The KOROVA Theatre

NIGHT OF THE EAGLE (Sidney Hayers, 1962, UK)

2012-02-18T09:14:00.000-05:00

Norman Taylor must face his disbeliefs and intellectual limitations, his home a volatile house of tarot cards, summoning his charm to conjure wife. Director Sidney Hayers casts a cinematic spell of witchcraft and trickery by utilizing tight framing and solid compositions often dominated by looming statues, creating a sense of impending doom in a rational world. Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont adapt the classic Fritz Leiber novel into a believable domestic melodrama amid the politics of an English College.

Norman is a young and successful professor, well liked by his students and colleagues. He teaches the psychology of superstition, that it's the believer who powers the supernatural with post hoc fallacies and wishful thinking, not the ability to control reality with secret ceremonies and trinkets. But his wife Tansy believes that her charms guard Norman against the sinister urges of the faculty wives. Like the protagonist of Matheson's HELL HOUSE, Norman cannot accept the possibility of magic superseding science and it could drive him to madness. What makes the story so intriguing is that each encounter has a potential rationale explanation, either hypnosis or self-fulfilling prophecy. When Norman destroys his wife's protective charms and bad things begin to happen, he must race against time to save her from the evil clutches of a crippled witch...or from her own crippled beliefs.

The dénouement brings poetic justice to the vengeful and plotting antagonist: the eagle finally makes its landing.

Final Grade: (B+)

CERTIFIED COPY (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010, France)

2012-02-16T19:08:00.003-05:00

An author an his nameless companion spend an afternoon immersed in an imitation marriage, a certifiably tumultuous affair, an emotional tsunami that destroys preconceptions and expectations. Writer and Director Abbas Kiarostami deftly navigates the murky terrain of affection and passion, a puzzling odyssey that leaves both characters (and audience) pondering seemingly vacuous terms of endearment.

The plot is fairly simple: James Miller is a writer who responds to a note of a female admirer (wistfully performed by Juliette Binoche). The two then begin a casual journey of interlocutory attraction before their playful dialogue becomes choleric, questioning the veracity of this seemingly innocuous affair. Kiarostami manipulates the tropes of the typical romantic independent film, anticipating probabilities before reconstructing the narrative into an intimate fallacy. Kiarostami seemingly focuses on a potential love story between beautiful strangers, a writer and antique dealer, whose differing opinions will lead them towards love’s delightful embrace: from the uncomfortable silences of first attraction which finally end in a hotel room, their desires irresponsibly quenched.

The story’s axis balances on the mundane dialogue and participatory travelogue, a zero momentum whose kinetic energy eventually clashes and catapults the two into competing vectors. Many viewers are lost in the puzzle as we begin to realize that these two characters have met before. After they are mistaken for a married couple it becomes evident that there is some unspoken (more importantly, some untold element that Kiarostami purposely conceals) dilemma that haunts this tempestuous relationship.

Are they married? This is the superficial question that the film is designed to deconstruct, to confound expectations. We are given a few clues, both verbal and non-verbal, that reveal that she is a mistress who hasn’t seen him for many months (years?) and has born his child. The woman remains nameless throughout the film and this fact divulges an insight into James’ spurious nature: she opens her heart to him demanding to be loved and he is closed off, an imitation husband. Kiarostami seems to imply that their physical coupling (and its byproduct) is a certified copy of a marriage that carries the same responsibilities and emotional baggage. The film ends with reflection and introspection and offers James no easy answer to his ethical conundrum.

Final Grade: (B+)

THE OUTRAGE (Martin Ritt, 1964, USA)

2012-02-14T18:56:00.001-05:00

An itinerant priest is mired in the sins of Silver Gulch, desperately seeking a miracle to restore his faith in God…and humanity. Director Martin Ritt remakes Kurosawa’s RASHOMON as a Western, replacing Japanese social mores with American values, as he cross-examines four witnesses to a violent crime.

Please see my review for the Kurosawa film for my dissection of the film’s themes and subtext: here I will examine the differences between the two, explaining why THE OUTRAGE is a lesser creation though not necessarily a failure.

The cast includes William Shatner as the forlorn priest, a subdued and aching performance in the days before being typecast; Paul Newman as the outlaw Carrasco, unfortunately resorting to stereotype as the criminal, his Spanish accent an embarrassment; Laurence Harvey as the impotent husband, his character bland and underdeveloped though his eyes are always expressive; Claire Bloom as the victim, too shrill with a faltering Southern accent that disappears in the midst of conversations; Howard Da Silva as the prospector, his grizzled visage depicting the weary years of suffering; and Edward G. Robinson as the talkative Con Man who reflects the cruel truth a despicable world. The actors fall into caricature but it’s mostly Shatner and Da Silva who deserve our empathy, and it’s the strength of their performances that makes the revelation dramatic. Newman is no Mifune, and though Mifune also over-plays his part, Newman’s seems contrived and clichéd.

Martin Ritt structures the film very much like the original but without the artistry; he condenses important elements and lengthens the exposition. This film is nine minutes longer than the original while excising the lengthy tracking shots and chiaroscuro ingredients, and fills the time with annoying explanation. Ritt mirrors a few of Kurosawa’s compositions: the low angle shot of the dead husband’s convulsed hand, and he shoots directly into the sun for effect…but not the same effect. Ritt reminds the audience of the blazing heat, while Kurosawa used the sun as metaphor concerning spiritual light and concealing darkness. As a Western, one element that adds to the story is the landscape of prickly cacti and sand, as nature becomes an instrument of physical pain and confrontation. The widescreen black & white cinematography is excellent, utilizing many close-ups including several short but frantic tracking shots, while the editing remains visually elusive.

The film’s major flaw is in being too talky. Where RASHOMON allows the viewer to come to a conclusion, Ritt hammers home the theme with a six-shooter mentality. The result is a monotone narrative that is more boring than interesting, removing the viewer as active participant. And what is the outrage? Is it the violent act? Or the intentional lies told by the witnesses? Or is it the original sin of human nature? The title forces the audience to consider the reality of the act instead of the act of reality; a subtle paradigm shift that diminishes the thematic power.

Overall, THE OUTRAGE is an interesting film that stands on its own as parable but is a pale reflection of the original.

Final Grade: (B-)

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RASHOMON (Akira Kurosawa)

THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (Ti West, 2009, USA)

2012-02-13T20:44:00.003-05:00

Samantha’s common sense is eclipsed by her desperation as she accepts a babysitting job that seems too good to be true. Writer/Director Ti West’s celebration of classic horror films splices together sub-genre tropes by splicing Satanism, haunted house, and slasher conventions into a cohesive and mordantly suspenseful narrative. He utilizes heavy film grain to paint the cinematography with a retroactive appeal, and the soundtrack’s eerie piano taps nervously upon the tingling spine. Echoes of Wendy Carlos’ synthesizer impregnate the trauma with devilish subtly.

The setup: Samantha is a poor college girl who accepts a babysitting job from a creepy older man, his skeletal presence a dominant black shadow that diminishes her sensibilities like the total eclipse that darkens the witching hour. Left alone in Hill House (or its equivalent), she is possessed by curiosity until assaulted by demonic forces looking to harbor the moon’s mystical powers.

Style: West sketches the narrative with charcoal characterizations, never revealing too much about Samantha’s past: it is enough that she is an innocuous student with a disparate roommate. This threshes the chaff and allows the mystery to grow. West uses classic tracking shots and languid camera movements as Samantha haunts the manor, ratcheting the spring-wound tension. The bulk of the film is in this cursory investigation, but we know that the gruesome payoff is coming. The first murder is not unexpected though we struggle to fit it into the chain of events. The suspense builds without release, and here West makes a structural error: he allows the audience to see behind a locked door, foreshadowing the heroine’s fate. When the delivery guy is introduced, his boots reveal the intricate plan. A plan that doesn’t make much sense, but serves as only a process to get her alone in a scary house. The final sacrifice and bloody escape owes as much to DePalma’s CARRIE as early 70’s Hammer Films.

Conclusion: West’s attempt to recapture the halcyon days of the horror genre is enjoyable and refreshing, relying upon suspense instead of gore and misery to tell his tale. The final shot is ripe with a demonic fruit, as Satan’s heir awaits birth into the world…once again.

Final Grade: (C)

THE BOYS IN COMPANY C (Sidney J. Furie, 1978, USA)

2012-02-11T09:32:00.001-05:00

Like Kubrick’s masterpiece FULL METAL JACKET, Director Sidney J. Furie is not concerned with reporting historical fact but instead depicts the nihilistic schism between soldier and civilian; the absolute destructive madness purchased wholesale at the cost of our moral identity. Exploiting the classic film noir voice-over, the story is told in retrospect through diary entries of the naïve and uncorrupted Private Alvin Foster whose fate, like Joe Gillis in SUNSET BOULEVARD, has already been decided.

We follow a handful of civilians who, in only six weeks of basic training, are morally deconstructed and reborn as murderous objects, weapons of flesh, blood, and bone. Their Drill Instructor is SSGT. Loyce (R. Lee Ermey) who browbeats them into submission, who must prepare them for the brutality and unimaginable shocks of combat and erase their individuality: he must make them Marines. The characters begin as stereotypes: the athlete, the drug dealer, the journalist, the tough talking street kid from Brooklyn, the hippie, and the incompetent Commander. When we first meet our protagonists, they regurgitate inane and clichéd dialogue as they bid farewell to loved ones and spout patriotic jargon: these spoken beliefs will soon become ethical contradictions, which will exemplify their fiery baptism and the realization (and abandonment) of their naïve righteousness. But Furie doesn’t rely on our universal understanding of these characters, he subverts the paradigm and creates complex individuals who don’t react as we expect: this is antithetical to the Kubrickian convention of dehumanization.

The scenes In Country are explosively detailed supporting the visual reality of Vietnam. The plot itself is a metaphor defining the absurdity of the Vietnam War: if the soldiers beat the Dragons (a South Vietnamese elite team) in a soccer match, they can spend the remainder of their tour in relative comfort, playing exhibition games all over southeast Asia. There is a caveat: they must lose every game for propaganda purposes, to instill a sense of national pride in the native population. The soldiers must sacrifice pride and honor, not only their own but every American soldier who is fighting and dying in this awful conflict, or face assignment to the meat grinder at Khe Sanh. The choice is really no choice at all: they tame the Dragons.

Final Grade: (A)

WORLD ON A WIRE (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973, Germany)

2012-02-08T21:11:00.001-05:00

Virtual personalities created not with DNA but microprocessors, electronic impulses that think…therefore they are. Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s brave new world projects an eerie synchronicity ripe with casual sexuality, abusive power, and a murder mystery that suspends cause and effect, relegating the physical medium to a world of ideas. Reality becomes something that may not be trusted or believed but is still just as deadly.

After the strange death of Professor Vollmer, the scientist who designed a complex computer program in which simulacrums live electric lives (and dream of electric sheep too, I suppose), Dr. Stiller assumes his predecessor’s role and soon becomes subsumed by mysterious happenstance. When Gunter Lause, the head of Corporate Security, disappears and is erased from reality, Stiller is haunted by a residual memory and seeks the answer to a question he has yet to discover.

Fassbinder’s plot merges mystery, action, and science-fiction genres to create a noirish melodrama enriched with intelligentsia, examining the world of perceptions and the impotence of free will. It is also a condemnation of Capitalistic greed where human beings are reduced to binary codes, all for the sake of market research to prophecy future trends. Fassbinder uses long takes and slow tracking shots, allowing each scene to linger dreamlike upon the screen, to imprint upon the retina, while the soundtrack pulsates with eerie tension. This allows the film to become unsettling as nothing is what it seems, but everything is as it appears, and this perceptive contradiction alludes to a narrative vertigo without tech-talk exposition.

Dr. Stiller asks the great questions to life: Who are we? Why are we here? Is there personality after death? But he doesn’t like the answers.

Final Grade: (B+)

PEEPING TOM (Michael Powell, 1960, UK)

2012-02-07T19:57:00.001-05:00

Mark is subsumed by his monochrome pathology as his bright eyes becomes grim lenses, the convolutions of his confused brain tangled celluloid that captures the dying of the light as focus is pulled towards infinite darkness. He is a damaged child in a man’s body, victim of his father’s cruel psychological experiments to understand fear by causing it, to extract this noxious ether from Mark which traps the boy forever in this flammable element.

Suffering from Scoptophilia, Mark is a photographer by hobby and 1st Assistant Camera by profession: he sees the world only through an objective lens and experiences relationships through the purring revolutions of a projector. He is distanced from reality by a morally reduced aperture, and murders women while filming them, which yields his zealous sadistic pleasure…but the light always fades too quickly. Director Michael Powell has ingeniously crafted a vicious thriller whose elements precede both Hitchcock’s PSYCHO and Antonioni’s BLOWUP, while PEEPING TOM unjustly remains relegated to cult status.

Masterfully written by subverting cultural mores, the narrative concerns the very act of filmmaking…and film viewing: a subtle condemnation of the audience as participant in voyeuristic pleasure. Powell’s expert editing and mise-en-scene reveals Mark’s interior dialogue without the need for exposition: his ghostly shadow cast surreally upon his blank screen, his eyes seen through the spokes of a film reel, or the mimicry of his 24/fps reality all convey his deepening madness in a more terrifying way than the grisly murders.

The film’s major flaw is actor Carl Boehm’s portrayal of Mark Lewis as too shy and backwards, a man whose humanity is isolated beyond a compassionate relationship with the audience: he is no cruel monster but lost in his own Idios Cosmos. Though a victim of childhood trauma like Norman Bates, there is nothing very likable about Mark Lewis and it’s difficult to believe in his minor romantic interest. Marks’ nightmares haunt him in black and white and this becomes his existence, while the world of color becomes a violent fantasy.

Final Grade: (B)

TOKYO DRIFTER (Seijun Suzuki, 1966, Japan)

2012-02-04T21:29:00.005-05:00

Tetsuya is a samurai hit man who values duty above all else, trying to walk the path of enlightenment through the dark night of his soul. Seijun Suzuki’s absurdist neon noir is a pantheon of trite clichés deconstructed and stripped bare, revealing a narrative element that burns like a noble gas.

Suzuki dismantles genre expectations in the very first reel, beginning the film not in black and white (like a “serious” noir-ish melodrama) but in a blown-out monochrome bled of all color. The anti-hero Tetsuya is introduced as a victim of a rival gang, as he seemingly allows them to pummel him into physical submission. We soon learn that loyalty kept him from fighting back, as his master Kurata attempts to go straight and place the life of crime behind them both. Of course, this becomes impossible so thus we have conflict and a plot involving a property deed worth millions and egos worth their weight in souls.

Suzuki’s twisting plot threads weave a syncopated narrative tapestry, like a torch song missing random key notes. The use of disorienting jump cuts streamlines the anecdotal economy, disallowing extraneous character development as the viewer is expected to understand by proxy. In one scene, Suzuki instigates a daring rescue as Tetsuya saves his femme fondue from a rival gang with an adrenaline car crash…only to cut in the middle and reveal the two of them at a local arcade, with no reference to the previous action. Suzuki takes us from point A to C with few establishing shots or movement during the films 82 minute run time.

Drenched in big neon glitter, the anti-hero traverses Tokyo’s brothels and Western style clubs with stylized transitions, set designs flooded in Day-Glo colors that seem to merge with actual location shots. This duality creates a surreal and dreamlike world for Tetsuya to wander, and the quicksilver action sequences are like James Bond on acid. Maddeningly brilliant and beautiful. Suzuki ends the film with a betrayal leading to a white hot oblivion though Tetsuya always remains true to the one that matters most. Himself.

Final Grade: (B+)

THE FALL (Tarsem Singh, 2007, UK)

2012-02-02T20:52:00.000-05:00

Korova Theatre Top Ten 2008!

The power of myth to restructure the world, the love of an innocent child; both can help us to see beauty through the veil of despair. Director Tarsem Singh takes us on an odyssey through the imagination of a crippled stuntman, addicted to morphine, and a little girl whom he befriends.

Roy Walker (who only walks in “make-believe”) is a paraplegic who, while bedridden in a hospital, manipulates Alexandria into bringing him drugs; he’ll reveal more of his improvised fantasy epic if she’ll steal the pills, just like his mythological Masked Bandit. She naively agrees and as he sinks deeper into depression the story becomes infused with malignancy. Tarsem films in mind-blowing over-saturated colors and beautiful vistas, capturing the unreal within numerous deep focus compositions. This fantastic vision contrasts the subdued colors of the hospital and Roy’s self-destructive spiral, and it’s only the childlike innocence and wisdom of a little girl that saves him. But you must excavate the layers beneath the vivid stratum: Tarsem is showing us how stories can remake our lives, how fiction reveals more of the human spirit than a hardened reality, and how we manipulate both for our own benefit…or bane.

Alexandria unknowingly shares the Eucharist with Roy and he jokingly asks if she is trying to save his soul; she doesn't understand and it’s this unconditional human love that is savior and not some Holy cracker; transubstantiation as imaginary as the five characters in the impish fable.

Roy is heartbroken over his failed romance and his seemingly crippled existence; in his mind he is no longer a whole man. But he must weigh this suffering against the young Alexandria who has already witnessed the death of her father, the burning of her home, and the knowledge that her life may never amount to more than picking oranges. The film’s finale skips years ahead and we see Chaplin, Keaton, and other Silent Era greats projected into Alexandria’s 24 frames-per-second escapist montage: she imagines Roy in every film! But Roy’s fate is unknown, and his few indelible images could have been filmed before the accident. They each suffered a disheartening downfall; we can only hope they can rise above their unjust burden.

Final Grade: (A)

LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE (Jorge Grau, 1974, Italy)

2012-02-01T19:43:00.000-05:00

Also known as DON'T OPEN THE WINDOW.

George is an antiques dealer who discovers a new axiom: those who unearth the past are doomed to be devoured by it. Writer/Director Jorge Grau evokes the spirit of both George Romero and Michelangelo Antonioni in this classic horror film, creating drama from the sludge piles and belching factories of RED DESERT, sporting an ultra-cool and suave protagonist whose motorcycle rockets through the arteries of London, a reincarnation of David Hemmings in BLOW-UP, and the mystery of the rising dead and cultural clash that was so well defined by NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

A chance encounter propels George and Edna upon a diabolical journey into the unknown, where they become trapped in a vault of horror. Grau devises a scientific premise for the reanimation of the recently dead as a local farmer is using ultrasonic radiation to destroy the simple nervous systems of insects: it seems to be less toxic than pesticide. But this has an effect on both newborns who become violent and the electronic impulses of the newly deceased…and the dead began to rise. Though interesting, the major plot fault is in the deduction that these zombies can use their own irradiated blood to create a brotherhood of corpses.

The use of heart-thumping sound precedes an attack and creates a crescendo of fear which is utilized to great effect. One chilling scene in particular has our protagonists and a police officer trapped in a basement while the dead begin to push aside their caskets: Tobe Hooper’s homage is evident in the Marsten House basement scenario from SALEM’S LOT. The police investigate these series of murders blaming the deaths on Edna’s drug addled sister and corrupting youth culture represented by George in his leather jacket and shaggy good looks. As in classic science fiction films, the young hero discovers the source of the apocalypse but his pleas fall upon the deaf ears of his elders, so he must take matters into his own hands.

These zombies think and move quickly, the core of some basic reasoning still existent in their gray matter, and the disease can be passed by blood: again we see another influence that haunts Danny Boyle’s 28 DAYS LATER. George fights his way through a demented hell to save Edna, a stranger only hours before, and the nihilistic vengeful finale is reflective of the culture and social temperament of its time: the dead shall inherit the Earth.

Final Grade: (B)

BELLE DE JOUR (Luis Buñuel, 1967, France)

2012-01-28T21:45:00.000-05:00

Séverine is a wilting Daylily; her per annus excursions into self-destructive sexual encounters are rooted in the deep trauma of childhood and religious oppression. Director Luis Buñuel’s intimate portrait of a troubled young lady is painted with compassion and a vibrant physical urgency, a film that seems less about sexual liberation and more about post traumatic stress disorder.

The beautiful Catherine Deneuve imbues Séverine with a prim and proper seductive quality; a seething concoction of basic human desires whose obsessive nature begins to dominate her life. Buñuel begins the film with jingling bells as she and her husband share a carriage ride on a lovely afternoon. Suddenly, he becomes angry with her cold demeanor and allows her to be dragged naked through the woods where she is whipped and ravaged by the carriage drivers…while he watches. This turns out to be one of Séverine’s orgasmic fantasies, which we soon realize are always preceded by the ringing of bells; a wonderful aural punctuation mark that helps the viewer discern hardened reality from her degrading conceits. She imagines herself raped, emotionally abused, and dehumanized by being covered in dung. But her daytime affairs are none the less fatal: she can not give her body to her adoring husband so she becomes a prostitute between the hours of 2 to 5 PM each weekday, filling her empty spaces with the viscid fluid of strangers.

Buñuel expertly conveys her dormant past in two quick flashbacks, both as she contemplates her new occupation: one is an objective memory of herself being touched by a grimy workman as a child, alluding to a sexual assault; and the other is her refusal to take communion, a telling image of a young girl adamantly refusing to open her mouth, a silent oral confirmation of her guilt and victimization. She begins to enjoy her new job but has become trapped within her own flesh and bone, because she loves her patient husband…a doctor who will soon become her patient.

A young man becomes infatuated with Séverine and suddenly her fantasy life intrudes upon reality and this roguish youth attempts to murder her husband, leaving him paralyzed and dysfunctional. Buñuel’s homage to Godard is mimicked in the street vendor selling the Herald Tribune and later, as the young man is gunned down in the street by the police leaving him (and the audience) breathless. Finally, dressed as a schoolgirl, regressed back to her childhood, she realizes that she can now take care of her husband without ever having to become intimate…and can live an illusion of a happy marriage.

Final Grade: (A)

MAD DETECTIVE (Johnnie To & Wai Ka-Fai, Hong Kong, 2007)

2012-01-25T21:41:00.000-05:00

Korova Top Ten 2008!

Bun is cursed not with the preternatural ability too interact with other people's “inner personalities”…but in not being able to see his own. Suffering from a debilitating mental illness, Bun is released from the police force after severing his ear and offering it to the retiring commissioner. He spends the next few years in seeming isolation, accompanied only by his imaginary wife. When he is needed by a young detective to solve a heinous crime, he refuses his meds and psychiatric advice to once again use his abilities and sacrifices himself for a higher cause.

This is an interesting character study that peers deep within Bun’s convoluted mind but ultimately doesn’t reveal his secrets. Directors Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai erect the film’s structure around Bun, we see mostly from his skewed perspective, we experience the ghostly personalities that haunt the world; these deadly sins that push the characters towards vice, decadence, and finally the ultimate sin….betrayal. To and Ka-Fai forgo the need for tricky camera shots and hyper-editing and let the narrative develop more intimately, they give us insight into Bun’s personal life such as the sad dinner, the seat across from him forever empty. This imbues us with empathy for our protagonist; though mad, he may be the only sane person in the entire drama because he stays true to his own uncorrupted nature.

The final surreal shootout is homage to Orson Welles' LADY FROM SHANGHAI, shattered mirrors and dark reflections, like sharks mad with their own blood, devouring themselves. Unlike Welles' protagonist Michael O’Hara, there is no escape for Bun, his fate the nihilistic void of an eternal restful peace while the world remains restless, full of violence, blood shed, and injustice.

