Indignation

Logan Lerman and Sarah Gadon in Indignation

James Schamus' Indignation is the best filmed Philip Roth adaptation thus far. Damning with faint praise, I know, but longtime Ang Lee producer Schamus has crafted a very adept first film. Indignation has all the hallmarks of the tradition of quality, but Schamus proves he knows how to shoot intimate, dialogue dominated scenes that give space for his players to work at length. Schamus frames his action with feeling and tact, using close-ups judiciously. The film's premise, a Rothian Jewish protagonist experiencing the pains and joys of sex while going to college in uber goy 50s Ohio, is explored ambivalently, not succumbing to the overkill that has marred most Roth adaptations.

Logan Lerman is only serviceable as the lead. This is not fatal to the film as the character is a bit of a tabula rasa, a Roth stand-in who observes the alien goy society. Lerman is not able to register the surly rebelliousness implied in the title. This is why Tracy Letts, as the college's Dean of Students, dominates the long and provocative scenes between the two. Lerman's character's righteous rebellion against the staid and hypocritical norms represented by the Dean seems whiny because Letts' nuanced authority figure wipes him off the screen

It is to Roth's credit that he is able to auto-critique his stand-ins better as he matured as a writer. Not only is the protagonist's rebellion shown to be an adolescent one, but his inability to deal with his more sexually advanced and troubled girlfriend shows that he is just as repressed as the society he mocks. Sarah Gadon is superb as the femme, both tremulous and bold. The furtive sex in Indignation registers as dangerous because Schamus is able to portray the starched collar conformity of 1951 America without resorting to caricature. The lovers are in touch with their yearnings, but their behavior is monitored and surveilled by forces of societal control: the dorm den mother, a nurse, and the dean.

Because they cross a line, the lovers are punished. One goes mad and one dies in Korea. The bookend Korean sections are the worst parts of the film. Murkily directed, they suggest Schamus should avoid the action genre. They also point out the phoniness of Roth's fatalism. However, the film does expertly convey the ambivalent power of Roth's view of family. I will not soon forget Linda Emond blackmailing her son to dump his beloved shiksa. The wonderful performance does not stereotype a monstrous mother, but shows a real woman at the end of her rope with few options. What Indignation does best is portray an America of the 1950s with Roth's barbed ambivalence, one that is more The Paranoid Style in American Politics than Happy Days. (2/23/17)

That's the Way of the World

                 

Sig Shore's That's the Way of the World, from 1975, is a teeny bit better than its dire reputation. As Robert Lipsyte, author of the original screenplay and a noted sportswriter, put it, "the soundtrack went platinum and the the film wnt lead." The soundtrack was Earth, Wind & Fire's sixth album and it went to number one, as did lead single, "Shining Star". The film, however, suffers from not having enough footage of the band; called in the film, "The Group". Harvey Keitel plays the band's producer, Coleman Buckmaster, who is cajoled by the mobbed up corporate poohbahs of his employer, A-Chord Records, to shift his attentions from Earth, Wind & Fire to an anodyne "family" trio. 

This is one of the hurdles the film cannot overcome. A large portion of the film is devoted to Buckmaster helping craft a hit for the trio, named The Pages. Bert Parks and Jimmy Boyd are kinda fun as two thirds of the trio. The trio sing schmaltzy, Carpenters type tunes and Parks' showbiz smarm, he was the longtime MC of the Miss America pageant, is a snug fit. As is Boyd, who gained fame as a teenager for singing the execrable "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus". It is a measure of the film's satiric intent that after The Pages hit paydirt, Boyd is shown cooking heroin in his dressing room.

Unfortunately, the third member of the trio and Keitel's love interest, Cynthia Bostick, is the weakest link. She has zero chemistry with Keitel and sinks every scene she is in. Bostick only had a total of four screen acting credits, so I think my opinion of her talents was widely shared. The twenty minutes or so of The Pages cutting their single, the cutesy pie "Joy, Joy, Joy", is hard to sit through unless you are into 70's recording technology.

