3000 Years of Longing

Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton in 3000 Years of Longing

I liked 3000 Years of Longing, George Miller's adaptation of a A. S. Byatt short story, a bit more than most folks. If anything. Miller's timing was off. This was not the cultural moment to be doing a story that opened itself up to accusations of Orientalism ( a pejorative criticism since the 1978 publication of Edward Said's book of that name) and usage of the magical negro trope. Me, I saw a colorful update of Michael Powell type fantasia set in the Levant. 

Tilda Swinton plays a lonely scholar who purchases an old bottle while attending a conference in Istanbul. Out pops a djinn, played by Idris Elba, who regales the scholar with tales of his adventures through the ages. The djinn's colorful stories are the highlight of the film. Less successful is the love story between the two. When Swinton confesses her love for the big lug, it seems to come from nowhere. Elba's role is a snug fit for him, but Swinton is miscast. Her character is meek and humble, but her strengths as an actor are projecting arrogance and imperiousness. A better fit would have been Deborah Kerr, if she wasn't otherwise engaged for the rest of eternity. 

Frontier Marshal

Randolph Scott and Cesar Romero in Frontier Marshal

Alan Dwan's Frontier Marshal, from 1939, is one of the many Hollywood renditions of Wyatt Earp coming to Tombstone, becoming a lawman, and participating in the gunfight at the OK Corral. A good B picture that clock in at a brisk 71 minutes, Frontier Marshal is a testament to Dwan's solid craftmanship.

Taken from the book that inspired the 1934 film of the same name and John Ford's My Darling Clementine, Frontier Marshal drops many of the familiar elements of the saga. Ike Clanton and his brood are absent as are Earp's brothers. The dichotomy between the two main female characters, a virtuous maiden from the East versus a vampish dancehall girl, found in My Darling Clementine is also present in Frontier Marshal. Nancy Kelly, as the lady, and Binnie Barnes, as the tramp, are both pretty good at enlivening rote roles. 

Randolph Scott is adequate as Earp. He is called upon to do little more than embody moral rectitude with his ramrod posture. It was only later in his career, working with such directors as Budd Boetticher and Sam Peckinpah, that Scott was able to add additional shades to his portrayals of chivalric heroism. One of my favorite reaction shots in all of cinema is that of Scott at the conclusion of Boetticher's Comanche Station. Part of the reason for the potency of the shot is that Boetticher is playing off Scott's usual stoicism. 

Best of all is Cesar Romero as Doc Holliday. To viewers who know him primarily as the Cisco Kid,  umpteen Latin lovers or the Joker on television's Batman, this might seem to be strange casting, but Romero is good at expressing the romantic fatalism of the character. His effective turns in such films as disparate as Frontier Marshal, The Devil is a Woman, and Wee Willie Winkie display that he was not fully utilized by Hollywood.

Eddie Foy Jr. appears, as he often did, as his father, a noted vaudevillian. His antics and Barnes' dancehall number add to the period flavor of the film. Foy Sr.'s life story was turned into a film in 1955, the mediocre Bob Hope vehicle, The Seven Little Foys.

Frontier Marshal is nothing earth shaking, but it will appeal to film aficionados and Western fans. I was knocked out by the film's opening montage which shows the finding of silver near Tombstone and its subsequent growth into a boom town. Fred Allen or Robert Bischoff's efforts, the credit for this is unclear, rivals that of Don Siegel's concurrent and justly lauded montage sequences that he concocted for Warner Brothers. 

The Nice Guys, Irrational Man, Embrace of the Serpent

Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in The Nice Guys

Shane Black's The Nice Guys is, like his previous Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a buddy film disguised as a comic mystery. Black's big break in Hollywood was his script for Lethal Weapon, along with Top Gun the ultimate 80s bromance, in which narrative drive was sacrificed to the bonding rituals of Messrs. Gibson and Glover. 

Not much has changed in thirty years. Here, the leads are Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling and there is no wife or girlfriend to distract us from the burgeoning relationship between the two. They meet cute on opposite sides of a case and when the older dick breaks the ice by breaking the Goose's hymen, er arm, then they can bond while solving the shaggy dog mystery that Black has concocted.