Final Grade: (B+)

HIGH AND LOW (Akira Kurosawa, 1963, Japan)

2012-01-19T20:19:00.000-05:00

Japanese translation is literally Heaven and Hell.

A man is willing to sacrifice a child's life in order to secure his own future but sees his best laid plans go up in pink smoke. Akira Kurosawa dissects the morality of a self-made businessman, exposing him to a life shattering decision where success is measured against the high cost of living.

Gondo holds thirteen percent of the stock in National Shoes, but forges a plan to buy a majority share in order to keep the company from making cheap and inferior products. Gondo's hostile takeover is interrupted when a kidnapper mistakenly seizes his chauffer's little boy and holds him for ransom. Is Gondo morally and ethically bound to sacrifice his family's welfare for his servant’s? Kurosawa posits a complex question with dangerous possibilities but goes deeper into the double standard of big business and class distinction, where the criminal law decides right and wrong with little regard to Justice.

Gondo is a self-made man who worked his way from the sweatshops of National Shoes, where his skill and hubris were tools to conquer the boardrooms of this huge corporation. Ginjiro is a medical technician who lives in squalor, eclipsed by the shadow of Gondo’s mansion, his spirit poisoned by self-pity like a disease spread by the ubiquitous lice and crawling parasites (both human and insect) that inhabit his world. Kurosawa contrasts these two seemingly disparate characters and asks the viewer to cast moral judgment upon them (expecting sympathies to lie with Gondo, of course), then reveals that they are infected with the same intent, differentiated only by their actions. Hmmm, what am I getting at?

Gondo will let the boy die. There is no doubt that this is his final answer. Though his wife begs him he decides that his well planned takeover of National Shoes is more important than a human life. It’s revealed that Gondo is not all that ‘self-made” after all, that he married into a wealthy family and used the dowry as capital to form the takeover. But once he answers the final phone call, Gondo contradicts everything he previously stated and agrees to pay the ransom. Gondo’s is not a selfless sacrifice. On the contrary, he expects to recover the money and complete his mission. Is Gondo a murderer? Yes and no. His takeover will murder his competition and probably end in disgrace and seppuku for the losers, but this is well within legal and moral limits of the law. Gondo is not the one to wield the executioner’s sword, but he casts the penumbra of the grim reaper, bringing about their doom. But it’s all ok, when you swim with sharks you expect to get bitten.

Ginjiro haunts the dregs of society, born at the bottom rung of a ragged social ladder through no fault of his own, and plans to use the money to escape this hell. When he recovers the satchel full of money, he plans a hostile takeover himself. His conspirators are drug addicts and Ginjiro supplies them with pure heroine which results in their death from overdose. He doesn’t administer the deadly needle to the vein, he is only the harbinger of their doom. I suppose when you swim with sharks you should also expect to become chum. What becomes acceptable in the business world now become illegal in the criminal underworld: are these worlds of heaven and hell really that different?

Yes. Ginjiro is captured and sentenced to death while Gondo is hailed as a hero, losing his company for he sake of a child. Though this public impression is not totally true, there is little doubt Gondo welcomes the illusion. But Gondo decides to visit Ginjiro in prison, the first meeting between the two characters in the entire film. What he sees is not a reflection but a subjugation, two images that become one. Not two sides of the same coin but a rare double impression which blurs identity, now conjoined in both act and intent.

Final Grade: (A+)

BOY (Nagisa Oshima, 1969, Japan)

2012-01-14T13:35:00.000-05:00

A boy is caught in a precarious nexus between patriarchal authority and maternal inferiority, an abused and nameless shell drowning in a sea of domestic untranquility. Director Nagisa Oshima’s Stygian dramaturgy masquerades as melodrama but runs deep with polemic, a political and social tragedy where an abandoned family becomes metaphor that juxtaposes Japan’s toxic past and brutal social mores, suffocating the present tense.

Oshima's use of a static camera allows a voyeuristic view into the dysfunction of the microcosm, a prescient cinematic style that predates "reality TV" where the act of filming alters the very subject, a quantum deception that subverts objective and subjective observation. But Oshima shatters the image with an enigmatic soundtrack of playful rhymes and vibrato ghosts, projecting reality but embracing illusion. BOY seems like a familial and humanist drama, rather superficial and mundane linear plot, but contains poisonous subtext in the narrative core: one just has to bite deep enough. Each scene is blocked perfectly though the freedom of movement is fluid and natural, allowing balanced compositions of empty space or oblique angles to contradict or enhance characters and action. The boy is tiny and often lost amid the wide angle shots, insignificant against the monolithic city and its machine heart. Oshima's mise-en-scene is a Revelation, an Armageddon of paternity where a father is dictator not only bringing life but ordering its abortion.

The boy's nuclear family reaches critical mass as the police close in upon their scam, chasing them to the very edge of their world. A series of petty scams, faking accidents then asking for payoff from unsuspecting motorists, becomes a temporary (and lucrative) livelihood. Oshima is not limited to indicting the mother and father, he also depicts the "victims" as fait accompli: they would rather pay off the family then report to police or insurance companies. The few who attempt to follow protocol are bullied with guilt until they comply, but this doesn't lessen their responsibility. The boy and his baby brother are never addressed as people by their parents, never given human nomenclature or identity, so a small child dreams of a galaxy far far away, where his true kin will someday come and take him home. For now, he's trapped in a Pater Ex Machina.

Final Grade: (A)

THE DEAD (John Huston, 1987, Ireland)

2012-01-11T18:42:00.000-05:00

The bleating of lambs mournful and lost, echoes from the past whose whisper speaks of the grave, where all love dies. Director John Huston’s swan song is an epiphany of cinematic delight haunted by mortality and the voices of the dead. Adapted from James Joyce novella, Huston captures the quicksilver spirit of Joyce’s prose without padding the story or overextending the tale, diluting its powerful insight: the film is exactly the correct length at 80 minutes.

Huston’s attention to period detail is amazing, as the household, props, makeup, language, and casting are flawless, the silver screen like a window in time. The actors themselves seem imbued with the ghosts of a past time, as if they lived a hundred years ago. Huston allows his camera to slowly wander through the dinner party, eavesdropping on conversations, moving from one person to the next. The dialogue often overlaps and bleeds into other conversations, making the audience participant in the drama. The story is spiced with humor when the drunken Freddy stumbles in, good natured but embarrassingly incoherent. The narrative exposes many different characters but gradually focuses upon George, a man aloof and trapped in thought though we are not privileged to share his isolated thoughts…yet. The dinner party’s conversation ebbs and recedes like a vocal tide, the genial chatter hypnotic while the clinking of silverware on china or an awkward silence becomes an exclamation point.

As George and his wife Gretta prepare to leave the party, she becomes possessed by some ethereal spirit, awakened by the solemn lyricism of a song. Perplexed, George stares at her framed in a wonderful composition before the glowing plate glass window, the vibrant colors surrounding her body like a vision of the Virgin Mary. Later in their room, Gretta is inspired to tell her husband of a young man named Michael Fuery who froze to death proclaiming his love to her many years ago, as the dead still whisper to the living. She cries herself to sleep and George is left confused, starring into the dark night of the soul, realizing that he doesn’t love his wife with such commitment and, in some ways, they are strangers to each other.

As the snow falls over Ireland, truth and fiction collide and George’s lamenting epiphany becomes John Huston’s epitaph.

Final Grade: (A)

SUPER 8 (J. J. Abrams, 2011, USA)

2012-01-07T11:44:00.000-05:00

Even the poster has blue lens flares!

A group of kids must suffer through the conventions of a Spielbergian science fiction melodrama to learn that grief is universal. J.J. Abrams pays homage to all of the worst clichés of his cinementor in between the ear shattering bombast of a Blockbuster!, an admixture of PG knee jerking violence and tear jerking motives. SUPER 8 is a superficial adventure that manipulates childhood trauma into a plot device that sets our inner alien free.

So what does the film get right? The young actors are excellent and Abrams seems to direct them casually, and it’s not difficult to imagine that this group are friends. Their conversations seem unscripted and spontaneous (though the adults are one dimensional morons). The two leads are able to promote pathos while being burdened with trite dialogue. Here again, the adults infuse the narrative with only bathos, inanimate objects infused with pathetic fallacy.

The rest of the story is a conflated mess that utilizes magic as an end to the means. It denies any real emotional impact in representing childhood trauma and instead parades cardboard cutouts in place of characters, giving the movie a video game mentality. I’m not sure why every science fiction film believes that the creature piloting the space craft can actually build it. I’m sure Neil Armstrong is a super intelligent guy but I doubt he could reconstitute the Apollo 11 from spare parts…especially alien spare parts. I also find it disturbing that the movie seems to be saying that the boy and his father, after suffering such a tragic loss, must “let go” of their grief. This elevates the message to the Spielbergian realm of pure emotional manipulation that is outright wrong, a pop psychology cure as sweet as a candy and just as sickly filling.

The movie, like the alien, is just too big and loud that not only stretches credulity but deforms it. I guess no one could see a 20 ft monster running around the city for a few days? It smashes cars, kidnaps people (wtf?), breaks into stores and steals electronics while no one witnesses these events or even questions the magnitude of the crimes. And what did the alien do with the hundreds of tons of dirt while digging his cavern? And how did all of the metal reform into the exact space craft that was depicted in the professor’s videos? What was the point of the Rubik’s-like cubes? And how in the world did the professor survive a head-on collision with a speeding train? The movie buries its logic under a screeching cacophony ("phony" being the nominative) of grinding metal and two vapid faux Pas (stupid pun alluding to the poorly written “fake” father figures). And if I see another blue lens flair I will fucking scream!

SUPER 8 is too big and empty of any cinematic calories, a summer snack that seems tasty when eaten but is nearly impossible to digest.

Final Grade: (D)

1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976, Italy)

2012-01-02T10:17:00.000-05:00

Two twentieth-century boys become separated by social and political war, existing in a purgatory of violent schisms dominated by sadism and entitlement. Bernardo Bertolucci simplifies the complexities of history by presenting the formula of Fascism, elemental ingredients of a tenure of terror born in the very DNA of the two protagonists, brothers by oath and enemies by obligation.
Olmo and Alfredo share the same birthday and birthplace, separated by a social hierarchy as natural as the very ground that the farmers till with calloused hands. As children they think like children, together and free to defy their elders and dream of escaping their bondage. But the storm of reality breaks upon them with the Great War, fragmenting their hopes and desires, an explosive and divisive conflict where each chooses his predetermined role...which is no choice at all. Olmo goes off to fight for family and country while Alfredo remains behind on the farm under the tutelage of his father, the Deus Ex farm Machina. Though they are eventually reunited, they have grown too far apart socially and politically, a battle that will rage for the remainder of their lives.

Two scene is particular show this chasm that divides Olmo and Alfredo, a dark scar that remains where they’ve been emotionally and intellectually cut apart. The first involves a prostitute that they intend to share, a beautiful lass who massages their manhood equally, but is soon corrupted by a toxic flaw in her genetic code: they are always unable to share peace (or a piece). The other concerns the fascist overlord Attila who mercilessly beats Olmo while Alfredo becomes spectator, grieving for his friend but also for himself, unable to exert control over his supposed employee. Alfredo realizes the tenuous position of his family (and all landowners) in this violent new economy.

Bertolucci’s golden cinematography is refracted by the lens of nostalgia, utilizing the farm as microcosm of Italy’s pre and post war social ills. He often visually equates the Padrone and his progeny with bloated cows and the fascists with gutted and squealing pigs, while the farmers are juxtaposed with clanking machinery of this social war, replacements who work not for money (or pride) but gasoline. The acting is dramatically overindulgent, and while Gerard Depardieu and Burt Lancaster seem comfortable with this hyper-realism, Robert DeNiro seems to sleepwalk through his lines an Donald Sutherland borders on camp. It’s a technical blemish but easily overlooked due to the power of the story and elegance of compositions.

The story comes full circle on the eve of Germany’s destruction as the fascists and wealthy landowners are razed, and in a wonderful crane shot Olmo and Alfredo continue the eternal struggle between classes, diminishing and diminutive. A jump cut then shows them as old men, jousting and cursing each other, until Alfredo wanders to the train tracks to relive a moment of his youth. But even he cannot stop the momentum of the future and lays his head to rest...one final time.

Final Grade: (B+)

FALLEN ANGELS (Wong Kar-wai, 1995, Hong Kong)

2011-12-29T19:12:00.000-05:00

All the lonely people, where do they come from? All the lonely people, where do they belong? Wong Kar-wai’s frenetic tableau is a synergy of moving parts that seem to go nowhere, souls oversaturated with romantic despair devoid of faux sentimentality, trapped in the now here. As Kar-wai waxes poetic about things pathetic, he is still able to imbue the characters with hope and humor, raging against the dying of the neon lights and pale glitter, where laughter subsumes pathos.

Disenchanted spirits haunting the garden of Earthly delights, close but so far away from each other, a gangster shoots his way to redemption and a mute mimes his way to salvation. Wong Chi-min is a contract killer whose ethereal partner haunts the periphery of his life, a beautifully cool and sinister woman who hides in plain site behind dark sunglasses, her long thick hair often obscuring her face. They are connected by violence and duty, like a pistol and it's hollow point ammunition: neither complete without the other. It's no coincidence that she remains nameless, an avatar for the restless and reckless despair coursing through the veins of a lonely woman, like neon gas through a white hot placard.

He Zhiwu manifests in a parallel story, a young man who is mute because of childhood trauma with spoiled pineapples, and searches for a human touch in a world of clenched fists. He breaks into shops after hours and forces random people to purchase his wares, forcing customers to eat ice cream all night. Disenfranchised from others, he becomes fascinated with a manic girl who lives her life through a phone, her heartbeat a shrill and tenuous vibrato that echoes from a tiny earpiece. These and many other characters bounce around and collide in a world of millions of people, creating a brief single spark that soon fades away, sometimes immeasurable and insubstantial.

Wong Kar-wai creates frisson by juxtaposing these beautiful images upon a soulful soundtrack, then cuts with a frantic energy that leaves the viewer breathless and exhausted. To accentuate the character’s isolation, sex is shown only in two masturbatory scenes, denuding this sensual exertion to a physical desertion devoid of reciprocation. As they struggle to find love it sometimes shows up in the strangest places, discovered when least expected. A simple gesture attains the sublime.

Final Grade: (B+)

THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION (W.D. Richter, 1984, USA)

2011-12-24T09:00:00.000-05:00

A frenetically puerile comic book adventure, BUCKAROO BANZAI successfully travels across the 8th dimension of serious science fiction and campy action flick. This would make a great double feature with John Carpenter’s BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA. Buckaroo is a world renowned brain surgeon, race car driver, scientist, adventurer, and rock star….from New Jersey. There is really a rather intelligent and often convoluted plot involving Orson Welles and the original War of the Worlds radio broadcast, Red and black Lectroids from Planet Ten, an Oscillation Overthruster, the United States Government Weapons Program, nuclear extortion, Penny Priddy (the secret twin of Buckaroo’s deceased wife), the Radar Rangers, The Rug Suckers, The Blue Blaze Irregulars, Nova Police and the Hong Kong Cavaliers. And we can’t forget Jeff Goldblum in his blazing red shirt and chaps!

B. Banzai follows in his father's tire tracks and races through solid rock and into the 8th Dimension, where volatile life exists between the vast spaces of atoms and quarks. These evil creatures from Planet 10, once justly imprisoned by their peers, now seek to steal Banzai's Oscillation Overthruster and escape to their home world to wreak havoc and imbibe of cruel cold revenge. When Buckaroo stumbles into this vast conspiracy, he must save the Earth from nuclear anarchy and Planet 10 from genocide. Or something like that.

This audacious amalgam of genre conventions is successful because it takes itself seriously and refuses to be self-referencing: there are no subtle nods or winks towards the audience to break the illusion. The actors and director play it straight with ironic humor and crosscutting suspense. The attention to set detail and characters makes this zany world seem larger than the screen; we accept that even the President is awed by this New World Man. John Lithgow’s performance as the possessed Dr. Lizardo is gleefully berserk but perfectly within character of the demented and deranged scientist. The plot develops quickly and the catapults towards the violent conclusion leaving the audience a bit dazed and breathless not sure what to expect around the next corner. The dated synthesizer score (and wardrobe!) adds an 80’s pop culture veneer to this madcap adventure. Unfortunately, the Buckaroo Banzai sequel was never filmed: now that’s a crime!

Final Grade: (B)

CROSS OF IRON (Sam Peckinpah, 1977, UK)

2011-12-18T13:20:00.002-05:00

Two soldiers brought together by war but separated by birthright: one's honor forged by sacrifice and the other's honor sacrificed upon an iron cross. Sam Peckinpah's only war film is more than an orgy of shrapnel and bloodshed, it is an incisive characterization of the German soldiers fighting for God and country, men sunk in the misery of a failed campaign who curse their Nazi übermensch yet stand up for one another. Peckinpah transcends cliché to present the Axis side of the Second World War that is not much different than our own: men fight and die while the generals dictate murderous doctrine.

The opening credit montage of black and white stock war footage is juxtaposed with German children chanting a playful rhyme, testimony to the virulent indoctrination of Hitler Youth who grow into violent men. Peckinpah then cuts in narrative scenes while adding blood red color to the swastika, triumphantly carried in Romanesque parades. Soon, we're on the eastern Front with a rag-tag band of German soldiers ready to ambush a Russian artillery unit. After a fierce firefight, they capture a young boy and bring him back to their bunker. Peckinpah confounds expectations in the first act as he leads the story towards melodrama, tough soldiers bonding with an enemy child, and tears it apart with the shrapnel of irony: the boy is released and shot by his own troops. All sentimentality is gone and the film thrusts each character (and the audience) into senseless and explosive vignettes that begin to form a corpus delecti.

The conflict involves much more than enemy soldiers: this is about class warfare. Sgt. Steiner is an elementary warrior whose victories are written upon his sunken visage, a face hollowed out from the ravages of combat, as if he is being eaten from the inside by virus. He has earned his Iron Cross by luck and leadership, sharpened like a steel bayonet in the bloody trenches. He is contrasted with Capt. Stransky, a Prussian noble whose milk fed life is one of entitlement without honor or merit. He demands a medal to further his military career and social standing, his manhood like a decoration to be flaunted. Through error and trial Stransky and Steiner carry out their orders, while one is action the other stagnation. Sgt. Steiner is the one who leads Capt. Stransky into the breach, towards certain death, and into the fertile fields where the iron crosses grow.

Final Grade: (B+)

IKARIE XB-1 (Jindrich Polak, Czechoslovakia, 1963)

2011-12-07T21:27:00.000-05:00

A group of intrepid astronauts go where no man or woman has gone before, seeking the future but finding only a dead and decrepit past. But hope springs eternal like radiation emanating from an invisible star.

This Czech science fiction film considers the reality of space travel and its effect upon the human psyche, as the empty dead spaces between stars is filled with despair and a longing for Mother Earth’s embrace. The story doesn’t defend itself with hard science but simply runs on a theorem of plausibility, where future shock is measured by faster than light travel, a three year journey from Earth to Alpha Centari. One interesting idea is the use of olfactory senses to ease homesickness, utilizing a tube of “chapstick” that contains the memories of green pastures and fresh air. The corridors of the ship are monitored by the ubiquitous eye of the ship’s computer, an authoritative voice that becomes neither murderous nor defective. The SPFX are dated but very good for their time (though plastic models wobble through space) but it’s the attention to interior details and set designs that make the film believable. From the all-seeing eye of the computer to the architecture, it seems like Stanley Kubrick and Douglas Trumbull modeled their odyssey from this template.

The plot touches the surface of melodrama with a young couple desperate in love, another’s bitter jealousy, and a secret pregnancy but resists the gravitational pull of romantic convention. The story stays focused upon a maddening officer who has lost his mind, and a discovery that will change the human race. In one scene, they discover a derelict spacecraft and it’s assumed to be alien. Two astronauts go aboard the vessel and realize it’s from Earth, a hundred years in their past. A surreal scene evolves in this dark coffin, where corpses reveal a decomposing world of authority circa 1987. Even here, billions of miles from home, the human race cannot escape itself.

Finally, a dark Star vomits its deadly radiation causing the crew to slowly pass out and expire, unable to turn back. But they will soon awake into a New World.

Final Grade: (B+)

TOUCH OF EVIL (Orson Welles, 1958, USA)

2011-12-04T09:25:00.000-05:00

In the explosive purgatory between moral boundaries, two men seek Justice by different means: one servant to the Rule of Law and the other...master. This is dynamite in a shoebox. Orson Welles' sweaty and grimy moral epic vivisects seemingly two disparate men, cops who fight with the same sledgehammer conviction of their acts. Vargas is a young swashbuckling detective who is bound to a rigid code of justification who must bring down Quinlan, a shambling mound of a corrupt officer who is suddenly at an end to his means. But is Quinlan touched by evil, or fully embraced? Welles offer no answer to this film steeped in ambiguity and outrage, just the oblique statement that Quinlan was, "some kind of a man".

Welles's direction is beautifully expressionist, from the nearly ten minute opening tracking shot (considered one of cinema's finest moments!) to the dominating low angle caricatures, he signs his celluloid creation with a signature style. Once again, Welles use of mumbling and overlapping dialogue adds a tempestuous realism to the drama. Diagetic sound and Henry Mancini’s evocative score drifts together like smoke in a seedy barroom. In this monochrome world of nebulous boundaries, between both men and their countries, nothing is black and white. Here is a modern world of cyclopean derricks loitering in the darkness, pumping blood from the earth for profit. And Welles is not without humor, twice commenting on Charlton Heston's obviously faux-Mexicana with acerbic wit.

Though visually and aurally striking and masterful, the true focus of Welles’ vision is Shakespearean tragedy, as two men physically embody their respective mortal morality. Make no mistake, Vargas is the democratic viewpoint, idealized but Just, his actions on the higher ground. But the film isn't about Vargas or the crime syndicate he prosecutes, it's about Quinlan and his rationale, a beast of burden who carries the guilt of the damned while protecting the blood of the innocents. Quinlan is caught planting evidence, framing a frustrated lover caught in his own biracial intercourse (a striking parallel to Vargas and his American wife). He is “aiding Justice”, ensuring that truly guilty men are convicted beyond his reasonable doubt, not framing innocents for profit or sadism. This lumbering and emotionally crippled giant sinks into desperate acts and still maintains some legacy of sympathy: it seems his wife's murder set him on his vendetta of just cause. Even as he washes his hands of sin and chokes a final testament, he still feels that convicting evil men at any cost is worth the price. Quinlan has become the abyss. What does it matter what you say about anybody?

Final Grade: (A+)

DAS BOOT (Wolfgang Petersen, 1981, Germany)

2011-11-27T18:28:00.000-05:00

Men buried at sea in a steel coffin, confined to a hellish existence where lungs expand with diesel fumes and the hearts contract with the pressure of fear. The glory days of the wolfpack are gone, where the Swastika once rose over the breakwaters of victory it now drowns in a sea of violent desperation.