The biggest problem with the film was that Sig Shore, who had had a big success producing Superfly, was not cut out to be a director. Shore, a hustler and fascinating character who got his start in the biz importing international films such as Hiroshima Mon Amour, did not know where to place his camera or his players or how to pace a scene. The film is choppy, but individual shots are so erratic that I'm not sure the blame can be placed on the editing team.

There are a couple of good concert sequences with Earth, Wind & Fire. I particularly enjoyed the roller disco scene with Keitel boogieing along in extra tight trousers. The funky 70s fashion are a delight throughout. At one point, Keitel is wearing a white suit with a black shirt, so somebody associated with the making of Saturday Night Fever probably made a mental note. Keitel's presence and Lipsyte's script are the main reasons to see the film. Lipsyte displays a good feel for New York City and the music business. Keitel's scenes with Shore himself, as a retired record executive, and Murray Moston, as Keitel's musician father, show what might have been. As the street smart and cocksure Buckmaster, Keitel is in his element. I especially enjoyed watching him motor around Gotham in a vintage Rolls convertible. The film features cameos by Murray the K, Frankie Crocker, and Doris Troy ("Just One Look"). I can in no way call this a good film, but those who want to see Keitel, Earth, Wind & Fire or a good script mangled could do worse.

Quick Takes, February 2023

Banks Repeta and Anthony Hopkins in Armageddon Time

I enjoyed James Grey's handsome portrait of his Queens youth in Armageddon Time. The satiric and fantasy sequences feel a little off, but I was won over by the period verisimilitude and the warm conjuring of Jewish family life. Anthony Hopkins is particularly moving as the sacrificial grandfather.

Xavier Giannoli's Lost Illusions is a good Balzac adaptation and the most lavish French period production I've seen in some time. The novel's insights into the rise of the periodical press and print advertisements in the 1820s and how they affected France's culture are crisply portrayed. Giannoli's leads are not as interesting as the supporting cast and that kills some of the film's emotional intensity. The acting laurels go to Xavier Dolan, well cast as the aristocratic aesthete, Nathan d'Anastazio. 

Speaking of aristocratic aesthetes, I was surprised how bored and disappointed I was with Brett Morgen's Moonage Daydream, a documentary about David Bowie. Instead of a film about the exciting musician and media star, we get a portrait of Bowie the intellectual dilettante. More time is spent on Bowie the painter than Bowie the musician toiling in the studio. Unless one thinks Bowie was the equal of  Michelangelo or da Vinci, this is an unbalanced viewpoint. Instead of Bowie the exciting stage performer, we get a host of inane interviews in which Bowie, usually in a cocaine induced psychosis, babbles on about Nietzsche and Aleister Crowley. What live musical moments there are here are dominated by footage from D.A. Pennebaker's widely seen concert film, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. All in all, a missed opportunity. 

Even worse is Robert Rossen's inert sword and sandal epic Alexander the Great from 1956. Rossen has no feel for epic filmmaking or Cinemascope. There are too many midrange shots of stultifying speeches or static tableaux. The matte painting is some of the worst I've seen in a major production. A chore to sit through despite a fine cast; including a bewigged Richard Burton, Frederic March, Claire Bloom, Michael Hordern, Stanley Baker, and Danielle Darrieux. Harry Andrews, of all people, wins the acting laurels as the Persian monarch, Darius.

Andrew Semans' Resurrection is a woman in peril film that is a good vehicle for Rebecca Hall. Hall plays a single mother whose life is upended when a crazed and controlling lover from her past reappears after two decades. Semans use of a subjective perspective helps paint a disturbing picture of a mind losing its moorings. The anonymous public buildings and corporate towers of Albany are used to good effect in delineating Hall's character slip into paranoia. Hall is ably assisted by Tim Roth and Grace Kaufman. Nothing revelatory, but a successfully unsettling B picture. 