The jokes are stale, the plot nonexistent and the gunplay rote. Still, the leads are charming and Angourie Rice, as Gosling's daughter, is a find. Black has a flair for funky ephemera and has an obvious affection for his LA locales. As a visual stylist, Black is fairly slack, but I'll take him over Richard Donner any day. The Nice Guys is cinematically underwhelming, yet it is a pleasant enough diversion.

Incrementally better is Woody Allan's Irrational Man. Middling Woody, the film is competently shot and acted with lots of walking and talking shots of the leading man and his ladies as has been Allen's wont since Sleeper. Joaquin Phoenix, one of our best leading men, is an uneasy fit as a troubled (he has a paunch and drinks from a flask while driving his Volvo) Philosophy professor. I'm not sure Phoenix would ever be right for the relatively Apollonian oeuvre of Allen. He is best amidst the Dionysian unease of a Paul Thomas Anderson. Allen is unable to unleash the sexual charisma that Anderson did in Inherent Vice despite the stalwart assistance of Parker Posey and Emma Stone.  

Emma Stone and Joaquin Phoenix in Irrational Man

This is fatal to the climax of the film. Phoenix has carried out the "perfect crime", poisoning a, perhaps, corrupt judge who he has no personal connection to. Stone, his student and lover, is onto him and has threatened to expose him if he does not turn himself in. Phoenix tries to throw her down an elevator shaft, but trips on a flashlight (symbol!) that is a memento of one of their trysts and falls to his deserved demise. Because Allen has not let Phoenix's performance breathe, his character lacks the charm to make him seem a tempting devil rather than an intellectual creep. There is no surprise for the audience in his perfidy, just confusion that Stone's character did not earlier discern his villainy.

Phoenix is adept at spouting philosophical jargon, but, as soon as he says he is working on a book on Heidegger, the mindful reader knows something is wrong with his moral compass. Some critics have branded the philosophical nature of the film as facile, but I am inclined to give the Woodman a break on this because it is obvious that he is fascinated by the presence of evil in everyday life: the portraits of bourgeois men getting away with murder in Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point are among his most resonant. 

Ciro Guerra's Embrace of the Serpent is an interesting look at the clash between modern and so called primitive perspectives as a shaman encounters two different German scholars forty years apart in the Amazonian forest. Guerra shoots in black and white which heightens the harshness and danger of the rain forest instead of its lush beauty.

Nilbio Torres in Embrace of the Serpent

The message of the film is rather predictable, that we have as much to learn from indigenous people as they do from us, but the skill of the direction and performers raises what could have been a hackneyed art flick into a generally compelling film. Nilbio Torres and Antonio Bolivar are both superb as the young and old iterations of the shaman, Karamakate. The three dimensionality of their portrayals helps Embrace of the Serpent skirt a romanticization of the 'noble savage" that has plagued the Western canon since, at least, The Last of the Mohicans.

Guerra is adept at portraying the myriad hazards of the rain forest and Karamakate's adroit calm. The requisite trippy sequence is botched, as they almost always are. How a film artist can portray a subjective ecstatic experience in a narrative is always a conundrum though I did like how Jane Campion portrayed Kate Winslet's epiphany in Holy Smoke. (7/29/16)

Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone

                       
Adam Curtis' Russia 1985 - 1999: TraumaZone is a seven part, seven hour documentary on the fall of first communism and then democracy in the former Soviet Union. Curtis eschews narration, talking heads, and a musical score. Combing through hundred of hours of footage from BBC sources, Curtis creates an epic and varied bricolage of Russia that gives us the compelling sweep of history and a view of the people on the streets.

Some have missed the puckish sense of Curtis' personality that permeates his other documentaries, but I think he was wise to stay out of the way of a massive story that needs little editorial comment. He does provide titles that tell the where and when of the footage plus pertinent background information. Curtis stresses the vastness of the country in these titles by listing each location's distance from Moscow. This, in turn, shows the folly of central planning in such a vast and far-flung empire.

The variety of footage is stunning. Its length is daunting, but I doubt I will watch a more rewarding and enlightening film this year. Viewers of  TraumaZone won't soon forget the little girl pictured below. One of this year's few must see films. 

