The Best Vintage Films I Viewed in 2022

                       

1)  Actress aka Center Stage                                Stanley Kwan                                   1991

2)  Une Femme Douce                                           Robert Bresson                                 1969

3)  Les Bonnes Femmes                                       Claude Chabrol                                1960 

4)  By the Bluest of Seas                                        Boris Barnet                                     1936

5)  Spring Summer Fall Winter...                          Kim Ki-Duk                                      2003

6)  Vincere                                                             Marco Bellocchio                               2009

7)  The Mill and the Cross                                    Lech Majewski                                   2011

8)  Le Cercle Rouge                                            Jean-Pierre Melville                            1970

9)  Unknown Pleasures                                         Jia Zhangke                                        2002

10) Mandabi                                                         Ousmane Sembene                             1968

I also passionately recommend:

Black Tuesday , Has Anybody Seen My Gal , I Was Born, But , The Raid,

When A Woman Ascends the Stairs, Silver Lode , Japon , Pepe le Moko,

Les cousins, Kameradschaft, and Sister

Glass Onion

Daniel Craig

Rian Johnson's Glass Onion is the kind of well crafted entertainment that Hollywood is thought incapable of doing anymore. Whether they be products of Hollywood's heyday or of the current era's streaming behemoths, audience pleasing features like this one tend to be critically neglected, now as then, compared to films with a more socially conscious bent. Ultimately, art wins out. The contributions of Cary Grant in films like Holiday or Bringing Up Baby still entertain today while the concurrent performances of Paul Muni, much lauded at the time, seem artificial and period bound. Not that Glass Onion is devoid of social commentary, but Mr. Johnson's packaging of it within the murder mystery format is the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down. Furthermore, Johnson's lampooning of Elon Musk and social media influencers, some of the easiest targets for satire of our era, signal that he is making this film for the widest possible audience.

What most impressed me about Glass Onion was the precision of its storytelling. As David Bordwell has pointed out, the first Knives Out film boasted an intricate story structure that would have generated a lot more comment in serious film journals if they had been found in an art film. If anything, the structure of Glass Onion is even more complex, with Johnson utilizing multiple flashbacks as Chinese boxes; a trope underlined by the elaborate boxes the Musk-like tycoon played by Edward Norton sends out as invitations at the start of the film. Despite this, the nearly two and a half hour length of the film flies by without padding or self-consciousness. It remains playful and spritely from beginning to end. 

The cast is broadly fun without being cartoonish. Even such limited performers as Kate Hudson and Dave Bautista are expertly cast and directed. The costumes by Jenny Eagan are fittingly fun and flamboyant, as is the film's soundtrack and production design. I appreciated the tributes to Ricky Jay and The Last of Sheila, both cult favorites whose Kool-Aid I have long savored. Rian Johnson showed he appreciated the classic format of the detective story in his first feature, Brick, Glass Onion shows he can still revel with delight in what in most hands is a hackneyed genre. 

Emily the Criminal

Aubrey Plaza in Emily the Criminal

A terrific vehicle for Aubrey Plaza and a pretty good first feature, John Patton Ford's Emily the Criminal is an LA sunshine noir that chronicles career opportunities in credit card fraud. Plaza's Emily already has a record, so her job options vary little amongst the low hanging fruit of the gig economy ranging from Uber to DoorDash. A humiliating job interview at the film's opening puts the audience on her side even when she, on a tip from a co-worker, embraces criminality. She ends up romancing her criminal superior and causes his downfall. In an earlier era, Emily would have been the femme fatale in this scenario, A good point of comparison is Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat, a 1981 retro noir, in which Kathleen Turner's female lead also ends up abroad, beyond US justice. In Emily the Criminal, the woman is as much victim as complicit moll. In Body Heat she is the bitch supreme in a fever dream, a master criminal and ultimate ball breaker.

