Ruben Brandt, Collector

Art is all consuming in Ruben Brandt, Collector

A jaunt through the Western Art canon, Ruben Brandt, Collector is spirited adult animation. The Slovenian feature from Milorad Krstic finds the title character haunted by figures from great paintings as he dreams. The film takes on a surreal edge immediately as Velasquez's "Infanta" eviscerates Brandt's forearm with her incisors. Paintings are integrated into the action and form the film's background. The effects and affects verge on overload, but Krstic keeps the momentum chugging along. He wisely shifts the film's palette with each succeeding segment, varying from somber realism to Fauvism.

The film's plot concerns Brandt's attempt to steal and collect the masterpieces that haunt him in order to purge his trauma. An "art therapist", Brandt inhabits a world where characters faces appear to be drawn by Ernst, Dubuffet, Grosz or Modigliani. The narrative is absurd, but the visual invention never flags. Despite one too many chase scenes, Ruben Brandt, Collector ranks with the best animation of the last decade.

Black Coal, Thin Ice

Grids and neon fill the frame in Black Coal, Thin Ice

Diao Yinan's Black Coal, Thin Ice is a masterful mystery that doesn't kowtow to audience expectations for a tidy narrative. Mr. Diao purposefully obfuscates the story to heighten his poetic reveries of lust and control. The cinematographer Dong Jingsong, a frequent Diao collaborator who also shot Long Day's Journey Into Night, alternates between illustrating the industrial grid of downtown Xi'an and projecting a dream like atmosphere lit by gauzy neon. This works to somewhat mask the seamy nature of the plot, a noir in the tradition of James M. Cain. Fan Liao plays a police detective, Zili, in the Northern Chinese province of Shaanxi. The opening sequence, which has little to do with the plot and where he beats a woman who has dumped him, establishes him as a brute. An investigation into a mysterious killing in which body parts have ended up in coal bins miles apart ends badly with suspects and cops killed and Zili suspended from the force because of his PTSD.

Five years later, Zili begins to suspect the coal bin killer is still on the loose and starts shadowing the widow of an alleged victim. Further spoilers will be avoided because the impact of the film depends on the viewer perceiving things to be as much of a tangled web as the protagonist does. Lu-Mei Kwei gives a great, moody performance as the "widow" who Zili becomes smitten with. She is portrayed as a pawn passed between louts. The neon and constant snow provide a patina of romance to Xi'an, but the reality is tragic and coarse. The police are brutal forces of repression, none more so than Zili who rapes his lady love in a Ferris wheel.

Black Coal, Thin Ice is a bracing combination of beauty and Kino Fist. Production design, costumes and, particularly, sound design are all first rate. The film lingers in the nether regions of the mind. The images accumulate as if in a dream or, more aptly, a nightmare. The film sparkles and flickers such that the Chinese title might have been more apropos: Daylight Fireworks.

Best of 1998

1. A Simple Plan                                                                           Sam Raimi
2. Out of Sight                                                                               Steven Soderbergh
3. Croupier                                                                                    Mike Hodges
4. Rushmore                                                                                  Wes Anderson
5. The Thin Red Line                                                                    Terence Malick
6. Flowers of Shanghai                                                                 Hou Hsiao-Hsien
7. Living Out Loud                                                                        Richard LaGravenese
8. Fallen Angels                                                                             Wong Kar-Wai
9. New Rose Hotel                                                                         Abel Ferrara
10. Wild Things                                                                               John McNaughton

       Honorable Mention

       The School of Flesh -- Jacquot,

       There's Something About Mary -- Farrelly Brothers, Pi -- Aronofsky,

       The Big Lebowski -- Cohen Brothers, The Celebration -- Vinterberg, 

       High Art -- Cholodenko, Besieged -- Bertolucci,
       Affliction -- Schrader, Babe: Pig in the City -- Miller

        Movies I Enjoyed

       Love and Death on Long Island, Ringu, 

       The Opposite of Sex, Ronin, 

       The Hole, Rounders,

       Small Soldiers, After Life,

       Central Station, The Mask of Zorro, 

       Bulworth, The Newton Boys,

       Clockwatchers, Sicilia!,

       Twilight, The Parent Trap,

       Bio Zombie, Alice et Martin,

       Beloved, Celebrity, 

       Shakespeare in Love, Enemy of the State, 

       American History X, The Truman Show, 

       Saving Private Ryan, Gods and Monsters,

       Pleasantville, After Life,

       Snake Eyes, 

       He Got Game, Bride of Chucky

       Under the Mendoza Line

       Secret Defense, Without Limits, 

       The General,

       Buffalo '66, Six Days, Seven Nights 

       Elizabeth, Apt Pupil, 

       Primary Colors, The Rugrats Movie,

       Rush Hour, The Man in the Iron Mask, 

       Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,

       The Wedding Singer, A Bug's Life, 

       The Replacement Killers, Ever After, Dark City,   

       The Faculty, Meet Joe Black, Deep Impact, 

       Armageddon, The Prince of Egypt, 

       Practical Magic, Antz,

       Blade,  

       BASEketball, Lethal Weapon 4,

       The Waterboy, Board Heads,

       

        Cave Videntium

        

        Patch Adams