Manderlay

Bryce Dallas Howard and Isaach De Bankole in Manderlay

Lars von Trier's Manderlay, from 2005, is a slightly less successful sequel to the director's 2003 masterpiece, Dogville. Grace Mulligan (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her gangster father are touring the American South after vamoosing Dogville. They happen upon the titular plantation where the black population still, in 1933, suffers under the yoke of slavery. Grace sets about rectifying the situation by enrolling a number of her father's goons to free the slaves and set up, under her guidance, a communitarian democracy to run the place. Despite Grace's good intentions, her plans go awry and von Trier is able to close his drama with a note of delicious irony

Like Dogville, Manderlay's single setting is portrayed on a minimally decorated soundstage. The element of surprise at this strategy is diminished this time out, but it is still an effective way of presenting what is essentially an allegory about America rather than a realistic drama. Von Trier's grasp of Americana is tenuous at best, dust storms don't occur in Alabama, for in stance, but one cannot deny the palpability of his negative feelings towards our country. 

The spartan settings and von Trier's hand-held Dogme technique places a great burden on his cast, most of whom deliver here. Nicole Kidman's performance as Grace in Dogville was a towering one, a Mother Courage for our times. Bryce Dallas Howard steps into the role here and is, unfortunately, the film's main flaw. Howard is good at evoking the do-gooding, schoolmarm side of Grace, but lacks the ability to project the steeliness and sensuality that Kidman did so expertly. On the other hand, Danny Glover is superb as Manderlay's house Negro. 

Lars von Trier's anti-Americanism no doubt rankles some. James Caan was so disturbed by it that he opted out of Manderlay after appearing in Dogville. His role, that of Grace's gangster father, is capably filled by Willem Defoe. I certainly don't share any of the director's batty politics, but respect the depth of his feelings on display in Dogville and Manderlay. It is unimportant to me what a director's politics are or whether he is sufficiently woke or anti-woke. What matters to me whether the director effectively transfers his ideas and feelings into a coherent and well crafted film. In Manderlay, von Trier is able to conjure the legacy of trauma that American slavery bequeathed to African Americans and that is more than enough to help the film transcend his blinkered view of the USA. 

Vengeance

Ashton Kutcher and B.J. Novak in Vengeance

B.J. Novak's Vengeance, his feature film directorial debut, is an assured and well written comic thriller. Novak plays a New York based writer and podcaster, Ben, who travels to West Texas to attend the funeral of a young woman named Abilene Shaw. Though only a fitful acquaintance of the woman, Ben is embraced by her family who were led to believe by Abilene that Ben was her steady boyfriend. Abilene died from an overdose of opiates and her family feels that some skullduggery was involved. Ben is dubious of this, but thinks a profile of Abilene and her family would make a good podcast. Eventually, Ben realizes that there is more to the story than meets the eye and finds that he has come to share the family's need for, yes, vengeance.

Most of the comedy in the film arises from the fish out of water nature of the narrative. Ben gradually comes to realize that the West Texas natives he meets are not quite the aimless bumblefucks he assumed they would be. Furthermore, they show him the empathy he lacks under his culturally sophisticated façade. The people he meets are all balancing their vulnerability with toughness. A local drug lord who is the chief suspect turns out to have had a soft spot for Abilene because she read him Harry Potter novels over the phone. A music impresario, played by Aston Kutcher, shows incredible sensitivity in the recording studio, but we learn that this is a mask hiding a monstrous callousness. 

Novak's achievement here is that he is able to imbue nearly all his characters with shades of gray. Only the local constabulary are pictured as outright bozos. The cultural rites of West Texas are, on the whole, treated with affection and respect, though a rodeo sequence is overdrawn. Novak's handling of his large cast is exemplary with Boyd Holbrook's turn as Abilene's brother being the standout. Kutcher is merely adequate, lacking the Zen master implacability his role demands.

Vengeance is more than a promising debut. The rooftop opening sequence set in New York shows Novak could easily do a cosmopolitan comedy of manners, but he set his sights on something more expansive and he has largely succeeded. Even his choices that explore the meta level of his film, particularly his usage of John Mayer and Lana Del Rey, are provocative and effective. Whatever the future holds for Novak, Vengeance is intelligent and enjoyable film. 