The change in emphasis is a sign of the times. Ford's directorial style is realistic. Kasdan's is a foray into expressionism. Each style has their plusses and minuses. I was more impressed with Ford's screenplay than his direction which serves the script, but does little more. The action sequences lack a visceral sense. I also have issues with some side orders on the menu. Emily's art background offers a clunky back story, a good example of what Manny Farber called the "Gimp". Similarly, Megalyn Echikurnwoke's character is so bland she seems to exist solely to provide Emily with a non-criminal friend. I did enjoy the contributions of Theo Rossi, Gina Gershon, Jonathan Avigdor, and John Billingsley. 

Most of all I enjoyed the film because Ms. Plaza has delivered the performance of the year. Mostly utilized in comedies, her talents include a flair for the sinister found in Legion, Ingrid Goes West,  Black Bear and, now Emily the Criminal. Even if her career goes to hell on a sled, which I doubt. this performance already caps an impressive career.
 

What Price Hollywood?

Lowell Sherman and Constance Bennett in What Price Hollywood?

George Cukor's What Price Hollywood?, from 1932, is the best iteration of the numerous versions of A Star is Born. Judging by the results of the latest Sight and Sound Poll, the contributions of classic Hollywood are a bit underrated today, but these things wax and wane. Certainly, few films made today have this level of energy, craftmanship, and wit on display here. Enough vinegar remains from Edna St. John's original to make this a raucous Pre-Code delight. As Andrew Sarris has noted, Cukor thrived when focusing on show people and this look at the rise of a Hollywood star seems tailor made for the former Broadway phenom.

Constance Bennett stars as Mary Evans who we first meet mooning over Clark Gable as she reads a Hollywood fan magazine. By this time, the film industry had been established in Hollywood for two decades and this film offers a tart picture of the publicity machine generated by the industry and its stars. Evans' rise to stardom is pictured in headlines from both news and trade papers. When Evans is mired in scandal a pile of papers is shown laden with mud. Her wedding is disrupted by a mob of well-wishers and members of the press. She must abandon her home because it is constantly being besieged by paparazzi and flees to France. This is the price of fame the film implies, Yet, despite alcoholism, divorce, and suicide. What Price Hollywood? exudes a cockeyed optimism buoyed the sheer joy of the filmmaking process. The scenes on the RKO soundstages show off Cukor at his most youthfully energetic, not a description I would offer to any of his work after Sylvia Scarlett. 

Cukor's skill with actors was perhaps unrivalled in Hollywood and he guides the cast to some of their best work. Bennett is waitressing at The Brown Derby at the opening of the film, the biggest stretch in the film for this sophisticated actress who belonged to an acting clan that rivalled the Barrymore's. Bennett is entertaining and convincing throughout, even in the potentially sticky domestic scenes with a small child and Louis Beavers as "The Maid". Her Garbo imitation was funny enough to be reprised and expanded upon by Janet Gaynor in the 1937 A Star is Born. What Price Hollywood? is the high water mark of her career with 1937's Topper being a sort of last hurrah. 

One change that the subsequent ...Star is Born films all share is that they combined the drunken mentor (Lowell Sherman) and romantic lead (Neil Hamilton) characters into one person, the doomed Norman Maine. I think this is a flaw that bedevils all the subsequent versions. The character of Maine makes the story overly lugubrious whether he is portrayed as in the film or music industry. Neil Hamilton is more than adequate as Lonny Borden, a polo playing heir who literally sweeps Evans off her feet. Hamilton's career dates back to the silent era, where he was a leading man for D. W. Griffith, but he is best known today as Commissioner Gordon on television's Batman. Hamilton didn't have much range, but is well cast as a patrician swain who looks down upon Mary's fellow film folk. Cukor gets an unusually animated performance from Hamilton. One of his two best. The other being a B horror turn in the little scene 1961 feature, The Devil's Hand.