Ron Howard's Thirteen Lives, currently streaming on Amazon Prime, is one of his more credible efforts. This tale of the rescue of a Thai youth soccer team trapped in a cave is good nuts and bolts filmmaking. Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell, and Joel Edgerton offer solid and believable lead performances. No one will ever mistake Howard for a distinctive stylist, but he has crafted a number of solid entertainments including Ransom, Splash, A Beautiful Mind, Frost/Nixon, and Thirteen Lives' cinematic twin, Apollo 13. 

Resurrection (1980)

                
Daniel Petrie Sr.'s Resurrection, from 1980, is a nice, yet somewhat forgettable and cliched, picture about a faith healer that garnered Ellen Burstyn her fourth Academy Award nomination. Without her efforts, the film would seem slight and underdrawn. Still, the film has a couple of outstanding scenes: Richard Farnsworth showing Burstyn his two headed snake and Sam Shepard seducing her over bowls of Beefaroni. 

An unadorned realist, the Canadian born Petrie was a fairly anonymous director who bounced between television and films. His forte was his handling of actors. Indeed, his best work may have been within the boxlike confines of TV movies such as Eleanor and Franklin and Sybil. His film work is largely undistinguished with the exception of Resurrection and Lifeguard, which features exemplary performances by Sam Elliott, Anne Archer, and Kathleen Quinlan. Petrie spawned two writer/directors in Daniel Petrie Jr. (Toy Soldiers) and Donald Petrie (Mystic Pizza). If there is a real auteur behind Resurrection, it may be Lewis John Carlino whose scripts often featured taciturn, testosterone damaged males; especially here and in the Carlino directed The Great Santini.

Merci pour le Chocolat

Isabelle Huppert and Jacques Dutronc

A study of perversity in the guise of a thriller, Claude Chabrol's Merci pour le Chocolat, from 2000, is engrossing, if not spectacular, fare. It takes Chabrol one wedding reception scene to establish a tone of bourgeoise one-upmanship and social Darwinism. The country house the main couple, Isabelle Huppert and Jacques Dutronc, reside in contains a murderous secret, just like the houses in the Renoir and Fritz Lang films Huppert gives her step-son to watch. 

Since we know by the second reel that Huppert is dosing her family's hot chocolate with benzodiazepine, the film lacks mystery, but triumphs as a chilling portrait of the mask of a psychopath. Huppert, Ms. Poker Face herself, tops even Chabrol's main muse, Stephane Audran, in portraying a character who stays true to the bourgeoise dictum of keeping up appearances even when plotting a frenemy's demise. Loosely based on Charlotte Armstrong's The Chocolate Cobweb. 

Timbuktu

 Abderrahmane Sissako's Timbuktu is a well constructed portrait of life under Sharia law in Mali. The film is handsomely shot with vivid coloring. Sissako deftly handles his ensemble cast on location in his native Mauritania, which stands in for its eastern neighbor. The opening sequence, which juxtaposes a hunted impala in full flight with shots of totems being shot apart, cannily evokes a nation under siege.

Part of the power of the film is Sissako's refusal to type the fundamentalists as one dimensional villains. They are shown fully rounded whether discussing soccer, sneaking forbidden cigarettes or enforcing repressive codes of behavior. This frees Sissako to romanticize his protagonists, a lone family at the edge of town, within a realistic setting without resorting to a mythic Good/Bad dichotomy, such as in George Stevens' Shane. This makes the daily interaction of the family all the more poignant. We sense a menacing threat despite the respect the fundamentalists have for the family.

If there is a flaw that prevents Timbuktu from having the emotional impact of a masterwork, it is Sissako's clumsy handling of action. When the characters recline and converse, Sissako frames and cuts for maximum impact. When characters are on the move, during a manslaughter or the finale, the effects are marred by an unsteady hand. A soccer game without a ball seems too twee a rebellion against authority. Despite these flaws, a memorable and estimable film. (8/31/16)

Summer Storm

Linda Darnell and Edward Everett Horton cut the cake in Summer Storm

Douglas Sirk's Summer Storm is a delightfully diabolical adaptation of Chekhov's only novel, The Shooting Party. Sirk, who had been working on the screenplay even before emigrating to America, transposes the melodrama from the 1840s to the revolutionary era. There are bookend sections set in 1919, with all the main characters in reduced circumstances, but the majority of the novel is set in 1912. Sirk captures Chekhov's ironic tone in telling the tale of a Russian peasant siren, Olga, who drives a large number of men in her local burg to their doom.

