietly rewarding one. 

Jellyfish Eyes

                  

Takashi Murakami's Jellyfish Eyes is a second rate oddity and I mean that fondly. I've read a few commentators being bent out of shape that Criterion has released it, namely that it is not up to their standards, has amateurish acting, etc., etc., but I found it visually exciting and expressive; especially Murakami's use of color. The children of the cast (and some of the adults) are amateurish, but, within the context of the film's mix of genres (it is a mashup of Pokémon, Power Rangers, Mario Brawl, and Sci-Fi), I found it endearing. Murakami wants Jellyfish Eyes to be a family film and his broad strokes keep it from resembling a darker, more adult work.

Not that it doesn't have an adult theme, like a good chunk of Japanese Science Fiction, Jellyfish Eyes is an ecological protest film; albeit one with cuter monsters than usual. The film also functions as a meta critique/celebration of video gaming. I thought the creatures were fabulous and think gamers of any age would enjoy the film. (2/13/16)

Every Man for Himself

Isabelle Huppert and other wonders of nature in Every Man for Himself

Jean-Luc Godard's Every Man for Himself, from 1980, is one of the most curdled and self-disgusted art objects I have ever encountered. It's well constructed and shot, but soul deadening. Godard's return to commercial filmmaking is one of his least celebratory works: he is so intent on his thesis that capitalism reduces all human exchange to prostitution that he cannot derive any pleasure from framing Isabelle Huppert's gorgeous ass or other wonders of nature.

Jacques Dutronc plays 'Godard' as a sleazy dude on the make and it is an entertaining stunt. Nathalie Baye also gives her all as a woman searching for meaning in an existence that is devoid of one. Godard has since proven that he was not washed up as a filmmaker. However, despite widespread acclaim, I feel this is one of his least rewarding features. (2/16/16)
 

Trainwreck, Munna Bhai M. B. B. S.

Bill Hader and Amy Schumer in Trainwreck

Judd Apatow's movies entertain me reasonably, but always leave me unsatisfied. He is gifted with performers, but pedestrian visually. As for ideas, thematic issues and the like, I suppose he grapples with issues of maturation and responsibility in Caucasians as they navigate sex and work, but comic directors like Nancy Meyers, David Wain, and Frank Oz strike me as more rewarding. That juggling of career and love that has been at the crux of American Romantic Comedies since the Depression. Like a lot of comic creators of his generation, Apatow's platonic ideal seems to be The Mary Tyler Moore on which single gal Mary entertained a host of hunky suitors while being nurtured by the alternative families in her apartment building and workplace. 

This is pretty much the premise of Trainwreck, Amy Schumer's cinematic coming out party. Of course, times change and our girl's travails are now leavened with an extra dollop of schtick and vulgarity. These are Schumer's strengths. Apatow draws appealing performances out of Brie Larson, Vanessa Bayer, Colin Quinn and Bill Hader, who has nice chemistry with Schumer.

However, Schumer's script is conformist and predictable. She resorts to dime novel Freudianism to explain her character's unwillingness to embrace monogamy. When she finally commits to the nice doctor who loves her, she is the one who compromises by foreswearing demon rum and weed. There are more laughs in, say, Neighbors, and more cinematic chops and feminist acuity in Tiny Furniture. Like most of Apatow's films, I was reasonably entertained by Trainwreck, but it left me hungering for more.

My daughter had enjoyed a Bollywood film in class, so, to have a family movie night, we viewed its prequel Munna Bhai M. B. B. S., from 2003. Despite being a Bollywood virgin, I pretty much knew what to expect: a few colorful musical numbers, a hackneyed plot based on mistaken identity and honoring one's Mom and Dad. Boy meets Girl, but doesn't get to kiss her. Etc.

Sanjay Dutt in Munna Bhai M. B. B. S.

And this is pretty much what you get, albeit with a visual dynamism that puts Apatow to shame. The cast was entertaining, though Sanjay Dutt appeared to be the same age as the actress playing his mother. (I suppose Bollywood is not all that different than Hollywood) A nice family movie that spans at least three genres. (2/9/16)

Crimes of the Future

Lea Seydoux, Viggo Mortensen, and Kristen Stewart in Crimes of the Future

The times have finally caught up with David Cronenberg. His body horror films may have seemed outré in the 80s, but the realities of the 21st century have given his work, like that of  Marshall McLuhan and Alvin Toffler, the weight of prophecy. Body modification is so commonplace in my burg of Portland that when I see someone with devil's horns or piercings in the double digits, I nary bat an eye. Cronenberg has had such a long and successful enough career that he has spawned cinematic progeny: not only his actual son Brandon, but such acolytes as Julia Ducournau and Carlo Mirabella-Davis.