Lowell Sherman portrays Max Carey, a noted director who meets Mary at The Brown Derby and launches her meteoric rise. Sherman, a longtime veteran of stage and screen (he plays the cad who jilts Lillian Gish in Way Down East), is delightful in an outmoded role that was then a convention, that of the good natured drunk who revels in his perpetual pixilation. A canard perhaps, but a lot more fun than hanging out with hangdog Norman Maine. Sherman not only handles well the insouciant quips of his character, but also his decline and eventual suicide. The suicide scene hits a little close to home, since Sherman was to die prematurely, at age 46, a few years later. In the film, Carey is shocked at his dissipated visage in a mirror which is next to a studio glamor portrait of himself. Sherman truly does look like shit in the reflection and, thanks to Cukor's visceral handling, we can see why he grabs a handy pistol and offs himself. What Price Hollywood? was Sherman last role in a film that he did not direct. Apparently, Sherman was finding playing an endless litany of playboys and cads "monotonous" and took to directing to allay his boredom. He was more than a fine actor and director (the most famous film he helmed was the Mae West vehicle, She Done Him Wrong) whose output is now relatively neglected. 

Quick Takes, December 2022

Florence Pugh in The Wonder

Sebastian Lelio's The Wonder is a good, but not great, adaptation of Emma Donoghue's novel. Set in 19th century Ireland, the film tells the tale of an English nurse (Florence Pugh) assigned to monitor a rural girl who, allegedly, has survived for months without food. The film does a good job depicting the age old conflict between faith and reason, but the traumatic backstory of the nurse feels sketchy. Also, the distancing techniques of the prelude and coda adds little. Still, the performances are first rate, particularly Pugh, the best actress to emerge from the UK in this century. Currently streaming on Netflix.

Halina Reijn's Bodies Bodies Bodies is a Generation Z variation on And Then There Were None. Reijn handles her ensemble well, but this comedy horror film is neither funny nor scary enough. If you are going to have an ensemble films with no sympathetic characters, the satire needs to be sharper. Instead, we get endless shots of the beleaguered ensemble stumbling down cellphone lit corridors.

Charlotte Colbert's She Will is a run of the mill feminist horror film from England. Alice Krige stars as a faded film star recovering from a mastectomy. She ventures to a rural retreat to recuperate with the aid of a nurse. There she encounters the pantheistic spirits of burned witches or something, confronts past trauma, and drinks the milk of feminist empowerment. Colbert is so busy hammering away at her themes that she fails to establish a narrative or characters. The character of the nurse, in particular, is woefully underdrawn. Krige does her best and I enjoyed the contributions of Rupert Everett, Malcom McDowell, and Olwen Fouere. This is Ms. Colbert's first feature and she shows herself to be visually gifted, so her future shows some promise. 

Kevin Lewis' Willy's Wonderland features Nicolas Cage and a band of  'teens' battling possessed animatronic creatures in a Chuck E. Cheese type entertainment center. That is about it.  The characterizations, back story, and subtext are so superficial that the film runs out of steam after the first act. Cage himself described the film as a cross between Pale Rider and Killer Klowns from Outer Space, so it is no surprise that the film gives the sense that it was constructed out of spare parts to be a future cult item rather than a movie that  stands on its own.

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, also on Netflix, is a technical marvel and, largely, a delight. I wasn't knocked out by the songs and thought David Bradley wasn't warm enough as Geppetto, but was ultimately moved. The director's setting the story in fascist Italy jibes with themes already found in his films such as The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth. A black shirt bootcamp is just as horrifying as Pleasure Island and the whole project fits Del Toro's gift for the grotesque. If anything, Collodi's original is darker than either this or the classic Disney version. Ewan McGregor is perfect as the talking and singing cricket who is the film's heart.

A pint-sized Persona, Celine Sciamma's Petite Maman might seem like a throat clearing exercise after Portrait of a Lady on Fire, but it contains just as many formal pleasures and thematic quandaries in its scant 72 minutes. Formally an ouroboros, the film is a musing on loss and trauma. Sciamma shows she can find the uncanny amidst the commonplace. The film's exteriors are beautifully unsettling, the interiors exude a foreboding emptiness. Unlike many art films, Petite Maman boasts expertly directed performances.