Linda Darnell entered into a new phase of her career with this picture, shifting from playing, as she put it, "sweet young things" to sexy femme fatales. Almost all of the posters advertising United Artists concocted for the picture features Darnell's gams with such pulpy copy as "She Devil", "Don't Go Near this Woman", and "She was an Invitation to Murder". The hype did the trick and the film was a moderate success, at least for a Chekhov adaptation. Sirk and cinematographer Archie Stout milk the most out of Darnell's physical charms. Traipsing around the California countryside in bare feet, Darnell gives the film some needed oomph. Stout's outdoor shots bestow to the film a tang of eroticism and sun dappled beauty. No one in Hollywood photographed horses as magnificently. Stout had had plenty of practice, shooting scores of B Westerns before graduating to A pictures such as Beau Geste and Fort Apache.

The erotic charge Darnell gives the film really helps because without her the picture sometimes seems to emanate from an English drawing room rather than the Russian steppes. Of course, one shouldn't complain when such stalwarts as George Sanders, Anna Lee, and Edward Everett Horton are in the cast. Horton, as Count "Piggy" Volsky, is the very embodiment of aristocratic fecklessness. Sanders plays the Count's friend, a local Judge. He is well-cast as the caddish magistrate who is engaged to Lee's publisher's daughter, but soon goes gaga over Olga. Sanders, born to Russian parents, even got to sing in his native language in a thrilling musical number. This precedes, if you are keeping score Sirk fans, the second of two key mirror shots in the film. 

Anna Lee seemed to be a perennial second female lead in Hollywood, but I would rate her a better actress than a large number of her co-stars with higher billing. Her best work is in numerous John Ford films, Tay Garnett's Seven Sinners, and Sam Fuller's The Crimson Kimono. 

Summer Storm contains the second most creepy Russian Orthodox wedding in cinematic history, besides The Scarlet Empress, and the reception that follows is comically ghastly. The print currently streaming on Tubi is murky, but you can still find better DVD versions. Sirk's other feature with Sanders, 1946's A Scandal in Paris, is even more delightful.

The Breaking Point

                           
Michael Curtiz's The Breaking Point is a more desolate and fatalistic version of Hemingway's To Have and Have Not than the playful Howard Hawks film. The numerous writers on the Hawks film jettisoned all but the first few chapters of the novel. Ranald MacDougall's screenplay for The Breaking Point is more faithful to the novel, but shifts the locale from Key West to the West Coast and gives the seaman protagonist, Harry Morgan, a wife and two daughters. Morgan's motivation to give a better life for his family leads him to take on questionable tasks that have tragic results.

Along with his work in Force of Evil, I think John Garfield's performance as Harry Morgan ranks as his best work. It is a soulful performance, but there is a sense of his real life plight leaking into the picture. After his wife had been exposed as a Communist by Red Channels, Garfield had been hounded by HUAC and the FBI. The collapse of his production company, after the commercial wipe-out of Force of Evil, was a huge blow. He subsequently signed a two picture deal with Warner Brothers, which he had left in frustration only a few years before. He was a hunted and beleaguered man and it is impossible to look at this film and not see it.

Fortunately, Michael Curtiz was an esteemed and beloved colleague (at least by Garfield) who had directed him to great success in Garfield's film debut, Four Daughters. Garfield's Harry Morgan is less insolent and more desperate than Bogart's. The Breaking Point is not a romantic fantasy like Hawks' film. The surroundings are more seamy and there is even a cockfight in the background of one scene. Max Steiner's score is used judiciously with silence often punctuating the tension. The voice overs by Garfield make the film seem like a narrated nightmare. The movie concludes with a winsome crane shot of a boy experiencing the ultimate trauma, the death of a parent.