Wolfgang Peterson directs this ironic and iconic tale of U-Boat crew who must bond as soldiers and men, learn to co-exists in a metal microcosm where political ideologies are relegated to flyspecked photographs staring with impotence, echoing hollow fanaticism ignoble and abhorred. The story's axis balances upon a naive journalist full of patriotic fury, who wishes to write an expose about these sunken heroes of the Fatherland. Lt. Werner documents by turning ink and paper into flesh and blood, the swift curl of cursive characters transformed into real men who sweat cold fear, bleeding faith but praying for luck. This baby-faced correspondent learns that war is simple men murdering for their country, a rude awakening from the sleep of the unjust. By the film's end, he is tarnished by iron reality, patriotism soured with a healthy respect for the enemy, his heartbeat a sonic ping tight with tension torn apart by emotional depth charges.

Though the story is mainly told from Lt. Werner's perspective, the film belongs to the Commander who is simply referred to by rank, a man who carries the weight of responsibility like an iron cross around his neck. His face seems hollowed out, sunken, eaten from the inside and scarred from the ravages of war and dis-ease. He is as solid as his vessel, able to withstand the absolute pressures of combat, but dreams of sailing tall ships like a ghost from another time haunting the waves. He sees his men become one entity, boys born into men, acting together to survive by following orders and routine. But every man has his breaking point and even the most rugged veteran falls in this psychological warfare, as minds twist and crack at the seams.

DAS BOOT may fall at times into cliché and balance on the precipice of melodrama, but the tight compositions crush with claustrophobia and imbue the film with a subliminal tension. Peterson’s intention may have been to create a film so realistic that it would demonize war, but it can be seen as a patriotic salute to a bleak time in German history when men became heroes despite their insane Fuhrer. The final irony dilutes this perception however, as these men suffer an ignoble end.

Final Grade: (B+)

ALL NIGHT LONG (Basil Dearden, 1962, UK)

2011-11-24T09:02:00.000-05:00

Johnny Cousins plays more than just the drums; he orchestrates a performance of emotional percussion, where love is transformed into adulterating violence. Basil Dearden’s odyssey is a melting pot (and another kind of pot) of Shakespearean tragedy and swinging London jazz, a prescient melodrama where biracial relationships are accepted without question and Big Business seeks to consume artistic merit.

Dearden sets his film amid a single apartment with the exception of the opening and closing shots, creating a wonderful atmosphere of beneficent socialism that slowly turns to a choking claustrophobia. The film’s rhythm is a seemingly live improv jazz score played within the confines of the narrative, as legends such as Charles Mingus and Dave Brubeck (playing themselves) take center stage for their share of close ups. The wonderful cast includes not only many other great musicians but Richard Attenborough and the eclectic Patrick McGoohan. But make no mistake; McGoohan steals the film as the Iago counterpart Johnny Cousins, his rimshot dialogue setting the tone and disrupting emotional harmony. McGoohan’s intensity burns like napalm, every word a weapon: he makes a simple act of walking up the stairs an act of defiance…or attrition.

Cousins seeks to destroy the familial bond between Rex and Delia for his own diabolical profit, preaching the fine art of self-destruction. The final act moves with clockwork precision, as Rex abandons his marital throne to jealousy’s conceit, where Cass and Delia pay the brutal price. But it’s Johnny who is fatally damaged, not only losing his marriage but more sadly, losing himself.

Final Grade: (B+)

EL TOPO (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970, Mexico)

2011-11-22T17:56:00.000-05:00

A gunman surrenders to his lust and must complete an epic journey, much like King Arthur, to seek fulfillment and drink from his holy grail. Creator Alexander Jodorowsky's metaphysical graffiti copulates with surreal images and births a lurid and tempestuous hybrid of genre and genuflection, anarchy in spurs.

The lone gunman of the apocalypse is a mole digging through the dirt of revelation, seeking justice in a desert world where saints are victims to sinners, his six gun salvation tolls of his own destruction. Once El Topo gives himself to a woman he becomes slave to bodily desires: this is not the woman's fault, it is his. His feminine soul dressed in black leather, a husky voice commanding obedience with love and violence, leads him to a crumbling bridge over troubled prairies, where El Topo is crucified with lead, deconstructed by his own tools. This is the Genesis of a great man who must die to be reborn...in what form? Is he angel with a sword of fire or does he bring forgiveness through intervention?

The second verse brings the godhead to flesh, psalms for alms, as the nameless protagonist is no longer a dangerous gunman but has become greater by becoming smaller. With his tiny bride, he begs and dances for money, a surrender without giving his true self away. His love is now healthy and complete, not driven by lust or selfishness but shared and gentle. Together, they save their copper cents to buy tools to dig the tunnel to connect the dark underworld to the blistering Sodom. But even good intentions lead to corrupt results, as the surface dwellers who represent the "norm" prove to be crippled and diseased, a disguise defined by the status quo and exposed by their inhumane behavior. And the nameless little man's self immolating protest burns into the consciousness, a harbinger of total war, a ghost of Vietnam. His son assumes his father's responsibility and rides away into the sunset, clad in black leather, an echo of his father's last will and elemental testament.

Jodorowsky utilizes Sergio Leone's style and twist it into surreal parody, showing contempt for form but delivering his own unique message like a secret code embedded in the narrative strata. He uses a simple and recognizable structure, a gunfighter seeking to avenge the poor and disenfranchised, to lure the viewer into this dark night of the soul. EL TOPO cannot be understood by deciphering every scene, by explaining every detail or nuance, but by experiencing as a whole; allowing the mise en scene to complete an entire picture. Once broken down into basic elements, the journey becomes toxic like multiple interpretations of inane Holy Books. Jodorowsky allows each viewer a chance to crawl out from under the rock and taste the sweet honey.

Final Grade: (B+)

DEEP RED (Dario Argento, 1975, Italy)

2011-11-19T16:58:00.000-05:00

A pianist must use his delicate hands to scrape away a mystery, revealing the bones of forgotten crime beneath plaster and paint. Dario Argento's Hitchcockian thriller is an admixture of Aphroditic humor and gruesome Thanatos, a bubbling cauldron of sexual innuendo and bloody in your-end-o.

Marcus Daly is a transplanted Englishman who witnesses a murder, and with the help of a feminist reporter he must solve the crime before he becomes victim of it. Argento once again questions reality and perspective, as Daly struggles to remember vital details (such as a painting) lost amid the convolutions of his brain, desperately trying to discover the electrical impulse that powers specific neurotransmitters, but left with a void in the synapse. His drunken friend is of little use as his recollection can be found at the bottom of a bottle, a ninety-proof memory. Between teeth chattering, face scalding, and hatchet wielding murder scenarios Daly must fend off the sexual advances of a rather cute reporter who tries desperately to bed him. This humor releases volatile tension and becomes important to the atmosphere of thick humors, expunging another type of bodily fluid.

The film is perfectly paced (this is the longer Italian cut) and each scenario dazzling and eerily beautiful, the murders shown in gruesome detail. The opening scene of domestic violence subsumes expected tranquility, as a creeping shadow cast larger than life commits it’s own violent covenant, and a child is left with the Christmas aftermath. Argento holds back vital clues and information from Daly and the viewer, leading the story from the haunted halls of a deserted villa to Leonardo Da Vinci’s childish scrawl. The subtext of feminine empowerment and equality plays an important role in solving the mystery, a nice twist in the narrative knot.

Marcus Daly is forced to reconsider his views on feminism and entitlement, as he finally sees his true self reflected in deep red.

Final Grade: (B+)

BOOM! (Joseph Losey, 1968, UK)

2011-11-17T20:01:00.000-05:00

An aging heiress isolates herself from the world, courted by Death, fighting against the dying of the light. Joseph Losey directs this Tennessee William’s melodrama with technical brilliance, utilizing subtle tracking shots and deep focus compositions, allowing Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton to create in the moment: artists composing Art...but not always good Art.

Taylor plays Flora GoForth, a woman whose emotional polarity opposes Capote’s delicate heroine Holly GoLightly, heir to the misfortunes of millions of dead and millions of dollars. She is surrounded by the booming sea atop a steep cliff, like Zeus perched upon Mt. Olympus and just as disconnected from the world. Into this delirium stumbles Angelo Del Morte, subtly characterized by Burton, a struggling artist whose desires to force emotional contact with the aging and tumultuous Madame. The story becomes one of intent, good or evil, as the consequences are predetermined.

Taylor’s performance is aggressively exaggerated, infusing GoForth with a despicable intensity that is difficult to overcome. But her soft eyes betray a frightened humanity hiding behind the power of abuse and entitlement. Taylor wanders too close to Camp instead of forthright melodrama but Burton eases into his role with elusive charm, grounding the film before it careens out of control entirely. Though their synergy is electric and shocking, the fault lies in the fact that Taylor is too young for her role and Burton too old! The story begins to make sense if imagined as HAROLD AND MAUDE instead of WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLFE, as GoForth should be much older than her suitor whose jeweled intentions are often questioned and condemned. He is Death given flesh: a harbinger of doom or angel bringing peace?

Final Grade: (C)

THE KILLING (Stanley Kubrick, 1956, USA)

2011-11-06T08:17:00.000-05:00

Originally published at Kevyn Knox's ultracool blog THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FRAUD IN TH WORLD.

Stanley Kubrick gives the film-noir genre a new twist with a jigsaw narrative layered with quick tough dialogue penned by crime aficionado Jim Thompson. His classic tracking shots and low angle photography are works in progress here but the potential is unmistakable.

Sterling Hayden as Johnny Clay is tough and likable as the gang leader but we’re never allowed intimacy with him or any other character, a device that Kubrick later perfected. Though we are shown some insight into the lives of the participants such as the bartender whose wife is dying of cancer, George and his femme fatale wife, and Johnny and his adoring girlfriend, the camera gives them too much distance for the viewer to make any real connection.

The non-linear timeline pieces the robbery together, sometimes reliving the same event from other perspectives. What makes this interesting is that we are never privy to the plot; we watch it come together like a puzzle until a coherent picture is formed. Kubrick uses a voice-over to keep us on schedule and to explain timing of events but the narrator is imperfect: we are told at 7:00 AM “Johnny began what could be the last day of his life” during a scene between he and his cohort Marv. Later Johnny arrives at the airport and the narrator announces the time as 7:00 AM. I believe Kubrick was breaking with convention by purposely conveying false information from what is typically a neutral omniscient voice. This ominous “mistake” foreshadows the violence and betrayal soon to follow.

Per film-noir expectations, the wicked woman leads the men to destruction with her conniving, greed, and sexual manipulation. The pounding score ups the ante and creates suspense as the tragedy unfolds. Does anyone else think that Timothy Carey was a greatly underrated actor? Finally Clay's dirty deeds are scrubbed clean by propeller wash.

Final Grade: (B +)

THE TREE OF LIFE (Terrence Malick, 2011, USA)

2011-11-02T20:04:00.000-04:00

The story of a man who could live 65 lifetimes and feel it could still be better. Patchwork memories that haunt the convolutions of the brain, the soul a ghost lost in the temporal network of neurons and synapses, like a warm breeze trapped in the steel and glass valleys of mid-life. Here, a boy still exists within this schism, struggling between shame and respect, affection and hate, and the fear of discovering that his father is all too human, fragile, imperfect. Now he has become a man who is so like his father that he despises himself, caught in a life of doing instead of being, gaining material success but losing himself in the process.

Terence Malick's spatial odyssey evokes the metaphysical dream worlds of Tarkovsky, the spiritual malaise of Bresson, and even the echo of Lynch’s nightmarish subjective monologue, all the while retaining his own vision through a glass clearly, eschewing linear movement and capturing the etherealness of existence from the Big Bang to Sol’s final whisper. The grandiose cinematography is the story, vignettes refracted through subjective impressions, weaving every grain of sand and fallen leaf into a tapestry of life. People in search of a Prime Mover in a desperate attempt to catalogue their world, to make sense of the nonsensical, renaming fear as faith.

Malick captures lightning in a bottle, the ethereal penumbra of childhood whose shadows lurk in the bright corners of our mind, flash reflections like heat lightening on a summer night. This small Texas town is ubiquitous both in place and time, and the restlessness inherent in our human condition blinds with curiosity, ignorance, and bitter affection. Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Sean Penn, and especially Hunter McCracken breath life into the clay of their characters, transcending the borders of the frame where life isn't confined to a specific aspect ration. Jack becomes an architect, a designer himself, manipulating the world into his vision. As he struggles with understanding this volatile world and coming to grips with his past, he finally sees nature reflected in the steel and glass buildings. With a slight smile of epiphany he realizes that modernity isn't in conflict with nature, it is an elemental ingredient.

Final Grade: (A+)

RACE WITH THE DEVIL (Jack Starrett, 1975, USA)

2011-10-30T13:12:00.000-04:00

Jack Starret’s classic B-film gem sports one of the best tag lines ever: If you're going to race with the devil, you've got to be as fast as Hell! Peter Fonda and Warren Oates take their wives on the best damn vacation ever, a cross country journey from Texas to Colorado in their new RV. Somewhere along the way, they pull of the road for the night and set camp in an isolated clearing. After racing their motorcycles and drinking beer, they settle down to relax and witness a satanic orgy…that ends in a bloody sacrifice.

Thus the race odyssey begins.

The remaining 50+ minutes is a mixture of suspense and outright terror as the Deliverance-like cultists seem to be everywhere: from the local sheriff to the tourists at the camp ground! This ubiquitous sense of unease is truly unnerving: every smile, glance, or greeting seems to have ominous undertones.

The action is violent and brutal with close-up camerawork in the narrow confines of the RV. Though this is a chase movie, the screenplay really focuses on the sense of dread and abandonment…strangers in a strange land. When the action sequences happen you have a personal connection and can feel the fear dripping from their pores. My only serious complaint is that Loretta Swit and Laura Parker are relegated to the roles of stereotypical screaming women. Otherwise, a great 70’s B-movie that outruns many contemporary action flicks!

Final grade: (B)

THE THING (John Carpenter, 1982, USA)

2011-10-29T10:37:00.000-04:00

A Cold War is fought in the Antarctic by an American research team who must battle a shape-shifting invader, a gruesome horror that absorbs its victims, both physically and mentally, and subverts the social structure from within. This classic film begins with a helicopter rising over stark jagged mountains chasing a seemingly innocuous Husky; then almost subliminally, Ennio Morricone’s eerie synthesizer score creeps into our subconscious and we realize that all is not what is seems. When the alien finally reveals itself in an awesome display of slime, blood, tentacles, and gore, the infiltration has already begun.

John Carpenter has created a sublime terror, an emotional tremor more powerful than any alien monstrosity because the enemy is unseen: it could be your best friend…or even yourself. As the death toll rises accusations begin to undermine their fraternity, and MacReady must discover a way to distinguish the human from the inhuman. In this truly fascinating and complex scene, blood samples are drawn and tested with a hot needle. Each character, especially the ones who are human, shows absolute relief as if expecting themselves to be revealed as monsters: how devastating to be unsure of your own identity.

The true power of the film is in the disintegration of Authority reflective of Reagan Era America, where the proletariat can no longer trust those in control; we’re still suffering the consequences from Oakland to Wall Street. Here, in the cold charnel house of Antarctica, it is MacReady the helicopter pilot and Childs the mechanic who potentially saves the human race, not the fierce leader with his “pop” gun. Carpenter’s nihilistic social commentary is perfectly revealed in the ambiguous conclusion, as MacReady and Childs confront one another, they futilely wonder, “Who goes there?” The only answer is a slow fade to black.

Final Grade: (A)

THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN (Bernard McEveety, 1971, USA)

2011-10-26T20:11:00.002-04:00

A small town is reduced to an abattoir where stinking corpses are preserved with dry ice, and black magic eclipses the rising Son. Veteran TV director Bernard McEveety helms this supernatural tale of paranoia and dread set amid Our Town, creating a viable tension that superimposes Satanism with the corrupting counterculture and its deleterious effects upon the children of a lost generation. This poisoned seed is planted in Anytown, USA and blossoms into a village of the damned.

The bedeviling plot is a conventional exercise in satanic tropes, where a secret coven of witches and warlocks conspire towards immortality. Silver chalices, Pagan symbols, black cloaks and red robes set amid some secret antechamber in an abandoned house make for a visually repetitive setting. What makes the film interesting is Strother Martin’s diabolically gleeful performance as the leader of this brazen coven, and the use of benign children’s toys as murder weapons.

The opening sequence is a close-up of a toy tank screaming its war cry with childlike fervor, clicking and clacking tiny gears and plastic treads (a really cool toy, too!). But we hear screams off screen and the crunching of steel and bone, as a real tank crushes a car with the people trapped helplessly inside. This cuts back and forth, from the toy to the large tank as giant tracks grind metal and tear flesh. Finally, a child comes and picks up the toy leaving behind a bloody massacre and mysterious tank tracks like an exclamation point at the end of a life sentence. And it’s into this maelstrom that the protagonists are eventually driven by supernatural forces, emanating not from above but from the hellish depths of the abyss.

Small town America is plagued by the murder of its adult townsfolk and the disappearance of the children. LQ Jones, the versatile stuntman and character actor whose name nobody knows but face everyone remembers, plays the county sheriff trying to solve this gruesome mystery. Jones is also known for directing the Harlan Ellison post-apocalyptic tale A BOY AND HIS DOG (reviewed here in the Korova also). The film eschews a score to heighten tension and instead allows the silences between actions to carry dead weight, or the soft patter of raindrops whispering in the chill night air to create discomfort and unease. And it works. A surreal dream sequence isn’t the most frightening aspect of the story, but the bizarre orange monkey, a doll whose yellow face and ears are a ghastly death mask cradled in the arms of a child. Like a baby cuckoo, firmly nested in the care of its victim whom it shall soon consume.

The Brotherhood performs its secret ceremony and meets their fate at the end of fiery swords, only to be reborn into the world to carry out Satan’s majestic request.

Final Grade: (C+)

WITCHFINDER GENERAL (Michael Reeves, 1968, UK)

2011-10-23T21:03:00.000-04:00

Two men swear blood oaths to a violent god, seeking deific approval for their murderous acts, intentions tainted by toxic orthodoxy. Michael Reeves' anachronistic tale of witch trials and revenge is a slow burn towards soul consuming conflagration where enlightenment is reduced to ashes and dust.

Two wars rage in England: a Civil War to depose the divine right of Kings, and a religious war that elects murderers and charlatans as Messianic authority. Each preys upon the common man, trapped between biblical verse and Rule of Law sanctioned by the conqueror. Matthew Hopkins, a fine understated performance by Vincent Price, is the harbinger of a dreadful faith where an ethereal god writes human law into coded text. He walks the English countryside, a specter of Death, punishing those accused of witchcraft by scared and jealous magistrates. Blood money courses through his course veins, a grim reaper who extracts lies by torture and names it Truth: he's not saving souls...he's damning his. He rapes a young woman and torture her uncle and must face the Earthly judgment of cold steel and gunpowder. Hopkins is cruel and egocentric, but it's his assistant John Stearne who revels in sadistic pleasure.

Michael Reeves allows the story time to unfold dramatically instead of rushing from one exploitive scene to the next. He places the tale firmly in a historical context, even frames a scene between the protagonist Richard Marshall and the legendary Oliver Cromwell. Though his narrative short-cut redacts the trials of those accused of witchcraft, the point is directly made that petty squabbles and arguments lead from finger pointing to neck stretching verdicts, and the townsfolk who cheer have each escaped their fate, for now. The methods of extracting a confession are steeped in historicity; from stabbing into birthmarks, throwing weakened victims into rivers, and burning at the stake, Reeves shows the brutality in deep red.

Hopkins finally eats his just desserts but here, on the cusp of the Age of Enlightenment, even the victors become victims to despicable violence, where Law is twisted not to serve mankind but powerful men, those touched by the wicked spell of Christianity are left to shout their pain to the heart of an uncaring world.

Final Grade: (B)

COUNT DRACULA (Jesus Franco, 1970, Spain)

2011-10-20T21:20:00.002-04:00

Filmed in 1970, Jess Franco’s version of DRACULA was touted with the tag tine as the most faithful adaptation of Stoker’s classic. Unfortunately, Franco’s film deviates in both plot and subtext by taking liberal narrative short cuts and expunging the sexual riptide that drowns the characters in Victorian guilt and shameful physical desires.

The film begins much like the novel as Jonathan Harker travels to the dank keep of his mysterious benefactor, chagrined at the furtive glances and whispers of the local villagers. Franco is able to build a modicum of suspense though his style quickly becomes visually tiresome: he uses a pan and quick zoom for reaction shots that seems rather clumsy. His style eschews the need for inserts and it would be interesting if used for effect, but it becomes a matter of routine and thus stands out instead of accentuating the emotive response. The first act is enjoyable as Franco transforms dream and reality into Harker’s nightmarish journey into the sepulcher of his unholy host. But the story soon excises all suspense and adventure and unites the major characters at Van Helsing’s (?) Sanitarium. Franco also diminishes the strong willed Lucy to a weak minded victim who fails to partake in the action. And why is Van Helsing relegated to a wheelchair at the midway point, when it plays no role in the outcome of the redacted story? The acting is neither good nor bad, it just is, and Klaus Kinski is sinfully mitigated to a voiceless and static role (though his eyes mirror madness). However, Christopher Lee as the Count is both Lordly and lethal, speaking much of Stoker’s dialogue with the perfection of a Shakespearean performance.

Bruno Nicolai’s score seems a poor man’s Ennio Morricone, more spaghetti western than gothic horror. The music often stands out in opposition to the visual, more aggressive than the motionless story. The cinematography is bland and forgettable, as the compositions are mostly framed in close up. Franco somehow transforms Stoker’s adventure story into stagnant dialogue. The ending of the film is laughable as Styrofoam blocks bounce harmlessly off a horse’s head, and then cut to Gypsies crushed by the cheaply made props.

Final Grade: (D)

SECONDS (John Frankenheimer, 1966, USA)

2011-10-16T09:58:00.001-04:00

Arthur Hamilton loses himself in the drudgery of middle age and conceit, possessed by materialism and success, which have become superficial trappings that resonate in the empty chambers of his aging heart. He is adrift and alone, a wife and daughter can offer no salvation from these distant shores of space, and he must find himself once again…or continue to walk the earth virtually lifeless, a victim to the slow fade of love.

But Arthur gets a Second chance. A phone call from a “deceased” friend sets him up for a new identity, to become not only a different person but start life afresh, to breathe in the sweetness of youth tempered with the wisdom of maturity. He is reborn. But he must shed the guilt of his former life and become Tony Wilson; his old life must remain dead. And buried. Arthur’s change is only superficial and he is still imbued with the same rotting essence; he has not come to terms with the root of his inner conflict, he has only treated the symptoms. Baptized in the wine and passion of free love, he cannot shed his old skin and seeks his old life, only to discover that he was not as loved (or missed) as he thought. Arthur’s second life is now measured in Seconds but his corpse will be put to good use…for the next consumer.

John Frankenheimer films with paranoid and frantic close-ups, his camera moving through crowds like an invisible angry spirit, a vengeful ghost haunting its next victim. He skews identity with mirrored twisting images and surreal hallucinations. This beautiful cinematography reveals Arthur’s confusion and turmoil and his inability to socialize. His inner voice is now mute. The score heightens the tension towards his narcissistic self-destruction and is hammered with irony: as he finally begins the long journey to enlightenment he realizes there are no third chances. In vino veritas: no matter where you go, there you are.