Gabrielle and Josephine Sanz in Petite Maman

Blood Father

                   

Jean-Francois Richet's Blood Father, an adaptation of the Peter Craig novel, is the B movie sleeper of the year. The daughter in peril trope that hit a chord with the popularity of the Taken series is a snug fit for Mel Gibson who is a suitably mad dad. Gibson plays an ex-con who makes a living inking tattoos in his decrepit trailer. Gibson is at his most soulful and unhinged, reveling in the surrounding scuzz. Richet also gets wonderful turns from old pros like William H. Macy, Michael Parks, Diego Luna, and Miguel Sandoval. What is most impressive is the strong performances he gets from his newcomers, Erin Moriarty is sturdy in the wobbly role of the daughter and Thomas Mann stands out in his few scenes as a sympathetic desk clerk.

Richet conjures a vision of white, blue-collar America struggling for survival at the dawn of the Trump administration, a vision that captures the feelings of hopelessness and orneriness that led this group to form a posse comitatus that rescued Trump's campaign. Out of the scraps of a genre project, Richet has fashioned not only a solid action film, but, also, genuine termite art reminiscent of a Fuller or Siegel B from the 50s. (1/20/17)

10 Cloverfield Lane

John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead in 10 Cloverfield Lane

Dan Trachtenberg's 10 Cloverfield Lane is an efficient enough suspense film that lacks the personal vision to enable it to transcend a rather routine script. If there is a true auteur behind the project it is J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot production team. Bits and pieces from previous Abrams projects (Lost. Super 8, Star Trek and Wars, and obviously, Cloverfield) are cobbled together here in a fashion that reflects commercial rather than artistic intent. 

That the film functions well enough is testament to Trachtenberg's and his lead actors' craft. John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead are always assets and both perform with aplomb. John Gallagher Jr. lends able support even when saddled with the lamest backstory monologue I've encountered in some years. The script is Swiss cheese, not fatal to a genre flick like this, but clunky all the same. The film is OK fast food fare, digestible, but not memorable or nourishing. (6/22/16)     

Murina

Gracija Filipovic in Marina

Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic's Murina, the winner of the Camera d'Or at Cannes in 2021, seems to me the most assured cinematic debut since Panah Panahi's Hit the Road. Gracija Filipovic stars as Julija, a Croatian teen living with her parents on an isolated island in the Adriatic. On the surface, it seems as if they live in a sun-kissed paradise, but we soon learn that the family, especially Julija, feel frustrated and stunted there.

The visit to the island by Javier, a titan of business, brings things to a head. Javier is a lifelong friend of Julija's parents, but there are tensions between the three. Julija's father used to work for Javier, but there was a falling out between the two. Embers of a romance exist between Javier and Julija's mother. We learn that the family is financially strapped and the possibility that Javier will turn their land into a resort seems to be a last chance for them to escape the island. The father is envious of Javier's success and he takes out his resentment and anger upon Julija. His ogre like behavior culminates in him locking Julija in a dank basement as if she were a beleaguered heroine in a fairy tale.

Julija hopes Javier will rescue her and her mother and take them along with him to his seemingly magical life. This is also a dark reflection of the wish fulfillment of fairy tales in which downtrodden children find their long-lost parents to be royalty. Julija's wish turns out to be as much of a pipe dream as her father's desire to turn their property into a resort. An ambivalent ending stresses the resiliency needed for an individual to free themselves from the tyranny of their parental legacies.

I often diss films that foreground criticism of the patriarchy or capitalism or whatever at the expense of narrative and character. Ms. Kusijanovic does not fall into that trap. Because she takes the time to develop her characters, such themes emerge naturally and not heavy-handedly from her scenario. She is greatly help by the cinematography of Helene Louvart (The Lost Daughter, Happy as Lazzaro). Her work, particularly in the underwater sequences, suggest the unconscious impulses at work upon the characters of which they are only dimly aware of.