Thor: Love and Thunder

                    

Lightning did not strike twice for Taika Waititi and the Thor franchise. Thor: Love and Thunder lacks the impish spark that elevated Ragnarok above nearly all of the Marvel movies. When the biggest laughs come from the celebrity cameos, you know something is rotten in Asgard. The direction is spritely enough, but the script has a few insurmountable problems. One of those is the children in peril motif. The villain of the piece, Christian Bale's Gorr, kidnaps Asgard's junior set so he can lure Thor into a trap. The kids are innocent victims and not all that interesting. Waititi has continually utilized children in his scenarios, probably because he is just a big kid himself, but they have previously been scamps. That sense of mischief is missing in this film, as are the sorely missed Tom Hiddleston and Jeff Goldblum. Even Tessa Thompson's Valkyrie seems less joyously anarchic this time around.

A bigger problem is Thor's love interest, Jane Foster, who has been give stage four cancer for this opus. Now maybe Natalie Portman put her foot down and said, dudes, this is my last go round in the Thor saga and Waititi and company thought the big C was a good way to build up sympathy for the character before they offed her. Instead, it just puts a damper on the proceedings. The film is nowhere near as stodgy as Branagh's Thor, but Waititi has similar problems building romantic chemistry between Ms. Portman and Chris Hemsworth. Hemsworth is a bit of a lost cause as an actor. Like Channing Tatum, he exists in film to drop trou, a dorsal view here of course, but, unlike Tatum, he is not enough of an actor to make it seem like he is in on the joke. The jokes aimed at his metal dimness seem tired in ...Love and Thunder. Portman is a more frustrating case. In her youth, she seemed promising, but her mature work after Black Swan has been disappointing. In her juvenilia, she exhibited interesting chemistry with Jean Reno in The Professional and Timothy Hutton in Beautiful Girls, but her scenes with Hemsworth are as flat as her ones with Hayden Christensen in the Star Wars films. 

Official Competition

Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas in Official Competition

Gaston Duprat and Mariano Cohn's Official Competition is that rarity, an intelligent and genuinely funny comedy. A farce about the backstage antics behind a movie, Official Competition mostly focuses on its three leads. Lola Cuevas (Penelope Cruz) is an avant garde film director who has the backing to produce an adaptation of a best-selling novel about two feuding brothers. She casts two actors with oppositional approaches as her leads. The roughhewn brother is played by Felix Rivero (Antonio Banderas), a top tier movie star who is an instinctual artist. The more restrained brother is played by Ivan Torres (Oliver Martinez), a polymath who takes a more academic approach. 

Naturally, these talented egoists clash. Torres honors study and preparation, Rivero lives for the moment, and Cuevas searches for a new artistic paradigms. The results are as heady as they are amusing. The two actors argue whether art is for the elite or the masses with Banderas and Martinez playing overinflated versions of themselves. Cruz has to do most of the heavy lifting as a square peg in a red wig of epic proportions. The boys gang up on Cuevas after each has been ritually humiliated by her. Allegiances are in perpetual flux, but, eventually, a film is created.

Significantly, Mr. Martinez, like the directorial duo, is from Argentina, a nuance lost on most North Americans, but one that has some bearing on the proceedings in Official Competition. Messrs. Duprat and Cohn have been artistic partners for over thirty years. They started out in the avant garde, have created numerous television programs, documentaries, and even founded a cultural TV channel in Buenos Aires. Official Competition is their third fictional feature and I will be chuffed to investigate their back catalogue. 

Quick Takes, November 2022

Lee Purcell in Summer of Fear

Wes Craven's Summer of Fear, a TV movie from 1978, was his first true Hollywood effort. He seems to be learning the ropes and there are only a few uncanny moments. Craven neutered for televised consumption. Lois Duncan's source novel provides possibilities, but the cast is generally woeful as are the costumes and hair. This was the last of a slew of exploitive TV films that starred Linda Blair in the wake of The Exorcist. Fortunately, the plum role of the witch who bedevils Blair and her family is in the capable hands of Lee Purcell. MacDonald Carey is well utilized and Fran Drescher shows she had her schtick down pat at this early stage. For Craven completists and lovers of 70s cheese.

Kevin Smith's Yoga Hosers, from 2016, is as funny as a crutch. Despite an impressive cast (Johnny Depp, Lily-Rose Depp, Vanessa Paradis, Natasha Lyonne, Justin Long, Austin Butler, Haley Joel Osment), the results are dire. 