Final Grade: (B+)

NOSTALGHIA (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983, Italy)

2011-10-13T20:04:00.000-04:00

The mathematics of faith reduced to an irreducibly complex equation, where two men become of belief lost in the present tense, yearning for a past once but never was. Andrei Tarkovsky's melancholia is a spiritual melanoma, yearning for a Motherland that drove him away, a place of childhood memories that carry the weight of light and air, like the burden of guilt for loving an abusive parent...but unable to forgive.

Through a dream vapor darkly walks Andrei, a Russian poet who weaves a tapestry of elusive symbols, desperately trying to decipher his own subtext. Andrei's ailing heart beats to its own pentameter, a lonely rhythm without reason or rhyme. He has traveled to Italy to research a 18th century Russian composer, a man who gained his creative freedom in exile only to forfeit his life upon his return to Mother Russia. Here, Andrei meets a mad saint who sacrificed his family to save the world and discovers the volatile Molotov of religious conviction. He drifts casually from his dream world into a shared unreality, confounding identity and purpose, attempting to walk upon water while carrying the hallowed flame. His reflection preaches atop a stone mount, cursing the time when mankind went astray and the need to return to simple values of the past, to return to Eden and replace the forbidden fruit, then expunges himself in hellfire.

Tarkovsky's lens captures the human animal in the garden of earthy delights, surrounded by nature. Images of a statuesque Virgin birthing a flock of birds, discarded wine bottles swallowing drops of water, or a gentle fog crawling upon the landscape evoke memories of things past, where events needn't have happened to be true, a state where borders no longer exist with the convolutions of dreamscape. Water is a prime mover, a fluid thematic element, from a warm pool polluted by refuse hidden within its murky depths to a torrent that beats nervously upon the psyches of drowning men. Tarkovsky siphons Beethoven and Verdi through a nightmare machine, a grinding cacophony, a syncopation of sin where fallen angels dwell. And like Andrei, welcome the past imperfect and remain forever trapped by the stone walls of faith.

Final Grade: (A)

NEVER TAKE SWEETS FROM A STRANGER (Cyril Frankel, 1960, UK)

2011-10-09T18:29:00.000-04:00

Originally published on my Hammer blog HAMMER & THONGS.

Children become a sweet confection for a sick and twisted man who hides behind his reputation, a festering sore in a diseased community whose only reaction is denial. Cyril Frankel directs this honest and compelling drama concerning the dirty secret and shame of child sexual abuse as it pertains to the social macrocosm and familial microcosm. This is one of the most realistic films concerning this taboo subject that I have ever seen, and in my experience it portrays the emotional trauma of the victims (both parents and children) as it often manifests eschewing dramatic license.

The premise of the film concerns an elderly giant in the community, the founding father Clarence Olderberry, who is accused of offering candy to two little girls in exchange for their undressing and dancing naked for his satisfaction. When the parents of one girl discover this crime, the film follows their trials and tribulations in court and in the community. Considered outsiders, they are shunned and despised not for telling lies…but for having the nerve to file a criminal complaint and upset the status quo of their tiny community. Mr. Olderberry it seems is a dirty secret that is ignored and considered harmless because, well, he has never actually ‘touched” a child. Wow. I wish I could say this attitude is relegated to the past but it taints the minds of current attitudes and mores, a shame that lingers like a creeping malignance in a cancerous society.

The film is raw not with social conscience but human consciousness, with the girl’s parents fighting for justice and living through the brutality of the criminal justice system that allows a nine year old girl to be exposed once again before strangers. The court room scene is dramatically anxious and realistic, as the defense attorney gleefully rapes the victim once again by twisting words and details creating a smothering tsunami of emotions. The defense attorney would not be allowed to ask questions that are speculative, so that line of attack would have been denied by the judge. And make no mistake; this little girl is attacked by counsel even though her story is consistent and true. The absolute power of the narrative is that the girl’s parents believe her and accept her honesty (I wish that were always true). Their reaction is believable as they accept the veracity of her story but weigh the pros and cons of ‘going public”. But their decision to seek justice (not retribution) soon portrays the old pervert (in the mind of the ignorant) as the victim!
　

Freddie Francis lenses the film with wide angle compositions that create a palpable tension with temporal use of empty spaces and medium shots crowded with accusations. The opening shot is fantastic as the children jump from a tree swing and run towards the mansion where the creepy dude haunts the attic rooms. The triptych composition keeps the tree in focus on one side and the swing framing the other, while the children recede in importance as they run towards the house: this is all shot in deep focus so the children can be seen to disappear, the tree swing representing a solid but vanishing childhood, soon overtaken by the trauma of victimization. Frankel’s solid direction carries the film towards it’s brutal climax, where Francis once again shines with a chase through the woods that ends in an abandoned house, like a mind dirty with the cobwebs of an ugly past. And surprisingly enough, the film is honest and forthright and doesn’t give the audience the happy ending, upsetting expectations with the death of a child. Or more precisely, the sexual assault and murder of a child by a child rapist. This is an important Hammer film that should be recognized as a classic.

Final Grade: (A)

THE WOMAN IN THE DUNES (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1962, Japan)

2011-10-06T20:59:00.000-04:00

A ménage a trios involving elemental strangers trapped in a hole, a prison where flesh and bone are scraped away, covered by the constantly shifting skin of the dunes. Director Hiroshi Teshigahara pulls focus upon a tiny world of two insect-like humans who scratch and claw their feeble way towards self-discovery.

A nameless man (his name isn't revealed until the final credits) walks the mysterious dunes searching for insects to add to his collection. He is soon tricked into descending a ladder into a pit where he becomes trapped with a beautiful young woman (also nameless) who suffers an eternal struggle to save her home from the shifting sand. The man reflects upon his own identity, captured on paper and plastic, filed away and recorded, and thinks of himself as a teacher and scientist, a man of reason. He neither formally introduces himself to the young woman nor asks her name. This is partly an subliminal answer to the question that Teshigahara hasn't revealed yet; that is, the nature/nurture of identity.

Teshigahara uses superb compositions to underscore tone and theme, often reducing the characters to extreme close-ups, the sand almost a second skin, then cuts to insects pinned in a box, or medium shots of the man through lateral shadows like prison bars. He films the shifting and cracking sand as if it's a living entity, undulating and amorphous, an intelligent design. The man's reactions are full of impotent rage, but they also share moments of kindness. She accepts her position and works to save her home while he wishes to escape...but to where? The villagers who tricked him seem cruel but this is a matter of perspective; they give them a weekly allowance of water and food, and save his life when he escapes. Their masked visages leering over the pit's edge during some mysterious ceremony, urging them to fuck so he can be allowed to walk to the sea once a day is emotionally disruptive. But it seems more like an initiation than exploitation.

The man finally escapes but runs into a metaphorical larger pit and is caught in quicksand. He realizes that he really has no home, admitting he became a scientists to escape the confines of the city, and is just running in circles. Here, with this naive and beautiful woman he has finally put down roots. He has earned his right to stay in the village and given the means of escape, and he cannot wait to share his invention with his kindred spirits. He is home.

Final Grade: (A)

LIFE DURING WARTIME (Todd Solondz, 2009, USA)

2011-10-02T12:59:00.001-04:00

Originally published at Kevyn Knox's fine blog THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FRAUD IN THE WORLD.

"He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations." (Exodus 34: 6-7)

Todd Solondz’s cinematic allegory is as depraved as the archaic Torah, anchored in the cold hard fear of modernity’s unholy scripture to reveal people lost in contradiction and religiosity.

A tale of three sisters who live in the worst of times, echoes of war like a hard rain thrumming upon a collective consciousness, drowning in a thick morass of denial and guilt. The film focuses it’s penetrating gaze upon Trish, whose husband is serving State Time for child rape (though she has told her two youngest children he’s dead); her sister Joy who is mired in an abusive relationship and carries the dead weight of the past on her back like an addiction; and the witch-like Helen who has transformed her family’s pathos into a successful career. Ironically Helen is the mot independent character in the story, both from her sisters and their melodrama, yet she is the most superficial and neurotic, awash in the depths of Lethe. But Joy and her Moaning Myrtle persona becomes tiresome and rather annoying, her helium voice penetrating the talky narrative like shrapnel through the audience’s eardrums. And Helen is too static and unbelievably needy to reflect upon, a woman who speaks of her sexual gratification to her 12 year old child. I suppose it’s meant to be shocking but it reveals no insight or desire into her skewed expectations. Helen remains a squeaky door (hiding skeletons, of course) that is more interesting left closed.

Solondz distances the viewer with formal dialogue and clockwork conversations, capturing melodrama dominated by talking heads. He develops a boorish pace as dialogue is vomited between annoying characters, flickering between close-ups and reaction shots to the “subversive” content. Solondz reduces a very interesting story into a process that is as exciting as watching amoebas reproduce, always keeping the audience distant from any revelation or self-discovery. These are people who do not exist, avatars created to spout inane (though sometimes funny) dialogue with robotic routine. Solondz doesn’t offer any closure to their artificial wounds and that’s fine, actually preferable, but the characters are so disingenuous that they fail to breath and live as human beings. Stuck between forgiveness and forgetfulness, they are too blind to see the third option. A very human fault lost in the hardwired script.

Final Grade: (C-)

NIGHT OF THE DEMON (Jacques Tourneur, 1957, UK)

2011-09-29T20:05:00.000-04:00

A scientist's reason battles superstition, his life as fragile as parchment, his rock solid skepticism soon broken like the jagged teeth of Stonehenge. Jacques Tourneur deftly directs this demonic dramaturgy where the supernatural coincides with the Thomas theorem.

In the thrilling prologue, a nervous professor is apologetic to an austere Dr. Karswell, promising to end an investigation because the professor now believes in the mysterious Power. But it’s too late for the good professor as his fate lurches from the bubbling mist in the form of a fiery Balrog descending from the trees, his former obloquy now and formal obituary. Enter: an American scientist Dr. John Holden as he falls in love with the victim’s niece Joanna Harrington, and together they must race against devilish time to investigate her uncle’s violent death while attempting to decipher an ancient tome of forbidden and forgotten knowledge.

Tourneur utilizes shadows and tense pacing as the film races towards it finale, their fate laid down like train tracks in the cold hard earth, as unchanging and hardened as steel, as tasteless as fear. Karswell is presented as a reasonable fellow and not some satanic nut, lending an unsettling credibility to the story. Each coincidence can be explained psychologically, as Holden rationalizes, or considered preternaturally, as the film supposes.

Though the winged demon is revealed in the first act and it can be argued that fear of the unknown is the greater fear, there is an anxious shadowy satisfaction to awaiting the creature’s return...and guessing who it shall feast upon. The denouement is a rush of clacking wheels on steel tracks, where modernity meets druidic orthodoxy.

Final Grade: (B)

BREWSTER MCCLOUD (Robert Altman, 1970, USA)

2011-09-25T13:27:00.000-04:00

A fledgling boy is grounded by the gravity of imagination, his body crushed beneath the weight of mechanical dreams. Robert Altman's flight of fancy becomes an avian ossuary where a fallen angel must raise her chick to face an impartial world, populated by selfish and violent predators, fanged raptors who feed on hope.

Brewster lives in a gilded cage, desiring freedom but suffering social fallout, locked in a shelter deep within the Houston Astrodome. His dream is to fly, not within a metal skin where thrust is powered by chemical reactions (though most of the film seems powered by such) but by his own muscle and willpower. Brewster's matriarch is a mysterious benefactor with clipped wings and who demands his virginal sacrifice, a murder of crows appointed volant guardianship. Fowl play leads to a homicide investigation where our protagonist is recognized as a causal factor, and forces converge to arrest his misfit endeavor. But Brewster is his own worst enemy, consumed by physical desire as he hatches into maturity before he can fly.

Robert Altman despises the status quo, detailing a lurid expose of material consumerism and political chicanery that defrocks individuality and expression. Altman’s signature style is still evolving with generous use of overlapping dialogue, as sometimes two or three conversations take place simultaneously. He utilizes slow camera zooms with long takes and often shoots through window frames and windshields. The narrative structure seems hollow as a bird’s wing but supports its fanciful weight. The film begins with a professor’s dissertation on bird ecology and, as the story progresses, is intercut with these pronouncements while the professor begins to actually resemble a bird. Altman also satirizes genre clichés with his own idiomatic pastiche of muscle car chases, tough talking cops, and coming of age conundrums. Shelly Duval, in her first role, actually looks like a bird, thin and sleek, her long neck and limbs evoke her avian nature and bring Brewster down to earth...permanently.

Brewster discovers the Land of Oz is just a circus, perhaps regretting Dorothy’s orgasmic infatuation without participating,. He learns the cold hard facts of reality, dead at the bottom of his cage.

Final Grade: (B)

INFERNO (Dario Argento, 1980, Italy)

2011-09-21T21:53:00.000-04:00

A mysterious tome shines the light of revelation upon a maternal shadow, leading to a conflagration that eclipses a diabolical darkness. Dario Argento’s sequel to SUSPIRIA is style over substance, a patchwork of events that operates outside the confines of traditional narrative but are woven together to create an enigma, ripe with anxiety and desperation.

Rose is strangely gifted a book, detailing an architecture of superstition and fear, the building blocks of a metaphysical reality that transcends and transforms rationality. She follows the clues until she descends into the subterranean sepulcher buried in the very foundation of her home, a threat under her very feet. Rose discovers a key but forfeits her life, a long distance connection that beckons her brother to her eerie domicile that is now her tomb. This first act is brilliant as Argento makes this fluid world burst with surface tension, as Rose dives into a watery hole to retrieve her keychain, molested by a rotting corpse, an inverted world of elemental mystery. Unfortunately, Argento fails to revisit (or explain) this set piece and the remainder of the narrative becomes mere flotsam and jetsam.

The film's structure becomes tangential vignettes drenched in primary colors and surrealistic fury, an atmosphere of confounding narrative but extraordinary design. The characters are merely beings who stumble through the story as Argento doesn't care to forge an empathetic link to the viewer, fodder for the visual hijinks.

Final Grade: (B-)

LA SIGNORA SENZA CAMELIE (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1953, Italy)

2011-09-18T11:01:00.000-04:00

Clara is a wilted flower, a fragile expression broken like soft petals that drift slowly to the ground, trampled into cold hard earth. She is betrayed be those she loves most, transformed from woman into a commodity of supple flesh, a celluloid heroine as stable as camphor and nitrate under fire. Director Michelangelo Antonioni subverts melodrama by transposing the expected with the ambiguous, creating tragedy from sentimentality.

Clara walks a thin white line in the soft rain while her identity is projected onto a silver screen, fearing audience reaction to her bit part in a spurious and forgettable production. She eavesdrops upon those leaving the theatre, defining herself by the loose talk of strangers like a smeared reflection upon a wet dirty street. An overnight success, she is soon bullied into a regrettable marriage and forced to adopt a submissive role. Her wealthy producer husband seethes with jealousy and dominates her life; as she smothers Clara struggles to breath. Soon she is in a brief encounter with a playboy but fails to recognize it as such; he spurns her even as she divorces her husband.

Antonioni transcends the Italian soap opera by placing Clara in this precarious nexus of subjective and objective identity, where love becomes a gilded cage and desire can set her free. Antonioni adds flesh and blood to the characters, people with complex reactions driven by human needs and lonely fears: the husband is controlling and often unlikable but reaches his own epiphany, a sublime understanding that eludes our heroine. After his suicide attempt, seemingly a mere theatric, he accepts their separation but doesn't harbor hatred for Clara...and he has some right to. The playboy is caricature and superficial, his intentions obvious to everyone but Clara who remains occluded, chasing a shadow or a dream. Antonioni sets this internal crisis amid the film industry where the difference between people and their reflections is vague, and Clara can only see through a lens darkly, unable to find her place. Antonioni's mise en scene often depicts Clara amid portraits of famous actresses (like Garbo or Bergman) and even one commentator spurns her performance in comparison to Dreyer’s angelic Falconetti. Clara is trapped between her desire to be an A list actress and B movie cheesecake.

Clara becomes an extra in the movie of her own life, never finding the right part to fit in. She remains trapped between reels and reality, moving at 24 frames per second.

Final Grade: (B+)

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (Rudolph Cartier, 1954, UK)

2011-09-15T21:08:00.001-04:00

An everyman is hollowed out, emptied of emotion, his humanity replaced by a cold singular devotion to a higher authority. Nigel Kean's BBC teledrama is the best adaptation of Orwell’s prescient parable, reducing the narrative into cinematic form without diluting the brutal message, creating this future world without a past in small spaces and slick slogans, an elusive illusion of expressionist lighting and dominating close-ups.

Winston Smith redacts history but soon becomes possessed with a lust for truth, to peer lucidly into the past and discover a time when two plus two equaled four, and war and peace were absolute moral oppositions. Smith needs to understand on more than an intellectual level, he needs to expose the raw nerve of curiosity and feel the electric shock of enlightenment, to actually feel in a world of un-feeling, where hate is the coin of the realm. Julia is a functionary who wears a mask to conceal her sexual identity, her ministry of pornography an opium to the masses. Hope is three words scrawled in haste, an expression untouched by newspeak and doublethink.

Peter Cushing, in one of his earliest roles, is excellent as Smith, reflecting the repressed hopes and desires of every man, an avatar for a human race that is nearly lost. He deftly portrays Smith through his many incarnations, transforming from inchoate thought to physical act as both believable and sympathetic. Yvonne Mitchell is also able to imbue Julia with a sexual urgency, a strong feminine willpower (she instigate the affair) that is all the more severe when condemned by the State. And Andre Morell (another Hammer regular in the making!) is pitch perfect as O'Brien, the double agent whose betrayal is systematic and invasive, a man of wealth and taste (and power) who echoes the call for revolution but ultimately is an empty reservoir filled with the blood of innocents...and innocence.

The dramaturgy plays well in full frame utilizing television techniques, shot mostly in close up with few establishing shots or transitions, reducing this world to a claustrophobic and anxious prison. The monologues are taken in part directly from the source novel and delivered with the quick rapport of gunshots. A few errors find their way into this live broadcast such as boom shadows and a few shaky sets where the walls belie their plywood origins. This live BBC television drama made in 1954 exists as a prophetic tale of the penultimate propaganda: it’s double plus good.

Final Grade: (A)

SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957, USA)

2011-09-13T20:47:00.001-04:00

Originally published at Kevyn Knox's excellent blog THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FRAUD IN THE WORLD.

A powerful journalist recreates reality by manipulating text, reducing morality to the black and white of the printed word, language a scalpel that cuts to the bone. Director Alexander Mackendrick swims with sharks amid this vicious feeding frenzy where politicians and celebrities alike are chum for the predatory journalist. The meaning of a man’s life is gossip not truth worth only a shred of green paper backed by the Federal Reserve.

Falco is an agent short on luck, his last hope of success in the dirty game of show business is to “do a favor” for the ubermensch columnist J.J. Hunsecker: Falco must secretly undermine the romance between his own client Dallas, a jazz guitarist, and Hunsecker’s little sister. Tony Curtis' ice-cream boy good looks are disarming, his piercing eyes and sly grin a mask of greed and self-indulgence, prostituting his friends (and himself) for a shot at the Big Time...whatever that may be. He plays against type by eschewing humor for greed, hiding behind a verbal barrage of insults and accusations: Falco is a true Grade-A Asshole. Curtis' sublime performance makes this very unlikable character too human, imbued with just enough self-reflection that we hope he can change and put this terrible lie behind him. But there is no redemption for Falco, only the clockwork of success and failure.

Burt Lancaster portrays the powerful Hunsecker without compassion, a Nietzschean prototype who judges his success by the trail of dead in his wake. He hides behind patriotism and justice, words and meanings bastardized and bowdlerized to support his opinions: he is the modern equivalent of Tea Party ethics, redacting history for his story. Hunsecker’s emotionally (and physically?) incestuous relationship with his younger sister is challenged by Dallas, an ordinary young man with no ulterior motive except love, and Hunsecker sets out to destroy Dallas just to satisfy his own agenda: power and control over everyone and everything. Dallas stands up to Hunsecker’s bullying but suffers the consequences: emotionally castrated, framed for drug possession, incarcerated and his jazz career likely over.

Mackendrick’s direction is superb as he moves the camera through busy New York City streets and nightclubs, crowding the frame with movement and suffocating anxiety. Though the film is verbose, it’s whipsmart dialogue breaks the sound barrier and pops with intensity. The cool jazz music and Elmer Bernstein score create the perfect soundstage, both as diagetic and diaphanous narrative instruments.

There is no justice in this seedy egomaniacal melodrama where the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

Final Grade: (B+)

THE LONG RIDERS (Walter Hill, 1980, USA)

2011-09-10T10:06:00.000-04:00

A family divided against itself cannot stand, a brotherhood of bloodshed and betrayal, where Justice is defined by perspective. Walter Hill's revisionist Western is primarily a familial drama that utilizes genre tropes as violent set pieces but instead focuses upon the quiet moments between shootouts.

The film opens with a bank robbery in progress, guns drawn, the air thick with fear and the stench of gunpowder, as Jesse James and his gang seem to follow a well regulated routine. Suddenly, one Younger brother becomes a loose gun and murders a teller. This scene sets the tone of the film, the internal conflicts that develop between the families, and the strict consequences of disobeying Jesse's leadership. It also portrays the James/Younger gang as thieves but not murderers, Rebels who continue to fight their own war against the North, as the Pinkerton detectives are cast in an unpleasant shadow of criminality. Every character exists in these shades of grey, human qualities that add dimension without demonizing, that blurs the line between law and entitlement in a time when the country was still fractured by war. But this is no excuse for their behavior and each character suffers the consequences of their actions...and inactions.

Walter Hill channels Peckinpah in the slow motion gruesome shootouts, extended the brutality into hyperrealism, not only deconstructing the romantic western cliché where guns become phallic symbols to be respected and admired, but Hill shatters this myth with epic violence. This is no John Wayne shoot’em up where people are shot and fall down, this is a ferocious orgy of human savagery. The penultimate scene is a five minute gunfight that erupts in a Minnesota town as time slows down into an explosive bloodbath that peaks in a nihilistic crescendo. Both time and sound warp into a surreal nightmare, as the gasping whine of horses and the exclamation of rifles become a demonic guttural growl, inhuman in capacity and frightening in context. Here, men are reduced to less that animals by their own instincts.

The power of the story is in the quiet affairs: this is not an action film (though there is action), this is an insightful dissection of human behavior and motivations between lovers and brothers, where blood becomes thicker than lead and more valuable than money. Hill frames the few action sequences between a wedding, or one man’s infatuation with a prostitute (who’s not cheap), or another’s relationship with a beautiful blue-eyed girl. There’s a wonderful scene as one brother pushes this girl on a tree swing, a simple act of blossoming love/lust that could have been lifted from a daguerreotype. The film depicts the internal struggles of an extended family that is quickly becoming an anachronism (a metaphor shown in the Minnesota robbery as a steam belching machine clambers down the street moments before the plan goes awry), and who must sacrifice its limbs to save the body. The Long Riders are not long for this world.

Final Grade: (B)

THE STUNT MAN (Richard Rush, 1980, USA)

2011-09-07T18:41:00.000-04:00

A man's conscience still haunts the thick jungles of his past, his identity drowned in ice cream. Director Richard Rush vivisects the sacred body of the film industry, exposing the secret hidden mechanics of this celluloid organism, an inflammable admixture of not only nitrate and camphor but deific egos perfecting illusion and chasing the almighty dollar.