Elvis

Austin Butler in Elvis

Baz Luhrmann's artistic credo seems to drive him to turn all of his projects into glitzy musicals. His ostentatious, life is a carnival style reminds me of what Pauline Kael (I think) wrote about Alan Parker: he has style to burn and that is exactly what he should do with it. That said, Elvis provides Luhrmann with a suitable project containing good music, and it is his best film since Moulin Rouge. Yet, I was more exhausted by it than exhilarated.

Part of the reason is the scope of the film. Instead of focusing on a narrow slice of Presley's career, Luhrmann and his numerous screenwriters try to tackle the whole enchilada. Events whirr by and characterization, something often lost in the stars in Luhrmann's films, is meagre. Only Helen Thompson as Elvis' beloved mother is able to project a character and she goes to meet her maker far too soon. This is a problem for any author or auteur addressing what Greil Marcus called the Presliad. Elvis' life went pretty much downhill after the death of Gladys Presley. Even Pete Guralnick's outstanding biography becomes a litany of bad movies and prescription drugs after her death.

Luhrmann does himself proud in his presentation of the musical performances in the film. Glimpses of Little Richard, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Big Mama Thornton, and Arthur Crudup give a good background sketch of the musical influences that helped form Elvis. The influence of country music on Elvis is downplayed. The film's caricature of Hank Snow is overly broad and reductive. Luhrmann gives him a Southern accent despite Snow being from Canada.

Snow is in the film because Colonel Tom Parker was his manager before Parker glommed onto Presley. Elvis is presented from the point of view of a dying Parker, played by Tom Hanks. The failure of his performance is fatal to the film. An icon of decency, like Jimmy Stewart before him, Hanks is unable to exude greed, malice or even a hint of evil from beneath his prosthetics. Luhrmann wants the relationship between Elvis and Parker to resemble that of Faust and Mephistopheles. Instead, we get a waxworks Elvis and Mr. Rogers in a fat suit.

Austin Butler does reasonably well as Elvis. He does not embody Elvis with the ease of a Kurt Russell, but he is a more than reasonable facsimile of the real thing. In the cinematic oeuvre of Baz Luhrmann, one devoid of thematic depth and ambiguity, presenting a comprehensible façade of a character is the best a thespian can do. Still, Elvis could have been a lot worse. The kinetic drive of Presley's story and music is better suited to Luhrmann's sensibilities than the challenges of Australia or The Great Gatsby. While not a good or satisfying movie, Elvis has enough love and respect for its subject to satisfy fans of the King.

Quick Takes, January 2017

Journey to the West

Stephen Chow and Derek Kwok's Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons is a cartoonish, yet ultimately winning adaptation of one of the great pillars of Chinese literature. A dumbed down prequel, the flick is an action comedy with enough CGI demons and monsters to compete with the Harry Potters and Avengers of the film kingdom. What makes the film click is the assured handling of the cast. Bo Huang is especially outstanding as the Monkey King. The movie is suitable for children, the violence is not gory and the romance between the leads, a meek monk and a kick-ass demon slayer, is chaste and droll. It is just weird enough to exert the uncanny unconscious pull at the heart of fantasy and folk tales.

Edgar Wright's The World's End is tired and unfunny. What starts too slowly as a male menopause movie proceeds to then try to inspire guffaws with a pub crawl and an alien invasion. Titters were not even elicited. This recycling of Wright's better film Shaun of the Dead made me glad I skipped Wright's Hot Fuzz, also with Simon Pegg.

My wife and I tried to watch the much lauded documentary, The Act of Killing, but gave up halfway through. Joshua Oppenheimer directs former Indonesian death squad members in the reenactment of their various atrocities, which occurred some forty years ago during the overthrow of Sukarno. I found the film captured the unusual jumble that is Indonesian culture, but also found it manipulative and repetitive. The thugs interviewed have a rascally charm, but I suppose some members of the SS did, too. Unsettling in the wrong way, The Act of Killing is intellectually and ethically deficient. As my wife put it, "I already know how to garrote people."