Crimes of the Future marks a return to the theme of body horror that dominated his work in the 80s and 90s. Indeed, the script dates back to the 90s. What resonated with me was the self-identification of Cronenberg with his protagonist, the performance artist Saul Tenser, played by Viggo Mortenson. Tenser and his partner, Caprice (Lea Seydoux) engage in body modification and ritualized surgeries. We are shown rival performance artists engaging in similar work. However, years of dedication to his art have taken a toll on Tenser. His health and diet are poor. He shuffles around in a magus like shroud, bemoaning his waning powers and confessing that he is jealous of younger artists. His name (which could be read as "anxious Jew") and the presence of Mortensen, the director's leading man of choice since A History of Violence, stress the identification of the aged director with his protagonist. 

Furthermore, the acolytes of his work are regarded ambivalently. Caprice and an official from the "National Organ Registry", played by Kristen Stewart, revere his body of work, but both seem to want to use his work as a springboard for their own artistic aspirations. Tenser is wary of them both. Though Caprice is his partner in life and work, Tenser keeps aspects of his self hidden from her. The scene where Caprice unzips his torso and starts licking his internal organs suggests, perhaps all too obviously, the vampiric nature of their relationship.

The film is far from flawless. The rusted ships and decayed buildings of Athens are appropriate to the fallen nature of mankind in the film, but are too reminiscent of the Interzone of Burrough's and (Cronenberg's) Naked Lunch. The paranoid and predatory mix of government officials and business representatives seems fuzzily drawn here; as it does to me in Burroughs' oeuvre (too much bug spray, perhaps). Seydoux, a fierce talent, is stuck with more expository dialogue than is good for an ESL thespian. My wife, a lifelong Cronenberg fan, found his rehash of themes to be tired. Certainly, he has explored fetishism to death.  This is always the paradox of auteurist cinema, though. Is an old director lamely recycling his old tropes or intriguingly reinvestigating lifelong obsessions. It is no surprise to me that the American critics least receptive to auteurism (Ann Hornaday, Mick LaSalle, Rex Reed) are the ones that have graced this film with its most negative reviews.

I think Crimes of the Future is middling Cronenberg (like his Naked Lunch), but my esteem for his vision and the complexity of its thematic reach make it the best new film I have seen in 2022. It contains yet another superb Howard Shore score.  Mortenson and Stewart are both excellent and the ending, too abrupt for some, ranks as one of his most fascinating. Is the ending an act of suicide or a new form of communion; or both. Neither the red pill nor blue one, but purple. The old flesh is dead. Long live the new flesh!

In Cronenberg's work, secular institutions are shown as having usurped the ritualistic trapping and communal bonding of religion. (see especially The Brood, Dead Ringers and Eastern Promises) The unease of this transition is one of Cronenberg's most important themes. In his early films, revulsion had been the primary response to the horrors of the flesh in our new secular, technological world. In Crimes of the Future, the mood is one of serene acceptance, one of the last stages of a human contemplating mortality. The techno, medical, performance art (aka sexless sex) is presented in a blasé manner. Stylistically, Cronenberg has never been a showy director in utilizing his camera. Nor is he a moralist. This is why the film seems undynamic and "boring" to some. 

Cronenberg has always been queasy about the human body and its twin signifiers, sex and death. One proclaims fertility, the other seemingly barren nothingness. One of our least romantic artists, Cronenberg displays supreme self-knowledge when Tenser intones, after an abortive and deeply unsatisfying tryst, "I was always bad at the old sex." Not an epitaph, but, hopefully, the start of a new stage.

Electric Boogaloo, Angel, Nymph-Light

The preternatural in a puddle: Joseph Cornell's Angel

Electric Boogaloo is an entertaining history of Cannon Pictures. The film is rather sparse in its detailing of the personal lives of Messrs. Golan and Globus, but that may have been because their professional lives were all consuming. The cheesy clips were well edited and the interviews were acerbic; my kind of combo.

If this enjoyable documentary won't leave much of an impression on me it is because of the revelatory color shorts by Joseph Cornell I watched beforehand: Angel and Nymph-Light, both from 1957. Cornell's pair of films are an expression of his faith (he was a devote Christian Scientist), a celebration of the patterns of the divine found in the natural world even in the heart of Gotham. The tattered parasol and frilly frock of the titular nymph are for Cornell just the transient fancies of our day to day lives. By the film's end, the parasol is in a waste bin, soon to be carted away.

Cornell is more taken with transcendent and less artificial signifiers of the Creator's plan, namely birds. They exist without self-consciousness or care, emblems of the divine found even in our most Babylonian metropolis, New York City. The birds are paralleled with the human denizens of a park, both watching the passing scene. While the birds seem to revel in nature's transcendent splendor, the humans, wrapped up in their day to day struggles and estranged from the natural rhythms of existence, merely bide their time.

Angel reminds me of a quote cited by my old professor, Larry Hall, on the Romantics, "...they could find the preternatural in a puddle." The fountain reflections and flowers in the film conjure a sense of mystery and mute beauty that spring from Cornell's spiritual yearnings. Cornell is one of the least chthonic artists of the modern era. The shot of the clouds that ends the film, with the angel in the foreground, expresses his desire for eternity in a world above ours.