Cameron is the fugitive kind, a pinball life desperately close to tilting. After escaping from the cops (and telephone company repairmen) he stumbles into a World War and assumes a dead man's persona, an illusion within an illusion, where love and death carry both the weight of absolute reality and the ethereal quanta of Schrodinger's theorem. Floating above the chaos is the deific overlord Eli Cross who shouts truth in barbed words, a cruel manipulator who seeks to create this fictitious world, a Genesis in silver and nitrate. The film is his end and justifies the means, to birth the story in his own image and imagination. He embraces the rugged integrity of Cameron, allowing the fugitive to replace Bert, the stunt man who just died during a dangerous stunt. And Cameron struggles not to drown in the guilt of Bert's accidental death, a burden that may see him die doing the very same stunt!

Richard Rush imbues his film (as Eli Cross does) with an absurd post modern realism that obscures audience expectations: he makes the viewer believe, if only for the run time of the film, in his insane and impossible constructed reality. Eli Cross redacts the script on a whim, adding a fornicating musical bear during a pivotal scene or asks his protagonist to dance on the wing of a plane: as the creator, he makes the audience believe in his vision as the ultimate power and control. But Rush does the same thing with the basic narrative: Why does no one question the death of Bert? Why is there no police investigation? Why doesn't anyone take this tragedy seriously? Rush answers these questions by deflecting them with banal situations such as a drunken cohort, bumbling police, and redacted dailies, then laughs behind his hand as the form overwhelms the substance.

Peter O'Toole is a wonderfully Lean-ish caricature who presides over his people like a messiah, his harsh utterances orthodoxy. His performance is ripe with vainglory and vanity, yet betraying an utter contradiction of a kind man. O'Toole makes Eli Cross despicable at times but never unlikable. His comic timing is genius too. Steve Railsback as Cameron is also a conundrum, both gentle and furious, his soft eyes expressive and understanding yet humid like the jungles that birthed his fear. Railsback falters a bit in his romantic role but Barbara Hershey balances the scales. Her performance is more nuanced and sublime, expressing emotion on two distinct levels of understanding. Rush’s frenetic camerawork with lens flare transitions captures a film on the run, a runaway narrative of impartial intentions and ulterior motives. THE STUNT MAN is a very funny film but he who laughs first probably doesn't get the joke.

Final Grade: (B+)

HORROR EXPRESS (Eugenio Martin, 1973, Spain)

2011-09-01T21:41:00.001-04:00

From the mountains a madness is recovered and released, a vitreous humour on the Trans-Siberian Express. That sentence is actually more interesting than the film itself, as director Eugenio Martin’s debacle assaults and insults with a barely cohesive script and unintelligible internal logic.

Professor Saxton transports a well preserved hominid fossil upon the isolated railway. The gangly fossil is corrupted by an alien intelligence and it comes to life, murdering by absorbing thoughts through its eyes, leeching the life force from any living creature. The victims bleed from their orifices and are left vacant, their cranial convolutions now eroded like a smooth river stone. The entity jumps from victim to victim and the passengers become paranoid, unable to discern a human from the inhuman. But the story becomes frighteningly illogical as the Detective, when possessed, sports the withered hand of the fossil; or those killed by the being can now be reanimated as zombies; or the monk who suddenly casts aside his faith to follow “Satan”; or the ability to see images of the past in a creature’s eye (not the alien’s eye mind you, but the fossil’s...how could fragile tissue remain preserved even in the Russian cold for two million years?); or the final transmission to derail the train; or the fact that the Russians would build a railroad the ended on the edge of a cliff (as absurd as a self-destruct mechanism in a space ship).

Though there are some neat ideas, the film stutters and stalls in every scene, muting tension and suspense by showing the audience the mystery before allowing it to unfold dramatically. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are respectable (as always) but Telly Savalas is as incoherent as his accent, detracting from the ensemble. The HORROR EXPRESS is derailed by its director’s incompetence.

Final Grade: (D)

THE ROMANTIC ENGLISHWOMAN (Joseph Losey, 1975, UK)

2011-08-27T00:41:00.000-04:00

Elizabeth is a reflection in a cold sterile jar of winter, haunted by an electrical ghost that howls in the bones of her face, a linear beauty reduced to an apparition of impulses and consequences. Director Joseph Losey dissects a failed marriage by introducing a strange element into a static environment and encrypts the dramaturgy with enigma and suspense.

Elizabeth flees her family for a temporary journey of desperation and self discovery, meeting a handsome young man with no attachments or engagements. Thomas represents the dangerous liaisons of poetic fury, tempting her from the sleep of marriage. She finally returns to her husband Lewis whose prose is more substantial than his wife's feelings and he begins a ménage e trios that piques his moribund curiosity, thus fulfilling his self destructive prophecy. Thomas meanwhile is a loose end, a man without a past, and moves in mysterious ways and towards destinations unknown.

Losey's self-deprecating drama is full of bleak and unsentimental humor, as Lewis' director friend speaks of his next film, mirroring the plot we are currently involved in, while Lewis admits it's a boring premise. A novelist and screenwriter, Lewis says the story needs thrills and excitement, not Art House histrionics. Losey obliges by spicing THE ROMANTIC ENGLISHWOMAN with gangsters and thugs, and an oblique romance that may or may not have happened. Losey's camera tracks methodically through their lives, often utilizing a slow zoom for dramatic license, or shooting reflections as characters inhabit a mirrored universe of anti-matters. Lewis' fantasies about Elizabeth's possible affair becomes antithetical to cause and effect, making reality into his own fractured imagination.

The denouement is a conflation of genre conventions, as empty as a tattered suitcase, as void as a shattered marriage.

Final Grade: (B)

THE HUSTLER (Robert Rossen, 1961, USA)

2011-08-23T17:48:00.000-04:00

A pool shark leaves the little pond and is soon devoured by a larger fish. Robert Rossen directs this Cimmerian melodrama about a loser whose desire to win almost consumes his humanity; a man who must lose everything to find himself.

Fast Eddie Felson is a hustler, a thief with a Cheshire grin whose life is measured by the clacking of cue balls and the long hard miles between dingy hotel rooms. Eddie stubbornly wills himself to believe he’s the best pool player in the land, his raison d’etre now defined by conquering the legendary Minnesota Fats. Eddie learns the high cost of losing...and the higher cost of winning.

The film begins with a wonderful setup as Eddie and his partner hustle some small town yokels out of a few bucks. The scene depicts this small time existence, Eddie’s talent worth a pittance, a crushing despair that satisfies the id but not the super-ego. Rossen utilizes this dichotomy in the next scene as Eddie challenges Fats in a marathon session for pool hall supremacy; the setting is superficial, the smoky rooms filled with sweat and human detritus remain the same, but here it’s the challenge that is the Big Time. Eddie’s loss causes him to spiral out of control but it’s a crippled love that redeems him.

Paul Newman sweats charisma as Fast Eddie, walking with a cool swagger and overconfidence portrayed as a fault in his seemingly solid foundation. Newman makes Eddie utterly believable as a human being, full of fear and anxieties, a man who doubts himself but will never let it show: it’s a bravura performance deserving of accolades! George C. Scott is Bert Gordon, the cruel gambler who buys men’s souls for profit...his. Scott imbue this unlikable character with a sly humanity, a keen insightful performance that make Gordon a person and not a mere villain to subrogate Newman’s resurrection. Piper Laurie’s breathy sexuality is convincingly honest and meek, a lonely woman who needs Eddie to whisper those three magical words to attain salvation. But loses her own straight game with a straight razor.

Rossen films in Cinemascope black and white compositions inside of the bleak pool halls, bars, and bus stations which projects an illusion of freedom within claustrophobic places. The effects is akin to a prisoner who feels free when allowed to walk the exercise yard, momentarily forgetting that the static tomb of the cell awaits. A cool jazz arrangement keeps score setting tempo and defining narrative timbre.

Ultimately Fast Eddie Felson must face his demons and win his self-respect, not bow to the color of money.

Final Grade: (A)

THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (Nicholas Ray, 1949, USA)

2011-08-20T23:25:00.000-04:00

Bowie and Keechie inhabit the world’s umbra, concealed in the murk of a fugitive life while dreaming of an ordinary existence, to feel the warming embrace of the sun instead of the cold sterile touch of the dark side. Nicolas Ray transforms film noir into human melodrama, creating a hybrid of violence and romance among thieves, where justice exists in some nebulous boundary unexplored by zealous moralists.

Ray’s film is an anti-Bonnie and Clyde tale of life on the run, portraying Bowie as a boy led astray and Keechie as his first love whose wish is to live like ordinary people. Bowie was incarcerated for murder as a teenager and seeks a new attorney to file an appeal while Keechie tries to straighten his crooked desires. Farley Granger's clean-cut and precious features reflect a boy incarcerated in a man's body, a man now at the mercy of more powerful cohorts. Cathy O'Donnell infuses Keechie with a pure and innocent aura, her maternal instinct superseding his fraternal morality. These two young lovers are hiding from the Law, not running from accountability, searching for Justice. But there is no honor among thieves where selfishness betrays honor at the cost of conscience, and Judas leads her savior to certain doom.

Nicolas Ray begins the film with a magnificent aerial shot as the three escapees race across barren fields, like an impotent god watching a human tragedy from above. Bowie, T-Dub, and Chicamaw stop a passing motorist and Ray shows the brutal action like a flashpoint, gone as quickly as it happened. This scene establishes Bowie opposed to violence while his compatriots relish in the bloodshed, career criminals whose end will be justified. Ray captures the lovelorn characters in mostly medium close-ups, allowing them to dominate the screen, revealing their emotional epiphany.

Bowie is forced into one last bank robbery and Keechie, pregnant with more than fear and doubt, silently awaits his return. But judgment is imposed by police who shoot first and never ask questions.

Final Grade: (B)

DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS (Harry Kumel, 1971, Belgium)

2011-08-16T20:46:00.000-04:00

A deserted Hotel becomes a sepulcher, echoing dark secrets and mysterious desires. Director Harry Kümel eschews prosaic supernatural conventions for the psychological, creating a seducing character study of libidinous pathology and murderous intent.

Stefan and Valerie are newlyweds caught in a circuitous travelogue, their destination obscured by Stefan’s secretive family tree. It soon becomes evident that the couple married quickly and don’t really know each other which adds to the mounting dread, as Stefan’s behavior becomes erratic and Valerie’s erotic. After checking in at a storybook hotel, which beckons like some grand totem of the dead and buried, haunted by memories of long lost souls, and they are consumed by two beautiful women who wear their hearts firmly beneath their breasts.

The gorgeous Delphine Seyrig once again assumes an ethereal spirit, evoking the haunting trauma of Alain Resnais’ masterful LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, a shadow dance of confounding immortal narrative. Seyrig portrays Lady Bá thory, descendent or deceit, her ageless beauty a vampiric delight, clotting the senses of the two young lovers penetrated by her sexual charm. Kü mel corrupts Bram Stoker’s Victorian morality by allowing the women to enjoy their incorporeal seductions, reveling in the pleasures of sex, a matriarchal domination in which men commit willingly. A subplot involving a Detective and a few unsolved murders peaks momentary interest but fails to generate suspense and is concluded rather haphazardly.

Sex and gore are kept to the imagination though the film drips with carnality and bloodlust, where two women become enslaved to their physical desires, embraced by the cold arms of undeath. Evil always races faster than the speed of night.

Final Grade: (B)

KISS ME DEADLY (Robert Aldrich, 1955, USA)

2011-08-14T10:46:00.000-04:00

Mike Hammer is as hard and thin as a railroad spike driven into concrete, seduced by mystery and a dark poem of remembrance. Director Robert Aldrich's debut is a brutish noir transformed by cloak and dagger thrills, an explosive algorithm of cold war ethics. Aldrich turns the genre upside-down like the opening credits (read from bottom to top!), a cinematic excursion where a femme fatale whispers a nuclear polemic.

Mike Hammer lives in the subconscious, the penumbra of the Id, always racing like a jaguar towards the fulfillment of his pleasure principle. He is the prototypical anti-hero, dressed to kill with a temper to match, raping women with only a sideways glance. But Hammer is soon made impotent, victim of a faceless "they" who seek the great "whats’it", his good deeds never seeming to go unpunished. He is forced to pick up a voluptuous hitchhiker and soon embroiled in a thermonuclear winter of discontent, and stalks the nightmarish truth for his own vengeful purposes, an ignoble purpose of National insecurities. A whispered epitaph becomes a steel key, a violent travelogue that leads to an irradiated treasure locked away, ashes and brimstone of the new atomic age.

Aldrich captures the film with skewed angles and a creeping malaise, as men in black consume the night with a biblical fury, summoned by a government bureaucracy to stand guard like demonic sentinels, harbingers of a world without hope: these are men who are much worse than the petty evils of Mike Hammer. Aldrich utilizes film noir gumshoe tropes but advances a scientific element, a Periodic Chart to fuel this explosive admixture. In this monochrome world, no one is pure but an amalgam of intents and desires, prostituting themselves to the highest bidder. The film ends with Hammer and his moll flee into the crashing surf while the world burns down.

Final Grade: (A)

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973, Mexico)

2011-08-09T21:27:00.000-04:00

A Thief reduced to a Messiah, searching for a god that cannot be found, subsumed by paper Mache idolatry where crucifixion is sold for mass consumption. Alejandro Jodorowsky forgoes formal narrative construction and instead takes the audience on an internal travelogue of self-discovery where the summit of enlightenment is beyond the fourth wall.

Each character of Jodorowsky's parable represent an element of the tarot or some astrological design, avatars for human nature and misunderstanding. The Alchemist turns shit into gold and melts away the waxy veneer of physical desire to reveal the beast within the breast. Jodorowsky is particularly damning of Catholicism, the business of religion where profit measures faith with silver and gold, and blind followers follow blindly. The Alchemist is only the doorway to understanding, the teacher who must elevate his students to a higher spiritual status, not a egocentric universe surrounded by the ellipse of godhood. Here is one of the important truths Jodorowsky wished to impart: that a teacher (spiritual leader, priest, rabbi, etc...) is a tool to understanding and not understanding in and of itself. His film is about this symbiotic relationship in the search for self-enlightenment. Otherwise, the Popes or Jim Jones' of the material world rule with bloody scepter and serve ice cold Kool Aid to their flock.

The film is ripe with plush images infused with satire and fury, from a Weapons Manufacturer with a creative genius for murder (a crucifix handgun for the hip Priest) to the Toy Maker who educates children with violent fantasies in order to spawn playthings for impotent leaders. Or the Thief who chases the Pharisees from the temple while smashing his mass-produced simulacra to exploding frogs. A rainbow of wonderful compositions leads the traveler to the pot at the end of the mescaline journey. Jodorowsky surprises by utilizing the very thing he condemns to impart his message, and allows the audience to join in this spiritual conspiracy.

Final Grade: (B)

I'M NOT THERE (Todd Haynes, 2007, USA)

2011-08-06T23:17:00.001-04:00

Bob Dylan’s not here but his fractured ghost haunts this film…though his songs walk by themselves. Todd Haynes chooses to represent Dylan in six phases of his life using six different actors. The film begins with a young Dylan jumping a boxcar and the story’s train of thought decouples from the narrative locomotion, utilizing a Fellini-like dream structure that is both confusing and intellectually provoking. There is no controlling plot device to advance the tale, only time-warp vignettes of Dylan in varying aspects of his career and life.

But I believe this film is about more than Bob Dylan: it’s concerned with examining the Cult Of Personality and the creative experience itself. When do we separate the artist from the art? Once a song is written and shared it becomes a part of the listener, it changes. WILCO sings about this very concern:

“And if the whole world’s singing your songs, And all of your paintings have been hung, Just remember what was yours is everyone’s from now on, And that’s not wrong or right, But you can struggle with it all you like, You'll only get uptight.”

Dylan gets uptight, pretentious, self-destructive, and begins to despise the people who once worshiped his songs, who looked to this dirty prophet for guidance but now find only idiot wind. He begins to lose his freedom and fears becoming bound to the listener…the very antithesis of the creative process!

Haynes uses different film stock and color schemes to reflect Dylan’s emotional metamorphosis. He also employs sudden jump cuts to keep the viewer vertiginous, conflicted, and confounded in order to empathize with the character(s); we begin to feel what he’s feeling. If you want a documentary on Bob Dylan…rent another film. This is an intellectual vivisection of an icon and the very audience that adores him. Does it matter what we think of the living breathing person Bob Dylan? His songs now belong to us.

Final Grade: (A)

ALICE (Jan Svankmajer, 1988, Czechoslovakia)

2011-08-03T21:45:00.000-04:00

Childhood is a jar of honey spiked with thumbtacks, a sweet dessert that often draws blood. Jan Svankmajer travels into a surreal dream world where narrative form and cause and effect are suspended by childlike fascinations, fertile images born from the strange womb of imagination.

Svankmajer doesn't adapt Carroll's magnum opus as much as transform it, shape it into a playfully wicked journey of puerile perspicacity. Alice seems banished to her room, surrounded by a jumble of toys that will soon live in her imaginary world, for you can only see when you close your eyes. Her stuffed white rabbit escapes from his glass menagerie, bleeding sawdust, razor teeth clacking together while dressing for a very important date with the Queen. Alice follows the Lepus Lagomorpha through her bedroom wall, across a field of thick mud, and into a wooden desk, bridging the gap between reality and perception. Her many bizarre adventures include shrinking into a ceramic doll, sparring with a rat who sets her hair on fire, the ferocious feast with the Mad Hatter and March Hare, being chased by flying bird skulls and a skeletal assembly of soldiers, playing croquet with cutout flamingoes, and a trial in two dimensions. Alice narrates the film and becomes the voices for every character, as if reading a book to the audience. She must utilize her own wits and ingenuity to escape this ferocious fairy land before she loses her head.

The art design and stop motion animation is brilliant, more creative than any Timothy Burton CGI vomited from a mainframe. Bird skulls erupt from chicken eggs, sandworm socks burrow through a wooden floor, and a ganglion of clacking skulls chase the frightened heroine until she finds her way home (where all is not as it was...or should be!). The only adult depicted in the story is beheaded by the composition, her identity kept out of frame, a purposeful reduction of adult reasoning and alluding to the churlish “off with her head!” that fascinates Alice so. ALICE is a film for the child in all of us who lives in the dark, but always sees the light.

Final Grade: (A)

TWO EVIL EYES (George A. Romero & Dario Argento, 1990, USA & Italy)

2011-07-31T09:16:00.000-04:00

George Romero and Dario Argento tag-team the works of Edgar Allen Poe, attempting the alchemical equation of turning Gothic prose into Modern macabre, which results in a plodding, tedious, and trite narrative.

Romero’s hypnotic THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR is mesmerizing in that fact it is drowsy and boorish. The power of Poe’s story is in its documentary presentation, the supernatural made natural, its narrator describing with medical precision (and in gruesome detail) the impossibility of delaying the death process: Poe’s ultimate de-composition. But Romero takes this skeletal plot and superimposes a static boilerplate tale of greed and adultery, harkening back once again to the classic pre-code E.C. comics. The result is a series of mundane visual composition, too much dialogue, and stock characters: this plays like a overdrawn episode of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, more made for TV than the big screen.

Argento imbues his experiment THE BLACK CAT with a ripe visual flair that is texturally interesting, utilizing low angle camera placements, POV, tracking shots, and an abundance of Tom Savini’s bloody handiwork. The fault lies mostly with the structure as the story is too well known to create much tension, and Harvey Keitel has only one speed...maniacal. The story results in a police procedural that just would never happen: do filmmakers ever research their damn stories? Technically brilliant at times, once again the tale wags the dog; that is, the ending moves the corpus and the denouement becomes a real hang-up.

Use you two good eyes to watch other films by these masterful directors and skip this anthology. Then open your collected tales of Edgar Allen Poe and enjoy.

Final Grade: (D)

SECRET CEREMONY (Jospeh Losey, 1968, UK)

2011-07-26T21:15:00.000-04:00

Two women share a damaged and parasitic psyche, fearing the vast empty spaces of a lonely existence, ghosts like a residual haunting who putter about dreary routine for eternity. Joseph Losey's psychological drama is set inside a huge Victorian mansion whose rooms are weighted down with the anchor of past lives, where two women drown in self-inflicted guilt.

The film begins in a graveyard and ends at a funeral as the specter of death stalks the characters, an uneasy feeling heightened by Losey's taught direction and eerie soundtrack. Nicolas Roeg's masterful DON'T LOOK NOW comes to mind with skewed perceptions and dread foreboding. Losey utilizes many extreme angle shots, reducing and enlarging characters who never quite seem to be in the right frame of mind. Elizabeth Taylor is a emotional hurricane, able to convey impotent rage one moment and soul crushing grief the next: she is the ugly American dressed up in the trappings of the British socialite. Taylor is Leonora, a prostitute who still grieves over the loss of her child and carries this burden like a dead weight. She is approached by a young waif named Cenci, deftly played by Mia Farrow, who believes Leonora is her mother who died a few weeks ago. Here is a woman in search of a daughter to ally her guilt and grief, and a daughter in search of a mother for protection and care. As the role play progresses, a devilishly clever and bearded man completes the ménage a trio. Robert Mitchum as Albert is Cenci’s step-father with an unhealthy physical attachment to his daughter, and sets about to destroy the uber mater so he can inherit Cenci’s fortune.

Leonora confesses her professional sins but is not motivated by greed for Cenci’s money, only her own desire to heal this fractured girl. In the final touching scene, Leonora describes her own suicide attempt while Cenci slowly dies from ingesting a handful of pills, unbeknownst to Leonora. It is heartbreaking for Leonora but to Albert it is a heart piercing judgment.

Final Grade: (B)

WOMEN OF THE NIGHT (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1948, Japan)

2011-07-23T08:21:00.000-04:00

A tale of two sisters of diametrically opposed alignments who are consumed by post-war poverty and the need to survive in a patriarchal society. Director Kenji Mizoguchi directs his attention once again to the troubled lives of woman, suffering the insufferable burden of moral obligation in a world of the double-standard.

Fusako stumbles through the rubble strewn streets of post-war Osaka desperately trying to sell her summer clothes for a few yen. He child is dying of tuberculosis and she needs money for medicine and food, while awaiting word of her husband’s return from the war. Mizoguchi’s neo-realistic style is reminiscent of Rossellini’s War Trilogy as he weaves the diseased environment into the very fabric of the narrative. Fusako is revealed to be a good wife, abiding by the strict cultural mores, and even states that she couldn’t face her husband if the child dies: a telling statement that reflects her desire to adhere to her matronly position of duty and honor, even though she has no control over life and death. Soon her world crumbles around her, like the very city that she haunts, and she becomes a ghost of her former self, her vampiric existence walking the streets in need of sustenance: money.

Mizoguchi doesn’t shy away from this deplorable nightlife, the filthy streets and morality, as hatred consumes Fusako; she becomes a wraith full of syphilis and vows to pass on this deadly burden to every man she touches. Her sister Natsuko, once seemingly the black sheep, consorts with a drug dealer but has never pimped her body for profit or need. Mizoguchi does not judge these sisters but allows sympathy and insight into their now inhuman condition, the elemental conspiracy that has almost destroyed them: they are victims. More importantly, Mizoguchi directs the blame at the system, both religious and patriarchal, that enables this debasement. It’s the men who pay for sex, and it’s the Church who fails to understand their impoverished needs, blaming the woman for only wanting to “have fun” instead of work real jobs.