Jeff Nichols' Midnight Special is a slightly above average fantasy film enlivened by a touching performance by Michael Shannon. Typically typecast as monsters or thugs, Shannon gives a nuanced performance as a caring father whose son, imbued with 'special powers', is on the run from stock villains: in this case, government officials and religious fanatics. There is a predictable Spielbergian feel to the film's fantasy sequences, particularly when ET gets to go home at the climax. Nichols' script doesn't flesh out his supporting characters enough, so talented performers like Joel Edgerton, Bill Camp (so good in The Night of...), Adam Driver, and Kirsten Dunst are left with little to do. Sam Shepard sinks his teeth into the role of a cult leader, but disappears after the first twenty minutes. Ultimately, Midnight Special is a well made, but pointless retread.

A slightly better film is Adam Wingard's The Guest, an exploitation film that rises above the norm. Dan Stevens, most famous for batting his baby blues on Downton Abbey, is the titular character who embeds himself with a New Mexico family after convincing them that he was best buds with their dead son in Afghanistan. Things are not what they seem, of course, and the final act devolves into a routine shootout. However, Simon Barrett's script is better at fleshing out the secondary actors than most films of this ilk and Wingard's mise en scene looks lived in instead of generic. Stevens and Brendan Meyer, are quite effective, the woman playing the dead son's Mom less so. Like Midnight Special, this is essentially a retread: Teorema transposed to the American Southwest with kegs and guns. Wingard is able to invest his material with the sense of disquietude haunting American life in the 21st Century.

Joe Angio's Revenge of the Mekons is as cheeky and delightful as the band it documents. Wisely eschewing an album by album breakdown, Angio offers loving portraits of the personalities in this disparate and dissolute aggregation. It has the right mix of talking heads and live performances.

Mike Flanagan's Hush is a retool of Wait Until Dark in which the victim (female natch) is deaf and dumb. Flanagan's previous work as an editor is evident in the lean and economical  construction of the film. The first third of Hush is meticulously constructed. However, the script's machinations quickly become repetitive and Flanagan lacks the brio for crossbow foo. Kate Siegel, who co-wrote the screenplay with Flanagan and eventually married him, is good as the resourceful victim as is John Gallagher as her psycho nemesis. 

The Mekons

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Emma Corrin and Jack O'Connell in Lady Chatterley's Lover

Laure de Clermont-Tonnere's Lady Chatterley's Lover, currently streaming on Netflix, is a slightly above average adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's final novel that ultimately fails to capture the complexities of the original. Ms. Clermont-Tonnere's does a good job contrasting the stultifying interiors of the manor house with the liberating splendor of the English countryside. The film is handsome without being ostentatious and the costumes by Emma Fryer, whether they are worn or cast about, are an asset. There are good performances in supporting roles by Joely Richardson, Faye Marsay, and Ella Hunt. 

However, the lead performances are all wan and underdrawn, resulting in a film that never ignites. Matthew Duckett is forgettable in the role of Clifford Chatterley. Now the role is a thankless one, but this cuckolded laird seems impotent even before he leaves for the Great War. Jack O'Connell is a more felt presence as the gamekeeper. Depth of character is hinted at, he reads Joyce fer chrissakes, but he functions as little more than a primeval stud. Emma Corrin nails her character's boredom and sense of entitlement. Still, something is missing. There is little sense of the intellectual and spiritual growth of their character. At times, the Lady comes off as a bored and spoiled housewife who just needs a good boff.

David Magee's adaptation of the novel overly simplifies Lawrence's ideas for present day consumption. One could easily surmise from this film that Lawrence was a socialist. There are certainly socialist themes in Lawrence's writing, but he had more issues with industrialization than capitalism per se. He was not doctrinaire in any fashion. Socialist Bertrand Russell thought he was a proto-fascist. Lawrence rejected the mind/body dualism of Western thought and yearned for individual liberation rather than a collective one. As he put it in his poem A Sane Revolution, "If you make a revolution,/ make it for fun." Connie Chatterley's liberation in this film seems more a product of good sex than a raised consciousness whereas, in the novel, both are equally important. As George Clinton sang, "Free your mind and your ass will follow."