Garfield was always stout as an action film lead, but The Breaking Point shows his range. Garfield is very tender and vulnerable in his domestic scenes, his macho carapace discarded. Phyllis Thaxter, who played an parade of patient wives before her career was sidetracked by polio, was never better and has a palpable erotic chemistry with Garfield. As a good time girl, Patricia Neal is miscast. When she sings along to a jukebox, one can't help but compare her to Bacall (and Hoagy Carmichael) and find her wanting. She spars well with Garfield, but her manner doesn't jibe with his Method. Juano Hernandez as Morgan's first mate and Wallace Ford as Morgan's oleaginous lawyer are memorable. Effective entertainment from 1950 that has not aged.

You and the Night

          
Yann Gonzalez's You and the Night, his feature debut from 2013, presents us with a motley group of strangers gathering for an orgy at an incongruous high rise apartment in the French countryside. Their hosts are a young couple and their transvestite maid, Udo, who greets the assembled guests by taking their coats and offering them speed, poppers, cocaine, MDMA and cocktails. Instead of diving into a state of dishabille, the attendees offer dreams, monologues and back stories to explain their presence at the event. These reminiscences are treated in a more stylized fashion, like the section pictured above which tips its chapeau to Rohmer's Perceval. A suicide provokes some outbursts of passion and a menage is rearranged. The end to a nice slice of French realism.

Of course, I jest. You and the Night is a transgressive art film that shows promise, but falls apart during its final act. Fans of Waters, Ozon, and Noe will be amused, but most viewers should steer clear. The film ends with a plea for alternative families, but, however heartfelt, the effect seems contrived. Part of the reason for this, is that the film's ideas, images, and tropes are borrowed from greater works. The central premise is more interestingly explored in The Exterminating Angel, The Cocktail Party, and No Exit. Gonzalez also borrows freely from de Sade, Poe, and Maya Deren. This is not a negative in itself, but there is not much else going on in this film. Just homages and recycling.

The cast is extremely variable. I want to single out Eric Cantona who plays "The Stud". One of the best footballers France has ever produced, Cantona starred with Manchester United in the 1990s until his unexpected retirement at age thirty. Saying he had lost his spark of enchantment with football, Cantona dedicated himself to an acting career and has had a credible career in supporting roles. Gonzalez does a good job milking his massive frame, especially in a scene with Beatrice Dalle as a jailhouse torturer with submissive tendencies. It's that kind of film. 

Paris When It Sizzles

                         

Richard Quine's Paris When It Sizzles is a romantic comedy misfire from 1964. William Holden plays an alcoholic screenwriter who needs to crank out a script for producer Noel Coward over the Bastille Day weekend. Audrey Hepburn plays the world's chicest typist who assists Holden and ends up falling for the bloody mary swilling lug. A telling credit is Hubert de Givenchy's for Ms. Hepburn's gowns and perfume. Too bad the film wasn't released in Smell-O-Vision or Odorama.

The production was a contractual obligation for both Holden and Hepburn and it feels like it. The two had had an affair during the making of Sabrina and Holden, whose career was in decline and was struggling in the depths of alcoholic despair, wanted to rekindle his romance with Hepburn. The married Hepburn put the kibosh to that and Holden responded by going on a bender. Director Quine had sensed trouble brewing before the shoot and had rented a house next to Holden's in order to keep him in line, but it was not to be. Holden took multiple breaks from the production in an attempt to deal with his lifelong problem. The filming, which occurred during the summer of 1962, was rancorous. Hepburn thought that Claude Renoir's photography was unflattering to her and had him replaced with Charles Lang. Tony Curtis is featured in an uncredited supporting role. Marlene Dietrich and Hepburn's then husband Mel Ferrer, presumably vigilant, have cameos. Paramount soon knew they had a lemon on their hands and sat on the film for over a year. 

Hepburn fits right in with the glittering artifice of the picture. She has little to do but flit her eyelashes, wear a fluffy negligee, and look gorgeous. I only half believed William Holden as an alcoholic writer. He lacks the urbane sophistication required for the role. He was better suited for hard-boiled Yankees. Holden looks labored doing the physical schtick required for the role. Quine lacks the physical finesse displayed by his former writing partner Blake Edwards whose Euro based productions of the era have similar antics.