The final scene becomes a Hieronymus Bosch triptych as Fusako attempts to leave the fold but is beaten into submission, her sacrifice to enable another to escape. The prostitutes scream, pummel, and gnash teeth in a rubble strewn church yard where the Virgin Mary is only glass, fragile and opaque. Fusako is not blinded by faith or deceived by good intentions; abandoned by an opaque god, she can only rely on herself.

Final Grade: (B)

ALIEN (Ridley Scott, 1979, USA)

2011-07-20T17:49:00.000-04:00

Seven human commodities to be traded in the free market, devalued and expendable, purchased at the cost of one dark entity...the almighty dollar. Ridley Scott adapts Dan O'Bannon's terse screenplay into equal parts terror and corporate fait acompli, transforming the haunted house tropes into science fiction, future echoes imbued with a healthy dose of prescient Wall Street morality.

Ridley Scott limits the cast of characters and imprisons them in the dank and grim confines of an industrial spaceship, to be stalked by the perfect predator: a creature that invokes fear of the Dark Ages, whose elongated appendages and multiple rows of jagged teeth could have clawed its way from a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Scott lights the hallways and rooms with chiaroscuro delight, allowing fear of what is not seen to override the senses. Sounds echo and reverberate surrounding the victims with a cloak of terror. ALIEN is a horror film impregnated with science fiction elements, as the film’s structure utilizes horror tropes but sets them in the future: here, technology is only a trapping of suspense, not a means to scientific ends.

The script is taught and well-paced allowing character discovery and interaction to become believable, which is necessary to create audience frisson; otherwise, the crew would be reduced to a bucket of raw chum. But there is an electric charge to the script that powers certain character’s motivations, and this sublime subplot equates human life to a monetary equation where an alien organism is worth more than seven lives (or more!). Like HAL 9000, the mother computer seems caught in the perplexing nexus of pure reason, diminishing culpability by reducing lives to binary code and stock market evaluations. It’s a brilliant touch that heightens the melodrama by creating a backlash among the crew, internal friction against an enemy never revealed on screen! The true alien becomes the faceless men and women of the “corporation” who are truly inhuman.

The story spins on the cliché of a billion dollar spaceship endowed with a self-destruct mechanism, a deus ex machina plot device that is as inane as it is idiotic. Why would a spacecraft that is obviously built for interstellar travel have a hardwired program that could allow a disgruntled employee (or malfunction) to obliterate its investment? And not only is this computer program difficult to begin but becomes impossible to defuse! Modern rockets are built with a mechanism to allow it to explode if it goes off-course with the flick of a switch: if needed, this would be an emergency procedure. Instead, it’s a lame plot mechanic to create suspense as Ripley rushes about the ship attempting to abort the final countdown. The denouement unfortunately becomes the weak link to an otherwise strong chain of events.

ALIEN has spawned generic and pretentious sequels but still stands as a classic of two genres.

Final Grade: (A)

DARK STAR (John Carpenter, 1974, USA)

2011-07-18T21:39:00.000-04:00

Three astronauts trapped for the past twenty years inside the metallic skin of Dark Star have become as unstable as the planets they destroy. Director John Carpenter and writer Dan O'Bannon turn their student thesis into a theatrical release, a conflated parody of Kubrick's pretentious masterpiece while under the influence of Philip K Dick. The results are uneven but interesting, as DARK STAR has itself birthed such classic science fiction shows as Grant and Naylor's RED DWARF and Douglas Adams HITCHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY.

The unfocused plot involves a group of four astronauts (The Commander recently died in a radiation leak) whose mission is to destroy unstable planets by dropping "smart bombs" into their atmosphere. The ramblings capture the boredom and routine of deep space travel where most time is spent between missions. The astronauts have devolved into hebephrenic habits and have become emotionally isolated and depressed, looking more like Hippies than scientists (though one is only a fuel technician). The ship's artificially intelligent computer has a sultry feminine voice contrasting the gently reflexive tenor of the HAL 9000. The conflicts involve fighting amongst the crew, an alien beach-ball, and finally a computer malfunction that enables a bomb to discuss its conscious perceptions and develop a god complex.

DARK STAR is light on science and comedy but heavy with concepts, ideas, and visuals. The sequence when Pinback chases the gaseous mascot through the air ducts eerily foreshadows events in O’Bannon’s ALIEN, as does the computer control room. The direction and editing of the theatrical version is clumsy though serviceable, padding the runtime without any visual flare or style. The synthetic score is a bit monotonous and redundant but the country song Benson, Arizona that bookends the film is classic, evoking the satire of Slim Pickens’ Major Kong from DR. STRANGELOVE.

Finally, the bomb discards all sensory input and realizes it is the only consciousness in an empty cosmos, and creates a universe with these fateful words: let there be light.

Final Grade: (B-)

IT HAPPENED HERE (Kevin Brownlow & Andrew Mollo, 1966, UK)

2011-07-16T09:41:00.000-04:00

After the Dunkirk debacle, England is conquered by the Swastika and its inhabitants subsumed by the need for order...even if it's name is National Socialism. Independent filmmakers Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s “what if” scenario was shot on a shoestring budget without professional actors, utilizing grainy 16mm film, but these constraints help add a veneer of violent reality, of a large world shrinking and contracting towards political collapse.

The compositions are in full-frame and capture the story in mostly medium shot and close-up. The moving images are accentuated by the bombast of Wagnerian grandiosity, a percussive score that shouts Hitler's triumph of the English will. The establishing shots have a feel of “home movie” authenticity as we see Nazis goose-stepping with Big Ben towering in the background or within the shadows of other landmarks. Though we see the world through a limited exposure, the attention to detail is remarkable with realistic uniforms, tanks, vehicles, and the Nazi propaganda that litters the walls, newspapers , television and airwaves. All of this is even more remarkable because the directors never resort to stock footage! A recent film (with a much higher budget!) that mirrors this attempt to create a violent society from the tiniest details is Alfonso Cuaron’s masterful CHILDREN OF MEN.

The story begins with World At War inspired exposition explaining the history of the German occupation and utilizes flash-cuts and close-ups to depict the bloody conflict. The story then focuses upon a nurse named Pauline whose neutral political ideals are soon corrupted by the New World Order. After her friends are caught in the crossfire of a partisan ambush, she is routinely indoctrinated into the Fascist ranks. The chilling lesson offers law and order at the cost of individual rights and how easy it is to accept and rationalize, to quickly become a participant in a murderous hierarchy. Pauline soon becomes a woman without a country, her conscience blind to the Jewish ghettos and euthanized immigrants. In one scene, the directors allow modern fascists to vomit their inane beliefs and it becomes obvious that not every Englishman would veto a Nazi occupation. IT HAPPENED HERE is a prescient tale, a dire warning that freedom comes at the price of flesh and blood, and that the ghost of Hitler still haunts the Earth.

Final Grade: (B+)

THE INNOCENTS (Jack Clayton, 1961, UK)

2011-07-12T17:16:00.000-04:00

Miss Giddens traverses the nebulous boundary between imagination and logic: Madness is the soft whisper at the edge of reason.

As the film begins, a child’s lilting and playful tune haunts an ominous black screen. Gradually, hands clasped in prayer are revealed to be Miss Giddens’ as she utters a tearful plea: “I only want to help the children, not destroy them”. It’s this dichotomy between light and darkness, good deeds and destruction, which prepares the audience for the trauma to follow. A psychologically fragile governess is given absolute control over two precocious children by their estranged Uncle; a man who can spare little time for their well-being and comfort. The children are orphans though their parent’s death is never explained: it’s another dead-end in this multicursal maze. Miss Giddens also learns that the previous governess died and that she must never mention her to the children, especially the impressionable Flora. She accepts the post and travels to Bly House, the Uncle’s beautiful country estate that is the children’s sanctuary.

Almost immediately, a serene and mysterious echo wafts upon the mid-afternoon breeze beckoning Flora. The little girl is first seen as a murky reflection in the lake, a masterful display of foreshadowing the connection to Miss Jessel, before the camera pans to Flora’s cherubic smile. Her brother Miles is away at school but there seems to be some telepathic connection between them: she knows he is coming home. Miles does come home the next day because he was expelled from school and his deceitfully charming personality is exposed, his infectious temperament invigorated. The children act as tiny adults with kind manners and an intellectual capacity that belies their years. But they exude a nefariously manipulative and disingenuous aroma.

As Miss Giddens learns more about the suicide of Miss Jessel, the previous governess, and the death of Miss Jessel’s lover Quint, she begins to have strange experiences: a nefarious visage in the darkness, a towering man, a woman passing in a lonely corridor, the ghostly lady of the lake, and disembodied voices calling the children’s names. There is purpose behind every sound and shadow: a window slamming closed, a child’s game of hide and seek, or a bug crawling from the mouth of a statue all have ominous undertones. Though never overtly alleged, Miles is mysteriously implicated in Quint’s death. Herein lies the crux of the drama: is Miss Giddens irrational or is there some supernatural element that is harming the children? She believes that the spirits of Miss Jessel and Quint have possessed the children and she must exercise them, cut out this malignance. Indeed, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

The cinematography is exceptional with Freddie Francis’ deep focus photography that brings every background detail to life, expanding the illusory world of Bly House far beyond two dimensions: it adds an otherworldly quality to the film. Truman Capote fleshed out the narrative and defined the repressed sexuality, in both Miles and the governess, which leads to a rather uncomfortable and askew moment. THE INNOCENTS does not judge the characters and lead us to any absolute understanding: the verdict is in the hands of the audience to decide guilt…or innocence.

Final Grade: (A)

EXCALIBUR (John Boorman, 1981, UK)

2011-07-10T10:01:00.000-04:00

A young man unwittingly pulls the sword from the stone claiming the throne that will either unite a kingdom...or destroy it. Director John Boorman's bold retelling of the Arthurian Legend is meant as allegory not as textual interpretation or historical documentary. This is a tale of men who find honor at the point of a sword, where death is the result of an insult or deceit. Pumped full of testosterone, EXCALIBUR is a film of brutal men learning peace and compassion, that human nature is part of the dragon invoked by Merlin as flesh and earth become one.

Boorman's grandiose costume designs are as much a part of the narrative as the actors themselves, reflecting their passions and weaknesses. As Uther succumbs to his base lusts which proves his undoing, the grim iron armor is very primitive and archaic with Neanderthal-like helmets and skewed angles. As Arthur achieves the crown and peace settles upon the land, the armor becomes poetic and shinning, reflective of pure ideals and morality. As war once again settles upon the King’s brow, the burnished shields fade to the color of dried blood. The acting is full of machismo and potent masculinity, Shakespearean dialogue where nearly every word is an act of defiance or a command. Boorman is able to merge the fairy-tale with reality by showing the brutality of swordplay, the grim bloodletting of hand-to-hand combat, and the crushed exoskeletons of once proud men now reduced to food for a murder of crows.

The choreography is wonderful and captures the frisson of combat, fatigued warriors grasping and gasping for breath, heavy maces and long swords sparking against steel and cutting through bone. Boorman composes in medium shot without the need to cut to close-up or utilize flash-cut techniques which lend a violent verisimilitude to the film. The score heightens the suspense and underlines the action and the use of Orff’s Carmina Burana becomes a knightly resurrection.

The weakest of the majestic Knights, baptized in Lancelot’s rage, holds the chalice to a dying king’s lips and revives a kingdom. As the world blooms and a final battle is fought, magic slips into the past like a dream (or nightmare) and a once proud king gives his sword to the ages.

Final Grade: (B+)

KNIGHTRIDERS (George Romero, 1981, USA)

2011-07-08T08:36:00.000-04:00

King William is a creative anachronism who desperately tries to decipher the code of honor in this modern world of polluted morality. Director George Romero eschews zombie politico for a character study involving a troupe of Renaissance performers, a group of misfits and self-imposed outcasts who joust upon their iron steeds, living upon the fumes of chivalry.

Romero begins the film with a fluttering prophecy like some evil incarnate, a black bird descending to the earth. This is Billy's (King William) vision as next he is seen in naked repose beside his buxom queen, then flagellating himself in a lake. Surrounded by skeletal trees, this could be a scene from the 6th century. It's not until a low angle shot reveals his horse to be a motorcycle and he kicks it to life, its growl cracking the air like a burbeling Jabberwocky. The film is essentially plotless and focuses upon the struggle of this groups existence in a society that doesn’t care to understand true freedom and honor. They travel the country roads of Pennsylvania and perform for a few dollars to small towns where the cows outnumber the people. The conflict involves Billy and his nemesis (and cohort) Morgan, who wants to “sell out” to a promoter for fame and glory. The strength of the film is in its ability to allow peripheral characters to develop; though these insights don’t advance the plot it grounds the story in human drama.

The motorcycle jousting scenes are wonderful and well choreographed, often composed in medium shot (with close-ups reserved for weapons striking bloodied armor and shields), so the crashes and stunt-work can truly be appreciated...in the days before CGI! Ed Harris infuses Billy with a pompous and knightly conceit yet makes him fallible and human, full of anger, despair, and love for his friends. Tom Savini is the Black Knight Morgan but he too has many dimensions and is not a total cad, and earns the respect of his King. On paper, the film seems like a guilty pleasure, a campy romp through Camelot but it rises above the superficial: this is a sad tale of sacrifice and nobility in a world haunted by Corporate zombies.

Finally, a joust decides the once and future King as Morgan accepts the crown and the heavy responsibility of leadership. Like King Arthur, Billy then disappears into history and becomes a myth for those who loved him.

Final Grade: (B)

BURN, WITCH, BURN (Sidney Hayers, 1962, UK)

2011-07-06T08:59:00.000-04:00

EYES WITHOUT A FACE (Georges Franju, 1960, France)

2011-07-04T14:11:00.000-04:00

A father's omnipotence is challenged by a defiant daughter, her vacuous visage an effigy of his failure, two identities defined and transfigured by a murderous obsession: hers hidden behind a masquerade of plastic beauty, his eclipsed by a surgical mask. Director Georges Franju confounds genre expectations as this classic horror bromide wonderfully mutates into an Expressionist melodrama, ripe with patriarchal abuse and feminine fatale.

The opening scene is wickedly mysterious as a car races through the thick night, trees like skeletal hands silhouetted against the sky, and a shadowy figure slumped in the back seat. Maurice Jarre’s skewed carnival music overlaps the onrushing images painting a frightening emotional texture upon the narrative. A handsome woman grips the steering wheel with determination, glancing quickly towards her “sleeping” passenger. From a low angle, we see her stop the car and pull the figure from the back-seat...and throw it in the river. This opening begins a gruesome and exciting experiment in tension and domestic turbulence, where a mad doctor commits murder, his Hippocratic Oath now hypocritical.

Dr. Genessier is responsible for the disfigurement of his lovely daughter Christiane whom he keeps like a bird in a cage; a slight thing of beauty, to be cared for and under his control. With the help of his assistant Louise, she kidnaps blue eyed women and he cuts off their faces to transplant upon his daughter’s scarred visage. The doctor is both compassionate and unsympathetic, helping sick children one moment and applying his precision skills to the supple flesh of helpless victims the next. He is more concerned with proving his procedure a success than desiring its superficial outcome: to save his daughter’s life. Christiane is revolted when she discovers that innocents are being harmed and rebels against her father, but is kept prisoner by her injury.

Franju films the first operation with surgical precision, showing the scalpel slice into the skin and the fleshy mask lifted off the victim, a stolen identity to be born again. The cinematography has a New Wave appeal as the camera travels around the house, a cinema verity excursion that depicts a life-like location and not a soundstage. The baying of hounds often breaks the tense silences, and Dr. Genessier is often visually linked with the dogs while his fragile daughter is equated with birds; even her thin curvaceous neck and delicate eyes evoke an avian nature.

Christiane finally succeeds in a poetic gesture that frees her from imprisonment while her father becomes food of the dogs.

Final Grade: (B+)

THE FACE OF ANOTHER (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966, Japan)

2011-07-02T12:17:00.001-04:00

A damaged man loses his individuality and is devoured by a manufactured plastic persona, a mask that seems to have a life of its own. Director Hiroshi Teshigahara explores themes of alienation from society and oneself in this bifurcated tale of divorced identity and marital discourse.

Okuyama is disfigured in an industrial accident and now hides his visage behind a veil of bandages. A Psychiatrist and plastic surgeon agrees to create a new face for Okuyama, but warns him of the possible dire consequences. But Okuyama’s desire to become a part of society once again actually isolates him from the world, and he even sinks so low as to seduce his own wife. Okuyama is first introduced from inside out, in a talking x-ray, where we actually peer beneath the soft veneer of his face. We are never shown Okuyama as he was a priori, eschewing flashbacks or exposition, so we know very little of his personality. Teshigahara also hides the deformity by shooting through bubbled glass or quick cut-away, creating a very mysterious and surreal atmosphere. He obfuscates the narrative by depicting a parallel tale of perversity: a young woman who caries the radiation scars from Nagasaki on one-half of her face, and her incestuous relationship with her brother. Though these two stories never collide, the characters never meet, they both suffer the same dementia. One is lost in a foaming sea and the other drowns in a faceless crowd, both vaporized in an internal nuclear Armageddon.

Teshigahara conflates common themes of the human need to take on different identities to survive, but not necessarily becoming different people: such as, a woman's desire to hide inside of a mask of makeup or wear a silk veil, empowering her revelation to one she trusts, who earns the right. Teshigahara films in strange oblique angles with stuttering and repetitive editing techniques, and surreal set-pieces like the glass ether of the doctor's office. The soundtrack whispers eerie secrets with disjointed creaking notes, and ghostly backlighting compounded with quick-zooms and dehumanizing extreme close-up, subsuming identity beyond the full-frame, creating an almost supernatural rhythm and rhyme to the narrative.

Okuyama must destroy the creator of his mask, severing the final vestige of self, now totally free to become a new man...but remains only a stranger with his own hands.

Final Grade: (A)

PALE FLOWER (Masahiro Shinoda, 1964, Japan)

2011-06-29T09:23:00.000-04:00

One man's lust, his body condemned to a walled existence, a thirst that can never be slaked, grasps a withered flower in one cold hand. Director Masahiro Shinoda’s film noir thriller paints an existential portrait of grim addiction where flesh and money become interchangeable, purchased at the cost of a soul.

Muraki’s samurai loyalty incarcerates his morality, locked-up behind concrete and barbed wire, a man who has everything to lose and nothing to gain. Released from prison for the murder of a rival gang member, Muraki earns the respect of his peers and the adoration of a mysterious woman, balanced precariously between duty and desire. Saeko (psycho?) is a fragile beauty with the tensile strength of steel, her large eyes mirrors that reflect nothing, placid waters with an invisible riptide that drown Muraki. He falls deeper and deeper into these unfathomable depths, an animal trapped in a race for another’s profit.

Shinoda sacrifices story for style, every shot a well composed composition, utilizing mise en scene as language that supersedes dialogue. He conveys a grim atmosphere thick with cigarette smoke and sweat, claustrophobic interiors that traps Muraki in a prison cell: a free man who has become his own jailor. Shinoda affects a brutal realism of this underworld realm, haunted by men barely alive. He uses a dog race as a metaphor concerning the yakuza, as the bosses gamble money where their benefit is another’s fatal loss. The musical score is chilling and surreal, giving the film an eerie haunted quality that foreshadows the Shakespearean tragic romance.

Muraki’s choice is really no choice, a victim of his own self-fulfilling prophecy. His freedom balances on the edge of a knife, and his sanity is consumed by a wicked desire that can no longer be satisfied.

Final Grade: (B+)

THE YOUNG ONE (Luis Bunuel, 1960, Mexico)

2011-06-27T23:36:00.000-04:00

A moral triptych as two adults become trapped by the steel jaws of racial propaganda and a child falls victim to male enhancement. Director Luis Bunuel creates a powerful story condemning the belief systems that fuel racism and statutory rape. He creates an island in an ocean of despair and allows the drama to reach flashpoint where even holy water cannot douse the flames.

Evvie is like the fragile doe kept on a leash, a pet for Miller who is the game warden of this isolated community. Into this environment stumbles a stranger: Traver is a black man accused of raping a white woman. Evvie accepts the stranger at face value (not knowing his past), and is scared at first but soon recognizes his actions as reactionary but fair: he takes the shotgun, food, ammo, and tools but leaves money for the items. Miller is a passionate racist, white trash who condemns Traver and passes judgment, not based on facts but on the color of his skin. And Evvie is stuck in the middle of this war, victim herself of Miller’s sexual appetite. Like the raccoon that raids the henhouse, these predatory beliefs devour this microcosm.

Bunuel doesn’t give the audience black and white answers: he develops are story of dimension and moral gravity by introducing the Reverend Fleetwood and a hardcore southern redneck named Jackson as “mirrors” to reflect Traver and Miller. Evvie remains the only true innocent as her childhood is penetrated by the callous Miller, a man old enough to be her grandfather. Jackson is without merit, a cruel ignoble person (I don’t even consider his type to be a man) who wants nothing more than to murder Traver: this is a man who considers child rape acceptable (wink, wink) but would kill a black man with the slightest provocation...and enjoy it. Reverend Fleetwood is the voice of reason but his holy words echo hollowly in these guttural halls.

The final act is powerful and provocative as Miller begins to understand Traver’s plight and helps him escape the island. Though still despicable, Bunuel at least imbues Miller's character with the slightest possibility of change…unlike Jackson. And Evvie is still the simple child who dances in her high heeled shoes.

Final Grade: (B+)

ONE-EYED JACKS (Marlon Brando, 1961, USA)

2011-06-25T22:42:00.000-04:00

With one eye towards a future, Dad Longworth trades his friendship for two bags of gold. Marlin Brando directs this striking tale of two friends who become bitter enemies, not over the stolen loot but the blatant lies of dead reckoning.

Brando is the honorable Kid, trapped on a ridge with his partner Dad (a tempestuous performance by Karl Malden), and he palms two bullets in order to stay while his partner tries to wrangle-up some new horses. But Dad betrays Kid and leaves him to a grim fate and makes off with the gold. Five years later, Kid escapes from the stinking prison and hunts down his partner only to find him two-faced: dad is now the sheriff of Monterey, his criminal life behind him like a dim shadow. Kid expects to exact revenge but Brando plays the part with subtlety as Kid seems to vacillate, and it's not until he catches Dad in an outright lie that cements his decision. This is a tale of injustice as the law is used for personal gain, and a skewed morality as Kid is fighting an internal struggle to change his life and Dad seems a good man...but only on the outside.

Brando takes the film into new territory, eschewing genre landscapes like deserts and Death Valley for the crashing surf of the beach. The characters are given time to speak and react, to breath and become alive, and even Slim Pickens' Deputy Sheriff transcends the restrictions of minor plot device. This is a story that is pregnant with dialogue so when the action starts its quick and bloody. Brando doesn't glamorize the genre, he depicts the brutality and justifications for this lawless time.

Dad and Kid, the metaphorical father and prodigal son, finally unload their accusations in the dusty street. Again Brando subverts western tropes and instead of a long drawn-out gun battle, the two duel around a stone fountain. But there is no happy ending for the Kid as he must abandon love and ride away a wanted man.