Ms. Richardson's presence hearkened me back to the miniseries derived from this book that she starred in with Sean Bean under Ken Russell's direction. The long form of the series helped in adding character development and Ms. Richardson and Mr. Bean gave their characters more oomph than is found in Ms. Clermont-Tonnere's version. Mr. Russell is responsible for the best adaptation of Lawrence thus far, not the highly praised film of Women in Love, but his little seen adaptation of The Rainbow from 1989.

Pearl

Mia Goth armed and ready in Pearl

What I had to say about Ti West's X  also applies to its prequel, Pearl. The film provides the back story to the murderous old crone in X. The bright surface beauty of Pearl, which promises the comfort and joy of a technicolor heartland, is undercut by West before the opening credits are done. The year is 1918 and Pearl is living with her German born mother and invalid father on an isolated farm in Texas. Besides Pearl, the only other holdover from the first film is a sizeable gator named Theda; a name which is an anagram of death.

Pearl, whose husband is away fighting in the war, is lonely and frustrated. She loses herself in reveries of dance and dreams of a career in show business while visiting the local movie palace. There she meets a handsome projectionist and is attracted to his kind manner and worldliness. A dance audition seemingly provides an escape hatch for Pearl, but her dreams turn out to be delusions of grandeur masking psychosis. A metaphor, perhaps. for all art and show biz. 

The boredom and alienation experienced by Americans living on the plains in the 19th and early 20th century is a historical fact (check out Otto Bettmann's wonderful The Good Old Days - They Were Terrible for examples) usually elided by manifestations of the American mythos, like movies. Pearl turns the prairie sequences of The Wizard of Oz upside down by rendering rural America into a nightmare world that drives its inhabitants mad. Ms. Goth who concocted the script with Mr. West, triumphs in a role that showcases her range. Her seven minute monologue near Pearl's conclusion is a signal achievement. The contributions of supporting players David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, and Emma Jenkins-Purro are also vivid. Pearl is Ti West's strongest film thus far and the first one I would recommend to viewers in general and not just horror aficionados. 

Michael Collins

Liam Neeson as Michael Collins

Neil Jordan's Michael Collins, from 1996, is a good biopic of the Irish revolutionary leader. Jordan's script wisely condenses his film by limiting the time frame, beginning in 1916 with the Easter Rising and concluding with Collins' assassination in 1922. The machinations of the IRA in waging a guerrilla and, some would say, terroristic war against the British are presented in a crisp, but detailed fashion. The recreation of historical events, such as Bloody Sunday and the Croke Park Massacre, is impressive. Collins was the de facto Irish military commander of the war, its Trotsky if you will, while Eamon de Valera was its political chief. The film does a good job of detailing the rivalry between the two men and its subsequent effect upon Irish history. Of course, given its title, it is not a surprise that the film tilts its favor towards Collins and away from de Valera. Alan Rickman's anal retentive performance as de Valera perhaps makes him more diabolical than he actually was. With a couple of exceptions, though, the film is largely accurate in its presentation of history.

Liam Neeson was a good pick to perform the larger than life persona of Collins. A large slab of a man, he physically dominates the movie, even the crowd scenes. The film is at its shakiest in its portrayal of the love triangle of Collins, Harry Boland and Kitty Kiernan, Collins' eventual fiancé. Aidan Quinn is quite good as Boland giving the character the quiet yearning that is his trademark. It seems that Quinn fell from grace with the Hollywood Gods at some point, he has not had any plum roles in A pictures in the 21st Century, and it is hard to say why. He has a nice rapport with Neeson here. Unfortunately, Quinn and Neeson's chemistry is much better than Neeson's with Julia Roberts who plays Kitty. Roberts is by no means dreadful, simply miscast. When we first see Roberts, trying to sing the wonderful Irish ballad "She Moved Through the Fair", one can't help but think that any capable Irish or UK actress, say Kelly Macdonald, would have been a better fit.