George Axelrod based his script on a Julian Duvivier film, Holiday for Henrietta. What pleasure I derived from Paris When It Sizzles stems from its wigged out script. Axelrod was riding high after the success of Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Manchurian Candidate and used Duvivier's script as a springboard to parody Hollywood genres. Hepburn and Holden spend most of the movie enacting an everchanging film within a film that starts in the heist genre, but morphs into a spy movie, a romcom, a Western and even a monster movie. Axelrod takes a few jabs at Godard and Resnais and leaves us a few choice bon mots. Hepburn intones knowingly at one point, "Did you realize that Frankenstein and My Fair Lady are the same story."

The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House

                  
The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House is a nine segment show currently on Netflix that was overseen by Hirokazu Kore-eda. It is the tale of two adolescent girls, Sumire and Kiyo, and their experiences as maiko or apprentice geishas in Gion, Kyoto's geisha district. As implied by the title, Kiyo, who lacks the grace and poise needed to be a geisha, embraces the role of makanai or cook for the house. Kiyo is a gifted chef and her loving meals bring great joy to the house and to the viewer. One savors this show as if it were an elegant and delicious banquet.

Derived from a manga, The Makanai... is the most kindly and chaste show or film I've seen in some time. The young ladies may be in geisha bootcamp, but mindfulness and consideration are the order of the house, not cruelty. The banning of cell phones within the house makes the interactions between the inhabitants, with each gesture delicately judged by the showrunners, seem like special instances between people and not Instagram moments. The ladies' respect for rituals, talismans and charms underscore a tradition that is shown as nurturing and not oppressive. I found The Makanai... to be a balm to the eyes and a boon for the soul. Recommended to fans of Little Women and, more surprisingly, Night of the Living Dead. 

Tar

                      

I liked, but didn't love, Todd Field's Tar. It is the first Field film that I was even remotely satisfied by, but my mixed feelings about the film mostly stem from my reactions to Cate Blanchett's commanding performance. Her character, Lydia Tar, is a genius conductor and musician with feet of clay, a visionary who has long ago ignored traditional ethical boundaries. I felt Blanchett meticulous performance got the genius part right, but the elemental fire needed to show the conductor losing her mental mooring was absent. When Blanchett is showing the conductor at the top of her game, she inhabits the character, but when the conductor goes mad, I felt I was watching Blanchett give a performance.

In each of  Field's three films, human intimacy is undermined by the distance between people and their different agendas. Their are moments of comfort here between Tar and her spouse, Sharon (an underused Nina Hoss), but Field usually emphasizes the distance between the two characters; often using long shots, even in domestic scenes. Another example is a scene in an auto between Hoss and Blanchett when Tar's frantic driving is frightening her spouse. This scene pictures Tar's growing mental derangement and augurs the couple's split. Field shoots the scene from the back seat of the auto, primarily focused on Sharon and only showing Lydia's reflection in the rearview mirror. Tar is with her spouse in the car (until Sharon bolts out), but truly exists only on a different spiritual and spatial plane.

I rather enjoyed Field's playing with the the theme of the conflict between elitism and democracy in culture. As the West trends towards a more inclusive and multi-cultural society, the cult of the solitary genius and seer is being eroded. I suspect Mr. Fields, who worked with Stanley Kubrick and is a director (or regie or ruler as the Germans put it) himself after all, respects the value of following one person's singular vision within the artistic field. Tar's true love is not her spouse or whatever lovers she may or may not have had, but music itself. That love of music, and Field is a musician himself, suffuses Tar from beginning to end and is ultimately pictured as its heroine's balm and salvation. 