Li Yuhe's Absurd Accident, his debut film from 2017, is, yes, an absurdist black comedy set in the hinterlands of northern China. The film takes leaps back and forth in time as it tells the tale of ten intersecting characters. Li has a solid sense of place and knows where to plant his camera. The tone is similar to the yahoo comedies of the Cohen brothers. Like their lesser comedies, the humor is more of the peculiar rather than laugh out loud funny. If anything, Li tries to cram too much in one feature: the black and white sequences which mimic speeded up silent films are an egregious example. Still, Mr. Li shows promise. Streaming on Amazon Prime. 

Tsui Hark's The Taking of Tiger Mountain, from 2014, is an old fashioned action film, at once pleasing and anonymous. Hark has churned out fifty or so of these and reminds me of Henry Hathaway; competent, yet relatively colorless. The film has a rich feel to it: the set decoration, costuming, and hair styling are all eye popping. Initially, a historical novel, then a Maoist opera, this is, at least, the second film adaptation of the yarn. The film has a cobbled together feel with bits of The Seven Samurai and Mad Max attached to it.

Peter Strickland's Flux Gourmet is a wigged out satire of the art world. With a narrative that defies description, Flux Gourmet once again displays Strickland's gift for arch humor and Bunuelian satire. As in his recent In Fabric, Strickland shows sighs of artistic growth, particularly in his ability to create three dimensional characters. In this he is greatly helped by a fine cast, especially Asa Butterfield and Strickland regular, Fatma Mohamed.

Chloe Okuno's Watcher is an underwhelming woman in peril film set in Bucharest. Okuno gets a sense of menace out of the apartment corridors and streets of Romania, but the characters of this thriller are wan and underdrawn. Part of the problem are the nondescript leads. Based on the interesting bits and pieces in Watcher, Slut, and her short in the anthology V/H/S, Ms. Okuno seems a talent to watch for the future. 

Fatma Mohamed in Flux Gourmet

A Brighter Summer Day

             

Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day, from 1991, is a tragic epic of one teen's descent into criminality in Cold War era Taiwan. Yang portrays New Frontier Taiwan as a repressive militaristic society in constant preparedness for an invasion from China. Corridors, grid like classrooms and offices are emphasized to show how the Taiwanese youth and their even more alienated elders are confined by their culture. The teens in the film are all enraptured with American culture to such an extent that it heightens their alienation as displaced Chinese. They end up resembling the disaffected youths in Nicholas Ray's Rebels Without a Cause, albeit without jalopies. They form gangs, listen to and perform Elvis, and have shifting romantic allegiances just like Ray's misfits. Yang is not as hysterical a director as Ray, and that has its pluses and minuses. The young actors were tightly controlled by Yang and, thus, there aren't the seismic tremors that Ray elicited from James Dean and his cohorts. However, Yang's reserve fits his perspective on his culture and his exploration of the theme of the sins of the father being visited on the sons is more controlled and powerful than in Ray's film. A scene where the protagonist sees his father beating his brother is much more effective than a demasculinized Jim Backus wearing a frilly apron in Rebel....

A Brighter Summer Day is, perhaps, a little lengthy, but it is out of the love for his characters that Yang indulges his muse. The beauty of a tracking shot that follows two juveniles dashing away after harassing trysting teens displays Yang's affection for the fleeting moments that are largely lost upon youths themselves. 

Results, The Last Detail

Cobie Smulders and Guy Pearce in Results

Andrew Bujalski's Results is a romantic comedy with an off kilter triangle that I seemingly enjoyed a smidge more than most folks. As in Computer Chess, Bujalski injects his brand of mumblecore with enough technique to make ninety minutes pass swimmingly. Whether summarizing six months of a character's life with a montage sequence or breaking down a promo pitch via YouTube, Bujalski documents how 21st century romance persists in the age of Instagram and Facebook. Guy Pearce, Cobie Smulders and the busy Kevin Corrigan are all charming despite their characters' flaws. Elizabeth Berridge (Mrs. Corrigan) makes a welcome, but all too rare appearance in this nice film. 