Jordan goes back to "She Moved Through the Fair" at the conclusion of Michael Collins. The song plays as shots of Kitty trying on dresses for a wedding that will never occur are contrasted with that of Collins meeting his demise. The gist of the song, tragic lovers reuniting in the afterlife, mirrors the plot well and works visually: the dress turning into a funeral shroud. However, the emotional juice has never been evident between Roberts and Neeson and this robs the moment of any chance of greatness. It does place the film firmly within Jordan's corpus where star-crossed outsiders romantically love in vain. The theme of his best films: Byzantium, Breakfast on Pluto, The End of the Affair, The Crying Game and Mona Lisa. 

Has Anybody Seen My Gal

Gigi Perreau and Charles Coburn cut the rug in Has Anybody Seen My Gal

Douglas Sirk's Has Anybody Seen My Gal, from 1952, is more fun than a copy of Captain Billy's Whiz Bang. A celebration of 1920s Americana, there lurks beneath its glittering surface (as in most Sirk films) a denunciation of American materialism and intolerance. Yet, the film also functions superbly as light entertainment. I think it is the bee's knees and the cat's pajamas.

Rock Hudson and Piper Laurie, rising newcomers at Universal Pictures, are the nominal stars of the film, but Charles Coburn is the film's cynosure and chief asset. A millionaire without an heir, Coburn tracks down the family of a lost love and becomes their anonymous benefactor. He moves to the Vermont town where they live and ingratiates himself with the family in order to surmise if their newfound wealth has changed them. Coburn's beloved's granddaughter (Laurie) is going steady with soda jerk Hudson, but her family's newfound fortune causes them to pooh pooh the impoverished suitor. Coburn helps steer the couple through troubled waters towards a happy ending. The mysterious benefactor who helps unite star-crossed lovers was a familiar trope of Victorian literature and spawned many variations in Hollywood. particularly George Arliss' starring vehicles in the twenties and thirties. 

With five or so small scale musical numbers, Has Anybody Seen My Gal often feels like a poor man's Singin' in the Rain. Yet, there are a few Sirkian moments that even that splendid musical does not approach. Especially one in which Laurie's character and her younger sister watch a Christmas snowfall through a picture window. Laurie's character has had a quarrel with her lover and, in contrast to her sister's holiday joy, throws herself on her bed for a good cry. The shot anticipates the use of a picture window at Rock Hudson's cabin in All That Heaven Allows. In both cases, nature's peaceful splendor is contrasted with a character's inner turmoil.

Yet, one does not have to have even heard of Douglas Sirk to appreciate this joyous film. Coburn's performance is one of his most entertaining and ebullient. The signifiers of the roaring twenties, speakeasies, racoon coats and flappers doing the Charleston, are all in evidence. The sparkling Technicolor surfaces of the film belie its message that all that glitters is not gold. As with Sirk's later Universal melodramas starring Hudson, the luxe recreation of American life masks a cautionary theme. Film buffs will relish the memorable cameo by James Dean as a demanding soda fountain customer. Has Anybody Seen My Gal is a film for all but the most intransigent cynic. 

James Dean

Playground

Sister and Brother in Playground

Laura Wandel's Playground, the Belgian entry for this year's Oscars, is a drama about elementary school bullying. The almost universal praise for the film seems to me a response to its message rather than its aesthetic merit. Critics have praised the film for its harrowing realism and its sensitivity, but I found the film to be manipulative, boring, and overwrought.

The Belgian title of the film is Un Monde (A World) which gives a better sense of Wandel's intent. The world of the film is a self contained one which Wandel reinforces by keeping a tight frame around his pint sized heroine. The protagonist, Nora, is entering first grade at an elementary school her brother already attends with much trepidation. Wandel ably portrays Nora's first day jitters and her subsequent feelings of frustration and helplessness when she witnesses her brother being bullied. However, the film soon becomes overladen with intimations of racism, classism and sexism. Wandel wants to show how the sins of the parents are visited upon their children, but, by doing so, she makes her schoolchildren resemble surly adolescents. I was grateful the film was only 72 minutes long.