The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover

Broderick Crawford as J. Edgar Hoover

Larry Cohen's The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, from 1977, is a scuzzy, B minus picture about the longtime FBI director. Production values are tawdry and scant. The film's Oval Office reminded me of a disused Saturday Night Live set. Whenever an important historical episode occurs, say Pearl Harbor or the March on the Pentagon, Cohen relies on newsreel footage. This is not bad in itself, one feels sympathy for Cohen in his attempt to make a historical epic on a tight budget, but the integration of the historical footage with shots of Cohen's players is often shoddy. The most egregious example is the footage of Broderick Crawford, who plays the mature Hoover, striding down Pennsylvania Avenue which is intercut with contemporaneous footage of President Kennedy's funeral. Besides Crawford, Cohen employs a slew of Hollywood has-beens, some of whom, especially Dan Dailey as Clyde Tolson, look quite ghastly. Miklos Rozsa's score also harkens back to yesteryear. 

And yet, I was partially won over by Cohen's scrappy and crappy little film. The Poverty Row feel of The Private Files... matches its tabloid style. Cohen shows how Hoover was able to uncover dirt on our country's power brokers, but the film is also a cockeyed defense of the man. Hoover kept the resources of the Bureau out of the hands of political figures, keeping it non-partisan and uncompromised. Cohen also intuited that the Bureau's unseen hand was, at least. partially responsible for Nixon's downfall.

A number of old Hollywood hands phone in their performances, particularly Jose Ferrer and Lloyd Nolan. However, I was struck by how many interesting performances the film contained. Howard Da Silva, seemingly an odd choice to play FDR, captures well the man's patrician hauteur, ebullience, and entitlement. The underutilized Jack Cassidy is a smooth fit for the role of Damon Runyon. Best of all is Michael Parks as Robert Kennedy. Parks is adept at showing both the mercurial brilliance and immaturity of RFK. He even nails the man's slouch. I also enjoyed the contributions of June Havoc, Celeste Holm, and Raymond St. Jacques.

Crawford is good as Hoover and since I remember the sodden and hulking wreck that hosted Saturday Night Live at this time, I suppose I was just glad his performance was not the disaster I feared it would be. Such is my attitude towards the film as a whole. Cohen's talents may have been more attuned to films about a killer babies (It's Alive) or winged serpents terrorizing Manhattan (Q) or dessert treats that turn people into zombies (The Stuff), but he never codescends to his material or his audience. An underrated B movie master. The cast of The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover also includes Ronee Blakely, Rip Torn, John Marley, Michael Sacks, and George Plimpton. 

The Lobster

Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz in The Lobster

Yorgos Lanthimos' The Lobster is one of the most original and well acted films I have seen in some time. Set some time in the near future, the film is mostly set in a rural Irish hotel where single guests are sent to find a mate. If they don't find a suitable partner in a moth or so, they are turned another creature of their choice. Colin Farrell plays a buttoned down type who, if he fails to find a mate, has chosen to be turned into the titular crustacean. 

One indicator of the quality of Farrell's performance is that my wife, used to swooning at his mannish appeal, failed to even recognize him; so resolutely has Farrell dug into his character's colorless affect. Complications ensue at the hotel and Farrell joins a resistance group in the countryside who have rebelled against the prevailing order. Lanthimos wisely avoids detailing the backstory of whatever biological cataclysm has occurred. He is more focused on interpersonal relationships than the world at large. As in his earlier Dogtooth, he is concerned with the clash between nature and nurture and how it impacts our personal lives. My feeling is he leans towards nature. His characters tend to deconstruct because of biological factors that are beyond their control. 

The cast is uniformly excellent. Ben Whishaw and John C. Reilly both register as Farrell's closest buds at the hotel. Reilly's role is a neat fit for his sad sack persona, his character practically has 'kick me' printed on his rear. Rachel Weisz is stellar as usual as Farrell's lady love and Lea Seydoux continues to impress as a tough resistance leader. The actors dig into the black comic, somewhat Kubrickian tone. Like the master, Lanthimos looks at his creations with a dispassionate objectivity. Farrell and Weisz escape, but Lanthimos literally pictures their love as blind. (8/26/16)

Mandibles

David Marsais and Gregoire Ludig in Mandibles

The best comedy I have seen in some time, Quentin Dupieux's Mandibles, released in the US in 2021, tells the not particularly tender story of the bonding that occurs between two sociopathic French drifters and a two foot long fly. The film features an assault, armed robberies, a dog being eaten, arson, a carjacking, a kidnapping, and humor at the expense of the disabled, but I found it to be a hilarious mashup of Dumb and Dumber and The Fly.