Randy Quaid and Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail

A film I didn't like as much as most people is Hal Ashby's The Last Detail . Ashby is primarily an actor's director and the efforts of Nicholson, Randy Quaid, and Carol Kane are wonderful and marvelously supported. Gilda Radner has a nice cameo as a manic cultist. Nancy Allen is a whore! However, Ashby's visual style, realistic grunge with a tinge of dope addled sweetness, has always left me unmoved. Robert Towne's adaptation provides a sturdy framework for this road movie and its talented players. I hated the music. Johnny Mandel's recycling of nautical and patriotic themes for comic, MASH style effect struck me as overkill. Ashby's tawdry portrayal of East Coast America circa 1972 saves the movie from sentimentalism, but often falls prey to the humdrum inanity of realistic decoration. Nevertheless, along with Shampoo, Being There, and the maudit 8 Million Ways to Die, this is one of Ashby's better films. (6/21/16)

The Banshees of Inisherin

Colin Farrell and Brendon Gleeson in The Banshees of Inisherin

Martin McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin deserves most of the acclaim that has come its way. I have certainly not seen a better acting ensemble in some time. The cast (including Colin Farrell, Brendon Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, Gary Lydon and Sheila Flitton) all expertly milk the notes McDonagh has written for this dark Irish ballad.

What struck me was how seamless McDonagh has become as a filmmaker. The nearly two hour length of the movie flies by even though the drama is slow and deliberate. Part of this is due to the crisp editing. McDonagh does not linger after his characters say their lines, but quickly cuts to the response. This not only saves the film from falling into a torpor, but it stresses the estrangement of the characters in the film. Each character in The Banshees of Inisherin is an island, standing alone. 

My only criticism of the film is that it is overly schematic. Colin Farrell's Padraig is a Christian everyman. A bit doltish, but a good soul whose true communion is with the animals he tends. He is a good shepherd. Brendon Gleeson's Colm is the solitary artist who is more in touch with Ireland's pagan roots than its Christian fellowship. Notice the foreign masks, totems, and puppets that fill his cottage. McDonagh gives us a man who lives for the day versus a man who lives for eternity. What seems arbitrary is not the eventual estrangement of these characters, but the bond of friendship that formerly united them. This, however, is a quibble. Mr. McDonagh is one of the world's most talented playwrights and The Banshees of Inisherin once again confirms that his film work is of equally high caliber. 

All Quiet on the Western Front

Felix Kammerer

Edward Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front, currently streaming on Netflix, is an adequate adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's novel about World War 1 that I can muster little enthusiasm for. The film's historical verisimilitude and production design are exemplary, but the humanistic tenor of the novel has been lost in this adaption by Mr. Berger and his collaborators. What we are left with is a World War 1 theme park ride somewhat akin to 1917. 

The main flaw is that Mr. Berger has divided his film into two halves that do not complement each other. Remarque's novel and the Lewis Milestone's stodgy film version center on the wartime horrors experienced by raw recruit Paul Baumer. In addition to this, Berger highlights the story of the German diplomatic team negotiating the Armistice. Berger no doubt thought that stressing rich diplomats and officers enjoying fine dining and drinks while Baumer (Felix Kammerer) and his pal are dying in the trenches would augment their plight. Instead, it vitiates the cumulative impact of the story. Remarque's work gains in strength as we get to know Paul and his cohorts. Because the story of these soldiers only takes up ninety minutes of the two and a half hour runtime, the characters in the trenches are given short shrift and the impact of their deaths is diminished. The camaraderie of the foot soldiers is one of the great consoling joys of the novel and it is largely absent from Berger's version.

Berger wants to show how the putative terms dictated to Germany at the end of World War 1 fanned the flames of nationalism in the more sinister form of Nazism. He does show, a little, the nationalistic fervor that greeted Germany's entrance into the Great War. However, the Paris Peace Conference was more responsible for the doom of the Weimar Republic than the Armistice agreed to by an exhausted Germany.

The project might have been more suited to the mini-series format. For those who have not read the novel, Berger's version might be sufficiently effective and it is certainly more loose limbed than the 1930 film. The best Remarque adaptations are relatively neglected and remain Frank Borzage's Three Comrades from 1938 and Douglas Sirk's A Time to Love and A Time to Die from 1958. 