Final Grade: (B-)

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (Orson Welles, 1965, Spain)

2011-06-22T14:50:00.000-04:00

The corpulent and puckish Falstaff lives life dishonestly but truthfully, a roguish contradiction living in each moment, disloyal to others but true to thyself: a poor man with a rich heart. Orson Welles navigates the tragicomic character into a moral compass, centering his narrative upon the rotund protagonist who reflects upon the past darkly, a man perfect in his imperfections.

Welles imbues Falstaff with much more than just his oversized physical stature; he becomes a mirthful and yet often despicable opportunist, a victim of his own his drunken folly and escapades. Falstaff becomes his own worst enemy. Yet he is wonderfully incompetent, clad in the hilariously pot-bellied amour, hiding behind the bushes during a gruesome duel where his cohort Prince Hal fights for the right of ascension. Even when he boasts of his involvement, it is more comical than deceitful, his expectant lies accepted with the taint of incredulity. Welles' broad craggy features, shock of white hair, huge disposition, and commanding voice tinged with self-deprecation make him sympathetic and ultimately tragic; a huge man diminished by his own aggrandizements.

The cinematography is brilliant with deep focus photography allowing characters to move within the frame and yet remain visually prominent. Welles uses both high and low angle shots to great effect, creating the illusion of a much larger castle or crowd to continue outside the composition. When Falstaff is informed of the Prince's coronation, he limps towards the camera and dominates the screen shot from an extreme low angle, becoming an important (at least to himself) persona. This parallels another fantastic shot of Falstaff as he is spurned by his former friend and he limps away from the camera, remaining in focus as he diminishes slowly from sight between two stone arches...a huge man fading away. The Battle of Shrewsbury is wonderfully captured on film and edited with quick action inserts and brutal violence, creating a realistic and textural experience of medieval combat. Details such as the knights being lowered by ropes onto their mounts, dead and dying horses, and knights reduced to animals scrambling in thick mud and dying in heaps. Welles depicts this realistically and not theatrically, and must have influenced films as diverse as EXCALIBUR and BRAVEHEART (though this sequence is better than either film).

This is arguably Welles' masterpiece as it becomes involving not only through the frisson of the narrative but the friction of the visuals, the heat generated between scenes and frames, Shakespeare's dialogue spoken with the utmost authority and zeal, breathing life into this pastiche of history. The times do change but the men remain the same.

Final Grade: (A+)

MODESTY BLAISE (Joseph Losey, 1966, UK)

2011-06-19T15:19:00.000-04:00

I wasn’t going to write a review. Then I thought: why not write a review about why I didn’t want to write a review? So here are some ramblings and misgivings concerning director Joseph Losey's treacle and debacle.

First, the not so bad points. Monica Vitti as the titular heroine is a delicious pop tart with faraway eyes, a living sculpture possessed by Aphrodite, a goddess whose sultry English accent evokes passionate intercourse...even though you can barley understand her. Terence Stamp as her sidekick Willie Garvin adds an elemental masculinity and rugged physicality thick with cockney slang. But it’s Dirk Bogarde as the villainous Gabriel whose white socks and blonde wig fail to disguise his evil snickering genius imbued with homoerotic pathos. Gabriel’s accountant is always prepared to delineate the bottom line, a bookish cohort who weighs the financial means to his master’s diabolical ends. Losey’s camera tracks and moves with precision, often capturing interesting compositions: in one scene he shoots through Gabriel’s champagne glass (half empty or half full?) to focus upon soldiers in a distant tower, or through an aperture in a modern sculpture to frame a frightened Modesty. Losey’s use of cross cutting and jump cuts is professionally competent. The catchy spring heeled score saturates the entire film and is often used diagetically, from radios to a circus organ during a knife fight.

The rest is pretty but awful. The characters are not well defined and uninteresting, as Modesty is absolutely not believable as a spy or action hero! I haven’t read the comic strip or novels, so my concern is not to compare and let the film fall on its own merits. There are only a few action scenes and they are incompetent and futile: a bumbling knife fight, a car chase with little suspense, and a final riot of madcap gunplay. The somnambulistic pacing is as suspenseful as an accounting ledger, a zero sum equation ending in red. The fatal error that plagues Losey’s film is that it is an impotent parody of a genre that veers precariously close to insincerity...even when played straight.

I didn’t want to waste time writing about a film that I literally care nothing about. But I caught myself thinking about a film that I didn’t want to think about, strange as that seems. So I pasted these words together: please don’t get the impression that my syntax is a recommendation. Conversely, my bottom line is this: A satire should reveal the limitations of the source material with humorous insight but MODESTY BLAISE is immodest and blasé.

Final Grade: (D)

THE CIRCUS (Charles Chaplin, 1928, USA)

2011-06-18T12:15:00.000-04:00

A tramp discovers true love is more dangerous than walking a tightrope. Charles Chaplin once again tells a simple tale of sublime devotion to reveal the wonderful depth of human nature.

The tramp is accused of pick pocketing and chased into a failing circus, where his bumbling antics are a sensation. He is hired as a property man and becomes the hit of the show, his slapstick seemingly unintentionally inept. He falls for the owners daughter, a trapeze artist who is abused by her father when her routine fails. When Rex is hired as the new act, the tramp has to prove himself the superior man.

Chaplin’s routines are a humorous ballet and fit the tempo and structure of the story: from the ongoing gag of the donkey chase to the high-wire act where he’s accosted by monkeys, each setup is perfectly in character and becomes a tempestuous performance of physicality and emotion. With precise body language and facial expression, Chaplin imbues the tramp with grace and humility making his final sacrifice all the more tearful. This is Chaplin at the height of his creativity! As the tramp attempts to impress his paramour by taking over the high-wire act, the ensuing chaos is wonderfully choreographed and the results absolutely hilarious. But the power of the film is in its contemplative moments as the tramp sits alone and daydreams. In one sequence Chaplin uses a double-exposure to mimic the tramp’s daydream of pummeling the new suitor but he remains shy and unassuming. The final scene as he walks alone across the muddy field leaving behind the fading circus ring is beautifully sad and reflective: his loss has become another’s gain.

Final Grade: (A)

84 CHARLIE MOPIC (Patrick Sheane Duncan, 1989, USA)

2011-06-16T18:17:00.000-04:00

War is reduced to a small group of men humping their way through a spiritual wasteland of corrupted dreams and broken hopes. Director Patrick Duncan’s POV technique shrinks the world into a series of medium close-ups, allowing the men to dominate the film with obtuse words and weary expressions, yet underscore the drama with existential dread were the enemy haunt their jungle like demons captured on undeveloped film.

The setup is fairly simple: a two-man motion picture crew is assigned to accompany a five man long range patrol on a reconnaissance mission, in order to chronicle the practical field techniques, to be studied for training purposes. The leader is OD, a hulking black man who leads by example, a man who is tough and deadly in the field…but fair. Though the characters tend towards cliché; the jokester (and short-timer), the hillbilly, the killer, and the pretty boy, each becomes an individual whose roots run deep towards home through the muck of Vietnam. They transcend the boundaries of the frame and become believable and real people. The acting is first rate and often carries the illusion of immediacy and improvisation while remaining consistent.

The film depicts the boring and mundane routine of combat, living in the gulf of silence between the teeth chattering rumble of combat. Details like the soldiers powdering their feet and drying their socks, duct taping equipment so it doesn’t rattle, or discarding a pack of cigarettes because menthol carries in the wind for a quarter mile make the story credible. The bulk of the story concerns these details as they discover NVA booby traps or an enemy encampment, or setting up a perimeter for sleep. The action happens quickly and is over in a few seconds and renders the consequences in gut wrenching detail. Watching OD remove dog tags, duct tape one set between clenched teeth, and snap his comrade up inside a grimy body bag is brutal: each snap is like a gunshot that kills a part of the soul.

84 CHARLIE MOPIC is a very good little war film whose goal is not to export some huge and foreboding Truth about war…but to strip away the veneer of John Wayne heroism and reveal a wasteland where men are left killing men...just like themselves.

Final Grade: (B+)

CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES: ORIGINAL CUT (J. Lee Thompson, 1972, USA)

2011-06-14T19:56:00.000-04:00

The King is dead. Long live the King! J. Lee Thompson casts a dark shadow upon the fourth film in the Ape franchise, an infusion of fear, paranoia, and repression where minorities, unable to access equal rights or the rule of law, stage a violent revolt and destroy the destroyers…thus ensuring their potential salvation will result in their own annihilation.

The film’s premise is explained in the first few minutes: Armando saved the child of the time traveling hominids Zira and Cornelius, an evolved great ape that could lead his taxonomic family to enslave the human race (explained in the previous film). For the past twenty years, this ape was thought dead until an excited utterance reveals the truth: the world is inhabited by lousy human bastards! Now, apes have replaced domestic pets as objects of affection, and their superior intelligence (relative to dogs and cats), has cast them as servants and slaves. Caesar witnesses the barbaric cruelty levied against his kind and leads a bloody revolution, his crown a ring of fire, and spits his venomous curse towards all humanity for he is not born of man or woman, and he must set his kindred free.

Once suspension of disbelief is successfully suspended (for all the apes other than Caesar are of the mundane type), the film is ripe with spoiled morality that urges violence as not only the means…but also the end. A film that refracts its time through the prism of social upheaval, echoing the screams of innocent students murdered at Kent State, or those beaten and ridiculed because of their race or religious (and non-religious) belief, capturing the frisson of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where law only existed for those with Power.

The film in its original cut is brutal. Caesar leads in a frenzy of violence, without recourse to the Rule of Law as this is his species only hope of freedom, however temporary. The Governor is nothing more than a racist caricature, scowling his way through the film, and his assistant MacDonald, a black man, is the subdued voice of reason, a man who cannot subscribe to this wholesale slaughter. Anger breads anger, the knife leads to the gun, the gun to bombs, until extermination rests in the hands of madmen. In this version, the Chimpanzee Lisa is unable to utter the compassionate plea for mercy, and Caesar commands his legion to batter the Governor to death. His fiery rhetoric inflames his minions and is the spark that burns away the old to make way for the New World Order. Like all Dictators, Caesar better watch his friends closely.

Final Grade: (B-)

THE HIDDEN FORTRESS (Akira Kurosawa, 1958, Japan)

2011-06-12T14:29:00.000-04:00

Two bumbling peasants play a bloody lottery in a viscous battle and end up burying corpses instead of becoming ones: driven by greed, they unknowingly wager on the right House, holding a winning hand in this fatal game of life. Akira Kurosawa’s adventure story is a travelogue through enemy territory as both Tahei and Matashichi embark upon a violent masquerade in a country exposed like the raw nerve of war.

Kurosawa begins the film with the two protagonists swearing and cursing, scrabbling in the dirt like shitworms, the very antithesis of heroism and legendary deeds. The story breaks genre conventions by focusing upon these two idiots and the part they unwittingly play in helping a princess and general escape through enemy checkpoints, the monkey on their backs greed, hidden in sticks or burlap sacks. Tahei and Matashichi bicker, argue, threaten to betray one another, all for the love of money. When they decide to help a stranger and his mute mistress it is only for monetary gain, not moral reward. They attempt to run away with the loot but are discovered and return, forever grumbling about their plight. In one unnerving scene, they even draw straws to rape the sleeping mute girl, but are kept at bay by her rock-wielding guardian angel. Even though they are dirty, sometimes disgusting, simple, annoying and often very funny, there is still a basic humility and humanity that pumps through their veins.

Kurosawa’s use of the TohoScope format is amazing, his compositions fluid and vibrant with movement. The chase scene as the secretive General Rokurota (another wonderful Toshiro Mifune performance!) races on horseback to track down the enemy soldiers is done in fast tracking shots, as slashing blades cut bone and sinew and bodies crash to the hard ground. Rokurota ends his violent encounter by dueling with the enemy General, a five minute sequence of patient observation punctuated by spear thrusts like exclamation points, tearing through the entire encampment.

Fate seems to reward Tahei and Matashichi with three horses laden with gold, and true to themselves they begin fighting over who should have the greater share. When the secret is finally revealed, the look on their faces is priceless, and they are given a single gold bar as a reward: a fortune for two peasants! But this time, they begin to trust each other and walk off-screen towards a hopeful future.

Final Grade: (B)

MARTIN (George Romero, 1977, USA)

2011-06-11T10:18:00.000-04:00

A troubled young man is confounded by the anachronism of memory, juxtaposing sexual desire for bloodletting, his existence devoid of magic but ripe with superstition. George Romero propels the vampire myth into the 20th century as a tale of adolescent angst corrupted by archaic family values, where sex becomes violent penetration (a hypodermic as substitute for his manhood), a thirst slaked not only by blood...but the power to control.

The film opens with a brutal rape on a train, where an ordinary young man sneaks into a locked compartment and subdues a woman with a hypo full of sodium pentothal, has sex with her unconscious and unresponsive body, then cuts her wrists with a razor blade to drink the blood. He then arranges the room to make it seem like a suicide. As the camera follows the perpetrator from the train we soon realize that he is our subject, the story’s protagonist that has only earned our outrage. It is to Romero’s credit that Martin eventually becomes a sympathetic character, a victim of a family shame who treads precariously in the thorns of his uncle’s Old World. His vociferous uncle Cuda taunts Martin believing him to be “Nosferatu” and vows to destroy him but will save his soul first...unless Martin kills again. Cuda hangs garlic on the doors, crucifixes on the walls, and even has an Catholic priest perform a meek exorcism. Martin is profoundly disturbed and acts out these vampire tropes by mundane means: without the use of “magic”, he utilizes drugs to control his victims and a razor the cut their veins. Romero uses black and white scenes to portray either Martin’s distant past (he believes himself to be over 80 years old) or his fantasy world tainted by classic horror films: Martin has fulfilled his uncle’s prophecy.

The killings decline when Martin finally discovers a willing companion to satisfy his sexual urges, a depressed and drunken married woman, but her suicide is ironically pinned on him; or more precisely, pinned through him.

Final Grade: (B)

SOYLENT GREEN (Richard Fleischer, 1973, USA)

2011-06-09T19:39:00.000-04:00

Soylent Green is made of people! OK there, I said it. Are you happy now? Richard Fleischer directs this bleak portrayal of an overpopulated and degraded world, where the dead are not buried but processed for consumption.

Charlton Heston chews through his scenes with testosterone fueled aplomb, a tough cop in a lawless world, a man who isn’t above stealing from the dead but can still be destroyed by this cannibalistic secret. Edward G. Robinson is wonderful as his aging partner, a research assistant who still remembers the vibrant and lush past before it was burned away by the greenhouse effect. His reaction to eating real lettuce or an apple is truly joyful, creating the heightened sensation of a world subsisting on tasteless crackers.

The film’s structure is a clichéd police procedural as Heston investigates a murder that proves to be an assassination, threatened by superiors who wish to cover it up. The illusion of a city of 40,000,000 people is not very believable as we often see busy city streets, or stairways full of bodies but never get a feel for such crowded conditions. Where is the stink of the sewer, the filth, the dead bodies that would clog the gutters every day? And the litter strewn streets echo lonely at night when this would be the time of activity in a hellish world, an inferno of trapped carbon dioxide. Fleischer uses a green filter on some of the daylight scenes to create a smog-like effect. There is a shortage of paper so another interesting detail are the writing tablets like carbon paper, used over and over again.

As Sol sets a final time he revisits a world he once knew; a verdant landscape of his childhood. He whispers his burden to Thorn who now knows the truth but must discover the evidence to make it public. His bloody hand is like an exclamation point, shouting truth to the heart of the world. But the human race has run...and lost.

Final Grade: (C)

DONT LOOK BACK (D. A. Pennebaker, 1967, USA)

2011-06-05T22:32:00.000-04:00

Portrait of a man as a young artist, the anarchy of prose condemned by the prosaic, where a guitar recites six string poetry. D.A. Pennebaker's celluloid diary transcends documentary and mere visual journalism, momentarily capturing that thin wild mercury, like photographing a shadow at night, Dylan’s penumbra eclipsing his own world.

Pennebaker smartly eschews voice-over and talking heads, allowing his camera to be casual observer in the circus of show business freak show. Beginning with Dylan’s back alley video Subterranean Homesick Blues, where truth is reduced to cue cards crudely discarded, we are intimate passengers behind the lens. The time is 1965 and Dylan is returning to London a star, where fame has confined him to tiny spaces, a prisoner of success. Pennebaker captures Dylan exclusively in cramped cars, trains, rooms boiling over with inane people and vacuous questions, or backstage awaiting his performance surrounded by his entourage. He is a man equated with confinement, both physical and metaphysical, and alone on the stage with the spotlight his epiphany, he masters his craft.

Make no mistake, Dylan is a shrewd businessman concerned not only with his art but its popularity, constantly scanning the charts and music journals for articles written about him or his rivals. But he also mentions in a quick throwaway line that this is only one part of his music, opposing the dark hours of writing long after midnight when the world stops, and the blank page becomes a Nietzschean abyss. Dylan's performances are portrayed in montage, his persona dominating the low angle compositions, the audience invisible shadows enraptured by his words. He doesn't speak between songs because his songs speak for themselves.

Dylan dissects reporters and journalists, refusing to answer questions with static replies and instead seeking fluid dialogue, always confounding the many Mr. Jones'. He only interacts directly with fans in one short segment, a few teenage girls subsumed by the cult of personality, and this other side of Bob Dylan is playful and sincere with these star struck fans. In another scene, Donovan strums his bubblegum melody, his sweet voice a narcotic, and Dylan firmly takes the guitar and belts out one of the best songs ever written, dimming this rising star and turning smiles into Cheshire grins. Another scene depicts Dylan performing to a small crowd of black farmers, then cuts to a concert hall where the reverb echoes his words...but not his intent; a visceral contradiction where words are diluted and reduced to rhyming melodies as pop songs. One thing is for certain, Judas went electric and never looked back!

Final Grade: (B+)

TAXI DRIVER (Martin Scorsese, 1976, USA)

2011-06-04T10:52:00.000-04:00

We are first introduced to Travis Bickle in extreme close-up, his eyes huge mirrors to a lost soul. Scorsese cuts to a smeared world haunted by colorfast ghosts while Bernard Herrmann’s breezy score becomes infused with thunderclouds. This juxtaposition sets the tone, a violent duality of a lonely man slowly detaching from the world.

The city of Travis Bickle is a whisper at the edge of reason, inhibited by predators and unwary prey, that stalk the refuse of this steel jungle. Director Martin Scorsese captures New York City in the bright neon like a hooker’s lipstick, a red gash of sharp teeth, with a poetic majesty of primary colors beckoning their lush carnal desires. Though Travis is caught in his own personal trap, the film isn’t a polemic against the Vietnam War or corrupt politicians, it is simply a modern tale of isolation in a city of millions.

Robert DeNiro’s commanding performance as the askew protagonist is both charming and brutal, imbued with empathy and apathy. His eyes reflect nothing but see everything, a man who has become as mechanical as his taxi. He is a sociopath when he focuses his rage upon a Presidential Candidate but a hero when he carries out his vendetta against a Pimp; Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader dance this macabre pirouette, this violent ballet of social perspective. The final bloodletting is ejaculatory for Bickle, an expungement of pent-up frustrations. He imagines himself the rain that has come to wash the trash and stink from the streets.

Final Grade: (A+)

THE MISFITS (John Huston, 1961, USA)

2011-06-01T12:30:00.000-04:00

Roslyn is a dying flower surrounded by three dead men, her crippling innocence blooms into victimization of a patriarchy whose objectification diminishes her humanity and consumes her. She is a creature of instincts, a great enabler who wants to heal the world…while running away from it. Roslyn is attracted to men who need her help but can’t be helped; men who are jagged puzzle pieces that don’t fit together and who must find their own way to find themselves.

Full of self-loathing, Roslyn is contrasted with Isabelle, an aging fiery woman of the world whose existential attitude is one of survival and gritty realism. Roslyn is lost and insignificant among a vast interior wasteland, a prison whose walls are flesh and bone. But her insights are profound and caring, wanting to help but not asking for help, her emotional body invisible against her voluptuous physicality, reflecting this pure misogyny that infuses our society. Gay and Perce are cowboys, a nomenclature that defines their superficial qualities of free men who shall never “work for wage”. Guido is the devious innocent, the manipulator who lives his life above others, looking down at the destruction he’s wrought but never seeing the people.

Director John Huston’s camera adores Marilyn Monroe and embraces her femininity with sensual close-ups that accentuate her lovely form, but often films her in reflection showing her dramatic duality as her morality surrenders to a hellish world. The narrative’s vertex is an emotional duel in the Nevada desert, as the three men subdue a handful of graceful wild-horses, pulling down the world with their own egocentric insignificance. Roslyn sees them as murders, machines of death, things no longer human, and her faint plea is almost lost amid the cosmos.

The soft whinnying of dying horses is her own death rattle, as she becomes a ghost in the arid desert. But Perce decides to forego the money and free the horses while Gay recaptures the stallion…only to set him free: he abides by his own terms. Roslyn’s fierce love resurrects Perce and Gay…but Guido remains one of the walking dead.

Final Grade: (A)

BLOW OUT (Brian De Palma, 1981, USA)

2011-05-30T19:03:00.000-04:00

Jack Terri's life is imprinted upon magnetic tape, a reel to reel existence lived through a live wire. Director and writer Brian De Palma ciphers Antonioni's BLOW-UP into a Hitchcockian mystery where everything is exactly as it seems, synching video and audio into an nihilistic thriller as cracked as the Liberty Bell.

The film begins as a classic teen-slasher flick, to include the buxom victims and the hunchbacked serial killer, shot in POV of the murderer allowing immediate viewer identification with the sadistic acts. De Palma then smartly cuts to a sound studio where Jack Terri is synchronizing sound effects to the moving pictures but unable to imprint the perfect scream. This genre excursion becomes a harsh parallel to the actual film and blurs the line between cinematic Trash and Art.

Later that night, Jack is recording nature sounds for his collection and witnesses a car crash into the river. He jumps into the frigid waters and pulls a young woman from the vehicle but the driver is dead. Soon, he is being ordered to forget the girl and details of the accident by mysterious politicians because the driver was the Governor and presidential hopeful. Now, Jack is involved in an apparent conspiracy where he knows the truth but can't prove it. De Palma smartly reveals the truth to the audience and allows the narrative to exceed Jack's perception, creating high-wire tension between what we know and what he doesn't.

De Palma utilizes split screen and two-shot compositions to great effect, revealing visual information to weave a pattern of suspense. The beautiful cinematography portrays the City of Brotherly Love in all its sordid elegance, from the bright neon glitter to the litter strewn gutters. He often surrounds Jack with studio equipment, isolating him from human contact, and in one 360 degree shot centers him in a room full of blank cassettes. Little is revealed about Jack's past (or Sally's) except an incident where his talent for invention resulted in the murder of a police officer. DePalma sets the scene for Jack's redemption but dresses it to kill our expectations...and it does. Jack only discovers the girl of his screams.

Final Grade: (B+)

KWAIDAN (Masaki Kobayashi, 1964, Japan)

2011-05-29T22:07:00.000-04:00

An addendum of apparitions, a tetralogy of terror separating the physical world from the spiritual realm where frozen promises and dark desires create a nebulous boundary of self-destruction. Masaki Kobayashi’s ghost stories evoke an eerie sense of expressionist reality, utilizing unsettling colors and surreal imagery that sets the stage for four disparate morality plays.