The previous films I have seen from Dupieux, most significantly Rubber and Deerskin, have been funny in the sense of being peculiar and Mandibles is certainly that, but it is also the first Dupieux film to have elicited belly laughs from me. I especially enjoyed the inane rapport between the two lead miscreants, Gregoire Ludig's Manu and David Marsais' Jean Gab, who reminded me of Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere as louts on the road in Bertrand Blier's Going Places. Ludig's Manu, like Depardieu's character and Oliver Hardy, is the top, a beefy sensualist who is always growling about his underfed stomach. Marsais' Jean Gab is the bottom, a slightly more sensitive soul who bonds with and trains the big bug. Truly not for everyone, but those with a tolerance for cruel humor will find delight in Mandibles. 

The Velvet Underground

Nico and The Velvet Underground

Todd Haynes' The Velvet Underground is a must view for anyone with a fleeting interest in rock and roll, Andy Warhol, the 1960s New York art scene or avant-garde cinema. Haynes brilliantly uses a multi-screen avant format, a mirror of Warhol's Chelsea Girls, to frame or rather fragment a band that was influential, revered and despised. Like Warhol, Haynes uses visual repetition and duplication to suggest the multiplicity of meaning found in these great artists. Haynes interlaces the Velvets' story with clips from avant-garde shorts in a way that comments on the cultural underpinnings of the band. So,we get shots from Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising helping to suggest the aura of homoeroticism and S & M around the band or a brief clip of the looking glass face of the cloaked figure in Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon (a film that also dabbles in repetition) as Nico intones "I'll Be Your Mirror."

I enjoyed it all immensely and I laud Haynes for wading through all the footage that he did (I visited the Warhol museum in Pittsburg recently and it was obvious Warhol kept everything, especially the receipts), but I have my quibbles. As Greil Marcus has noted, Haynes seems to lose interest in the band after John Cale was forced out. Now I think the band's albums and live shows with Doug Yule are just as strong as the ones with Cale. Haynes seems to prefer the sturm and drang of "Heroin", "I Heard Her Call My Name", and "Sister Ray" to the sweet Lou sensitivity of "Pale Blue Eyes", "Jesus", and "New Age". As Paul Nelson noted over four decades ago, a sweet, sunny side coexisted with a dark one in the songs of Lou Reed. 🍌

I happen to think, as did Mr. Nelson and Robert Christgau, that the Velvets' best album is the one they did after Cale left; their eponymous third. Haynes seems to think Cale's talents were equal to that of Reed's. I do think that Cale's musical releases in the 1970s, especially his Island albums, are of equal value to  Mr. Reed's output then; something I wouldn't have admitted at the time, but, since the 70s, Mr. Cale has proved to be a better collaborator than songwriter or composer. The attention Haynes lavishes on Mr. Cale seems to be at the expense of Sterling Morrison and Moe Tucker. Both are fascinating characters in themselves and I think Ms. Tucker was a minimalist pioneer in her grafting of Bo Diddley and African drumming, but I'm not sure this is a documentary about music.

Of course, Cale's replacement, Doug Yule is given the shortest shrift. Happily, the band The Paranoid Style offered up a paean to him (entitled "Doug Yule") that is an apt tribute just this past year. That the Velvets continued on with Yule as the front man after Reed left the band is unmentioned by Haynes, presumably out of kindness to those involved. The band's fifth album, Squeeze, is fairly woeful compared to the first four (and 1969 Velvet Underground Live and VU), but it exists. I may be a demented outlier about this, but I would have enjoyed hearing of the European tour they did without Lou and the subsequent tour of New England's finest, and crappiest, ski lodges.

🍌 Paul Nelson, 'All The Young Dudes", 

The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, 1976.