El Aura

Alejandro Awada and Ricardo Darin in El Aura

Fabien Bielinsky's El Aura is a slow burn thriller from Argentina. Ricardo Darin plays Esteban, an epileptic taxidermist from Buenos Aires. Esteban is a loner, deserted by his wife, who fantasizes about planning elaborate heists. When a frenemy invites him to a hunting trip in Patagonia, the opportunity arises to fulfil his fantasies. Of course, his fantasies do not match the harsh light of reality.

The aura refers to the brief moments of transcendence an epileptic experiences before falling into a seizure. The reality of the film is a sharp slap across the face in response to such intimations of freedom. Men in El aura are aggressive and sadistic brutes vying for dominance. They may shoot all sorts of game, but besting their fellow man is the ultimate trophy. Bielinsky stresses the bleakness of his scenario with a monochromatic palette of blues, greys, and greens. The lack of connection between the characters is emphasized by the framing in the widescreen format.

This would be all to misanthropic if not for the humanity gleaned in the performances. Even the most vile of Bielinsky's creations has moments of vulnerability. Best of the miscreants is Walter Reyno as a gunsel facing his twilight. Darin aptly captures his character's dimness and his delusions of grandeur. Esteban has, at least, gained a faithful companion by the film's conclusion. Sadly, this 2005 film was Bielinsky's final effort before his premature death at 47. 

Knight of Cups

Christian Bale and Natalie Portman in Knight of Cups

Terrence Malick's Knight of Cups was such a hoot that I thought up alternate titles while the film unspooled: the winners were Journey to the Wonder and A Rake Regrets. Anyway, by most sane artistic measures the film is a failure, but I found it, at times, to be visually compelling and moving. Malick's vision here is more spooky splendor than natural wonder. Lead Christian Bale spends more times in backlots, corporate towers, ersatz Beverly Hills' palazzos and Vegas rather than amidst Malick's  beloved natural settings where the director can get off on his single grain of sand pantheism. Malick is at sea here divorced from the natural world rather than focusing on the Badlands, jungles of Guadalcanal or the plains of Kansas. Modern alienation is not his forte, Man in Nature is.

The narrative is a poor second to the visuals. Bale romances a fistful of dames, tries to connect with his brother and father, but can't relate with anyone because he is wandering lost; like most of the cast. Malick has a load of mega talents (Bale, Portman, Blanchett, Brian Dennehy), but they seem to have nothing to latch onto or react against. Only Antonio Banderas stands out as a comic Hollywood lounge lizard. The romantic scenes are inert as the characters seem less interesting than the décor. If Malick no longer wants to tell a story, he needn't try. (12/10/16)

Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiousities

Peter Weller in Panos Cosmatos' The Viewing

Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, an anthology series currently streaming on Netflix, will please horror fans. Mr. del Toro gets to emulate Hitchcock by curating and hosting the films. All the films have some redeeming quality, most of which are short story adaptations. What unites the films are their luxe production qualities. When I came of age in the 1960s, horror was the bargain basement genre, but now it is such a commercially popular genre that its budgets are A level. Of course, you can still make good horror with a cheap cast and a barn or ranch house, like Romero, Craven and Hooper, but the roadshow musicals of my youth are long gone; thank god. Some of this is due to the change in the demographics of the audience. The current movie theater audience is younger and more male than in 1965. Perhaps the rise of the modern horror film, ushered in by Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist, reflects cultural decay, but I think the primary reason boils down to economics. Anyway, I find that The Last House on the Left offers a more compelling artistic and moral statement than Camelot, Paint Your Wagon, Song of Norway, Oliver, 1776, Darling Lilli or Sweet Charity. 

Two of the hour or so long films in the anthology are the standouts. Ana Lily Amirpour's The Outside is an effective example of body horror and satire. The burlesque of consumerism is broad and black, but Amirpour never loses sight of the plight of her plain jane protagonist. It reminded me a lot of Larry Cohen's The Stuff. Panos Cosmatos' follows up his breakthrough, Mandy with The Viewing. Cosmatos style is so extreme that I don't think he is a candidate for mainstream success, yet I think he has a singular brilliance. The bespoke 1979 style of The Viewing with its gold, orange, brown color scheme puts to shame most current period films about the era. Peter Weller is superbly deadpan as the power mad oligarch who intones lines like, "There is no smoking in the obelisk room." There are a number of Lovecraft adaptations in this anthology, but The Viewing, an original script, is the only film to conjure the dread of that twisted master. Cosmatos is too lysergic a filmmaker for most, but I enjoy sampling his Kool-Aid. 