The Black Hair: A tale of love divorced from social standing, when a samurai leaves his poor wife to pursue a better life only to become servant to a pampered Princess. He discovers that wealth is more than the sum of gold. Haunted by dreams of her simple beauty and purity, he returns to their dilapidated home to reconcile and discovers a dark reality clinging like spider webs…and strands of long black hair.

The Woman of the Snow: Two men trapped in a raging snowstorm meet a frigid queen whose breath brings cold silence of eternity. Spared because of his innocent charm, one man must promise never to speak of his mystical savior. But some men eventually share all secrets with their wives, and doom descends like a blizzard upon sleeping children.

Hoichi, the Earless: A blind musician plays his song of an ancient battle for a ghostly court, slowly fading into an incorporeal existence. He is spared by the Holy Text painted upon his body, concealing Hoichi from the desperate spirits…but two parts remain unprotected.

In a Cup of Tea: An incomplete story of a samurai who drinks the spirit of another warrior and suffers the consequences of madness, like an artist finally subsumed by his work.

Kobayashi stages each story like a play, focusing upon static sets painted with vibrancy or concealed in deranged shadows, faces painted with the thick Noh makeup. He creates an atmosphere of etherealness, where logic falls prey to myth and legend, a spooky transition like faces peering through the thin veil of the afterlife…or the depths of a watery tomb. Kobayashi tells the epic battle of Dan-no-ura with a creative flourish, his camera panning over traditional paintings spliced with savage violence; a tale told with respect and dignity, but nonetheless tragic in its finality. He elevates the horror genre into the realm of high Art.

Final Grade: (A)

SOLARIS (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972, USSR)

2011-05-28T11:37:00.000-04:00

Kris Kelvin travels millions of miles to combat an alien consciousness…his own. Andrei Tarkovsky’s existential masterpiece is an introspective journey into a foreign world, where the cold sea can wash away sin or drown the victim in its sentient embrace.

Tarkovsky begins the story as Kris Kelvin wanders contemplatively around his father’s farmhouse, focusing upon the rippling waters and green spindly tendrils, the rich abundance of life and energy on Earth. He argues with his father and burns his past, its ashes drifting away into the ether…but regrets always write their indelible text upon our psyches. Tarkovsky’s narrative dichotomy to Earth imparts a sense of longing and loneliness for Kelvin: he is isolated and disheveled upon arriving at the neglected space station, its gray and foreboding interior a reflection of Kelvin’s dejection. The surviving scientists are caught in their own traps, their dire warnings too vague and obtuse for understanding. Sleep soon brings the deep-rooted fears and bitter anxieties to flesh, to once again be opposed, a divine torture gifted from the tumultuous seas below, a watery intelligence who grasps at their minds attempting to communicate. But the scientists want to destroy what they fail to understand.

Kris must confront a simulacrum of his ex-wife Hari, who killed herself because she could not live without him. This façade is plucked from his mind and she is created in his mental image, with all of her flaws and weaknesses…as remembered and imagined by Kris. I think this is an important distinction and why Kris ultimately fails: Hari is form to his own biased and anxious emotions, soc when she committed suicide Kris believed it to be his fault. He spirals deeper and deeper into depression and remorse unable to reciprocate her unconditional love; time after time redemption trickles through his fingers like water. But this automaton is becoming human in its own way, and makes the one final selfless decision for love, revealing Kris’s egocentrism because he can’t believe she would make that sacrifice for him, proving that Kris didn’t understand the “real” Hari at all.

Tarkovsky’s beautiful cinematography varies between color and black and white to show Kris’s mental state, his gradual loss of sanity: the past, present, and delusion becoming one continuum. The detail to the set design is magnificent and adds an unused and hebephrenic disorder to the visuals and subtext that creates an absolutely realistic environment. Ironically, Kris willingly becomes a prisoner to the garden of Earthly delights, a Boschian purgatory given substance on Solaris.

Final Grade: (A+)

FOLLOWING (Christopher Nolan, 1998, UK)

2011-05-25T21:47:00.001-04:00

A nameless man becomes a stranger to himself, a crowd of one, and desperately searches for identity in objects and transgressions. Christopher Nolan’s debut film is short in time, just over 60 minutes, but long on ideas and substance: a loner who falls victim to a violent ménage a trio.

A struggling young writer begins to follow strangers around London, observing and deducing their lives from routine and habit, a strange fiction that soon becomes a malignant fascination. When confronted by one of his subjects, he fails to consider that he may be a victim himself, reduced to an object, a behavioral pattern in a complex web of deceit.

Nolan subverts typical narrative patterns, which he would perfect in his next film MEMENTO, to create an enigma from a rather standard coda. He utilizes flashbacks and flash-forwards to extreme effect, forcing the observant viewer to piece together the story based on details such as scars/busies, hairstyles, and mundane possessions. His sudden cuts between scenes heightens suspense, a vertiginous technique that keeps the viewer focused yet slightly unbalanced.

FOLLOWING is a wonderful debut from a talented filmmaker, a creator whose cinematic ideas are balanced with fringe personas, composing an intelligent drama from film noir tropes. Unfortunately, after MEMENTO Christopher Nolan has been subsumed by Hollywood and has become master of the illusion...without substance.

Final Grade: (B+)

BICYCLE THIEVES (Vittorio De Sica, 1948, Italy)

2011-05-22T15:18:00.000-04:00

Despair drives an honest man to commit a criminal act but the simple gesture of a little boy restores his humanity and humility. Director Vittorio De Sica’s quest into that undiscovered country of human conscience is told succinctly and without melodrama, a path through impoverished streets and dingy rooms, clad in rags and empty of cash…but full of life.

Antonio is part of the faceless mass of unemployed workers, a man who relies on his wife and little boy to sustain their meager existence. He is offered a job that requires a bicycle but his has been pawned to keep them from starving. His quick-thinking wife strips the bed and sells the cotton bed sheets for enough money to buy back the bicycle. But Antonio’s dream is crushed on the very first day when his bike is stolen and the remainder of the film becomes a desperate quest to find this Holy Grail.

This odyssey becomes a life and death struggle, a means to survive, but it is much more than that: it is Antonio’s very manhood that is at stake, his self-respect. He is impotent without a job and the bicycle has become a symbol of his accomplishment…and his guilt in allowing it to be stolen. His compulsion to find the thief and recover the bike is to prove his worth to his family and himself. The joy when he is able to buy back the bike from the pawnshop is one of spiritual exuberance in a dirty world where religion has no place, where doors must be locked so the poor doesn’t leave before super. When Antonio is forced to steal as a last option, he becomes the very thing he despises, it is total destruction. He is lost, dehumanized, a ghost who possesses his mysterious skin. But it’s Bruno who takes his father’s calloused hand and resurrects his soul in a way that holy words can never achieve.

This is also a story concerning a loss of faith; not only Antonio’s but a whole society victimized by war. There is no mythical quality, no help from above, no miracle that sets our helpless protagonist apart from the liars and thieves. The church is full of hungry stomachs who mutter vacuous prayers so they can stand in a soup line. De Sica damns the church and their meager efforts by exclusion from the narrative: mythology is reflexive and the godhead impotent.

De Sica films in crowded streets and dirty tenements, a bitter reflection of post-war Rome, and his use of unknown actors helps the film become the penumbra of Hollywood reality, juxtaposed with the very posters that Antonio pastes on walls. This isn’t real life but a more direct montage of real life, with the stink and wretchedness of poverty: here, being poor doesn’t make you a better person, it crushes the spirit.

Final Grade: (A)

HEAD (Bob Rafelson, 1968, USA)

2011-05-21T21:20:00.000-04:00

The Monkees alter the perception of reality by deconstructing their image with self-deprecating humor and curse the very audience that made them stars. Bob Rafleson’s head-trip into the cult of personality is a psychedelic time capsule, a dark reflection of the counterculture zeitgeist of the late 60s.

Rafleson structures the film with stream of consciousness precision and blends genres into an alchemical admixture of anti-establishment propaganda. The prefab four attempt the journey from adolescence into adulthood, imbuing their inane antics with adult concern. Rafleson utilizes flash cuts, jump cuts, elliptical editing with vignettes that reflect the brutality of the Vietnam war spliced with stereotypical hijinks: it’s an unsettling contrast. The Monkees themselves want to eat their cake…and have it to. They are a media-hyped illusion that has devoured the flesh and blood personas: Davey, Mickey, Mike and Peter have become the very thing they despise, their real names and identities now an illusion. HEAD tries unsuccessfully (though it’s nonetheless entertaining!) to break this enchantment.. When Mike laments that it’s a bummer to be a millionaire at the ripe old age of 25 because of the excess emotional baggage, his artistry barely recognized, it comes across as elitist prattle: I’m sure there are a billion people (your humble narrator included) who would trade places in an instant. Michael Hugo’s cinematography is beautifully psychedelic and opens up the Monkees from the 4:3 didactic and into a larger moral panorama.

HEAD is experimental and illusory in the best possible way with a subtle soundtrack that displays the talent of the self-deprecating tin band. The Monkees end their career by committing suicide by jumping off of the bridge and into placid waters.

Final Grade: (B+)

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez, 1999, USA)

2011-05-19T18:52:00.000-04:00

Three filmmakers in search of malignant history behind a local myth discover that the supernatural still walks the woods: and whatever walks there, walks alone. The visceral power behind the film lies in its faux documentary structure, shot on hand held cameras from a point-of-view perspective without music, minimal editing, or other conventional cinematic cues to remove the audience from the horror: it’s a slow descent into hellish nightmare without over-the-top graphics, relying on the pure adrenaline rush of hysteria.

The film’s advertising was crucial in fooling many viewers into believing this was an actual documentary, creating a detailed legend of the Blair Witch and its environment saturating the internet and airwaves, with seemingly genuine police reports and interviews to substantiate the claims. Wonderful! Even now, with the film an obvious gimmick, it still holds up very well and is still highly entertaining.

The film follows three film students on a mission to document the legend of the Blair Witch, as the camera captures them behind the scenes as opposed to acting before the camera. Heather, Joshua, and Michael eschew Hollywood stereotype and become easy (if sometimes annoying) characters in whom the audience can easily sympathize. As they become lost and aggressively erratic, their plight seems ridiculous because it is deadly, their demeanor changes and they begin to blame each other, possessed by true human emotion so lacking in most horror films. Strange symbols woven together with sticks and string hanging in the trees, eerie howling and children’s voices at night, and the ever increasing tension that they’re walking in circles is impossibly creepy. When Joshua disappears the suspense becomes chaotic and bloody teeth depict the seriousness of their predicament: this is no fucking joke. By showing little blood (the teeth wrapped in cloth), no rubbery monsters or misshapen makeup, or revealing the Witch itself are strokes of genius (and budget) that don’t sell the story short.

The ending is ripe with paranoia and thick with fear, as a dilapidated house looms from the darkness like some Cyclopean monolith (I can imagine the frightful oozing Cthulhu lurking in the basement), and a shock ending that keeps its secrets…and takes it to the grave.

Final Grade: (B+)

127 HOURS (Danny Boyle, 2010, USA)

2011-05-18T15:52:00.000-04:00

Aron Ralston must challenge the unknown; not some phantasmagoria that lurks in the deep chasms of rock but in the dark night of his soul. Director Danny Boyle contrasts the rugged beauty of nature with the rock solid determination of one man’s will to live which becomes an emotionally charged soliloquy.

Boyle’s flash-cuts and split-screens become a nuisance early in the drama as Aron prepares for his journey while the pounding rhythm becomes as aurally intoxicating as a hangover. Aron’s departure is more like a commercial than a cinematic prelude with annoying product placements and buzzing soundtrack. Though one scene foreshadows Aron’s plight as his fingers dance towards his Swiss Army Knife which remains just barely out of reach, forgotten in an empty cupboard.

The premise is fairly simple and once the accident occurs, Boyle settles down into close-ups and utilizes flashbacks and surreal fantasy sequences to reveal Aron’s past and the guilt he carries like a two ton rock. Here is the power of the film as Boyle goes beyond showing what happened, a documentary could accomplish that task, but shows us the internal monologue as a brain physically ceases to function properly while it is forcibly willed into survival mode. James Franco is able to become this victim trapped not only between two rocks but inside of himself, the revelation of self-discovery. Franco is believable in every aspect; from first shock to aftershock. As he comes to terms with his possible death he realizes that selfishness was his true downfall and this challenge his resurrection: he is born again.

ceThe wonderful cinematography of Blue John Canyon reduces Aron to insignificance like the black ants that crawl through the dirt and across his skin, the deep blue sky an ocean smothering Aron with thirst. But the images become a bit too gimmicky and the music intrusive: it’s the long slow takes and the natural silences that propel this horrific climax towards its bone-breaking conclusion. The camera doesn’t shy away from the gore but neither does it linger, and it’s Franco’s excellent mimicry that makes the audience squirm as he saws away at grey flesh and severs nerves and tendons.

Aron lives because of luck and determination. He thanks his adversary and is fortunate enough to discover life anew and accept a helping hand.

Final Grade: (B)

TAKE AIM AT THE POLICE VAN (Seijun Suzuki, 1960, Japan)

2011-05-16T17:01:00.000-04:00

A Corrections Officer is paroled from his job after a murderous attack, his moral compass leading him into the violent convolutions of the criminal underworld, inhabited by those who rarely deserve Justice but are often condemned by it. Seijun Suzuki populates the film with absurd and stylish characters that confound genre conventions and revel in the idiosyncrasy of his outlandish plot: he rewrites the noir formula and pours a new concoction onto the quicksilver screen, his alchemy the magic of transforming the mundane into the magnificent.

Suzuki begins the film through a sniper’s scope, foreshadowing the conflict but also breaking the fourth wall: a warning aimed directly at the audience. The clues to solve the deepening mystery (a mystery that doesn’t yet exist!) are revealed in the opening shots: a lonely lady dressed in shadows, a name exhaled onto glass, and a bubblegum chewing sniper. Suzuki deftly creates a typical escape sequence as prisoners are being transported in a van, but it soon becomes as assassination attempt…but against whom? Daijiro is a Prison Guard who treats the inmates fairly and with respect; he is the van’s driver who is suspended because he didn’t prevent two prisoners from being killed. He accepts his temporary suspension with a sense of humor, imaging it as a vacation, and never questions the decision of his superiors: how the hell was he supposed to prevent an ambush?

But he’s consumed with a sense of Justice and soon wanders the dark side of corrupt Japan, experiencing crime from the perpetrator’s perspective and being dragged into a police dragnet. Daijiro falls in love with a beautiful ’businesswoman” and potential assassin: unlike Cupid, her bow and arrow brings death. Through a series of false leads and fake deaths, fistfights and gunfights, flaming gas trucks and speeding trains, Daijiro finally sees his reflection in seedy eyes hidden by dark shades, and moral bottom line balances in the blood red.

Final Grade: (B+)

TWISTED NERVE (Ray Boulting, 1968, UK)

2011-05-14T13:01:00.000-04:00

Martin is a spoiled son eclipsed by his mother’s dark secret, kept hidden in an institution, his life an apology for his brother whose handicap is written in DNA. Roy Boulting directs this twisted tale of obscene masquerade and creepy sexuality.

After visiting his brother in the mental hospital, Martin is disenfranchised from his mother and step-father who have locked away their guilt and thrown away the key. When Martin has a chance encounter with the lovely young Susan, he pretends to be mentally retarded to gain her trust. He eventually insinuates himself into her home, a rooming house run by her promiscuous mother, a pessimistic and racist film editor, and an intelligent medical student completing his education. Martin is now “Georgie” and plays his role to maximum effect, as his infatuation grows his identity begins to shrink.

Boulting paces the two hour run time with clockwork precision, allowing the plot to unwind believably while ratcheting up the tension with enigmatic eroticism. We see inside Martin’s mind through his actions, and one wonderful mise-en-scene involves a stack of magazines adorned with muscle bound men and his naked body reflected in a shattered mirror, his face and genitals obscured by the spider web of broken glass. It becomes evident that he feels inferior, a boyish young man trapped in an underdeveloped body. Another scene shows him chopping wood as Susan’s mother reaches deep into his front pocket for a handkerchief, then begins to caress his chest: remember, she believes him to be a mentally challenged boy, ready to sate her own desires. But “Georgie” knows the charade will soon be revealed, and he disposes of her advances by chopping more than wood. As the camera pulls back, we see the shed and hear only the monotonous sawing as metal teeth rend bone.

Bernard Herrmann's playfully nervous score transcends the frame and becomes part of the story as Georgie often whistles the infectious tune; the music not only underscores the action but it becomes relevant psychologically; the abstract translated into bloody and demented action, yet filled with child-like inspiration.

The final act is a race against time as Susan discovers his despicable act, and rushes home to warn her mother. Capture by the now psychotic Martin, he begs her to endure some perverted sexual act which is drowned out by a voice-over, a nice touch that makes his plea terrifying and mysterious. Boulting then flashes a montage of murder projected from Martin’s damaged psyche as his umbilical to reality is severed, his ganglion terminally gone awry.

Final Grade: (B+)

CERTIFIED COPY (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010, France)

2011-05-11T07:57:00.000-04:00

UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010, Thailand)

2011-05-07T22:35:00.001-04:00

As Boonmee prepares the shuffle off this mortal coil he is haunted by loving spirits and visions of the past and future. Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul allows the environment to become central to the story, the thick lush jungle, glittering cavern, or the sadly beautiful waterfall where an ugly Princess discovers happiness: we are creatures of the dirt and to the dirt our bodies go…but does something else live on?

The cinematography worships this vibrant jungle where jagged mountains poke like broken teeth and into this world are physical and metaphysical being who exist: Weerasethakul presents them as people…not actors portraying people. The story is very simple as Boonmee plans for his death due to a kidney disorder and still tries to manage his small farm. His sister-in-law and her son arrive to help him and ease his suffering. It is a magical film without the requisite and insufferable self-pitying and guilt-ridden monologues that infect death stories. This concerns the natural order of things, and when his long dead wife materializes at the dinner table or his lost son, resurrected as a spirit monkey, visit him at the table it is a bit surprising but not wholly unexpected: it is natural. In a poignant scene Boonmee reveals his embarrassment to his wife’s spirit because she is still 19 years younger and he has aged. Their embrace is a simple yet life affirming gesture. Absolutely beautiful.

Scenes of karmic intrigue become wonderful interludes, shadows of perception, like some whisper of secret and forbidden knowledge passed on to imitate the art of life. The story makes sense because it is about living and the truth of facing death without fear, for it is a truth we all must face. Just remember: Heaven is overrated.

Final Grade: (A)

THE MAN FROM EARTH (Richard Schenkman, 2007, USA)

2011-05-05T18:36:00.001-04:00

A college professor professes to be 14,000 years old to his intimates on the eve of his cyclical evacuation to deter questions regarding his inability to age. Director Richard Schenkman converts Jerome Bixby’s interesting premise into a prosaic pantomime of ponderous pseudo-intellectualism.

John Oldman (geez, even the pun is awful) is packing his sparse belongings into his truck for destinations unknown while his professor colleagues attempt to throw him an impromptu farewell party. After a few drinks and superficial questions, John reveals that he is a 14,000 years old Cro-Magnon. His friends fail to follow the joke then for some inexplicable reason become angered and offended when John persists with the veracity of his tale. He vomits forth textual facts tinged with personal experiences while his colleagues attempt to discredit his ad hominid assertions. But the story becomes too preposterous, not only failing to suspend disbelief but garroting it in the process.

The direction and cinematography is appalling, not because of its obvious low-budget nature but in the fact of Schenkman’s incompetence: the film seems pasted together from random shots (do we really need to see an ear dominate the screen in a reverse angle shot?) seemingly done by a child with a digital camera. Each character becomes a cipher for argument (the Biology professor, Fundamentalist Christian, Psychiatrist, Geologist, etc…) but fails to become a convincing and complex person: their reactions are incomprehensible and laughably inconsistent, deriding John one minute then pondering the awesome possibilities the next. John soon admits to knowing Vincent van Gogh (even mispronouncing his name), sailing with Christopher Columbus (who thought the world was flat? WTF?), being the template for Jesus after meeting Buddha, and other such nonsense. I won’t even mention details of the final act of synchronicity which is jaw-droopingly inane.

The film wants to postulate that truth is subjective; that is, the others cannot disprove John’s story but this is argument from ignorance, a logical fallacy that seems to convince his friends. The story doesn’t delve too far into the mechanics of John’s immortality other than he says he doesn’t scar, which fails to explain why he looks like a middle-aged American. Remember, he is not a descendant but rather a surviving exemplar: for some, it must be reassuring that Jesus was white! Why didn’t he speak a few words of Sumerian or Aramaic (or hundreds of other language), or describe mundane details of his routines over the centuries? I would expect to witness some mysterious or exotic inflections or speech patterns as he falls back into the comfort of a favorite dialect or denote some strange gesture or body language. But John Oldman just seems to be some guy who can recite history. It would have been more interesting to hear a tale of desperation and mundanity, a life that has experienced the stinking streets of 17^th century London to the muddy trenches of the Great War as a common man instead of some self-important parable. This is a tale that wags the dog…and smells like one too.

Final Grade: (F)

PITFALL (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1962, Japan)

2011-05-03T06:41:00.000-04:00

A poor miner who has deserted from the military is caught in the telephoto lens of a man in white, and suffers a cruel fate of eternal hunger, reduced to the motions of an insect forever struggling in a pool of dirty water. Hiroshi Teshigahara weaves a tale of ghostly polemic and procedural melodrama that results in a nihilistic Capitalist creed muttered with smug delight: “Exactly as planned”.

The story begins in chiaroscuro terror with an frantic tracking shot as a nameless man and his boy race from some unknown terror. The man is a deserter from the Army and begins work in a small mine, he and his cohort scamming the landowner with the promise of discovering a rich vein of coal. As the boy molds the soft clay into ghastly shapes, a stranger in a white suite is photographing them, obscured by tombstones in a garden of death. Is this a bounty hunter searching for AWOL soldiers, or something more sinister? With this setup the film begins to cross into surreal territory, as Teshigahara utilizes stock footage of mining disasters, condemning the system which enslaves men without recourse to law or appeal. The miner and his boy are eventually lured into a ghost town dominated by a mountain of slag with a moat of filth, and he is murdered by the man in white. As his spirit rises from his body, he can only look at the heap of dead flesh that was once is body and wonder why. He wanders back into town and towards the candy store, now full of other spirits going through reverberations of life like dutiful insects.

The story then shifts to a journalistic procedural when reporters investigate the murder and discover this nameless man is a twin of a powerful Union leader, and this nobody may have been murder by mistake. This leads to a violent denouement between Union leaders in a muddy lake, the mud like rancid earth-blood, clotted and thick. And the ghosts can only watch, no longer able to alter events, silent sentinels drowning in self-pity, unable (or unwilling) to understand.

Teshigahara’s bleak monochrome cinematography perfectly presents a corrupt world where people are silhouetted against turgid skies, tiny and insignificant atop huge piles of slag and coke. Or the bloodstained transition into the ghost world, the miner’s identity never revealed even in this static afterlife, desperately attempting interaction with others. Teshigahara turns the world upside down through a knothole, and depicts the police as another form of corrupt power, photographing the rape scene from above in a voyeuristic stoicism without edit, unflinching and remorseless.

There is a sad beauty that burns through the film, a smoldering rage that ends with the man in white making his declaration…and a boy witness to the violence running towards an unknown future, an orphan who could become the next assassin.

Final Grade: (A)