I always enjoy seeing old color footage that shows how cities looked in mid-century America. I feel a nostalgic pang seeing the old fashions and people no longer walking the earth. I'm struck by the vividness of the advertising colors. I wonder if colors in advertising have changed in the last half century, more muted greens and oranges and less stark primary colors. A window into a past I only dimly remember. (2/4/16)

Licorice Pizza

Cooper Hoffman in Licorice Pizza

Paul Thomas Anderson's Licorice Pizza is a fine work of nostalgic Americana circa 1973. The film concerns a mismatched romance between a fifteen year old actor named Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) and a stunted twenty five year old cameraman's assistant named Alana (Alana Haim). Set amidst the sights and sounds of the San Fernando Valley, the film is an awkward romance leavened with satiric comedy. A largely pleasant effort, the film does not reach Anderson's previous heights, but will reward his fans.

As I've noted before, Anderson's films are variably Altmanesque ensemble films that celebrate alternative families (Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Inherent Vice) or colder, Kubrickian films featuring an egotist at war with the world (There Will Be Blood, The Master, Phantom Thread). Licorice Pizza belongs to the former category and its strong supporting cast gives the film a new shot of juice every five minutes or so. Christine Ebersole, Tom Waits, Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper, Benny Safdie, Skyler Gisondo, Isabelle Kusman, and Jon Beavers all contribute memorable bits. As in all Anderson's work, making a living in a rapacious system requires a hustler's cunning. Gary Valentine knows his time as a child actor is running out, so he engages in side hustles like selling water beds, running a P.R. firm, and operating a pinball arcade. Similarly, Alana, despite being drawn to Gary, strives to keep her options open both romantically and economically. 

The film is weakest when satirizing the racism and sexism of the era. Anderson's touch is so leaden with the racism of the owner of a Japanese restaurant that it brought accusations of racism upon Anderson himself. A tracking shot of motorists waiting in a line for gasoline falls flat, a faint echo of Godard's traffic jam tracking shot in Weekend. Still Ms. Haim and Mr. Hoffman are well-cast and appealing romantic leads. Licorice Pizza is certainly the sweetest film in Anderson's impressive canon. 

Get Out

                
Jordan Peele's directorial debut, Get Out, has garnered critical acclaim and commercial reward. On a budget of five million, the US gross is approaching two hundred million and the darn film is still playing here in Portland, five months after its opening. It has touched a chord of racial unease that has resounded with the populace. The death of George Romero reminded me of how Night of the Living Dead captures the racial climate of the late 60s better than any history I have read. Both films are buried in the horror genre, but both exist as triumphant termite art.

Peele has not exactly come from nowhere and his background in sketch comedy shows with his handling of the cast. There are no weak or misguided performances, indeed there are a number of outstanding ones: by Bradley Whitford, Stephen Root, and LilRel Howery. Peele also shows taste and restraint with his camera. When the Afro-American protagonist arrives at his white girlfriend's parents' home, Peele holds onto the long shot of the columned manse for a few extra moments as the initial greetings are made. The protagonist is not really gleaning his hosts as they are, but seeing only the façade.

A similar intelligence is discernible behind the camera throughout Get Out. Peele has macabrely pictured the American body politic in an incisive manner as Romero did in the 60s, as Siegel did in the 50s with Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and as Carpenter did in the 80s with They Live. (7/29/17)

The Matrix Resurrections

 

Once more unto the breach: Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss in The Matrix Resurrections

The feeble commercial and critical response to Lana Wachowski's The Matrix Resurrections gave me very low expectations for this, the fourth film in the series. Director Wachowski was in dire need of a hit and Mr. Reeves has found renewed success in grizzled action roles, so this seemed like it was going to be a mere cash-in; The Matrix regurgitations. 

I was certainly not bowled over by the film. The exposition scenes are tedious with Jada Pinkett-Smith trying to scowl under layers of latex. The action is largely rote. This bloated white elephant of a movie runs almost two and a half hours when it should have been 100 minutes. Still, compared to the previous sequels, I thought the movie had a pulse.

Lawrence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving are MIA, visible only in flashbacks. Perhaps the filmmakers didn't want the sexagenarians to look ridiculous in the action sequences or it was a way to cut costs. Regardless, Wachowski mostly succeeds with the young additions to the saga. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Jessica Henwick both seem promising. The presence of David Mitchell on the screenwriting team also helps.

What was most heartening to me is that Wachowski seems more personally invested in the material than in the previous sequels. The tyranny of binary choices and the ambivalent impact of the world wide web (or matrix) are, at least, grown-up themes that they attempt to grapple with here. I wouldn't call myself a Wachowski partisan, but in their best films (Bound, The Matrix, Cloud Atlas, and this one), a genuine artistic personality with recurrent themes has emerged.

The Shallows

Jaume Collet-Serra's The Shallows is a forgettable surfer versus shark flick with Blake Lively as the imperiled vacationer. Suspense is extremely mild and the back story half-assed; as are the gratuitous, Millennial attracting inclusions of screens within screens. Lively's performance is OK and her bod and the Australian settings that stand in for Mexico are magnificent. The overall effect, though, is negligible, even for a mindless popcorn flick. I got more of a buzz from the idiotic Sharknado pictures. (7/26/17)