Athena

Sami Slimane in Athena

Romain Gavras' Athena has a kinetic rush that sweeps the viewer along, but fail to provide much in the way of thematic development or characterization. The murder of a teenager in a French project (the titular Athena) sparks rioting among its population of Muslim immigrants. Three brothers of the victim, a rebel leader (Sami Slimane), a hardened criminal (Ouassini Embarek) and a cop (Dali Benssalah), are swept up in a maelstrom of events that soon spiral out of control. Gavras does a good job of choreographing the mayhem and making Athena a tangible presence.

However, much of what underpins Athena fails to hold up in retrospect. Gavras' view of modern France, pictured here as on the verge of civil war, is overly hysterical. More damaging are the lapses in characterization. In particular, the main character of the cop, Abdel, whose actions belie any consistency. Athena is an impressive technical achievement that is less than the sum of its parts. 

Black Tuesday

                 

Hugo Fregonese's Black Tuesday, from 1954, is a superb noir. Gangster boss Vincent Canelli (Edward G. Robinson) is on death row for a long list of misdeeds. The first twenty minutes or so of this B picture details a jailbreak masterminded by Vincent's main squeeze, Hatti, played impressively by Jean Parker. Canelli makes sure to take along murderer and bank robber Peter Manning (Peter Graves) who has 200,000 clams stashed away from his heist. They, along with some hostages and minions, hide out on the top floor of an abandoned warehouse. Things do not go as planned. 

Black Tuesday is a taut and expressive film. There are no wasted expository moments in police stations or newspaper editorial rooms. Every part of its construction is primed to spring the trap of its narrative. Farran Smith Nehme has brought up the theme of confinement in Fregonese's work and Black Tuesday is a prime example. The set design and photography of the film emphasize this theme. The world of the film is one of cages within cages, whether they be found in warehouses, banks or jails. Stanley Cortez's cinematography is a treat and a feat. He gives a low angle portentousness to his character shots and a deterministic framing (particularly the grim theater of the execution room) to his establishing shots. This meshes with the themes of Sydney Boehm's (The Big Heat, Fregonese's The Raid) script. When encased by the warehouse set, Fregonese and Cortez always seem able to frame background characters as a way to comment on the foreground action. 

Boehm's screenplay posits that, in a state where capital punishment exists, is the criminal wrong to feel persecuted. Canelli uses this argument to defend his own sociopathy, which is rammed home in a scene in which he repairs a toy tank so he can watch it run over some plush toys. A stuffed cobra is introduced ominously and obviously. The character of Peter Manning is that of a criminal with a conscience, drawn to contrast with the nihilism of Canelli. It is this blackness which provides a great opportunity for Robinson. In what would prove to be a farewell to gangster roles, he is sulphuric. Jean Parker (Bluebeard, The Gunfighter) , in a moll role that is a lot less demeaning than Claire Trevor's similar character in Key Largo, is compelling as a woman so in thrall to her lover that she cannot fathom his moral odiousness. Peter Graves offers his warmest, most three dimensional performance. The cast is full of familiar faces turning in solid performances including Jack Kelly, Millburn Stone, Russell Johnson, and William Schallert. 

For decades Fregonese's work has been relatively neglected. Now thanks to having retrospectives in Bologna and New York, he has been getting deserved recognition. Of all the directors not listed in Andrew Sarris' The American Cinema, Fregonese and Cy Endfield seem to be the most egregious omissions. I first stumbled upon Fregonese in my childhood when my Civil War mania lead me to watch The Raid, the film Fregonese directed just before Black Tuesday. The Raid chronicles an assault upon St. Albans, Vermont by Confederate soldiers based in Canada. It also features a jailbreak. Reseeing it recently, I found it as compelling as when I was ten, especially Van Heflin's agitated lead and Lucien Ballard's gorgeous color cinematography. I have sought out Fregonese's films since my youth and none have matched the power of The Raid until I saw Black Tuesday.